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
Sep 1, 2014
Labor Day 2014–once again, it’s an election year. And once again, officials of the unions are rushing to line up the workers’ votes for the Democrats.
Why? Certainly not because the Democrats have defended the interests of ordinary people. Even the worst union bureaucrat is forced to admit that. But, they tell us, the Republicans are worse.
That’s like saying it’s worse to die from a heart attack than from a stroke. Well, maybe, but it sure doesn’t feel that much different once you’re in the coffin.
Republicans worse than the Democrats?
What’s really worse is that for many decades, the working class has had no party of its own, no candidates that really represent working class interests, no one that speaks for working people.
This year, however, there is an unusual campaign in Michigan. Five candidates, linked together by a common program, proclaim that, “workers should not pay the cost of the bosses’ crisis.” They say that there is enough accumulated treasure in the vaults of the capitalist class to eliminate unemployment completely, enough to raise the standard of living of everyone in this society to a decent level, enough to rescue the public schools and provide adequate public services to every neighborhood.
And they aren’t wrong. Because for decades, the capitalist class has hoarded so much money, stolen from the labor of working people, that all these needs, and many more, could be met for years.
These five candidates, who stand “for a working class fight based on a working class policy,” are Sam Johnson, running for Michigan’s congressional district 13; Gary Walkowicz, running for district 12; Mary Anne Hering and Kenneth Jannot, Jr, running for the Dearborn School Board, which is responsible for Henry Ford Community College; and David Roehrig, running in District 2, for the Wayne County Community College Board.
(More about them and their program can be found on the internet at: hyperlink)
They clearly say what most people know: “Our situation won’t be changed with a vote–it will take a fight to stop things from getting worse.” And they add: “Maybe there is no fight today. But this greedy capitalist class will push us into a fight. And a vote for candidates who stand on a working class program can prepare the fight. It is the only useful vote.”
Union officials have long told us that to vote for anyone other than a Democrat or Republican is to throw away our vote. And some workers have come to believe that lie.
In fact, to vote for either Democrats or Republicans is to vote for parties that already have proved they are on the side of the capitalist class against the working class. THAT is really throwing your vote away!
To quote these five candidates: “The working class needs to begin speaking for itself, putting forward its own demands.”
Or, to recall the words of Eugene V. Debs, one of the true leaders of the American working class, “I would rather vote for what I want and not get it, than to vote for what I don’t want and get that.”
This year, in parts of Michigan, it’s possible to vote for what you want.
At least in these districts, working people have a way to cast a useful vote, one which lets them express their anger, one which demands that the wealth of this society be taken back to protect the lives of the population.
Sep 1, 2014
This article is from the August 29th, 2014 edition of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The Ebola epidemic is spreading in West Africa. It no longer affects only isolated villages, but has now struck major cities, most notably Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. The absence of healthcare infrastructure and neglect by the governments of the countries in question have spread the disease and increased the number of victims.
The World Health Organization says four countries are affected with nearly 1,500 victims, but its officials admit that these estimates are too low. Suspected cases have surfaced in several other countries, including outside West Africa. One U.N. official has spoken in terms of a six-month “war” against the virus. For now, the assistance offered by these international organizations appears insignificant given the scale of the catastrophe.
Recently two U.S. citizens were declared cured of Ebola. They had been repatriated to the United States, hospitalized in isolation, and cared for with the most modern treatments, including experimental techniques. They did not transmit the virus to their caregivers or to their relatives. This proves that it is perfectly possible to control the spread of the disease.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, in Monrovia, the army and the police forcibly blocked off a slum of 75,000 people in which there apparently are no medical staff. Certain African countries have attempted to close their borders and several airline companies have cancelled flights. These measures have no chance of halting the progress of the virus. In fact, by making it harder for people to access care and information, they even threaten to further its spread.
However, it is not impossible to combat the Ebola virus within Africa. It is necessary above all to isolate the infected and the dead, to equip medical workers with protective gear, and to supply single-use medical devices. This does not represent a huge expense.
