CALIFORNIA TEACHERS —
WE CANNOT WAIT, WE CANNOT POSTPONE OUR UNITED TEACHERS’ STRUGGLE:
- To defend public education!
- To join the movement for justice for Renee Good and to defend democracy itself!
- To stop Trump’s regime of police-state murder and terror in our communities!
- To stop the rise of Trump’s fascist government in America!
1. The threat to American democracy is real—including the threat to the right to public education—BUT THE MASS MOVEMENT TO DEFEND DEMOCRACY AND STOP FASCISM IS REAL, TOO.
Trump invaded Los Angeles with an anti-immigrant federal military force that targeted immigrants and, in reality, all human rights and all principles of equal justice. In response, the people of Los Angeles have risen up and inspired a national movement to defeat Trump and his attacks and his despotic presidency. Trump’s would-be American gestapo has been ordered by him to invade other cities. In Minneapolis on January 7, one of Trump’s federal thugs, ICE agent Jonathan Ross, publicly murdered Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, shooting her in front of her wife, 3 times through her car window. Trump’s top officials, including Trump himself, immediately defended the murder and the murderer—against an avalanche of video evidence and eye-witness accounts seen by millions.
Now the people of Minneapolis and Minnesota, led by a broad coalition of courageous and compassionate communities and following in the heroic example of the brave immigrants and progressive communities of Los Angeles, have deepened and expanded the new movement against Trump’s cruelty, authoritarianism, and plans for a fascist America.
2. The Rise of American Fascism is Real.
Teachers know words like “fascism” are often thrown around lightly. We naturally want to protect our students against the careless demagogy by which anybody may call somebody with whom they disagree “fascist.”
But fascism has been an only too real phenomenon of modern history. Between the end of WWI and the end of WWII, fascist movements, headed by the leadership cults of ultranationalist, Trump-style demagogues, used their nations’ supposedly democratic constitutions to create authoritarian executives sustained by police-state regimes which destroyed democratic government in Italy (Mussolini’s fascist party) and Germany (Hitler’s Nazis).
The fanatical obsession of these two tyrants with their central strategic aim—the domination of all Europe by the two fascist countries—led not only to the abomination of Mussolini and Hitler’s totalitarianism with its sweeping destruction of human rights and individual liberty—but to the systematic genocides of the Holocaust and the nuclear holocaust of the United States’ atomic bombings of Japan in the most terrible war of human history. This era, launched by these two fascist movements, ended with the dawn of the nuclear age.
3. The Specific Origins and Character of Fascism
The 20th and 21st centuries have seen many dictatorships—many attacks on democracy, most typically military coups. Fascism is the political program of a particular kind of dictatorship in societies where a straightforward coup is not viable—in effect, in societies which have developed in such a way that a ruling elite that seeks authoritarian power over the state can do so only—in part—by being based on a plebeian mass movement. Fascism is one of those bitter ironies of history: to create an undemocratic regime in some countries requires a certain perverse development: a mass movement directed against the democratic power of the masses.
In effect, fascism is necessary when a section of a ruling class becomes convinced it must persuade a certain section of the ordinary common working masses to support the destruction of their own democratic protections and rights. History affords only a few circumstances for something so irrational as a mass ritual of political suicide: generally speaking, circumstances in which a section of the wealthy ruling class layers—a section of the modern capitalist class—becomes convinced it can maintain its rule only by summoning into being a supposedly mass-democratic movement against democracy. This requires an historical moment of extreme contradictions and polarizations.
Only a few ideological causes can facilitate such a strange and dangerous development. Primarily, the ideology of fascism requires an appeal to the ultranationalism of working people—of a section of the lower middle class, the “petit bourgeoisie.” A leadership cult appeals to the gut national chauvinism of a mass constituency on the basis of its ostensible real or fictitious history of petty privileges now supposedly under attack. This leadership—representing in reality the despairing appetite for unfettered power of a segment of the wealthiest ruling layers—in short, of the biggest capitalists—presents itself as the salvation of a section of the laboring, smallholding masses as long as this mass base identifies its own desperation with the very different struggle for power of a faction of its oppressive economic rulers (in US history for example, the demagogic appeal to white supremacy and immigrant-bashing by the right wing directed to lower-middle-class and lumpenized white Americans against what are actually the struggles for equal rights and opportunities by black and other minority Americans and immigrants).
