BROOKLYN, NY, Oct, 28 — “The parents united will never be defeated!” This chant greeted parents as they entered school for parent-teacher conferences. About thirty students and teachers picketed at the entrance and passed out flyers inviting parents and neighbors to an upcoming meeting to discuss the Department of Education’s (DoE) plans for racist attacks against our schools. PLP members and friends helped organize this event as part of a growing campaign to build multi-racial unity against the destructive plans of the local education bosses.

Our building houses several schools, which were created as part of an earlier reform program. Education officials broke up large comprehensive high schools around the city and created smaller schools which they hoped would be easier to control. In our case, the building is physically located in a mainly white, middle-class neighborhood. However, the students who attend all the schools are black, Latino and Asian working-class youth from surrounding neighborhoods. While teachers have struggled to help these students learn, graduate and go on to college, the DoE has placed every obstacle they can in the students’ path. Budgets in the schools have been cut every year, the 100-year-old building has not been renovated and students are scanned through metal detectors every day as if they were criminals.

The newest attacks on our school are the most blatantly racist yet. We have been told the DoE plans to put an additional school into our building because the DoE’s formulas say that our space can hold more students. The stated purpose of this school is to “serve the immediate neighborhood,” the wealthier, white parents who have historically sent their children to magnet schools in other neighborhoods if they cannot afford, or do not believe in, private schools. This new school would be screened, meaning students would have to meet high academic standards to get in. The building will get millions of dollars worth of renovation to accommodate the new school, although our schools have been told we would not be renovated, even if we increased our enrollment to match their formula for space usage. The DoE has said they may remove the metal detectors with the addition of the new school, something they have refused to do for years when the school housed mainly black and Latino students. We’ve even heard rumors that the DoE is consulting with the custodial staff about the possibility of creating a separate entrance for the new school.

This kind of segregation within the same building is one of the most disgusting manifestations of the racism built into the capitalist system. This new school would create a system of “separate and unequal” within our building. Some of the politicians and DoE functionaries who have addressed the issue have been very direct about it, although others claimed that the current schools could reap benefits from the additional money coming into the building with the new school.

Students and teachers in our schools are horrified and looking for ways to fight back against this assault. In the past, students from our schools walked out over the cell-phone ban and have protested budget cuts to the schools and mass transit. Last spring, teachers picketed against the budget cuts before school. We know we now need to unite students, teachers and parents in class struggle. The actions on parent-teacher conference night were our first steps this year in fighting these new attacks.

That day, the debate team of our schools organized a debate on the issue during the after-school program attended by about 100 students and teachers. Although the student debaters are all against the DoE’s plans, they carefully researched and presented both sides so there could be a full discussion. After the debate, students and teachers were invited to “do something instead of just talking” and join the picket in front of school to publicize the issue to parents. A group of teachers, including Party members and friends, has been meeting after school to plan parent outreach and other tactics. These are good, but they are baby steps. Many of the students and teachers involved are already CHALLENGE readers. We aim to develop a student study group and many more CHALLENGE readers as more angry students, parents and teachers join the fight-back efforts. If Party members give leadership to the struggle, it has the potential to explode into mass anger. We have a lot of work to do and a lot of lessons to learn. 

CHICAGO, November 15 — The mothers of the Whittier elementary school here have given workers of the world another glimpse of our ability to establish a society of, for and by the workers. When Ron Huberman, the racist CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, threatened to raze the Whittier field house to build a soccer field for the nearby private school, the mothers collectively occupied the building for 43 days. “La casita”, as the field house came to be known, will remain as a community center and be under the control of a non-profit led by the mothers.

The struggle for “La casita” (our “little Stella d’Oro”) was within the confines of the bosses’ reform struggle, but by participating in the occupation, bringing food, spending the night at the field house, doing the “grunt” work necessary, we gained the confidence of the community and were able to raise communist ideas.

One important struggle occurred around the politician hacks who wanted to use the brave mothers as a photo opportunity. While Alderman Danny Solis and Mayor Daley were vilified for the racist crooks that they are, others, like City Clerk and mayoral hopeful Miguel Del Valle were heralded.  Some Whittier moms supported a local community group bearing a “Del Valle for Mayor” pin.

