Washington Schools’ Demo
Matt Damon Speaking at the Demo
Teachers from all over the US gathered in the capital Washington DC last weekend to demonstrate against privatisation and stand up for public schools
US teachers at the march, which was endorsed by both US teaching unions the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), are protesting against the direction of Obama’s schools policy, which includes the acceleration of privatised charter school programmes, the withdrawal of union negitating rights in some states, attacks on pensions, cuts in public school budgets, increases in high stakes testing and the linking of pay and tenure to testing – in short the whole range of neo-liberal education policies which are being faced by teachers to a greater or lesser degree all over the world.
There was a large delegation of teachers from Wisconsin who have been facing particularly vicious attacks from their state government (see previous posts). The rally was addressed by teachers from around the US as well as actor Matt Damon who spoke movingly of his commitment to public schools and the debt he owed them.
Leading education scholar and writer Alfie Kohn told Education Week:
“We are living through what future historians will surely describe as one of the darkest eras in American education — a time when teachers, as well as the very idea of democratic public education, came under attack; when carrots and sticks tied to results on terrible tests were sold to the public as bold “reform”; when politicians who understand nothing about learning relied uncritically on corporate models and metaphors to set education policy; when the goal of schooling was as misconceived as the methods, framed not in terms of what children need but in terms of “global competitiveness” — that is, how U.S. corporations can triumph over their counterparts in other countries.
“There will come a time when people will look back at this era and ask, “How the hell could they have let this happen?” By participating in Saturday’s march, by speaking out in our communities, we’re saying that we need to act before we lose an entire generation to this insanity. The corporate-style school reformers don’t have research or logic on their side. All they have is the power to impose their ignorance with the force of law. To challenge their power, therefore, means we need to organize. We must make sure that the conversation about the how’s and why’s of education is driven by educators.”
To read more about Saturday’s march go to: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/07/alfie_kohn_we_have_to_take_bac.html
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August 01 2011 03:57 pm | General
Lois Weiner on 15 Aug 2011 at 2:46 pm #
My comment on the New Politics blog (http://newpol.org/node/497)
I was out of the country and couldn’t attend the SOS march but most reports have agreed that the the rally was spirited, and disappointingly small, given how hard the organizers worked at building it, and the amount of “celebrity” power behind it, including Diane Ravitch in a starring political role and Matt Damon in a starring role. Both the AFT and NEA endorsed the march and gave a token contribution, $25,000- probably not even as much as they spent on rubber bands and paper clips at national headquarters last year. Even if you don’t look closely at the AFT’s Facebook page coverage of its involvement in the march, it’s clear from the pathetic photos that it had a very small presence. If the AFT and NEA had put even one-quarter of the effort organizing for this march as they did the get-out-the-vote for Obama, the march would have had tens of thousands of teachers. Post-march critiques that I’ve read have been split. On one side are the folks who essentially say “ Matt Damon was great! It was a fine start and it’s a beginning on which we have to build.” On the other side are postings analyzing the political shortcomings of the march demands and speeches, like Susan Ohanian’s blog and Alan Singer’s piece on Huffington.
From the start the march organizers had great energy, high hopes, and lots of naivete. The underlying political message was that Obama’s heart is in the right place – and we just have to let him know that he has his facts wrong. Diane Ravitch was an articulate spokesperson for the march, a fact that’s been taken up by the supporters of multicultural education who (rightly) remember her long-time opposition to scholarship or curricula even faintly suggestive of systemic racism or sexism in US society. I won’t repeat my analysis of what’s right and wrong with Ravitch’s current political work and writing, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that she has, essentially, substituted herself for what labor/liberals and the AFT and NEA national leadership should be doing and saying. I suggest we view Ravitch as our frenemy in the struggle to save public education. The problem is not Ravitch, but progressives, and especially the teachers unions, which have bowed to Obama and the Billionaire Boys Club in a way Ravitch has not.
What the SOS march didn’t get at was why the neoliberal reforms have been accepted so readily. Granted, the Billionaire Boys Club has control of the popular media and lots of money to throw at the “problem” of teachers standing up for the dignity of their profession. (Do see the real “indy” film about education,“The inconvenient truth behind waiting for superman.”) We have to understand that the ideological success of the neoliberal project in education also comes from its exploitation of US education’s historic inequalities in education. Minority parents and communities can’t be won away from charter schools and privatization unless we acknowledge the sad complicity of teachers, their unions, and the education establishment in supporting a status quo of educational inequality. We need credibility when we ask for parent support and explain how Walmart’s funding of charter schools and “fast track” teacher certification programs relates to its anti-union, sexist, and racist employment policies.
Still, we can’t be too hard on the march organizers because their unwillingness to identify the politics behind the assault on teachers unions (and public education) has characterized most of the liberals in the education establishment, like the Opportunity to Learn Campaign. Even more disappointing has been The Nation’s analysis, or rather, lack of it. A recent story about “teacher quality” is typical of The Nation’s refusal to take note of Obama’s buy-in of policies advanced by Democrats for Education Reform, who are indistinguishable from the neoliberal American Enterprise Institute. Jane McAlevey’s fine piece about labor’s capitulation to Obama’s policies was an exception to The Nation’s failure to get at the deep problem we face in the bipartisan drive to refashion public education and destroy teachers unions. Another solid piece, by Pedro Noguera and Michelle Fine, explaining the politics of scapegoating teachers, is worth reading in The Progressive.
