Get Up Get Down! Oakland Is A Union Town — Mass March and Rally To Defend Public Education

Watching the excellent movie on the pending Oakland teachers' strike above, and now the probable beginning of the Los Angeles teachers' strike on Jan 14, 2019, I can only say the revolution has begun because it is labor and only labor that makes fundamental change.

So, now we have a Democratic Party mouthpiece, Huffington Post, telling the background story on the LA teachers strike, admitting to a split in the Democratic Party. Remember, no party can represent both capital and labor. From:

"Los Angeles Teachers Set to Begin Massive Strike on Monday" by Rebecca Klein, 1/11/19 at
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/los-angeles-teachers-strike-democratic-party_us_5c35005be4b0dbd066011983

“Los Angeles teachers are set to strike on Monday, a plan that will impact about a half million students in the nation’s second-largest school district. The move, which follows 20 months of failed negotiations, will involve more than 30,000 teachers at 900 schools.”

“In the background is tension over the expansion of charter schools and questions over who gets to control the direction of the district. Its 2017 school board election was the most expensive in U.S. history, with outside groups ― including unions ― spending nearly $15 million.”

“Los Angeles teacher Gillian Claycomb argues that even though the superintendent of schools, Austin Beutner, is a Democrat, his approach to education makes him “just as bad as [Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos and [President] Donald Trump. “He is a billionaire. He spends a lot of time with other billionaires and people with very deep pockets who are really invested in privatizing public education,” said Claycomb, a high school history teacher and a chapter leader with the local teachers union.”

“At the heart of the strike is the issue of resource distribution. The state of California spends comparatively little on education per pupil. While United Teachers Los Angeles points to $2 billion that the school district keeps in a reserve fund as a way to pay for changes, Beutner contends that the district needs to maintain that cushion.”

Democrat millionaire war criminal Obama staunchly supported charter schools:

“To the dismay of some progressive groups and politicians, President Barack Obama’s two secretaries of education, Arne Duncan and John King, championed the growth of charter schools. In 2017, the NAACP called for a moratorium on these schools ― a stance that complicated the idea that so-called school choice is a civil rights issue, as education reform groups often argue."

"Some groups like Democrats for Education Reform have pushed back against the portrayal of school choice as anything but liberal. The group only supports nonprofit public charter schools and is opposed to other forms of school choice, like voucher programs. “We’re very clear about the legacy in which we operate. We operate within the legacy of Barack Obama. His agenda is our agenda, and it’s an agenda that hundreds of Democrats across the country support,” Shavar Jeffries, leader of Democrats for Education Reform, told BuzzFeed in February 2018."

Liberation News tells the history of the billionaire Democrat Los Angeles Superintendent of Schools at:

“Solidarity With LA Teachers” by David Feldman, 1/8/19
https://www.liberationnews.org/solidarity-with-the-la-teachers-strike/
“Some 33,000 educators and members of the United Teachers of Los Angeles union, consisting of teachers, counselors, nurses, librarians and other school workers are set to take to the picket line to defend public education in Los Angeles against the privatization plans of LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner.”

“Beutner, a multimillionaire and former investment banker, got rich by breaking up and selling off corporations while laying off workers and wants to do the same to LAUSD. He worked in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and made huge profits selling off socialized property. Beutner has never worked in public education and was installed as LAUSD superintendent to privatize the school district in LA as what has happened in cities such as Detroit and New Orleans where there are now in essence no public schools.”

“It was recently leaked that Beutner has a plan to divide LAUSD into 32 smaller districts, a so called “portfolio” model, made up different privatization schemes. This tactic has been utilized in Newark, New Jersey, under the direction of Corey Booker, the former mayor of the city and current U.S. Senator for the state. Over a third of Newark public schools have been turned into charter schools.”

“The money is there. LAUSD has a $2 billion surplus which Beutner is refusing to spend. He is hoarding money to fund his privatization plans, but teachers and the majority of working class people stand in the way of Beutner and his billionaire supporters.”