We brought up the bankruptcy of capitalism and ALL of its politician-protectors and wondered aloud why we needed politicians at all. We organized la casita for 43 days while under threat of attack from the government and cops; surely we can organize the rest of society.  Even though we did not convince everyone, we did not despair because it is struggles like these that give life to our ideas and allow us to grow in the process. 

The necessity for communists to lead the battle against sexist ideas that run rampant in the working class was also evident. Latina mothers, who typically are disempowered not only on the job but at home with their husbands, smashed the sexist stereotype by acting as leaders and fighters.  However, this empowerment has created tensions with male counterparts and it has spilled over into the struggle itself. One husband accused his wife, one of the key leaders in the struggle, of having an affair with one of the organizers. Despite struggle from other moms, she has since removed herself from the struggle, a sign that much more work is necessary. In the process, other moms have been going through similar problems.  One of the mothers close to the Party was extremely emotional about the accusations because she was accused of something similar. She wisely pointed out that the solution to this struggle “is by involving the dads in the process from the very beginning.”

Of course we can’t change the dynamics of sexist relationships overnight but in the context of the class struggle, as in the fight for la casita, men can learn to accept leadership from the women and struggle side-by-side.  In the process of fighting capitalism, we can smash the gender roles that it requires, men and women as competing commodities to be exploited, and instead create new roles as comrades-in-arms.  This struggle at la casita and with the Whittier mothers is in its infancy. We will continue to fight and struggle. 

NEW YORK CITY, November 15 — The recent annual mass meeting of TWU (Transport Workers Union) Local 100, representing most, but not all,  MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) workers, painted a grim future for the union. However, angry rank-and-file workers who want mass confrontation against MTA bosses over racism, unemployment, pay, service and fares have the potential to spark a bright beacon of mass anti-racist class struggle for the entire international working class.

Transit workers move New York and they can stop New York in fighting the racist MTA bosses, who focus cuts on mainly black, Latino and immigrant riders and workers. Bus Operators in an MTA Queens Village depot, represented by ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 1056, demonstrated some of this power on November 12 when they refused to take assignments from a racist dispatcher who called a Bus Operator a n-----. Their protest halted more than 20 buses for two hours and defied New York’s Taylor Law that bans job actions by government workers.

Such struggles can provide fertile ground to build a mass, fighting Progressive Labor Party that unites workers, the unemployed, students and soldiers in a revolutionary communist movement against the entire racist worldwide system of capitalism.

Racist U.S. Bosses Target Mass Transit

A liberal New York Daily News writer and the ATU International President detailed U.S. rulers’ nation-wide cuts to mass transit. Huge layoffs, union-busting and contracts with 0% raises or cuts have become the norm in just a few years. TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen warned of pension cuts for both new and current MTA workers, possibly raising years of service and the retirement age needed to collect a pension to 30/62 from 25/55.

In the 1960s and ’70s, anti-racist rebellions in black inner cities, wildcat strikes and the civil rights movement opened up relatively stable and well-paying transit jobs to black, Latino and immigrant workers. But today rivalry between imperialists — the world’s richest and most powerful capitalist classes — is forcing bosses worldwide to exploit “their” workers more than their competitors’. U.S. bosses’ “recovery” is built directly on mass racist unemployment that forces double unemployment rates on black workers and attacks all workers.

Rank-and-File Must Push Union Hacks Out of the Way

Several workers at the November 5 mass meeting told CHALLENGE they’ve organized job slowdowns over safety. These efforts were mainly individual, with varying support from co-workers. Many of these angry workers want backing and leadership from top union officials. But only rank-and-file workers themselves can lead militant fight-back.

The Local 100 leadership effectively accepted layoffs in return for maintaining the current contract. Local 100 heads spent most of their time and energy on lobbying for transit-funding bills and negotiating the re-hiring of laid-off workers in various titles. Once they even floated a scheme to create a Local 100-operated dollar-van company to re-hire laid-off bus operators. These efforts didn’t challenge the layoffs in the first place and failed to win even small gains. Most anti-layoff protests or job actions were small, scattered and organized separately in Local divisions.

Looking towards the next contract, Samuelsen said neither Republicans nor Democrats are our friends. But then almost in the same breath he bragged about helping save NY Democratic Congressional seats and insisted he would lead a massive lobbying campaign to revive two transit funding bills that died in Congress. Lobby and give money to our enemies says Samuelsen!

