BUFFALO, NY, April 27 — New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) is on a campaign here to win teachers to defend capitalism, a tough sell when teachers are being singled out for especially vicious attacks. Delegate numbers for NYSUT’s state convention, the state affiliate of the two national teacher unions, are sharply down this year. Teacher anger is seething. 

So how do the bosses respond?  With 11,000 teachers laid off statewide, and phony teacher-evaluation grades made public, the NYSUT’s leadership did not fight back with picket lines, mass meetings, job actions, or strikes. It didn’t organize unemployed teachers and the still-employed into a unified fighting force. It didn’t support other workers who are fighting back and to unite with them. 

Instead, NYSUT’s leaders invited a mayor, a state senator, the state comptroller, the state education commissioner, and a New York senator to address the delegates.

This convention was aimed at misleading teachers to support the racist and imperialist ruling-class attacks on the working class here and abroad. It was part of the bosses’ ongoing campaign to win teachers to their side in the class struggle, a very serious danger.

Fortunately, the union’s sellout politics were unable to suppress a lively demonstration by the Lancaster teacher local outside the convention on opening night, protesting the teacher-evaluation scam. Two New York City teacher delegates joined them, chanting together as we faced the police on horseback: “Education is a right: Fight, fight, fight, fight!” 

The next day, the Buffalo local walked out on Commissioner John King over the same issue. They rallied outside and welcomed some delegates from other locals.  These are small signs of what is possible if teachers fight back.

The rogues’ gallery of speakers was presented as “friends of labor” by the president of the National Education Association (NEA). Barack Obama and his racist, imperialist Democratic Party are also “friends,” according to this well-paid stooge.  But we know that many of the 600,000 teachers in New York don’t agree with him. 

With communist leadership from the Progressive Labor Party, they can be won to put aside narrow interests and find solidarity with other workers, including their own students. A communist analysis can also help them understand why the laws of capitalism require the bosses’ state to impose budget and pension cuts, layoffs and forced furloughs, fascist-style public shaming, and threats to collective bargaining rights.  

Win Teachers to Oppose Racism, Sexism, Imperialism, Capitalism

PL’ers and friends in NYSUT, along with other delegates who consistently support us in debate, have an uphill battle to expose the federal and state governments as tools of the dictatorship of the capitalist class.  We must lead rank-and-file teachers to the class consciousness denied by the AFT’s (American Federation of Teachers) “union of professionals” logo denies.  Eadie Shanker, widow of the red-baiting, racist AFT leader Al Shanker, actually told the convention, “We are not just workers, we are professionals.” She boasted of winning the racist 1968 UFT (United Federation of Teachers) “strike” against black and Latino communities in New York. For a moment, the mask came off. The racist elitism of the UFT and AFT leadership emerged without apology.  

In a meeting of the civil and human rights committee, we debated resolutions brought by a progressive local against the war in Afghanistan, the racist stop-and-frisk law in New York City, and the “new Jim Crow” of mass incarceration of black people.  In every case, the spokesperson for the UFT/AFT leadership amended the resolutions to remove any explicit attack on racism and imperialism. But even though the UFT leadership stacked the committee in its favor, a pro-imperialist amendment passed by only 58-49. 

Teacher union leaders in the U.S. are explicitly allying with the capitalist state and opposing any rank-and-file struggle against its racist and imperialist policies. Our task as communists is equally clear: to win our fellow teachers to anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-imperialism, anti-fascism, and anti-capitalism.