To the NPC of Democratic Socialists of America, the publishers of Democratic Left, and the Rutgers University community,

Central NJ DSA and North NJ DSA were alarmed to see that Democratic Left, a publication of the Democratic Socialists of America, recently published a piece by Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway, a man notorious for fighting against union demands.¹While this article has since been taken down and replaced, we are calling on Democratic Left to publish pieces by Rutgers educators and workers who are involved in its union contract campaigns. It is imperative that the DSA uplift the voices of working people, especially those challenging men like Holloway and the values they uphold. Going forward, it is vital that the NPC and Democratic Left do not undercut the labor and housing work of local chapters.

Central NJ and North NJ DSA are deeply involved in solidarity work with the Rutgers University unions, like AAUP-AFT, PTLFC-AAUP-AFT, BHSNJ-AAUP, URA-AFT, and other unions that represent the thousands of workers at Rutgers University that are working without a contract. Some of those workers are our own members. As an employer, Rutgers University has failed to bargain in good faith or offer dignified terms for the workers.

The decision to feature Holloway’s introduction to the 2023 edition of The Souls of Black Folk is a severe misjudgment on behalf of the editorial team at Democratic Left, in light of Holloway’s obstinate resistance to recognize the validity of union organizing and workers’ demands. As president of Rutgers, Holloway has been breaking the power of campus unions, even recently releasing a statement pitting workers against students and their families. He has been running the University for the benefit of predatory developers and business interests, without regard for the needs of the workers, students, or surrounding communities. None of these despicable actions are new – Holloway has established himself as an anti-union zealot as a dean at Yale, before his time at Rutgers, dragging with him a history of brutal and unnecessary layoffs.

Throughout the union contract campaign at Rutgers, our chapters have been striving, alongside the unions, to bring together faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members into a broad coalition against Holloway’s vision of a corporate university. Furthermore, we have united unions’ struggle with local tenant struggles, and built strong connections that we will leverage in our chapter’s long term work. President Holloway is a representative of the system we stand against. In direct opposition to the coalition-building work of our local chapters, we were shocked to learn that Democratic Left chose to publish an article written by Holloway and centering his views on socialism on the same day as the Rutgers’ unions rallied in Newark. This decision undermined the important solidarity and coalition work of our chapters. It is evident there was little research done into Holloway’s work before Democratic Left published this piece and the negligence to properly evaluate the credentials of a writer and historian shows a profound lack of coordination between National DSA and local chapters.

On February 28th, the faculty union held a rally in Newark to denounce the university administration for their greed and intransigence, to show unity among workers and the broader community, and to begin the union’s historic strike vote. It was a powerful event, the culmination of many months of enduring work, and DSA showed up in force to connect with fellow workers and offer our vision of a just and dignified society, a society in which educators and workers at Rutgers are compensated for their labor that sustains the university as a place for education and learning. Holloway’s vision, alongside others in his administration, is to find ways to pay workers as little as possible, all the while speaking about fairness in the most superficial terms.

President Holloway, who receives a salary of $1.2 million dollars, is hypocritical for reflecting on the legacy of socialist luminary W.E.B. DuBois while the workers he is responsible for negotiating with struggle to pay their bills.² In his 1918 article, “The Black Man and the Unions,” DuBois lauds the power of unionizing. “Collective bargaining has, undoubtedly, raised modern labor from something like chattel slavery to the threshold of industrial freedom, and in this advance of labor white and black have shared.”³

It was a mistake to invite Holloway to provide the introduction to The Souls of Black Folk because of his long history of failing to live up to the standards set forth by DuBois’ work and writings and by the other authors involved, who themselves represent a radical and more just vision of society. It bears reiterating that Holloway’s trail of destruction for everyday working people at the institutions he’s been part of extends far. Examples once more include Holloway’s disastrous tenure as Dean of Yale College during the 2017 hunger strikes of Yale graduate workers demanding better wages and working conditions, as Provost of Northwestern University amidst the 2019 “discussions” surrounding racist visiting lecturer Satoshi Kanazawa, and currently President of Rutgers during the Covid-19 pandemic when he laid off more than a thousand union workers as part of a broader “austerity” while him and others retained their own exorbitant salaries.⁴Resisting calls for divestment at Rutgers, Holloway has also strengthened institutional ties to Israel and the American military-industrial complex through a tech partnership with Tel Aviv University, opening the door to taxpayer funded weapons research.⁵ Holloway fails to achieve the wisdom and fraternity championed by DuBois. If he wants to live up to the socialist and anti-imperialist vision of DuBois, Holloway must settle a fair contract with the workers, and end the displacement and exploitation of the local communities.

For these reasons and more, we are reiterating our demand for President Holloway to quit pitting worker power against a prosperous Rutgers University and working class New Jerseyans and for Democratic Left, part of our own organization, DSA, to publish the insights and analysis of Rutgers workers.

