In Los Angeles, 34,000 school personnel went on strike and won. In the face of attacks from a pro-corporate school board with an agenda to charterize the school district, these educators went on the offensive.
They secured a new union contract, won concessions (including smaller class sizes), and stopped the charter school agenda in its tracks, affirming that public schools are not only the lifeblood of education, but the heart of the community. They won a statewide moratorium on new charter schools.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is the second largest school district in the country, serving 694,000 students, most of whom come from low-income, working class families; 90% are students of color. Strikers included not only teachers, but nurses, counselors, librarians, and other school staff. This is the first LA school district strike since 1989. It comes almost one year after the teacher strike wave started in West Virginia swept the country.
The victory is even more impressive when we understand just how rotten the LAUSD school board is. Although is board is elected, its members are bought and paid for by the rich. Corporate interest groups pumped $13 million into the last election. Much of it came from the Walton family (the owners of Walmart). Their hand-picked superintendent is Austin Beutner, a former Wall Street banker who worked for the U.S. State Department to help the rich seize the state assets of Russia once counterrevolution had defeated the USSR. Beutner’s plan was for LAUSD was to carve up the district into clusters and then sell off “weak performers” as if they were stock portfolios.
We may be used to thinking that the rich vultures will always get their way, but this amazing movement has shown that old fashioned organizing—and especially going on strike—empowers working class people to take on the 1% and win.
Unity and community support did the trick. Large numbers of teachers were joined by parents and students at the picket lines. Over 50,000 people participated on the first day.
New Orleanians should take note of what is possible in the struggle for education. The situation in New Orleans may be worse, but privatization is not irreversible.
Last month, the first ever charter school teacher strike went down in Chicago and the teachers’ union won a new contract with major concessions. This shows that it is possible to wage struggle in places where the charter movement has seemed to have triumphed. Last month, over 200 New Orleanians packed into a school board meeting, protesting the planned conversion of McDonogh 35 into a charter school. The anger over the intentional destruction of public education is still intense here in the city. This anger must be organized into action.