[Fwd: Detroit and Oaxaca Battles Continue, What Can We Do?]

[Rick Parkany <rparkany@borg.com>]

Now HERE's the FULL Monty...

...NOT the Corporate Monty, not the timid, good ol' American 
Progressivism, preached this list, that abhores revolutionary, 
*punctuated equilibrium* of systemic change in favor of that gradual, 
evolutionary change that NEVER occurs in this country because of the 
hegemonous coopting that IS American Political System.

Right, Geroge Schmidt?

Not much to add, here, Folks! This one says it all from Rich Gibson, 
doesn't it?

Edify!      ;-} rap.

PS:    I met my children in the classrooms this week. I won't even try 
to make a report from the halls of the Run-of-the-Mill HEROs I meet 
every day who don't or can't make local or national headlines, either 
because they don't have their own politcal gin-mill, nor cuddle up 
within a support group of 35 years because they've HAD to move so often, 
since each time they begin their work, they show up like a shiney penny 
in a pile of wooden nickels...when teachers like I and many others I 
know are denied tenure or outright fired for teaching socially 
constructivist curriculae rather than drill & kill scripted fodder OR 
run up head-long into some parochial, old gals network (80% of the 
teachers in our middle schools in Utica are FEmale and BOY! do they 
entrench odd agendas OFF the educational map!) we don't get a Hurrah! 
nor narry a Huzzah! do we?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Detroit and Oaxaca Battles Continue, What Can We Do?
Date: 	Sat, 09 Sep 2006 01:42:34 -0700
From: 	Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com>
To: 	(Recipient list suppressed)



Dear Friends,

The massive social uprising in Oaxaca demonstrates the Rouge Forum 
thesis that struggles initiated in schools can become uprisings that 
begin real social change. It proves the centripetal role of schooling in 
today's society. That fight is best documented on NarcoNews, online  
http://www.narconews.com/

The Detroit school workers, on strike for 12 days, were enjoined from 
continuing the strike on Friday afternoon, and the union was ordered to 
hold a mass meeting to tell the teachers to return to work. That meeting 
will be on Sunday at 4 pm at Cobo Hall, the same place where the 
spontaneous 1999 vote was taken to start a wildcat strike, opposed by 
the union, declared illegal by the government, fought by business. . The 
wildcat was a success in proving that workers who create political 
reality can defy unjust laws. http://clogic.eserver.org/2_2/gibson.html

The Detroit Federation of Teachers is on strike because rank and file 
educators are in a position similar to the California grocery strikers. 
They must fight back because they have little choice. Educators have 
made more than $65 million in concessions in the last five years. 
Conditions in schools are often deplorable. Respect from top 
administrators, clearly absent. Shortly after teachers made concessions 
last year, the administrators took 10% pay raises.

In the wildcat, Detroit educators learned they could strike, violate the 
law, and do it without their union leaders, a fact the leaders probably 
heard more clearly than the teachers. Irrelevance is a big fear of union 
bureaucrats.

Many forces collide in Detroit. The local Detroit ruling classes believe 
they are completely cornered. If the schools are constantly in crisis, 
no one is going to gentrify Detroit. So they must fight. The union 
leaders are trapped between a habit of selling out, concessions, and a 
rank and file that cannot take more sellouts. The judge is trapped by an 
electorate which might be sympathetic to the strike, and higher-ups who 
are certainly not. The Mayor and others argue the strike could demolish 
what is left of the city.

What settles this is connecting reason to power, the task of every 
educator every day. Power, for school workers, lies in the ability to 
build close ties with kids, parents, community people, on a rank and 
file basis, and to take independent direct action, as the AFL-CIO is 
going to fight against this strike just as it ruined the grocery strike, 
and the Detroit Newspaper strike, where union goons attacked rank and 
filers on picket lines, turning people in to the police, to protect 
social peace for the Clinton vote. 
http://www.pipeline.com/%7Ergibson/IWWCHEST.html

The DFT leadership did all it could to prevent another mass meeting of 
teachers, like the one ordered for Sunday. The DFT leadership changed 
the ratification process for contracts, so teachers would not have a 
chance to see each other in a mass meeting and vote thumbs up or down in 
a public vote, but that they would vote back in the schools, or by 
mail--probably meaning that they would return to work before a vote was 
finished.

Detroit teachers should tell the judge the same thing that John L. Lewis 
said about the Taft- Harley injunction that was handed to his coal 
miners' union, "Let Taft mine it, and Hartley haul it."

A court order cannot teach kids, nor even warehouse them. 9000 teachers 
are not going to be fired and jailed. Detroit is not Crestwood, where 
the Michigan Education Association betrayed a militant strike in a tiny 
district, all the teachers fired and permanently replaced. Detroit 
educators can defend this strike.

