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A Rouge Forum Broadside
Detroit Teachers Vote to Strike
Shut Down the Schools-and the Casino-Spread the Strike!
by Rich Gibson, Wayne State University
August 31, 1999
Around 2000 of the 3000 teachers attending a meeting of the Detroit Federation of
Teachers voted to strike on August 30, 1999. There are 11,500 teachers in the school
system. A huge "School Opening Rally" scheduled for Tuesday, was cancelled. The strike
vote flies in the face of a harsh state law, untested to date, that levies steep fines
against striking teachers and their union. The strike vote also shatters the
appearance of school reform in the city, a project which has spent about 100 million
dollars refurbishing decrepit schools this summer, a reform directed by seven member
school board appointed by the Governor and Detroit's Mayor. The board seized the
city's schools which serve about 180,000 children in 1999. The elected school board
was abolished. The new board is primarily made up of representatives of industry,
banks, and casinos, none of whom has experience as a school worker, the majority of
whom does not live in Detroit.
Significantly, the strike vote also is a clear rejection of the Detroit Federation of
Teachers (DFT) leadership which asked the membership to approve a ten-day extension of
the contract, promising that the leaders had achieved success on many key issues. In
fact, the DFT sent out a press release the evening before the vote which said the
members had voted to return to work. The repudiation of the leadership by the rank and
file, by at least a two-to-one margin, continues a trend inside teacher unions which
reached a high mark in 1998, when the membership of the National Education
Association, with more than two million members, by far that largest union in the
U.S., defeated by a 60-40% vote a leadership proposal to merge with the smaller,
urban-based AFT-and to virtually adopt the AFT's undemocratic structure.
The union members met on August 30 at Cobo Hall, a huge convention center downtown.
The rank and file members had heard radio reports the night before indicating that
John Elliot, president of the DFT for 18 years, had already agreed to a ten-day
contract extension. Elliot did nothing to allay that concern. Instead, Elliot began
the meeting by introducing a lawyer who started to outline the many sanctions
government could levy against the union and educators in the case of a strike. Early
on, teachers began to shout at her. She said, "And I thought teachers were supposed to
be models of being polite!" They booed. Elliot intervened on her behalf, "I can see
why many of you have discipline problems in your classrooms. You behave like your
kids." This set off new rounds of booing, shouting-and demands for a division of the
body, not a voice vote, as teachers yelled that Elliot had "miscounted" in the past.
One teacher said later, "We are sick of them talking down to us." Finall!
y, one high school teacher took a microphone and said, "Everyone who wants to strike,
move to the left. Everyone opposed to the strike move right." Elliot's choices ended
as the vast majority moved left.
The leadership circulated an outline of the results of the last two months' of
bargaining. Included in the section of items completed was an agreement to give away
seniority as a key factor in transfers, referring the question to a site-based
management committee. Class size limits, promised publicly by both the new board and
the DFT leaders, are merely referred to a committee for "review and study." The DFT
agreed on a proposal which indicates that if teachers use more than eight of their
fifteen days of sick time, they will not get salary increases the following year. The
agreement includes a merit pay section, which links pay increases to student
performance on standardized tests and principal evaluations. Still on the table, with
no agreement, are: pay, fringes like health benefits, longevity, duty periods, a
longer work day, unpaid teacher education days, time off for union representatives,
and sick bank accrual. There was no discussion in the meeting as to which sectio!
n particularly annoyed educators, so the leadership is at a loss as to the direction
to take. However, it is clear that the repudiated contract represents the general
tendencies of "school reform," or "New Unionism,"as it has been presented by the top
leadership of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education
Association, an outlook rooted in the idea of educator/management/corporation unity.
In a press conference hours after the mass meeting and following a caucus of the top
union leadership, DFT's Elliot blamed the vote on a "militant minority who always
wanted to strike, and who were able to get people to the meeting today." In the same
press conference, board Superintendent David Adamany, the former president of Wayne
State University, urged teachers to start school on Tuesday, saying, "This strike is
against the law. It is a matter of individual conscience, a decision for each teacher.
It hurts the massive reform effort that is demonstrated by our success in repairing
the schools." On August 31, only 150 teachers crossed the picket lines.
Adamany earlier had outlined three goals for starting the school year, other than the
building repairs: Each child in a uniform, the arrest of parents of truant kids, and
each teacher on the same page of the same text, each day. He said, further, "If this
is a rejection of what we have already agreed to, which we must have, we are all in
serious trouble." Adamany urged teachers to come to work but told parents to keep
their children home, and said he would not request state help in invoking the law
until he had a further chance to bargain.
