The Chicago Teacher's Strike and the 2012 Presidential Elections

Throughout history, there have been events which sharpen and clarify the historical epoch in which they occur. A few examples are the American and French revolutions, the 1848 uprisings, the US civil war, the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik revolution, the Spanish civil war, an so on. In the current period, we could add the Wisconsin battles over collective bargaining for public workers, the Occupy movement, and now the Chicago teacher's strike. One of the things these events do is to reveal the fracture lines in society, in particular the class divisions which underlie the events as they occur.

The Chicago teacher's strike is one of these clarifying events both because of the issues at stake and the particular people who have provoked the strike. Let us look, for example, at Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan. Emmanuel has not only provoked the strike by insisting on continuing unreasonable evaluation and retention policies for teachers based on standardized test scores of their students, he is also the point man in attacking the teacher's union--and the community that supports it. Duncan has taken the lead in promoting the disastrous policy of charter schools, which incidentally started in Chicago, and which is draining money and thus quality from the American educational system.

It hardly needs to be stated that Emmanuel and Duncan are both close associates of President Barack Obama. Emmanuel was his first chief of staff and is still an important adviser to Obama, and Duncan was appointed by Obama. How ironic that Mit Romney is "accusing" Obama of supporting the teacher's union when exactly the opposite is true. Romney's strange frame tries to pit teachers against students when, in fact, teachers, students, and the community are uniting in Chicago (the new teacher's union leadership there was elected precisely to do that). Treating teacher's better, hiring more teachers, etc. is one of the keys to reversing the downward slide in education in the United States. The point to emphasize,  however, is that it is Obama's people, not Romney or Wisconsin Republicans, who are the stalking horses for the most reactionary, retrogressive, austerity-driven strategy in Chicago. In Chicago, Obama is Romney, that is, he and his cronies are doing precisely what those who say they fear a Romney administration would do.

In these circumstances, I have decided that I have been too easy on my progressive friends who argue to vote for Obama to stop Romney. In 2012, such a position is untenable, dangerous, and destructive because it disarms those who would resist the assault on the vast majority of the American people, the drive for "austerity," and the destruction of the limited prosperity that a significant proportion of the population has enjoyed up to now. To support Obama and his policies in any way is to become complicit with his catastrophic agenda, which he or Romney will push regardless of which is elected. To focus on differences between Romney and Obama when they agree on much more which will be disastrous for the people of the USA and the world is to deceive and disarm. To support Obama is to abandon class struggle and resistance, which only allows the dominant class to pursue its programs with minimal opposition.

We should instead take our lead from Iceland, Greece, and France, in each of which the electorate has shifted its support from the austerity parties to parties of resistance. Until American progressives have the courage to do that, they will be part of the downward spiral and complicit in it. Much is at stake, and the time to take sides is now.