National teachers’ union leader seeks to smother Detroit protests
Randi Weingarten speaking at a vigil organized by the DFT to suppress the sick-out of teachers in Detroit
There is a concerted effort by the political establishment to smother the growing movement of teachers, parents and students in defense of public education in Detroit, with the most sinister role being played by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and its local affiliate.
The courageous sickouts called by teachers last month, in opposition to and independent of their union, and the subsequent protests by students and parents, have tripped alarm bells—from the mayor’s office in the Manoogian Mansion, to the paneled hearing rooms in the state capitol of Lansing, to the White House.
The incipient movement has also rattled the Washington, DC headquarters of the AFT, rousing its highly paid president, Randi Weingarten ($540,000 a year) to jet into the Motor City to try to squelch the protests. Having spent the last seven years suppressing every sign of opposition to President Obama’s corporate-driven “school reform” agenda, the AFT is losing control in Detroit and Chicago where rank-and-file teachers are rebelling against austerity measures imposed by the AFT’s Democratic Party allies.
The protests in Detroit threaten to undermine a deal that the AFT and the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) are crafting with Michigan legislators over the reorganization of the Detroit Public Schools (DPS). This includes plans by Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, and state Democrats to dissolve DPS and establish a new “Detroit Community Schools” entity, within which various for-profit education businesses will play an ever more dominant role.Both parties are using the possible bankruptcy of DPS by April—driven by decades of federal and state budget cuts, the loss of tax revenue in the devastated industrial city, and growing indebtedness to big bondholders—to implement the restructuring plan. In this reorganization, both the Michigan AFT and the DFT have worked as partners with the Skillman Foundation, National teachers’ union leader seeks to smother Detroit protests - World Socialist Web Site: