Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism

Text of flyer distributed to high school students in the
West Contra Costa Unified School District
September 2009

STUDENTS HAVE A RIGHT TO REBEL

UNDERFUNDED PROGRAMS, OVERCROWDED CLASSROOMS, CUTS IN MUSIC, ART, SPORTS, SUBSTANDARD TEST SCORES, POOR GRADUATION RATES, LACK OF OPPORTUNITY FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND NO PROMISE OF GOOD JOBS.

1/3 or 33% of our students do not graduate! Less than 25% or one-in-four of our students are proficient in their subject matter. If you are African American or Latino, your chances of success are even worse. It’s not your fault; it is the plan of the capitalists!

SO WE HAVE TO ASK: WHY IS THE WCCUSD FAILING OUR STUDENTS??

What your school board won’t let your teachers tell you is the truth about the capitalist economy and how it does not need you! This education system was formed to train a class of happy workers who know how and when to show up for work. But now the employing class has no work for you. It has become unprofitable to have good paying jobs in America. So today we have 12% official unemployment in California, but if you include all those not counted, it is more like 20%. In the Black and Latino communities this number goes up to over 25%. California has 167,000 people in prison. Prisoners cost $47,000 a year and only $7,500 is spent annually for each student. That is $2,000 less than the average of the rest of the nation. What are our priorities? For the bosses and their bought-and paid-for-politicians, prisons are more important than schools.

The bosses and their politicians in Washington and Sacramento, from Obama on down to the local school board, are united in their work to save the bankers and profiteers on Wall Street at the expense of working people and the poor. Trillions of dollars are found to bail out the banks and fund wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, but they can’t find enough money to keep teachers in the class rooms and provide quality education. Chevron makes billions in profits, but right here in their shadow our schools are under funded, while they get massive tax breaks, while the poor, the elderly and children suffer.

When it comes to the education of the working class and poor youth, the capitalist class will only spend as much as they can realize back in profit. Our youth have become expendable to the parasitic bosses and their lackey politicians.

THEY HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER YOU! NOT GOOD EDUCATION AND NOT GOOD JOBS! ALL THEY HAVE TO OFFER IS GLOBAL WARMING, ENDLESS WARS AND PRISON! IF YOU WANT EDUCATION AND GOOD JOBS, YOU WILL HAVE TO FIGHT FOR IT BY OVERTHROWING CAPITALISM AND BUILDING A WORKERS’ ECONOMY WHERE THE WORKERS OWN THE MAJOR INDUSTRIES AND RUN THEM THEMSELVES.

This past New Year’s Eve, police executed Oscar Grant on the BART platform. The police also harass undocumented workers and threaten to deport our Latino brothers and sisters. In the case of a teachers’ strike, the police will be used to get SCABS (replacement teachers) into our class rooms. In case of a strike, students must unite with the teachers and keep out the SCABS! In the event of a teachers’ strike, students and parents join the strike for quality education! JOIN THE PICKET LINES! OCCUPY THE SCHOOLS! TURN THEM INTO STRIKE SCHOOLS! MAKE STUDENTS’ DEMANDS PART OF THE STRIKE ACTION! WHOSE SCHOOL IS THIS? IT’S OUR SCHOOL!

We need to fight for the following demands, which can only be implemented by mobilizing the working class, students and the oppressed for a massive fight-back:

1. Full Employment at prevailing union rates for all. To assure full employment, thirty hours of work for forty hours’ pay must be implemented to spread the available work.
2. Failing industries (both financial and industrial) must be taken over (nationalized) under workers’ control without compensation to provide adequate access to credit and to get the wheels of industry rolling again.
3. STOP LAYOFFS! When the bosses declare layoffs or attempt to close down a workplace, workers should occupy the factories and the workplaces and establish workers’ control.
4. Housing is a right! Stop all foreclosures and evictions. Move the homeless and those in overcrowded housing into housing vacated by foreclosures and the falling real estate market.
5. Quality universal public education at no charge from daycare and pre-school through the graduate level. Working people know that without a good education, our children have no future. Through education we can build a rational economy and divest the world of poverty and drudgery. Education should be under the control of teachers, parents, and students old enough to participate. In that way, we will assure quality education and not the miseducation, over-testing, and ruling class propaganda that currently plague our public schools.
6. Quality free universal health care at no charge from prenatal to the grave is long overdue. To accomplish democratic health care, all medical institutions must be placed under worker (Doctor, Nurses, Staff) control with community/patient participation.
7. End attacks on undocumented workers! End the ICE raids! Free all detained undocumented workers!
8. US troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the world. Down with imperialist oppression. The defeat of imperialism is a victory for workers and the oppressed in the world.
9. We cannot count on Obama and the capitalists to clean up the environment and prevent catastrophic climate change. For them, profit always comes before the environment and the need of the workers. But the time to stop climate change is running out. We must fight for workers’ control of industry in order to transform the current, outmoded technology of industrial production to totally green and sustainable technology.
10. Break with the Democrats. No cross-class coalitions with Democrats and pro-capitalist Greens. Fight for the political independence of the working class! We need to build a revolutionary workers’/labor party based on democratically run unions and organizations of the oppressed and the unemployed.
11. For a workers’ government that can and will implement and defend all the above transitional demands. To accomplish these goals, working people need their own government. If we allow the capitalists to control the state via their government, they will continue to attack and ultimately destroy our social gains. To defend our gains, we need workers’ power.