They were referring here to the students refusal to accept the increased fees and the increased cut backs they were facing. The Wall Street Journal represents Wall Street and the banks and financial institutions. These are the people who ran the US and world economy to the verge of complete collapse in 2008/2009, and when they did they ran squealing in panic to Washington, with the "crassest of self pleading' and got bailed out with trillions of dollars of taxes, that is our money.
Given the hatred of the bankers and the bail out this smear against the student movement is a bit hard to sell, so today in a half page editorial the Wall Street Journal comes back to sharpen its attack. It and its class were shaken by the energy, size, militancy and power of the March 4th events. They were concerned that workers were joining with the students. They were concerned there were so many calls to make the rich pay. So in today's editorial they set the stage for a more thought out strategy. This can be spelled out in three words. "Divide and rule."
Today's entire editorial focuses on public sector workers' pay and benefits. Their claim is that it is these workers who have brought the state's finances to a state of bankruptcy. They select a few figures of highly paid administrators in the public sector and try to portray the situation as the state being ripped off by public sector workers. It addresses itself to the students. It says: "Unions get the lifeboats, and everyone else gets thrown over the side. Sorry kids." They are claiming here that it is the public sector unions that are to blame. We need to look at this a little closer. We think that there are a few others who are not mentioned who are the ones who are actually in the life boats, we are talking about the rich, the corporations, the oil industry, that is the California capitalist class.
Many public sector workers are working for low wages and with inadequate benefits. Many formerly public sector jobs have been privatized with the consequent cut in wages and benefits. Along with these facts we must reject capitalism's logic in its entirety. They say that where public sector workers have half decent wages and benefits these must be cut to solve the economic crisis of the state. The March 4th movement must reject this argument and instead build even greater unity with all workers and to bring all workers pay and benefits up to the level of the best paid and rewarded workers in the state. Any other approach would drive a wedge between the workers and students, and this is what the capitalists want, they want to split the movement and defeat it. Divide and rule. We have to stand unyieldingly for the defense of the wages and benefits and pensions of the public sector workers, we want these for us and for our parents and all workers public and private and we will not be divided. Unity between the students and workers. Unite and win.
Another aspect of this Wall Street Journal Article and the approach of the capitalist class it represent is its extreme censorship. California state finances are in bad shape. We do not deny this. This has to be dealt with. We do not deny this. But where we disagree with the mouth piece of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal and those for whom it speaks is the selection it makes in terms of what options are available to solve the crisis. We disagree with its censorship. For them there are only two options. They censor the others out. Either the students have to take the pain. Or the public sector workers have to take the pain. We reject this choice. For us neither take the pain. There are other players in the California and US economy. Let us drag them out from where they are hiding and take a look at them. It is no accident that we find them to be friends of the Wall Street Journal.
These forces which brought California to a state of bankruptcy are not even mentioned in its editorial due to the Wall Street Journal's censorship. They have to be kept out of sight. California had more natural resources than any other state. Its huge central valley with its agricultural capacity, its gold reserves, its oil reserves, one of the greatest natural harbors in the world, its great fishing reserves, but yet the state is now on the verge of bankruptcy. It was not the public sector workers who were running the state all these years, nor was it the students. No it was the California capitalist class. They took all these resources, plundered them at every turn and the result is they have bankrupted the state. Now they want the public sector workers, the students and all workers to pay. We have to state first of all by opening the books of the state and this includes the books of all the corporations who are based in the state. then we can see what is what.
The Wall Street Journal's options must be rejected. We say no to both their options. The March 4th movement showed the way. Unite students and all workers in a mass direct action movement to make the rich, the capitalists pay for the crisis they have caused. Make the corporations pay for the looting they have done. Enact an extraction tax on oil, California is one of the few, if not the only one of the major oil producing states, that does not have one. Make the rich pay for the crisis they have caused. They have bankrupted the state, they have forfeited the right to own and control the state's wealth, they have forfeited the right to rule. This must be the movements answer to the Wall Street Journal and their capitalist hacks and banks.
The March 4th movement must be strengthened. The existing committees must be maintained, new ones built and pulled together in a state wide network. But we must not be parochial or state centric in our view. March 4th shook the capitalists nation wide. The Obama regime wasted no time in striking back nation wide. It is no accident that in a day the entire teaching and other staff in Central Falls high School in Rhode Island were fired and that the education secretary and Obama himself came out and supported this. And the Republicans back them up too. A united capitalist assault. They can get together on this but on giving everybody health care. The firings in Central Falls are their answer to the march 4th movement and its fight. In their arrogance they are saying:'You are getting nothing. We will decide what is done and we are going to fire teachers and staff and cut wherever we like. Your March 4th movement means nothing to us. Just today Kansas City announced that it was closing 29 out of 61 of its high schools. They are throwing down the gauntlet to the March 4th movement. We must respond by picking it up.
The students in Central Falls have already had marches and come out against the firing of their teachers and staff. This is wonderful. (By the way we need to use our imagination. Where will these teachers and staff get jobs and how will they be able to pay their house note. What is being said by Obama and his Education Secretary about this?) The March 4th movement must not allow the Central Falls students to be isolated. Their struggle must be integrated into the national March 4th struggle. The attack on them must be put at the top of the agenda. This is where it is being placed by Obama and the education secretary, Duncan. It is being placed at the cutting edge of their attack. If Obama and his regime get away with firing the Central Falls, teachers and staff, they will try it all over the country and they will try and use success on this front to intimidate and cow the movement. The March 4th movement must step up its actions and respond. Obama and Duncan, who are supported by the Republicans in this must not get away with firing these teachers and staff in Central Falls.
The union leaders have millions of members. They used these and many tens of millions of dollars to put Obama in power. We said this was a mistakes. We said he was a slick capitalist politician who would do what the capitalists wanted when he got in. We have been proven right. The union leaders should recognize their mistake and now come out openly against the education policies of the Obama regime and put its full resources into the March 4th movement. Not to tame it, but to show a little humility after the disastrous mistake they have made with Obama, and mobilize their forces under the leadership of the youth and this developing direct action mass movement.
In this way we can build a movement that deals with the problems of education in a way that reshapes it in the interests of all involved in it, the students, the teachers, the parents, the workers, by democratically bringing together all these component parts in a democratic process to determine how education would be organized, education can be turned into a system which is democraticly controlled, accessible to everybody and which realizes the full potential of all students and all who are involved in the system.
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