Public Education Protests Draw Hundreds of Thousands

THE MARCH 4 national Day of Action to Defend Public Education now appears to have become the launching point for a revitalized mass movement.

Across the country, but especially in New York City and throughout California, young and working people marched, rallied and demonstrated to demand a reversal of budget cuts for public schools and against Obama’s “Race To The Top” plan to privatize “failing schools” and break teachers’ unions.

In all, 126 actions occurred in 33 states on March 4. In Oakland, Calif., high school teachers held open forums for students to talk about what’s happening to their schools. Protesters marching from Berkeley to Oakland blockaded the I-880 bridge during evening rush hour. Over 100 were arrested.

In small towns throughout the country, local teachers’ unions, PTAs, community organizations and residents rallied together on street corners in defense of public education.

In Baltimore, members of a peer-to-peer tutoring group besieged a juvenile detention center to protest the transfer of public education funds to the incarceration of youth.

In New York City, 2,000 rallied in front of the governor’s offices to protest his budget cuts. The scale of this rally was similar to those held in San Diego, Los Angeles, Davis, Riverside, San Francisco and Sacramento.

What is perhaps more important, though, is that it is clear from reports by local organizers and coalitions that these protests did not represent an end to organizing, but rather they were seen as a beginning.

And given that even the mainstream corporatist press had to acknowledge that hundreds of thousands (if not millions, according to one report from the Associated Press), there is no doubt that this new movement to defend public education is just starting.

AT THE SAME TIME, however, there is already a danger developing. Realizing they can neither ignore nor dismiss this new movement, the agents of the exploiting and oppressing classes are now moving to try to divide and co-opt it.

Already, California politicians like Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger (whose budget cuts sparked the movement) and Democrat Gavin Newsom (who cut 15,000 public sector jobs the day before) have declared their support for the protests, and have offered “a seat at the table” in the future.

Both parties of the exploiting and oppressing classes are now looking to take control of enough of the movement to channel it into “respectable” channels and turn it into an electoral vehicle ... and a battering ram against the teachers’ union that stand in the way of Obama’s RaTTT race to privatize.

Indeed, these politicians don’t need to co-opt every coalition and leader, only enough to sow division and internal chaos — only enough to create a “respectable” front against the “radicals” and “far left.”

As for the “far left,” they have given the exploiting and oppressing classes the means to do so. Many of these groups may talk about “revolution” and such, but they employ the same pressure-group tactics that the Republicans and Democrats count on.

After all, who do you think the slogan, “Money for jobs and education, not for war and incarceration!” is actually speaking to?

In the end, the cross-class character of the movement as it is today makes such a division inevitable. The “middle class” students that joined protests on Mar. 4 will be more attracted to the line that the next “day of action” will be Election Day 2010, and that the “leaders” should really be one of the parties of the exploiting and oppressing classes.

The Workers Party participated in the Day of Action to begin organizing a working people’s movement to defend public education. Our member marched, handed out copies of our statement (see last issue) and talked at length about the next steps.

And we will continue to organize and participate in all the days of action to come.