the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 19, 2012
A U.S. staff sergeant, in Afghanistan on his fourth combat deployment, went on a murderous rampage in the early morning hours of March 11. He broke into Afghan homes while the families slept, and shot 16 in cold blood, mostly women and children. Then he set some of the corpses on fire. These were civilians murdered in their own homes, in their own beds.
U.S. authorities tried to explain away what happened by saying it was only one soldier, and that he might have been suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress from the war, after serving three combat tours in Iraq, before this latest one in Afghanistan.
Maybe he did snap, but what he did is no different from what squads of soldiers have been doing, under orders, week after week, for ten years: entering the houses of civilians, destroying everything, and beating or shooting people if they make the smallest gesture of defiance.
If the sergeant snapped, he simply did what he and others had been taught to do and what he had been doing in Iraq and in Afghanistan: killing indiscriminately.
These are not the first or only mass killings of civilians at the hands of soldiers from the U.S. forces occupying Afghanistan. Some have already been exposed. Others–no one knows how many–have been covered up or dismissed as mere “collateral damage” in a combat operation.
Nor is this the only U.S. war in which such actions have taken place. From My Lai in Vietnam, to Haditha in Iraq, to Panjwai in Afghanistan, the chain of atrocities goes on, as soldiers are turned into killing machines.
This act of an individual soldier, carrying out a personal attack on Afghan civilians, was a horrific act of terrorism. But it is only a very tiny part of this much larger war of terrorism carried out against the Afghan population by the U.S. military, at the direction of the U.S. government, first under Bush, then under Obama.
The authorities pretend that the massacre was an act of individual insanity.
Here is the real insanity: the massacre of Afghan civilians carried out by the most powerful military in the world for more than ten years–all so the U.S. can put its hands on this “strategic” piece of land that controls access to a lot of the world’s oil.
No accurate count of Afghan civilian casualties exists. The number officials give of 35,000 dead is an underestimate. But a real measure of the terror is how many have fled their homes. Perhaps seven million have been displaced from their homes, pastures, farms, and livelihoods.
Afghan children grow up terrorized, liable to be fired on without warning by soldiers on the ground or from planes and drones above.
Afghan society is torn apart. The Afghan government–installed, continually financed and used by the U.S.–is among the most corrupt on earth.
This insanity is carried out for the sake of profits, for the sake of enabling multinational corporations to steal the resources of small defenseless countries.
People in this country are not immune from the effects of this insane war, and obviously the soldiers are not. Veterans with wounds visible and invisible must try to find a job. But capitalist society has few jobs for them. And this society devotes few resources to their rehabilitation.
Families and neighborhoods in the U.S. are left to deal with the walking time bombs of soldiers used up by the wars, and thrown away.
Blood for profit–this is the insane logic of the U.S. terrorist wars on other people.
Let the profits of the multinationals be damned! Stop this war–the U.S. out of Afghanistan NOW! COMPLETELY!
Mar 19, 2012
Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is proposing a new licensing fee of $1,500 that would apply only to some of the state’s surgical clinics–only those that perform abortions.
This proposal is coming from the administration of the supposedly open-minded, liberal Governor O’Malley, who a year ago appointed the supposedly open-minded liberal head of the health department, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein.
As if women’s health clinics don’t have enough problems and pressures in providing abortion and family planning services that are vital to the health and well-being of women who need them. Now these clinics with modest financial resources may be slapped with a $1,500 fee, just for the legal right to exist.
Democrats pretend to support women’s reproductive rights. But in making this proposal, they are clearly adding to the current push to deny women their rights.
Mar 19, 2012
A 30-year OBGYN surgeon with Kaiser, Barbara Zipkin, is suing Kaiser for retaliation, saying she was terminated for pointing out Kaiser’s inadequate staffing levels. Dr. Zipkin says that Kaiser punishes doctors for spending too much time with patients, and that Kaiser called her “unprofessional and disruptive” for daring to point out the problem.