In Solidarity,

Central New Jersey DSA
North New Jersey DSA

1. https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/another-black-history-month-ends-what-will-we-do/ 
2. https://www.nj.com/education/2020/01/12m-a-house-and-a-car-what-are-the-other-perks-the-new-rutgers-president-will-receive.html 
3. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-black-man-and-the-unions/ 
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/opinion/why-yale-graduate-students-are-on-a-hunger-strike.html, https://dailynorthwestern.com/2019/01/24/campus/holloway-defends-academic-freedom-saying-kanazawas-removal-would-make-matters-worse/, https://www.nj.com/opinion/2023/01/rutgers-prioritizes-union-busting-and-gaslighting-public-health-care-workers-opinion.html 
5. https://bdsmovement.net/news/academia-weapons-and-occupation-how-tel-aviv-university-serves-interests-israeli-military-and 

The post Joint Statement from Central NJ and North NJ DSA appeared first on Central NJ DSA.

Teachers and Community Defeat Stealth OUSD School Closure and Layoff Plan

By Michael Sebastian

On Tuesday February 28, with only 24 hours notice, OUSD board president Mike Hutchinson called a special meeting to consider resolutions relating to “Budget Adjustments” and a “Classified Employee Reduction in Work Force.” These resolutions, which Hutchinson negotiated in private with the district superintendent in the midst of teacher contract talks, would have cut 100 classified positions (translators, social workers, restorative justice counselors), enacted a district-wide hiring freeze, and merged ten schools in the district. Rapid-response organizing by Oakland teachers and the community helped defeat both resolutions, with candidates endorsed by the Oakland Education Association (OEA), Bachelor, Brouhard, and Williams, voting against. Board member Thompson joined Board President Hutchinson in the votes, while board member Davis abstained. 

Tuesday’s emergency meeting comes on the heels of the recent victory reversing planned school closures. Hutchinson had supported that earlier resolution, but angered many when he joined the superintendent in bringing forward the latest austerity proposal. At a time when OUSD has ample funding, the community loudly rejected the idea of cutting resources, schools, and jobs for the district instead of directing that funding to meet the needs of our students, as demanded by OEA.

OEA has presented the district with a list of common good demands to strengthen Oakland’s public schools and protect students as they bargain for a new contract. The resolutions presented on Tuesday are viewed as pitting teachers against other staff employees in order to unfairly strengthen the district’s hand at the bargaining table. “Tuesday’s proposal, cutting mainly from SEIU and AFSCME jobs within the district, was meant to create false antagonism between workers and weaken support for teachers and their demands,” said Lexi Ross, who co-chairs East Bay DSA’s OEA solidarity group. “OUSD has received $54 million in new state funding this year. Allocating that funding to fulfill teacher’s demands and cutting from the bloated administrative budget would eliminate any need for the cuts presented on Tuesday.” 

The magnitude of OUSD’s administrative expenditures has been a major point of contention. Comparing Oakland’s administrative budget to Santa Ana Unified, a district with 10,000 more students, Oakland spends $20 million more on administrative salaries. Instead of cutting needed jobs and resources from our schools, the district could “chop from the top”, cut the administrative bloat and be able to provide the common good demands that OEA is bargaining for.

At the meeting, community members voiced unanimous opposition to the cuts. Most public comments expressed dismay and exasperation that the district continues to fight to defund our schools when there are safety and resource issues district wide. Many mentioned the egregious amount that OUSD spends on administrative positions and its central office. Shane Ruiz, co-chair of East Bay DSA had this warning for board members voting in support of this budget at Tuesday’s meeting: “Networks are forming, people are watching, and come November people will be held accountable.”

The district’s efforts to pit educators against other essential school workers, and its claims that a long-deserved raise for teachers must come at the cost of layoffs, school closures or mergers may run afoul of state labor laws. Last year, OEA filed an unfair labor practice charge with the California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) when Budget and Finance Director Lisa Grant Dawson sent an email stating that the district would have to close and merge 12 schools to give teachers a raise. 

In a recent Oaklandside article, followed by a Facebook live stream, Mike Hutchinson stated: “Unfortunately for our budget, it’s a zero-sum game. In order for us to create resources to prioritize new and different things, we have to create those resources by making budget adjustments.” On his Facebook live stream Hutchinson also claimed that he was going to deliver an “historic” raise for teachers, but unless the budget with layoffs was approved the district wouldn’t have the money for those raises. Statements like these could set up an impasse similar to the unfair labor practice charge that OEA filed last year. 

The current round of contract negotiations have apparently stalled, with the district not meeting with OEA, the teachers’ union, since February 15, due to a lack of new proposals to bargain over. With little to show for months of negotiations with the district, OEA and its sister union, United Teachers of Los Angeles, are planning to walk out of “PD” or professional development sessions to attend simultaneous community rallies.

