Los Angeles: Suspended for Fighting Racism

LOS ANGELES, June 12—In a cowardly move meant to halt resistance, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) suspended three teachers at a high school here, including a PL teacher, one week before summer break. The teachers were associated with citywide student walkouts in protest of Trump’s inauguration over six months ago.
What began as a letter of misconduct turned into a mandatory suspension. These teachers allowed discussions in their classes around important issues, like police terror and anti-immigrant policies. Apparently, that is a suspendable offence! Waiting a week before summer break is an obvious attempt by the district to curb the ability of the staff, parents, and students to organize against these suspensions.
Our fellow teachers have shown support and fightback. Half of the faculty signed a letter protesting the suspensions and the underlying message they are sending to the teachers about discussing political issues in class. Students confronted the principal in person to demand answers.
School Bosses Expose Themselves as Racists
This segregated school is nearly 100 percent Black and Latin and has a history of walkouts organized by students. Suspending teachers associated with the walkout is a silencing and terrorization strategy by the school bosses. The principal even interrogated students. When the school district decides to discipline teachers in response to student fightback, they are sending a clear racist message to students, families, and workers.
They do not care that sexist, anti-immigrant, and racist rhetoric angers our working class brothers and sisters. They do not care that racist segregation of schools continues to leave Black and Latin students behind. They do not care that the police are killing our Black and Latin working-class brothers and sisters with impunity. They do not want students to voice their opinions or take an active stand against racism and sexism. They just want them to stay in class and learn to be obedient to the system.
LAUSD, the largest public school system after New York City, is exposing themselves to be the racist ruling-class agents that they are. Nearly three-fourths of students are Latin. Though Black students make up 9.16 percent of the population, they received 32.3 percent of suspensions in 2014 (Daily News, 1/14/15). When teachers are shut down for fighting racism, it’s a racist attack on students’ education. LAUSD has confirmed that segregation and racism are no accident; they’re part of the bosses’ plan to keep the future working class divided and alienated.
Teachers in other parts of the city are facing similar attacks, some also suspended. A plan is in the works to have a larger, more general protest to the district’s attempt to silence teachers and students during a critical time of increased fascism in the country.  We will keep CHALLENGE informed as we move forward. The class struggle continues!