Chicago Socialists

When the Chicago Teachers Turned the City Red

Tyler — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 15:16:31 +0000

By Lee Sustar, SocialistWorker.org

AN ARROGANT, union-bashing mayor left sputtering. A complacent local bourgeoisie suddenly alarmed. A working class embracing its sisters and brothers in solidarity.

That was the scene five years ago as more than 10,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union–wearing their signature red t-shirts–swarmed Chicago City Hall to kick off a nine-day strike. “There was a sprig of revolution in the air,” said a television reporter on the scene.

The momentum kept building. From impromptu picket-line rallies around the city greeted by honking supporters, to marches through working-class West Side and South Side neighborhoods, and another downtown protest, too, the cause of CTU teachers became that of everyone who wanted to defend public education in Chicago.

Nine days later, teachers agreed to a deal in which Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel dropped his main concessions demands. The CTU had won its first strike in 25 years–and organized labor scored one of its most important victories in decades.

Emanuel, who had campaigned on an explicit threat to take on the CTU, had canceled their raise after taking office in 2011 and tried to impose a longer school day without negotiations. His notorious comment to CTU President Karen Lewis in a private meeting summed up his attitude: “Fuck you, Lewis.” The mayor proceeded to use the 2012 contract talks to try to gut the union’s power.

He failed. “Mayor Rahm Emanuel had to agree to conditions that make it hard to fire some teachers who receive weak evaluations, and to limit some of the power of school principals to choose their staff,” the Wall Street Journal concluded.

Five years later, though, the CTU is facing some of the biggest battles in the union’s 80-year history.

From continued threats to pensions to the loss of membership as a result of school closings, charter school openings and declining enrollment, CTU members who defeated Emanuel in 2012 must now contend with the impact of repeated budget cuts and layoffs–as well as a right-wing Republican governor obsessed with cutting their pensions and crippling their union.

Added to this are the attacks on public school teachers everywhere, including policies pushed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as she attempts to convert public education into a profit machine for corporate school reformers.

Another looming threat: the Janus v. AFSCME case before the U.S. Supreme Court that could impose “right to work” policies on all public-sector unions, banning them from collecting fees from nonmembers the union is nevertheless required to represent.

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The Rise of the CORE Reformers

AS THE multipronged attack on teachers continues, it’s important to look back on the 2012 Chicago teachers strike for the lessons it provides today.

The central point is that union democracy, membership activism and community allies are essential to successful teacher union activism in this era. The strike was the culmination of efforts by the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE)–begun years before the caucus won office–to transform a sclerotic union and tap into its fighting traditions in order to mobilize members and win public support.

The conditions that gave rise to the CTU strike took shape in 1995, when its leaders acquiesced to state legislation on “school reform” that eliminated the union’s right to bargain over issues such as class sizes–and gave then-Mayor Richard M. Daley control of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

The first effort at reform came in 2001, when members fed up with a corrupt and dysfunctional CTU leadership reform slate won office in 2001. But the reformer, Deborah Lynch, was undercut by holdovers from the decades-long reign of the United Progress Caucus (UPC). Lynch oversold a contract that members thought was weak–and the reformers were voted out after one term.

But once back in office, the CTU old guard in the UPC continued to bow to politicians who rolled back union rights and sliced up the school system by opening, nonunion charter schools often run by their allies. The ruling caucus split over allegations of corruption, opening the way to a CORE victory.

While CORE drew in activists from the previous CTU reform efforts, it differed from them in important ways.

Many leading CORE activists had been involved in efforts against the closure of schools, collaborating with organizations such as the Kenwood-Oakwood Community Organization (KOCO) in the predominately African American South Side neighborhoods. Others worked with grassroots Latino groups such as the Pilsen Alliance, opposing the proliferation of charter schools run by the likes of UNO, a Mexican American-oriented nonprofit with heavy clout in City Hall.

These alliances were gathered together in the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), which held a forum against school closures in 2009 that attracted 500 people in the midst of a blizzard.

CORE linked the school closures to institutional racism–a dynamic that deeply affected the CTU membership itself, with predominately African American teachers who worked in the schools losing their jobs and unable to get a position elsewhere in the system.

Another key focus for CORE was the Chicago bankers who continued to profit on high-interest school bonds even as the Great Recession drove interest rates to record lows. Many of the figures from Chicago financial powerhouses were central players in school reform, such as David Vitale, a banker who presided over a school board handpicked by the mayor.

Meanwhile, quite a few of the school-based members and leaders of CORE were open socialists. These politics make a great difference to the type of union that was now being shaped.

After CORE had surprising success at getting two members elected as union reps on the CTU pension board, the group decided to contest the 2010 union elections.

The CORE slate was reflective of the change the group wanted to bring to the union.

At its head was Karen Lewis, an African American woman and veteran teacher with top credentials, who was adept at voicing the demands of the CTU rank and file. The vice presidential candidate was Jesse Sharkey, a longtime labor activist and socialist who had gained prominence opposing a military-run charter school located in the high school where he taught.

Michael Brunson, an African American man active around school closings, ran for the recording secretary post. Kristine Mayle, a young special education teacher who became active to save her Latino-majority school from closure, was the candidate for financial secretary.

But where the CTU old guard viewed officers as the apex of a patronage machine to run the union and herd the membership, CORE saw the elections as an opportunity to advocate for a member-driven union, in which those in elected positions–from school delegates to the officers–would be committed to rank-and-file activism and accountable to members.

Thus, most of the CORE candidates for the union’s big executive board–a rubber stamp under the old guard–were already steeped in activism at their own schools or part of the wider fight to defend public education in Chicago.

Jackson Potter, a founder of CORE who was originally the caucus vice presidential candidate until the old guard challenged his eligibility on a technicality, summed up the approach this way: “We’re not going to do it for you, we’re doing to do it with you.”

The Chicago establishment was bemused by the CTU’s internal struggles. The notion of a militant, democratic union taking on City Hall seemed like nostalgia for Chicago’s storied labor wars rather than a serious threat. “The bosses downtown are rooting for the rookies to get them to a bargaining table and eat them alive,” wrote veteran TV news anchorman Walter Jacobson.

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The Road to the 2012 Strike

After its surprise victory in the spring of 2010, the CORE leadership launched a new organizing department and revamped the field representative system. A key part of the effort was to revive the union’s tradition of school delegates as the front line for contract enforcement.

A research department was also added, which was responsible for a groundbreaking union white paper, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve, which advocated for fair education funding, equitable distribution of resources, workers’ job protections, union solidarity, community outreach and support of social services, all as related and interdependent.

There was a bit of breathing space as a result of the long transition at City Hall after Mayor Daley announced he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2010, all but handing the office over to Rahm Emanuel.

Emanuel was a former operative in Bill Clinton’s White House, who had gone on to Congress after becoming a multimillionaire during a brief stint as an investment banker. He didn’t break a sweat in his 2011 run for mayor, but used the opportunity to spell out his agenda for “education reform”–which meant steamrollering the CTU.

Weeks before he formally took office, Emanuel orchestrated the passage of state school “reform” legislation–Senate Bill 7, which, among other things, requires the CTU to get a “yes” vote from 75 percent of all members to vote to authorize a strike.

Emanuel and his CPS chief, Jean-Claude Brizard, wasted no time in challenging the new CTU leadership, canceling a scheduled raise and attempting–unsuccessfully–to impose a longer school day without negotiation.

CTU members who had perhaps voted for CORE mainly to oust the old guard now realized that the new leadership was right: This was class warfare, and the union had better get ready to fight.

The summer of 2012 saw the CTU move into high gear, with an endless series of meetings and trainings. The Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign formed–in part as an outgrowth of the Chicago Occupy movement that had emerged a few months earlier.

The Occupy movement, with its focus on the 99 Percent vs. the 1 Percent, had enabled the CTU’s message to resonate with a new generation of activists less familiar with union issues. Plus, Occupy had emboldened a renewed open socialist presence in the unions in Chicago and beyond.

While the union prepared for a ground war, Karen Lewis provided air cover by countering Emanuel’s threats one after another on TV and print media. At a time when most labor leaders and politicians were knuckling under to the mayor or avoiding confrontation, Lewis and the CTU took a stand.

Still, the pundits scoffed at the CTU’s ability to strike. Unions in Chicago had long since been tamed, hadn’t they? Anyone close to the action could see that a showdown was inevitable. But Rahm Emanuel, taken in by his own tough-guy hype, didn’t see it coming.

Socialist Worker’s Alan Maass described the scene on the first day of the strike:

For anyone walking, biking or driving around the city on Monday morning, the message that came through loud and clear was from the proud picketers to be found every several blocks at the more than 600 schools where the CTU is on strike.

Teachers talked about the issues in their struggle with a sense of sober anger, reflecting the high stakes of this struggle. But there was also pride, energy and enthusiasm now that they were finally able to make their stand–especially after so many months of being the target of Emanuel’s sneers and smears.

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The Rahmpire Strikes Back

THE CTU strike had an impact in the labor movement across the U.S., and for good reason.

At a time when strikes were at a record low–and those that did take place were often provoked by bosses confident of victory–the Chicago teachers showed it was possible to take to the picket line and win. They prevailed, moreover, against Emanuel, a high-powered political adversary and nationally renown proponent of business-friendly school “reform.”

Not surprisingly, in the aftermath of the strike, the CTU became a focal point for teacher union reformers around the U.S., and helped establish a network that became known as UCORE.

Activists from that networks were important in a series of struggles, such as the Seattle teachers strike of 2015 and a revived reform grouping that won election in United Teachers Los Angeles. Official rhetoric in the CTU’s parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, and the larger National Education Association shifted somewhat to the left on issues of school “reform,” as well as race and class issues in public education.

Nevertheless, the CTU strike, while it helped spark teachers strikes in Chicago suburbs, did not signal decisive shift in the level of class struggle locally or nationally.

Strike levels remained at historically low levels as private-sector unions were pressed hard by industrial restructuring and public-sector unions faced the pressures of enormous public debt that resulted from the Great Recession. Anti-union legislation continued to advance, including the once-unthinkable imposition of right-to-work laws in Michigan, long a labor stronghold.

All this has added to the pressures on the CTU leadership. CORE officers now faced the same challenges that have dogged other union reformers who won office in recent decades: working to restore competence to ineffectual institutions without becoming bureaucratic and risk-averse.

Emanuel calculated that he could use these conditions to his advantage against the CTU without targeting the union contract directly. Just months after the strike settled, he announced some 50 school closures in predominately African American neighborhoods.

The union, legally barred from striking over such issues, launched a political campaign that linked up with parent and community activists. In this atmosphere, the CORE slate was re-elected against a weak old guard opposition.

Despite inspiring protests and long marches in the springtime heat, Emanuel succeeded in dealing a major blow to public education with his mass closures. It was a costly victory for him. Emanuel’s approval ratings started to slide, both because of the CTU’s continued challenges, but also the mayor’s wider failure to address the pressing needs of working people in Chicago.

But Chicago’s schoolchildren and the CTU had taken a blow as well.

