Call for Teachers’ Strike vs. Fascist School Reform

LOS ANGELES, CA, Sept. 14 — At the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) area union meetings last week, some teachers called for a strike against the attacks on students and teachers, showing that “education reform” is fascist and part of the rulers’ moves to prepare for wider war.

On August 25, the Board of Education voted to turn over up to 200 lower-performing schools and 51 new schools to charter school operators.  This is fascist reorganization of the local school system by a U.S. ruling class that is in an on-going war and an era-defining economic crisis. After years of neglect this school reorganization is a qualitative shift as the bosses attempt to create a school system that will produce technically-trained and patriotic young workers to join the military and future war production. PLP needs to work among these youth who are future workers and soldiers, key forces for revolution.

This school reorganization is also being pushed in Obama’s so called “Race to the Top,” where his education secretary Arne Duncan, has proposed a competition for $4.35 billion in  federal grants to carry out “school reform.” States like California, where teachers’ unions had won laws that prohibit tying teacher evaluation and pay scales to student test data (so called “merit pay”) will be ineligible for these funds. But Duncan was in Sacramento recently to help State Senator Gloria Romero’s bid to change the law to make California eligible. And the LA Board of education just voted to enter the “Race to the Top” competition, also agreeing to tie teacher evaluations to test scores. These tests emphasize patriotism. Tying test scores to teacher evaluations is a way to enforce teaching patriotic lies and allow administrations to get rid of higher-paid older teachers while hiring younger teachers for lower wages and benefits.

In the face of the current attack, UTLA leadership is urging teachers to write local proposals to do school reform themselves.  While the union pays lip service to organizing the Charter Schools, they are not even trying to organize all teachers, including charter employees, into the same bargaining unit. UTLA President Duffy, loyal servant of capitalism, calls on teachers to get involved in so-called grass roots school reorganization such as the innovation division, “i-design.”  Such reorganization would be done to meet the ruling class’s needs, but would have to be approved by the school board and probably require a corporate partner.  This is not grass roots; it’s doing the bosses’ patriotic work to remake the schools to better prepare students for war, to defend a system of exploitation, racism and war. Local school control means teachers working with students and parents to administer their fascist system.  We can’t unite with those who oppress us, exploit us and send us off to war!

More layoffs and foreclosures are coming, so patriotic education reform will take on more importance for the bosses. A trade union response to this attack is totally inadequate. PLP calls on teachers, students and parents to organize a strike against the fascist reorganization of public schools.  Organizing such a strike, based on expanding CHALLENGE networks, builds the unity of parents, teachers, and students to prepare us for the struggle to get rid of the capitalist system and build a communist society.

Boston Teachers, Students and Parents Unite to Fight Budget Cuts

BOSTON, MA, May 19 — Chanting “Bail out schools, not banks” and “Money for schools, not war,” Boston teachers, students, parents and supporters rallied at the State House and marched to City Hall. We demanded no cuts in public school programs and full funding for community colleges and public education.

This was the first mass action of Boston teachers against budget cuts since layoffs were announced in December. Teachers attacked cuts in their own schools. A Haitian community leader spoke against cutbacks, pointing to rising immigrant dropout rates. A Roxbury Community College student attacked underfunding at state colleges. A parent explained how cuts in inner-city schools are racist. A school bus driver opposed the Superintendent’s plan to further segregate the Boston public schools by creating five zones and restricting school choice to within these zones.

A PLP speaker called for an end to the system of capitalism that created the economic crisis.  PLP leaflets calling for communist revolution were distributed.

To organize this rally inside the Boston Teachers Union (BTU), teachers had to fight the BTU Executive Board for months. The Board overturned the vote of the BTU membership to sponsor the rally, disgusting many members. The Board is calling for more taxes on working people, and for lobbying “friends” in the government. But many teachers followed the call to hold the rally anyway!

