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Oakland Teachers Will Lose
Oakland Teachers will loose unless.......they put money and benefits aside for the moment...and focus on the main need...to replace Ward with someone or group they can actually negotiate with
The Oakland Teachers are fighting a loosing battle. They are fighting an absolutely corrupt regime that will do anything to win. It is not just Randall Ward who is corrupt. It is the democratic political organization as well. The Don Peratas (absolutely corrupt), the Jerry Browns (absolutely corrupt), the Jack O’Connells (absolutely corrupt) and the Arnold Schwarzenaggers (absolutely corrupt.) There is an agenda that powerful financial and political interests have – and it appears to be the destruction of the public education system. The teacher’s have become a scapegoat in all of this. Did the teacher’s control the purse strings, set the budgets and administer the finances that got Oakland’s schools in trouble? No.
My question: How many democratic politicians in the East Bay or in the state are backing the teachers union in this struggle? How many have called for the removal of Randall Ward? Please answer that? There will be the answer.
From everything that Randall Ward has done, it would appear that he has no respect for the teachers and their union. A strike will be an opportunity for this dictator to display his power even more. Another opportunity to show the community and teachers how powerless they are against him and his powerful backers. This is not about cooperation, respect or the betterment of the schools or community. If it was, teachers might expect a reasonable, responsible approach that showed respect for all involved. That is not what is happening. This is about power.
To win, the unions and teachers need the support of others. Apparently, they will not get it from any established political group except maybe the Green Party. Will Ron Dellums do something for the teachers? He is a possible avenue for the union if it wants to breakdown some of the power structure. He may not. Where does he stand? What about Barbara Lee?
Forgetting the politicians, the teachers really need the community. They need the parents, students , former students, ministers and churches. The people on the street. The only way to win…..in a strike…is a strike not only by the teachers, but of the parents and the students…a strike…not for more money or benefits…but for a change in the control…..for the removal of the dictator and putting back in place an administrative structure from the community…..the locally elected school board. People who live in the community and respect the community. Not a power mad, megolamaniac forced upon the city and its schools. if the teachers can get the people behind them. If the parents and students refuse to cooperate with Ward and the state by taking their kids out of the schools for a period…then they can win. But you need places for the kids to go and the teachers to teach? Churches maybe?
The truth is the teachers will never win with Ward in place. That should be the main objective of a strike: to remove Ward. He has shown over and over again that he is not about respect or negotiation. He is about bullying and demeaning. He is about getting his way and it is a one way street with him. Only when you can negotiate with a group or person of reason who respects all sides can everyone win. The only objective of a strike must be: remove Ward, remove the state. Then you can negotiate.
My question: How many democratic politicians in the East Bay or in the state are backing the teachers union in this struggle? How many have called for the removal of Randall Ward? Please answer that? There will be the answer.
From everything that Randall Ward has done, it would appear that he has no respect for the teachers and their union. A strike will be an opportunity for this dictator to display his power even more. Another opportunity to show the community and teachers how powerless they are against him and his powerful backers. This is not about cooperation, respect or the betterment of the schools or community. If it was, teachers might expect a reasonable, responsible approach that showed respect for all involved. That is not what is happening. This is about power.
To win, the unions and teachers need the support of others. Apparently, they will not get it from any established political group except maybe the Green Party. Will Ron Dellums do something for the teachers? He is a possible avenue for the union if it wants to breakdown some of the power structure. He may not. Where does he stand? What about Barbara Lee?
Forgetting the politicians, the teachers really need the community. They need the parents, students , former students, ministers and churches. The people on the street. The only way to win…..in a strike…is a strike not only by the teachers, but of the parents and the students…a strike…not for more money or benefits…but for a change in the control…..for the removal of the dictator and putting back in place an administrative structure from the community…..the locally elected school board. People who live in the community and respect the community. Not a power mad, megolamaniac forced upon the city and its schools. if the teachers can get the people behind them. If the parents and students refuse to cooperate with Ward and the state by taking their kids out of the schools for a period…then they can win. But you need places for the kids to go and the teachers to teach? Churches maybe?
The truth is the teachers will never win with Ward in place. That should be the main objective of a strike: to remove Ward. He has shown over and over again that he is not about respect or negotiation. He is about bullying and demeaning. He is about getting his way and it is a one way street with him. Only when you can negotiate with a group or person of reason who respects all sides can everyone win. The only objective of a strike must be: remove Ward, remove the state. Then you can negotiate.
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1. The Oakland teacher's strike can be won. The Oakland Unified School District can be rapidly compelled to settle, and to the overwhelming advantage of striking teachers -- if this strike immediately leads to a city-wide school kids walkout.
2. The word for this should be spread by people who aren't strikers, and aren't employees of the school district.
This will prevent any individual strikers from being singled out and victimized later.
3. An action waged in this manner might result in some working people getting a better deal that we get when we play by the horseshit rules of trade unionism. It may also tend, in a very slight way, to politicize the strike and give it something of a more general character.
4. Now, I don't have any kids, and I don't exactly hang out with the under-18 set. So I have no idea of what the level of class consciousness is among kids these days. An appeal for a mass student walkout should certainly be phrased in terms of class solidarity. Most kids in public school are future or current wage slaves, and besides, in any case it's just the right thing to do.
But the real effective appeal of this might be a more amorphous anti-authoritarian one -- kids hate school; my guess is most do, at least. I did, back when I was a kid, (sometime way, way back, during the Coolidge administration, I believe.)
This also suggest another problem in communicating a message that resonates, which is that a lot of schoolkids may percieve of teachers as coercive authority figures.
So the appeal of this should be couched as a jumbo-sized holiday for school kids.
The resulting city-wide chaos, or, let's say, "adultist" fears of vast numbers of unruly young people flooding into Oakalnd's downtown and fucking up the city's bond rating, and the appeal of Oaktown condo living to yuppie gentrifiers might bring the OUSD back to the bargaining table on bended knee at speeds approaching that of light.
5. Calls for mass picketting as a fundamental element of a winning strategy for striking teachers might come from the right place emotionally -- but it isn't going to win this strike, or any other strike, either.
Only new tactics that jettison virtually the entire framework of the classical, social democratic workers' movement are going to be effective in the short term -- and more importantly in the long term .
1. The Oakland teacher's strike can be won. The Oakland Unified School District can be rapidly compelled to settle, and to the overwhelming advantage of striking teachers -- if this strike immediately leads to a city-wide school kids walkout.
2. The word for this should be spread by people who aren't strikers, and aren't employees of the school district.
This will prevent any individual strikers from being singled out and victimized later.
3. An action waged in this manner might result in some working people getting a better deal that we get when we play by the horseshit rules of trade unionism. It may also tend, in a very slight way, to politicize the strike and give it something of a more general character.
4. Now, I don't have any kids, and I don't exactly hang out with the under-18 set. So I have no idea of what the level of class consciousness is among kids these days. An appeal for a mass student walkout should certainly be phrased in terms of class solidarity. Most kids in public school are future or current wage slaves, and besides, in any case it's just the right thing to do.
But the real effective appeal of this might be a more amorphous anti-authoritarian one -- kids hate school; my guess is most do, at least. I did, back when I was a kid, (sometime way, way back, during the Coolidge administration, I believe.)
This also suggest another problem in communicating a message that resonates, which is that a lot of schoolkids may percieve of teachers as coercive authority figures.
So the appeal of this should be couched as a jumbo-sized holiday for school kids.
The resulting city-wide chaos, or, let's say, "adultist" fears of vast numbers of unruly young people flooding into Oakalnd's downtown and fucking up the city's bond rating, and the appeal of Oaktown condo living to yuppie gentrifiers might bring the OUSD back to the bargaining table on bended knee at speeds approaching that of light.
5. Calls for mass picketting as a fundamental element of a winning strategy for striking teachers might come from the right place emotionally -- but it isn't going to win this strike, or any other strike, either.
Only new tactics that jettison virtually the entire framework of the classical, social democratic workers' movement are going to be effective in the short term -- and more importantly in the long term .
The Oakland teachers can easily win. In the overwhelmingly workingclass community of Oakland, there will be practically no attendance at the schools and the handful of people willing to scab in Oakland will have mostly empty classrooms and unruly scenes in every school. It is routine in most teacher strikes where scabs are hired that the scabs provide no teaching but rather movies and the like. They are no better than substitutes, and usually worse because the school is practically shut down and there are practically no students. I hear the classified personnel are not crossing the picket lines, which means no garbage pickup, no sanitation, no fixing of anything broken. These are not tolerable working conditions for any money. In workingclass communities, there is always support for labor, and the hatred of the Oakland school administration is widespread in Oakland. We will see a complete shutdown of the Oakland school system. It is not the Democrat & Republican politicans and their lackeys like Randall Ward who call the shots; it is the workingclass. When the school system is closed, they lose.
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