A call to action
SHUT DOWN COVID-19
SHUT DOWN IN-PERSON SCHOOLS
STRIKE – WALKOUT – SICKOUT
COVID + SCHOOLS REOPENING = DEAD CHILDREN
Weekly National Public Tribunal
For Full Virtual Learning and to Defeat the COVID-29 Pandemic
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Across the nation, teachers, parents, and students are fighting for their lives. Students have organized strikes and walkouts in California, Michigan, New York, and Massachusetts, demanding remote learning options to protect themselves from COVID-19. The students organized online, often by circulating petitions among their classmates, many of whom had become infected during the holidays. In Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Detroit, and many more cities, teachers are engaged in ongoing struggles to achieve even the most basic safety precautions against the pandemic.
These struggles have appeared at moment of extreme urgency. The winter weather and family vacations caused COVID-19 case numbers to reach new records of over one million per day, straining hospital workers to the breaking point. The reality for education is that students and school employees are under the same strain. Either the schools must be shut down by strikes, or the schools will be shut down by sickness. There is no third choice.
But as the Omicron variant surges everywhere, school district leaders continue to push the reckless and deadly policy of reopening in-person schools, regardless of the fatal consequences. Child hospitalizations have skyrocketed to their highest point since the pandemic began, while the political leaders of both parties are echoing the sickening policy of Donald Trump towards the nation’s children: “We want them infected!”
This is an emergency; we must act decisively, and we must act now.
A policy choice between life and death
The science is unambiguously clear: the choice between in-person and remote learning makes an enormous difference in the number of cases and deaths from COVID-19. In one study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Association between statewide school closure and COVID-19 incidence and mortality in the US,” researchers found that school closures were associated with a 62% reduction in case numbers and a 58% reduction in deaths. More studies from many other countries have reinforced what everyone already knew: in-person schooling is very efficient at spreading disease.
However, political leaders have refused to learn anything from the science. Chicago’s belligerent Mayor Lightfoot has even rejected the use of mandatory PCR testing, calling it an “invasive medical procedure.” This insanity mimics a policy decision originally pushed by the Trump administration: stop doing testing in order to make the case numbers look smaller.
Basic policy decisions have been the largest factor, by far, in determining the death toll from COVID-19 all over the world. As a result of these decisions, the United States will reach one million deaths before some other nations have reached one thousand. The inhuman health policies of the US government have already caused the deaths of one out of every 400 individuals in the US population as a whole. Disproportionately, this crime against humanity has most severely affected America’s black, brown, and immigrant populations.
There is only one main reason why US leaders have allowed the virus to spread so relentlessly: to keep the economy booming. Forcing
students back to school is the only way of forcing parents back to work. And forcing parents back to work is the only way for big business to keep making big money. For the sake of boosting the profits of billionaires, US politicians have decided to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Our lives are not for sale. We are not willing to sacrifice the lives of teachers, parents, and children for the sake of more economic bull. We are “sick and tired of being sick and tired” and we will not tolerate this regime of death and destruction any longer.
Strike to shut down COVID-19, strike to win
Throughout the pandemic, in order to win any gains towards school safety measures, this has required parents refusing to send their children to school, and teachers refusing to return to work. More than 575,000 teachers have left the workforce since the start of the pandemic. Nearly every school closure so far has been the result of large numbers of parents who refuse to expose their children to danger. School districts would only close down officially once the community members had already shut them down in practice.
However, these actions by parents and teachers have been, in their large majority, individual initiatives. In order to win real and consistent gains for public health, we must be able to struggle as an organized movement. We must bring the methods of mass organization, mass democracy, and mass action to the movement. We must adopt the methods of strikes, walkouts, and protests—the historical tradition of civil rights struggle.
Teachers: build a local section of the Equal Opportunity Now/By Any Means Necessary caucus within your teachers’ union. Fight for clear, unequivocal demands to save lives. Always remember—strike to win!
Students, parents, and community members: build community defense groups to organize student strikes and impose demands on the school districts. Affiliate with the national EON/BAMN teachers’ caucus.
Program of demands:
Shut down in-person schools immediately; provide remote learning resources for all
Mandatory vaccination for all students and school employees
Mandatory mask use, with districts providing high quality N95, KN95, or KF94 respirators for all
Mandatory PCR testing and contact tracing
Expand paid leave and economic assistance for parents and families, to support their children’s ability to learn remotely
End the racist, second-class treatment of minority and immigrant communities—full resources and rights to health care regardless of documentation or status
2022.01.08
Watch BAMN’s Video: Call to Action! Shut Down COVID-19!
Shut Down In-Person Schools!