Teachers are skilled workers. But, like all workers, they are under attack by the bosses. Therefore, they must unite with working-class parents and students to fight against the bosses and their budget cuts. Otherwise, other workers may view teachers as “greedy and selfish.” By fighting to improve the education of working-class students and against racism, imperialism and war, teachers can fight for the needs of the whole working class.

The Progressive Labor Party tries to give leadership to the anger of the hundreds and thousands of teachers, parents and students and turn the fight against cutbacks into the fight for communist revolution.

Racist LA School Cuts Sacrifice Students, Not Bankers’ Profits

LOS ANGELES, June 15 — Students at high schools across this city walked out against racist budget cuts, carrying picket signs teachers had put up on their classroom doors, to protest the rulers’ Board of Education’s layoffs and increase in class size.

Obama called for “shared sacrifice” in his inaugural address, and lauded “the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job.” On May 27, LA Mayor Villaraigosa said, “Given the unprecedented economic downturn in California, everyone must share in the responsibility and sacrifice to bridge this budget deficit.” But neither of these bosses’ servants said the bankers must share their profits.

This idea isn’t new. For years, autoworkers were told a pay cut would avoid job losses. They’ve taken pay cut after pay cut, and then lost their jobs as well. That’s the way a profit system works.

Given the state budget crisis and virtual collapse of the union leadership in the wake of the May 15 injunction, teachers may be forced to take a pay cut “to save teacher jobs and class size,” but will probably wind up with both a cut and layoffs.

The fight continues with picket lines, community camp-outs and other actions. But the reluctance of teachers to strike against the injunction indicates our class must gain the confidence to defy the union leadership. The teachers and students fighting together against the cutbacks has been an inspiring example of working-class unity. Most important is the increase in CHALLENGE readers, five youth joining PLP, more meeting with the Party and distributing CHALLENGE. In this crisis, the working class’s main victory is the growth of the communist movement.

We communists believe in sharing scarcity as well as abundance, and we believe that the working class can be won to this communist idea. While the willingness of many teachers to take a pay cut in the belief they will save jobs and prevent class size increase might be an example of the collective spirit of the working class, under capitalism “shared sacrifice” is a lie and a trap.

Workers’ militancy should be used not to negotiate their wages and conditions down but to fight to up the ante of class struggle. The hypocrisy of a system that gives $750 billion of workers’ taxes to super-rich bankers while they squeeze predominantly black and Latino students into larger and larger classes must be exposed. Then they cut teachers’ wages to boot! In this capitalist class society, it’s always the working class who sacrifices and the rich who live off that sacrifice.

The German poet Bertholt Brecht wrote in “A German War Primer” in 1938:

“Those who take the meat from the table preach contentment.

Those for whom the taxes are destined demand sacrifice…

Those who lead the country into the abyss call ruling too difficult for ordinary men.”

Capitalism is in a deepening crisis. The U.S. is isolated internationally, fighting an imperialist war on at least two fronts, leading the international global market into decline and attacking workers to pay for this crisis. Millions are losing their jobs and homes. The only government expenses not being cut are their war expenditures, the police and the prisons — the infrastructure for the war and fascism which is the capitalists’ main hope of surviving this crisis.

Clearly capitalism cannot provide a decent life for the working class. It must and can be overthrown and replaced by a communist system based on collective work, collective planning, and real equality (not socialism which retained money, banks, and wages, with the latter’s differentials splitting the working class). Eliminating the exploiter class which lives off the profits it squeezes from workers’ labor will release the potential for workers to reap the full fruits of the value that they, and only they, create.

Every struggle must have the long-term strategic goal of building the communist movement that can seize power from the bosses. The class struggle has crucial lessons to teach us how to get there. Three wildcat one-hour work stoppages built the unity, militancy and resolve of teachers, students and parents, independent of the union leadership. Student walkouts throughout the district, fighting for their own and their siblings’ education, build their potential to fight for the working class.

This is a victory the Board of Education can’t take away — the unity of parents, teachers and students; the experience of confronting the district, the Mayor and the banks; seeing our potential to unite against the bosses and their racist system; and the growth of PLP.

