MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD, December 6 -The meeting of the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) was greeted tonight by a lively contingent of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends circulating a flier and petition calling for “Solidarity not Silence” in the case of teachers being attacked for alleged antisemitism because they have supported Palestinian workers in Gaza.
On November 30, a Takoma Park Middle School teacher was charged with antisemitism and put on administrative leave because of Facebook posts protesting the massive attacks on Palestinian civilians by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Two other teachers in the same district have been similarly punished. Having the email tagline“From the river to the sea” can be a crime these days. While MCEA’s staff is making sure they get due process, the elected Body should follow the lead of other unions, including Local Transit Union 689, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Postal Workers, and the UAW, who have called for a ceasefire along with the American Public Health Association (APHA). Petitions and resolutions are great steps but a walkout would be even better!
Students, doctors, workers, and organizations have been censured, fired, lambasted, and banned for false charges of antisemitism. Events have been canceled, and public and private funding revoked. In Maryland, for example, CASA de Maryland, which serves the immigrant community, was forced to issue a mea culpa and grovel for funding after they remarked on the horrors of the Gaza genocide . Legislators and private funders publicly shamed CASA and threatened the funding it uses to serve the needs of our immigrant community members — including public funds contributed in part by immigrants themselves through the taxes they pay. It is wrong to punish CASA for expressing solidarity, and it is wrong to punish the people they help by cutting funds to those in need of their services. The capitalist class uses the First Amendment to protect the speech of fascist and racist demonstrators while using its media to distort reality, but apparently, it does not protect those speaking up to defend Palestinian lives. This smacks of the anticommunism of 1950s McCarthyism.
The Takoma Park teacher is a working class leader . Because this teacher works tirelessly with others to challenge a racist system that attacks workers by not investing in programs that the most vulnerable students, their families, and our colleagues need, this attack (and others) is intended to silence all of us. From culturally sensitive, age-appropriate reading materials to affordable housing, she strongly fights for improved conditions in the schools and communities where the most vulnerable students live and attend public school. She organizes with workers around housing and provides personal and organizational support to immigrants in the DC area. After thousands and thousands of Facebook posts on many topics challenging systems of oppression, why this moment? Because the U.S. government is desperate to support the Zionist Israelis who represent their imperialist interests in the Middle East, such as oil, pipelines, and sea routes.
The Facebook posts included a drawing of Israeli tanks aimed at babies in neonatal units and called the destruction of lives in Palestine by Israeli bombing “a massacre.” Condemning the Zionist Israeli government and its U.S. government support is not antisemitism. Nevertheless, an Assistant Superintendent came to her school and lied to teachers, claiming the Facebook posts contained inherent threats of violence and reducing one teacher to tears. Spreading lies and stoking fear is part of this orchestrated fascism. The fascists who write the Daily Wire piled on in this case and further attacked a 2020 post that called out the billionaires in Montgomery County for ripping off the working class. Posting the names of billionaires is NOT “anti-Semitic.” Lies and more lies will follow, and PLP and its friends who joined this action will continue to step up the struggle as it unfolds.