Attention: Students and Parents in K-12 community colleges.

February 2010

SHUT DOWN ALL SCHOOLS ON MARCH 4TH

UNDERFUNDED PROGRAMS, OVER CROWDED CLASSROOMS, CUTS IN MUSIC, ART, SPORTS, SUBSTANDARD TEST SCORES, POOR GRADUATION RATES, LACK OF OPPORTUNITY FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND NO PROMISE OF GOOD JOBS. 1/3 or 33% of our students do not graduate! Less than 25% or one-in-four of our students are proficient in their subject matter. If you are African American or Latino, your chances of success are even worse. It's not your fault; it is the plan of the capitalists! SO WE HAVE TO ASK: WHY ARE CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS FAILING OUR STUDENTS?? What your school board or trustees wont let your teachers tell you is the truth about the capitalist economy and how it does not need you! This education system was formed to train a class of happy workers who know how and when to show up for work. But now the employing class has no work for you. It has become unprofitable to have good paying jobs in America. So today we have 12% official unemployment in California, but if you include all those not counted, it is more like 20%. In the Black and Latino communities this number goes up to over 25%. California has 167,000 people in prison. Prisoners cost $47,000 a year and only $7,500 is spent annually for each student. That is $2,000 less than the average of the rest of the nation. What are our priorities? For the bosses and their bought-and paid-for-politician s, prisons are more important than schools. The bosses and their politicians in Washington and Sacramento, from Obama on down to the local school board, are united in their work to save the bankers and profiteers on Wall Street at the expense of working people and the poor. Trillions of dollars are found to bail out the banks and fund wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, but they cant find enough money to keep teachers in the class rooms and provide quality education. Chevron makes billions in profits, but right here in their shadow our schools are under funded, while they get massive tax breaks, while the poor, the elderly and children suffer. When it comes to the education of working class and poor youth, the capitalist class will only spend as much as they can realize back in profit. Our youth have become expendable to the parasitic bosses and their lackey politicians. THEY HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER YOU! NOT GOOD EDUCATION AND NOT GOOD JOBS! ALL THEY HAVE TO OFFER IS GLOBAL WARMING, ENDLESS WARS AND PRISON! IF YOU WANT EDUCATION AND GOOD JOBS, YOU WILL HAVE TO FIGHT FOR THEM, BY OVERTHROWING CAPITALISM AND BUILDING A SOCIALIST ECONOMY WHERE THE WORKERS OWN THE MAJOR INDUSTRIES AND RUN THEM THEMSELVES ACCORDING TO THE WORKERS PLAN. MARCH 4 TH HAS BEEN DESIGNATED A DAY OF STRIKES AND ACTIONS FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION: WE CALL ON STUDENTS TO ORGANIZE WALK OUTS FROM SCHOOL AND JOIN THE STRIKE AND PROTEST ACTIONS IN BERKELEY, OAKLAND AND SAN FRANCISCO.! FORM ACTION/STRIKE COMMITTEES IN EACH SCHOOL ORGANIZE YOUR WALK OUT OR OCCUPY THE SCHOOLS! REOPEN THEM AS STRIKE SCHOOLS! MAKE STUDENTS' DEMANDS PART OF THE STRIKE ACTION! www.humanistsforrevolutionarysocialism.org e-mail HW4RS@yahoo.com

Attention: Students and Parents in K-12 community colleges.

February 2010

We need to fight for the following demands, which can only be implemented by mobilizing the working class, students and the oppressed for a massive fight back: 1. Full Employment at prevailing union rates for all. To assure full employment, thirty hours of work for forty hours pay must be implemented to spread the available work. 2. Failing industries (both financial and industrial) must be taken over (nationalized) under workers control without compensation to provide adequate access to credit and to get the wheels of industry rolling again.. 3. STOP LAYOFFS! When the bosses declare layoffs or attempt to close down a workplace, workers should occupy the factories and the workplaces and establish workers control. 4. Housing is a right! Stop all foreclosures and evictions. Move the homeless and those in overcrowded housing into housing vacated by foreclosures and the falling real estate market. 5. Quality universal public education at no charge from daycare and pre-school through the graduate level. Working people know that without a good education, our children have no future. Through education we can build a rational economy and divest the world of poverty and drudgery. Education should be under the control of teachers, parents, and students old enough to participate. In that way, we will assure quality education and not the mis-education, over-testing, and ruling class propaganda that currently plague our public schools. 6. Quality free universal health care at no charge from prenatal to the grave is long overdue. To accomplish democratic health care, all medical institutions must be placed under worker (Doctor, Nurses, Staff) control with community/patient participation. Health care for all not for profit! 7. End attacks on undocumented workers! End the ICE raids! Free all detained undocumented workers! Citizenship rights for all undocumented workers! 8. US troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the world. Down with imperialist oppression! The defeat of imperialism is a victory for workers and the oppressed in the world! 130 military bases around the world do not protect working people they are there to protect the investments of the corporations, bankers and speculators. 9. We cannot count on Obama the capitalists or their political parties to clean up the environment and prevent catastrophic climate change. For them, profit always comes before the environment and the need of the workers. But the time to stop climate change is running out. We must fight for workers control of industry in order to transform the current, outmoded technology of industrial production to totally green and sustainable technology. 10. Break with the Democrats. No cross-class coalitions with Democrats and pro-capitalist Greens. Fight for the political independence of the working class! We need to build a revolutionary workers/labor party based on democratically run unions and organizations of the oppressed and the unemployed. 11. For a workers government that can and will implement and defend all the above transitional demands. To accomplish these goals, working people need their own government. If we allow the capitalists to control the state via their government, they will continue to attack and ultimately destroy our social gains. To defend our gains, we need workers power based on democratic workers, students, and soldiers councils.

Hu manists for Revolutionary Socialism www.hu manistsforrevolutionarysocialism.org e-mail HW4RS@yahoo.com