Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1081203
10 CINEMONTAGE / Q1 2019 GET TING ORGANIZED LA educators left their schools to take to the streets this January. Their week-long strike proved to be a compelling demonstration of collective action's transformative power. Like many of you, I was proud to don red and walk the picket lines in solidarity with LA teachers, both at the school my kid attends and at Gardner Street Elementary, the school Local 700 jointly adopted with Local 600 during this strike. The courage and cohesion these educators exhibited was profoundly stirring. These are folks who give immeasurably of themselves in the classroom to offer love, wisdom and strength to the most valuable and most vulnerable members of our community. And they have left those classrooms to give of themselves in the streets, demanding respect for their profession and demanding investment in the students in their charge. The greater portion of their strike coincided with the nastiest series of storms to drench the Southland in some time but, deluge notwithstanding, spirits on the line remained undamped. I salute the schoolteachers' indefatigable spirit and give kudos to all of you who offered your solidarity to help them weather this struggle. Much has been written about the achievements the teachers secured at the table — raises, reduced class sizes and full-time nurses in every school, among other improvements in working conditions and educational practices. Although they didn't win everything they had sought, the educators made huge strides toward their goals. Beyond the specific clauses of the 40-page tentative agreement, the months and years to come will reveal how the teachers' stand will help shape the course of public debate and politicians' decisions regarding educational policy not only in LA but in in California and nationally as well. Addressing throngs of cheering educators at the union's victory rally, Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), declared, "The biggest win is us, teaching Los Angeles, and teaching the United States…how to fight, and how to win… You just taught the best lesson of your lives!" The UTLA strike does indeed afford us a teachable moment. Although it will take some historical perspective before we can appraise the full impact of the educators' stand, I believe that already there are several important and immediate takeaways from the teachers' action for the broader labor movement — our Guild included. The first of these lessons is that defeats ought not precipitate reflexive retreat or retrenchment. Aggressive offense is often the most effective way of fighting back from a setback. In May 2017, after a hard-fought election, union-endorsed candidates lost their majority on the Los Angeles School Board to proponents of charter schools. In the course of record-setting campaign spending, charter advocates outspent organized labor about two-to-one to capture control of LAUSD. Their control led to the selection of investment banker Austin Beutner, widely seen as a proponent of privatization and austerity, as superintendent a year later. Those two defeats were quickly followed by the Janus decision, which threatened to hobble teachers unions. UNDERSTANDING THE BEST DEFENSE It is easy to imagine how such a triple whammy of defeats might force a union into a defensive posture. But UTLA decided to ramp up its militancy rather than to hunker down. Recognizing the opportunity in these crises, the union persuaded its members of the urgency of taking action to protect public education. The best defense, the educators came to understand, is aggressive counter-attack. Another lesson we can derive from the teachers strike is the importance of clearly connecting contractual disputes to broader principles and larger struggles. UTLA deliberately foregrounded not just pocketbook issues (wages, benefits) but also concerns central to educational quality (class sizes, staffing, public accountability). Several of the issues at the heart of their fight — such as curbing "stop and frisk" practices in the schools — appeared well outside the bounds of conventional bread-and-butter topics that are typically the focus of collective bargaining. Whether you refer to it as "bargaining for the common good" (a catchphrase in labor circles) or "intersectionality" (a term with currency amongst progressive intellectuals), it's effectively the same idea: We must recognize how our fights for better contracts are inextricably intertwined with other movements in pursuit of justice. A joint delegation from Locals 600 and 700 joins parents and other allies to support UTLA educators on the picket line at Gardner Street Elementary School during the LAUSD teachers strike. CONTINUED ON PAGE 13