CHICAGO, December 15—Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, with a 96 percent “yes” vote. For several months, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have threatened a racist layoff of 20 percent of a workforce that serves mainly working-class Black, Latin and immigrant students. If the Illinois General Assembly fails to approve $500 million in funding by the end of January, and the layoffs are enforced, a strike is a strong possibility.
Members and friends of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are in the thick of organizing and fighting with multiracial unity against these racist cutbacks.
Racist Bosses Take Aim at Students
Students in Chicago’s school system, like others with a mostly Black and Latin population, are bearing the brunt of U.S. capitalists’ sharpening imperialist rivalry with Russia and China (see page 2). The rulers need to keep our class divided, impoverished and intimidated to enable them to restore a military draft for the broader global conflict to come. The CPS slogan, “Students First,” is, in reality, “Bankers First.” The school system borrows hundreds of millions of dollars in municipal bonds, and pays back billions to the biggest banks in debt service. Meanwhile, CPS bosses claim they are too broke to pay for basic necessities for Black, Latin and immigrant students.
The CTU’s liberal leadership has fought militantly for the rank-and-file. But like all labor unions, it fights within the confines of a capitalist system that can never meet workers’ needs. By contrast, PLP’s ultimate goal is to organize a revolution to overthrow capitalism, seize state power, and create a communist society.
The capitalist class holds state power, and to end capitalism the working class must take that power from them.
Chicago Class Struggle: School for Communism
PL’ers and friends organize and support anti-racist struggles within the CTU. While PLP fights within the working class to win reform demands, we also understand that a final victory can be won only by building CHALLENGE networks and a mass PLP for communist revolution. In September 2012, PL’ers joined Chicago’s teachers, students, parents and workers citywide in a massive, seven-day, anti-racist strike. As a result of this militancy, workers won some temporary concessions. But under capitalism, any crumbs the bosses concede are inevitably taken back. In May 2013, Chicago’s Board of Education closed 50 schools, virtually all of them in Black neighborhoods. The closures disrupted students and laid off school workers. Since then,. Chicago’s working class has fought back with boldness.
CTU’s contract expired July 1, 2015. Over more than a year of negotiations, the union has put forward reform demands for fewer police in schools, smaller class sizes, racial integration, an end to over-testing, a $15 minimum hourly wage for all CPS and vendors’ employees, and more school nurses, social workers, librarians, and services for homeless students. Union members have been emboldened by a rally of 5,000 students and workers in November, a hunger strike, demonstrations at Bank of America, and numerous walk-outs and “walk-ins” (morning rallies by staff, parents, students and community members, who then walk into the school together.)
When the Chicago police were forced to release a video of the police killing of Laquan McDonald in cold blood, the CTU leadership called on workers to support demonstrations against the murder and its coverup. But the CTU leaders again revealed the limits of liberalism by fixing the blame on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney and notorious defender of killer cops. They called on workers to back “better” politicians, like Hillary Clinton. As anti-racists passed a resolution in the CTU’s representative body to protesting Laquan McDonald’s killing, PL’ers attacked the whole racist capitalist system.
Our fight for communist revolution and to build a mass revolutionary party stands in contradiction to the union’s reliance on liberal politicians. We’ll keep organizing our friends and coworkers to keep picketing, chanting, sitting in, and marching. We are learning and fighting in the class struggle with our sisters and brothers, and building an anti-racist movement with multiracial unity and our Party’s communist vision up front.