An
Unhappy Anniversary as the Education Agenda Continues as a War Agenda
All
Out On October 7th! Real Hope vs Despair!
by Rich GibsonSubstance News October 2010
October 7th marks the
ninth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, a full blown hot war, a
“War on Terror”, rather than an attack on a crime mounted by a billionaire
irrationalist, Osama bin Laden, once a CIA favorite.
As the truth of the empire can
be found, internally, at work, and externally, at the ends of its tentacles,
let us look at highlights inside the US from coast to coast, and in the middle.
Then we can turn to the internal and external arts of resistance.
On the east coast, last weekend,
the AFL-CIO, a variety of liberal and self-proclaimed left sects held a pro-war
nationalist rally designed to:
*drive people into voting
booths where they are urged to choose who will oppress us best from the
executive committee and armed weapon of the rich: the corporate-state
government;
*to promote the newest
unionist rendition of “Buy American,” this time aimed at the Chinese. Flags
were draped everywhere as the United Auto Workers’ new King (Bob) shouted, “Are
you America?” The loud response: “Yes!.” We might remember the last time the UAW did this, young Vincent Chin,
about to be married and full of joy, was beaten to death with baseball bats on
the main street of Detroit, Woodward, by auto-workers who thought, wrongly,
that Chin was Japanese. US union tops often gain from racism;
*to create an illusion that
the union bosses and liberals have a base of conscious people who back them.
They don’t. Indeed, the last thing these Judas Goats want is a mass base of
class conscious people who recognize what is up (an international war of the
rich on the poor where the children of the poor fight and die on behalf of the
rich in their homelands) and what to do about that;
* to locate hope anywhere
but where it should be, with us, our united, wise, internationalist action to
control our communities and work places with direct action.
The AFL-CIO event couldn’t
be a demonstration, which might get out of hand. Instead, the union bosses
allowed many people to be bracketed in what amount to police pens, gates
surrounding them, keeping them from uniting with others and guaranteeing, again,
labor peace for the day.
Some leaders of the sects
and front groups, like the Communist Party and its failed United for Peace and
Justice, felt tricked. It was a decidedly pro-war rally led by people with a
long history of pro-war action. There was nearly no mention of the war, a
scenario carrying over from, for example, the school worker union conventions
where union heads fought anyone who connected capitalism, imperialism, class
war, and the education agenda. The only reference to the war was from Harry
Belefonte who was, overwhelmingly, ignored. Tricked? Who couldn’t foresee the
union chiefs and liberals lying? Once again we see the interaction of
sectarianism and opportunism: the sects have nearly nobody with them and those
who are, don’t know much.
It was, then, a counterfeit
rally thrown together by sham unionists and farcical reformers who have an
interest in gaining from class and empire wars. Interest? Take for example, the
$686,949 earned in 2008 by then National Education Association president Reg
Weaver. Good pay for mis-representing 3.5 people, many of whom live in
trailers. Both the NEA and AFL-CIO have been deeply involved in backing US wars
for decades, working with US intelligence agencies at the ends of the empires’
vicious tentacles, destroying indigenous workers’ movements on the belief that
American workers will do better if other workers do worse.
And, within the US, at work
where democracy is nullified in the private sector and nearly nil in the public
sector, we have witnessed the UAW’s King use both deception and violence to
hand more concessions to the bailed out, corporate state, auto chieftains while
union members earn one-half what they made just a year ago. In fact, the UAW is
nearly vanished, lost a million members, proved good only at fighting its own
members on the picket lines and in the shops, making concession after
concession when it is clear that concessions don’t save jobs–only make
bosses want more.
In the public sector, the school
worker unions not only made concessions but, with Quisling finesse, managed to
assist in the creation and advancement of the education agenda as a war agenda
with the Obama Race to the Top accelerating where Bush left off:
*regimented curricula
promoting nationalism, eradicating history;
*intensification of racist,
anti-working class high-stakes exams,
*militarization in poor and
working class areas,
*merit pay, elimination of
tenure, pay cuts, layoffs,
*some privatization met by
equally destructive corporate state schooling,
*a full scale
assault in colleges and universities on students, support workers, and
professors of all kinds.
