Class Struggle Education Workers Protest
D.O.E. Attempt to Ban Opposition to U.S./Israel War
Down with the Gag Order Against NYC Teachers!
By Class Struggle Education Workers/UFT
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| Class Struggle Education Workers, CUNY Internationalists and others protest gag order by NYC schools chancellor warning teachers against expressing their views on the U.S./Israel genocidal war against Gaza, November 16. (Internationalist photo) |
Almost immediately after Israel launched its massive bombing campaign against Gaza in response to the breakout attack by Islamist Hamas fighters, followed by their indefensible killing of several hundred Israeli Jews in nearby communities, Israel’s imperialist backers went on the warpath to squelch opposition to the unfolding Zionist slaughter. In various European countries Palestinian solidarity demonstrations were repeatedly banned outright. In the United States the repressive campaign was directed at universities in particular, where support for the Palestinians is widespread, but also against K-12 schools. Any and all protests against Israel’s mass murder were labeled anti-Semitic, including those by anti-Zionist Jewish groups. The drive to shut down opposition to U.S. president Joe Biden’s emphatic support for, and arming of, Israel intensified as people could see how the Zionist militarists’ bombing and subsequent ground invasion of Gaza amounted to a genocidal assault against the entire Palestinian population.
In New York City, the ex-cop mayor Eric Adams slammed celebrities, leftists and unnamed “influencers” who supposedly “spew out hateful thinking” and “specifically anti-Semitism” by expressing solidarity with Palestinians. He vituperated that “college campuses have now become breeding grounds of hate” (New York Post, 14 October). Adams’ schools chancellor David Banks issued a statement that denounced “attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians” but said zero about Israeli bombs raining death on a far greater scale on civilians in Gaza, or about 75 years of oppression of Palestinians by the Zionist state. At the same time, Banks circulated to teachers an “Israel-Hamas War Resource Guide” including pro-Israel lesson plans. As Palestinian solidarity protests mushroomed, Adams and Banks issued a joint statement on October 28 blasting “dangerous slogans and chants” and “toxic rhetoric and division at educational institutions.”
Then, on the day before a November 9 “Schools Out for #CeasefireNow” day of action, walkout and after-school rally, which was endorsed by several teacher groups – Teachers Unite, Movement of Rank-and-File Educators (M.O.R.E.), New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) – among others, Chancellor Banks fired off an email decreeing that “School leaders, teachers, and other school staff should not express their personal views about political matters during the school day” or while on school grounds, and even that “expression of one’s personal views, even outside of the workplace and via social media posts or otherwise, crosses a line” if it disrupts the work “environment,” interferes with New York City Public Schools “operations” (walkouts), etc. In case you didn’t get it, the boss of NYC schools spelled out that “When speech and action – even on one’s personal time – undermines the mission or core functions of NYCPS, we will review and take appropriate action on a case-by-case basis.” I.e., disciplining or firing.
This was no idle threat. Already when Mohammad Jehad Ahmad, a math teacher at Gotham Tech HS in Queens, wrote on his personal Facebook account that Banks’ sending out of “Zionist propaganda” in the guise of “resource guides” showed that the boss of the NYC Department of Education is a “white supremacist” and “imperialist,” the rabidly pro-Zionist New York Post vilified him, pro-Israel parents demanded his ouster, and the D.O.E. opened an investigation. Especially after Banks’ repeated denunciation of protests as “antisemitic” and distribution of pro-Israel teaching materials, this was a blatant attempt to force one and all to march in lockstep in support of the war. Many were enraged by this dictatorial attack on teachers’ freedom of speech, and some spoke out, but many more were intimidated. Could they utter the word “Palestine” on their lunch time, or in the teachers lounge? What if they were photographed by the Post at a Palestine solidarity rally? The NYC Department of Investigations witch-hunters will decide.
So what was the response to this assault on teachers’ basic rights? The New York Civil Liberties Union wrote on X (November 9), formerly known as Twitter, that NYC schools “should spend more time giving teachers the tools to support robust political debate, navigate students’ high emotions, and address serious issues – and less time monitoring their social media accounts.” But while opining that “attempting to restrict teachers’ and staff members’ political speech – especially speech that occurs outside the workplace – is often an overreach” that can “chill” debate and discussion, and that “NYC schools must do better,” the NYCLU’s conclusion was that “the DOE’s may be inside the bounds of the law.” So these bourgeois “defenders” of civil liberties say that the boss can dictate what employees do on their own time! This was then repeated by education website Chalkbeat (8 November).