Read CHALLENGE. Participate in our PLP Summer Project, where students and teachers, soldiers and industrial workers will reach thousands with our newspaper and spread communist ideas.

Troops, Cops, Tanks and Copters Can’t Crush Morelos Teachers’ Strike

MORELOS, Mexico, Oct. 10 — For several days over 2,000 Army troops and state and federal cops, using tanks and helicopters, viciously attacked teachers, parents (many of them indigenous) and other supporters blocking a national highway. Some 24,000 teachers in this state have been striking for two months against a government “reform” called Alliance for Quality Education that aims to privatize schools and intensify attacks on working conditions teachers have won through many decades of struggles.

The teachers are not only fighting the repressive arm of the bosses’ state but also the “mother of all union sellouts,” Elba Esther Gordillo. She is “President for life” of the SNTE (National Teachers’ Union), a Senator and firm supporter of the government of Felipe Calderón.

The militant teachers and supporters have also repudiated all the   bosses’ parties, burning electoral propaganda of the PAN, the ruling Party, the PRI (which ruled Mexico for 60 years) and the so-called pro-people PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution).

The teachers and their supporters fought against the military-cop attack even after being forced off the highway, battling the cops and troops from side streets. The rulers sent more reinforcements. Helicopters launched tear gas against protesters. Homes were raided  and numerous arrests made, with many injured.

It was another major class battle workers and their allies waged against the capitalist dictatorship ruling Mexico. In the last several years,  similar struggles occurred during the massive strike and popular uprising led by teachers in Oaxaca and by striking miners who repelled a massive attack by cops and troops.
During this battle, teachers and supporters marched from three different places and rallied at a major square to oppose the assault. Contingents of teachers from Oaxaca, Mexico City, Michoacán and Guerrero joined the demonstration.

On Oct. 8, in Mexico City thousands of teachers from 17 different regions marched to the Secretary of Education headquarters opposing the educational “reform” and denouncing the violent attack against teachers in Morelos. The marchers stopped at the Interior Ministry, ripped down fences surrounding the building and fought federal cops. They then set up a permanent “plantón” (picket line) at the Secretary of Education.

Some PLP teachers and friends from Oaxaca have gone to Morelos to support fellow teachers there, bringing our communist literature to them. Marches have been held in Oaxaca to support the struggle in Morelos. A national teachers’ strike is now pending and should become a general strike of the entire working class.
These militant actions take place amid the global capitalist economic earthquake which is hitting Mexico very hard since it is tied to the U.S. economy. The recent drop in oil prices and the decreased funds sent to Mexico from immigrants in the U.S. — who have lost their jobs because of the U.S. recession — have worsened the economic crisis here. Even the fortune of Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest capitalists, has been cut in half because of losses in the local and international stock market.

Only the drug cartel business is prospering here, producing a violent war for the control of the drug profits involving different sections of the ruling class and their corrupt politicians and cops.

PLP teachers, workers and students must redouble our efforts to bring our revolutionary communist politics to the masses of workers and their allies who are experiencing the violent dictatorship   of the bourgeois “democratic” state over the working class. DESAFIO must become a key ideological tool in this important task of turning the anger of workers and their allies into a mass revolutionary storm to destroy capitalism.
Teachers, students and workers in the U.S. should stand in solidarity with Mexico’s striking teachers, raising support in their unions and mass organizations

Teachers Oppose Bosses’ ‘Reform’ to End Pensions, Cut Vital Services

MEXICO CITY, May 29 — Thousands of teachers from many parts of Mexico, including Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tlaxcala and Mexico City, participated in a massive march here to protest the reform of the law of the Institute of the Social Security in Service of the State Workers (ISSSTE), which plans to reduce pension benefits and increase retirement age. Members and friends of PLP distributed thousands of leaflets exposing capitalism and calling on teachers to fight for communism.

In their fascist offensive, the bosses and their imperialist backers have dealt a new blow to workers by reforming this law, thereby giving workers’ savings to the banks and financial institutions. These “reforms” mean the end of pensions for the retired, removal of the right to housing credits, slashing child-care services and a severe cut in medical services.

