Let’s Organize to Defeat Capitalism and its Anti-Workers Schools here ♦ Homelessness is a Systemic Issue here ♦
Let’s Organize to Defeat Capitalism and Its Anti-Worker Schools
The unions that represent teachers and other school workers in Los Angeles are threatening to shut the schools down again. The fact that teachers are this angry—four years after a seven-day strike in 2019—makes it clear that this capitalist system cannot meet the needs of teachers, campus workers, and students. From Columbus, Ohio to Seattle, Washington, teachers are more willing to go on strike to demand more sustainable working conditions. But we must now increasingly realize that it is capitalism which cannot sustain us inside and outside of school classrooms.
In the classroom, we must analyze the type of education that we truly want for the working class. Undoubtedly, every teacher goes into the field of education with the great intention of educating our youth and to teach them critical thinking skills.
Even the best teachers are forced to operate within the system. We have to give grades. And students end up doing the work to get the grade, rather than engaging with ideas for the love of learning. And it’s no mistake that this prepares them for a life of working for wages, rather than to share their energy and gifts to meet the needs of society.
That’s just one way that schools are set up to reproduce capitalist relations of production. Those same grades, and the need to pass some students and fail others, create and justify a hierarchical ranking system.
Schools prepare us to believe that capitalism is a meritocracy—if you’re economically successful you deserve it and if you’re poor you deserve that. It certainly covers up the fact that the rich get rich by ripping off the labor of the poor.
Schools teach science, but we can’t ignore the scale of global warming. We must respond to the intensity of global warming with revolution.
We cannot wait to see if the bosses will ever fix the problems that they have created. Just like we cannot depend on the projected reserves of $4.9 billion that Los Angeles Unified School District bosses refuse to appropriately distribute to teachers and students.
Much as capitalist curriculum in the classroom censors and limits revolutionary education, billions of dollars have their own limits to take care of our needs.
And we cannot depend on the bosses to take care of us. We must take care of ourselves, and we need to take power from the capitalists.
Our need is also to educate the working class in order to recruit students to join a communist revolutionary movement that teaches students the need to build an international party that can mobilize, educate, and sustain our needs.
—Comrade teacher in Los Angeles (USA)
Read our pamphlet:
“Communist Education for a Classless Society”
Homelessness Is a Systemic Issue
Recently, my employment at Hope The Mission (HTM) ended. HTM is a nonprofit organization that provides interim housing (homeless shelters) to families and individuals. When I was hired there, I was very hopeful because HTM embraced tiny home shelters.
From my work in homeless services in Los Angeles County (USA), I felt strongly that tiny home shelters were a practical solution to the homeless crisis. Tiny home shelters were designed to house homeless individuals with severe untreated mental health and substance abuse issues.
Also, tiny homes (two beds per tiny home) offered more privacy as compared to residing in a traditional congregate shelter (large open shared space with many residents). Many unhoused individuals who struggle with mental health issues experience social anxiety.
Today, I am skeptical of HTM’s role in the battle to end homelessness. I believe that the organization has discriminatory hiring practices. Specifically, many individuals in leadership positions are Christian and attend the same church. Historically, HTM is a Christian organization, so this is to be expected.
Los Angeles County is religiously very diverse, but from my observation, religion is not a dominant cultural force. Many county residents tend to be non-religious. Therefore, HTM operates as a de facto Christian-safe space for its Christian employees. If its leadership represented individuals from various religious backgrounds, this would not be a problem.
Most concerning, many of HTM’s Black employees in leadership have either resigned, been terminated, or laid off. Considering that Black people comprise 8% of Los Angeles County’s general population, but 34% of the county’s homeless population, HTM is contributing to the county’s homeless crisis.
I am not implying that HTM is responsible for the Black homeless crisis nor the larger homeless crisis. I am asserting that the homeless crisis was not created in a vacuum. Homelessness is a systemic issue. Specifically, the region’s approach to public education, lack of affordable housing, and history of redlining has greatly contributed to the current homeless crisis.
Based on HTM’s struggle to support its Black employees, it is obvious that HTM’s leadership is perpetuating the challenges that Black county residents face. If Los Angeles County is going to solve the homeless crisis, county leaders are going to have to address the conditions that created the homeless crisis in the first place because organizations like HTM that receive local and federal government funds need oversight.
—Red Flag Reader
Red Flag responds: Thank you for this letter. The system at the root of the crisis is CAPITALISM where housing and everything else is mainly a source of profit, not a public good. We don’t think that “county leaders” or oversight boards or non-profit groups can solve it. We, workers like the writer and other readers, are the ones who must address these conditions by fighting for a communist system organized to meet the needs of the masses. That includes housing, education, and an end to racism.