In any case, it would be far less than the amount spent in the wars waged by the rich countries throughout the world.
Sep 1, 2014
It happened in Ferguson, Missouri, but it easily could have happened in any city or town in this country. Young black men, when they walk down the street, have a target on their back.
Some will say that’s an exaggeration. Well, look at the behavior of the political and police establishment in Ferguson after Michael Brown was gunned down by a cop. The Ferguson police and mayor shielded the cop, impeding the investigation. When they finally released the cop’s name, they showered him with praise, calling him, “a gentle, quiet man.” And they distributed a video at the same time, showing Brown apparently grabbing cigarillos from a convenience store without paying for them–trying to reinforce the idea that Brown was a dangerous criminal.
The fact is, he was, like many teenagers before him, shoplifting.
But apparently, in Ferguson Missouri, shoplifting calls for the death penalty. At least it does when a trigger-happy white cop becomes the judge, jury and executioner of a black teenager; and when the white political establishment rushes to cover up another cop-murder.
In fact, the cop didn’t know that Michael Brown had taken that handful of cigarillos. Even the Ferguson police chief admitted it. Michael and his friend were stopped, according to the chief, for “walking down the middle of the street, impeding traffic.” That is jay-walking!
It couldn’t be more obvious. Michael Brown was confronted by a trigger-happy cop for walking down the street and being black.
This kind of murder could have happened anywhere in the country–and, in fact, regularly does. The difference is that the black population of Ferguson didn’t accept it without protest. The protests continued for several weeks, marked by outbursts that reveal a rage residing deep inside people who have been abused and discarded.
Authorities from President Obama on down decry the “violence” that broke out after the murder of Michael Brown.
What cynics they are. Without that so-called “violence,” there would have been no investigation into the murder, no grand-jury investigation. The Missouri governor would not have stepped in replacing the Ferguson police. Without the protests, it would have been business as usual. And business as usual, when a young black man is killed by a cop, is to brush all evidence of murder under the rug. In fact, it wasn’t until the protests–and yes, the “violence”–continued for six days that anyone in authority dared to acknowledge that something might have been wrong in what that cop did.
The people in Ferguson were right to protest, they are right if they continue to find all the ways they can to express their outrage. “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” That was a famous line from a speech by Frederick Douglas, speaking of the fight to overturn slavery. It’s just as true today, as it was then, 157 years ago.
Michael Brown’s mother addressed the news media in St. Louis with these words: “You took my son away from me. Do you know how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate? You know how many black men graduate? Not many. Because you bring them down to this type of level, where they feel like they don’t got nothing to live for anyway. ‘They’re going to try to take me out anyway.’”
And that’s exactly what the murdering cop in Ferguson and all those who today support him did. They took Michael Brown out anyway.
There can be no justice for Michael Brown, nor his family. He is dead, cut down in his 18th year. And he can’t be brought back. But the anger that roiled the streets of Ferguson may have backed off some other trigger-happy cop, saving the life of some other teenager, who otherwise would have been cut down before he, too, had the chance to live out his life.
Sep 1, 2014
The biggest U.S. banks continue to pay record fines to settle suits brought against them for their role in the subprime mortgage crisis. Following JPMorgan Chase’s payment of 13 billion dollars in 2013 and Citigroup’s agreement to pay 7 billion last July, it is now Bank of America’s turn, with a total fine of 17 billion.
These impressive penalties allow the politicians to appear to be fighting against the banks’ “abuses” and to be taking firm action to clean up capitalism’s dirty excesses. They also allow these banks to reestablish their image, which has become somewhat tarnished since the crisis. However, these fines are not as heavy as they would seem at first sight.
Despite the total of 50 billion that the four biggest U.S. banks were forced to pay in 2013, they nevertheless made another 65 billion in profits that year.
These penalties are insignificant when compared with what the U.S. government put on the table to bail out the banking sector after the crisis in 2008. And even today, the government is going to help the big banks to pay their fines! They will be able to deduct part of the total settlement from their taxable incomes!
Out of the 17 billion that Bank of America owes, it will pay only 9.65 billion to the government. The remaining 7 billion is supposed to go toward lessening the monthly payments of indebted households, which nevertheless continue to be drained by the banks. In fact, this is an indirect aid for the banks, since it allows their debtors to be able to keep paying them.
Although the politicians and government officials are trying to fool the public with these “sanctions,” Wall Street understands very well what is going on–Bank of America stock rose by more than 4% on the day this settlement was decided. As for those whose lives were shattered by the loans they could not pay, for the millions who lost their mortgaged homes, there is no compensation in sight.
Sep 1, 2014
Profits of the big corporations and banks have been growing by leaps and bounds.
A bigger share of the national income is today going to corporate profits than at any time since these records have been kept.
Those profits could have been put to socially valuable use—protecting the lives of the working population.
Instead of that, the corporations, with the banks behind them, hoarded their profits.
They paid them out in increased dividends and stock buy-backs—so the wealthy who own the corporations got wealthier still.
They threw them into speculation, creating new bubbles, bringing about new crashes every few years.
And they sat on money, trillions of dollars, which they put to no use at all.
Their never-ending chase for more profit pushed working people into the grip of a full-blown crisis.
The share of people with jobs is the smallest it’s been in decades.
Our standard of living has fallen back, lower than it was in the 1970s.
Our working conditions are becoming ever more atrocious.
The new generations coming up are living worse than did their parents.
There will be no recovery for ordinary people until the working class puts its hands on that hoarded wealth, takes it back, and uses it to provide a job for everyone, an adequate income for everyone.
For a Working Class Policy, A Working Class Fight!
Sep 1, 2014
We face an emergency—we need an emergency measure to ban layoffs.
Let the companies take from their profits to maintain the jobs that exist today.
The work that does exist should be shared out among everyone, with no loss in pay to anyone.
Why should some of us be working 60 hours a week, while others go without a job?
Why should those of us with a job be losing our health in the vicious push for more productivity, while others have no job?
We could all be working half as many hours as we do today—and each of us could still be earning a decent wage every week.
If the companies say they can’t do it, then let’s look at their accounts. We can see they have the money to do it.
Today the big companies are sitting on a hoard of accumulated profits, amounting to almost eight trillion dollars.
That money was accumulated from the workers’ labor.
The capitalists’ hoard is harmful for society—it feeds speculation.
Use that wealth to protect the lives of the working class and all ordinary people, to protect our jobs and our wages.
If any companies refuse, then their whole business should be taken away from them, without them getting one penny back.
We Need a Working Class Policy, a Working Class Fight!
Sep 1, 2014
Wages, pensions, Social Security and benefits should all get an immediate and sizeable increase so we can have an adequate income.
Everyone who works should have a decent wage.
There should be no such thing as two-tier wages—people getting less pay for doing the same work.
There should be no such thing as temporary, part-time and contract work for people who want a full time job. Those are tricks to lower wages.
Pensions and Social Security should be set so we can live normal lives after all the years we put in to make this society run.
Disability payments, unemployment and other benefits should all be set so we can recover and find our way back to work.
Our income needs to be indexed—tied directly to prices.
When prices go up, our wages, Social Security, disability payments and benefits should all go up an equivalent amount—and immediately.
The bosses can easily afford it, every bit of it.
Corporate profits grew five times faster than wages in 2013.
Take the money the capitalists have been hoarding—it’s enough to give everyone the wage increase we need.
We Need a Working Class Policy, a Working Class Fight!
To Put an End to Unemployment ...
To Stop the Crisis in Our Schools and Neighborhoods ...
Sep 1, 2014
In Detroit, public services are disintegrating and the public schools are a disaster—it’s a crisis for the population.
It may be more desperate in Detroit—but the same problems face every working class neighborhood and public school system.
Because everywhere, public services and schools are starved to feed the profits of the corporations and the banks.
Everywhere, the wealthy pay little or no taxes.
We need a 180-degree turn. Public money should be spent on public services.
Take back all those tax breaks and subsidies that went to the corporations and banks—including what they got in the past.
Put that money into our children’s schools and our neighborhoods.
Hire the people necessary to do the work, hire the teachers, roadbuilders, carpenters, electricians, trash collectors, bus drivers and mechanics, people to staff the water system, the electrical systems, the fire department, emergency services, etc.
Take the money the state now gives to the corporations—use it to create the jobs that are necessary for a civilized society to run.
Not only would it make our daily lives reasonable, it would help to get rid of unemployment.
Take the money the federal government spends on wars—use it for schools that could give every child a chance to develop.
Why not? It’s more useful to provide a decent education for all young people than to put some of them into the army and others into prison because they can’t find a job.
We Need A Working Class Policy, A Working Class Fight!
To Stop the Decline in Our Standard of Living ...
To Protect Ourselves ...
To Stop the Crisis in Our Schools and Neighborhoods ...
Sep 1, 2014
Today, the big companies make every decision hidden in secrecy.
They hide the actual amount of their profit and then pretend they have no money to raise wages.
They pretend they are in trouble and have no choice but to lay off workers and close plants and offices.
A small handful of people, hidden away in a few executive suites, decide on the fate of millions of people today.
The big banks drag us into one crisis after another, hiding behind claims of “commercial privacy.”
They set up a financial house of cards; they speculate, inflating financial bubbles—right up to the point they bring us into a new collapse
Big companies and banks—both drain money out of the public treasury, using it for their own private purposes.
This can’t continue.
The workers acting altogether, collectively, can open up all these deals which today are carried out in secret.
The bosses cannot do without us—they need production workers, office workers, bank employees, public sector workers.
That’s why, taken altogether, we have the way to know what is going on, what is being produced, how much money is coming in, what is going out, the attacks being planned against us: layoffs, wage cuts, speed-up.
Taken altogether, we can find out how much real revenue is coming into the cities and states; we can know what is wasted on gifts to the big corporations and the real estate schemers; we see the unmet needs.
All of us taken together can find where the money is hidden—money for jobs and wages; money in the public treasury for good schools for our children, money for decent public services.
The Working Class Must Open Up the Bosses’ Accounts!
To Stop the Crisis in Our Schools and Neighborhoods ...
We Need to Fight!
Sep 1, 2014
The five of us are running this year:
to let working people express their anger,
to put forward a program of demands based on this idea: workers should not pay the cost of the bosses’ crisis.
We say, emergency measures are needed:
to put a halt to unemployment,
to stop the slide in our standard of living,
to stop the destruction of public services and schools.
We say, the wealth of this society—which today is hoarded by a handful of banks, a couple hundred large companies and a tiny wealthy capitalist class—must be taken and used to pay for measures protecting the lives of the ordinary people.
We are running to let working people who agree with these ideas declare themselves:
to say they know that the two big parties don’t represent their interest,
to say they want to stand up for themselves,
to express their support through their vote, for a working class program.
Our situation won’t be changed with a vote—we will need to make a fight to stop the worsening of our situation—but a vote for this program can be the beginning. It can show there are people who understand the working class will have to fight if we are to protect ourselves.
Sam Johnson, for U.S. Congress Michigan District 13
Gary Walkowicz, for U.S. Congress Michigan District 12
Mary Anne Hering and Kenneth Jannot Jr., for Dearborn School Board (HFC)
David Roehrig, for Wayne County Community College District 2
Sep 1, 2014
Candidate for Representative
in U.S. Congress District 13, Michigan
Sam Johnson was a Chrysler worker for 30 years, active at Dodge Main, Lynch Road, retiring from McGraw Glass in 1999. During all those years, he represented a working class policy in the plants, sometimes as an elected representative, always as a worker who stood with other workers against the attacks of the bosses.