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| November 9: thousands flood streets of New York City’s Midtown in student walkout/rally against war on Gaza, defying NYC Department of Education intimidation tactics. (Photo: Dave Sanders for The New York Times) |
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| Class Struggle Education Workers and CUNY Internationalists on steps of New York Public Library at start of November 9 rally. (Internationalist photo) |
On November 15, educators in the CSEW and CUNY Internationalists joined a rally of some 150 outside a delegate assembly of the United Federation of Teachers called by M.O.R.E. and others supporting an amendment calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to a resolution on the war. CSEW signs declared “No to the Gag Order! Free Speech for Teachers on Their Own Time,” and “Israel Out of the West Bank and Gaza Now!” (While we do not call for a ceasefire, which would leave the Israeli occupation in place, we would have critically voted in favor of the amendment as it expressed the desire to end the U.S./Israeli slaughter and was, in effect, a referendum on the Zionist/imperialist war on the Palestinians, with the Unity Caucus of the UFT bureaucracy dead-set opposed.) While the amendment was defeated, it received 44% of the votes, an unheard-of development in the historically vehemently pro-Zionist UFT.
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| CUNY and NYC high school students at November 16 CSEW protest at Department of Education headquarters protesting gag order against teachers. (Internationalist photo) |
The next day, November 16, Class Struggle Education Workers held its own protest on the steps leading up to the Department of Education headquarters in the Boss Tweed Court House calling for “Down with the Gag Order Against NYC Teachers!” While small, some 30+ supporters of the CSEW, Internationalist Group, CUNY Internationalists, as well some students from NYC high schools and others attended. They denounced the Banks email ordering teachers to keep their lips zipped on Palestine, and protested the U.S./Israel war, calling for working-class action against the ethnic cleansing and genocide currently taking place in Gaza. A student from City College spoke, linking the protest against the D.O.E.’s gag order to ongoing struggles on different campuses and organizing by workers in the city. Speakers noted that McCarthyite repression is part of the imperialist war drive – as it was during the anti-Soviet Cold War – which is aimed at fostering counterrevolution in China.
In subsequent days, after stirring up a hornet’s nest of opposition with his ban on teacher expression on Palestine – ultimately aimed at strangling student protest against the war – Chancellor Banks has been backing off, saying that he was “not trying to silence anybody,” just to make this a “teachable moment” (City & State, 14 November). A staff member at Brooklyn Tech was quoted as saying “No one wants to say anything because no one wants to get into trouble,” but a round-up article in Chalkbeat (21 November), “NYC students want to talk about Israel and Gaza. Schools are struggling to keep up,” reports that teachers have gone ahead and organized optional lunchtime teach-ins and after-school meetings, including Jewish and Muslim student groups, to talk about the war and the history behind it. This was possible because of the massive backlash against the D.O.E.’s attempt to censor and suppress student and teacher views.
We print below speeches from the November 16 CSEW demonstration, excerpted and edited for publication.
Mark Lance
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My name is Mark Lance. For last 22 years, I've been a math teacher at BMCC (Borough of Manhattan Community College). I teach math to adults who are trying to get their GEDs (general equivalency diplomas) – in other words to students whom the D.O.E. has already failed.
Today, Israeli rockets continue to pound Gaza into rubble and Israeli soldiers occupy the Al Shifa hospital. Babies are dying in their incubators due to the deliberate denial of electricity. Doctors are operating in the dark on children who have been denied anesthesia. At least 11,000 Palestinians are dead.
But the New York City Department of Education doesn't want teachers to talk about it. In fact, they forbid it.
On November 8, on the eve of a planned student walkout over the continued destruction of Gaza, the D.O.E. informed teachers that “express[ing] their personal views about political matters” on school grounds and “even outside the workplace” “crosses a line” and could subject teachers to disciplinary action.
It’s not just in New York. In California, an eighth-grade student was suspended for saying “Free Palestine.”
The McCarthyite censors don't want us to talk about the U.S.-backed mass murder in Gaza, but we do want to talk about it. We want to shout about it! And protest about it. And we want the labor movement to be in the forefront of these protests and put their muscle into it.
We've seen this before.
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| At November 15 rally outside UFT headquarters. (Internationalist photo) |
My poster is Picasso's Guernica where he depicted the 1937 bombing of that Basque town in Spain by the Condor Legion of Hitler's Luftwaffe. Hundreds were killed. If you look at photos of Guernica after the attack, it looks like Gaza. But the destruction of Gaza is vastly greater.
We do not condone Hamas’ attacks on civilians but what Israel is conducting now is mass murder on a massively larger scale. Today, the Israeli government speaks the language of genocide, describing Palestinians as “animals.” Netanyahu makes biblical references to the destruction of ancient enemies including men, women, children and infants. A minister in Netanyahu's government raised the idea of dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, adding that there was no such thing as a non-combatant there.