Mar 19, 2012
BCBS of Michigan is refusing to pay for in-patient hospital care for Andrea Duling, a Lansing woman who suffered a stroke, according to the Lansing State Journal. Duling worked as an equipment clerk and was told by her employer she was eligible for 180 days of in-patient care. Her teenage son says she is improving, but needs more therapy.
According to the Journal, a Blue Cross physician made the decision, not the patient’s personal doctor. So it’s no wonder the doctor ruled in the company’s favor. BCBS says Duling can appeal. That’s their approach, as with many insurance companies. Deny first, and ask questions later.
Denying in this case means the woman won’t get the therapy she needs NOW, when it will do the most good.
Mar 19, 2012
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder proposed a consent agreement for the city of Detroit. Detroit’s Mayor Dave Bing immediately spoke out against the agreement, and instead proposed his own consent agreement.
Snyder’s consent agreement would create a “Financial Advisory Board” that would appoint three executives. The Board, the executives and the mayor would have the same powers as an Emergency Financial Manager. They could terminate union contracts; lay off workers and break contracts with vendors; outsource city services like water, parks, garbage collection, street lighting and parking; and sell off city assets.
For all of Bing’s and the City Council’s bluster about their opposition to Snyder’s plant, their own proposal ends up in the same place. It gives the same emergency manager powers solely to Bing, but without a Financial Advisory Board. Bing says his proposal would not allow him to terminate union contracts. He could, however, use his power to lay off workers and eliminate services and department to force union workers to agree to contract concessions–which is the main point of both proposals.
Snyder and Bing were forced to turn to a consent agreement because Bing couldn’t convince city workers to stab themselves in the back and accept the huge concessions he demanded. It has been more than six weeks since Bing and some leaders of the city’s unions reached a tentative agreement on major concessions. But they still haven’t put it up for a vote of the rank and file. And that testifies to the opposition workers have expressed.
A consent agreement is a back-door way to impose the concessions and possibly more. And Snyder’s proposal says it would remain in effect even if the state’s emergency manager law is suspended or overturned by a petition that was circulated to put the law up for a voter referendum.
This end-run around the petition effort shows the state’s Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) law was always directed at cities like Detroit, no matter how generally the law appears to be written.
The city’s unions, churches, students and community groups have demonstrated their opposition in many ways to the attacks on public workers, schools, and city services.
We’ll see what happens next.
Mar 19, 2012
Forbes magazine, in service to the world’s ultra-rich, has just published its annual list of billionaires. They are more numerous than ever: 1,226 billionaires or 16 more than last year.
The world’s richest man remains, for the third year in a row, Carlos Slim Helû of Mexico, owner of Telmex, the phone system, and the conglomerate Grupo Carso. This year he’s worth 69 billion dollars, but his fortune went down by five billion dollars from the prior year. Still, it’s hard to shed tears for him.
In the second spot is Bill Gates, creator of Microsoft, worth “only” 61 billion dollars. With his billions, Gates is doing his best to destroy public schools in order to create charter schools throughout the U.S. In third place is Warren Buffett, whose fortune is valued at 44 billion dollars compared to 50 billion the year before. He’s the one who said, “It’s class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be.” At least he makes it clear which side he is on.
Half of the top twenty billionaires are from the U.S., and six belong to two families, the Waltons and the Kochs. The Waltons, owners of Wal-Mart, together are worth 100 billion dollars. The two Koch brothers have 50 billion dollars from chemicals and oil. Both families are well-known for the many right-wing causes they support, attacking public schooling and women’s rights to abortion.
Twenty five years ago, there were 140 billionaires. A thousand more billionaires in 25 years shows the growing inequality between the extremely rich and everyone else. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few capitalists is enormous, leaving billions of people in misery and insecurity.
Mar 19, 2012
On March 3rd the 911 emergency call system in Washington, D.C. stopped working for about a half-hour because of a power outage.
It is not surprising that the power outage began with a Pepco power line. But what about backup generators. After all, power outages are not infrequent and most people would agree that 911 is a vital service.
It appears that four systems may have failed–the main power system for 911 and its backup, and the backup generator and its backup.
If lives weren’t at stake, this would be almost laughable. The help call center cannot even handle its own emergencies and we expect it to handle our emergencies?
Mar 19, 2012
The Santa Monica community college (SMC) near Los Angeles has announced that, starting this summer, it will offer math and English courses for about $200 a unit.
The fees for California community colleges are set by the state legislature. Currently these fees are at $36 per unit, and they will increase to $46 per unit in the summer. In other words, SMC officials are trying to use some loopholes in the law to circumvent the legally mandated limit for fees–and charge four to five times more!
The officials say that these expensive courses will be offered “only when” the regular courses are full. That’s totally disingenuous, because the regular classes–especially classes like math and English–are severely overcrowded and many students can’t even get into them. The officials themselves admit that they have eliminated 1,000 courses in the last four years as a result of the cuts in the state education budget.
This is one more step–and a particularly blatant one–toward the privatization of public education. It’s one more step toward making explicit what now is implicit: In this class society education, is a privilege that belongs to the wealthy.
Mar 19, 2012
The huge oil company Perenco, in Colombia, has been accused of financing paramilitary groups–what are called the “death squads” in Colombia.
One accuser of Perenco presumably knows what he is talking about, as he used to lead another armed group, linked both to the Colombian government and the Colombian drug traffickers. These groups rendered each other such services as eliminating opponents, trade unionists, even political rivals among the politicians. And all of them massacred the Indian population in Colombia if they disrupted their drug trafficking. The death squads are said to have killed 50,000 people.
During the trial of Nestor Vargas, one of these paramilitary thugs, the company Perenco was on the hot seat. Between 2001 and 2005, it financed paramilitaries, giving them 100 barrels of gas each month and 65 to 130 million dollars. Not only is Perenco implicated, so is British Petroleum (BP).
Since 2006, the Colombian justice system claims to be taking apart the paramilitary squads, using confessions from their arrested leaders and even from members of parliament tied to them. Some got sentences of up to 40 years in prison.
But the big companies backing these terrorist paramilitary death squads, whose actions have cost the lives of thousands of unionists, have never been seriously prosecuted. When Chiquita Brands, the banana giant and heir of United Fruit Company, was prosecuted for financing death squads, it simply paid a fine. No legal action has ever been taken against Perenco.
Neither the Colombian government, nor any others, has wanted to take on such “great and honorable” financial backers.
Mar 19, 2012
One year ago, on March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake hit northeast Japan, followed by a devastating 40-foot tsunami.
The earthquake and tsunami caused severe damage to reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s eastern coast. The reactors shut down as planned, but the power for the emergency cooling system did not kick in. Overheating led to reactor core meltdowns in three of the six reactors at the plant. Explosions further damaged buildings and caused large amounts of radioactive material to escape, contaminating the air, soil and ocean water.
Today, one year after the disaster, a large area around Fukushima, where hundreds of thousands of people still live, remains contaminated and inhabitable. At least 80,000 people have lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of radioactive contamination–and many more remain in temporary housing. There have been reports of widespread food contamination; contamination has also been found in the drinking water of Tokyo. Former nuclear industry executive Arnie Gundersen has estimated that, over the next 30 years, as many as one million people are likely to get cancer as a result of radiation from Fukushima.
We can’t stop earthquakes and tsunamis, but the nuclear disaster at Fukushima was avoidable.
The plant’s operator, TEPCO, one of the largest utility companies in the world, has a long history of violating safety regulations and ignoring warnings of experts. And Japanese government agencies have a long history of looking the other way. For example, the Fukushima Daiichi plant was more than 40 years old and was not even supposed to be operated anymore. Five of the six reactors in the plant were General Electric’s “Mark 1” design, deemed unsafe already in 1972! And the emergency generator was in the basement and got flooded because the tsunami walls that TEPCO built were only 20 feet high–even though a tsunami about as high as the latest one was known to have struck the area before, even if it was 2000 years ago!
This pattern of blatant negligence and irresponsibility has continued after the meltdowns. While workers who were familiar with the Fukushima plant risked their own lives to help with the cleanup effort, TEPCO executives refused to acknowledge the meltdowns for months and denied their own responsibility in the disaster. And government officials tried to cover up for TEPCO in every way they could. Government officials even have the nerve to claim that the minutes of their crisis management meetings from March 11 until late December were not recorded!
Most important, both government and company officials withheld crucial information from the public. In so doing, they exposed residents to more contamination, and hampered cleanup and evacuation efforts. They knowingly endangered the lives and well-being of hundreds of thousands of people.
To this day, none of these criminals has been held accountable–and the disaster continues to victimize hundreds of thousands of people.
Mar 19, 2012
The nuclear disaster in Japan exposed the decades-long, criminal negligence of Japanese nuclear industry executives and government officials. But Japan is certainly not alone. In the U.S., for example, the NRC, the government agency that regulates nuclear energy, has been granting aging nuclear plants license extensions. Today, 60 of the 104 commercial nuclear reactors in use in the U.S. have been operating for more than 30 years—the life span they were designed for. And 23 of them are “Mark 1” reactors like those at Fukushima—which experts condemned as unsafe already in 1972!
The NRC has had a long-standing policy of easing safety standards in order to approve nuclear power plants that are clearly unsafe. One day before the Japanese earthquake last year, for example, the NRC granted a 20-year renewal to Entergy’s Vermont Yankee plant, which was known to leak radioactive materials into the groundwater. Nuclear industry officials have admitted that, probably, one third of the reactors in the U.S. have such leaks.
And to be sure, the U.S. has had its own share of nuclear “accidents.” Those that were reported already make a very long list, including several reactor core meltdowns—such as at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Lab near Los Angeles in 1959, at the Fermi plant near Detroit in 1966, and at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania in 1979. Each time, officials of the companies running the plants—and their accomplices, government officials—tried to hide from the public the extent of the contamination and public risk resulting from these meltdowns.
Just like many other technologies, nuclear energy is risky—because it is under the control of reckless, profit-hungry companies, and the “oversight” of a pro-capitalist government. Coal-burning power plants, which produce almost half the electricity in the U.S., cause enough air pollution to kill 30,000 people in the U.S. each year, according to a 2008 study. Add to that the thousands of mine workers killed in coal-mining “accidents,” and the thousands upon thousands of miners who suffer and die from black lung disease. Just as in the nuclear industry, coal bosses violate all kinds of mine safety and air pollution standards for more profit, and government regulators allow them to get away with it.
We need electricity, and we need safe, healthy methods to produce it. We need to reduce the risks and hazards associated with the way power plants are operated. Any rational society would use all its resources, and put its best scientists to work, toward this goal.
But that, exactly, will not happen—no matter what method or energy source is used—so long as energy production remains in the hands of private companies, concerned with one thing only: profit.
Mar 19, 2012
This article is reprinted from Workers’ Fight, a publication put out by comrades of the revolutionary communist organization of the same name in Great Britain.
Britain’s prison population has been hovering around a record 87,700 for months–ever since the courts started dishing out draconian sentences following last summer’s riots. With 151 persons imprisoned for every 100,000 of population, Britain has the highest incarceration rate in Western Europe. By comparison, Germany, with 95 per 100,000 and France with just 85 per 100,000, have static or even falling prison populations. [And, we should add, the U.S. with its massive prison system locks up 731 per 100,000.]
Yet it’s not as if Britain’s justice system had a better record than the rest of Western Europe–rather the opposite. But under pressure from politicians who play on reactionary prejudices, the courts choose to lock up defendants for the pettiest of crimes: more than half of all sentences are for less than six months.
So never mind the fact that prisons are well-known for turning petty offenders into entrenched criminals.
Never mind either, that petty crimes have generally much more to do with social problems and deprivation, mental disorders, or addictions, which could and should be dealt with using structures designed to provide help rather than coercion.
It’s so much easier to pander to the “hang ‘em, flog ‘em” brigade than to address the faults of this social system!
Mar 19, 2012
The following article was translated from the March 16 edition of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), a newspaper put out by comrades of the revolutionary communist group of the same name active in France.
After PSA Peugeot-Citroën and General Motors signed an agreement, the intentions of the two corporations became clear. The U.S. giant General Motors is going to give the French auto company 420 million dollars. But the agreement is designed to profit both companies. The savings are expected to amount to two billion dollars a year beginning in 2017.
How? Essentially thanks to what they call synergies, that is, savings realized by making common purchases. PSA and GM will create a common company in charge of purchases. Bargaining with suppliers by one of the top world auto makers evidently will allow PSA to pressure suppliers to push down their wages even more than they already do.
The two auto giants expect to combine research capacity, and then, beginning in 2016, production. That’s the date on which they’ve announced they will begin to sell vehicles with a common platform. Since it’s hardly likely that PSA will go the U.S. to produce Cadillacs, the idea is to produce PSA vehicles and Opel (the GM brand in Europe) on the European assembly lines of the two corporations. As of March 2016, the two companies are supposed to begin selling four models in common. Setting up common production lines means juicy possibilities to reduce the number of workers–at least in the minds of the capitalists.
PSA didn’t wait for this agreement to declare war on the workers. It announced 6,800 job eliminations in Europe in 2012, threatening to close three factories, in Aulnay-sous-Bois, in Madrid and in Hordain. The threat is turning into reality. The head of Peugeot industrial operations Denis Martin declared on March 6th the “problems of overcapacity” of the corporation will be “settled in 18 months.” “Settling the problem of overcapacity” in the cold language of the bosses means closing the Aulnay plant and laying off thousands of workers.
These closings–planned since before 2010–very certainly were included in the PSA-GM agreement. And now? What new attacks are foreseen, in secret, by the two corporations? How many closings of Opel factories, which ones, are forecast to satisfy the greed of the stockholders of the two corporations?
Once again, capitalist corporations concoct their attacks in secret, planning to strike out at tens of thousands of workers. This is why it’s vital to abolish the secrecy that allows such practices. It is vital to prohibit layoffs and to divide the work among everybody without cutting wages.
In 18 months perhaps the problem won’t be “settled!” Varin, Martin and their clique perhaps may stumble on the one thing that can really frighten them: an explosion of workers’ anger, especially from the PSA and Opel, whose factories run at full capacity today but are threatened with layoffs tomorrow.
The bosses are busy making “strategic alliances.” The workers, from all nations, have no other solution than to do the same.
Mar 19, 2012
In early 2006, smells of sulfur dioxide and crude oil released by oil drilling operations wafted through nearby residential areas in Baldwin Hills, southwest of downtown Los Angeles. Complaints about the odors came from as far as two miles away, and a number of residents evacuated the area.
Residents were stunned that one of the most extensive drilling programs in the state–drilling only hundreds of feet from some residences–had begun.
Oil companies had been quietly drilling new wells since 2002, using a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” By injecting a mixture of water, sand, and toxic chemicals under high pressure into the ground, drillers are able to gain access to hard-to-reach deposits of oil and natural gas.
Nationwide, fracking has been driving an oil and natural gas boom. California is becoming one of the most important centers of this new oil boom. This has created mounting anxiety in communities throughout the Los Angeles region, from Culver City to Monterey Park, where residents are slowly discovering that new oil drilling using fracking has gone on for years, sometimes in densely populated areas.
Injecting huge amounts of substances, including toxic chemicals, into the ground multiplies the usual dangers of oil spills and hazardous gas leaks. Toxic chemicals injected into the ground often pollute the water table. Fracking has also been found to be responsible for setting off earthquakes! The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports that, “Earthquakes induced by human activity have been documented in a few locations” in the United States, Japan, and Canada, “the cause [of which] was injection of fluids into deep wells for waste disposal and secondary recovery of oil, and the use of reservoirs for water supplies.” Seismologists at Columbia University recently reported that several earthquakes in Ohio throughout 2011–including a substantial, magnitude 4.0 on New Year’s Eve that had hit Youngstown–are linked to the hydraulic fracturing process.