The strike vote could have important implications. In the context of the labor
movement, it could be the harbinger of things to come in Detroit, and perhaps around
the U.S. In Detroit, the strike could, conceivably, spread. Professors at Wayne State
University, the 35,000 student urban college serving the metropolitan area, may take a
strike vote next week. Like the DFT, they are members of the AFT. In addition, later
in September, the UAW will target an auto company, probably Chrysler, for a strike. In
the context of the education community, the strike could inspire action elsewhere,
like Chicago, where the union leadership has taken stances similar to the DFT
leadership. NPR, on August 30, carried a statement from a dissident DFT member calling
for a general strike in Detroit. Following the bitter loss of the Detroit newspaper
strike, feelings run strong in metro-Detroit. The DFT has no plans to radiate the
strike. However, the conditions of this strike make it possible th!
at it could erupt into a social battle that could set aside decades of working class
passivity.
There are other factors to consider. The level of opposition from management and
government is a serious concern. While the size of the DFT makes it a big elephant
among teacher unions, those arrayed on management's side are not merely tough
bargainers, they are ideologues who have long fought to destroy unions. The state
Governor, John Engler, who harbors vice-presidential ambitions, struggled for most of
his political life to end what he sees as a union strangle-hold on the state. His
efforts, coupled with the bungling of the Michigan Education Association, led to the
passage of the law outlawing teacher strikes, as well as laws restructuring the tax
system to shift the burden of education costs away from corporations and onto working
and poor people. Schools are now funded by a property tax, guaranteeing that poor
schools stay poor. One of his goals for 1999-2000 has been to end the agency shop
clauses in teacher contracts, shifting that sector of the Michigan work force !
to a right-to-work state. Engler is known as a ruthless and cruel opponent. There is
no question that his attention is focused on Detroit teachers.
David Adamany, the DPS Superintendent, made a reputation at Wayne State attacking the
faculty union-to the extent that he was finally forced to resign after more than ten
years on the job-following a no-confidence faculty vote. Adamany was skillful at
dealing with capital improvements.Wayne State building projects grew and prospered in
the middle of a city in collapse. But, like Engler, he is seen as vindictive and
vengeful-and hot-tempered. He is well-known for taking decisive action against anyone
who opposes him. Adamany, too, has long battled to change public education to a
corporate model. At Wayne State, he initiated a program for freshmen and sophomores
that put them on the same page of the same book-teacher to teacher-a move the faculty
fought every year. In Detroit Public Schools, Adamany was expected to "clean house."
But he has only been able to clean buildings. He told the district principals, in a
spring meeting, that he would like to fire about ½ of them for "o!
bvious incompetence.". To date, none are fired. The district's personnel office is
notorious. Teachers routinely do not get paid for months on end. Job applicants are
treated like supplicants, ordered to pay steep fees to apply for a job. Adamany has
not moved to change the personnel personnel either.
He has considerable teacher and parent opposition, some of it taking root in his
arrogance. In a summer meeting with teachers, he was challenged about what he would do
as an educator facing disruptive students. "I would just put down my chalk and refuse
to teach." Openly gay, at the board meeting following his appointment, Adamany was met
by a church-based group of parents chanting, "He's gay-not with my kids!" and
demanding his removal.
Adamany claimed, after the strike vote, that he was worried that a strike might propel
parents into charter schools and support for a voucher amendment that will be on the
Michigan ballot soon. But Adamany, as president of Wayne State, opened the first
charter school in the state, and caused the dismissal of the dean of the college of
education who refused to support him. Last year, the charter school scored lowest in
the state on standardized exams. Still, hundreds of parents wait in line to enroll
their kids in the school each fall.
The chairman of what is known as the "Takeover Board" is Freeman Hendrix, a mayoral
aide who opened the first public meeting of the new board by inciting the two hundred
of attending to assault students and parents who had come to protest the seizure of
the school system. Hendrix, who lives in the city but whose children attend Catholic
Schools, shouted at the cops, "Throw them out and arrest them. Now! Now! Now!"
repeatedly over a public address system designed to drown out any sound of
dissension." His approach continued week after week, culminating in the police beating
of an older woman in the parking lot of a Detroit high school. He halted only when he
was clearly threatened by a group of men who attended the next meeting, telling him he
had caused beatings for the last time and offering him a "taste of pain." Hendrix has
mayoral aspirations-and Mayor Dennis Archer has hinted he hopes to leave the city to
become the Chair of the Democratic National Committee. Archer, in!
the press conference, urged teachers to report to work on Tuesday. Hendrix, the
following morning, issued statements of deep admiration for the DFT's Elliot, saying
that the president needs to rally his supporters and quickly hold another vote on the
contract-to end the strike.