Sam began his life in Alabama, under Jim Crow. He learned from his family not to accept the racism of the Klan and the cops, who were often the same.
His mother sent him to L.A. when he was 20, hoping to keep her son alive. Sam was a witness to the black rebellion in Watts, 1965, and then, after he came to Detroit, to the 1967 rebellion here.
Whether in the plants or in the community, Sam has always been a fighter, a man who sees the big picture and speaks out for the working class.
His book, giving an account of his life, a militant life, has just been published. It’s called: A Fighter All My Life.
Sep 1, 2014
Candidate for Representative in U.S. Congress District 12, Michigan
Gary Walkowicz has worked for 40 years at Ford, elected by his fellow workers to various positions in the local union. He is known as someone who always stood up against auto company demands to push workers backwards, and he helped organize opposition to contracts demanding concessions from the workers, including the one in 2009 that was voted down.
He was nominated for president of the UAW International at the 2010 and 2014 UAW Conventions, running against the top officials who had pushed concessions on auto workers.
Gary explained his goal: “I didn’t have any illusions I would win at the Convention, but running was a way to give a voice to the UAW membership, to the thousands of workers who do not agree to go on paying the cost for the bosses’ crisis.”
It’s exactly the same situation in the U.S. elections, where normally the working class has no voice. Gary’s candidacy will let the working class have a voice. It will allow workers to appear politically and to show that they want to see a working class policy and a working class fight.
Sep 1, 2014
Candidates for Dearborn School Board
(Henry Ford Community College)
Mary Anne Hering and Kenneth Jannot, Jr. have both been teachers all their working lives, serving in various community colleges in the region and in the public school system of this state.
They have witnessed first hand the damage caused by the severe cutbacks to the schools that serve the children of the working class.
These cutbacks, imposed by both of the big parties, are sacrificing a whole generation of youth, condemning them to reach adulthood without an adequate education.
Ken and Mary Anne both stand for a working class policy, one through which public money–the tax money we pay–goes to fully fund the public services we need for a decent life, including the schools. They both stand for a policy which would spend public money on education, instead of wasting it on wars and bailing out the banks.
Sep 1, 2014
Candidate for Trustee Wayne County Community College, District 2
David Roehrig has been a Detroit city worker for three years, during a time when the city has slashed services and discarded workers.
Like other workers of his generation, he attended community college when he could, and he worked whatever short-term jobs he could find. From cleaning hospital rooms to clearing snow, from mowing lawns, landscaping and utilizing his "green thumb" at his current job for the city–and always for low wages.
He is a true representative of this generation of younger workers who are offered jobs that are almost always for low pay and often only part-time.
He stands for a working class policy, whose aim is that every worker, including all those young workers, should have a job and decent pay.
He stands for a policy that would spend public money on public services, the schools and colleges, and not use it to bail out the banks or throw it away in destructive wars.
Sep 1, 2014
On July 17th, 1934, the truck drivers of Minneapolis began their third strike that year. It would go on to last six months and would mark the beginning of an important working class fight against the bosses.
From the moment the financial crisis of 1929 struck, the U.S. bourgeoisie tried to stop its profits from falling by shifting the entire weight of the crisis onto the backs of the working class. In 1933, at the crisis’s deepest point, one fourth of the working population was unemployed. Wages had declined by half in four years.
In Minneapolis, General Drivers Local 574 of the AFL International Brotherhood of Teamsters included a number of Trotskyist militants who had formed an organization in 1928 that later became the Socialist Workers Party.
Although the Local’s first strike, in February 1934, was limited to a single coal yard, it resulted in a victory. This accelerated the growth of the Local, increasing its membership from 75 to 3,000!
