2 Class Struggle Education Workers Newsletter “Educate – Agitate – Organize” Issue No. 3, April-May 2012 Email:
[email protected] We Need a Workers Party Not Obama/Romney’s “Only Game in Town” An out of town gambler gets into a taxi and asks the driver where he can get some action. The driver says, “I’ll take you to the game at Joe’s Gar- age.” The gambler says, “But I’ve heard that game is crooked.” “Yeah,” says the driver, “it’s rigged, but it’s the only game in town.” When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, millions of de- cent people wept for joy. In this deeply racist country, Americans voted for a black president – a cultural near miracle if not a po- litical one. He talked about the “audacity of hope” and promised “change we can believe in.” The CSEW was not among the be- lievers, and we forthrightly said so. It soon became painfully clear CSEW at New York City protest against the racist murder of Trayvon Martin, April 10. that although the 2008 election signified an important cultural shift in the optics of race in the Obama administration ever since. To direct educational the U.S., Obama was the champion of change that only Wall policy, Obama rejected the liberal educator Linda Darling Street could believe in. Hammond in favor of Arne Duncan, self-styled “CEO” of the Chicago Public Schools whose corporate education “re- Obama took time out from his 2008 campaign to sup- forms’ were solidly supported by the city’s business elite.