Francis lewis High School Chapter Leader Arthur Goldstein has written another great piece on school closings at Gotham Schools.org.
You can also see video of five of my colleagues at Gothamschools.org
We hope to see everyone at the PEP meeting at Brooklyn Tech tomorrow. It's going to be a long day and evening.
3 comments:
Yes, he did it again, and for what?
Who listens to him, or you, or Mulgrew, or ICE, or Unity, or parents, or teachers, or anyone?
Not Mayor Bloomberg, the only person who gets to make decisions in New York City.
http://www.edwize.org/a-powerful-and-obnoxious-odor-of-mendacity/comment-page-1#comment-66791
If possible please delete the above comment I posted and this paragraph, for the link is relevant but not particularly interesting. Pasting it here was an error on my part. Below is the comment I intended to post, which I did coincidentally cross-post to the link above.
19 schools were slated to be closed last night. The scumbags on the PEP passed the motions. As many speakers pointed out last night, the PEP has no authority to do this. We the workers, students, and teachers have the power to stop this. Last night not one person spoke in favor of a single school closing — not even from the panel which approved 19 of them. There is a unanimous consensus that these cuts are racist, classist attacks and must be stopped.
Now is the crucial moment. The sham PEP has been fully exposed. We must take matters into our own hands. We must walkout, occupy and strike to stop ALL school closings, layoffs, fare hikes, Metrocard cuts — all attacks on students, workers and the oppressed.
The UFT leaders must be exposed for their treachery. After weeks of demonstrations called by grassroots coalitions fed up with the UFT rubber stamping Bloomberg’s policies, the UFT leaders were forced to mobilize some rather small portions of their membership for the demonstration and meeting last night. This is not enough. The UFT, together with students and parents, has the power to shut the entire city down. Instead, union leaders share stages with politicians who pay lip service but scramble to keep us from mobilizing. The union leaders try to give us chances to symbolically display our anger without making a real fight or winning real change.
We cannot accept this intolerable situation. Thousands of teachers are facing layoffs, thousands of Black and Latino students are being displaced from their schools, and 500,000 students with free/reduced-cost Metrocards will lose these by September. Just like the UFT refuses to mobilize its teachers for a strike or actions to stop the closings, TWU100 refuses to mobilize transit workers against the MTA’s attacks on working class students.
Those of us who see and expose these betrayals must come together in common action. We must fight together so strongly that the union leaders have no choice but to support us or be sidelined entirely.
Now that the PEP has voted, we must immediately begin preparations for escalated and continued struggle, while realizing that many of our so-called “leaders” will be ready to drop the struggle and accept the PEP’s many-year plan to attack, underfund and close public schools.
Sending a message is not enough. We must make the change we seek. NOW we must immediately fight together on these grounds:
SUPPORT MARCH 4TH ACTIONS TO DEFEND EDUCATION!
OCCUPY CLOSING SCHOOLS AND KEEP THEM OPEN!
USE AN OCCUPIED SCHOOL TO BUILD A GENERAL ASSEMBLY FOR A REAL STRUGGLE AGAINST ALL ATTACKS ON EDUCATION!
STUDENTS AND WORKERS, BUILD A GENERAL STRIKE!
UFT MEMBERS, STAND TOGETHER AND FIGHT DESPITE THE TREACHERY OF THE BUREAUCRATS!
BEWARE OF ALL THOSE, EVEN IN OUR OWN RANKS, WHO STAND IN THE WAY OF THE MILITANT BATTLES NEEDED TO DEFEND OURSELVES FROM THE CAPITALIST ATTACKS!
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