In the spring of 1934, Local 574 began an organizing drive that addressed all workers in the Minneapolis transportation industry regardless of craft distinction (truck drivers, delivery drivers, warehouse workers, taxi drivers, etc.) They also made an effort to organize women, with the most militant grouped in a union auxiliary. Then, they called a strike on May 16, 1934, against the wishes of the national Teamsters leadership.
These six days on strike saw hard fought battles against the cops and sheriff’s deputies, driven off the battlefield by the tactics of the striking workers. Minneapolis bosses were forced to back down, agreeing to double the wages of most drivers and recognizing Teamsters Local 574.
In reality, the struggle was only put on hold, since the bosses did not respect the accord they had signed. A huge demonstration was held on July 6th, followed by a meeting of 12,000 workers to the cry of, “Make Minneapolis a Union Town.” Workers elected a strike committee of 100 members, which included the leaders of the strike in May and other workers thrown up by the rank-and-file.
The new strike started July 17. From the beginning, the governor of Minnesota mobilized the National Guard for “the preservation of law and order,” and the bosses threatened to fire workers if they did not resume work within three days. On July 20, the police fired on the strikers, injuring 47 of them as well as a dozen onlookers. Two of the striking workers would die of their injuries in the following days.
This repression didn’t work. The strike spread to the city’s public transportation as part of the protest against police violence. Forty thousand people participated in a funeral march for Henry Ness, a truck driver killed by the police. A petition calling for the firing of the chief of police got 140,000 signatures. Every day, dozens of people came to offer their services to the strike committee, not just unionized workers. The strike newspaper, The Organizer, ran daily as a way to counter the pro-boss positions in the regular newspapers. Its print rose to 10,000 copies.
On July 26th, fearing an insurrection, the governor declared martial law. He deployed 4,000 soldiers around the city’s entrance points and declared strike pickets illegal. In the middle of the night, soldiers armed with machine guns encircled the strike headquarters and arrested the main leaders, as well as the injured workers recovering there and their doctor. They also searched the leaders’ homes.
From that point on, the pickets were no longer organized from one central headquarters, which was too easy a target for the National Guard. Instead they operated from a decentralized command. In light of the experience that rank-and-file workers had already acquired, this proved just as effective.
The government made numerous arrests for illegal strike activity and a military tribunal sentenced certain strikers to 90 days of forced labor. In spite of this, 40,000 workers attended a mass meeting on August 6th. During the course of the strike, 4,000 workers outside the transportation industry became unionized. The threat of a citywide general strike persuaded Roosevelt to push the local bosses to come to terms with Local 574.
The bosses ended up agreeing to extend the wage increases that the drivers had won in May to all workers in the transportation industry and to recognize Teamsters Local 574. This broke open the craft barriers kept in place by the bosses and the union bureaucrats. At the same time, the laundry workers of Minneapolis went on strike and managed to win a similar agreement. The bosses did not want to go through the experience of a head-on confrontation again.
Alongside these massive and victorious strikes in Minneapolis, 1934 would also see a major auto strike in Toledo, a dockworkers’ strike on the West Coast that ended in a general strike in San Francisco, and the first national strike of textile workers. The working class across the United States was fighting with renewed energy.
Not only would a part of the U.S. working class defend its standard of living from attacks, but it would impose wage increases on the U.S. bourgeoisie even while the capitalist economy was wracked with crisis.
But the impressive fighting spirit of U.S. workers in the 1930s did not result in a revolutionary political consciousness taking root. As a result, the union bureaucracies finally succeeded in controlling this vast movement.
Sep 1, 2014
The Washington D.C. city government just announced four more closed public school buildings are available for charter schools to rent. In fact, charter schools now use half of the 54 public school buildings whose schools were closed.
It is hypocritical for the city to convert these buildings into charter schools. When the city closes the schools, it says the buildings are under-utilized. It says they have too many rooms and the rooms are too big. It says these spaces are too costly and inefficient to heat and cool. If that was really true, they wouldn’t turn around and let the charter schools use the very same buildings.
