Los Angeles, July 14 — Hundreds of teachers and other education workers took thousands of leaflets and hundreds of CHALLENGEs at the biannual American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention here. Opposing the leadership’s racist slogan, “Reclaiming the Promise,” members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party called on delegates to fight racist deportations and racism in education, and to turn the coming imperialist war into a war against the bosses. We helped organize two forums on these issues with the AFT Peace and Justice Caucus. We organized a rally inside the convention center for an end to racist deportations, with a call for education workers to join us in Murrieta, California, for a rally against the attacks on young undocumented immigrants from Central America.
From Los Angeles to Philadelphia, from Detroit to Newark, teachers report they are under attack. Thousands have been laid off. Teacher tenure is threatened. Schools are being closed. Teachers who have organized new caucuses, and in some cases won local leadership, are getting no AFT support in these struggles. Yet the AFT leaders and old-line local heads stand up one after the other and claim they are winning!
AFT Leadership Serves the Bosses
The AFT leadership has historically been part of the ruling class’s organizations, from the Council on Foreign Relations to the leadership of the Democratic Party. It has worked overtime to win education workers to vote for Democrats and support imperialist U.S. foreign policy.
But the leadership’s job is growing more difficult. Much of the rank-and-file knows that “Reclaiming the Promise,” with its implied reference to “the good old days,” is another lie. The old days featured 400 years of slavery, strike-breaking, war-making, sexism, anti-immigrant hatred and persecution, and the oppression of all workers. And what is the bosses’ promise to workers today? Words instead of jobs, wars instead of education and healthcare, poverty instead of housing — all in the name of patriotism for a ruling class that has never cared about anything but profits. That’s their only promise to the working class: to defend their system to the last drop of workers’ blood.
The response to PLP from many education workers at the conference was strongly positive. We were thanked for going to Murrieta. We were thanked for our demonstration. We were thanked when we brought a leaflet reporting on the rally in Murrieta to the convention the next day. We met militant educators from caucuses around the country, and several of them were involved in the Peace and Justice forums — the first on fighting back against attacks, the second on the need for school integration. Delegates responded warmly to the forums, and we’ll follow up on these new friends.
AFT “Democracy” = Extortion
While the AFT leaders talk about democracy, they enforce a rule on caucus members to refrain from criticizing or voting against the leadership. Anyone breaking the rule risks losing such perks as union jobs or free trips to the convention. New York’s United Federation of Teachers, which operates under the same rule, provides the “muscle” for the AFT leadership. These goons make it difficult to pass anything at the convention if it’s opposed by the leadership. More and more, however, this rule is being challenged by the new caucuses and local leaders.
But merely changing the AFT’s leadership will not change the nature of capitalist education. The bosses design schools to serve the needs of the ruling class — to create docile workers, willing soldiers, and unflagging allegiance to U.S. imperialism. As communists, our goal is to make a bigger, deeper change. We aim to put education in the hands of the students, parents, and teachers through communist revolution.
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LOS ANGELES, July 14 — At the just-concluded convention of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Progressive Labor Party intensified its struggle to win masses of education workers to communist ideas.
The AFT has about 1.5 million members throughout the country. Its leadership, led by President Randi Weingarten, represents the interests of the liberal wing of the capitalist ruling class. This is apparent in the leadership’s consistent support of the Barack Obama administration. Union leaders invited charter school champion Bill Gates as a keynote speaker at the convention, and continue to pitch ruling-class initiatives like the Common Core standards to its membership. After a series of recent ruling-class attacks, however, the union’s rank-and-file has grown more open to left ideas and is starting to challenge the leadership. We in PLP hope to win many to the Party in this struggle by exposing the true nature of the AFT leadership and linking our school fights to the larger struggle against capitalism.
A Battle Over Ideas
The AFT’s loyalty to the ruling class came out most sharply after the Chicago Teachers Union proposed a resolution attacking the Common Core. Both its implementation and purpose. The resolution fell short of connecting the Common Core to the rulers’ need to discipline ruling-class forces at odds with the dominant finance capital wing, like the religious right — or to ideologically control working-class youth as the bosses drive toward a broader global war. Nonetheless, it represented an advance in the membership’s willingness to fight back against the bosses’ plans.
