What a Teachers Movement Can Look Like
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- Published on Saturday, 16 February 2019 01:48
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1764 ... February 16, 2019
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What a Teachers’ Movement Can Look Like
Lois Weiner
The victory Los Angeles teachers and their union, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), won in their contract fight with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has the potential to change the world, as the Chicago Teachers Union did in its landmark 2012 strike. Their path-breaking struggles are reverberating in the latest wave of walkouts and strike votes spreading across the nation’s school systems -- and the school year is barely half-over.
Los Angeles teachers rode the tide created by the teacher walkouts in "red states," which taught labour the power of direct action to win demands from the GOP’s elected handmaidens to wealthy elites. By consciously using community organizing and reinvigorating the union’s internal... structures to mobilize members, UTLA created a social movement so powerful it forced LAUSD and the corporate titans who control the city’s school board to make concessions.
The strike demonstrated to teachers’ unions throughout the world that they can win against the global education reform movement. UTLA has created hope and breathing space for struggles for public education in the global North as well as the South, with governments in thrall to transnational corporations and international finance organizations controlled by the United States. This strike was a defeat not only for Superintendent Beutner, given his job by Los Angeles "vulture philanthropists" like Eli Broad, but also for their global project.