The union’s turn toward electoralism was in part a reaction to being ineffective in stopping the school closings. It was in his context that CTU began to pour more resources into Democratic Party politics. While CORE’s platform was left wing, it did not address the issue of the CTU’s support for the Democratic Party.

The union endorsed incumbent Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn in the 2014 election despite Quinn’s anti-union policies and his choice of Paul Vallas, the former Chicago schools CEO who engineered the union-bashing 1990s school reform plans, as a running mate.

In the event, Quinn was defeated by the right-wing near-billionaire, Republican Bruce Rauner.

Next came an effort to defeat Emanuel in his 2015 re-election effort. Karen Lewis herself began preparing to run against him until she was sidelined by a serious illness. The union then turned to a veteran politician, Jesus “Chuy” García, a onetime liberal state legislator who had become a member of the executive board of Cook County, which includes Chicago.

García’s supporters compared his campaign to that of Harold Washington, the city’s first African American mayor who won office in 1983. But García, a Washington ally, had come to back austerity measures that cut social spending as a member of the Cook County Board.

Lewis’s suggestion for CTU members to run themselves even when she could not encouraged several teachers to run for alderman positions–some as independents, some as Democrats. Sue Garza, a CTU stalwart and daughter of left-wing United Steelworkers leader Ed Sadlowski, won election as s Democrat in the city’s old steelmaking neighborhood. But the union’s main focus was on the mayor’s race.

García managed to force Emanuel into a humiliating runoff election. Yet by keeping the political debate centered on the supposed necessity for austerity, García undercut the CTU’s tax-the-rich message that had gotten traction during the 2012 strike. Instead of promising to deliver for the CTU and the rest of organized labor, he vowed to squeeze them.

“I’m going tell the unions a lot of bad news because the situation is so dire,” García said in a campaign debate with Emanuel. “Who’s going to be upset? Probably the unions who are supporting me now.”

If the CTU leaders who advocated for García had hoped his campaign would at least shift the political debate in the union’s direction, they were wrong. Instead, they had poured enormous resources into a candidate who, while more liberal then Emanuel, was a defender of the austerity status quo. And this took resources away from the kind of base-building and organizing that had made the 2012 strike victory possible.

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Facing Enemies in City Hall and Springfield

Emanuel won the election, but his air of invincibility was gone. His popularity plummeted a few months later following the November 2015 release of a video showing the police killing of an unarmed Black youth, Laquan McDonald. The CTU shifted back toward grassroots activism, endorsing and building protests against racist police violence that followed.

The CTU’s community alliances–and its focus on economic and racial justice–was on display a few months later when, on April 1, 2016, the union called a one-day strike despite CPS claims that the walkout was illegal. The action mobilized teachers to pressure CPS to drop its threats of budget cuts and to defend their pensions from attacks by Gov. Rauner.

The April 1 strike had an energy and dynamism that recalled the 2012 strike. But this time, the battle went well beyond the CTU’s particular issues. The union challenged Rauner in alliance with a range of unions, student groups, community organizations and left-wing activists who were opposing the governor’s refusal to fund basic social services by engineering a budget impasse.

The downtown rally that followed the strike action also highlighted the issue of police killings and racism, with a controversial anti-police comment from a Black Lives Matter protester. That linkage was criticized by some CTU members.

But highlighting the fight against racism was in keeping with CORE’s original perspective–that the CTU could not win simply through trade union bargaining, but had to be part of a wider social movement that mobilized working people.

The April 1 strike highlighted that potential by mobilizing 20,000 people in the streets, and striking school members held pickets in the morning and joined supporting actions at Chicago State University and at Nabisco, where workers were fighting a plant closing.

The triennial CTU elections had been scheduled for soon after the strike–but they were canceled because no opposition emerged to challenge the CORE slate.

Notably, Mayor Emanuel kept fairly quiet about the April 1 strike. Having lost substantial support among African American voters, he wasn’t eager for another high-profile confrontation.

He left the dirty work to schools CEO Forrest Claypool, a longtime political operative with no education background but a long record of inflicting pain on unions in the Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago Park District.

Claypool sought to undermine the contract won in 2012 at every opportunity. Union members suffered pay cuts in the form of furlough days while CPS effectively imposed a pay freeze. The schools CEO stonewalled on any serious contract negotiations, using the law to drag out the timeline for a legal CTU strike and forcing the union to work under an extension of the old deal for more than a year.

By September 2016, the CTU was gearing up for another strike, with a series of organizing meetings, a high-profile community support rally and thousands of picket signs prepared. The April 1 one-day strike had showed that if the CTU walked out again, the political context might be much less favorable for the mayor.

In the end, Emanuel blinked one year ago, pulling the concessions demands that had provoked the strike threat off the table at the last minute, in an offer calculated to concede just enough to avoid a repeat of 2012.

While the agreement fell short of what the union had demanded, the union had forced Emanuel to scour the city budget for more money for schools–something that had seemed unlikely going into the preparatory hours before a walkout. A majority of bargaining committee voted to accept the deal, averting a strike, and propose it to delegates for approval.

In the deal, Emanuel dropped his effort to eliminate automatic pay raises based on seniority and education–known as steps and lanes–and agreed to pay increases rather the effective pay cuts he’d demanded through a change in pension formulas. The union also won a longer period for teachers displaced through school closings to be rehired. After a series of sharp debates, delegates sent the agreement to the rank and file.

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Applying the Lessons of 2012

SINCE THE 2016 contract was signed, the CTU has been in trench warfare with Emanuel and CPS. Layoffs are chronic, cuts unending and school closings will soon be announced.

Yet Rauner’s hostility to the CTU is so intense and brazen that the mayor can–almost–seem like the good cop to the governor’s bad cop. While a legislative deal to enact a budget, passed over Rauner’s veto, will provide some relief for Chicago schools, separate legislation supported by the governor ties school funding to the introduction of voucher systems that would funnel tax money to religious and other private schools.

In this atmosphere, an opposition to the CTU leadership has developed in the form of the Members First caucus, which argues that the union’s focus on social justice issues has undermined its ability to deliver for teachers. This caucus is counting on cynicism and defeatism among members to build support for a more traditional bread-and-butter unionism.

CORE itself has been in the midst of an ongoing debate on various issues, from how to carry out contract enforcement to political strategy. And the CTU itself faces difficult choices on its budgets as the result of membership losses through school closings.

But as the CTU nears its 80th anniversary, it is important to remember that Chicago teachers have struggled through far more difficult challenges. It took four decades to create a unified union in 1937 in the midst of intense mobilization, during which teachers were paid in scrip as the schools were effectively bankrupt.

It was another three decades before the union had its first strike. It was no accident that this initial strike was a wildcat action by African American teachers radicalized by the Black Power movement and the Black school boycotts a few years earlier.

The influx of Black teachers into the union was a key factor in the CTU’s militancy, seen in nine strikes in 18 years in the 1970s and 1980s over budget cuts, payless paydays and other outrages.

The contribution of CORE and the 2012 strike–along with the one-day strike of 2016–was to revive that fighting tradition, while shedding the old guard’s business unionism. Some of the work is often slow-going, but crucial, like the CTU’s support for organizing charter school teachers and the proposed merger with their union.

Historically, Chicago teachers have won their biggest gains with the support of the wider working class in the city. The necessary day-to-day tasks of keeping the union effective in the schools–a sometimes thankless and frustrating effort–must be linked to a broader social movement and political strategy, independent of the Democrats, to revive organized labor. The role of the left from a variety of traditions has been critical in the CTU’s effort to revive as a fighting organization.

“We have borne some losses, but we were the counter to corporate education reform and the attempt to reduce social services, fighting the billionaires for the stability that all of us deserve,” said teacher and CTU executive board member Kimberly Goldbaum, noting that she and other socialists and radicals have continued to focus on those issues.

Today, facing not just Emanuel and Rauner but also the Trump administration, it will be more necessary than ever for the CTU–and all unions, for that matter–to anchor themselves in broader working class struggles.

The right is attempting to roll back decades of social progress. While Democrats like Emanuel may oppose some of that agenda, employers will not hesitate to use the anti-union onslaught to their own benefit.

The 2012 CTU strike showed how to fight back. It remains a model today.

Unite to Fight Right-Wing Terror

Tyler — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 19:10:32 +0000

THE MASK has been ripped off the supposedly new “alt-right” movement to reveal the familiar and horrifying face of fascism that most people thought was a relic of history.

Last weekend’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, wasn’t about some fake defense of “free speech,” but championing a Confederate statue. It welcomed open Nazis into its ranks, who roamed the streets looking for people to assault–and ultimately committed a vehicle-terror attack against a crowd of peaceful protesters, killing 32-year-old local activist Heather Heyer and injuring several dozen others, many seriously.

The outraged response to Nazi terror in Charlottesville was immediate and powerful, with protests and vigils in hundreds of cities and denunciations of the violent racists coming from everywhere. Everywhere but Donald Trump’s White House, that is.

This is a decisive moment. “Will the overt displays of racism return the extreme right-wing to the margins of politics, or will they serve to normalize the movement, allowing it to weave itself deeper into the national conversation?” asked the New York Times.

The answer depends on what the millions of people who despise Donald Trump and want to stand against him and the right do in the coming weeks and months.

Now is the time to overcome the fear that the fascists want us to feel and organize demonstrations with overwhelming numbers–to stop this cancer now, before it can grow into something far more threatening. That means organizing broad protests open to everyone affected by this threat–which is just about everyone–to prove the far right is a tiny minority.

After the sickening violence of the storm troopers in Charlottesville, we know that the far right isn’t looking to gain power through winning votes, and they don’t care about approval ratings. We can’t defeat them by following the liberal advice to “just ignore them.”

If we don’t stop the far right today, they will stop us from organizing tomorrow–it’s that simple. This isn’t a battle that we chose, but it’s one we have to win.

Let’s also be clear that we can’t rely on the police to protect us from fascists or on the government to deny them permits. It’s up to all of us to defend our communities and our movements from the right.

If we’re successful, Charlottesville could be remembered as a turning point, not only in our fight against the right, but in our ability to organize for our own demands.

The International Socialist Organization is wholly committed to this urgent struggle, and we join with the call that has come from so many organizations and individuals since Charlottesville: for a united fight to confront and defeat fascism.

There will be flash points in the coming weeks, from Boston to Berkeley, but this fight needs to be taken into every city and town, into every community, onto every campus, and into every workplace. We appeal to all our supporters and the whole left to take this stand: Now is the time to unite and fight.

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THE MOST horrifying incident from Charlottesville last weekend was, of course, neo-Nazi James Fields’ terror attack, in which the Vanguard America member plowed his car into a contingent of marchers that included members of the International Socialist Organization, Democratic Socialists of America and Industrial Workers of the World, among others.

But the project of fascism is a lot larger than solitary terror strikes. They want to build an organization of disciplined thugs to systematically brutalize and intimidate the oppressed–a program that, as history shows, inevitably involves murder.