In the short term, this will affect the workers of the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE), of PEMEX (the state-owned oil company) and of public companies. Even though the more pro-U.S. imperialist bosses support the “reform” all the other Mexican bosses represented by different capitalist political parties, including the opposition López Obrador and the PRD are behind it.  (This situation is facing workers worldwide — see page 5 on France’s workers facing a similar attack.)

Currently more than 20 million Mexicans eke out their existence on wages equal to barely twice the minimum and many even less than that. These hungry masses lack a revolutionary organization. PL’ers must continue exposing the bosses and their neoliberal and state capitalist policies and keep organizing the workers to build a communist system where exploitation, poverty and unemployment will not exist. We must have confidence in the great potential of the working class to make a revolution and run society.

During the march there were many insults and anger directed against President Felipe Calderon and Elba Esther Gordillo, “leader” of the teachers’ union, but the problem isn’t only these puppets and the Social Security Reform. The whole capitalist system is rotten and must be destroyed.

Some teachers said that the positive reforms to Social Security were won with over a century of struggle and now the bosses are taking them away with one stroke. This is the essence of capitalist “reforms”: they give workers only crumbs and can take them back at any moment. We need to fight, not for reforms but for a communist world, where workers in Mexico and globally will control society for the benefit of the international working class. Long Live Communism!

Puerto Rico: Teachers’ Strike On Hold, Fight ‘Rat’ Rivera

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, March 5 — After a 10-day militant strike, 10,000 teachers held a mass meeting at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum and agreed to the proposal of Rafael Feliciano, president of the FMPR (Federation of Teachers of Puerto Rico) for a temporary suspension of the strike in order to evaluate the weaknesses and strengths of their struggle without surrendering the right to strike again.

The strike included many mass actions, street marches of thousands, militant picket lines, battling vicious attacks by riot cops and confronting the gang-up of the Dept. of Education (DOE) bosses, governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá and a court order to decertify the union for violating the anti-strike Law 45.

The strikers also had to deal with backstabbing by international union hacks like Dennis Rivera, vice-president of the SEIU “Change to Win” Federation and former president of NYS Local 1199 of the Hospital Workers Union. He lunched with Governor Vilá to urge decertification of the FMPR in favor of an SEIU union. During a mass rally, when a speaker called Rivera a “vulture,” striking teachers repeatedly chanted, “He’s a rat.”

The strikers did win a $150-a-month wage hike on top of a $100 monthly increase agreed upon last year. While the cost of living here is much higher than in the U.S., teachers’ starting pay here is $19,200-a-year, much lower than any U.S. school district. The DOE agreed not to punish any striking teachers “except those involved in criminal activities” (it was the cops who criminally attacked strikers) and to put on hold the privatization of many public schools (the DOE’s plan to make the 500,000 public school students and their working-class parents pay even more for the rotten conditions).
The strikers received support from other workers and students here, many of whom joined the marches and other activities during the struggle. A mass student meeting at the Univ. of Puerto Rico Río Piedras campus organized a 24-hour strike to support the teachers. Scabbing “dissidents” had little mass support among the teachers but got a lot of coverage in the bosses’ media. And the opportunist leadership of the National Hostos Independence Movement issued a press release backing the bosses.

In the U.S., the strikers won support from both college and public school teachers. (See adjacent article on support from the City University of NY Professional Staff Congress union). The March 5 Delegate Assembly of the NYC United Federation of Teachers (UFT), with 92,000 members, also unanimously passed a solidarity resolution “to support the Puerto Rican teachers in their struggle to be treated with dignity.” But the UFT leadership gave no real support to the strikers.

On March 4, the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Agency in Manhattan was picketed, backing the strikers. PLP teachers participated in these support actions, and distributed a PLP leaflet in NYC and L.A. supporting them.
The strike was more than a trade union struggle; it was a political fight-back against the rulers’ strike-breaking Law 45 (similar to the U.S. Taft-Hartley and NY State Taylor Laws which forbid public workers’ strikes). It also fought the colonial-master politics of the Change to Win and AFL-CIO hacks, as well as the brutal repression by the “shock police.”

