LOS ANGELES, September 22 — An emergency informational teachers’ union meeting here discussed a proposed “Compact” between the union, the LA Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor, the Universities and the Schools Board. If this “Compact” passes, the union leadership will be enforcing the education reform agenda of the main section of the ruling class to reorganize schools on the cheap for the bosses.

The Compact would expand so-called peer review, determine No Child Left Behind intervention, expand charter and “iDesign” schools (where the teachers partner with a corporation to compete with charters and end up unwittingly helping do the bosses’ job for them). The goal is to make the school system cheaper and more adept at teaching minimum levels of math and English with lots of patriotism so students join the military and/or work in war plants for low wages.

When a comrade roundly condemned the Compact, he was heartily applauded by the teachers. He declared: “I’m a communist, not a democrat or a socialist. Socialists can’t make up their minds. This LA Compact that our leadership has brought us is a racist attack on our students. The fact that this union’s leadership would work with the Mayor, the School Board and the Chamber of Commerce on this should tell us it’s not in our interests.

“This Compact comes in the context of capitalist crisis and widening war. It represents a fascist reorganization of public education to meet the needs of the rulers, not our students. Fascism comes through dividing the working class and attacking one section more fiercely, and through racism. Our students are mainly black and Latino. The bosses are cutting education and health budgets but not the war budget. We must fight these attacks, including those on substitute teachers, with a united strike.”

PLP showed that the whole “compact” is a fascist assault on students and teachers. Others opposed the compact for each individual attack but concluded that it could be okay if it didn’t take away from “community organizing.” Our comrade argued that during an era-defining economic crisis and two wars, collaboration between the union leadership and the bosses would attack the students, on the road to fascism. He called on teachers to oppose the social-democrat/social-fascist union leadership and build for mass actions towards a political strike against the Compact, the cuts and the war.