in a conference on Teaching for Social Justice. It was organized by socialist and other left type groups, and endorsed by the teachers union. There were close to 1,000 educators and students who came from Washington and Oregon.
We set up a literature table in the common area, volunteered, and participated in several workshops. During the lunch break several more comrades came to distribute Red Flag to teachers and students. One workshop showed a documentary on the teacher strike in Mexico. When offered the paper with many articles on the strike, some people remarked that they knew all about it from the documentary. "This is different," we replied. "This is about a communist group of teachers struggling for communist education in the midst of the strike." They immediately saw that we were not just reporting on a reform movement, we were talking about revolution.
We were able to reach many new people, and reconnect with old friends. Our table was consistently surrounded with folks who wanted to know if we were really communists, and why. Many were surprised that we had such controversial ideas on education. The crowd was very diverse and multiracial. Many were from Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.
Not surprisingly, a coworker told us she felt the prison workshop was interesting, but did not provide any answers on what she could do to stop the racist incarceration of young men of color. We talked about how the whole system is designed to keep groups of workers constantly underemployed, underpaid and uneducated so that they can be super exploited. The only way to end it is to end capitalism.
The idea put forward in some workshops was that more democracy and justice would save our schools. But why fight to save our schools if they are bad? Children are stuck there for 12 years or more… isolated from the real working world. Therefore, it is not surprising that they do not understand how the world works and what their role could be. In a communist world students and workers will teach and learn together. There will be no separation of mental and manual labor.
In one workshop a comrade spoke to her breakout group about how we should stop encouraging kids to be lawyers and instead teach them to fight the system and break the laws that the ruling class set up to keep us all down. They need to know that there will never be justice or democracy for workers under their system. One facilitator overheard her and said, "That's exactly what we need to do!" He encouraged her to raise it when we regrouped. Unfortunately the workshop ran overtime and we had to end it then.
We should not be afraid to openly raise communist ideas in conferences like this one. Although they are organized by revisionists and reformers, people who come are not necessarily won to their politics. We learned this during the Occupy movement. Our ideas are like fresh air to workers, students and soldiers. They often remark, "I never thought about it that way" or "You've given me a whole new perspective"! We not only got out a lot of lit, but we have an ever-expanding list of people who are interested in our "pizza and politics" groups. We really need to get out a pamphlet on the question of education. Many people have expressed interest in reading more. It will be very helpful to have at coming events!