It would have been much easier to defend if the DFT had planned freedom 
schools for Detroit kids and parents during the strike, schools that 
taught outside the bounds of scripted curricula, and if the DFT had 
demanded an end to racist, high-stakes testing which is pivotal in the 
wreckage of schooling today.

But the DFT cannot do that since the DFT opposes free schooling and the 
examination of why things are as they are, because the DFT leadership is 
part of the problem, and, moreover, it was the DFT-AFT that initiated 
the high stakes tests along with the US Chambers of Commerce, and 
others. So, the ties in the community that could win this strike are not 
yet there, but it is not impossible for rank and filers to forge them.

Many possibilities exist. The strike could collapse under the 
injunction, and a real sellout come out later, but Rouge Forum members 
say that it may well not. A deal could be cut between this writing and 
the Sunday meeting, but if it is a concession contract, the educators 
will be in an uproar. It might be that the DFT leadership would look 
back to the corrupt legacy of Al Shanker and realize that they 
themselves could make careers of a judge's jail sentence for continuing 
the strike, and in jail they could get some rest.

But the key to the strike is whether or not the rank and file teachers, 
perhaps walking door to door, can build solidarity with their communities.

In any case, Detroit and Oaxaca school workers have offered working 
people many invaluable lessons. Their courage and perseverance is to be 
applauded, right now. An injury to one really does just go before an 
injury to all. Tell the DPS bosses to give they will lose, that we will 
never forget. http://www.detroit.k12.mi.us/

Below is a letter drafted by teachers to parents in their school. The 
DFT has done, to my knowledge, little or nothing like it.

Why Are The Teachers Striking?
A Letter to Our Parents
Don''t think for a moment that it doesn''t hurt us when we see your 
children clean and pressed and ready for the first day of school, only 
to find none of us inside the school building. We want to be in our 
classrooms ready to begin the new year. But this year, we cannot. We 
want you to know this strike is about more than raises in teacher 
salaries and benefits (although that is part of it). It is about 
standing up for your children''s rights to a free and appropriate 
education. It is about drawing a line in the sand and telling the 
district that we won''t stand for substandard school conditions that 
don''t afford our urban children the same opportunities as children who 
attend public school in other school districts.
We are standing behind this line because we believe in your children, 
and we are committed to providing a quality education with the tools 
they need to grow into successful adults. To do our jobs well, we need 
certain things that the district is not providing. The district is 
making poor choices about how to spend the $7,600 per child that the 
State gives each year. The district has been making poor choices for a 
long time, and that is why we are in the situation we are in The 
district should change the way they manage the money, rethink their 
spending priorities and not ask the teachers or students to make any 
more sacrifices to cover their negligent spending.
The teachers'' issues are:

   ·               Money being spent on high-priced leased office
   buildings with high-priced, fancy furniture and computers for
   administrators.
   ·               Spending thousands per student on five standardized
   tests. If one could be eliminated, much money and time could be
   spent more wisely to help our neighborhood school have the basics.
   ·               A drinking fountain that works on each floor,
   repaired ceilings, clean and painted walls, lights that work in each
   classroom and hallways, clean bathrooms with doors, toilets and
   sinks working. Floors that are not buckled from water, a school
   library for the students and staff, classrooms wired for the
   internet, a computer that works in each classroom, a computer lab, a
   safe and clean playground, safe sidewalks with curbs- not cracks and
   holes, and adequate cleaning staff to meet the demands of the
   overcrowded classrooms.
   ·               Forty students in a classroom is unacceptable.
   Uncertified substitutes being placed in classrooms to fill teacher
   vacancies is inexcusable. Our classroom aides and noon hour aides
   are being cut. They are greatly needed to support the staff and
   students.

We are standing for your children and hope that you will stand with us 
too. Other cities are looking at how this will turn out, and we are 
standing for those children and those teachers, too. We think there is 
enough money to teach our children well, if it is spent wisely in the 
school and not in the administration building. When we say no contract; 
no work we are asking for conditions that are equitable for children and 
teachers alike. If you have ANY QUESTIONS, please don''t hesitate to 
ask. We want you to understand the reasons we are standing outside the 
school, away from our classrooms because of the problems we are faced 
with and we hope you will stand with us for the children because NO 
CHILD SHOULD BE LEFT BEHIND.
Respectfully yours,
The teachers at Neinas Elementary School, September 5, 2006




"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism
because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
	-- Benito Mussolini
       (Encyclopedia Italiana,Giovanni Gentile, ed.).
http://www.borg.com/~rparkany/PromOriginal/EconomyOfWar/EconomicsOfWar.html
--
"Dein Wachstum sei feste und lache vor Lust!
Deines Herzens Trefflichkeit
Hat dir selbst das Feld bereit',
Auf dem du bluehen musst."     JS Bach: Bauern Kantata
Richard A. Parkany: Prometheus Educational Services
http://www.borg.com/~rparkany/
Upper Hudson & Mohawk Valleys; New York State, USA