The community is invited to join educators at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater on Wednesday, March 15 from 2pm-6pm to demand that OUSD bargain in good faith.

Atlanta DSA and YDSA GT Call on Norfolk Southern to Fully Fund East Palestine Cleanup, Compensate Residents and Meet Railroad Workers’ Demands!

For centuries, railroad companies like Norfolk Southern have prioritized profits for the capitalist class over the health and safety of their workers and the general public. Railroad workers endure notoriously brutal workplace conditions, are often expected to work on-call around the clock, and frequently suffer fatal accidents due to overwork and exhaustion. Meanwhile, as profits for billionaire shareholders rise, companies like Norfolk Southern continue to lobby in favor of industry deregulation and cutting corners – resulting in the slashing of maintenance, staffing, and equipment inspections as average train sizes increase – proving they see railroad workers as expendable.

In response to this exploitation, a majority of railroad workers nationwide rose up this past fall to reject an inadequate union contract which excluded crucial demands like sick leave and an end to Precision Scheduled Railroading. While workers prepared to strike, U.S. government officials invoked the antiquated Railroad Labor Act (RLA) to deny over 100,000 railroad workers the right to strike and tyrannically impose the unacceptable contract. Atlanta DSA and YDSA GT stand in full solidarity with the railroad workers, who continue to fight for better working conditions and reject Congress’s blatant labor rights violations.

Decades of deregulation have culminated in the derailment of multiple trains over the last month – including the horrendous incident on February 3rd during which a Northfolk Southern 32N train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, leading to a fire and subsequent evacuation of thousands of residents. This derailment was neither an “accident” nor “unavoidable”, as the Northfolk Southern executives would have you believe. On the contrary, this violent wreck – which endangered working people, contaminated drinking water, and even led to mass death of local wildlife – was the direct result of capitalist deregulation, attacks on workers’ rights, and the valuation of profits over the environment and human life. 

Atlanta DSA and YDSA GT join Railroad Workers United in calling for the immediate action of regulatory agencies and Congress to rein in Class One railroad corporations and pass legislation to place railroads under public ownership.

Additionally, we demand the following of Norfolk Southern, which is headquartered in Atlanta: 

1. Fund a massive clean up effort in the area around East Palestine to ensure no further damage is done to human health and the surrounding environment and watershed. 
2. Fully compensate every resident of the East Palestine area harmed by the derailment.
3. End the harmful business model known as Precision Scheduled Railroading, and ensure sufficient staffing in all crafts, with all trains operating crews of two people minimum.
4. Implement adequate maintenance and inspections of locomotives and rail cars, tracks and signals, wayside detectors, and cap train length and weight at a reasonable level.
5. Concede to the demands of railroad workers – guaranteeing them training, sick leave, adequate time off work, and an end to draconian attendance policies.
6. Terminate all lobbying practices aimed at abolishing or blocking safety rules and regulations that will help make the railroad safer.
7. Divest from the Atlanta Police Foundation and withdraw all support from the Atlanta police facility known as Cop City.

Further, we call on the Georgia Institute of Technology to cut ties with Norfolk Southern and its Board of Directors until it meets the above demands and ceases its attack on workers’ rights, destruction of the environment, and violence towards working people.

Welcome back comrades! In this segment, Ralph & Nicole-Ann kick off a new season for Heart of a Heartless World, catching up after a long hiatus and giving a preview of what is to come this year. It's a good dose of solidarity, spirituality, and of course, socialism – all the things that give us a little hope for the world.

References

Statistics on Racial Disparities: Sentencing Project, The Vera Institute, MacArthur Foundation

U.S. Ranking in Incarceration Rates vs. The World: Prison Policy Initiative

Incarceration Rates in Colorado by Geography (heatmaps), including breakdowns by ZIP codes

The private contractor families blame for deaths in El Paso County CJC

Suicide and mental health disparities in El Paso County CJC

The complete list of CJC deaths in 2022

The growth of jails in the U.S. - and how they are harming our communities

A Reuter’s investigative report on deaths in jails nationwide

66% of the people who died in jails from 2009-2019 were awaiting trial - meaning they were never convicted of a crime

How for-profit “community corrections” facilities set parolees up for failure and contribute to high recidivism

Report on recidivism rates state-by-state

Out of Reach Colorado Housing Prices (report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition)

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in jails & prisons*

Mental illness in jails and prisons nationwide

The mental health impacts of incarceration

The Prison-Industrial Complex

#StopCopCity

*The original ACE study was racist. Check out this resource instead.

