After 6 school days on the picket line, more then 30,000 LA public school instructors voted to accept an offer from the nation’s second-largest school district that amounted to a near-total capitulation by management in favor of the instructors’ broad demands: smaller classes; more aides, librarians and counselors; much better school maintenance; support for a statewide moratorium on brand-new charter schools; and releasing the cost-of-living-allowances that the state had paid to the LA U nified School District, however which the district had not passed on to the employees for numerous years, providing every instructor a real-terms pay-cut every year.
The teachers were signed up with on the picket line by fans ranging from parents’ and students’ groups (the trainees had their own needs: an end to in-school stop-and-frisk, limitations on authorities officers and military employers in schools, and an focus on their education over their imprisonment), and firemens. All in all, a strike by 30,000 instructors saw 60,000 people on the picket line, including teachers from LA’s largest charter school.
This week’s Intercepted podcast features a long and informative conversation with teacher-organizers who have been on the lines; likewise noteworthy is Jacobin’s interview with UTLA chief negotiator Arlene Inouye.
Teachers in other “blue” cities and states, from Denver to Oakland, are looking to the LA teachers’ example, defying the Democratic establishment and its longstanding affinity for school privatization through charter schools (see likewise, Cory Brooker’s tone-deaf appearance this week in support of Louisiana’s notoriously racist charter schools which were turbo charged by the shock-doctrine robbery that took location after Katrina).
Nothing will be the same after this. We now have to appearance as a union at how we can harness all this energy — and integrate all the brand-new leaders that have emerged — for the struggles ahead. I think the sky’s the limit. I hope other unions will actually be encouraged and inspired, and I believe they are, since I’ve been getting sent a lot of messages from throughout the country.
We were motivated by Chicago and we were motivated by the red states. Our actions all motivate each other — and this motion is just going to grow. I’m so proud to be part of this battle for public education, for social justice, for women, for racial justice, for all working people. And our unions are the location where we really have the power to bring this all together.
After LA’s Strike, “Nothing Will Be the Very same” [Eric Blanc/Jacobin]
LA teachers return to classrooms after 6- day strike [Holly Yan/CNN]