In this instance, it was James Fields who was the killer. But the Nazis and far-right “peacekeepers” who came heavily armed to Charlottesville were prepared to inflict violence on people of color, Jews and the left. They are more than willing to kill individuals in order to pave the way for their real aim–mass murder and genocide.

The real face of fascism was apparent throughout the weekend in Charlottesville: Hundreds of torch-wielding men, chanting “Blood and soil!” and assaulting counter-protesters; groups roaming the streets with weapons and shields, looking out especially for people of color like 20-year-old Deandre Harris to brutalize.

As ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson wrote, the far right in Charlottesville:

exhibited unprecedented organization and tactical savvy. Hundreds of racist activists converged on a park on Friday night, striding through the darkness in groups of five to 20 people. A handful of leaders with headsets and handheld radios gave orders as a pickup truck full of torches pulled up nearby. Within minutes, their numbers had swelled well into the hundreds. They quickly and efficiently formed a lengthy procession and begun marching, torches alight, through the campus of the University of Virginia.

The fascists in Charlottesville were confident. One smug little Nazi named Sean Patrick Nielsen bragged to the Washington Post, “I’m here because our republican values are, number one, standing up for local white identity, our identity is under threat, number two, free market, and number three, killing Jews.”

All of which made Donald Trump’s initial statement condemning violence “on many sides” all the more sickening to millions of people–and a cause for celebration for the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website.

This is another warning sign of the dangers of the current moment–with a Trump administration infested with far-right racists, from alt-right promoter Steve Bannon to Euro-fascist ally Sebastian Gorka to Confederacy enthusiast Jeff Sessions.

We shouldn’t have any illusions: The toxic combination of a far right that spans the range from open Nazis to people with access to key White House personnel produced the biggest show of force for American fascism in generations in Charlottesville.

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OUR SIDE has a powerful potential weapon to use against this growing threat: overwhelming numbers. The events of Charlottesville–not only the terror attack, but the Nazi flags, the torch-wielding march and the thuggish violence–horrified the vast majority of U.S. society.

From Saturday night through Monday, solidarity demonstrations were called in more than 400 cities across the country–an explosion of protest that recalled the days after Trump’s election last November.

Jason Kessler, the Charlottesville resident who initially called the Unite the Right rally, was chased from his own press conference by furious local residents. Statements poured in from across the country condemning white supremacy, domestic terrorism–and Trump’s weak response. The corporate media suddenly stopped referring to Richard Spencer and his pals as “alt-right” and called them the more accurate “white supremacists.”

Dozens of Republicans in Congress, who made their careers out of pandering to racism and reaction, rushed to condemn the Nazis and distance themselves from Trump–who was finally forced on Monday to explicitly condemn white supremacists.

Even then, though, it should be noted that Trump’s response to Charlottesville is to call for more “law and order”–a racist buzzword that means giving police and immigration authorities more unchecked power to detain and brutalize people of color.

The forces of “law and order” were all over the streets of Charlottesville–and they stood by as the orgy of right-wing violence took place.

Instead of appealing to the government to defend us, we have to build mass protests to defend ourselves and one another. The strategy of relying on small groups of anti-fascists to fight on behalf of the oppressed was shown to be insufficient in Charlottesville by the bigots’ large mobilization.

This is the moment to build united fronts with as many organizations as possible to confront the right–not only left-wing groups, but unions and civil rights organizations, down to every possible club on campuses.

In Portland, Oregon, this type of coalition brought out more than 1,000 people in June to confront hate groups that celebrated the racist murders of Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche.

We need more of this kind of organizing in the coming weeks when the far right descends on Boston on August 19, and throughout the school year as fascists like Richard Spencer attempt a provocative tour of campuses. The Movement for Black Lives has called a national day of action for August 19.

On August 27, the far right is planning an all-out mobilization in Berkeley, California, for a “No to a Marxist America” rally, where they will try to repeat their racist rampages of last spring. But anti-fascists have been preparing for weeks to send the message that we will not retreat in the face of their violence and hate.

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AMID THE many condemnations of the far right in Charlottesville, there has been one distinctly false note coming from many political leaders: that these fascists are somehow “un-American.”

Violent racism has deep roots in this country, and terrorism in defense of the right’s twisted ideals is as American as white sheets and a swinging rope.

But fighting back against racist terror is also very much a part of U.S. history. Those who tell us to ignore the racists and they’ll go away are either ignorant of that–or they don’t want us to build movements against the far right because they instinctively sense that our movements won’t stop there.

This is the time to learn the history of previous generations who fought the KKK and the courageous struggle against fascism in Europe. And it’s time to come together in action to give ourselves the courage to confront the forces that want us to stay home.

Just as we’ve taken strength from the bravery shown by the residents of Ferguson, Missouri, we can take strength from the words of Heather Heyer’s mother about her daughter: “She would never back down from what she believed in. And that’s what she died doing, she died fighting for what she believed in.”

The threat of the right is growing, but it has to be faced and overcome in order to fight for any of our demands. One organizer in Columbus, Ohio, gave voice to the instinct for solidarity and struggle that has been felt around the country since Charlottesville:

When we started planning the Columbus airport protest [against Trump’s Muslim travel ban] in January, several right-wingers and Islamophobic scum started posting graphic photos of animals and people being run over by cars.

Their aim was clear: to bully and threaten, and make people scared to come out. For several hours late at night, we just kept taking those photos down. Hundreds and hundreds of people showed up anyway to fight the ban. We kept a look out for errant cars, but they didn’t show up. And so we became part of the historic airport actions that beat back the first version of the Muslim ban.

These fascists will try to silence us, they will try to intimidate us, they will try to make us feel afraid. But we are many, they are few.

Join the Socialists!

Tyler — Sun, 19 Mar 2017 22:48:43 +0000

An unorganized socialist is a contradiction in terms. Get organized. Get involved. Check out an ISO branch meeting near you!

Upcoming Event: The Fight for a Socialist Future

Tyler — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 20:00:21 +0000

Are you curious about the “S” word? You’re not alone. A number of recent polls show that young people (18-30) are more positive about socialism than they are about capitalism. And, of course, voters under the age of 30 turned out in droves to back Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, a few months ago. But what exactly is socialism? How do we get from here to there? And what role can student activists play?

RSVP here. Don’t miss it!

What did people want at the People’s Summit?

Tyler — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 14:39:44 +0000

(via SocialistWorker.org)

“DO YOU want a revolution?”

RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United (NNU), had barely finished asking her question when the audience–some 3,000 people at the opening plenary of the People’s Summit in Chicago last weekend–erupted into thunderous applause.

Convened by the NNU, the three-day conference aimed to bring together people and organizations involved in politics, particularly in the wake of the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination–for discussions, as organizers put it, to facilitate “strategic organizing to build power” around a “principled, anti-corporate agenda.”

If the People’s Summit began with a bang, however, it finished on a less militant note. By the end of the conference on Sunday afternoon, with energy waning and participants beginning to scatter, DeMoro staked out a decidedly less revolutionary position.

“I know there are problems [with the Democratic Party], and I know many of you are thinking that the Democrats should get what they deserve [in the 2016 elections],” DeMoro said. “I get that. So I am not going to tell you to vote for Hillary Clinton. But I am going to tell you to vote against Trump.”

Voting against Trump, of course, is the main message of the Democratic Party and even the Hillary Clinton campaign itself–all along, Clinton has been looking forward to campaigning against whatever monster the Republicans nominated, rather than putting much positive forward. Thus, DeMoro is telling you to vote for Hillary Clinton.

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THIS CONTRADICTORY dynamic–emphasizing the need for militant social movements and radical change while at the same time pleading with activists to remain committed to voting for the Democratic presidential candidate most attendees opposed during the primaries and to working within the Democratic Party–was a running theme over the course of the weekend.

At times, the speeches from the front at the People’s Summit were quite radical. “We live under a system of exploitation based on private profit and greed,” DeMoro said in her opening speech. “The problem is neoliberalism: Austerity measures. Privatization. They’ve turned everything into commodities to be sold.” That certainly is nothing like the humdrum lines about “building a strong middle class” that many union leaders cling to.

The popular left-wing author Naomi Klein, who was also featured in the opening plenary, likewise spoke forcefully against neoliberalism and talked about the need for radical transformation. “We don’t have much time,” she said, referring to the threat of ecological disaster posed by climate change. “Small incremental changes aren’t good enough.”

John Nichols, a columnist for the Nation, drew roaring applause when he expressed excitement about the fact that “millions of Americans today are embracing the “s” word”–the “s” word, of course, being socialism.

Over the course of the weekend, many speakers offered blistering attacks on what they called the Democratic Party establishment. “I’m sick of all the capitulation from the DNC,” DeMoro said at one point. “Don’t think because they’ve got a “D” next to their name that they’re nice.” The presidential primary–in which the NNU endorsed Bernie Sanders over Clinton–was, according to DeMoro, maligned by “massive corruption in the political machinery of the Democratic Party and manipulation by the press.”

Others aimed their criticisms directly at Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. For example, Dominque Scott, a student activist with United Students Against Sweatshops, pointed out in one session that “Clinton has done massive amounts of harm to poor folks, to black communities…She supported massive increases in incarceration. I am deeply distraught by the two options available to me in the presidential election. Trump and Clinton don’t represent me.” Her remarks drew a standing ovation from the several hundred-strong audience.

Toby Chow, chair of the Chicago-based organization People’s Lobby, had similarly critical things to say about Clinton: “If you go out and phone bank for Clinton, you need to realize that you’re not building anything. Instead, we need to focus on building organization, building our movement. If you’re not doing this, it’s a waste of time.”

Chow’s remarks hit on another running theme over the course of the weekend: the importance of building social movements. As DeMoro put it: “We have to learn the lesson of the Obama years–after he won the election, the movements went away and Wall Street occupied the White House. We can never go away, no matter who’s president. We have to build struggles in the streets, in our workplaces, in our communities.”

Scholar and activist Frances Fox Piven, speaking on a panel titled “understanding our movement moment,” made similar arguments: “We won’t win anything unless we are prepared to fight…We need the politicians to be afraid of movements. We need to threaten them with ungovernability.”

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BUT FOR every bold statement in defense of movement-building and militant protest, most speakers attached a caveat: build the movements, sure, but also make sure to vote and participate in the electoral arena. And while it wasn’t explicit every time, the obvious implication of this argument was, in most cases, that movement activists, in order to achieve their goals, should work within and through the Democratic Party.

Some of the speakers were blunt about it. “I beg you,” Illinois state Sen. Will Guzzardi told an audience of activists, “please don’t abandon the Democratic Party.”

The strategy put forward emphasized electing “Berniecrats”–Democrats sympathetic to Sanders’ message and proposals–in down-ballot elections, on the one hand, and going to the DNC to demand progressive reforms to the party platform, on the other. The goal of both tactics is to integrate Bernie Sanders supporters into the Democratic Party so that they might attempt to transform it from within.

Because of this emphasis, discussion of the Green Party candidate for president, Jill Stein, was conspicuously absent. Generally, speakers at the front studiously avoided talking about any possibility of breaking away from the Democrats and supporting any party, either the Greens or a new formation, that would contest elections to the left of the Democrats.

Some people explicitly opposed such a strategy. For example, Bob Master, of the Communication Workers of America–the biggest labor endorser of Sanders–and the Working Families Party in New York, argued that it was “overly ambitious and counterproductive” to try to build an independent party to the left of the Democrats. The priority, Master said, should be supporting Democrats, not only in 2016, but in the 2018 midterm elections.

In another case, at a breakout session for activists based in California, members of the audience asked why there was no debate about whether to support Jill Stein, but were rebuffed by the official moderator, who offered soft support for Clinton.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

BUT ALTHOUGH conference organizers didn’t want to entertain such questions, many participants were very eager to discuss and debate them.

Over the course of the weekend, scores of conference attendees stopped by the International Socialist Organization’s (ISO) booth and expressed a strong aversion to falling in line behind Clinton. They were eager to talk about how to build a new political vehicle, separate from the Democrats, that could fight for some of the key planks in Sanders’ campaign platform, such as single-payer health care, tuition-free college education, and a $15 an hour minimum wage. Some expressed frustration that the People’s Summit wasn’t devoted to doing just that.

Indeed, the well-funded, well-attended and smoothly organized event might have seved–in a not too distant, but different world–as a preparatory step toward building a new third party of labor and social movements.

Although this obviously wasn’t the purpose its organizers intended for it, what was on display at the sessions and among attendees at the People’s Summit showed that independent politics is financially realistic and organizationally feasible–but only when we can amass the forces to lead labor and other social movement organizations to break from the corporate-funded Democrats and strike out on their own.

Unfortunately, organizers of the People’s Summit seem to have had the opposite goal: to channel the dissatisfaction with the status quo that drove Sanders’ populist vision and redirect it into an effort to work squarely within the Democratic Party.

Sanders’ senior adviser Becky Bond described the goal of this strategy as “doing to the Democrats what the Tea Party did to the Republicans.” But while the Sanders campaign has thrown up plenty of contradictions that the leaders of the DNC would rather sweep aside, we must also come to terms with the other side of the coin: to the extent that the “don’t leave the Democratic Party” strategy wins out, the Sanders phenomenon may leave the Democrats with a stronger grip on labor and progressive activists–in the short run, at least–than it had before.

Plenty of activists at People’s Summit saw this contradiction for what it is. Over the course of the weekend, organizers at the ISO table collected dozens of signatures to get Jill Stein–who stated on Twitter that she was barred from speaking at the event–on the ballot in Illinois. Many other people purchased paper editions of Socialist Worker and signed up to get more information about getting involved with the ISO in the various cities.

When asked, lots of people said they were happy to identify themselves as a socialists–which provided numerous occasions for discussions about exactly that label means, how social democracy differs from socialism, and so on.

This collision of contradictory forces–pushing left in favor of demands like single-payer, on the one hand, and pulling right to try to corral wayward progressive activists back into the Democratic Party fold on the other–presents the socialist left with an important opportunity.

A huge layer of activists who were moved into action by Sanders’ call for a “political revolution against the billionaire class” are thinking about what to do now that his campaign is over. Many of them are disgusted with the Clintons and the way the DNC and the corporate media stymied Sanders’ campaign at every turn.

As we saw firsthand last weekend, a large proportion of this audience is eager to get involved with organized socialists, expand their knowledge of the left, and get prepared for the long haul to fight for a better world. Sanders’ call for a “political revolution” is about to be transformed into a call to vote for the candidate he urged a revolt against. The left needs to find a way to engage and recruit the Sandernistas who are not ready to give up the fight.

The task of socialists right now is to try to win people away from the idea that we can, as Jill Stein recently put it, “fight for a political revolution within a counterrevolutionary party.”

She won’t go back into the shadows

Tyler — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 15:31:25 +0000

by Orlando Sepúlveda (via SocialistWorker.org)

THE U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is retaliating against an outspoken undocumented immigrant activist–and she is fighting back.

In May, Nadia Sol Ireri Unzueta Carrasco was denied renewal of her status under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program because, according to the USCIS ombudsman, she “was arrested on May 29, 2013, after her initial DACA grant…She was charged with civil disobedience, resisting arrest, obstruction of traffic and reckless conduct…Ms. Unzueta’s case raised public safety concerns.”

The irony of Ireri’s case is that without her “civil disobedience, resisting arrest, obstruction of traffic and reckless conduct”–along with those of countless immigrant youth in the years leading up to the Obama administration finally acting in June 2012–there would be no DACA program in the first place. Unzueta Carrasco is now suing.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE 29-year-old Unzueta Carrasco had been fighting for years, together with millions of other immigrants, for the legalization of all undocumented workers and their families. At age 18, she was an organizing member of an ad-hoc group of individuals and organizations that called for rallies against the draconian anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner bill in July 2005 and March 2006.

The massive March “mega-march” in Chicago was repeated in cities around the country, culminating in a massive national mobilization on May Day 2006 all over the U.S. The right-wing Sensenbrenner bill was defeated.

The movement for immigrant justice unleashed in the spring of 2006 utilized all types of political action–from massive protests to civil disobedience–with the aim of winning amnesty for more than 11 million immigrant workers. Obama was a beneficiary of this activism–he won a huge majority of votes from immigrants who believed his election would lead to immigration reform, especially with Democrats winning a majority in both houses of Congress.

But as the Democrats showed themselves unwilling to use their political power to push for immigration reform–and as Obama took his first steps toward earning his current title of Deporter-in-Chief–a section of the immigrant rights movement, particularly the undocumented youth in the country not by their choice, but brought in by their parents–began to grow impatient.

In 2009, a group of undocumented youth came together in Chicago to address the Obama administration’s stalling. They formed the Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL). In March 2010, the group staged a Coming Out of the Shadows rally to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the mega-marches, but also to provide a new direction for the movement–one led from the bottom up by undocumented immigrants who were putting themselves in the spotlight.

Ireri was one of the youths who came out of the shadows that day.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

EVENTUALLY, THE IYJL, and other emerging youth groups around the country inspired by it, became leading proponents of the DREAM Act [the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act]–but not without opposition from Democrats and mainstream liberals who thought that the youth’s independent direction and action could upset attempts to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR). On the left, some also abstained from supporting the bill because it included a provision offering legal status in exchange for military service.

In July 2010, as part of a national coordinated action to try to win passage of the DREAM Act, a group of over 20 young undocumented immigrants, wearing their graduation caps and gowns, organized a sit-in at the Washington offices of various senators, Republican and Democrats alike.

Unzueta Carrasco, holding a banner that read “Undocumented and Unafraid, DREAM Act Now” was one of them. She was arrested but not prosecuted.

Young undocumented immigrants organized similar in many cities. Every protest exposed more and more the absurd federal system of immigration that deemed unlawful the presence of millions of young people who came to the U.S. with their families when they were young children.

In 2012, a presidential election was looming, and Obama and the Democrats had broken all their promises to the immigrant rights movement. Congressional Democrats had dismissed the Dream Act in favor of the more elusive CIR. But growing pressure from undocumented youth put pressure on the White House to deliver some action.

In mid-June 2012, President Obama announced that undocumented youth could apply for DACA, giving them a temporary relieve from deportation and work permits, but they would have to comply with a long list of requirements.

They had to be under 31 years old, have entered the U.S. before their 16th birthday, reside in the country continuously from 2007 to the present, be enrolled in school or have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, and not have a felony conviction, to name a few.

Sol Ireri’s other instances of civil disobedience cited by the USCIS include in 2011, when she was part of a group protesting the use of local police in immigration matters in Chicago; in September 2012, when a group of undocumented youth engaged in a sit-in outside the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina; and in May 2013, during a protest of Obama in Chicago.

In her complaint before the court, Ireri’s lawyers to this last arrest:

Ms. Unzueta Carrasco had volunteered for [Obama’s] senatorial campaign while in high school, and was disappointed at the high number of deportations under his administration, including many people whom she knew. Ms. Unzueta Carrasco and a group of individuals blocked Michigan Avenue, connected to each other and sitting in a circle.

Her case is becoming a rallying point for all those who support both the right of all immigrants to reside in the country without fear and the right to political action in the face of injustice. Now that she is suing, more than 130 organizations are supporting her case and have signed onto a letter that concludes:

Civil disobedience actions, a tactic of nonviolent protest, are viewed as acts of conscience and remain a cornerstone of American social reforms and democracy. It is deeply troubling that in the decision over Ms. Unzueta Carrasco’s DACA renewal DHS views civil disobedience as a public safety concern, and not as protected First Amendment activity.

Nadia Sol Ireri Unzueta Carrasco has demonstrated to the people she met in this country that she is a hero, not a “threat to public safety.” She came to the U.S. in 1994, when she was 6 years old, and has lived in the U.S. for the last 22 years of her life. She graduated from high school and college. She enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), studying at the UIC Honors College, from where she graduated with the highest distinctions in her department.

She isn’t only an activist for justice, but also works for the extracurricular After School Matters program in Chicago. Thousands of educators are signing a letter in support of her not only because they want to see justice done, but because Sol Ireri is the type of person who should be recognized for helping to bring change for millions of people–not retaliated against by a vindictive administration shamed by her actions.

The Sharp Edge of American Racism

Tyler — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 00:06:36 +0000

Police in riot gear watch protesters in Ferguson, Mo. on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014. On Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014, a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in the St. Louis suburb. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (via www.socialistworker.org)

WHY THE issue of police brutality?

Police violence against Black people is not new. In 1951, a multiracial contingent of activists in the Civil Rights Congress raised the slogan “We charge genocide” to characterize the depth and consequences of police murder and the silent complicity of the state. The preamble of their petition read, in part:

There was a time when racist violence had its center in the South…Once most of the violence against Negroes occurred in the countryside, but that was before the Negro emigrations of the twenties and thirties. Now there is not a great American city from New York to Cleveland or Detroit, from Washington, the nation’s capital, to Chicago, from Memphis to Atlanta or Birmingham, from New Orleans to Los Angeles, that is not disgraced by the wanton killing of innocent Negroes.

It is no longer a sectional phenomenon. Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the policeman’s bullet. To many an American the police are the government, certainly its most visible representative. We submit that the evidence suggests that the killing of Negroes has become police policy in the United States and that police policy is the most practical expression of government policy.

Today, there is no shortage of issues that Black people in this country could mobilize around. But police brutality remains the catalyst for Black protest because it is the clearest example of the compromised citizenship of Black people. When the police can approach you, search you, arrest you and even kill you with impunity, it means you don’t have first-class citizenship–you have second-class citizenship.

This second-class citizenship, and its sharp conflict with what the United States says about itself, is what drives the radicalization of young Black people and others who know it to be true. In other words, we as a nation are always told that this is the greatest country on earth. We believe in “American exceptionalism” and the promises of unfettered opportunity for anyone willing to work for it. We believe in the American Dream.

