2010: The Year We Lose Contracts

An open letter from the Chicago MWM Committee.

Congratulations to the Chicago Teachers' Union and the Chicagoans United for Education for your mobilization here today! Every fight in the struggle for the working-class agenda is important, but the fight for public education is one of the most important. Our public education system is fighting the burden of “leaving no child behind” with inadequate funding, unequal distribution, and facilities suffering from years of systemic neglect. Now to “solve” the education problem, the CPS proposes to take education out of the public sector with Renaissance 2010.

Privatization is no renaissance. Taking the education of Chicago's children out of the hands of experienced educators and placing it into the hands of private corporations will not lead to a rebirth of learning and critical thinking in Chicago. It will lead instead to a loss of accountability to parents, local school councils, unions, and the community. Our schools will become accountable only to corporate interests, political maneuvering, and underfunded national mandates.

The Daley administration is betraying the social good, finding yet another way to hand out our public institutions to capitalist interests for a small slice of the profits. The public no longer owns the Skyway, maybe next the schools, where will they go after that? It is part of a national trend of privatization for profit of anything the corporations can get their hands on. And who are the ones being sold-out by this plan? Our hard-working teachers and substitutes, staff, cafeteria workers, custodians, and every other worker in the CPS system. The mostly African-American and Latino children and parents of Chicago's working class. And every single taxpayer whose public education taxes will no longer stay in the public sector, but will end up instead in the pockets of greedy corporate CEO “school administrators.”

When we organized for the Million Worker March last October 17 in Washington D.C., we envisioned a larger working-class struggle, a movement for all working people who believe that we need more funding for our public schools, not programs like privatization and vouchers to take money away from them. A movement for everyone who sees the need for universal health care for every American with universal access to the best quality care regardless of income level. A movement to oppose the corporate-imperial war in Iraq, the siphoning off of money from social services to pay for that war, and militarization on every level, especially when it becomes, as it has at Senn and other schools, an issue of turning our public education into facilities for recruiting and training the youth of the working class to fight imperial wars.

The enemies of public education do not have to win. Today's turnout shows the growing awareness of the threat. Last month, Senn H.S. students, parents and community supporters were so strong that they drove the Navy propagandists out of the building! We believe that such informed resistance can continue to prevail if this movement joins hands with the antiwar movement, and with all those needing national health care, and struggling for living wage jobs. We urge you to join us and working people across the country, to help build a national movement to address a broad working-class agenda, for the workers and by the workers, for all of our futures. Our next meeting will be on Saturday, November 20 at 10:00 AM, location to be announced, in order to discuss the organization of our committee as it continues to grow beyond the original core. For more information, such as the meeting location, contact us:

website: millionworkermarch.org
email: chicagoworkermarch (at) yahoo.com tel: 773.913.6539 fax: 773.409.5349

or join our listserv and take part in the active discussion: chicagoworkermarch-subscribe (at) yahoogroups.com

In Solidarity,

The Chicago Million Worker March Committee