Police Brutality in Colorado Springs

De’Von Bailey murdered by CSPD after being stopped for a false report

Justice for Dalvin

CSPD murders a 63-year-old man having a mental health crisis

CSPD Excessive force against a 17-year-old girl

CSPD Excessive force and violent language against Colorado Springs Black Lives Matter protestors in summer 2020

Club Q

The Club Q shooter’s 2021 terrorism

How the D.A. and Judge failed to prevent the shooting at Club Q

Low enforcement of red flag laws in Colorado

Preliminary Hearings that presented evidence against Aldrich, including evidence that the shooting was bias-motivated

The Receipts

Reporting on CSPD’s infiltration and surveillance of leftist organizations in Southeast Colorado Springs

Reporting on attempts by CSPD and the FBI to entrap leftists

CSPD Body camera footage of cops discussing beating Colorado Springs Housing for All protestors

The Alphabet Boys podcast series on how the FBI planted a sex offender in the Denver BLM movement to surveil, incite violence, & entrap leftists (with an episode on surveillance and attempts at entrapment in Colorado Springs)

Community Alternatives to Public Safety

CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) is a Eugene, Oregon-based street clinic that intervenes in mental health crises without the presence of law enforcement. They receive funding as an alternative to policing and have saved the city millions of dollars.

STAR (Support Team Assisted Response) Program is a response program in Denver that sends trauma-informed behavioral health professionals to respond to community crises related to mental health, homelessness, substance use, and more without the assistance of police. They have reduced the number of arrests and improved community well-being since their beginnings in 2020.

Colorado HB17-1326 was a two-part bill that created parole reform by reducing the amount of time a person could be reincarcerated for a technical parole violation. The second part of the bill redirected $4 million in savings from the parole reform into a program called Transforming Safety , which provides grants to community organizations in North Aurora and Southeast Colorado Springs — two communities that are overpoliced and disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration — for creating crime prevention programs.

Work and Gain Education and Employment Skills (WAGEES) is a program to support people reentering society from incarceration by using Colorado Department of Corrections funds to allow community organizations to provide job skills training and assist with employment placement. This program has been so successful at reducing recidivism and helping people transition back into community that it has received increased funding and been set for renewal in legislative sunset reviews.

The Gathering Place in Denver provides free supportive, wrap-around services to women, children, and transgender people struggling with poverty in the Denver area. They provide housing assistance, food assistance, education and job training, healthcare, and mental health services.

Liberatory Harm Reduction is a philosophy that centers freedom of choice and treatment for those who use substances if they want it. Colorado has several harm reduction programs that offer clean syringes, overdose prevention education, and Narcan distribution to help people stay safer as opposed to using incarceration to punish substance use. However, many of these programs operate under a public health model rather than a liberatory model. Check out the link to learn more about the difference and why we need more programming that works under a liberatory harm reduction model.

One Million Experiments is a project that shares stories of community projects that redefine safety and explore alternatives to community-based public safety.

Interrupting Criminalization is a resource organization that provides a platform for programs and ideas around alternatives to policing and incarceration. They also coordinate between organizations to help build bigger campaigns for abolition work.

Do No Harm is a philosophy and guide for healthcare professionals to commit to serving clients while refusing to cooperate with the process of criminalizing and incarcerating them.

What is Transformative Justice?

Abolition Reading List

We Do This Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba

Abolition. Feminism. Now. by Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Beth Richie, and Erica Meiners

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

The End of Policing by Alex Vitale

Saving Our Own Lives: Liberatory Harm Reduction by Shira Hassan

Ready to join the fight against mass incarceration and police brutality? Join DSA!

You can also help support our work by donating to help us print more copies of our abolition zine! You can also share a downloadable version here.

On Feb. 21st Boston DSA emailed out the following call to action to Boston residents encouraging them to give public testimony on how the Mayor’s rent control proposal is in need of serious changes

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb. 22nd, at 10 am the Boston City Council will be hearing public comment on the Mayor’s proposed rent control legislation. Unfortunately, the proposal as is does not adequately protect tenants from increasing rents. It excludes many renters’ landlords and still allows for annual rent increases of 6 percentage points more than inflation (and rent increases of up to 10%). Most gravely, since the proposal lacks vacancy controls it may even incentivize evictions.

We are asking people to either submit written testimony or show up to give public comment tomorrow to point out to the Council that Boston deserves better. Boston is one of the most expensive cities to live in within the US; we need more affordable housing options.

To testify virtually on Zoom, email this address and ask for a link to give public comment: Christine.oDonnell@Boston.Gov. To submit written testimony, simply email your comments to this email: Ccc.Go@Boston.Gov. There is no deadline to submit written testimony.

If while drafting your testimony you’re looking for specific points to make on how Boston City Government could be ensuring people have affordable housing, here are some suggestions:

• First and foremost, the rent control proposal absolutely needs vacancy controls added in. Meaning, rent-increase caps must extend to both current and new tenants. Absent vacancy control, landlords will just have an extra incentive to evict renters and find higher-income tenants.

