Day 9 - Danville, Pennsylvania

We’ve seen nothing but trees since we got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike - no complaints after living through 6 years of California drought!

As we made our way through the trees, we remembered our stop earlier in the morning at Kent State University in Ohio and of the terrible events of May 4, 1970. We recalled that 4 students were killed and 9 injured when Ohio Army National Guard fired into a crowd of student protesters. The terrible events of that day added fuel to the growing national pressure to stop the pointless slaughter in Viet Nam and Cambodia.

It's time to free our students from more insanity.

Visiting Kent State the day before I will participate in a protest with Dr. Jill Stein at the first 2016 Presidential Debate at Hofstra University was a strong reminder of why I’m on this 7,000-mile journey. Jill is being excluded from the debate stage, although she is on the ballot in every state but two, South Dakota and Oklahoma, just as students are being excluded from a strong, confident beginning to their lives upon graduation. Instead of their country standing behind them, we're picking their pockets!

I talked with Kent students for much of the morning about the injustice of putting a great burden of debt on their backs when they should be preparing to take leadership roles in our nation. It is a situation just as insane and counter-productive as was the killing and wounding of students in 1970!  America, wake up!

Making profits from student loans, including the U.S. government earning $50 billion annually on student loans and the average debt of 70% of our graduates at $35,000, doesn’t sit well on struggling students. These are difficult times but I’m always inspired by the goodness and strength and hope I feel when I talk with them. My hope is that this sleeping giant - 43 million student debtors - will awaken in time to flip the vote and rescue our country.