National Day of Action to Defend Public Education a Major Success

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The nation-wide protests of students and education workers against budget cuts to schools on March 4 was the most significant day of resistance to the economic downturn since the crisis erupted in 2008. It is an important harbinger of bigger struggles to come.

The recession may be officially over but the crisis facing working people and youth is only getting worse. The layoffs and home foreclosures continue, while crucial social services are put on the chopping block. States all across the country face unprecedented declines in revenue. Public education has become one of the biggest targets for vicious budget cuts.

The most severe deficit is in California, which faces a$20 billion shortfall for the coming fiscal year. This is on top of the massive cuts enacted this fiscal year after the state had to issue IUO’s last summer when it ran out of money scrambling to pass an austerity budget.

The cuts to higher education led to a faculty and student walkout in the University of California (UC) system on September 24 of last year. A state-wide conference in October, which brought together over 700 students, teachers, faculty and other activists, called for a state-wide “strike and day of action” on March 4 to defend public education.

This conference also endorsed actions in mid-November to demonstrate against the plan for a massive 32% tuition hike. Across the UC system there were rallies and on some campuses students occupied buildings to protest the Board of Regents’ vote to raise tuition. The occupations where met by repression of the police and administration against both the occupiers and their supporters who rallied outside. But these actions also brought national attention to the issues of cuts and other attacks on education, as well as the anger and growing resistance to these policies.

March 4

Inspired by the events in California, students across the country put out a call to make March 4 a national day of action to defend public education. On March 4, in over 30 states from California to New York, from Texas to Wisconsin, there were hundreds of protests against the attacks on public education.

It was the first day of coordinated action on a national level against the on-going cuts that are being implemented as a result of the global economic crisis. Underscoring the popular anger at the budget cuts, corporate media outlets nationwide felt compelled to give the protests significant and generally positive coverage.

In California there were actions on all UC campuses. Many of these actions converged with K-12 students and teachers in larger city-wide demonstrations. In San Francisco, some estimates put the crowd at 20,000.

At UC Santa Cruz student effectively shut down their school for the day by organizing pickets at the campus entrances. Students at UCLA staged a 5-hour sit-in at the president’s office. There were also attempts to shut down interstate highways; police used tear gas on 100 protestors from UC Davis as they marched on a highway.

Although the turnout for most protests around the country were in the hundreds, they were indicative of a growing anger that exists in U.S. society. Many pointed to the backwards policies of doling out hundreds of billions to save the banks while education and public services are being slashed and burned. These policies make ordinary working people and youth pay for the crisis with cuts, tuition hikes, furloughs and layoffs.

While most of the actions centered around students in public higher education, the actions and demands encompassed the entire public education sector. Notably, March 4 was supported by unions of faculty, K-12 teachers, and other public sector unions. The California Federation of Teachers endorsed the March 4 day of action as did a number of AFSCME locals. In Oakland, K-12 teachers organized “disaster” drills to draw attention to the disastrous education policies.

In New York City, the faculty union for the City University of New York endorsed the March 4 rally at Governor Paterson’s office. The rally, attended by over 500 college and high school students as well as teachers and professors, marched across town to join another rally organized by the Transit Workers Union outside a public hearing of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).

Among the drastic cuts the MTA plans, is the proposal to cut the free MetroCards provided to over 500,000 students in the city. The march to the MTA hearing brought attention to wider attacks coming down on public services in general.

K-12 and the corporate agenda

Budget cuts are not the only issue facing education. Disguised as “reform” there is an on-going agenda to transform public education into something that looks more like a business. Education administrations are being run more and more by people who have little or no background in education but come instead from the corporate world.

There is an intense push to make standards and “performance” increasingly based on high-stakes testing data. Charter schools, publicly funded but privately run, are propped up by wealthy backers and able to select better performing students while leaving underfunded public schools to rot and carry the burden of special needs students.

Understandably, parents see charter schools a way out of the deteriorating situation of public schools. However, they are a back door to privatization and the undermining of public education. Since charter schools don’t have to be unionized, they weaken teachers’ unions, which are the main obstacle to carrying out the education “reforms.” This is why there is so much propaganda in the corporate media that “incompetent” and “lazy” teachers are the problem, deflecting the blame from underfunding, the madness of high-stakes testing, and severe overcrowding. Only weeks before March 4, a small high school in rural Rhode Island announced it would fire its entire teaching staff. This “tough love” was approved by the Obama administration, which has been actively supporting state governments’ efforts to increase charter schools as well as tying teacher evaluations to test data—which would make it easier to get rid of “under-performing” teachers.

The assault on public education and on teachers’ unions has led to active resistance of teachers, parents and students. In Oakland, teachers have set a one-day strike for April 22, in a contract battle that includes issues of pay, class size, and staff reductions. In cities across the country, like LA, Chicago, DC, Detroit, and New York, there is growing opposition, both inside unions and amongst students and parents, against these policies.

Building a broader movement

March 4 has brought to the fore various struggles that have been developing around public education. At the same time, the budget cuts are severe and with the federal stimulus money running out this year, the fiscal crisis and push for deep cuts will intensify alongside further privatization and attacks on the unions.

The potential to build a stronger movement to confront the attacks on education could be seen in the energy and anger displayed at the events on March 4. Following the example of California, conferences should be called, bringing together teachers, faculty, and other education workers as well as parents and students in college and high school, to discuss the way forward and next actions to take. Links must be made with other public sector workers to build an on-going struggle to defend public services.

The coming together of students and unions on March 4 was a very positive development but we still have yet to see anything close to a full mobilization of the unions—which could put hundreds of thousands on the streets in cities around the country. There should also be discussion about the possibility of a national demonstration in the fall against cuts, which would call for tax increases on the wealthy and demand a federal bailout of the states instead of bank bailouts and endless war.

There should be no mistake; the bank bailouts and the war, as well as the budget cuts and policies of making working people pay for the crisis, are being carried out by both major parties, Republicans and Democrats alike. The union movement cannot afford to tail the Democratic Party if it has any hope of confronting the assault on public services and working people. The unions and campaigns organized around defending education should run their own candidates that stand against the cuts and layoffs and call for taxing the rich and making them pay for the crisis.

Such electoral campaigns, connected to on-going struggles, could get a tremendous echo amongst working class and youth. A failure to build an independent struggle will open up space further for right-wing forces like the Tea Party, who have gained strength by effectively tapping into the growing anger in U.S. society. March 4 was just the beginning. Now it’s time to organize a serious, national fight-back.

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