Using CHALLENGE to Battle Growing Fascism in Chicago Schools

Recent CHALLENGE articles about fascism’s growth in Haiti (see issue 12/14/11) and its attacks on the Occupy movements worldwide inspired me to report recent efforts to build PLP amid growing fascism in Chicago.

I am a laid-off black schoolteacher here, among the disproportionate number of laid-off black teachers. These racist layoffs and those of all groups reflect the economic and political crises of capitalism.

Global fascism and its imperialist wars make workers’ lives miserable, attacking the working class in many ways. One tactic is forcing government employees (teachers, health workers, among others) to accept lower living standards — reduced wages, skimpier benefits and lousier working conditions. For teachers, this includes layoffs, denied pay raises (or lower pay scales, inducing them to move to a growing number of higher-paying charter schools), more expensive health care coverage and increasingly poor working conditions.

In education, one such condition is overcrowded classrooms. More students per teacher are cheaper for capitalists, whose gain is the working class’s loss in schools. Classroom overcrowding reduces the quality of education for students, often implemented in a racist way. Black and Latino students, already enduring racist oppression, are stuffed into learning environments ill designed to meet their needs.

Then there’s the increased repression of those who fight these attacks. Because of my activism on the local school Council, the administration took special measures to eliminate my position and lay me off. My co-workers elected me to be a

teacher representative on the Council. I and other community members challenged the principal’s hiring of an extra administrator/assistant principal (to terrorize teachers) and an armed off-duty cop (to terrorize students). Standing up to these attacks ensured my trip to the reassigned teacher pool.

The fact that the administrators are black shows that racism is not about the perpetrators’ color but rather about the racist conditions they help enforce.

The school is now battling closure. Staff members, food service and custodial workers will lose their jobs. Students will be forced to attend schools miles from home. Some will cross dangerous gang territories and/or attend schools where academic ratings are even lower than their current school. School bosses are funding newer computer technology in the “closing” building, preparing to re-open it as a charter or “selective enrollment” school which won’t serve the students of this area.

Community organizations are campaigning to keep this school and several others open. These efforts are well-intentioned, carried out by honest people, knowledgeable about organizing. Parents wanting a good education for their children and grandchildren are joining this effort. Unfortunately, they’re organizing around capitalist liberal principles that will fail at best, and at worst will lead workers away from PLP’s revolutionary communist principles.

Both before and after my layoff I’ve distributed CHALLENGE to several school staff members and won some workers to continue distributing the paper in my absence. I still meet with school staff and have remained active in the community organizing efforts. One teacher has attended a Party club meeting and I’ve had political discussions with others. I’ve also encouraged a few 8th graders and their parents to read the paper and check the PLP website.

I will continue to build relationships with co-workers and friends and increase distribution of CHALLENGE and other PLP documents. I’ll write more for CHALLENGE, enabling my friends to see that our conversations are part of a global movement to free the working class from the bonds of capitalism. We want to win people to see that education under capitalism only serves the system. It can never provide for workers’ needs. I’m committed to building my confidence in the workers and the workers’ confidence in our Party that is theirs to join and build.