Workers Need Mass Class Struggle

Both the leading faction of Local 100 hacks and their “opposition” focus on corruption and in-fighting instead of opposing more layoffs and organizing support for laid-off transit workers. Hoping for their help is a dead end. The recent anti-racist mini-strike of rank-and-file ATU Local 1056 members, and major strikes of transit workers in Europe, show that rank-and-file workers can organize a mass fight-back against the MTA and unite transit workers, employed and unemployed.

The bosses can use courts, banks and the rest of their racist class dictatorship to reverse temporary gains won through worker’s militant struggle. But with communist leadership, strikes, job actions and rebellions can build the forces needed to win a lasting, anti-racist, communist working-class dictatorship that smashes the bosses in revolution. 

BALTIMORE, MD, October 16 — In the largest turnout of teachers in memory for a contract ratification vote, Baltimore teachers voted 1,540 to 1,107, on Wednesday and Thursday last week, to reject the proposed union contract.

These teachers in Baltimore handed a small but significant defeat to the education plans of the ruling class, which includes Obama and his secretary. of Education Duncan, the national leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the leadership of the Baltimore Teachers’ Union, Alonso (CEO of public schools in Baltimore), the local school board and the main Baltimore newspaper, The Sun. They had all hailed the proposed contract as a ground-breaking, progressive step forward.

On the morning before the main voting, a comrade was able to get an article published in The Sun. That Op-Ed piece criticized the anti-working class aspects of the contract. In particular, the contract includes a merit pay system which pits teachers against each other, encouraging them not to work collectively since only a small percentage can receive the rewards built into the contract.

The contract includes provisions which would lead to larger class sizes and a greater focus on test scores, which harm students’ ability to learn. The article also pointed out that the new contract gives principals a lot of power to fire teachers, reduces the union’s ability to protect teachers and, most importantly, helps the ruling class control what ideas are taught in the schools. The article seems to have played a helpful role — along with lots of other grassroots opposition — in contributing to a widespread understanding of the contract’s true nature.

But editors at The Sun newspaper decided to cut out nearly all of the main political points concerning ramifications of a national curriculum from the original Op-Ed piece. Here is some of that section:

Two wars are currently raging because of this, and more war is on the horizon, including the threat of a world war. . .ExxonMobil, along with the other major oil and gas giants — and the big banks who provide them with financing — are key players, behind the scenes, in running the United States. The continued and expanding profits of these institutions require war. They need millions of young people who are willing to fight and die for them. To accomplish this, the ruling class needs public schools to teach a particular set of beliefs and “facts.”

The new high-stakes tests are likely to require — for students to score well — that particular answers favorable to the world-view of ExxonMobil be given. And any teacher whose students haven’t been duly habituated to giving those responses will be evaluated poorly, and denied raises, because his or her students didn’t make the appropriate “progress.” This sort of scenario is where Obama’s Race-to-the-Top is headed. And this is another reason why we should not support the proposed contract which is inextricably tied up with Race-to-the-Top.

However, a significant portion of the opposition to the contract was based not on this political disagreement or even on reformist disagreements with the substance of the contract, but on the fact that it is quite vague, leaving many new details to be worked out by new union/management committees, after its adoption. The CEO, school board, and local union leaders are now taking advantage of this, planning a second vote soon, with few if any changes to the proposed contract. Instead, they are focusing on efforts to just “clarify” the proposed contract to teachers. 

About a dozen AFT staffers were brought to Baltimore for several weeks, traveling from school to school to help sell the contract. In opposition to both versions, activist teachers have organized meetings, distributed flyers, hosted a city-wide spaghetti dinner and created a button: “DEFEND STUDENTS — VOTE NO.”

During this and future struggles, PLP members need to do much better at distributing CHALLENGE as widely as possible. And a strong effort must also be made to expand the opposition movement within the union so that it’s truly inclusive. In the past, teacher groups that have politically challenged the union leadership here have been predominately white. In a city where the vast majority of students and teachers are black, this must change!

The bosses use racism in the schools to divide teachers, parents and students. Communists reject the racist ideas built into capitalism, so teachers must build multi-racial unity as we fight to make the world better for our students, the future workers of the world. No matter what the outcome of the second vote on November 17th, the victory for the Party and the working class will be that multi-racial unity.