The strike demonstrated that, despite all the odds, these teachers dared to fight back in a day and age when so many workers accept the bosses’ attacks that make us pay for their economic crisis and endless wars (the death rate of soldiers from Puerto Rico in the Iraq war is very high). But it also showed the limitations of reform struggles.
Workers must turn these battles into schools for communism, learning how to forge a revolutionary internationalist movement to carry on the long-range fight-back for a world without vicious cops, union traitors and capitalist-imperialist oppressors. That’s the goal of workers’ power — communism — that PLP fights for. Join us!

CUNY Faculty Union Supports Puerto Rico’s Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, March 6 — The February 25 Delegate Assembly of the City University’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC) voted unanimously to “participate in strike support and solidarity efforts on behalf of the striking teachers of the FMPR [Puerto Rico’s teachers’ union].” Delegates contributed $700 on the spot, and quickly organized a network for strike support on the campuses. Fifty PSC’ers took 7,000 flyers and petitions to union colleagues and students on at least half of CUNY’s 20 campuses. Another $900 was raised by PSC leaders at a board meeting of the state teachers’ union body.

Class unity across borders is essential for teachers and all workers, so PL members and friends in the PSC took the lead organizing strike support on the campuses. Exclusive focus on economic gains for a single union’s members is a loser for all workers because it isolates us from each other. We need to combine struggle for our own demands with equal efforts to build international working-class unity and class consciousness, to win workers to PLP.

This struggle will remain a significant political one among PSC leaders and activists for some time. While all are sympathetic to the striking teachers, there is disagreement about priorities: amid a tough PSC contract campaign and an uphill battle for more State funding, should we spend time and resources on FMPR strike support?

PLP members and friends and other PSC’ers answered that question with a mass approach, working hard on the campuses to persuade our colleagues and students how vital it is to support our fellow teachers in a bitter struggle. We were not deterred by comments like, “I wish you’d spend this kind of energy on the contract campaign!” Some were anxious about relations with other unions “if we got too far out front” supporting the FMPR, which disaffiliated from our national union, and is being raided by SEIU VP Dennis Rivera. But we persisted, getting a warm response from CUNY students, especially those entering teaching and those from Latin America.

One cafeteria worker urged others to sign the petition, exclaiming, “This is to liberate my people!” And all workers, we told him. One signer was a union chapter leader in his high school.

We used different tactics: tabling, roving the cafeteria, faculty distributing flyers to their classes, getting signatures and donations in department meetings. We proved that relying on the masses of PSC’ers and students to express their international solidarity with the strikers was the way for revolutionaries to work in reform struggles, not as some sectarian groups do, saying some apparently “correct” things but building no base among the mass of workers.

Self-critically, comrades in the PSC know we must intensify our efforts amid these kinds of struggles to build the Party itself at CUNY. The Party is the essential weapon to win, not reform demands to be reversed by capitalists’ state power, but win all workers’ liberation — communism.

We’ve recently had two CUNY PLP forums, one on racism and another on immigration, each attracting 30 or more faculty and students. We’ve also expanded CHALLENGE readership and study groups, have collected $800 worth of new subscriptions. We’re planning a Party newsletter at CUNY, and winning some friends closer to joining, but we have more to do. Time presses: the whole world is a tinder box leading to a major imperialist war. Teachers in Oaxaca and Puerto Rico have taught us a good lesson in fighting capitalism: “¡Lucha sí! ¡Entrega no!” Struggle yes, surrender no!

PLP Students Lead Action vs. Racist NYC Budget Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, February 14 — A multi-racial group of over 500 parents, teachers and students rallied on the steps of City Hall today, protesting the recent racist budget cuts. On January 30, a $180 million cut had been announced and it was carried out the very next day.