Netanyahu's staunchest ally in this mass murder is the U.S. government which has armed Israel to the teeth. Biden has stood by Netanyahu as each bomb fell on civilians and, like Netanyahu, he opposes even a ceasefire.
This, too, is not new.
We remember the siege of Falujah [in Iraq]. We remember Vietnam where the U.S. military said they had to destroy villages in order to “save” them. We remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All of these atrocities were done by the U.S. government in the name of “democracy.”
So, we have no illusions in the U.S. government playing the role of peacemaker. Quite the contrary, the U.S. government is the architect of these war crimes and the #1 perpetrator of them.
So who can stop the joint U.S./Israeli war machine?
I was at a protest last night [outside the UFT delegate assembly] where a chant was “If we don't get it, shut it down!” That sounds good, but who, who’s going to shut it down?
We in the Class Struggle Education Workers look to the labor movement, especially internationally, to oppose this genocidal slaughter.
Some people say “Come on, man. That’ll never happen.”
In Canada, the public employee union CUPE called on the government to end arms sales to Israel. In Britain, the rail and transport rail and transport workers called on members to join Palestine solidarity protests and called on the government to stop arms sales to Israel. Workers in Unite, Unison and other unions in the UK blocked the entrance to an Israeli arms company in Kent. Workers in Italy marched at a U.S. base and called to stop arms to Israel and Ukraine.
In Genoa, Italy, dock workers are preparing to block weapons in transit to Israel. In Spain, the union representing Barcelona's dockworkers promised Monday not to load or unload military materials onto any ship bound for Israel or another warzone where they could be used against civilians.
This is a modest start. The point is to turn sentiments of solidarity into action such as “hot-cargoing” [refusing to move cargo that’s “too hot to handle”] arms shipments at the factories, ports and railheads.
I'll tell you what is a utopian fantasy. Thinking the U.S. government is ever going to oppose Israel's genocidal slaughter.
We have emphasized that this is a U.S./Israel war. This war is funded, armed and backed by the U.S. government, headed up today by Democratic president Joe Biden. The Vietnam War and the atom-bombing of Japan were also imperialist wars, also executed by Democratic Party-led administrations
We call on workers and to break with the Democratic Party and form a workers party based on a program of class struggle.
One more thing.
The Nazis’ bombing of Guernica was a dress rehearsal for World War II. They tried out their shrieking Stukka dive bombers there, designed to simultaneously kill and terrorize. “Shock and awe.”
The crazed warmakers in Washington and Jerusalem are hell bent on driving to World War III. Their #1 target – and they admit it – is China.
If class struggle is needed – and it desperately is – then it’s necessary to organize it.
Class struggle is real. It works. It's the only thing that works.
For workers action to stop Israeli terror!
Marjorie Stamberg
My name is Marjorie Stamberg, I’m a retired teacher in the Department of Education, and a very proud member of the UFT (the United Federation of Teachers). We have always said the UFT is not the leadership. The UFT is the teachers, it’s the paras (paraprofessionals), it’s the nurses, it’s the people who make up the body of the UFT. We’re always fighting with the union leadership that right now, in terms of health care, in terms of Palestine, I see as working for [Mayor Eric] Adams.
There are a lot of threats against teachers … for teaching. As teachers, our job is to talk with people about how for 55 years Gaza has been the world’s biggest open-air prison. But we’re not allowed to show our personal preferences in the classroom. That’s something that’s been there for a while. But the letter from Chancellor Banks says teachers may not talk about their personal feelings about the situation anywhere on school grounds. That means not in the lunch room, not in your prep (preparation time), not before and not after. That’s point one. Point two is worse: you may not talk about your personal feelings on the issue outside of the school day.
So you guys want to come and get me? I’m retired and I have tenure, so come on. But for many, many teachers who do not have tenure, their jobs could be on the line.
Yesterday over a hundred people were down at the UFT to pass a motion for a ceasefire. It did not pass, but it split the body much deeper than they’ve ever seen anything. We in my group, Class Struggle Education Workers, are not calling for a ceasefire, because that would mean Israeli troops in the hospitals, taking over half of Gaza, pushing the people of Gaza into the desert, into the Sinai. We call for Israel out of Gaza and the West Bank completely. We’re for united Palestinian Arab and Hebrew workers struggle, because there are many contradictions in Israel as well.