Material conditions might suggest a prudent course for management: combining threats
about the law, perhaps even an injunction, with rewards for returning to work,
bargaining behind closed doors with the union leadership, a hurried meeting in which
pro-contract votes are mustered and counted, a back to work order, and a new opening
of the schools. But the personalities of the players are significant, and the people
involved on the management side have a history of hot-headed behavior. These are not
people accustomed to negotiations, the cynical give and take of corrupt union
bargaining. The management side is composed of people who see the key issues, like
merit pay, the end of seniority, control of the curriculum, etc., as matters of
principle.
Of course, there is a lot at stake for them. The seizure of the Detroit public schools
by the rich comes at a critical juncture in the history of the city and the state.
Detroit today is third world. Key city streets look like tank traps. Electrical
service is routinely interrupted for city and nearby suburban residents, for up to two
weeks at a time. Public transportation is nonexistent in the Motor City. Vaccination
rates of the city children run about 35%, while TB continues to be a force in some
areas of the city. The day the first casino opened, the county had to close 29 lakes,
due to ecoli poisoning. The lake inspectors were laid off days later. The Bureau of
Labor Statistics lists 35 major layoffs of more than 100 people so far this year. Even
so, the Wall Street Journal declared Detroit on the "comeback trail, " in mid-August.
Housing prices are up for the first time in decades. On August 30, the day of the
strike vote, the Washington Post carried a long article lau!
ding Detroit's black mayor for leading a "dramatic turnaround," calling him a leader
of the "post civil-rights era."
Thirty-five Detroit police officers were indicted for drug related crimes this year.
The former chief of police, of a department with a long history of corruption, is now
serving time in Milan Federal Prison, just west of Detroit. The police department has
settled millions in liability suits in the last few years-making them a hated entity
once again. The two officers who killed Malice Green, in a famous assassination,
appear to be about to escape serious punishment. The murder rate is up, about 25%.
Robberies, a rate determined by arrests made by a crooked police department, are down.
Detroit schools crawl with police, yet remain centers of drug dealing. Detroit
students live under unremitting surveillance in school. They face an array of metal
detectors, rules of citizenship (which strip them of their constitutional rights) and
an endless stream of standardized exams-though their teachers have no textbooks to
offer many, even most, of them. One high school, whose principal moonlights as a local
professor, opens each year with a traditional sweep and lock-down. The school is
surrounded by police in the morning, who, at first bell, sweep everyone in the
surrounding block into the school. Then the school is locked down. All inside are
searched. Non-students, those with contraband, and others are taken to the central
precinct-where they are routinely released since the charges against them can never be
upheld.
The auditor of the former school board, in acknowledging that she could not count for
up to three million dollars of board funds, finally admitted that she had not been the
auditor at Northwest Airlines-she was a clerk. After she resigned, she bought one of
the most fashionable restaurants in Detroit. Once known as the Homeowner's City, with
more single family homes per-capita than any other, the city has bulldozed huge plots
of land where housing once stood-to the point that residents walking just a mile from
the city center commonly kick up pheasants who have moved into the vacant fields.
While unemployment levels in the city are two to three times those of the rest of the
state, the state as a whole is experiencing remarkable growth and prosperity-as is the
U.S. Unlike the 1980's, when joblessness in Detroit exceeded 50%, most people now have
jobs. The city school system is 90% black. Two-thirds of the children who enter DPS do
not graduate. Prominent sociologists recogni!
ze Detroit as the most racially segregated city in the U.S. Most suburban white
people never enter the city, except perhaps to quickly enter the city for Tiger and
Red Wings games-and flee just as swiftly.
About five years ago, property values in the city bottomed out. GM, Ford, and
speculators began to buy back what was once theirs-including land on the priceless
riverfront. Although Detroit residents voted repeatedly to oppose casinos in the city,
the issue was placed on a state-wide ballot and passed. The mayor promised that the
three casinos approved by the voters would never take up precious riverfront space.
