Janus—the best defense is a good offense

 
OAKLAND, CA — This month, the Supreme Court will likely decide the Janus v. AFSCME case that seeks to stop public unions collecting fees from all the employees they’re required to represent. Janus attacks public workers, teachers, and the resources we all need.
Janus is one part of the corporate-led attack to privatize or eliminate all public services and resources, including public education. Public unions have played a major role in defending these resources, but it is time for teachers, and all who must work to survive, to take the offensive. In public education, this means our unions must unite with our students, their families, and the broader community to hold government accountable to guarantee the necessities of life for everyone, without exception.
We call out the corporate takeover of government that dispossesses us of our rights and resources. Massive corporate tax cuts and loopholes leave government short of funds, slashing public services. Corporations united with our government engineer this crisis, then use it as an excuse to turn public funds into private profit. Government serves as the Dispossessor-in-Chief.
Why? Corporations won’t pay to educate workers they no longer need. Mass public education has always been based on corporate need for literate workers in large numbers. The digital revolution has changed our economy, making more and more workers superfluous; the decline in education funding and quality follows.
Profit-based funding means education on the cheap; crowded classrooms, inadequate educational resources, and teacher poverty.
The attack is bipartisan; it represents the needs of the entire corporate class of billionaires. It includes corporate liberals like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, the Clintons, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, and Rahm Emanuel, not just Trump, the Kochs, and DeVos.
Taking the offensive means understanding there are no common interests between corporations and the people. It means demanding profit has no place in public education! In West Virginia, Arizona and beyond, teachers are fighting for adequate classroom resources and teacher compensation. Because the laws are designed to prevent workers from fighting and winning, teachers are forced to break those laws to press their case, hooking up with parents, classified staff, and other state workers as they strike illegally.
Suddenly there is a social force driving governors to provide money they said didn’t exist. This broad force is able to unite because they all face further cuts to fundamental necessities of life. More and more, we face a common, growing poverty. Education, health care, pensions, housing, jobs are all basic needs to survive. The just demand for these is the basis of their unity and their power, and also of ours.
We must hold government accountable to guarantee the welfare of human beings and the earth, not of corporations. As we’ve seen from the poisoning of Flint to the devastation of Appalachian mountains, corporations evade responsibility for the problems they cause. And government lets them do this.
The Janus decision, along with vouchers and charter schools, creates two education systems; one for the Haves, one for the Have-Nots. We will not accept this; we will not be silent about this. We will unite and go on the offensive for what we need and deserve.