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| Genocide underway: survivors look for bodies and survivors after Israel bombed Jabaliya refugee camp on October 21 with two 2,000-pound bombs, leveling a whole block. (Photo: Mohammed Saber/EPA) |
One of the big lies that is going on around here is that anybody who defends Palestine has got to be an anti-Semite. They’re just trying to intimidate you. We are anti-Zionist, which is not anti-Semitism. Jewish people throughout the world have been victims of anti-Semitism who are not for the most part committed to having a state in the Middle East. Many of them were victims of the Holocaust, and they could not come to the United States, they were not allowed in, also in many other countries in Europe, so many went to Israel.
The problem is, when you have two groups of people occupying the same land, you really can’t solve it unless you have socialism. Because if you have two states, which state is the stronger, which state is going to control the fuel, which will control the land, which one has the biggest army? So that idea [of a “two-state solution”] has gone down the way. We say we need a revolution in Gaza, in Israel and throughout the Middle East. And we can’t forget the U.S. role.
So we have a fight inside our union, for our students and for our teachers to have the right to express their own opinions and to teach. That’s what we’re there for.
Charlie Brover
I’m Charlie Brover and I’m a member of Class Struggle Education Workers. Mark and Marjorie have certainly laid out the case. I just want to say I grew up in a Jewish home and we have a special responsibility to speak out. I’m particularly offended when it’s said that people who are raising the question of Palestinian rights are somehow anti-Semitic. For years, they’ve been selling that lie. So I was sort of gratified when I saw that there was a letter by Jewish writers saying that it is a danger to try to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. But then there was that big [pro-Israel] demo in Washington, where they featured a Christian Zionist, John Hagee, who is pro-Israel because he wants all the Jews to be gathered in Jerusalem so that they can either be converted or burned, when the “second coming” comes. That they support.
What happens in a war like this is that language gets distorted in terrible ways. Not only the question of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, but if you turn on your TV and you listen to what people are saying, they’re calling this a war on Hamas. This is not a war on Hamas, it is a war on the people of Palestine, and anybody with eyes can see it. Then they say it’s about “self-defense.” Where’s the self-defense? They killed 4,000 children – that’s not self-defense!
What’s happening is the unfolding of genocide. And it’s classical. The Center for Constitutional Rights is bringing a suit on general legal terms. That is, when you cut off their electricity, when you cut off their water, when you cut off their capacity to run their hospitals, that is war on a whole people. That’s what’s going on, and the language they use is the language of colonialism: “We represent civilization. You represent barbarism.” Where have we heard that before? We heard it about Native Americans, we heard it about black people under Jim Crow. It is always the position they take, and we need to stand up to that.
Finally, whenever there’s a problem, we always say the answer is socialism. Get rid of capitalism and we can solve that. And liberals respond that we can solve that under capitalism: we can solve climate change under capitalism, we can solve racism under capitalism, we can solve war under capitalism. And then they come to Palestine and Israel. How are you going to solve that? And they say, we have no idea. In fact, when you have interpenetrated peoples, it cannot be solved under capitalism, it can’t be solved other than by an Arab-Hebrew workers state.
Charlie Morán
Hi everybody, I’m Charlie Morán. I’m an immigrant worker, I’m also a supporter of the Internationalist Group and a co-founder of Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas, that is, Class-Struggle Immigrant Workers, an immigrant organization associated with the IG.
As immigrant workers we know a little bit about what it
means to be on the receiving end of state repression. And we know a little bit
about concentration camps: a lot of immigrant workers are trapped down at the
border for months, sometimes for years, in the ICE [Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency) concentration camps. It’s not the same as in Gaza, but as
immigrant workers we know what it is to be living in a police state, not even
able to move from state to state, or even leave the country and be able to come
back.
We’re also protesting the fact of the genocide that the Zionist garrison state is giving out against the Palestinians in Gaza and very likely, very soon in the West Bank as well. This is what the Zionist state has been waiting for a long time. They have carried out this ethnic cleansing for the past 75 years. And now they’re really going to erase Gaza completely. We cannot be silent. We cannot let any institution, whether it is a high school or it’s a university, challenge us.
We know that the Democratic Party, in power now, and the Republican Party, both of them are pro-Zionist, pro-Israel. We need to understand that, even though we have mass mobilization, which is a good thing, also in Europe, that we need the power of the working class that can bring this ethnic cleansing in Palestine to a halt. And not only here. We look to our brothers and sisters of the working class in Egypt, to mobilize their power.
Kaitlan
Hello everyone, my name is Kaitlan, I’m a student and a member of the CUNY Internationalist Clubs. We came out of a pandemic when working-class and poor students had their education compromised, or halted altogether. Then we witnessed the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless others, and multiple instances of the blatant disregard for black lives. These days we live under the constant threat of World War III, something that Biden and all those in the Democratic and Republican parties feel all too comfortable bringing us closer to. And now, for weeks, we’ve watched as countless bombs have killed thousands, including families and entire generations. Children have been murdered in Gaza, a war funded and armed by the U.S.A.