One $200 million temporary casino was completed in two months and opened in July-to
lines of thousands of working people cuing in the heat. Two others will open before
Y2K. All three casinos plan more swank permanent structures-on the river front, as the
mayor recently announced. The Lions and Tigers are completing new stadiums downtown as
well. When asked where all the poor people who live near the new entertainment centers
will move, an urban planner simply said, "Well, I certainly hope they leave." Once a
proud urban center with hard-working blue collar values, wh!
ere the top hockey heroes were the "Production Line," the city now offers spectacles
in place of production.
Many things happen first in Detroit. The 1929 depression began in the city. Because of
the long dependence on industrial production, the impact of economic shifts are early
and severe. Detroit was once a rowdy city, where honky-tonks, blues bars, rock and
roll, all found a home on the streets, and in the plants. Now, perhaps leading the
nation, Detroit is commodifying and constraining what was once the margins-and giving
the citizens a health dose of authoritarianism at the same time. The casinos, gambling
centers, promote themselves as family entertainment centers, replacing the back-room
card games-and the music that fronted for them in all-night bars. Prostitution is
moved off the streets, into trendy counter-culture newspapers and into the casinos,
and into a burgeoning business for strip joints surrounding the city. The suburban
voters who thought they could locate gambling and immorality in Detroit alone are
finding their daughters turned into dancers. An annual Woodwa!
rd Dream Cruise is designed as a nostalgic look back at 1950's cruising of the street
that Life once called the "Longest Unrecognized Drag-way in the World." It was a cite
of kids fighting cops, night after night, for their right to enjoy cars, sex, and rock
and roll. In July, 1999, more than 1.2 million auot fans showed up for the Fifth Dream
Cruise. 5,000 suburban cops shut down Woodward at 9:30 p.m., threatening anyone
walking on nearby sidewalks with arrest, simply because, "Too many people are here."
This, like most city cultural events-and churches--is profoundly segregated
Detroit is being reclaimed by elites who have no desire for an integrated, critical,
authentic school system. While they recognize the need for multi-culturalism in their
own ranks, they are keen to maintain a system of segregation among other classes. The
state standardized tests for school kids measure, solely, parental income and race.
The tests are used, along with geographic housing choices made by racist parents, to
deepen segregation, not enliven education. In seizing the form of education, the
school buildings, and the content, the curricula, wealth seeks to stratify not only
children, but also educators, who eventually will be paid, through merit schemes,
along the lines of the income of the parents of their kids.
What elites must have right now is social peace-and that is why they seized the
Detroit schools when they did. They are led by an organization called "New Detroit,"
formed by quaking corporate leaders in the midst of the 1967 rebellion, whose
director, Bill Beckham, is the key leader of the Takeover Board. Beckham, a former
mayoral aide, is acutely aware that conditions in Detroit mirrored conditions in the
summer of 1967: hatred for the police, high expectations contradicted by minimal
real-life possibilities, a community acting on gossip and tabloid TV news since a
boycott of the scab papers is still 40% effective, and contempt for what is
traditionally a center of hope-school. The 1967 uprising was only quelled by military
intervention including troops returned from Vietnam. It was a terrible setback for
elites everywhere-and a material boon to local citizens who gained nearly 100,000 jobs
within six months of the rebellion. Strict welfare restrictions were quickly droppe!
d and caseloads exploded. The carrot briefly replaced the stick. But the
"Renaissance," of Detroit, declared thirty years ago but never realized, is now a
Ponzi scheme, based on the faith of wealthy investors believing that their money will
not vanish in a wave of class or race violence.
In order to gain social peace, vital to winning the failed bets of suburban gamblers
taking the chance of entering the city (the photo of one horrified suburbanite running
from an urban insurrection would destroy downtown investments for a long time to
come), elites had to hold out a believable carrot-schools that work. They wiped out
the existing board, which was traditionally corrupt and incompetent, going back to the
1920's, and set out on a reform program which sees parents, teachers, and kids as the
source of most of the school's problems-as Adamany's program demonstrates. Remarkably,
the old board had adopted a carbon-copy plan, days before they were abolished. As
proof of the old board's political bankruptcy, only a handful of people protested
their removal. The Takeover Board moved swiftly to smash any potential opposition.
Massive police presence at early meetings drove away many parents and students. They
opened the district treasury to make repairs in schools all !
across the district, and succeeded in at least 4/5 of them. Days before school
opened, they flooded radio stations with announcements of a huge "Back to School
Rally" with parents and kids invited to each school. They were also ordered to attend,
and told that anyone not at school the first day would have to repeat a long
registration process. Many saw this as an effort to limit the potential of a DFT job
action by raising parental hopes-and fears.