The fascist leadership cult addresses its mass base in terms history has made only too terribly familiar: there is a crying need for a supposedly “mass-democratic” or populist coup AGAINST DEMOCRACY. Evil forces—the fascist voices declare—are attacking the “genuine patriots,” the “real citizens,” the one-time majority of once-privileged, now supposedly threatened “true citizens.” From the lower layers—the historically especially-oppressed working people—and from certain elements of the rich and famous—a murky plot has supposedly developed, a dark conspiracy that has created a set of rights and protections—supposedly steps towards the ideals of democracy—whose real heinous purpose is to take away the (essentially petty or fictitious) privileges of the fascists’ audience. These “evil forces,” themselves made up of both rich and poor—have supposedly usurped the Constitutional and political banner of democracy and turned it against the once-privileged, once-upon-a-time majority now drawn toward the fascists’ message of self-pity and despair.
The only solution—the fascist program ultimately proclaims—is the destruction of the whole historical program of democratic rights and protections and the whole “misleading” program of equal rights for all. The fascists declare the only real democracy to be a war on democracy in the name of the glory of the once-great-fatherland/motherland of the supposedly “original, real citizens.”
Where such a paradoxical appeal can resonate, on the one hand, with the mentality of a section of the national economic ruling class and, on the other hand, a section of the working masses—there is a potential for a fascist leadership to attempt to construct a fascist political movement—even a fascist political party. But the relative success of such a movement requires, on the one hand, a history of substantial but limited and unstable success in the creation of democratic political institutions and mass-democratic consciousness, and, on the other hand, the historical evolution of both a ruling-class and mass fear and resentment of the ongoing progressive development of a mass-democratic society.
Thus the components accumulate in a nation’s history for a ruling class that yearns for authoritarian power but does not believe it can carry out a reactionary coup within the existing political and military order. In effect, the whole modern history of the country is bound up with a belief in democratic rights and institutions. Fascism provides a certain political key to this paradox: how to turn masses against their own system of democratic rights.
Fascism, by its most essential nature, must aim at the destruction of the whole system of political, economic, and cultural concessions made to the laboring majority of a modern society. It offers itself, after all, primarily as a solution to a sense of collective despair on the part of a wealthy elite convinced they must have all political power concentrated in the hands of a political elite loyal to them, not any bunch of misled masses. But fascism requires a mass-plebeian base to counter the historic strength of the commitment to democracy of millions of people.
Fascism is therefore inherently dangerous for its supporters—and thus a phenomenon of periods of extreme political paralysis, polarization, and desperation. Fascism is inherently unstable and internally divided. But its very desperate character makes the empowered fascist program more dangerous. Fascism succeeds not from the occasional success of a particular policy—the policy of fascism is merely a long-run succession of gestures of despair. Whether in coming to power or in maintaining power, a fascist movement “succeeds” only insofar as it is successful in frightening and fostering the paralysis of the defenders of democracy.
Fascism is, then, a sort of ongoing, mass, right-wing reactionary coup against democracy. It takes root only in the political and social soil of despair, planted and fertilized by ignorance, paranoia, and bigotry. Fascism is essentially fear and hatred directed against the struggle for equality and directed against the rule of reason.
The fascist ongoing reactionary coup against democracy, rooted in and sustained by paranoia and fear, can be defeated only by the bold action of the defenders of the principles of democracy and equality. Fascism cannot be neutralized, normalized, and bargained or flattered into civilized behavior. It is the true enemy of all genuine civilization. The ongoing cruel counterrevolutionary coup of fascism can, in historical terms, only be defeated by the victory of the democratic and egalitarian revolution.