The AFT executive council countered with its own resolution to keep the workers in line. While critiquing implementation of Common Core, the resolution called for all teachers to work within it and “make it better.” To that end, the AFT is issuing “innovation” grants to teachers out of money originally given to the AFT by Bill and Melinda Gates.
Another battle came over the AFT’s executive council resolution to attack Russia and call for U.S. economic and political support for Ukraine — a prime example of the leadership’s continued push for the bosses’ war plans. The Professional Staff Congress, which represents professors and adjuncts in the City University of New York system, countered a resolution that outlined the Ukraine government’s ties to right-wing oligarchs and neo-Nazis — forces that are racist and anti-union. While Weingarten kept trying from the podium to whip up imperialist, anti-Russian sentiments, it was clear that the membership stood against U.S. involvement in Ukraine. While the PSC resolution was watered down due to backroom politics, the AFT leadership had to compromise and agree to oppose intervention from all outside parties, including the U.S.
Fight-Back Forums
The AFT’s Peace and Justice Caucus, where PLP helps give political leadership, organized two well-attended forums around the fight back against education budget cuts and the increasing segregation of U.S. public schools.
The first forum included teachers and parents from New York, Los Angeles, Newark, and Chicago. One speaker addressed the international situation and in particular how workers in Mexico were resisting attacks against their schools. A teacher explained that school closings and mass layoffs were fascist because they aimed to discipline the working class for a future of low wages and wider war. Another teacher discussed the racist nature of attacks on her students and how the union is organizing students, parents, and teachers to fight back.
PL members in the audience connected the school struggle to the larger struggle against capitalism. They called on all those in the room to join them in Murrieta, California, where undocumented immigrant children were attacked by local racists (see page 1). They argued that these children in detention prisons are “our students,” and that teachers had a responsibility to confront the racists. Many in the crowd applauded. Some teachers were won to leave the convention and go to Murrieta with the Party.
The second forum addressed the fight against school segregation. Teachers from Minneapolis and Chicago explained how their schools were never truly integrated. A third teacher, a PL member from New York, told an inspiring story of how teachers, students, and parents had united to integrate the schools. She noted that integration was essential to the fight against racism and to unite the working class for the broader struggle to defeat the capitalist bosses.
Another forum, organized by the Chicago Teachers Union and the United Teachers of Los Angeles, dealt with social justice unionism. Local leaders from Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, St. Paul, and Philadelphia, many of them members of dissident AFT caucuses, discussed how they fought back. They recommended working with the community, fighting for parents’ and students’ interests alongside teachers’ interests, and struggling around issues outside education, like the attacks on undocumented youth. With over 200 participants, the forum revealed a wave of new members who are ready for more militant fight back. Weingarten was forced to address them in another effort to control her membership.
Limits of Social Justice Unionism
Locals across the country are seeing the rise of “social justice” caucuses. The new movement has won many teachers, young and old, to fight back against the bosses. It often focuses on student–parent–teacher unity. It also addresses topics outside of education and attempts to raise class-consciousness. It has constrained Weingarten and company, forcing them to criticize Common Core (if in a limited way) and the Obama Administration.
But despite the positive aspects to this movement, we must also understand its limits and the need to maintain and spread our communist analysis even as we participate in the union. At the forum on social justice unionism, there was no criticism or even a mention of the capitalist system. The speakers all focused on various reforms, many of them related to their contract. Without a communist analysis and communist leadership to guide workers through these struggles, they are being set up for disappointment and cynicism. Reform victories are always temporary, and reform movements are inevitably taken over by the bosses.
Weingarten and her fellow liberals plan on doing just that. Yes, she’s been forced to make some concessions, but the AFT remains firmly in the bosses’ hands. We see city after city under attack. Even in Chicago, where social justice unionism has been reborn, teachers and students still face school closures and cutbacks. The AFT leadership will hold up liberals like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka as examples of how the working class can “win” within the capitalist electoral system. They will pay lip service to members’ needs by critiquing the implementation of standardized testing while ignoring how it relates to imperialism and war.
This is not an argument for communists to leave the unions — just the opposite. We must with our brothers and sisters to fight back against the bosses’ attacks. There is growing resentment toward the AFT leadership. We can win many teachers to see the connection between school closures and the bosses plans for fascism and war. If we stick with these education workers, we will win many to dedicate their lives to the working class and to fight for a communist world.