• The rent control proposal’s ‘just cause’ eviction protections have too many exemptions / potential loopholes to make up for the lack of vacancy controls. Most importantly, the vast majority of evictions in Boston are for non-payment of rent, which are not protected at all.

• The rent control proposal should limit increases to no higher than inflation in the given year.

• The rent control proposal excludes too many tenants. For example, it excludes buildings where the property owner lives there and there are also six or fewer dwelling units.

• The rent control proposal does not give due consideration to students who also suffer from their universities’ exorbitant housing costs.

• The rent control proposal should also include an overall rent cap, in an actual dollar amount.

Furthermore, we encourage folks to point out to the Council how rent control alone is not sufficient to end the exploitation of tenants by real-estate interests. More needs to be done to address the core problems the housing market generates.

• More municipal dollars should be committed to community-land trusts.

• We need more social housing and greater public funding for maintenance so as to have the upkeep residents deserve. Accordingly, the State Legislature must approve Boston’s request for a real estate transfer fee.

• The State Legislature must also pass legislation guaranteeing a universal right to free legal counsel in housing court for tenants.

Again, the public hearing is tomorrow at 10 am. And to testify virtually on Zoom, email this address and ask for a link to give public comment: Christine.oDonnell@Boston.Gov. To submit written testimony, send your comments to this email: Ccc.Go@Boston.Gov. 

P.S. We want to further acknowledge that housing justice isn’t simply attained with governmental policy changes, but through tenants collectively organizing and compelling real-estate interests to act. So, we encourage you to get in touch with the chapter’s Housing Working Group if you wish to plug in to that sort of organizing — simply email Housing@BostonDsa.Org and ask to join.

By Michael Sebastian

As the Oakland Education Association bargains a new contract, it has raised a comprehensive set of common good demands to help strengthen Oakland’s public schools and support students. OEA rallied hundreds of teachers and community members in support of these demands at the February 8 school board meeting. 

At the rally outside La Escuelita elementary school ahead of the board meeting, participants heard speeches from OEA teachers and parent leader Pecolia Manigo, who fired up the crowd with chants of “Who’s schools? Our schools!” Manigo, a leader of the Bay Area Parent Leadership Action Network (PLAN) and recent candidate for school board, said “we can get this confused, that this is just about a contract. The contract is a representation of what we want in our schools.”

As the school board meeting opened to the public, hundreds flowed into the gymnasium where the meeting was held. Ismael Armendariz’s suggestion to “cut pork at the top” sparked chants of “chop from the top,” referencing the top-heavy finances of the district’s budget, where the superintendent makes $294,000 and other administrators pull in large salaries which divert money away from schools, teachers, and children. As OEA observed in a pamphlet in 2019: “OUSD is ‘broke’ on purpose so billionaire influencers can make financial arguments for closing neighborhood schools, refusing living wages for teachers, and denying students the support they need in order to learn and grow.” The chronic lack of resources has less to do with funding and more to do with who will foot the bill. The budget will either be balanced on the backs of black and brown students, as Armendariz said in the gymnasium, or the district will need to “chop from the top”.

As the meeting continued and the floor opened for public comment, attendees spoke about the dangerous consequences of chronically underfunded schools. One teacher spoke via Zoom about finding guns in school lockers, and a student report back showed that roughly half of high school students in OUSD don’t feel safe at the school that they attend. These problems arise because schools are understaffed, which is why OEA is calling for smaller class sizes, more nurses, counselors, psychologists and school librarians. Reinvesting in our schools and fully staffing them is the only way to create safe and productive learning environments for children.

Part of the reason that Oakland schools are so understaffed is that teachers in Oakland are substantially underpaid. Oakland is one of the most expensive cities to live in the state, and one of the lowest paid for teachers in Alameda county. “Living wages continue to be an issue in Oakland,” said OEA president Keith Brown in Edsource. “An experienced teacher can move to Hayward Unified and make $28,000 more overnight.” This results in high turnover, with one in four teachers leaving the district each year. In order to increase teacher retention rates, provide quality teachers for students, and maintain a stable learning environment in public schools, Oakland Unified will need to increase salaries so that teachers don’t leave the district or change careers to meet cost of living in the Bay Area.

Finally, OEA wants to reinvest in the Community School model, which has received over $4 billion in new state funding over the past two years. Engaging parents and communities so that schools become places where neighborhoods can flourish, community schools will provide needed resources for families, organizing in and out of school to make sure that students can thrive. This will help the district fulfill another one of OEA’s common good demands, a Reparations 4 Black Students resolution which aims to eliminate the black student opportunity gap in literacy and educational outcomes, and provide resources for black families who predominantly live in the city’s most disadvantaged communities.  