The idea for the protest grew out of a teachers union Delegate Assembly on February 6 when PLP members called for the immediate organization of a protest rally for February 14 at Department of Education (DOE) headquarters. They called for teacher unity with parents and students and for the union to use the press, radio and leafleting subway stations to bring out as many people as possible.

The union leadership attacked the call, saying the 14th was “too soon” to bring anyone out. (This from a union with over 100,000 members!) They said, “We can’t ‘hide’ behind our students.” Clearly the union leaders feared thousands of angry workers and students on the streets. Instead they called for a “coalition rally” for March 19, six weeks after the cuts were made.

But PLP students and teachers showed what could be done NOW. At several schools, PLP’ers immediately called for meetings to plan a student-parent-teacher fight-back. They proposed a rally on Valentine’s Day at DOE offices.

The students wrote a flyer advertising the rally and e-mailed it to other student governments city-wide; posted copies around schools; made announcements over school loudspeakers; explained the impact of the cuts in the classrooms. The news of the rally quickly spread to other schools and they took up the organizing as well, encouraging students to join the fight-back.

No Love on Valentine’s Day

At the rally some student speeches emphasized the need to build a movement to smash capitalism, that we must not rely on lying politicians. Some of the latter said they would “help” the students, asserting that the students and parents need Democratic politicians “to save them.”

One young woman speaker said if politicians really cared, billionaire Mayor Bloomberg would pay the school “deficit” out of his $11 billion fortune because he CAN. Instead we have Democratic candidate Obama wanting 92,000 more troops in the military while NYS Senator Hillary Clinton allows $504 million to be cut from the school budget. Some “help”! The speaker concluded that we need a revolution to end this racist system. Condemning the budget cuts as racist, students also linked them to the widening war and to a growing police state.

Liberals in the crowd told the cops that the students “weren’t a part of the demonstration” and wanted them to leave. The cops, eager to end the event, tried to negotiate but we told the crowd what was going on and they all began chanting, “Let them speak!”

The final speaker described the growing repression against workers fighting the attacks of the system. While Bloomberg rolled out the red carpet a week before for the NY Giants, he will never do that for angry parents and students on the steps of City Hall. Fight for communism!

21,000 Teachers On Strike in Puerto Rico against Privatization

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Feb. 25—
Teachers are waging a very important struggle for teachers and workers, here and in the U.S. They are fighting the governor and education authorities, the cops who have attacked their picket lines and AFT and SEIU hacks who have tried to raid their union. The 42,000-strong FMPR (Federation of Teachers of Puerto Rico)—the island’s biggest union—went on strike on Feb. 21 against the union-busting Law 45 (a combination of the federal Taft-Hartley and New York State Taylor Law) which bans public workers from striking. The teachers are also fighting for better working and teaching conditions and against the plans to privatize about 1,000 schools, turning them into charter schools. The average annual wage of teachers here (most of them women) is $19,500, lower than any in the U.S.

The school bosses and cops have tried to push scabs to break the strikes. On the first day of the strike, riot cops viciously attacked striking teachers. On Mon., Feb. 25, cops escorting scabs attacked striking teachers at the Republic of Colombia school in Río Piedras. But in spite of the barrage of attacks facing the striking teachers, their struggle has mass support. Most of the 500,000 students are staying away from schools even though the government is urging them to attend classes. On Sun. Feb. 17, a few days before the strike, chanting “La huelga en educación será la mejor lección (The strike in education will be the best of all lessons) and “lucha sí, entrega no” (Fightback, no sellout), some 25,000 teachers and other workers and youth marched in San Juan in support of the teachers. There were huge contingents of workers from the UTIER (electrical utility union) and UIA (water workers unon), who are also negotiating new contracts.

But while these workers are fighting mad, the sellouts of the AFT (AFL-CIO) and the SEIU’s Change to Win Federation are behaving like colonial masters, trying to stab the teachers in the back. Both are conniving with the local government to decertify the FMPR. There are rumors that Dennis Rivera, former head of NYC’s 1199 and now a top honcho in the international SEIU and the NYS Democratic Party, has offered governor Vila a huge contribution to his re-election campaign (the governor is facing charges of campaign irregularities in his previous election) in exchange for decertification.