Let us leave the fabricated
rally and turn our gaze to the Midwest, its most glaring manifestation of
capitalism in rapid decay where racism, alienation, poverty, corruption, and
sheer incompetence left the city and its schools reeling in despair.
In the last 18 months, the
Mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, was jailed for corruption as were several of his top
aides. So was city council person Monica Conyers, wife of Congressman John.
The head of the school board,
Otis Mathis, a functionally illiterate man elected by a board vote of 10-1 over
a University of Michigan grad, pled no contest to a charge of masturbating in
front of the female superintendent, repeatedly. Board member Reverend David
Murray (not a reverend, he changed his name to Reverend, who, incidentally, had
his six kids removed by protective services but was re-elected) said, "It happens to a lot of young men.
They engage in behavior they feel is harmless and it's offensive to certain
people... It could be deemed offensive, but some women are more sensitive to
those types of things than others...."I feel bad for him because he
probably felt that it was something she would probably like or she got humor
out of it."
Detroit schools “lost” more than
100,000 kids in the last decade. In that context, during a state takeover of
the school board, suburbanite board members set about building new schools and
refurbishing others. The upshot of that is that dozens of the new and rebuilt
schools sit empty, stripped by scrappers, while the current board pays more
than a million dollars a year to fence and guard them. The takeover board’s
promises of better schools for the city’s kids, about 90 percent of them black,
never materialized. They left a debt of about $200 million, though nobody can
trust any figures that come out of Detroit–not the student count, not
test scores, and not the balance on the books.
19 months ago, the school board
was effectively taken over by a Broad Foundation product, Bob Bobb who set
about rooting out small time crooks (and they are there by the dozens) while
fobbing off big contracts to friends and cronies. Bobb met resistance from what
has to be seen as a wacky school board and members of the By Any Means
Necessary (Bamn) group which also took on, fought from time to time, the
sellout leadership of the Detroit Federation of Teachers.
Not long ago, the DFT negotiated
what may be the worst school worker contract in US labor history. Union
officials successfully foisted a contract on the members that gave up $500 a
pay, massive health benefit give-backs–especially harmful to people with
kids—merit pay, the near abolition of tenure, promotion of Priority
Schools which get cleaned and supplied, distinct from Neighborhood Schools
which don’t; all on the promise of again, saving jobs.
BAMN organized serious
opposition to the contract, at one point winning more than a thousand educators
to sign a petition not only attacking the contract, but the DFT President,
Keith Johnson. BAMN members repeatedly disrupted DFT meetings. Johnson moved to
expel one BAMN leader from the union; actually began to hold a ludicrous trial.
Then, oddly, BAMN opposition
nearly evaporated. Johnson agreed to back a BAMN rally in Washington DC (the
busses broke down) and hired a BAMN attorney to do some legal work.
Quid pro quo? We can only hope
not. BAMN members now prepare an election campaign against Johnson but their
silence, for months, puzzles many, many, members.
In much of the mid-west, we see
the organized decay that is indicative of much of intellectual and practical
life in the US now. The alternatives are clear enough: community or barbarism.
Real community is for just a moment later.
Instead, let us look to the left
coast where, over the weekend of October 1st, some very serious
people gathered in San Diego County.
750,000 spectators and
participants cheered the Miramar Air show, complete with flyovers from the Blue
Angels, F-22s, F18s, Harrier jets, strategic bombers, and more. One of my
former students, a single mom, took her kids. She emailed me from the show.
Each year, she said, the producers create a “Wall of Fire,” from napalm. This
year, “the announcer went a bit overboard in describing how useful napalm is in
sticking to human flesh.”
Seven hundred and fifty thousand
men, women, and school children, cheered for that Wall of Napalm which I saw
explode in brilliant reds and yellows from my home 8 ½ miles to the
south.
Outside the US, the high-tech
war machine is fought to a standstill in both Iraq (where another Saddam is the
US’ best hope) and Afghanistan. There, people with Kalashnikovs have paralyzed
the vaunted US military, and its economic conscripts. But, over time, as
children of the poor kill other children of the poor, barbarism rises–now
in the form of murdering civilians, keeping body parts, making film of the
activity–a kind of death-cultism that is indicative of fascism. Today,
the choice is clear enough: communities of resistance, or barbarism.