Obviously, there is the danger that fracking in the vastly populated Los Angeles region, that sits on literally thousands of earthquake faults, could set off a much worse catastrophe.
However, when residents and community groups have looked to government authorities for help, they have been met by a wall of silence. A 2005 amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act, pushed through by Republican George Bush, allows oil companies to not divulge what chemicals they inject into the ground. As for the state government, only last month, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown declared that he would make sure that there would be minimal oversight over the oil industry, and even fired two top state regulators who opposed him on this.
Obviously for the politicians of both parties, what counts above all else are the profits of the oil and gas industry. Their watchword is: Let the health and safety of millions of people be damned!
Mar 19, 2012
A report just released by the Labor Department Solicitor General’s Office shows that even during the Mine Safety and Health Administration investigation of the deadly April 2010 explosion at Massey Energy Corporation’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, Massey was still determined to run the mine in a dangerous fashion. After a Mine Safety investigator issued a citation against Massey for the dangerous behavior of a company consultant in the mine during the investigation and ordered the consultant out, Massey and its friends in Congress got top Mine Safety officials to remove their own chief investigator from the case for three months. The administrator for Coal Mine Safety and Health vacated the citation and order.
The Solicitor Office report was written last November. But it was kept under wraps by the government until National Public Radio recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
It was only because of the uproar following the 2010 explosion that Mine Safety was forced to conduct an extensive investigation of this disaster that killed 29 miners. In its report on the disaster, which it finally issued this past December, Mine Safety was forced to admit that for years the company had repeatedly violated health and safety regulations and put coal production before protecting miners’ lives.
Nevertheless, no top officials of Massey have been charged for their criminal behavior that caused this disaster.
In the face of that power, what chance do inspectors–even honest ones–have?
Mar 19, 2012
The New Orleans Saints’ professional football players and at least one assistant coach maintained a bounty pool of up to $50,000. This money went over the past three seasons to reward players who inflicted game-ending injuries on opposing players. The best-known targets were quarterbacks Brett Favre and Kurt Warner.
The NFL said the bounty pool contained the most money in 2009, the year the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl. “Knockouts” were worth $1,500 each and “cart-offs” were worth $1,000, with payments doubled or tripled in playoff games.
The NFL said more than 20 players were involved, administered by the Saints’ defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, with the knowledge of the head coach. Another coach said he knew of similar bounty programs in Tennessee.
NFL officials act shocked. And sources say it will likely fine the Saints–now that this information is public.
But does anyone really believe that in the NFL, no one knew this was happening? You can see the intent to injure every week in televised games. Not only with the Saints, but with almost every team.
Injuries are big bucks!
Mar 19, 2012
The Chester Upland School District, a Pennsylvania school district outside Philadelphia, is so broke it is not clear it can pay its teachers this month. It is one of the poorer school districts in Pennsylvania, with average household income of $26,000. The state must finance about 70% of its budget.
As of this moment, a single charter school gets more than half of the ENTIRE Chester district’s funding. Yes, one school, and a private charter at that, with 2600 students–the Chester Community Charter School. This school has a management that calls itself non-profit, but $5,000–yes $5,000 per student–goes to a for-profit charter company that manages this school.
If those figures are correct, a company making profits takes in 13 million dollars from this one charter school, while the rest of the district has to sue the state to pay its teachers.
The acting superintendent for this district put it well: “Poor schools in this state are underfunded. Poor kids aren’t going to get the same shot as wealthy kids. That’s the society we are in now.”
Mar 19, 2012
Rahm Emanuel and his handpicked school board have vowed to extend the school day in elementary and high schools by 90 minutes, to 7 hours and 30 minutes a day.