No, what the city is really doing is funneling public school dollars into the hands of private businesses, including for-profit corporations. The charter schools are anti-union and pay teachers and maintenance staff less for doing more work. That is what school officials and the politicians are pushing.
Sep 1, 2014
The president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Karen Lewis, announced she has filed the official paperwork required if she decides to run for mayor of Chicago. But, according to Lewis, she will let the population decide–if she gets enough signatures, she says she will run.
It’s obvious she could have the signatures if she wants them–the polls indicate that she would defeat Rahm Emanuel, the current mayor, if the election were held today.
We can’t rule out the possibility that this is a charade aimed at striking a deal with Emanuel. Politicians certainly have done that kind of thing before. And union leaders today are politicians, whatever else they may be.
But if Lewis does decide to run, that could change a certain number of things in Chicago’s political atmosphere. The fact that the leader of an important union has decided to contest for political office against one of the most powerful Democrats in the country symbolically, if nothing else, challenges the long-standing habit of the unions to tie the working class to the Democrats.
Lewis two years ago led her union in a strike against concession demands that Emanuel made of the teachers. That strike became a political fact in Chicago. Not only had Emanuel been leading the attack on teachers and students in the Chicago schools, he was also one of Obama’s closest allies. Coming right in the midst of Obama’s re-election campaign, the strike was a political embarrassment for Obama.
For many Chicago teachers and parents, Karen Lewis continues to be a symbol of that resistance.
That’s not to say that Lewis in the past didn’t endorse Democrats. It’s not to say that she won’t again.
But if she takes this step, it could be a political assertion for the working class–a statement that the working class could put up its own leaders as candidates.
In and of itself, that would be notable. We, after all, live in a country where the working class long ago stopped appearing on the political scene in its own name. And the unions forgot, if they ever knew, how to play an independent political role.
One of the important issues of this campaign will certainly have to be the question of what happens to the public schools. Emanuel, with Arne Duncan and Barack Obama behind him, has continued to lead the bourgeoisie’s attack on the schools–that is, on the children of the working class.
It won’t be nearly so easy for Karen Lewis to win the election in February as it is for her to be ahead in the polls today. Emanuel is one of the slickest politicians in the country–not for nothing was he Obama’s chief of staff. And he is loaded with money and connections.
On the other hand, Lewis could tap the ranks of her union and other unions, the ranks of all those parents disaffected by what is being done to their children’s education. Not only for money. In order to win, she will have to look to a kind of popular campaign. If she does, that will change things in the political atmosphere.
If she is elected next February as the mayor of Chicago by waging a campaign in defense of public schools and their teachers, that in itself will not change things for the children, nor for the working class. If, however, participation in the campaign gives the teachers and the broad working class confidence in their own capacity to fight in the political arena, that could open a new chapter in Chicago’s long working class history.
Sep 1, 2014
Chicago’s Board of Education announced its budget for the schools for next year. The 5.8 billion dollars they propose to spend is a 3% increase over last year. But that’s not stopping them from cutting 72 million dollars from the budgets of 504 of the city’s neighborhood schools. Those cuts mean even more layoffs and dropped programs at the schools that are struggling the most. At the same time, the Board is increasing funding to the system’s 143 charter schools by the same amount. There’s no doubt about it, Emanuel wants to privatize the school system as much as he can.
Charter schools take public money and put it into private hands. Concept Schools, a charter network in Chicago, has been under an investigation by the FBI for white collar crime for several months now. But that’s not stopping the school board from handing them two more schools on Chicago’s South Side this year. No wonder–Concept Schools flew Michael Madigan, the head of the Illinois State legislature and the most powerful politician in Illinois, out to Turkey three times in a year.
The fact that it is much easier to make corrupt business deals through charter schools is one of their main attractions for businessmen and patronage-minded Chicago Democrats.