December 2016's Teaching
Resistance is written
by the one and only Yvette
Felarca, a bay
area-based educator, activist, and tireless voice of anti-fascist
resistance who is an inspiration to radical teachers everywhere.
Building the Movement to Stop Trump
Lessons From Victory in Berkeley by an Anti-Fascist, Civil Rights Educator
Donald Trump has used the presidential
election in the U.S. to build a movement modeled on the semi-fascist
ultra-right wing immigrant bashing parties of Europe, like the Le Pen
National Front, and the historical experience of the rise to power of
Mussolini’s fascists and Hitler’s Nazi’s. With Donald Trump’s
assumption of the presidency, the first step would be taken in the
creation of a fascist power over the American government and the
American people. The feeble electoral tactics of Clinton’s
Democrats have failed to prevent this disaster for democracy in the
U.S. and around the world. Both the Democratic Party and the American
news media have proven bankrupt in defeating Trump or even in
speaking the plain truth about the threat he presents and the real
character of the movement he heads.
Trump and his movement can be defeated,
but only by a new mass movement committed to the principles of
democracy, equality, diversity, and openness. Only such a movement
can defeat Trump, his billionaire club backers, and his mass
lynch-mob followers’ struggle to undermine those principles in
order to carry out draconian attacks on immigrants, organized labor,
and all oppressed communities. Trump’s movement is at war with the
new majority-minority America with its progressive commitment to
diversity, tolerance, and internationalism. Trump’s demagogy and
even his personal image promises a return to a reactionary utopia of
white-skin privilege and male power over women.
To defend the democratic gains of the
past, and realize the potential for a fully human liberation in the
future, and to avoid the destruction of both Americans’ most
cherished principles and a world of increasing division, hate, and
violence, we must build a new mass movement to defeat Trump and
everything he stands for. The building of such a mass democratic
movement is the greatest and most urgent challenge of our times. Our
new mass movement, by mobilizing everything that’s best in us, can
defeat Trump and his ugly mob, which concentrates everything that is
worst in American history.
I know this first hand, because I just
won my own victory against Trump’s Nazi and KKK backers. My name is
Yvette Felarca. I have been
dedicated middle school teacher in Berkeley, and longtime civil
rights and trade union activist. I came under attack from the
Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) administration for my work as
a progressive teacher and for my political activity. I teach ELD
(English as a Second Language) and Humanities at Martin Luther King
Middle School in Berkeley, where I’ve taught for 10 years. I
consistently received strong teaching evaluations and support from
students, co-workers, and parents. As a teacher and a political
activist, I believe in engaging young people in their education by
encouraging them to connect their learning to their own lives and
struggles for social justice.
On June 26, 2016, during summer vacation,
I protested self-identified neo-Nazi and KKK Trump supporters who
scheduled a rally on the steps of the capitol in Sacramento. Instead
they violently attacked us, and nine anti-fascist protesters,
including me, were stabbed by the Nazis. These same fascists had
already stabbed and almost killed black and Latino protesters in
Anaheim earlier in the year, and had gone to Sacramento to try to do
the same thing. The day after the Sacramento rally, violent threats
were made by Nazi and racist Trump supporters against me and against
my school if I was not fired.
Instead of defending me, the neo-liberal
BUSD administration attacked me and began their witch-hunt. Four days
after I was stabbed, the District issued me a formal discipline, then
later, on August 31, they took my entire August paycheck. On Wed.
Sept. 21, three weeks into the school year, the BUSD administration
removed me from a faculty meeting, escorted me to my classroom to
collect my personal belongings, and then marched me out of the
school. I was placed on administrative leave.
Every witch-hunt includes a shameful
round-up, and Berkeley was no exception. I found out that the same
day I was placed on administrative leave, several of my immigrant and
ELD students were removed from class and questioned about me by the
school district’s lawyer, without their parents being notified or
present. They were also questioned about their off campus, outside of
school political activities and activism. They were forced to answer
questions in English, which is not their native language. My other
immigrant and international students, and only my immigrant and
international students, were rounded up and questioned on a variety
of days during the time that I was on administrative leave. Even
Latina students who had been my students years earlier, but who had
spoken out in my defense at school board meetings, were also
interrogated by District officials. And just when it seems like it
couldn’t be more shameful, students were told by BUSD lawyers and
administration to keep their "interviews" a secret and to
"tell no one."
The initial shock and fear that I and my
students experienced from this victimization soon gave way to anger,
and that anger galvanized me and my students to take action. Before I
even left the school on the first day I was suspended, I asked my
co-workers to announce what happened to the rest of the staff, and to
urge them to get to the school board meeting that evening. Teachers,
school support staff, students, and parents filled the school board
meeting to speak out in my defense, and even shut down the meeting to
demand the right of one my students’ parents to speak. The
following school board meeting we had twice as many people there and
shut down the meeting again. Me and other teachers, school employees,
students, parents, and community members attended every school board
meeting since then, and held mass organizing meetings where we voted
on demands and a plan of action from week to week. Students, in
particular, were incredibly courageous and inspiring—making
speeches at School Board meetings, writing and circulating their own
petition, wearing stickers and buttons, even organizing each other
internationally to call in to the School Board meetings to make
speeches from Mexico City. I spoke to the media every chance I got.
And even though there were days where the pressure and uncertainty
certainly took their toll on me, the movement sustained and bolstered
me far more than anything else could have. I knew that I had to speak
up, because if I didn’t, not only me, but other good teachers would
get run out of teaching if I didn’t.
I am a union and civil rights activist. I
am member of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) Executive
Board, a founding member of the Equal Opportunity Now/By Any Means
Necessary (EON/BAMN) Caucus in both the National Education
Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). I am
a national organizer with the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action,
Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means
Necessary (BAMN). If not for my experience as a political organizer,
and the support of my national organizations, I would have felt too
isolated to fight the way I did. Thanks to EON/BAMN and to teachers
in my school and others who supported me, I got my union to file a
grievance to restore my pay and to also advocate for my swift return
to my classroom. My lawyers in BAMN also filed lawsuit on my behalf
against BUSD for discrimination, violations of free speech, due
process, and academic freedom. They also filed a lawsuit on behalf of
my students and their parents for discrimination, racial targeting
and intimidation, and for violating the students’ freedom of
speech.
It’s a huge mistake, however, to rely
on either the union bureaucracy or the court system to win justice.
By far, credit for our Berkeley victory goes to the movement that
spread nationally and even internationally with each passing day.
Building that movement would not have been possible without the
backing and movement organizing methods of EON/BAMN. Despite the best
efforts of Trump’s racist threats and policies, our movement won,
and I was returned to my classroom after six weeks.
The outcome of my struggle was and is
vital to the rights of other teachers and to the struggle against
racism and the growth of American fascism. In the context of growing
violent racist and far right-wing attacks being waged across the
globe, and by the racism and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s cabinet,
the decision of BUSD to discipline and suspend me for my off duty
political activities and political affiliations and activism place
Berkeley on the wrong side of the historic struggle to stop the rise
of the far-right wing and their violent attacks. That, in turn,
discredited that neo-liberal school board members with each passing
day. More importantly, I urge more teachers who face the same kind of
threats and attacks in the future to stand up and wage a public
fight, too—and to contact me and BAMN. We beat the neo-liberals who
rolled out the red carpet for Trump. Now let’s defeat Trump! Se se
puede! --Yvette Felarca
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