Students & workers organize to teach antiracism

LOS ANGELES, September 8 –When high school students organize and lead a Social Justice Day on day three of a school year that is steeped in instability for our class, we can lay claim to the potential of a bright future ahead of us. Sixteen students and 10  staff members (organized by a teacher member of PLP) met and planned through the summer to pull together the day’s activities. When the school’s administration tried to push it back again claiming there was not enough time to “do it right”, students and staff said NO! We demanded that the nonsense they were calling Fall Bridge be condensed so that instead our fight for an antiracist school, community, and world could take center stage.
The momentum for this event was driven by an emboldened group of students, alumni, and staff to confront the racism on our school campus and within the charter network. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, students and alumni called out school administration and the broader school district for being complicit in racist policies and practices. They were swiftly supported by two thirds of the school’s staff. But the foundation for this fight back has been laid by the struggle over communist ideas and politics for the last five years.
Workers learn through struggle
It is in the day-to-day struggle over ideas, combined with the push for class struggle and action, that lead to leaps in political development during surges of the mass movement. As communist teachers, we fight to make our schools student-centered and for the struggles they face to be our struggles.
Under capitalism, workers are alienated from their labor. For teachers, this means we are alienated from the students and families we serve. The struggle against that is difficult. For school staff who do not understand how capitalism ravages working class families, it is easy to blame students and their families for the problems observed in schools. The communist voice in the school must constantly find new ways to demonstrate capitalism as the root of all the problems we are struggling to solve in the education system.
In this school, over the last five years, that has looked like things as large as an organization wide fight against a racist mandated English curriculum, to as small as the push for teachers to not use zeros in their grade book. It has encompassed a battle to shift from a detention/suspension system to a more restorative justice approach. It has  also meant an organized effort by staff to provide education and services after schools shut down when the school district left families for weeks with nothing. It has also included a fight to improve learning conditions for students, whether for smaller class sizes or for the decades old AC system to be repaired, and the fight against gentrification in the surrounding community.
It is in these fights, and so many more, where communist educators can expose that capitalism has nothing to offer the working class. This will not be an easy battle though. Just as the main wing of the ruling class – Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the rest of the liberal Democrats – attempt to fool our class, the so-called “progressive” charter networks are appropriating the language of the left while maintaining the same racist, oppressive systems that exist across the education system. PLP members have not shied away from the struggle with our base that liberals are the main danger to our class, and this has led to many breakthroughs in political development.
Cadre schools un-teach capitalist lies
With the groundwork laid, we were able to present to 600 students and 40 staff members three workshops – “Race is Not Real”, “Racism is Real”, and “What Are We Going to Do About It?”. The content was created and presented by student leaders. Through the workshop development process, the Party teacher was able to struggle for our line on racism to be the basis of the content. Each workshop was followed by breakout discussion groups, many of which were also guided by student leaders. The workshops and discussion groups presented many aspects of the Party’s line, including the importance of multi-racial unity, how racism hurts all workers, and that the working class has power to change society.
It became clear to some students very quickly that not all staff members were on the same page. Like all schools, there is a wide array of political beliefs among the staff. While the administration likes to use the phrase “antiracist practitioners” to describe our staff, they have done nothing to confront the ideas that some staff members, including themselves, hold which contradict that title. Knowing our staff very well, the teacher leaders of Social Justice Day paired the strongest student leaders with the staff members whose politics did not align with our agenda. We also asked staff members to allow students to take the lead.
This did not stop two teachers from spewing their garbage in breakout groups or grade level discussions. As students in one break out room discussed police brutality, the teacher interjected to say racism was not that bad – in the workshop entitled “Racism is Real”! Students held their ground and called this teacher out in the grade level session at the end of the day. The administration stayed silent. Like all other enemies of our class, the administration showed their true colors in that moment. The Party teacher thanked the students for being brave enough to call out their teacher in front of everyone and made it clear to everyone in attendance that we must follow the example of these students and interrupt racist ideas at every turn.
Capitalism for profit, communism for workers’ lives
In another grade level discussion, students suggested one call to action could be following BLM on social media and joining their fightback when possible. A teacher responded “playing devil’s advocate” by saying that BLM is a bunch of Marxists, their protests have only further divided the country, and the riots they caused have destroyed small businesses. Thankfully, a teacher organizer who is in the base of the Party jumped in and demanded that he stop comparing the loss of human life to the loss of property. Again, the silence of the administration exposed where they really stand in the fight against racism.
The battle over ideas will continue. But the main way we can change people’s ideology is through action! Students and staff left Social Justice Day with a call to action – “An Injustice to One is An Injustice to All!” To make that a reality, we have asked staff and students to get involved with the Justice for Alex Flores fight back and some have stepped up. Two teachers and a student attended the recent speak out and one teacher is regularly meeting in a study group. We are also tying the work at the school with the Social Justice Club to broader education work in a larger mass organization in LA. Lastly, we are building a connection to a local tenant’s union to connect families with a way to fight evictions and gentrification in the community.
We still have a long way to go for the masses to turn these ideas into action and to turn action into a fight for a communist world. But anytime we can put the Common Core State Standards of “learning” to the side and present education centered on working class consciousness, we are making a small step in the fight for communism. The struggle continues!