Combining the teachers’ requests for living wages and better working conditions with resources that will help Oakland children thrive, OEA is mindful that without the support of the community most of their demands will go unmet. The fight for better teacher wages, better working conditions, and better schools for children are completely intertwined. This is why the union fought so hard to save Oakland schools from closure, culminating in the 4-3 vote in January to overturn last year’s decision to close five elementary schools. This is also why it continues to fight to hold on to these victories and set the stage for more gains for our schools, children, and communities in the future.

Join teachers at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater on Wed, March 15 at 2pm to demand that OUSD bargain in good faith.

Michael Sebastian is a member of the steering committee of East Bay DSA.

By: The People’s Transit Alliance

5 minute read

tw: racism, sexual assault

This past Saturday, Feb. 4th, 2023, was Transit Equity Day, “a collaborative effort of several organizations and unions to promote public transit as a civil right and a strategy to combat climate change…” organized by Labor 4 Sustainability. 

For Transit Equity Day 2023, the People’s Transit Alliance held a canvass of transit riders in Downtown Berkeley to discuss what improvements could be made to the bus system, the planned service redesign, and the importance of transit workers and riders building power together.

Labor 4 Sustainability chose Feb. 4th, Rosa Parks’ birthday, in order to honor her legacy as a civil rights icon, and her courageous action taken on a segregated bus on December 1, 1955. Those of us raised in the United States know the story of Rosa Parks, and her refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger.

What is less well known is her long history as an organizer for the NAACP, her radical politics, and her lifelong commitment to fighting white supremacy in the United States. 

The People’s Transit Alliance wishes to share this neglected side of Rosa Parks’ story. As we organize in her name, we must disrupt the whitewashed version of her life that is taught in schools, and used by politicians and corporations to maintain the very systems of oppression that she spent her life fighting against.

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She grew up with her maternal grandparents and mother. Her grandfather was a follower of Marcus Garvey, and taught young Parks the importance of self-defense, sitting on his porch with a shotgun when the Ku Klux Klan came into town.

She was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church for her entire life, where she learned a “theology of liberation that affirmed the equality of all people, laid forth a Christian responsibility to act and provided sustenance to struggle against injustice.”

Mrs. Parks first met her husband, Raymond Parks, while he worked as an organizer on the Scottsboro Boys case. Mr. Parks was a committed activist and revolutionary, who often had to hold secret meetings and avoid police, who were seeking to harass and arrest him for his activism. He and Mrs. Parks attended Communist Party meetings, and worked with other important socialist and communist organizers in the Deep South.

Mrs. Parks began working with the Montgomery NAACP in 1943, where she would soon meet E.D. Nixon. Nixon, Parks, and a small group of activists at the NAACP would lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement in the decade leading up to the bus boycott. 

Parks worked as the secretary of both the Montgomery and Alabama State chapters of the NAACP, seeking justice for black women who had been raped by white men, and black men who had been wrongly accused of sexually assaulting white women.

She and Nixon represented a working class presence at the NAACP, which was often dominated by more affluent members of the black community. When the national NAACP directed local chapters to expel members with socialist or communist tendencies, Parks spoke out against the purge. The Montgomery chapter refused to carry out the resolution.

On December 1, 1955, when Mrs. Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus, she was not the first to do so. Claudette Colvin, who was 15 years old at the time of her arrest, had refused to give up their seat months before Parks, as had others.

In fact, it was a case against Colvin, not Parks, that was brought before the Supreme Court and led to the decision that bus segregation was illegal.

Parks’ decision to remain in her seat was not wholly spontaneous, but a result of her growing frustration with the lack of success that negotiating with the city government had produced, as well as an intimate understanding of the consequences of taking such an action.

Often, Parks’ role in the boycott is diminished. Rather, it is seen as the moment where Martin Luther King Jr. achieved national prominence. However, this version of events ignores Parks’ work as a carpool operator, and a key member of the inner circle of organizers at the Montgomery NAACP.

Eventually, due to death threats, red baiting, an inability to find work in Montgomery, and disagreements over the direction of the Civil Rights movement, Mrs. Parks and her husband were forced to move to Detroit.

In Detroit, Mrs. Parks worked tirelessly as an organizer, particularly focused on freeing political prisoners, expanding access to reproductive rights, defending the rights of women prisoners, and defending black women who had been sexually assaulted. She was a primary organizer of the Joann Little Defense Committee.

Rosa Parks’ politics were truly radical, and clearly opposed to the goals and actions of the powerful politicians who claim to honor her legacy today. She called Malcolm X her personal political hero, and believed in the power of organized nonviolent direct action and the moral right to self-defense.

In 1973, she wrote a letter that included the statement, “The attempt to solve our racial problems nonviolently was discredited in the eyes of many by the hard core segregationists who met peaceful demonstrations with countless acts of violence and bloodshed. Time is running out for a peaceful solution. It may even be too late to save our society from total destruction.”

