March 4th: the Potential and Challenges of Building a Mass, Democratic Movement
In a major advance in the fight against the privatization of education, what began as a struggle centered mostly in the University of California system exploded on March 4th as a united fight-back of the entire education sector.
Students and education workers from all of the educational sectors across the state of California and in 33 other states mobilized massive, united protest actions on March 4th, including strikes, work stoppages, walk-outs, rallies, protests, sit-ins, open occupations, and even two freeway takeovers. Among others, there were massive rallies in Oakland (~2,000), San Francisco (~15,000), San Diego (~3,000) and Los Angeles (~3,500). Demands included ending layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts for workers; rescinding student fee hikes and cuts to classes and departments; and eliminating policies such as Arne Duncan’s Race To The Top that favor the formation and support of charter schools over public schools. Many linked the fight for public education to the economic crisis, the wars, and the growth of the prison industry with the slogan “Money for Jobs and Education! Not For War and Incarceration!”
Under pressure from rank-and-file workers, several unions across the state officially endorsed March 4th; yet these endorsements did not come without exposing the deep divisions between the rank-and-file workers and the union leadership. Indeed, the entrenched union leadership tried to channel protest efforts away from militant, collective direct action and towards visits to Congressmen, lobbying campaigns, legislative drives, and evening rallies after work hours, into the same demobilizing strategy of “Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote.” Similar efforts were led by some local school administrations and the most bureaucratic currents of the student government bodies. They fought to control the political content of the rallies as well, pushing for speakers from the union leadership and the Democratic Party, but these efforts were rejected by the mobilized students and worker activists.
The March 4th Strike and Day of Action was built from the ground up by students and rank-and-file workers from all of the educational sectors. The decision to build for a united strike and day of action came out of a conference organized at UC Berkeley last October, 2009 where 800 students and workers from across the state came together to build a united plan to fight the cuts. The conference also embodied in practice three basic political principles that have shaped and pushed forward the struggle: the unity of workers and students across all sectors, the mass democratic and independent character of the movement, and the need for militant direct action. The conference also established the March 4th Regional Committees — bodies created specifically to fight for and defend the conference principles; to offer a space to build city and regional unity, mobilization efforts, and spaces for democratic decision-making; and to coordinate mobilization efforts in each of the regions of the state.
The Second Statewide Conference: Continuing the Mobilization and Unification of our Movement & the Accomplishments of the Conference
Coming out of March 4th, the principle challenge facing the Education movement was that of organization, unification, and expansion of the struggle. Movement participants began immediately the work of convening a 2nd Statewide Mobilizing Conference to bring together the mobilized sectors in order to channel the statewide energy of March 4th and its participants into more qualitative steps and to move forward with a united plan of resistance.
The Conference, which took place on April 24th in Los Angeles, gave representatives from more than 30 schools across the state the opportunity to come together to assess the real state of mobilization and to discuss strategies and ideas for how to push forward the struggle. The Conference accomplished two major tasks designed to contribute to the continuity and expansion of the movement: participants discussed and voted on another Day of Action on October 7th, followed by a nationwide Conference on October 16th.
After significant debate on this point, the majority of the Conference participants voted to incorporate mobilization (through the day of action) and organization (through the next Conference) into one unified plan of struggle. This marked a huge step forward and a defeat of two different tendencies: (1) those who hoped to limit the outcome of the Conference to just calling for another Conference, and thus rejecting and undermining the legitimacy of a common plan of action, and (2) those who deny the need for organization of the struggle and thus only want to discuss plans of action.
The first tendency was composed of organizations and groups with more bureaucratic tendencies do not want to organize the movement through collective mobilized actions in every school; rather, they want to call for Conferences that are separate from the collective mobilization of the movement. The second tendency are narrowly focused on engaging in “direct action for the sake of action” without considering the necessity of giving mobilized students and workers a democratic space to discuss the means and goals of their movement and actions, to discuss openly their agreements and disagreements.
While these are key gains, the Conference at the same time could not overcome several definitive changes in the state of the movement in the period after March 4th. The first of these was the increasingly uneven development of struggle across the state in the absence of a statewide coordination for the movement. The second was the relative demobilization of the movement in the absence of a unified statewide strategy to push it forward. The third was the launching of serious campaigns of repression against the established movement strongholds – UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State – that helped to further polarize and fragment the movement.
The fourth factor, a reaction to the first, second and third factors, was the reluctance of much of the Left to decide together on a unifying plan of resistance. In the absence of the significant pressure to unite to fight back together (something that a large mobilized base and a continuing upsurge in the struggle would have produced), and with no perspective or proposal for how to revive or expand the struggle, much of the Left preferred to adopt a comfortable “wait-and-see” position or did not commit to carry out the collective decisions of the conference. As a result of these limitations, the conference participants were not able to have meaningful political discussions about the principles and structure of the movement, nor were they able to come to agreement on a unified set of demands.
This failure will have important repercussions specifically because this was one of the most essential tasks of the Conference – to provide a space for collective discussion and agreement on the demands, political orientation, and organization of the movement. It is this need that is most strongly felt by the rank-and-file workers, for whom the advancement of this fight is urgent. These points are critical for extending this fight back beyond the confines of education and into other sectors of the workforce.
Many individuals and organizations attempted to delay discussing these issues by debating the conference’s validity and value. But the movement must have demands, demands that reflect the real needs of the people and that target the structural issues at the heart of the problems we face in all public sectors, but that also resonate with the general consciousness or mood of the vast majority mobilized and yet-to-be mobilized students, workers, and community members. We must vote on a unified (and unifying) set of demands that can educate and mobilize all sectors for public education.
Our Proposal for Unifying Set of Demands
– No layoffs, no fee hikes – federally-funded expanded education and open admissions
For democratic control of the education and schools by students / faculty / support-staff / working class communities
– Jobs for all – restore and expand funding for vital public programs through ending wars and occupations abroad, the bail-outs of Wall Street, and the banks and increasing taxes on the rich
– Money for jobs and education, not for war and incarceration – dismantle the prison industrial complex
– Full citizenship rights and access to education for all immigrants and no ICE raids in our schools, communities, and workplaces
– Increased admissions for underrepresented communities
– An end to the repression and criminalization of our movement: Drop the charges against the students and workers and suspend the illegal Office of Student Conduct Hearings.
Source: La Voz de los Trabajadores n° 3
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