Workers shouldn’t have any faith in these hacks and in any electoral parties, including the pro-independence liberal PIP, which is offering its legal aid to the strikers. All these politicians serve capitalism.

PLP teachers are internationalist and always support our militant brothers and sisters fighting back anywhere against the same enemies we all face (education authorities, cops and union hacks). The striking teachers in Puerto Rico are an example we should all follow, fighting back in a period where teachers and workers all over face major attacks from the bosses trying to make us pay for the bosses’ economic crisis and imperialist war. Our slogan should be: teachers and workers of the world, unite!

PLP Exposes Scheme to Use ‘School Reform’ in U.S. War Plans

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 12 — Last week at the L.A. teachers union House of Representatives (HR), anti-racists fought for the union to support the struggle of the ‘Jena 6’ (six black youth victimized by legal lynching); to condemn the racist immigration raids sweeping the country; and to join the struggle to re-open King/Drew Trauma Center, the only public hospital in south L.A. PL’ers distributed leaflets exposing the imperialists’ plans to use school reform to build patriotism for widening wars. One-fourth of the delegates received CHALLENGE. Teachers won $1,000 for the ‘Jena 6’ defense, but only lip service for supporting the struggle to re-open the hospital. The union leadership guaranteed no debate on these questions, trying to reduce these important issues to pieces of paper.

What was so important to prevent discussion of the immigration raids sweeping our city and terrorizing our students, or the lack of emergency medical care for black and Latino workers here? “School reform,” of course. The bosses are using the unions to win teachers to “restructure” the schools to prepare students politically and technologically for war.

The HR agenda included pages about charter schools. Instead of fighting them, the union leadership tried to make an accomodation with them, as Randi Weingarten did with “Green Dot” (charter-schools company that allows a union) in New York. Their main aim is collecting union dues from charter-school teachers. Merit pay — paying the teachers most effective in pushing the bosses’ patriotic agenda more — is not yet on the table, but it’s coming.

The main HR discussion offered the carrot and the stick in reorganizing inner city schools. On the one hand, the superintendent is threatening to put all junior and senior high schools with low test scores into a “Transformation Division” under his scrutiny; to lengthen school days; to institute teacher-proof scripted lessons; to place more arbitrary authority in principals’ hands; and reduce team teaching.

The “carrot” is the Innovation Division, supposedly allowing teachers and parents to “restructure” their “own” schools. The union leaders tried to sell this option not as the “lesser evil” but to get the teachers’ support for school reform — to do the bosses’ work for them. The ruling class needs the passion and energy of the thousands of teachers who work in the inner city schools and are committed to serving their students. The Innovation Division is the bosses’ plan to win these teachers to school reform and to the “diverse” patriotic agenda.

School reform is part of the U.S. ruling class’s preparation for what Foreign Affairs magazine calls the “inevitable confrontation” with China and a larger war in the Middle-East. The bosses must re-industrialize the U.S, particularly armaments production. They realize they must compete or risk decisive losses. Therefore, they need school reform: to win teachers and students to patriotism and to refit the schools to train young people to develop, produce and use the latest high-tech weapons. After decades of pushing racist terror, drugs, social neglect and mass incarceration, the capitalist class finds it absolutely necessary to change its educational plans and train a significantly larger sector of its inner city youth.

But, as Karl Marx said, capitalism creates its own grave-diggers. Teachers fighting to serve their students and to resist arbitrary, racist principals and superintendents can unite with their students in rejecting the bosses’ agenda of patriotic loyalty to the rulers and their wars. Teachers need to teach the truth about capitalism, to prepare students — who will be in crucial positions in society as industrial workers, soldiers and teachers — to fight to finally destroy this system and its wars for profit. As the school-reform struggle develops, teachers must build CHALLENGE networks to win students and their families to join the Progressive Labor Party and lead the working class to counter capitalism’s racist, imperialist wars with communist revolution.