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

by Labor Video Project
On January 12, 2019 thousands of teachers, students and staff marched and rallied in Oakland to defend public education. The Oakland Education Association contract has expired and they are discussing striking in February.
oea_defend_pub_ed_march_kids_1-12-19.jpg
A march and rally on January 12, 2019 of several thousand teachers, students, staff and supporters of public education rallied in Oakland on January 12, 2019. Keith Brown, the president of OEA spoke at the rally. The OEA has said that they will probably be going on strike in February.

Video by Gerard Ange
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pplDGhDQTSc

Additional media:

OEA Defend Public Education Rally Arnetta Olden Coliseum College Prep Academy Senior
https://youtu.be/ZdLz966wgM8

Oakland Public Education Rally & Andrew Knight Of Angry Tired Teachers Band Speaks Out
https://youtu.be/o6EIM7M-T1Q

SEIU1021 Oakland Schools Classified President Bettie Reed Smith On Charters and The Defense Of Public Education
https://youtu.be/KYvQoPqmcuo

At N. CA Defend Public Education Rally State Senator Nancy Skinner Interviewed
https://youtu.be/a0LiV4B4Jb0

KPFA WorkWeek Radio
workweek(at)kpfa.org

Production of Labor Video Project
http://www.laborvideo.org
§Angry Tired Teachers Performed At Rally
by Labor Video Project
knight_kong_andrew_angry_teachers_1-12-19.jpg
The Angry Tired Teachers band performed for the rally.
§We Need Arts and Culture Say Senior Anetta Olden
by Labor Video Project
olden_arnetta_coliseum_college_pres_academy_senior_1-12-19.jpg
Arnetta Olden, a senior at the Coliseum College Prep Academy said that all the arts programs have been eliminated and now the school district is threatening more cuts.
§Need For United Public Workers Fight
by Labor Video Project
oea_defend_public_education_all_public_workers_unite_1-12-19.jpg
Speaker discussed the need to unite all public workers. The UC AFSCME 3299 and CWA UPTE workers are also without contracts and should unite with the teachers in this fight.
§Fight For Schools
by Labor Video Project
oea_defend_public_ed_rally_fight_for_schools_1-12-19.jpg
On Monday January 14, 2018 33,000 Los Angeles UTLA teachers will be going on strike and the fight for education is becoming a major battle.
§NAACP Is Calling For Cap On Charters In California
by Labor Video Project
sm_naacp_support_charter_cap_on_charters.jpg
The NAACP has called for a cap on any further charters in California but the CTA and CFT continue to defend public funding for charters. They want to reform the California charter school law to make it more transparent and to enforce the Brown Act to make the charters more accountable.
§Defend Public Education March and Rally
by Labor Video
Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page:
(Video by Gerard Ange, 5:32)

A march and rally of several thousand teachers, students, staff and supporters of public education rallied in Oakland on January 12, 2019. Keith Brown, the president of OEA spoke at the rally. The OEA has said that they are likely to go on strike in February. There are more than 40 charter schools in Oakland which is siphoning off more than $50 million. The main focus of the rally was to reform proposition 13 to tax the corporations more fairly.
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by Solidarity Forever
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.”
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