And then, when we rightly come out in defense of Gaza and Palestinians, we face various repercussions. We heard about Columbia, where student groups that came out in defense of Gaza were suspended. At Hunter [College], a film screening, seeking to educate students and faculty about Zionism was canceled by the president. This is a trend. In recent years, there have also been attacks on teachers who want to talk about race in their classroom, or gender. All of this is intimidation tactics. They’re trying to set a precedent, and if we don’t come out now, they will win. We can’t let them win. That is why we need to bring out our power as students, as teachers and as workers around this city. If we mobilize that power we can squash these intimidation tactics, this censorship and this gag order, once and for all.
Demonstrators chant: “Stop the gag order, We will not be silent,” “Defend Gaza against Israeli terror,” “For workers action to defend the Palestinians” and “For workers action to stop the arms shipments.”
Sándor John
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| Signs (upper left) reproduce poster "We Will Not Be Silenced" from Mexico after the October 1968 massacre in which hundreds were killed by the army using guns supplied by the United States and advised by U.S. agents. (Internationalist photo) |
Speakers have referred to the fear of defending the besieged people, imprisoned in this open-air concentration camp of Gaza, where they are being bombed, every day with bombs made where? [Demonstrators: “U.S.A.”] From planes made where? [Demonstrators: “U.S.A.”] The fear of coming out against that, to protest that, to protest war criminals like President Biden and the Democratic Party, and Netanyahu and the Israeli state. They claim that to protest that is anti-Semitic. They want to smear everybody who wants to fight against this bloody, murderous war. By doing so, they are breeding Islamophobia, and they are breeding anti-Semitism. So against that lie we chant, “Arab, Jewish, black and white, Workers of the world unite!” [Demonstrators chant.]
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| Internationalists at Nov. 6 "Block the Boat" picket in Tacoma, Washington. Longshore workers respected the picket, military had to use soldiers to load war cargo for the Middle East. (Internationalist photo) |
Speakers have emphasized the power of the working class. We’re talking about workers action to stop those ships, carrying those weapons. There were community pickets in Oakland [California], and then in Tacoma [Washington] where longshore workers respected those picket lines, and the government had to send in military personnel to ship deadly weapons for mass murder in this U.S. war. But to unleash the power of the working class, we have to fight against the bureaucracy, the current leadership of the labor movement, that subordinates the unions and working-class organizations in general to the government party, the war party, the Democratic Party of U.S. imperialism presently in the White House, alternating with the other main party of U.S. imperialism, the Republicans. In fact, the Democratic Party is usually in power when U.S. imperialism carries out its wars.
Demonstrators chant: Remember Hiroshima, remember Vietnam, Democratic Party, we know which side you’re on!”
About the gag order in the schools: the D.O.E. literally said that teachers and staff could not express their political opinions not only on work time but on their own time when they’re on school grounds. So if you’re at lunch and you’re sitting next to your friend and you say, “I can’t believe that they just bombed another hospital,” you could be disciplined. But the D.O.E. went further, and literally said, even on your own time and not at work – they put this in bold letters – you could still be disciplined for expressing a political opinion. This is McCarthyism, which was an attempt to silence opposition to the Korean War, to silence organizing against racist Jim Crow segregation, against lynching, during the Cold War. That was broken through, above anything else, with the massive black freedom struggle in the 1950s and ’60s. This began to crack the “Cold War consensus.” But they couldn’t crack the repressive apparatus of the United States government – for that we need socialist revolution.
Amalia
And who runs this state, who is behind this gag order? Cop mayor Eric Adams of the Democratic Party. And who is funding and supporting this war, who is aiding the Israeli regime of murder? Democratic Party president Joe Biden. If we want to fight the repression of those protesting the war and defending the Palestinians, we have to be clear about who our enemies are. The fight against the gag order and the resurgence of McCarthyism in our schools is part of the battle over education. It is a class struggle and must be fought as such, against the ruling class and its vendetta of repression. For free, quality, robust schools open to all!
Class Struggle Education Workers is an organization, fraternally linked to the Internationalist Group, of union and non-unionized activists in all aspects of education fighting for a revitalization and transformation of the labor movement into an instrument for the emancipation of the working class and the oppressed. See the CSEW program here. The struggle for students’ and educators’ rights, and mobilization against the genocidal war on the Palestinians continues. If you are interested in joining these efforts, contact the CSEW at cs_edworkers@hotmail.com. ■
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