Puerto Rico: Workers occupy school, resist bosses’ state

 The following report is from the Puerto Rico Brigade, where over 20 students and community college professors from the U.S. contributed their labor and their international solidarity to the working class devastated by Hurricane Maria. On their Brigade, the group met families occupying a school that was threatened with closure.

PUERTO RICO, July 22—“Who has the power? Grandmothers have the power!” So spoke one of the grandmothers occupying a public school in Toa Baja. Parents and teachers have been camping out at the school daily to ensure that equipment is not removed from the school at night by the school board. Parents have been calling press conferences and organizing rallies to keep their neighborhood schools open.
But while the capitalists have been exposed for closing schools and “reassigning” teachers (to nonteaching “special jobs”), working-class communities have learned to rely on each other to rebuild and fight back. The struggle to fight for education is the prime evidence of working-class unity—students, teachers and parents repairing schools and organizing protests across the island to protest the capitalist agenda to sell the island piece meal at the expense of its youth and working class.  
As the Brigade who volunteered this summer in Puerto Rico, we were able to participate and support the working-class fightback and occupations of local schools slated to be closed. Progressive Labor Party members brought the message of international solidarity and the need for revolution to teachers and families. Families were tremendously welcoming to PLP and its communist ideas.
School building rented for a dollar
The failure of capitalism to meet the needs of the working class is on full display here. The much-hated Secretary of Education Julia Keheler (annual salary $250,000) is calling for the closure of 400 schools in two years. She blames low student enrollment when in reality, Keheler is working hand in glove with developers to take over Puerto Rico.
The policy of privatization presents a golden egg for these capitalists who are able to feed off public funds in the name of “austerity” (read: cutbacks). Last year, 179 public schools were shuttered and 150 more were closed from 2010 to 2015 (Huffington Post, 4/6).
The public schools are often in attractive locations for developers, who have close ties to the government. Some schools have already been told they will be closed to create “offices.” Others are close to beach or tourist attractions. The Julia Burgos School in Carolina was shut down and then rented for $1/year to a financier who then reopened it as a private school. The mural dedicated to Puerto Rican writer Julia Burgos inside the school was immediately removed.
Finance capital bosses are descending on Puerto Rico like hawks.
There are big names among them: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Perella Weinberg Partners and TPG Capital. What’s luring them is the opportunity to scoop up home loans and foreclosed properties for pennies on the dollar (Bloomberg, 7/14/17).
School closure (and home foreclosures) is one of the many ways the barbarous bosses use a crisis as an opportunity for business schemes and to slash and burn any benefits the working class has gained through past fightbacks.
Racist Disregard
The massive closure of schools that will affect Latin youth also paves the wave for charter schools, which receive public funds but are privately operated. Law 85, recently enacted, dictates that 10 percent of Puerto Rico’s schools should be charters. Charters here have high turnover, high segregation rates, and bad teaching conditions.
Education workers with the Federación de Maestras de Puerto Rico (FMPR) correctly blame the finance capital bosses. Billionaires like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Jonathan Sackler (family owner of big pharma Purdue Pharma) and the DeVos family foundation for pushing to cut any remaining benefits for the working class in favor of lining their own pockets. (Betsy DeVos is the current Secretary of Education).
We salute the fightback spirit of our working-class sisters and brothers in Puerto Rico, who have been leading massive fightbacks throughout the island. They exposed how the strategy of the school closings also aims to divide parents, by leaving some schools untouched and closing others.
Attack on disabled students
Many of the 400 schools up for closure have high percentages of students with disabilities. According to a U.S. Department of Education report, approximately 25 percent of students in Puerto Rico have one or more disabilities. Many of the schools targeted have excellent facilities for students with disabilities, according to their parents. Charter schools here are known for their refusal to accept students with disabilities
One example is an elementary school in the Toa Baja municipality, where eight people died in the flooding from last year’s hurricanes. The town suffered the onslaught of sea surges and torrential rain. Levies from a nearby lagoon were opened to prevent them from breaking. The school survived intact with little damage and the neighborhood united to clean and prepare it for returning students.
A few months ago, the same school received notice they were on the list of closure. Parents and teachers are outraged at the Department of Education. The government is forcing children, 56 percent of whom have a disability, to a distant facility with fewer resources and staff. The new school didn’t even have bathrooms for the preschool children. When parents protested, the department representative said children could use the floor mat as a bathroom. “Like an animal!” one parent angrily remarked. “This is how capitalists treat our children, like animals.”
Same Struggle, Same Fight
The militancy of the working class here is clear and the potential to get involved in the class struggle is great. Teachers and students from various community colleges had the honor of supporting these school struggles. From the South Bronx to Toa Boja, workers struggles have no borders.