At most of Chicago’s elementary schools, students attend classes for 5 hours and 45 minutes. This day has only a 20 minute lunch break for students and no recess. Everyone, teachers, students, and parents, agree that the short elementary school day does not serve Chicago’s students.
But the question is how to lengthen it—what to include? What do good schools have, the kind parents want their children to attend? They have a broad and rich education, with art, music, life sciences and physical education for all elementary and high school students, in addition to math and English. They have foreign languages. Most elementary schools in Chicago have only art or music, not both, and almost none have physical education every day, even though that is required by law.
These programs require more teachers and supplies—meaning they require more money. And that’s exactly what Rahm and company are not proposing to provide.
They already forced 400 million in budget cuts on the schools this year, leading to the elimination of after school programs and larger class sizes.
Emanuel has made it clear that he does not intend to increase the number of teachers nor give additional pay for additional work-time. So teachers will be doing more work for almost no pay, and will have less time outside of work to prepare. This is not a recipe for improving education. A longer day without more time for teachers to prepare and without enrichment programs means that students will turn off from school—as so many already do.
No wonder many parents have come out against the 7½ hour day. One parent set up an online petition calling for a 6½ hour school day. So far, more than 900 parents have signed on.
If Emanuel wanted to improve education, he would start by reducing class sizes, and bringing back after the school programs that have been cut by him and Daley, the previous mayor.
But Emanuel’s goal is not to improve the schools—but to take money from them for the enrichment of the capitalist class he so loyally serves.
Mar 19, 2012
The state of Michigan announced the make-up of its proposed “Educational Achievement System.” It’s yet another step in attacking teachers and students in Michigan, and further privatizing the school system.
The Educational Achievement System (EAS) was announced in August 2011 by Governor Rick Snyder and Detroit Public Schools (DPS) Emergency Manager Roy Roberts. They claim this school district will collect and reorganize “low-performing” schools across the state. But so far, only Detroit schools have been included.
Fifteen DPS high schools and elementary/middle schools, with 12,000 students, will be split out of the district and reorganized into the EAS.
All teachers, and principals, must apply anew for all positions in the schools.
Up to 200 of the 600 teachers will be taken from Teach for America: inexperienced, untested college graduates working for next to nothing, and leaving after two years. The officials have not yet revealed whether those teachers will still be part of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, or any teachers union. The wage rate has not been revealed either. We’re just supposed to take their word for it that the rate will be good.
One thing HAS been clarified, though: the EAS teachers will not be part of the state-wide public teacher pension system that all DPS teachers currently belong to. Instead, these teachers will be receiving some undetermined 401(k). In other words, they’ll be starting from scratch with their retirement plans. This virtually guarantees that only new, young and low-paid teachers will be interested in those jobs. The older, higher-paid teachers–the ones with experience in those classrooms, the ones who have been holding those students and communities together despite all the problems–are being dumped.
Roberts makes lots of noise about how the students in the schools will have “Individualized Education Plans,” and will be organized by “instructional level” rather than by age group. They say different groups of students will be working on different things in the same classroom. But this could only allow individualized instruction in classrooms with VERY low student-to-teacher ratios. They would have to hire many more than the 600 they say they’ll hire, for teachers to really give students individual attention.
What they’re REALLY saying is that students will be left on their own in the classroom, working “individually” with almost no teacher input and guidance. Teachers will be reduced to room monitors, not educators. They’re talking about warehousing all of these students–tossing them onto the trash heap!
Of these 15 schools, up to two-thirds of them will be charter schools or “contract” schools–contracted with private, for-profit companies. Roberts claims that 95% of the district budget will be spent directly in the classroom. Really? After the charter and contract companies all take their cuts? Only if you count their profits in the 95%!
This new district is a huge boondoggle to shift public money into private hands. This district will receive 82 million dollars in state funds. That’s 82 million dollars that the DPS will NOT be receiving. And, private companies will control two-thirds of that 82 million dollars.
This is nothing but an attack on students and teachers–both in the fifteen schools, and in the remaining DPS schools.