There are serious problems inside the DFT. The union leadership has long been
profoundly alienated from the rank and file. The leaders are widely seen as
incompetent and corrupt-on the other side. In midsummer, DFT president Elliot was
asked how many days teachers teach in the school year. He guessed wrong, by ten days.
Elliot has never led a serious job action, other than a brief strike in 1992, nor have
his cohorts. In meetings to report the results of bargaining for the last two DFT
contracts, Elliot declared voice votes which clearly opposed his positions, to be
votes in favor of a return to work. The staff leadership of the AFT has very, very
close ties to the UAW leaders who systematically sabotaged the rank and file and
community action which could have led to a victory in the newspaper strike. Now,
because they have been so separated from the members, the leadership has no idea of
what it is they must bargain to gain member ratification-except a clear message from
th!
e members that they do not like what the leaders have already done. Elliot was
obviously shocked by the strike vote, as was Adamany. The union side has no plan for a
long strike.
Opposition to Elliot, despite his claims and hints about outside agitators, is really
small and not well organized. His perennial opponent, a high school teacher at the
city's most prestigious school, has never been able to gain more than 40% of the vote
in presidential elections, and there are no indications of extensive opposition
organizing. The Trotskyist National Women's Rights Organizing Committee and the
Columbus-based anarchist Anti-Racist Action group both have a tiny presence; neither
could be considered influential now. The Rouge Forum, described below, has a small
presence among teachers and parents. In sum, the teacher side has a serious problem
with leadership-and the feelings of the rank and file are hard to gauge. The DFT did
no extensive bargaining survey, asking teachers what they wanted, before bargaining
began.
While no one has a clear count, it appeared that the meeting on August 30, consisting
of only about 1/3 of Detroit teachers, was heavy with voters from high schools,
typically centers of greater militance. The key to a successful strike of this size is
not the high schools but the elementary schools, critical to companies and parents as
a source of free baby sitting. High school students can take care of themselves; grade
school students cannot. Without a good base of elementary school educator support, the
strike could unravel.
No one knows the feelings of the nearly 1,000 teachers the district hired in special
hiring fairs in the summer of 1999. I was not able to locate a single new teacher on
the picket lines. NEA and AFT research clearly says that new young teachers are far
less likely to support union action than their colleagues who were hired in the late
1960's and early 1970's.
Moreover, the union has nearly no base in the community. No from DFT one organized
parents or kids over the long summer vacation. The Board received heavy,
congratulatory, press coverage for the school repair program. City schools have
suffered from a bad reputation for years, much of it deserved. The schools are one of
several reasons-the most important being systematized racism-that the city went from a
population of about two million to less than one million today. About ½ of Detroit
public schools were built before 1930, about 1/4 before 1920. 83 schools, in the
spring, were still heated by coal furnaces, leading to rates of asthma among staff and
children over 70%. Class size is, on paper, often outrageous, over 40, but the
district counts on truancy to offset what would otherwise be a crisis of space. The
DFT has repeatedly taken extra pay for teachers in larger classes, rather than placing
a strict cap on class size, and in this and in many other instances is seen by !
community people as a privileged force in their midst-living well at the expense of
community people. Very few teachers live in the communities where they teach, in fact,
only a minority of them live in Detroit-and fewer still have children in Detroit
schools.
The DFT has another problem: they supported the Takeover Board, and nearly all of the
principles the board adopted, from standardized tests to harsh discipline to
site-based management and a "partnership" between the union and management. The
partnership idea has origins in Detroit, with the UAW's father-son duo, Irving and
Barry Bluestone. Irving was a professional anti-communist who helped lend an
intellectual panache to Water Reuther's racist slate controlling the union. Later, son
Barry, an Ivy-League economist, enunciated the necessity for
labor/management/government partnerships, taking the lead from Mussolini. Bluestone is
now very close to the NEA's president, Bob Chase, whose policies of "New Unionsim"
mimic Bluestone, and the AFT's boss, Sandra Feldman, carrying on a tradition begun by
the deceased reactionary, Albert Shanker, a father of the union concession movement in
the 1970's, and one of the early boosters of the idea that the working class and the
owning cla!
ss have everything in common. . Detroiters have lived the partnership notion in their
unions, and have become the worse for it. Many people see this school reform as a
partnership against them. The DFT, having slept with the Takeover Board, lacks a moral
ground for a fight.
