ICWP Raises Red Flag in Mass Struggle Against Racist School Closings
Oakland, California is one of the major cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area is home to the third largest concentration of billionaires in the world. Oakland is home to an exploding tent city population and a school district that apparently is always bankrupt or near bankruptcy.
Enormous wealth versus chronic bankruptcy; the bigger the wealth gap, the bigger the contempt the billionaires have for us. And, in return, the bigger the fury we harbor toward them. That is the way class struggles play out.
It is this dynamic that has unfolded in Oakland, California, since the first days of February. It was then the Oakland School Board announced plans to close (meaning “charterize” or sell to real estate developers) eleven more schools. They were schools in working-class areas with predominantly Black students.
It planned to close them in May, as soon as the school year ended. No debate, no parent, teacher, or community input. It would just close them. It was a display of racist contempt. It would close them because, in the final argument, that was the “fiscally responsible” thing to do.
“Fiscally Responsible!” That’s a phrase that is supposed to silence debate. Unfortunately, it is not just a phrase. It has real social forces organized behind it. In the case of education, that organization is “FCMAT” (pronounced Fic-mat). It is a state-appointed board that rules whether any educational district is bankrupt or solvent.
This appointed FCMAT has the power because it controls the purse. FCMAT is the education face of what Karl Marx called “the dictatorship of Capital.” The democratically elected School Board is just a fig leaf.
Working-class struggle against the dictatorship of Capital! That is the best way to sum up this powerful mass movement of teachers, parent community (and now ILWU longshore workers) that the Oakland School Board unleashed when, in February, it announced its rush to close schools.
Crammed school board meetings stretching into the early hours of the morning, hunger strikes, pickets, parent-teacher fundraising barbeques, teach-ins, marches, rallies, outreach committees, poster-making collectives, critiques of textbooks…if FCMAT is the face of Capital, then this movement is the raised fist of the working-class struggle.
The ICWP has been in this struggle inside the schools, the meetings, and on the streets, with Red Flag and our vision of a share-and-share-alike communist (not socialist) future. As masses are learning today from the struggle, we envision education in the future that will not serve the interests of Capital but will instead emerge from the needs and the practice of the masses.
Imagination is vital – we don’t build anything without first imagining it – but most people in the movement aren’t there yet. Enough are not yet fighting capitalist state power for workers’ power. For all its positive energy it is still reactive and defensive. It is still only fighting to restore Public (State-run, FCMAT budgeted) schooling.
The teachers’ alliance with the longshore workers (ILWU) limits itself to trying to stop the building of a Baseball Stadium in a dockland area that would cut longshore jobs. It is not calling for a world that would house the unhoused tent-city dwellers. The movement has gone far since February, but it still has further to go.
Multi-racial sustained struggles against capital, like this one, can strengthen our confidence in the capabilities of today’s working class. Red Flag and our Communist Education pamphlet have been well received at all the rallies we have attended. The revolutionary ideas planted today will mature in future struggles.
Read our pamphlet: “Communist Education for a Classless Society” here
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