Just a few weeks ago Obama traveled to Cuba, where he said, “I believe that every person should be equal under the law…Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education, and health care and food on the table and a roof over their heads…American democracy has given our people the opportunity to pursue their dreams and enjoy a high standard of living.”

Obama likes to tout his own story and rise as a product of America’s greatness, but what on earth do these words mean to the family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was shot and killed by police within 1.6 seconds arriving on the scene. What does it mean when the cops who killed him will not face charges?

What does it mean to Aiyana Jones, a 7-year-old girl sleeping on the couch in a house in Detroit, who was killed by police in a botched raid? What does it mean that those officers will not be punished?

What does it mean to Laquan McDonald’s family? To Rekia Boyd’s family?

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BUT THE movement has exposed what the vast majority of Black people in America know to be true–in inner cities across this country, there exists a police state, where the police are governed by a completely different set of rules; where they can kill, often with impunity; where they are empowered to do what they want, when they want, all with the intention of maintaining discipline and control over the country’s Black population.

If you think this is an exaggeration then consider this: Since January 2015, American police have killed 1,405 people. According to the findings of a study conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics on police homicides, in the years 2003-09 and 2011, American police killed 7,427 people.

That’s an average of 928 people a year. If we include the last four years, American police will have been responsible for killing more than 11,000 people. In 2015, when theGuardian newspaper began to keep track of police killings, it found that young Black men aged 15 to 34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by the police.

Consider that 22 American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan last year. Or that 25 people were killed by law enforcement in Canada in 2015. In the last 24 years, police in England and Wales have killed 55 people. By January 31 of this year, American police had killed 89 people. In Germany police killed no one in 2013 and 2014. China, with a population four and half times the size of the United States, recorded 12 police killings in 2014.

And this is only a fraction of what we know in the U.S. There are 18,000 police departments in this country, and only 1,000 of them bother to report to the federal government how many people they kill each year.

The New York City Police Department, for example, has not reported on how many civilians it has killed since 2007. The state of Florida does not report at all. So we have a very limited view of the extent of police homicide in the United States, and because of the lack of consistent tracking, we have no idea what proportion of these deaths are incurred by African-Americans or Latinos.

The police in the United States have always been an oppressive institution, but these practices have become worse and more widespread recently. The increasing brutality of police has coincided with the attrition of the already weak American welfare state. The political establishment in its Republican and Democratic clothing is gutting our neighborhoods.

When you close public schools and mental health clinics, cut funding for public hospitals and public libraries; when you cut welfare, housing assistance and food stamps in the midst of a jobs crisis when there are already 50 million poor people in the United States; when you do these things, you are creating the conditions for crime. Policing has become the public policy of last resort, intended to contain crime to certain neighborhoods, not actually stop it.

For example, the section of Baltimore where Freddie Gray–whose death ignited the Baltimore Rebellion–lived, 21 percent of residents are unemployed; 25 percent of the buildings are abandoned and in a state of disrepair; life expectancy is six years shorter than in the rest of the city; 55 percent of families live on less than $25,000 a year; and 30 percent officially live in poverty.

Three weeks before Gray was killed, police were instructed to increase their presence and arrests on the corner Gray was picked up on. The police have been inserted where the rest of the state has failed its citizens.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THIS KEY role played by the police in governing our cities today means they are a protected class governed by a separate set of rules and regulations. This is why mayors and city council members regularly turn a blind eye to brutal policing. Brutal policing is simply the cost of doing business.

And the cost of doing business is quite high. In the city of Chicago alone, the city alone has spent $500 million over the last 10 years in settlements or payouts for lawsuits against the city for police brutality and wrongful death suits. The NYPD has averaged $100 million settlements for police brutality and wrongful death lawsuits each year, over the last decade adding up to $1 billion.

The 10 cities with the largest police departments paid out $248 million last year in settlements and court judgments in police misconduct cases, up 48 percent from $163 million in 2010. In the last five years, those same 10 cities have paid out $1.2 billion.

Any other public institution that incurred this kind of deficit would have its budgets and services shrunk or the institution is shut down. When the Chicago Board of Education claimed it was running a billion dollar deficit, it simply closed 52 public schools and never looked back.

Policing in the United States has nothing to do with crime. As activists and radicals, we don’t deny that crime is an issue in the lives of working-class and poor people. But crime is a product of poverty and economic inequality.

We live in the richest country in the history of the world. If the United States wanted to end poverty in this country tomorrow, it could. Since the economy crashed in 2008, the federal government has spent close to $4 trillion in a bailout of the nation’s financial sector. The federal government spent $438 billion to bail out Citigroup alone.

That $4 trillion could transform every school in the country, provide health care for all, provide housing for millions, end food insecurity and upend the kind of economic inequality that produces crime. But while it was determined that the banks were too big to fail, our public schools, hospitals and other vital institutions were and continue to be too insignificant to save.

Instead of money, wealth and other resources being dedicated to eradicating poverty, we get policing and more policing. And the logic of policing only begets more policing as elected officials create political value out of rising arrest rates and falling crime rates by aggressively tracking policing statistics and turning them into campaign fodder. Police are rewarded not for stopping crime, but for making arrests.

Finally, as revenue streams have tightened in American cities, as no American politician will take responsibility for raising taxes, law enforcement has become a de facto way for municipalities to raise funds on the backs of the politically weak and vulnerable. In Chicago, there are red light cameras, endless tickets, fines and fees. New York City profited $10 million a week from parking tickets. The city also made almost $1 billion a year in court and administrative fines.

These, of course, create incentives for the police to target people and entire neighborhoods as sources of income for the city. And encounters with the police of this nature, of course, drag people into the criminal justice system, thereby making it even harder to get a job or maintain any level of economic stability.

In other words, ending police terrorism also means recognizing it as the logical outcome of a brutal society that willfully turns a blind eye to inequality and injustice. It means that police brutality and murder are not the products of “bad police,” but they are built into a system that actually has no solution to poverty, racism and inequality. Instead, the system and its representatives manage the products of inequality.

It is for this reason that there has never been a golden age of policing that any of us can point to as a place to get back to when the police were not violent and abusive. Such a period does not exist.

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WHAT THEN can we do? The systemic violence of the police does not mean that the movement is helpless. Our movement should fight for the resources and programs that would minimize the pretext for police in our neighborhoods–good-paying jobs with benefits, fully funded public institutions. Instead of paying for police, we should be paying to rebuild the public and civic infrastructure of our cities.

We should also be fighting to decriminalize the growing list of so-called offenses that serve no other purpose than to put people under the control of the criminal justice system: from the possession of marijuana, to feeding the homeless, to sleeping in your car, to begging for money. We have to end the American obsession with criminalization as a form of social control.

But, perhaps, most importantly we must continue to build the movement.

What does this mean in this era? At the end of the 1960s, it was almost a common sense that the Black movement should and would be all Black. But the most significant transformation in Black life in the last 40 years has been the emergence of intense class differences among African-Americans, which in turn have given way to deep political differences.

As we come upon the one-year anniversary of the Baltimore Rebellion, there is not a better example of how these differences express themselves. Not only does Baltimore have a Black mayor, police chief and state’s attorney, but this amassing of local Black power, is happening within the context of the greatest concentration of Black political power in the nation’s history.

Today, there is a Black president, Black attorney general, not to mention the thousands of Black elected officials in cities and states around the country. There are 43 Black members of Congress–the highest number in American history.

It is clear that a layer of Blacks have been fully absorbed and integrated into American capitalism and they, like the president, can be the most vociferous when denouncing poor and working-class African-Americans.

African-American Mayor Stephanie-Rawlings Blake, prior to the rebellion in Baltimore, said, “Too many of us in the Black community have become complacent about Black-on-Black crime…While many of us are willing to march and protest and become active in the face of police misconduct, many of us turn a blind eye when it’s us killing us.”

Of course, she and Obama both referred to young Blacks in the rebellion as “thugs” and “criminals”–two words that were never used by the white officials of Ferguson. In other words, often, Black elected officials, help to narrate that experience of African Americans in ways that white elected officials could never get away with–by blaming Blacks through rhetoric that emphasizes culture and morality and irresponsibility as the source of Black inequality as opposed to racism and economic inequality.

This deepening chasm between the Black elite and the Black working class has made the question of class solidarity in the movement an important one. Historically, the Black movement has always been across class lines because of the all-encompassing nature of American racism. But as more Black elected officials are governing the cities and suburbs where Black workers live, it has created a deeper antagonism that frays the notion of solidarity between all Blacks.

When the Black mayor of Baltimore mobilizes the military to occupy the Black neighborhoods, while allowing whites to come and go freely ignore an imposed martial law for Blacks, the idea that we are all on the same side and in the same struggle is blown up.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

BUILDING A broader movement, then, means trying to bring together the many different groups who are impacted by police violence and who are often already involved in activist projects, like the undocumented and immigrant rights movement; and Arabs and Muslims who are actively fighting against Islamophobia and other forms of state-sanctioned violence.

There is even a basis for drawing working-class and poor whites into this movement as well. Compared to the rest of the world, white people are arrested at unprecedented rates in the United States. We know that police are many more times predisposed to killing Black and Latinos in the U.S., but the police have literally killed thousands of white people in the last 10 years. Moreover, the physical repression and crushing of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the winter of 2012 shows that the state is willing to do anything to maintain control in this society.

Black Lives Matter should look to deepen in some places and develop in other places relationships to the movement for educational justice and the movement to increase the minimum wage, as just two examples. Not only is this about drawing a more specific connection between the attacks on the public infrastructure, poverty and economic inequality as directly connected to abusive policing, but it also puts the movement in relationship with those who have the social power to shut down key aspect of the economy in ways that disproportionately threaten the economic health of the system.

One need look no further than the action called by the Chicago Teachers Union on April 1 to see the power of the organized working class. We can imagine a future of workplace stoppages in response to police brutality or police murder.

The need to build a larger movement is not something to suggest so that we can all get along or feel good about ourselves. It is really about coming to terms with the enormity of our task when we talk about ending police terrorism in our communities. For as much as the movement has accomplished in exposing the issue of police violence, we are right now witnessing the resilience and determination of the political establishment to protect criminal, killer cops:

— The refusal to indict Tamir Rice’s killers;
— The decision to grant bail to the cop who killed Walter Scott;
— The embattled Rahm Emanuel putting in his personal puppet as police chief, who had the audacity to say that in his 27 years as a cop in Chicago he has never seen police misconduct;
— A recent decision to of a San Francisco judge to reinstate police officers who exchanged texts that declared “white power” and, among other things, “All niggers must hang” and “Niggers should be spayed…I just saw one with four kids”;
— Granting bail to Jason Van Dyke, who killed Laquan McDonald;
— The Justice Department reinstating asset seizure as a practice;
— Thirteen months have passed and the 59 recommendations from Obama’s police commission have yet to be implemented;
— The Chicago Police Department will not even fire Dante Servin;
— And American police have killed approximately 80 people a month since January.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE POLITICAL establishment, led by Barack Obama, is always willing to throw together a commission, invite activists to a roundtable, and unveil countless studies with the objective of creating the illusion that something is happening. And they try and convince the rest of us that “something” is progress.