She was a committed supporter of the Black Power movement, showing up to support radical organizations such as The Black Panthers and working alongside the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and Republic of New Afrika in the wake of the 1967 Detroit Riots.

She was also an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa, and the march towards war in the aftermath of 9/11.

To recount the entirety of her activism, organizing, and incredible life is beyond the scope of this article. Rather, our goal with this piece is to shed light on an important piece of history that is often ignored, in favor of a quiet, modest Rosa Parks.

Organizing around public transit was not her primary political project but rather one part of a broader struggle against white supremacy, patriarchy, and imperialism. On this Transit Equity Day and beyond, The People’s Transit Alliance seeks to carry Parks’ radical history into the present and imagine organizing for a better transit system as one part of a broader struggle.

When we organize transit workers and riders, we build power at a key political and economic intersection in the East Bay. We reconnect organized labor with a radical political project, and develop concrete strategies to improve the working conditions of those that operate the transit system, which in turn improves riding conditions.

Public transit serves the East Bay’s multiracial working class. It ensures that workers can get to their jobs, the grocery store, doctor’s appointments, places of worship, friends and family, and access all parts of the city.

Improving public transit alleviates the economic burden of maintaining a car, lowers the carbon emissions that deepen the climate crisis and pollute the air we breathe, improves mobility for disabled people, and provides critical access to the working poor of the East Bay.

Transit organizing is a key priority in the fight against white supremacy, the climate crisis, patriarchy, and liberation of the working class. To honor Rosa Parks on Transit Equity Day, we must remember that we are still fighting the same systems of oppression she began fighting more than 80 years ago.

Solidarity forever!

Note: For further reading about the incredible contributions of Rosa Parks to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond, please visit these links:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/01/how-history-got-the-rosa-parks-story-wrong/

https://archive.org/details/rebelliouslifeof0000theo_i7s2/page/n24/mode/1up?view=theater

The People’s Transit Alliance is a project of East Bay DSA, organizing for an equitable, democratically controlled transit system that serves the multiracial working class of the East Bay and beyond.

January 17, 2023

The Charlotte Metro Democratic Socialists of America steering committee calls on the CATS bus system contractor RATP DEV USA to accept CATS workers’ collective bargaining demands.

Over the last few months of negotiation, CATS’s contractor has been trying to push a raw deal on bus operators. The company is threatening to cut pensions, remove dependents from their health insurance coverage, and ignore bus operator’s safety concerns. After years of pandemic and inflation it’s unconscionable that an employer would threaten to stop covering medical expenses for loved ones, and pretend a raise below inflation would make up for this. 

The bus operators have voted 254-14 to strike, which may begin as early as February 6th if the company continues to ignore their workers’ concerns. This strike will undeniably inconvenience many people who depend on public transit. We are disappointed that CATS and many local media sources have framed this as the fault of the workers. The workers are going on strike to defend the benefits they currently have and win the dignity we all deserve. It’s the company’s  focus on profits over their workers that is threatening to hurt riders.
As climate change increasingly threatens society, we need to do everything we can to cut back on emissions. This includes investing in our public transportation and the workers who operate it. If we let our city and its contractor keep mistreating the workers and families that keep the buses running, we’re going to struggle to find enough workers to keep up with the transit expansions we’ll need to avoid the worst of climate change.

We stand with our bus operators and their authorization to strike. A win for them is a win for all of us. It’s a win for public transportation, a win against climate change, and most importantly, a win against capitalist exploitation.

Solidarity Forever!

Charlotte Metro Democratic Socialists of America Steering Committee

By Michael Sebastian

Parker students marched with teachers and DSA members to Markham Elementary School last year to protest the closure of their school. (Photo: Stephanie Hung)

On January 11, Oakland’s educators and the community scored a signal victory in their years-long fight to end the closure and privatization of public schools. Within days of being seated on the school board, two new members endorsed by the Oakland Education Association, Valarie Bachelor and Jennifer Brouhard, joined a 4-3 majority to overturn last year’s school closure plan.

The closures faced mass opposition from parents, teachers and students, prompting protests and packed town halls. More than 2,000 attended last year’s virtual school board meeting on February 9, when the board voted to approve the closures. Public comments were unanimously opposed, arguing that the closures fell disproportionately on low-income, majority-black districts in Oakland, and were not needed in the face of a record budget surplus in California and a district superintendent with a base salary of $294,000. “OUSD has had a pattern of targeting schools with black and brown students populations for closures, effectively balancing the budget on the backs of our most marginalized students,” said Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, an Oakland teacher and OEA vice-president. “It has caused generations of harm.” The vote by the previous school board further eroded trust in a board seen as dominated by charter-school interests, setting the stage for the replacement of several board members in the 2022 elections.

