CTA Claps for Wisconsin Teachers

The California Teachers Association issued this silly 30 sec video in which they tell Wisconsin teachers and public sector workers they support them, and then chant Si Se Puede and clap for fifteen seconds.

This is a nice gesture, but it is not solidarity. In fact, it is a risk-free and entirely meaningless act that does nothing to help Wisconsin teachers win their struggle to maintain their union under the threat of military intervention by Gov. Scott Walker. It does nothing to protect CTA’s own membership from the growing attacks in California. (See California's War On Teachers Unions).

True solidarity would involve going to Wisconsin and joining a picket line, risking arrest, confronting their National Guard or, better yet, calling for a General Strike in California, not only in solidarity with Wisconsin workers, but in defense of California public sector workers who are also under attack. It is high time for a nation-wide General Strike, or at least many local ones. The attacks on unions and public workers will not go away by issuing press statements or by collaborating with the enemy or even by paying lobbyists and contributing to Democratic candidates. The attacks will stop only when workers join together and fight back, demonstrating their strength to the ruling class through collective actions that stop the flow of profits.

Until unions get this, until the rank and file force them to get this, the anti-union campaign will intensify until it destroys unions completely.