But what we are confronting is the systemic, rooted and institutional feature of racism and oppression in this society and it requires a political strategy that can challenge it–but also look beyond it.

These are the things we can do now, but our goals of Black liberation cannot be measured only in units of reform and that which is possible today. The fight for real freedom requires the fundamental transformation of a society founded on genocide; that flourished because of slavery, and simply thrives on economic inequality.

Last year was the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and, with it, the first declaration of civil rights for African-Americans. This year, we continue to celebrate the 50th anniversaries of the civil rights movement from the decade of the 1960s. But as long as the question of Black freedom is only ever asked within the context of this existing society, as long as it is posed as a question to today’s existing political institutions, it will never be answered.

Simply put: We cannot vote or even protest our way into ending racism in a society where racial inequality and racial injustice is so tightly wound into the marrow of its bones. There is literally no period of time in its existence where Black oppression was not a key feature.

This is not a reason for despair, but a sober reminder of what exactly we are fighting for. What are the social forces that can lead a struggle for a new society based on freedom and justice? What are the politics necessary to shape the struggle for a new society? These are not new questions, but they are debates that have animated the struggle for Black liberation for as long as Black people have been struggling for freedom in the United States.

In 1967, King posed the question, “Where do we go from here?” After civil rights, how do we achieve Black and human liberation? He said:

We honestly face the fact that the Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are 40 million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there 40 million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?…Your whole structure must be changed. A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them–make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again!

How we dumped Trump

Tyler — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 15:46:43 +0000

by Mario Cardenas (via SocialistWorker.org)

A MULTIRACIAL crowd representing people from all over Chicago turned out to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Pavilion on March 11 to tell Donald Trump his racist message isn’t welcome here–forcing him to cancel his rally and send his supporters home.

Socialist Worker was inside and outside the UIC pavilion to report on how racism and bigotry was successfully shut down in the Windy City.

Trump, currently the frontrunner for Republican presidential nomination, was scheduled to take the stage at 6 p.m. in front of a packed house on Friday night. But 30 minutes after it was supposed to start, a Trump representative walked to the podium and announced:

Mr. Trump just arrived in Chicago, and after meeting with law enforcement, has determined that for the safety of all of the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight’s rally will be postponed to another date.

It was clear victory for protesters, as cheers went up throughout anti-Trump forces in the crowd, and a clear defeat for Trump supporters.

For almost five hours, the air was tense inside the pavilion as Trump supporters and activists that had gone inside the pavilion to protest waited for the event to start. Waves of violence, vulgarity and hate ebbed and flowed from Trump supporters to anti-Trump protesters.

This pro-wrestling-type spectacle seems to be the bread and butter of the Trump PR strategy, as he typically whips his crowd into frenzy against immigrants, Muslims and anti-Trump protesters themselves. According to people inside the venue, some Trump supporters ran around the arena wherever a protester was discovered to yell at them and flip them off. There were also supporters who turned out for the event in black party dresses, tailored suits, gold watches and designer shoes.

Others wore “Blue Lives Matter” buttons and whenever a row of police passed by, clapped and chanted “CPD! CPD!” (Chicago Police Department). The front rows were reserved for the wealthier supporters, and it was rumored that Bears quarterback Jay Cutler had reserved a seat. In the upper decks, there were people sporting “All Lives Matter” T-shirts, military haircuts, Confederate garb and KKK patches.

At his rallies, Trump is fueling people’s fears and anger and directing it at easy scapegoats, like immigrants and Muslims. One Trump supporter complained, “My family is struggling for my son to go to college and he has an illegal friend who is getting a free ride. This society is not recognizing people who are struggling.”

For some attendees, this is a place where they can find an outlet for their racism and xenophobia. Trump has encouraged his supporters to physically attack any anti-Trump protesters that turn out to his events, and some people are turning up to his protests eager to do just that.

Trump’s security approached people inside the venue that they thought were protesters, usually non-white people, to ask their names and look them up on their smart phones. Officers from three police departments were also part of the security detail for the event.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

FOR PROTESTERS outside, the day began earlier that afternoon at the UIC campus quad, where hundreds turned out for a student-led speak-out, organized largely via social media, before marching to the UIC Pavilion.

The protest was organized very quickly, as the announcement of Trump’s event came just a week before the event. A UIC student started a MoveOn.org petition to get UIC to disinvite Trump that gained some traction. A collection of student groups and activists at UIC started a “Stop Trump” Facebook group and event that within 24 hours had thousands of people signing up to attend.

An opening organizing meeting on March 7 drew about 100 students representing groups such as the Muslim Student Association, College Democrats, the Black Student Union, student immigrant rights groups and Black Lives Matter activists among others, including members of Service Employees International Union Local 73.

Protesters developed an inside and an outside strategy for the Trump event, and over the course of the week, the numbers of people who wanted to come out and stand up to Trump ballooned.

On March 11, as news helicopters hovered above and traffic lanes were paralyzed, on the ground the crowd swelled to some 3,000 mostly young, multiracial and very animated anti-Trump activists. It was like a festival of solidarity as a broad spectrum of left and progressive organizations and many individuals who had never been to a protest before marched as one through the UIC campus and headed to the arena.

As people marched closer to UIC Pavilion, barricades and hundreds of Chicago, Cook County, and UIC police on foot, car and horseback separated the protesters from the people waiting in line to get in.

Chants of “Dump Trump!” accompanied the thousands of posters, banners, horn sections and even a mariachi band as the crowd surrounded the arena.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

WALKING THROUGH the crowd on Harrison Street was like seeing the different ethnicities of Chicago’s segregated neighborhoods come together, with protesters carrying signs in Spanish, Arabic and English. There were groups of queer activists, Black Lives Matter activists, Latino Sanders supporters, anarchists, socialists, artists, workers and professionals–all of them gathered to shut down Trump.

A young couple holding hands, Diego and Caroline, were among them. “This is the first time coming out [to a protest]. We were debating to come out or to go support Bernie,” Diego said, referring to the fact that Sanders had a campaign event the same day. “But we decided to come over…we want to stand together in solidarity against Trump, no matter what he says.”

An overwhelming number of people supported the Bernie Sanders campaign. Sandra Puebla, a student at Dominican University, proudly pasted a “Unidos con Bernie” (United with Bernie) sticker on her sweater and proclaimed, “[Sanders] is bringing up issues that aren’t usually brought up. He’s spoken about the importance of Black Lives Matter movement, xenophobia, and that’s not something Democrats usually talk about. Even if he doesn’t win he’s still impacting the election.”

Others didn’t affiliate with any presidential candidate, but stood firmly against Trump. “Trump needs to be stopped,” said 20-year-old Madeline Frankie, who goes to school in Pittsburgh and was home for spring break. Talking about the racism of the Trump campaign, she added, “It’s disgusting. We’re all humans, we’re all people.”

Contrary to Trump’s lies that his event was disrupted by “professional agitators,” Jacob, a 20-year-old holding a sign that read “#DumpTrump,” explained, “This is honestly my first protest. It was shared on Facebook. UIC students have been talking about it a lot on campus, and one of my friends in class shared it with me and I shared it with all my friends and now they’re all here with me.”

Next to him, 20-year-old Ashley from the Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen expressed her anger: “I’m Mexican and when Trump made his statements about how we’re all rapists and criminals, that really hit close to my heart because a lot of my family is undocumented. They are amazing hard workers. Trump is wrong–not all Mexicans are rapists, not all Muslims are terrorists.”

She added, “My first protests was in 2012 for Trayvon Martin, and since then I’ve been politically active.”

This new youth radicalization is thirsty for multiracial unity and while organizations still need to be built, the desire for solidarity is strong. Twenty-three-year-old Alex Wiggins from Chicago’s South Side encapsulated the anger:

Honestly I don’t fuck with Donald Trump, I don’t believe in his motivations. I have a lot of Mexican friends, and I’m African American. He’s trying to make America white again; I don’t think America is white. It’s a melting pot, isn’t it? I think it was made for all of us. My people died for this country, we may have been forced, but our blood is on this land. Mexican blood, Native American blood is on this land.

This is our country, and we’re not going to let money run it. We’re not going to let the top 1 Percent take everything. My father is almost 70–there was a time when he was young, when a man could work 40 hours a week and support his family, send his kids to college, spend time with his kids. Now people working 70 hours a week can’t raise their kids.

In turn, their kids are on the street and now we’re getting violence, we’re getting poverty. And people like Donald Trump have never been anywhere close to anything like that. They don’t understand what it’s like to walk into a store and be judged or even walk into a classroom and be judged. So that’s why I’m out here.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE ONLY way to stop the right is to directly shut them down with mass actions that unite people against their racism.

The vile celebrations of hate at Trump rallies have recently drawn protests at nearly every campaign stop, with activists going inside the events to hold up banners and disrupt the event. These incidents are so commonplace that Trump now begins his rallies by instructing the crowd to deal with disrupters by chanting “Trump!” to draw attention of security.

Trump has also condoned his supporters physically attacking protesters on multiple occasions, including at a recent North Carolina rally where a protester was punched by a Trump supporter. Trump sanctioned this action by offering to pay the assailant’s legal fees.

Chicago protesters expressed the sentiments of many anti-racists across the country and demonstrated that Trump and racists of his ilk can actually be shut down. At the rally, the workers and students of Chicago–Black, Latin@, Arab, Asian and white–did what few in the Democratic or Republican Party establishments or the media have done: tackle his bigotry head on. The right-wing demagogue who prides himself on never backing down was humbled not by a witty retort in a debate, a slick social media campaign, or even an elaborate set-piece direct action–but by the thousands of Chicagoans who turned out to oppose him.

Days before the rally, the Chicago Tribune ran the headline, “Trump to face protest by Latino Leaders,” claiming that “Latino elected officials and leaders said Monday they are organizing a protest to counter…Donald Trump’s appearance.” In a classic display of opportunism, Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez and Alderman Danny Solis held press conferences in an effort to gain political points for the Democrats.

However, it wasn’t the elected officials, but thousands of ordinary Chicagoans who gathered and marched on Trump, pushed police lines back and took the streets. Hundreds more protested inside the UIC pavilion and, through sheer force of numbers, forced Trump out of their city.

The strategy used by protesters inside the arena was effective through both the magnitude of participants and quality of organization. The activists inside didn’t act at random to avoid being picked off one by one but were disciplined so as not to be provoked and determined to act together.

As the radical historian Howard Zinn once wrote, if you’re going to disrupt a right-wing rally, “do it with 2,000 people.” While the protesters inside were decisive in canceling the event, the large, highly visible mass march outside was equally important in sending a message to the people of Chicago and beyond that racism and bigotry aren’t welcome in our city. While Democratic politicians stand up against racism or homophobia only when it’s politically convenient for them, it was the masses of Chicago who sent a message to Trump this time: You’re fired.

In the aftermath, the media described the protests as “violent clashes.” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who was also in the Chicago area campaigning on the day of the protest, weighed in, decrying the “violence” of both sides and making a bizarre comparison to the racist mass shooting by a white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina.