Five years ago, in numerous
presentations, the historian and political scientist (and former CIA asset)
Chalmers Johnson called the US a fascist state. Surely, the population is being
prepared for that eventuality.
Now we have a photo of right,
left, and center in the USA. But it’s only a frozen picture of what should be a
moving film because, as we know, people will fight back, as they must fight
back to live.
At issue: can we make sense of
why we must resist, that is, class and imperialist war, or will we fight back a
few at a time, divided along lines like the fetishes of unionism that US unions
are, i.e., by job (teachers for teachers, support workers for support workers,
students for students), or by industry (auto workers for auto workers, steel
workers for steel workers, or the unemployed, left alone by the millions).
The core issue of our time is
the reality of the promise of perpetual war and booming inequality met by the
potential of the direct actions of masses of class-conscious people. Two
events, one ongoing and another in progress, are signals of hope.
The first, the library, “La
Casita,” occupation in Chicago. Substance coverage on the exemplary action is
familiar to readers. No need for repetition. As I write, the local warlords are
trying to freeze out the occupiers. A library action like this is near-perfect.
It is hard to launch an attack on people who want a library, harder still
because they are inside it, and are building it. I will only add that the
action, and Substance reporting, inspires people all over the country including
those I address now.
Last March 4, students
throughout the US, led by students in the elite University of California system
and the California State Universities, shut down their schools. They struck.
They occupied, demonstrated, seized freeways, taught in and out, held freedom
schools. Other students, school workers, and community people around the US
followed their example. In nearly every instance, the students rightly
connected this reality: the education agenda is a war agenda. It is a class war
agenda and an imperialist war agenda. \
March 4th was a
dramatic success, a real step forward in the development of rational resistance
in the US. The unions and sects, however, followed the path described in the
fake rally, above. The unions, both NEA and AFT, first tried to dismiss the
call for strikes and actions. Some went so far as to reserve campus space, then
deny it to student activists. Then the union tops tried to divert the movement,
wipe out any mention of class war or empires’s war. Later, when the movement
succeeded, they claimed credit for it–repugnant dishonesty at every turn.
In the weeks that followed what
became known as M4, meetings were held around California and the US, looking
for next steps. It was decided to call for October 7th as, again, a
Day of Action. Most people involved in those discussions knew the significance
of 10-7, the anniversary of the 2001 US invasion. Some did not. Once again, the
union chief and sects sought to feed on, and demolish, the movement, with only
marginal success.
In either case, the October 7th anniversary and the Call for Action is upon us. Students I know in Southern
California have worked tirelessly to spread the word, to build a base not only
for action, but reflective, conscious, knowledgeable action.
We can reclaim real hope from
false promises by organizing ourselves, our schools, and our communities in
accord with those student leaders who have grasped why things are as they are,
and are learning what to do about it.
“GENERAL, YOUR TANK IS A
POWERFUL VEHICLE
It smashes down forests and
crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.
General, your bomber is
powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and
carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.
General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.”
Brecht
References
On the US unions’ promotion of
war and empire, see Kim Scipes’ and Paul Buhles’ work on-line and Scipes’ very
fine, carefully referenced, book, just out, “The AFL-CIO’s Secret War.”
On the decline of the UAW, see
Gibson, The Torment and Demise of the United Auto Workers Union: http://clogic.eserver.org/2006/gibson.html
On the NEA conventions, the DFT
contract, and M4, a prediction about the AFL-CIO sham rally, see Gibson in
Substance online at: http://www.substancenews.net/authors.php?author=Rich+Gibson+
For Chalmers Johnson, see his
brilliant “Nemesis Trilogy” and the more recent, if disappointing, “Dissolving
the Empire.”
For Schooling and Unionism as
Commodity Fetishism, see Gibson pending at Cultural Logic online at: http://richgibson.com/EducationFetish.pdf
The poem is Brecht’s linked
here: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/from-a-german-war-primer/
Rich Gibson is an emeritus
professor of education at San Diego State University. Rgibson@pipeline.com
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