Neither the union nor the Takeover Board has any plan to deal with the key problem in
Detroit's schools: the deep racist poverty that has overwhelmed the city in the last
forty years. As Jean Anyon has shown, doing school reform without radically changing
economic oppression is like washing the air on one side of a screen door. In this
fuller context, it is not possible to address the takeover of the schools without
considering the construction of fascism, on a slow, ugly, day by day pace.
With no organization, no history of serious battles, no base among parents, kids, or
workers in the community, the DFT leadership appears to be in big trouble-and they
are. But they remain in charge as long as the mind set of the rank and file and the
community remains mired in the narrow history of unionism--which has historically
divided more people than united them-and as long as the rank and file unconsciously
chooses to let the leadership remain in charge. While it is most likely that this
strike will be sold out, there are some clear actions rank and file activists might
take. The crux of this, though, is that the union leadership must be superceded, and
this process begins by declaring and making them irrelevant-and taking power from them
when it is necessary. The principles which drive this should be equality and
democracy, at every turn.
Both the Takeover Board members and the DFT union leaders were genuinely shocked at
the vote of the educators in Cobo Hall. Neither group had contingency plans in the
case of failure. Adamany believed Elliot could deliver. Elliot thought he knew what
his members wanted, and would tolerate. They were wrong. Now the situation is, at
least temporarily, out of their control.
Those who see schools as vehicles for social change-for democracy and equality-need to
move quickly to unite the community and educators against the wealthy and privileged
few who now run the schools, and the many who follow their directions. The issue:
Whose Side Are You On? This can be achieved, within the confines of the union, by
elevating demands which naturally unite parents, kids, and school workers-like class
size, academic freedom, a more just tax system, more equitable pay schedules, and
integrated inclusive schools. At the same time, Freedom Schools could be established,
schools set up in local facilities and people's homes which could take up their own
curriculum-like just who are these people on the school board and why do they act like
this? Or, why is Detroit such a racist city? In other words, they could teach as many
teachers believe they cannot, and both students and teachers would learn a lot.
A quick fix, and one is needed to inspire and carry forward the strike, would be for
educators to march on the casino and shut it down-and keep it shut. The casino is a
weak link in the power of elites in Detroit, the cultural, economic, and the social
pollution it engenders makes it a clear target--and suburban gamblers do not want to
face angry people as they wait patiently in line-for the opportunity to lose. This is
a move the city elites do not expect.
Longer term, rank and file notables need to assert their leadership of the strike-by
seeking to spread it. This involves appealing to rank and file members of other unions
in the area, especially the militants in the MEA, who recognize the reality of the old
union saw, "An injury to one only precedes an injury to all." No one should expect
genuine support from other union bigwigs, especially those who wrecked the newspaper
strike. The UAW big-cheeses are likely to feel they need to do nothing but plan for
their strike at Chrysler, and Al Gore's election, but there are many UAW members who
see otherwise-and many former UAW members who are now motel clerks who might be
mobilized in support. Michigan Education Association, the states largest union by far,
must be won to take action in support of the strike, from koining DFT picket lines to
closing schools in the case of mass fines or firings aimed at Detroit. A general
strike in Detroit is unlikely, especially since it will hav!
e to climb over the bodies of the moribund union bosses, but it is possible.
In the long run, the crux of the matter is to build an organization that understands
that in order to make serious social change, to fight for democracy and equality, it
is necessary to organize people in new ways-and to challenge the permanence of capital
which today can only offer war, racism, organized social decay, meaningless
spectacles, relentless surveillance, and jobs to people who look at others and think,
"Sucker." Those of us working in schools, and attacking capitalism, are right on
point. Everything is in place for social change--except the decision to make it and
the understanding of what that is.
The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic
society. We are concerned about questions like these: How can we teach against racism,
national chauvinism and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic
society? How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals and still teach--or
learn? Whose interests shall school
serve in a society that is ever more unequal? We are both research and action
oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we
simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what that
is. We seek to build a caring inclusive community which understands that an injury to
one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to
deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless.
We hope to demonstrate that the power necessary to win greater democracy will likely
rise out of an organization that unites people in new ways--across union boundaries,
across community lines, across the fences of race and sex/gender. We believe that good
humor and friendships are a vital part of building this kind of organization, as
important as theoretical clarity. Friendships allow us to understand that action
always reveals errors--the key way we learn.
There are no dues to join the Rouge Forum. Just email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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