In reality, peaceful protesters were attacked by mobs of angry Trump supporters when they learned the event was canceled. This has been–unsurprisingly–underreported by the corporate media, as was the fact that a number of protesters were beaten by the police and arrested.

At the same time, Trump has whined about his “freedom of speech” being violated. The fact that Trump can run for president with his inherited millions and buy a pulpit where his every word is carried by new stations as though his views automatically have merit, however, is a violation of the freedom of speech of the thousands upon thousands of working people who he targets with this scapegoating.

The protesters in Chicago didn’t ask the state to interfere by the restricting his speech. Instead we drowned out his hate ourselves with the power of our collective voices. Protests like that of Chicago are what are required to build a movement against racist scapegoating, endless war, border walls and deportations, no matter which political party–Republican or Democrat–is at fault.

Brian Bean, Rory Fanning and Brit Schulte contributed to this article.

How can Chicago teachers win again?

Tyler — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 20:41:41 +0000

by Lee Sustar (via SocialistWorker.org)

THREE YEARS after their strike defeated an attempt to gut their contract and further entrench the corporate education deform agenda in city schools, Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members could soon be walking the picket lines again.

Like last time, a Democratic mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is poised to cut jobs and pay and gut classroom resources. But now they face a Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, who is seeking to crush the union outright.

CTU members–who in December voted by an overwhelming 88 percent margin to authorize a strike–vowed to walk out as early as April 1 if Chicago Public Schools (CPS) unilaterally pushed more pension costs onto teachers.

CPS backed off its threat–for now–after the union began preparing for an unfair labor practices strike. But the school board claims that unless the CTU makes major concessions, it will be compelled to take this step as a result of a budget deadlock in the state legislature, a squeeze on Chicago city finances and a long-running fiscal crisis at CPS itself.

The CTU–which is still planning protests for a day of action on April 1–counters that CPS is “broke on purpose.” The union points out that the district began the current school year with a $1 billion deficit as a result of the decades-long tax dodge by big business; a push for expensive, nonunion charter schools; and high-interest loans to CPS that benefit the big banks at the expense of kids. If CPS unilaterally imposes higher pension costs on workers, the CTU has stated that it will invoke its right to strike against an unfair labor practice.

A strike over a new contract could still come this spring or in the fall if no agreement is reached. The CTU has been working under an extension of the old contract, which expired in June 2015.

Emanuel and Rauner–whatever their own differences–are both targeting the CTU, presenting the union with one of the greatest challenges in the organization’s 79-year history.

Even so, the CTU can still prevail if it builds on the public support it won in the 2012 strike to lead a wider labor-community fight against sweeping budget cuts in education and across the public sector–this time making the fight against racism and inequality even more prominent. A solidarity meeting for the CTU, set for March 9, will focus on many of those themes.

With Emanuel still reeling from the disclosure of a video showing the 2014 police murder of Laquan McDonald and Rauner saddled with popularity ratings that show a majority of Illinois voters disapprove of him, the CTU can rally popular support behind a program of challenging austerity and taxing the wealthy to pay for schools and social services.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE NUMBERS tell the story of the CPS financial crisis: a $500 million payment due to teachers’ pensions this year, the result of systematic underpayments by CPS for decades; borrowing, most recently some $725 million, at extortionate interest rates that will cost the system hundreds of millions of dollars; and a long-term drain of tax dollars away from schools to fund development schemes for businesses that don’t need the money.

In the past, the hard-charging Emanuel would have used the crisis to simply try to ram through cuts. But with his approval ratings dropping to 27 percent–the lowest of any Chicago mayor in the modern era–he has tried to reach a deal by giving considerable ground on issues important to the CTU, including a ban on economic layoffs and a freeze on the creation of charter schools.

But the CTU’s bargaining committee didn’t buy it when they voted on the city’s offer. Teachers on the committee rejected the deal unanimously, pointing out that retirement incentives would have resulted in a net loss of 1,500 CTU jobs, and the proposal that teachers pick up pension payments would have amounted to a cut in compensation once inflation is taken into account.

Chicago schools CEO Forrest Claypool, a veteran Democratic operative, has set an April 1 deadline for rescinding a portion of the pension cost that it has paid for decades and cutting $85 million from school budgets. This will involve the layoff of some 1,000 teachers and paraprofessionals. The union has responded by stepping up the action, including “walk-in” protests at some 200 schools.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE BATTLE is reminiscent of union struggles in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the CTU went on strike against payless paydays and the Illinois state legislature created the School Finance Authority to oversee spending, amid political turmoil in the Chicago Democratic machine following the death of Mayor Richard J. Daley. Of the CTU’s nine strikes between 1969 and 1987, most took place during that era–including three against Mayor Harold Washington, the city’s first African American mayor.

But the threat to the CTU goes deeper than the budget squeeze or attacks by Emanuel and Rauner. Chicago teachers find themselves at the center of multiple, converging crises: the failure of pro-business neoliberal policies to revive the city’s economy after the Great Recession; growing resistance to racist police violence; cracks in the two main political parties, as evidenced by the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump phenomena; and the struggle by organized labor for continued relevance after decades of decline.

Perhaps the closest analog for today’s struggles is the Great Depression of the 1930s, when Chicago teachers–then organized in several unions–embarked on series of battles that would lead to the founding of a unified Chicago Teachers Union in 1937. Then, as now, the corporate establishment and the politicians sought to force teachers to bear the brunt of conditions in schools crippled by budget cuts.

For his part, Bruce Rauner, a hedge fund boss worth nearly $1 billion who bought himself the governor’s office in the 2014 election, wants to turn back the clock to the days when public-sector unions had no right to collective bargaining.

Although he has been in office for 14 months, Rauner has refused to reach any budget deal with the Democratic legislature unless lawmakers capitulate to his demand to include anti-union measures. The result is huge cuts in spending in vital social programs and state institutions. One consequence: layoff notices were sent to all faculty, staff and administrators at Chicago State University, where the student body is heavily African American.

The governor is doing his utmost to provoke a confrontation with the CTU by pushing a plan for bankruptcy that would void union contracts and seeking to block CPS from selling bonds to finance school operations.

The Democrats control the Illinois legislature and the state constitution limits his authority, so Rauner is trying to create a crisis in which he can assert executive power to impose a contract settlement on the CTU, directly or through a judge’s order–and/or create the political conditions for a legislative settlement in his favor.

In this context, the CTU’s fight cannot be won through conventional trade union bargaining–at least as it has evolved since the CTU won formal collective bargaining rights in the late 1960s. Rauner has already proposed that the Illinois National Guard do state workers’ jobs in the event of a public employees strike–a throwback to the 19th century, when governors regularly used the state militia, the Guard’s predecessor, to put down strikes by railroad workers and coal miners.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE CTU enters this fight with a reservoir of popular support. According to an opinion poll, three times more Chicagoans trust the union on education issues than Rahm Emanuel.

Moreover, the union has forged links with numerous community, issue-oriented and faith-based organizations, many of them grouped into the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM).

Labor support for the CTU is much more uneven, however.

The teachers do have solid relationships with several different unions, including the liberal Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Illinois-Indiana, the home health care workers union that Rauner is out to destroy. Another ally is the reform leadership of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308, which represents city transit workers who were hammered by Claypool a few years back when he was their boss. The National Nurses Organizing Committee, the activist union representing workers at Cook County Hospital, was a prominent backer of the CTU strike in 2012 and remains an ally today.

The list of the CTU’s labor supporters is notable by who isn’t on it, however. The Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL), which groups together the city’s main unions, is missing in action, as are most of its affiliates. The CFL and the state AFL-CIO did mobilize against Rauner’s attempts to push through local anti-union “right to work” laws, but they have been mostly quiet since then. In Chicago, several big unions, including the Teamsters Joint Council and most of the building trades, back Emanuel.

The CTU’s most natural ally in its fight is American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31, which is trying to negotiate a contract with Rauner that covers some 100,000 state workers.

Rauner’s contract demands are intolerable and would gut the union. But it is Rauner, not AFSCME, that is pushing for a strike. The union, by contrast, is backing legislation that would eliminate its own right to strike, but bar Rauner from locking them out–leaving the final contract decision to an arbitrator.

Certainly, AFSCME’s opposition to Rauner’s austerity drive puts it on the same page as the CTU. But AFSCME’s abandonment of the strike, labor’s most powerful weapon, is in sharp contrast to the CTU’s strategy.

Instead, AFSCME has looked to the legislature for relief. Since a handful of Rauner’s Democratic allies in the legislature have refused to support the no-strike, no-lockout bill, labor spent heavily in the Democratic primaries set for March 15, even as Rauner’s wealthy backers pour their own money into the race.

The result is that rather than mobilize AFSCME members for an inevitable confrontation with Rauner and present themselves as proud defenders of public services, the top AFSCME leadership has urged members to appear moderate and merely paint Rauner as a villain who should be ousted from office.

The problem is that the next election for Illinois governor isn’t until 2018–and the struggle will come to a head long before that. In any case, Rauner, who was already wealthy and powerful before taking office, doesn’t care if he is re-elected. He was installed in office by his superrich circle of allies in order to demolish the state’s welfare system and stomp on unions.

If Rauner succeeds but gets tossed out of office as a result, he’ll count it as a win, go back to asset-stripping companies and relax at one of his seven homes around the world.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE RELUCTANCE of the big unions to fight alongside the CTU may reflect the opportunism or caution of their leaderships–but it doesn’t mean that there is a lack of support for teachers.

The union has the potential to tap widespread solidarity by appealing directly to members of other public-sector unions in the city–after all, their children attend CPS schools.

Just as importantly, the union can draw on the widespread anger at Emanuel over his complicity in the epidemic of racist police violence against African Americans. That anger erupted late last year when the video of Laquan McDonald being executed by cops emerged, and Emanuel’s once-undisputed power was shaken by the worst crisis in Chicago politics since the 1980s.

CTU support for the Black Lives Matter movement wasn’t automatic, however. Some CTU members are married to police officers, and a vocal minority criticized union President Karen Lewis and CTU officials after a November union rally where a young African American activist was given a chance to speak and decried police racism and violence. Since then, the union supported and mobilized for anti-police protests.

Still, the exposure of a widespread cover-up of the McDonald video since then has shattered Emanuel’s aura of political invincibility. The mayor’s African American allies on the City Council, who were key to helping Emanuel win an unprecedented runoff vote to stay in office, are now far more worried about their angry constituents than appeasing the notorious bully of City Hall.

Tapping into this rebellious mood will require building on the political arguments that the CTU has made since Lewis and other Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) activists took office in 2010: that CPS has been systematically underfunded for years by pro-business tax policies; that it became a nest for corruption and political patronage by funneling resources to clout-heavy charter schools; that bankers have been feasting on CPS by locking in the schools at high interest rates; and that Emanuel and the city have made Black and Latino communities pay the price.

