As Thanksgiving approaches, even with 12% unemployment, crumbling city streets and schools with 51 kids to a class, Californians can find reasons to give thanks. But it's about to get even worse.

$2 billion in additional state budget cuts will be "triggered" in December. Working Californians -- who already subsidize corporations and the wealthy through an unfair tax code -- will bear the burden once again. The ax will fall on everything from public school budgets (California already ranks 47th in per pupil spending¹) to in-home health care for the elderly and infirm.

It doesn't have to be this way. Our state is not really broke, just held hostage by right wing ideologues. Sacramento Republicans won't raise a penny in taxes no matter who they hurt or or whose future they flush down the toilet, but even so, we have a way out. We can go over the heads of the right wing and go directly to the people with a ballot measure.

Will you join Courage Campaign and demand that Governor Brown put forward an initiative to make California's 1% pay their fair share?

Today Sacramento is silent as college students strike because tuition has increased 47% in the last three years² and looks to be headed higher with no end in sight. The solution is simple: the wealthy need to pay a little more for the remarkable state that allowed them to grow rich.

Will you tell the Governor that we expect him to lead in taxing the 1%? And if he does, we'll have his back?

If we can give him the courage, he'll do the right thing. Thanks for all you do.

Rick Jacobs
Chair and Founder, Courage Campaign

Additional reading

To read the full story, California School Spending: Winning the Race to the Bottom? click HERE.

To read the full story, CSU campuses on list of steepest tuition increases, click HERE.