CHICAGO, December 4—“I attended high school here and the administration fired one of our favorite teachers so the student’s lead a protest in and outside of school to bring him back…that protest changed my life. I never had a voice before and after that protest I decided what I needed to do with my life and that is to use my voice to make change in the world that’s what brought me out to the picket line today to support the teachers.”
 This alumni Acero charter school student supported the first charter school strike in the country. Acero strike united students and parents on the picket lines for five of the unseasonal coldest days of the year. Parents and students brought coffee and doughnuts each day and joined the picket lines.
This student-parent-teacher unity is one of the pillars of an antiracist, communist culture. Progressive Labor Party supported the strike and brought the message of antiracism to the crowd. We fight for the idea that Acero schools’ working conditions are the 7,000 students’ learning conditions.
The education workers fought for pro-student and antiracist demands: smaller class sizes, meaningful sanctuary protections for the mostly immigrant students/ communities that Acero serves, and resources for students with language and special needs.
They also fought for better wages for the mainly Black and Latin paraprofessional and support staff workers. These workers have been deprived of salary increases since Acero unionized in May 2013. Teachers fought and won pay schedules that mirror the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). “Acero teachers earn, on average, $13,000 less than their peers in Chicago’s traditional public schools while also working around 20 percent more hours, the [CTU] union says” (NY Mag, 12/6).
Charter schools reinforce segregation and submission
This Acero win is only one part of a protracted fight that educators, students, parents, and the rest of the working class must unite around. Acero, like most charter schools, are organized to make money for wealthy backers and top administrators. However, that is not their main purpose. In addition to disciplining mainly Black and Latin students to take orders, the main purpose of charter schools is to divide our class. The bosses do this by dividing District teachers from Charter teachers; students from teachers; parents from teachers and students. Charter schools, because of their punitive discipline policies and their harsh rules they win teachers, students, and parents to a racist lie. Black and Latin youth are brainwashed into thinking that you’re weak if you can’t follow the rules or keep up with the piles of nightly homework. Many charters stress compliance among their primarily Black and Latin student body they service in working-class communities.
The growth of charter schools in Chicago, from 2005 to 2015, coincided with the destruction of public housing and the city’s loss of 250,000 Black people. Now the school district which was majority Black has shifted since 2010 to Latin students. Chicago district schools saw 83,000 fewer Black students in 2016 than it did in 2000, a loss of 36 percent (WBEZ).
In 2013, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed 50 schools in Black neighborhoods for “under-enrollment”. Many charter schools had opened in these same underpopulated neighborhoods, promising a better education but never delivering. In the early 2000s, when Chicago’s Latin population was growing, CPS made a decision to build new public schools rather than integrate Latin students into existing predominately Black schools. Later, the Acero charter network took advantage of Chicago’s growing Latin population by establishing 15 schools in Latin neighborhoods.
The only solution is communist revolution
Our job as communist is to win parents, students and teachers to see that all schools—charter, or otherwise—exist to educate our students for the ruling class. The U.S. is losing its hold as the number one imperialist in the world. That means world war is on the horizon, due to sharpening threats from rival imperialists in China and Russia. The same students that teachers like Acero’s fight for, will be cannon fodder for imperialist armies. The Progressive Labor Party, unlike other organizations involved in the Acero fight, consistently advocates for communist revolution as the solution to the horrors of capitalism. Struggles, such as the one waged by Acero workers, are important because of the lessons learned in the process.
Time and time again, when workers fight for better working and living conditions, we are given a few reforms and permission to vote for our next ruler. Workers keep voting, and Black and Latin working class communities still get attacked. Workers keep voting, yet the schools continue to be shut down. Immigrant workers still get deported and Black youth are still gunned down by kkkops. The countless politicians that played on workers’ cynicism to get votes are that many reasons why the ballot is a failed path to workers’ liberation.
Only overthrowing the racist, sexist and imperialist system called capitalism, and building a borderless communist world will ever give us the world the working class deserves. Join the international PLP to create a world where education is truly a right for the world’s workers!