Letters of October 3

Chicago Teachers Strike: Education on the Picket Line

Walking the picket line with striking teachers in Chicago, one learns quickly that progressive leadership from the Left, PLP, can quickly embolden teachers in need of communist led leadership. 

Teachers appreciated the support from PLP members as we led teachers marching near the South Side of Chicago. Strikers led by PLP members, chanted “Asian, Latin, Black, and White, teachers of the world unite.” 

CHALLENGE was received openly. It was crucial to have a previous rally covered on the front page of the paper as we talked to strikers. 

As the strike continues in the third largest city in the U.S., communists must sharpen the contrdictions of Chicago teachers against the local governments and the union. A contract with the bosses will not eliminate the inequality, segregation, or poverty the students in Chicago and around the world face every day.  A system that allows a few rulers to control the lives of millions must be abolished. 

Capitalist education calls for competition, segregated schools, and individual success leading to  divisions among working-class students. As the teachers continue their struggle, we must continue our struggle for communism; we must advance and sharpen the working class in how they think about the capitalist system.

Strike Supporter 

Recently a few retired teachers from NYC went to Chicago to support the teachers’ strike as well as to bring the ideas of workers’ power and communism to this struggle. In the few days that we were there, we were very well received. At the picket lines we gave speeches about international solidarity, the need for unity between parents, students, teachers and education workers and fighting racism. 

In the afternoon rallies downtown, people were literally grabbing our leaflets, which spoke of the link between imperialist war and the attacks on the union. People were very interested in PLP literature and many were happy to see a new leaflet every day. CHALLENGE went like hot cakes! 

It seemed clear to us that teachers had done a good job of building ties with parents and communities. Everywhere we went, there was honking or cheering for the teachers in red t-shirts. I think this is because the strike was directly addressing the injustices that students face, such as overcrowding and lack of air conditioning. Morale seemed high and many of the picket lines boasted 100% attendance from the staff. We also saw a real unity between school support staff and teachers.

Participating in this strike was very inspiring; it reminds us that the working class can rise up and will fight back. We pledged to continue strike support work in NY and to encourage our friends to keep organizing in their unions and keep raising PLP’s ideas in those struggles.

NYC Retired Teachers

I joined the picket lines of the striking Chicago teachers at two schools, and participated in three huge demonstrations downtown. Thousands of red-shirted teachers and supporters marched around city hall and the school board headquarters on the first two days of the strike. On day three, there were three separate large rallies that took place simultaneously. I’ve never seen so many workers organized to fight for better schools, demonstrating against the mayor and his chosen school board who are in the process of privatizing the schools. 

The teachers’ strike has received support from students and many parents. At the schools I visted, parents with their children greeted the teachers and joined the picket lines.  You could tell that the parents and teachers have a lot of respect for each other. Most of the teachers readily took CHALLENGE and leaflets. They agreed that the bosses are not interested in educating young people, especially black, Latino and white working-class children, and since there are no jobs, teaching positions are expendable. 

All the bosses need, in addition to a compliant working class, is an army willing to fight for their investments in all parts of the world.  Teachers complained that many schools have no libraries, not enough aides, counselors, nurses and social workers.  Many schools have no air conditioning, and large class sizes, unlike the private schools the mayor and Obama send their kids to.

The School Board is waiting until the end of the strike to close over 100 schools.  Students will be forced into larger classes and more teachers will join the ranks of the unemployed.  

The Progressive Labor Party is organizing the teachers, students and parents to fight for communist revolution.  The capitalists will be giving the union a few percentage points of a raise, but will take away much more by busting the union and building non-union charter schools.  The strike represents the beginning of the struggle — we have to turn it into a struggle for communist revolution.  In order to have better schools, capitalism must be smashed and power must be in the hands of the working class led by communist ideas.

Unemployed Worker

Don’t Get Psyched Out By Adapting to Capitalism

In early August, I attended the second Marxism and Psychology Conference at the Universidad Michoacana in Morelia, western Mexico. Five hundred people came, mostly students from Mexico, as well as scholars from 23 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. The conference was intense and inspiring. Its participants debated the role of psychology in transforming the world.

The first Conference took place in Canada in 2010, but this second one was far more explicitly political. Recent events were discussed related to the “Capitalist crises,” the European debt crisis, neoliberal politics, the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring and global student movements.

This might not seem remarkable to non-psychologists, but psychology as a discipline rarely addresses societal structures or social movements. Many of the topics could not have been discussed two years ago.

Some presenters advocated our need to expose the psychological damage caused by capitalism’s inequalities, insecurities and competition. Others argued that psychology needs to move beyond helping individuals “adapt” to a damaging and unjust society and rather help build movements to change it.

The conference location helped move it to the left politically. Morelia has highly visible evidence of both colonialism and the huge gap between rich and poor; the region is embroiled in struggle. There were students from the Mexican political movement “yo soy 132,” which opposes the money corruption of elections, often called the “Mexican Spring.”

Representatives were also present from Cherán, a nearby town where indigenous people have struggled successfully against corrupt government officials and the logging companies illegally devastating the communal forests. Students at the conference took notes and often asked questions that cut through the academic jargon to get to the heart of the matter.

The problem of language — in two senses — challenged the conference organizers. First, almost every talk was translated between English and Spanish in order to allow the diverse group to communicate. While important, the translations — done mostly by students without translation training — took time and limited the amount of discussion.

A second “language” problem was the specialized academic jargon that keeps professors from different disciplines and sub-disciplines from fully understanding each other. These different “languages” serve the capitalists in making it difficult for us to build unified collective movements.

The most important outcome of the conference was the recognition that we must work from every direction to bring about communism. There’s a need for new ways to help transform the world; yet it’s only in transforming the world that these new ways can fully emerge.

Scholars of psychology and Marxism can begin some important conversations and offer important insights, but the very nature of our work often confines us to the “ivory tower.”

Instead of concentrating on individualistic adaption to a capitalist world, we need to break out of the walls of academia and join with workers in struggle.

A Marxist Psychologist