The anti-banker mood, given voice by the Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, can be brought into this fight. It’s the banks and bondholders, after all, who dictate austerity policies to politicians. And in the case of Rauner, a banker is directly responsible for laying waste to state and city finances.

The struggle will be harder than it was in 2012, when Emanuel badly underestimated teachers’ resolve and the widespread sympathy for their union. This time, the CTU is up against both Rauner and Emanuel, and they are preparing for a showdown.

Nevertheless, by once again drawing on public sympathy–and this time, turning it into more active support, with protests, sit-ins and the like–the CTU can win. By linking its fight to broader working-class issues of fully funded public education and racial and economic equality, the CTU can defend good union jobs and build a wider movement for social justice.

Super Doomsday?

Tyler — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 18:47:31 +0000

by Danny Katch (via Socialist Worker)

THE BIG winners of the dozen Super Tuesday primary contests on March 1 were the two frontrunners for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations–but for the Democrats, that meant the status quo triumphed, while for the Republicans, it was more the status what-the-f%$k.

On the Republican side, billionaire reality TV star Donald Trump won most of the primaries and continued to build his early lead in the delegate count for the GOP convention. But his main challengers, Tea Partyier Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, increasingly the anybody-but-Trump consensus candidate for party leaders, both took a state or two to keep their hopes alive.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton, the anointed candidate of the party establishment, swept to big victories in the Southern-centric Super Tuesday voting, though her democratic socialist challenger Bernie Sanders did well to win four state contests, based once again on support among young voters.

Nevertheless, with victories in Nevada and South Carolina before Super Tuesday, Clinton has regained her status as prohibitive frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. On the Republican side, though, there’s much less certainty. Here are some observations on the meaning of the biggest day of elections on the primary calendar.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Observation No. 1: Donald F@*#ing Trump

You think they’re so dumb
You think they’re so funny
Wait until they got you running
to the night rally

Those lyrics are from an old Elvis Costello song about fascism, and while Trump is less a fascist than a classic American right-wing demagogue, you can’t help but sense an ominous orange shadow drawing down across the country as you watch him blaze through the wreckage of the GOP–formerly the proud first party of American capitalism.

When Marco Rubio–the Florida senator with an incredibly conservative voting record in Congress, who nevertheless can pose as a moderate when compared to Trump and Cruz–freezes up for a moment during a debate, he sinks like a stone in the New Hampshire primary that followed.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump refuses to reject the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke on live television–and later lamely claims that his earpiece wasn’t working–and days later, he takes a majority of the contests held on Super Tuesday.

Trump’s confident bigotry against Mexicans and Muslims is giving a boost to racists across the spectrum, from from white supremacist organizations to high school kids chanting “Trump” at basketball games against rival schools with large Latino populations.

But Trump’s appeal clearly goes beyond racism. While many working class and middle class people facing declining living standards are rallying to Bernie Sanders’ call for a “political revolution” against the domination of the 1 Percent, others seem to be in thrall to Trump’s claim that, with him, they can have their very own member of the 1 Percent to dominate on their behalf.

Like Sanders, Trump’s message is that the system is rigged. But he appeals not to the idealistic hope of making a “political revolution”, but to selfishness and cynicism. He’s running to be the con-artist-in-chief, the operator who knows his way around a crooked game. The more Trump lies, the more it feels to his supporters–and to all of us, in a way–that he’s revealing a deeper truth about the whole system.

Not that any of this can be neatly separated from Trump’s racism and scapegoating. The reality TV blowhard is proudly projecting some of the darkest elements of American culture–crude sexism, conspiracy theories, Internet trolling and flat-out cyber-bullying–that have been subtext in Republican politics for years but until now have scurried away from the harsh glare of daylight.

And this billionaire is selling all this filth as righteous anti-establishment anger. Could there be any more telling evidence of the bankruptcy of the two-party system?

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Observation No. 2: Is Trump Actually Going to Win?

Republican Party leaders are aghast at Trump’s rise. Not because they can’t stomach his racism–just two years ago, House Speaker Paul Ryan blamed Black unemployment on a “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular…generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work”–but because they fear he can’t be controlled and will destroy the image of the party they run.

Even now, it’s hard to see how the Republican Party establishment could allow such a crackpot and fanatic to win the nomination. It’s hard…but it’s even harder to see how they’re going to stop him, at least based on what we know now.

On the eve of Super Tuesday, Ryan and other Republicans tried to use the David Duke incident to draw a line in the sand to rally the party against Trump. But after years of peddling coded racism–like, for example, phrases such as “a tailspin of culture in our inner cities”–the GOP honchoes are in trouble if they’re counting on principled anti-racism to take down the reality show demagogue.

Republican leaders face a bigger problem, too: They can denounce Trump all they want, but they don’t have a unified candidate to put up against him. Trump has never had the majority support of Republican primary voters–though some polls show him creeping toward 50 percent–but the party has been helplessly split among his rivals.

Ted Cruz won two states on Tuesday–his home state of Texas, no surprise, but also neighboring Oklahoma, which was a minor upset. But Cruz is just as much a self-promoting saboteur as Trump–and possibly even more unpopular than Trump among his colleagues in Congress.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio managed just one win, his first of the campaign. He’s fought other conventional Republicans like Jeb Bush to become the seeming consensus candidate of Republican Party establishment. Only it seems that the “establishment” has lost its ability to control the right-wing base it let off the leash during the Obama years to obstruct any and all proposals from Democrats, even those that Republicans would have celebrated as their own a few years before.

Trump is still a long way away from locking up enough delegates to claim the nomination. And if the race has been this wild so far, there’s certainly more un-looked-for madness to come.

But it can be said that Trump has overcome each challenge so far from various sections of the political and media establishment, including the latest attempts to maintain a united front against him among Republicans. In the week before Super Tuesday, he picked up endorsements from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Maine Gov. Paul LePage, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Reps. Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, among others. They figure they’re siding with a winner.

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Observation No. 3: Hillary Clinton Takes Control

Bernie Sanders has roughly the same amount of support among Democratic voters as Donald Trump has among Republicans. The difference is that Sanders is running for the presidential nomination in a party whose establishment is united behind his opponent.

While Republicans like Christie and Sessions are defying party leaders to hop aboard the Trump bandwagon, it’s striking that Sanders has been able to attract huge crowds andraise astonishing amounts of money from small donations–while getting virtually no support from any notable Democrats.

Just four members of Congress have endorsed Sanders. None of his fellow senators have, nor any nationally prominent liberals like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

In recent weeks, the Sanders campaign made a big deal about getting the support of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a diehard Islamophobe. The Clinton campaign calmly responded with the endorsement of the 26-member Hispanic Caucus.

Not only is there more unity within the Democratic Party for its preferred candidate–there’s more unity between that candidate and her leading rival. While Trump has systematically bullied Republican rivals like Jeb Bush and Ben Carson into irrelevance,Sanders has failed to really go after Clinton–not just because he’s averse to running a negative campaign, but because he is committed, as he frequently tells his audiences, to keeping the party united to prepare for the coming general election.

Of course, one big reason why Sanders has done well is the discontent with Clinton among Democrats, but the vast majority of those same supporters are likely to transfer their support to Clinton–especially if Trump does end up winning on the GOP side. But the months and years to come will only exaggerate the doubts and questions.

Sanders is far from done as a primary candidate. He has states that are much more favorable to him coming up, both in the next few weeks, and later on. But the long odds he has faced since coming into the primaries with the entire party establishment against him have only gotten longer.

In any case, it’s striking that in an election year when both parties have been rocked by class anger and anti-establishment campaigns, the Democrats look much more likely to come out the other side intact, if not strengthened.

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Observation No. 4: Why Is Clinton Doing So Well with Black Voters?

To many people of all races, it doesn’t seem right: Hillary Clinton is deeply implicated–through her husband Bill’s presidency, and in her own right–in the construction of the mass incarceration system that Michelle Alexander famously calls The New Jim Crow.

Yet Clinton is getting support from African Americans in the primaries at levels that approach Barack Obama’s margins in 2008–with well over 70 percent support from African Americans in many states, and ranging as high as 90 percent.

The most common explanations in the media range from illogical (African Americans are turned off by Bernie Sanders’ campaign theme of promoting economic equality) to painfully condescending (Black people just love the Clintons!)

It also doesn’t seem likely that most Black voters have been blown off their feet by Clinton’s discovery of the radical term “intersectionality”–though many are likely more impressed with her many recent public appearances with the mothers of police murder victims Sandra Bland and Eric Garner.

There has been no shortage of speculative opinion pieces about why Sanders’ populist themes don’t connect with Black voters. But journalists who have actually talked to Black voters found that many like Sanders’ message, but feel that Clinton is the safer choice–both as a known quantity and as a candidate against the hostile Republicans.

It’s worth noting how far to the left Clinton has shifted–rhetorically–to win this level of Black support. Contrast Hillary Clinton campaigning with family members of police violence to her husband Bill leaving the primary campaign trail in 1992 to travel to Arkansas to witness the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a developmentally disabled Black man.

We should also keep in mind that Sanders won 43 percent of the vote among African American voters under 30 in South Carolina–and that he is supported by prominent left-wing Black leaders like Cornel West, Ben Jealous and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

And, of course, there is the continued dynamic of Black activists challenging Clinton–most recently, when Ashley Williams unfurled a banner during a South Carolina fundraiser that brought national attention to an infamous 1996 speech in favor of her husband’s crime bill, in which Clinton talked about “super-predators” who have to be “brought to heel.”

Sanders hasn’t helped his cause by failing to make the fight against racism a central campaign theme the way he talks about taking on Wall Street. That’s a point that Coates noted when contrasting Sanders’ claim that it was “unrealistic” and “divisive” to fight for reparations for slavery–as if the same couldn’t be said about his calls for a “political revolution.”

But even if Sanders were stronger in focusing on anti-racism, the African American vote in predominantly Southern Super Tuesday states probably still would have gone for Clinton. That’s a sign of the distance a candidate like Sanders will need to go to win the trust of Blacks–and of the enduring hold of the Democratic Party machine, especially its African American leaders, in delivering the vote for a candidate who has no justifiable claim to their support.

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Observation No. 5: Take a Deep Breath, There’s More to Come

The nomination battles aren’t over in either party. Clinton may have returned to the status of prohibitive frontrunner, but Sanders has continued to gain ground in national opinion polls–and on the other side, who knows what Republicans are going to do about Trump?

More importantly, it’s a good time for the left to remind itself that history isn’t ultimately made by who wins elections, even the ones for the White House, but by the level of popular struggle in society. As the people’s historian Howard Zinn famously put it, “What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is ‘sitting in.'”

We can learn something from the details of Election 2016, but there’s a bigger forest that shouldn’t be forgotten for the trees. It is a polarized picture: a dramatic increase in right-wing populism, strongly tinged by racism, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant hatred, on the one hand–alongside the rise of left-wing populism that Bernie Sanders has done us the favor of labeling as socialism.

The task of revolutionaries during this election season, but also beyond, is to help the rising left fight the rising right, but also fight within the new left to sharpen its ideas and create a strong socialist pole.