Los Angeles (USA): For Education and Work that Serve the Masses!

No Borders, No Profits, No Billionaires!

LOS ANGELES (USA) April 14—Today, at 4:00 am, students, parents, and school employees found out that school would be in session. At the last possible moment, the school district reached an agreement with the union that represents the people who make the schools run: cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, aides and other staff. Most of them are barely scraping by. The main thing they won was enough hours for more of them to qualify for medical coverage.

A planned strike was called off. The district had already settled with teachers and administrators for modest improvements in pay and benefits. But the district played the racist division between teachers and other school workers until the very last minute, hoping the non-teaching employees’ union would fold.

No surprise there. Schools in racist capitalism are contradictory. On the one hand, we want better schools because we want our young people to learn what they need to survive and thrive in this world, and to fight to make it better.

On the other hand, schools were invented to socialize kids for work and for war, and to teach the rotten values of the ruling elite.

One such value is that some people, because they studied hard and went to college, deserve to live better than others. That some work—like being a teacher—is a little bit more valuable than the essential work of construction, production, transportation, cooking and cleaning. That teachers’ kids deserve to go to the doctor—and aides’ kids don’t.

All our work is valuable. Our party fights for a world where we produce for need, not for profit. And share what we make based on need, rather than what someone can afford. In that communist world, we will all share in life-long education and in necessary work like cooking, cleaning, and taking out the trash.

All this is happening amidst capitalism in crisis. The fascist attacks on workers’ communities and the war in Iran are clear signs of that crisis. It was already developing before Trump. It’s how capitalism works, and what happens in a declining empire.

We all worry about our kids’ future. Fewer people have confidence that getting an education will get you a decent life. Many of us fear for our families and neighbors during the fascist ICE raids. Many of us have family members in the military who are being deployed to a war zone, and others who will be registered for a possible military draft next year.

And as we fight for better lives and better education here, let’s remember that the first attack in the current war on Iran was the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, where 168 girls were killed. In Lebanon, according to UNICEF, Israeli attacks on civilians have killed or wounded the equivalent of one classroom of children every day since the beginning of March. In the Gaza genocide at least 20,000 children have been killed and 92% of the schools have been destroyed since October 2023.

One key mission of public schools is to teach patriotism and obedience. The billionaires don’t fight their own wars. They send workers’ children to kill other workers while the capitalists consolidate their power, profits and control.

That’s their weakness. Young people can think. They can see working people around the world as their own class siblings. They can refuse to be part of committing war crimes. Teachers and others must encourage young people to question orders, and when necessary and possible refuse to carry them out. To turn their guns on the bosses instead of workers on the other side of an artificial border.

The strike got called off, but the struggle continues. The struggle to survive, and the struggle for a world without bosses, without borders, and without war. Students and school workers will join with other workers to march on May Day as part of that struggle for communism.

Visiting Marines in Oceanside

OCEANSIDE (USA), April 11— Comrades reaching out to Marines in this little town outside the Camp Pendleton Marine Base ran into a former student walking down the sidewalk. His teacher had talked to him previously about organizing inside the US military. The young man, not entirely convinced, was nevertheless happy to take the paper and give us his number.

The conversation will continue with this Marine, and with other enlisted personnel as we return regularly to Oceanside. On this visit, most of the Marines we ran into were recent graduates of boot camp—filled with propaganda and enthusiasm and as yet unacquainted with the reality of war. The teacher, a veteran of the Iraq war, talked about his experience.

Marines from Camp Pendleton are in the Persian Gulf. They have been put in harm’s way and ordered to harm other workers to further the goals of the imperialists. So have the soldiers and sailors of the Iranian military. Soldiers, sailors, and marines on all sides will be key in ending imperialism altogether, by joining the working class to fight for communism.

Read the ICWP manifesto Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to a Communist Workers’ Revolution here

Read the ICWP manifesto Communist Education for a Classless Society here

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