Black Lives Matter wants free college added to the Constitution, according to its first official public policy platform, reported on by Campus Reform.
In Black Lives Matter’s new platform, which was released just days before the two-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, the organization called for free college to be a constitutional right, along with five other demands.
“Under the current U.S. Constitution, education is not a constitutional right, which means that states within the U.S. make their own laws and allocate their little-to-no resources for public schools. As a result, education in this country is grossly unequal and underfunded,” the platform states.
“A constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to a fully-funded education would clarify and enhance the role of the national government in ensuring finance and resource adequacy, address the education needs and priorities of the [U.]S. as a whole, and provide necessary guidance to state and local governments to help raise the baseline of education quality, achievement, attainment, and accountability.”
In addition to claiming that free college as a constitutional right, Black Lives Matters is also calling for high-quality food options in all campus dining halls, free daycare for students with children, a social worker for every 40 students, and free health services on campus, including access to reproductive gender surgery.
Black Lives Matter says that America is an “outlier” when it comes to education, noting that nearly every other country besides the U.S. has “some type of constitutional or statutory right to an education,” and that is why they have called for their radical education reforms.
By proposing free college for everyone, regardless of income, Black Lives Matter’s college plan goes a step beyond Hillary Clinton’s college plan, in which only students from families with an annual income of $85,000 or less would initially receive free college.
Black Lives Matter has not placed a price tag on their free college proposal, although it’s likely to cost more than Hillary Clinton’s $350 million plan since it guarantees more free things.
