TEXAS, August 24 — Today an international group of students, teachers and workers rallied in front of our city’s Mexican Consulate to support the struggles of teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Progressive Labor Party and friends marched down city streets chanting, “When students and teachers are under attack, what do we do, stand up fight back!” And “Las Luchas Obreras, No Tienen Fronteras!” (workers’ struggles have no borders).
U.S.,Mexico — It’s All the Same
We passed out leaflets that connected the struggles of students and teachers in Mexico to the struggles of students and teachers in the U.S. Workers at bus stops and in storefronts expressed agreement with our chants and leaflet. One worker pointed out the similarities of the U.S. Common Core education reforms in the U.S. to the reforms in Mexico.
The Mexican ruling class’s reform efforts have shut down the teacher-union run education institute that serves primarily indigenous working-class families. This reform includes a new teacher evaluation system that ties student test scores to the teachers’ job security. This new system mirrors the Common Core education reforms in states such as New York, and the new T-TESS evaluation system in Texas, which uses a similar system of rating teachers based on students’ standardized test scores. This tactic pits teachers against students and blames teachers rather than capitalism for the inequalities in the education system.
Following the lead of the federal government, Texas is taking more direct control of teacher job evaluations. This is a fascist attack. Fascism is the outgrowth of global capitalism. It is the intensification and centralization of the repressive and ideological forces in order to maintain the existing capitalist class domination. Under these reforms, the government targets teachers, threatening to fire them for low-test scores. This new system is racist, hurting working-class Black and Latin school districts the most.
At a recent faculty meeting in a Texas school where this new evaluation system is being rolled out, school administration showed a film of a supposed “master” teacher teaching a class. This “model” class was of an all white senior honors English class. Afterward the faculty was asked for their input. One teacher stood up and explained that the video was disrespectful to teachers who teach in mainly Black, Latin, and immigrant schools and to their students who face greater challenges from capitalism. The faculty erupted in applause.
Rely on the Working Class
The local teachers’ union claims to oppose this new system. However, in practice they have actually helped implement this all-out attack on teachers. The union has known about the development of this new system for at least one year, but has done nothing about it. Now, instead of organizing teachers, students and parents to fight back, they have hired “experts” to help teachers avoid being fired. The working class must only rely on itself to fight back, not experts. That power of workers must be organized under a revolutionary party fighting to end this system.
We will continue to fight alongside all teachers and students of the world. The fight against capitalist education reforms has no borders. We will continue to discuss the connection of struggles of teachers around the world with teachers and students on our campuses. We will continue to raise international working class unity with our friends until our working class army destroys all borders and build a communist society.
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NEW YORK CITY, August 24 — Education workers in Mexico are fighting back against the government racist education reform law. Progressive Labor Party here in NYC organized a protest outside of the Mexican consulate today in solidarity with the struggle of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) union of section 22 in Oaxaca.
We denounced the killings, disappearances, and harassment of workers and youth. Some of the consulate workers supported us and took our literature. A Dominican woman passing by stopped to chanted with us in solidarity. Another worker congratulated us and said he was happy to see this movement. He said we must not minimize things because out of each worker that supports us we can build hundreds more. No matter how few in numbers we are now, the communist politics will spread. That is why what we do now is important.
Situation in Oaxaca
The government is dissolving the Oaxaca State Institute of Public Education (IEEPO), putting an end to the CNTE’s over 20-year control of education. Judges have also ordered arrests of 15 CNTE teachers in Oaxaca, charging them to disrupting elections. This is a part of the fascist move to discipline a militant workers’ struggle that has been going on strike almost every year since 1970. The bosses seek to exert control over a crucial institution through which they rule: the schools.
The government Governor Gabino Cué Monteagudo and his lackeys don’t tell the public that Section 22 of the CNTE fought along with parents more than 20 years ago for schools to be built, uniforms and books to be given so that children could study. And now, they take away the gains workers have made. They only want education according to the bosses’ needs.
Bosses Attack from All Angles
The teachers’ union, a profession of mainly women, there have been one of the most militant and the largest force in Oaxaca, not only for the positions they can give other teachers, but also their militant defense for workers and education against the policies of the local and federal state government. In the last elections they burnt all the voting ballots, so there would be no voting. They’ve carried out many strikes against the disappearance and killings of teachers. These education workers fight racism, and in the interest of indigenous and rural working-class families.
Scared, the government responded with militarizing the city with the navy, establishing a curfew, and firing and attacking workers any way they can. They are using scabs to break the movement and have infiltrated paramilitaries and provokers in the demonstrations. It has even used another unions as an alternative of organization and the teacher’s national union has frozen the accounts of section 22 so that they don’t have any funds. Despite solidarity from parents, the bosses and their media have been using some parents to discredit the movement. Government officials are also paying home visits to parents to coerce them into opposing teachers.
Struggle Must Continue
There is no solution under capitalism. Any reform we win is temporary, as we know from Oaxaca, because the capitalists will take it away as soon as they can. The real solution will come when workers organize under our party the PLP to destroy the capitalism with a communist revolution. Only then can lives of workers and students change in every sense; education will be in service of the working class, no more nationalism, sexism, racism, or any other divisive rubbish the capitalist system throws at us.
There is great potential for international solidarity here. It would be important for the teachers of Oaxaca to link this struggle to teachers currently on strike in Uruguay. As schools open in the United States, youth and teachers have a lot to learn from workers in Latin America about defying the bosses. From Mexico to the United States, the struggle continues!
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WASHINGTON, DC, August 24 — When communists set the stage for fightback, the working class takes it up with enthusiasm, and advances the fight. This is what happened at a local Progressive Labor Party rally here near the Mexican Cultural Center. We called on workers and students to join in the anti-racist solidarity with the bold mainly-women teachers of Oaxaca as they embarked on a strike against the Mexican government’s militaristic gang-up against them.
Suddenly, a worker from Oaxaca joined our rally with great joy and took the bullhorn, declaring that he had many friends in Section 22 (the union local in Oaxaca) and that all workers had a stake in the outcome of this monumental battle. A worker at a local non-profit housing developer rode by on his bicycle, and later noted that his son has spent several months organizing with workers in Chiapas, another of the areas under racist attack by the Mexican government. A board member of the local postal union also joined in speaking on the bullhorn, expressing his union’s solidarity with the teachers and insisting that his local and PLP participate in each other’s future actions against the bosses. No problem! Many drivers and passersby grabbed 180 leaflets and 120 CHALLENGEs. This response from workers shows workers across borders have every reason to unite and fight back as one class.
As this demonstration proves, the opportunity for international solidarity is real. The fight in Mexico is a battle against racism against the indigenous workers of southern Mexico. Similar to movements in the U.S., the government in Oaxaca is trying to seize centralized control of education. The bosses are blaming fighting workers for a capitalist crisis they created.
The struggle will continue worldwide!