We are happy to see CHALLENGE again printing letters critical of the work; this will help us to have a useful dialogue about how best to organize for communism in the day-to-day work. In Los Angeles we are doing our best to organize students and teachers in the union meetings and at our local schools around CHALLENGE and to build a base for the revolutionary line of the Party. We have been able to increase our distribution to about 250 papers per issue. We are active in the teachers’ union and this spring organized two illegal one-hour work stoppages against teacher layoffs at our school that were about 90% effective.

These actions were organized by CHALLENGE readers at our schools, raising the need to defy the bosses’ laws and the union contract to fight against the attacks on the schools in school, area and city-wide meetings. We fought for a one-day job action within the city-wide union, and had a successful vote at our schools, but when the union leadership folded in response to a court injunction, we could not pull off wildcat strikes at our schools.

Nevertheless, we have increased the paper sales and recruited a new PL club of young people active in these struggles and in school and the Summer Project. We advanced the political understanding of teacher and student CHALLENGE readers by refusing to let the union leadership define the limits of discussion. As fascism develops, the ruling class uses cutbacks and “school reform” to cheaply prepare the schools for war, especially in a school population that is overwhelmingly Latino and black. We put the struggle against charter schools in that context, rather than opportunistically echoing the “anti-privatization” rhetoric of the union leaders and revisionists (fake leftists).

We have also been self-critical about being misled, like so many honest teacher activists, into believing the hype about “bottom-up” school reform. Many honest trade unionists and good anti-racist teachers are willing to believe in reforms because they want something better for kids. We struggle with our political friends to see that racist capitalism has nothing good for the schools: that “school reform” is a fascist plan to teach a few technical skills and a lot of patriotism as they increase class size and teacher hours, and lay off experienced teachers and union janitors. We’re trying to spread an understanding that reform and revolution are a contradiction, united in the struggle of teachers and students for a decent education.

We are not fighting to make the bosses’ schools work better for them, but for a communist world where education will serve the working class. Calling for a strike against cutbacks and school reform is part of fighting for the political leadership of students and teachers, showing them the direction of the fight for communist revolution and winning them to the Party. Although we have a lot of weaknesses, we measure our success in recruitment, in increased distribution of CHALLENGE, and our friends’ deeper understanding of the attack on the working class as the crisis of capitalism sharpens, inter-imperialist rivalry accelerates and communist revolution becomes increasingly necessary.

Los Angeles Comrade Teachers