This month’s vote reversing the closure plan saves five elementary schools that were slated to close this year: Brookfield, Carl B. Munck, Grass Valley, Horace Mann, and Korematsu Discovery Academy. In addition, the middle school grades at Hillcrest K8 will be preserved. The vote does not undo last year’s closure of Parker and Community Day elementary, and La Escuelita’s middle school. 

Manufactured Crises Pave the Way for Charters

Despite California’s chronic underfunding of public education, the debt piled onto OUSD when the state put it in receivership in 2003, and chronic deficits since then, the closure of public schools is not the only solution to fiscal woes. The crux of the problem is that the district is spending the money it does have on the wrong things: too many administrators and consultants who are not supporting teachers and students. As Majority observed in 2019, “OUSD spends $30 million more on its central office than other comparable school districts in California. In the 2014-15 school year, if OUSD had reduced its central office spending to the comparison group average, it could have freed up $14 million.”

In fact, closing schools is a false solution. Districts receive per-pupil state funding for the number of students attending, so the more students that the district cedes to private and charter schools, the less money it receives for public schools. By closing public schools, the district only encourages parents to seek alternatives since their child’s own school could be next on the chopping block. Oakland has become a “charter boomtown” according to one KQED report, and in the decade after 2000 the number of charters “more than tripled”. But charters have the option of picking children that do better in school and have less need for support. This leaves public schools in a self-perpetuating cycle, with more high-needs students and fewer resources to support them. Schools then have to cut back on materials and extracurricular activities, which further incentivizes families to leave.

OEA Fights Back

The Oakland Education Association, the union representing Oakland’s public school teachers, made its opposition to school closures a centerpiece of its seven-day strike in 2019. “For decades a grassroots movement in Oakland has fought against the forces of privatization for equity, local control, and well resourced neighborhood public schools,” said OEA president Keith Brown. “The power of this collective effort grew when community and labor joined OEA in our 2019 strike.” 

Brown noted that the strike “brought many improvements for students and re-energized our fight for education justice in Oakland.”  Among those improvements was a brief moratorium on school closures and charter school expansion, and a contract provision that required the district to give OEA and the community a year’s advance notice of its plans to shutter more schools to allow for full community engagement before a decision is made.

Last February, when the district violated that provision, the struggle continued to grow. Teachers and the community organized a week of action against school closures in February, including a mass rally and march, as two teachers at Westlake middle school held a hunger strike. 

These actions culminated in a one-day unfair labor practice strike on April 29 by OEA teachers protesting the district’s breach of the notice provision in their contract. 

Then, as Election Day approached, the California Department of Justice opened up a probe into Oakland’s school closures for potential violation of student’s civil rights, driven in part by a complaint filed by OEA. 

Winning Change at the Ballot Box and in the Bargaining Campaign

But the union’s efforts to protect Oakland’s public schools didn’t stop there. After a disappointing meeting in June in which the school board failed to reverse its decision, organizing efforts shifted to the school board election in November. 

OEA endorsed three candidates, Jennifer Brouhard, Valarie Bachelor, and Pecolia Manigo, who ran on a platform that included reversing the closures. Brouhard and Bachelor won their elections, shifting the balance of power on the board and culminating in this month’s 4-3 vote to reverse the closures. At the emergency board meeting, Bachelor called on “every single board member sitting here today to approve this resolution to make sure that we stop the harm that we’ve already caused our families and make sure that we support these school sites moving forward.” She noted that, “as a Parker Elementary School community member, I saw the devastating impact of the school closures on our community and I don’t want that to happen across the city, especially in East Oakland.”

OEA president Brown credits the reversal of the school-closure decision to “the people power of Oakland,” and he sees the fight of students, families, workers and community for “for equity, local control, and increased resources prioritizing students and families” continuing to grow. “The fight continues this spring as Oakland educators organize to win a contract that addresses the crisis in educator salaries and supports schools that are safe, stable, and racially just.”

As it begins bargaining over a new contract, OEA has put forward a “Common Good” proposal to diversify the curriculum, address racial disparities, and protect our public schools from closure. This plan calls for reinvestment in the Community School model, which has been shown to be a successful alternative to school closures, and received over $4 billion in new state funding over the past two years. The OEA bargaining proposal also outlines a set of guidelines to reallocate resources, consult with the community, and do a thorough analysis before any school closure takes place. Charter schools that do not meet AB1505 regulations would also be returned to OUSD. 

“This victory has been a long journey!,” reflected OEA second vice president Taiz-Rancifer. “Today we need to remember there is not one sole hero in this story. We need to acknowledge all the work done by so many advocates, organizers, parents, educators, and students who have put their hearts on the line and helped us get to this point. Today, we must remember harm caused to many families, school staff, and educators that have been affected by closures. Now and in the future we must stay vigilant because this is a victory in a larger fight against privatization in Oakland.”

Michael Sebastian is a member of the steering committee of East Bay DSA.