The SOS march proved how much a movement to turn back these terrible changes to public education needs transformed teachers unions. The unions are being attacked so viciously because the Right understands the unions’ potential power, alas, better than do most teachers and progressives. Transforming the unions requires much more than replacing the faces at the top, though the head honchos in Washington certainly have to go. We need union democracy. And we need to shout out that schools can’t improve the economy and can’t create jobs. What schools, teachers, and their unions can do is stand up for the right of all children to have their full human potential respected.
Mary on 15 Aug 2011 at 4:08 pm #
The following is a letter sent to teachersolidarity from the US on the lessons of Wisconsin. The website would welcome reactions and discussion on this important issue – and indeed on any others which are reported on this site
Letter from the US:
The Wisconsin Uprising was lead from the beginning by teachers, students and university teaching assistants. For a long time, nobody controlled the process. But two weeks is a long time to be hanging out protesting in the winter in Wisconsin. By that point in the upsurge, teachers were reporting that parents needed schools to begin again, because they were missing too much work due to childcare.
Suddenly the AFL-CIO, the Wisconsin affiliate of the National Education Association (the WEA) and the Democratic Party started pushing the idea of a recall. They told protestors that it was time to go home, the recall puts everything in our ballpark, we’ve got this covered, you can depend on us. Believing in these traditional leaders, protestors started leaving the capitol in Madison. These forces accomplished what Gov, Scott Walker and his police could not. They ended the uprising.
Now we can see the results of relying on these leaders. They took control of the process and refused to push the central issue that drove the uprising – collective bargaining rights. When Walker initially demanded wage and pension cuts, union leaders immediately conciliated, even though there was no budget crisis in the state. They drew the line however at proposals to eliminate collective bargaining, since that is the funding base for their cushy jobs.
Top union leaders and Democrats were as dismayed as Republicans by the large-scale, grass-roots nature of the upsurge. This threatened their traditional go slow, incremental strategy of cooperation with corporations that they have relied on for 60 years.
Walker’s bill went much further than attacking collective bargaining. It also pushed privatization by allowing the state government to sell off power plants at public institutions like colleges without a bidding process. The immediate introduction of similar anti-union legislation in a number of states, especially in the Rust Belt, shows that this is far more than an economic attack. It is a political attack on the working class across the board with the open goal of breaking the only existing organizations that give workers any political power.
The political and class nature of the attacks openly appeared in Michigan, where the governor pushed through the Emergency Financial Manager Law. This gives the governor the right to seize any unit of government and impose an EFM (which can even be a corporation). The first victim of the law was the town of Benton Harbor, 80% African-American, which has been fighting against Whirlpool Corp for years. The same day, Robert Bobb, the EFM of Detroit public schools, fired over 5000 teachers.
This attack is something new in the experience of Americans, who, for two generations, have seldom experienced open class-based political attacks.
In this context, the AFL-CIO characterization of the battle in Wisconsin, as simply a fight to defend collective bargaining, an economic right, was a deliberate attempt to obscure the essential political nature of this fight. This was an attempt to undercut the popular, grass-roots impulse that drove the uprising.
Then they didn’t even bring up the collective bargaining issues in the Recall. This is the inevitable result of a strategy of conciliation with corporations, a concept that slow, incremental change will produce results, always remaining on the defensive, preaching that workers should rely on “our friends” in the Democratic Party, and running from the political issues. So much for the politics of begging.
There are moments in history when what was possible becomes impossible and what was impossible becomes possible. In fact, it becomes the only way to move forward. We are living out this moment. The old politics of insuring corporations get their way, while providing tiny increases in benefits can no longer produce anything. When the corporations and their political allies are openly attacking you, it’s time to openly attack the corporations. The right of a single family to live and prosper is a higher right than corporate profit.
***** *****
The National Education Association role is sabotaging the working class impulse to fight politically goes far beyond their unqualified endorsement of Obama at their 2011 Convention.
What happened in Wisconsin is now a matter of public record.
In Michigan, the Michigan Education Association (MEA) refuses to fight against the EMF law and preaches that re-calls are the only way. This leaves the law in place.
In Ohio, workers campaigned to get 1.5 million signatures to put a referendum on the ballot this Fall to vote down the Governor’s anti-labor laws. The OEA poo-pooed the importance of this and constantly tried to get the effort off-track.
In Illinois, the IEA collaborated with corporate-funded Stand For Children to isolate the Chicago Teachers Union and then allow anti-labor legislation to pass. The newspaper Substance reports, “Stand for Children is: “…a front group for the wealthiest people in the USA, the same people who are pushing the privatization agenda to wreck public schools, vilify teachers, and privatize the public’s wealth, adding to the personal wealth of men like James Crown (and his family), Kenneth Griffin (and his entities), and Chicago’s infamous Pritzker tribe of billionaires….”
In California, the state NEA affiliate, the CTA, preaches that everyone must support Governor Jerry Brown and his budget cuts because “we all must share the pain”. Brown cut more this year that Schwarzenegger ever did in one year and now will be cutting much, much more after the federal budget ceiling fiasco.
Nothing will change in America until people understand that this is a completely new day. The national Austerity campaign is being organized by a class of billionaires who consciously operate as a class-for-itself, who use the politics of power, who set strategic goals and operate with a strategic plan that includes operatives in both parties and the leadership of the unions.
The strategy and tactics that the unions have preached for years have failed. This is no longer an economic struggle for better paychecks and benefits. You cannot stop a political attack with an economic approach. What is required is a political movement. The working class must likewise become conscious as a class-for-itself. The new politics of power that underlie any political strategy must begin by protecting the interests of everyone who must work to survive. This requires a movement that forces the government to accept the responsibility to support the fundamental necessities of life for working people, rather turning over public wealth to the corporations.