CHICAGO, January 27— A mass student walkout and a sick-out by Detroit’s public school teachers reveals the racist core of the capitalist bosses’ schools and the need for communist organizing.
The teachers forced the bosses to shut down 69 of 100 segregated schools by calling in sick en masse. Teachers are fed up with the disgusting learning and teaching conditions and attacks on wages and benefits. Ninety-five percent of their students are Black or Latin; the under-funding of Detroit’s schools, under state control for 12 of the last 15 years, is clearly racist.
The teachers are calling for funding to guarantee clean and safe learning conditions, smaller classes, more workers, and social services for children with special needs. They are also demanding restoration of pay and benefits, including the return of nearly $10,000 each teacher was forced to “lend” the district under an agreement negotiated by the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) in 2012.
Rank-and-file teachers have organized job actions independently of the DFT. As disillusion with unions grow, so do the red opportunities for mass leadership from students and teachers toward shutting down capitalism. The student walkout from Cass Technical High School is a good example.
Bosses’ Emergencies, Workers’ Disasters
The teachers are also demanding the removal of the bosses’ hatchet man, Darnell Earley, the emergency manager appointed by the Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to “save” the bankrupt city. With sole decision-making power, Earley has slashed school and pension budgets while increasing funding for the police department.
This is the same Darnell Earley who’d recently served as emergency manager of Flint, Michigan, where he played an instrumental role in switching the water supply in the majority Black city from Lake Huron to the toxic Flint River, leading to widespread lead poisoning (see page 2).
This is What Capitalism Looks Like
After decades of budget cuts and the layoffs of thousands of teachers, engineers, janitors and other support staff, many schools are in a state of acute physical decay, making it impossible for students to learn (see sidebar).
The school district has 200 teaching vacancies yet to be filled. One DPS high school now has only one certified math teacher. One student said she’s had a substitute teacher in her Spanish class since the beginning of the school year—and the sub speaks no Spanish.
Under capitalism, only a certain percentage of the population needs higher education. And only a certain percentage gets jobs. The rest are set up to be unemployed or join the military. These cuts in the education factories—and in other social services—are designed to conserve the bosses’ resources as they prepare for war with their imperialist rivals. Under communism, all students will develop to their greatest potential and contribute to society.
Union Play their Racist Part
On Jan. 12, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, accompanied by state union chief David Hecker, toured several schools and feigned shock over finding rodents and other unsanitary conditions. In fact, city and union officials have disregarded complaints by teachers, parents and students for years!
On Jan. 15, the DFT, whose interim president has opposed the sick-outs, held a meeting that drew more than one thousand teachers. AFT President Randi Weingarten was flown in from Washington to break the rank-and-file’s resistance. She exposed the unions’ true role: subduing militant fightback while distracting workers to work within the capitalist system.
Only a communist revolution can enable workers to build a world where students can learn under safe and dignified conditions and give collective leadership. Detroit teachers and students are heading in the left direction. They have refused to heed the union’s call to calm down. Many feel a strike is the next step.
Public Enemy #1: Capitalism
Cities like Flint and Detroit have been decimated because of capitalism’s drive for maximum profit. Many higher-paying union jobs have been moved to non-union states where workers—weakened by racist divisions that prevent fightback—are paid poverty wages. Outside the U.S., workers are paid even less. This super-exploitation drives wages down for the entire working class.Millions are left unemployed.
Capitalism is so saturated with racism it can never meet the needs of the working class. The Progressive Labor Party stands with the students and teachers of Detroit and their fight. An attack on one student or teacher is an attack on the international working class. The bosses use their state power to breed racist working and learning conditions. PLP fights for state power by building an army for communist revolution—student by student, worker by worker.
Use CHALLENGE to expose the racist conditions of Detroit schools. Demonstrate working-class solidarity—fight back where you are!

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Here is a list—from Detroit teachers—of racist learning conditions at their schools:
Spain Elementary Middle School: Black mold; buckling gym floor; broken swimming pool; defective boiler.
Thirkell Elementary-Middle School: So few teachers that eighth graders are housed in the gym and pulled out for instruction in core subjects for only an hour or so each day; rain and snow pour through the ceiling; teachers get one prep period a month.
Moses Field School (for students with severe cognitive impairment): Broken boiler; infestations of rodents, roaches and bedbugs.
Palmer Park Preparatory Academy: Pieces of the ceiling falling on students’ heads; infestation of rats.
Bates Academy: Security issues; heating issues; mice; broken computers.
Dossin Elementary-Middle School: Standing water in classrooms; holes in the ceiling; classroom without power due to black mold in the wiring.
Ronald Brown Academy: Special education class with no textbooks; slimy growth on the walls; crumbling ceilings.
Mann Elementary School: Untrained teacher forced to administer medication to student suffering severe seizures.