4. Trump’s American-Style 21st-Century Fascism
Trump lies constantly, but his fascist intentions have nevertheless been clear enough. First, create an authoritarian executive on the basis of the ambiguities of the original American Constitution. All Trump has needed is five US Supreme Court judges prepared to redefine the original Constitution as a fascist document. He has had six such judges, who have already been prepared to devote themselves repeatedly to redefining the meaning of the document to give Trump whatever monarchical and tyrannical powers he has asserted—however absurd their interpretations of the plain words of the text. The lower federal courts have often found against Trump’s most outrageously tyrannical arguments, but they have been relatively slow to move against his would-be coup and often timid in their language, timing, and tactics. Meanwhile, the highest court—the US Supreme Court—over and over again has ridden like some antidemocracy cavalry in a bad Western movie to rescue Trump’s dictatorship from the dangers of democratic accountability and restraint.
As for the supposed official “opposition”—the Democrats—they reacted like impotent feeble Munchkins to Trump’s 2024 re-election. The Democratic leaders started Trump’s second term by refusing to use the legislative levers they possessed to block his cruel initiatives. Their mantra became a sacred oath to oppose Trump seriously only after he had MADE HIMSELF SO UNPOPULAR that no courage would be required to say a few unpleasant words about him. Giant corporations, supposedly respected news media, elite universities, once-admired commentators bowed before him, flattering him, used their power and influence to protect him against the dwindling voices of serious criticism.
The most important lesson of the Mussolini-Hitler era, supposedly well understood by sophisticated academics and pundits since the end of WWII, has been that fascism can only come to power if the ostensible defenders of democracy CHOOSE TO BE WEAK—fail to find the courage to offer meaningful opposition to a fascist movement’s first, unstable period in power.
But the supposed “official” American opposition to fascism—with a few exceptions—have maintained a policy of refusing to even say the word “fascism”—let alone boldly fight the growing—but still weak—fascist movement.
5. Believe in Ourselves—California’s United Teachers Can Show the Way with the Creation of the Justice for Renee Good, Anti-Police State, Anti-fascist Movement
Any MAGA/Trump attack on democracy must become an attack on American democracy’s central pillar: public education. Therefore, teachers have found themselves on the front lines of the fight to save democracy in America. California’s teachers’ struggles contain profound lessons for the new movement to defeat Trump’s attack on democracy and the basic standard of living of most Americans. We must unite all the struggles for democracy, equal rights, and economic justice.
Three years ago, teachers from 32 separate California Teachers’ Association (National Education Association) locals started to align their contract expiration dates. Their plan was to make it possible for teachers across the state to simultaneously bargain for the same set of mutually agreed upon demands together. The strategy was based on the premise that, if we all started bargaining at the same time, we could get through the procedural hurdles to call strikes at the same time. Although it had never been tried before, this strategy made perfect sense.
On February 4, 2025, the CTA president announced that 14 district contracts would expire at the end of the last school year. Local teacher unions as well as the CTA statewide leadership could start publicizing the various unions’ demands as a set of statewide teachers’ union demands. We could use the summer of 2025 to explain “why we can’t wait” to win our demands. We needed to make it clear to the School District bargainers that proposals for contract extensions and limited settlements on wages or benefits were off the table.
Detailed explanations of our various contract demands were available online and in widely distributed union bulletins to make clear that neither the teachers nor the students could “wait” any longer for our priority demands to be implemented right away. Our action proposal—strike together as one indivisible teachers’ struggle for as long as necessary to assure that all fourteen unions—including small districts—won real victories—was immediately popular with our students, our communities, and other unions.
In December 2025, the United Teachers of Richmond, CA (UTR) proved that this united strategy can turn separate labor union strikes into a broad-based successful teacher/union/student/community resistance movement. UTR was in a powerful position. By the end of November, a strike of all the school ancillary employees who are members of Teamsters Union 856 was ready to begin. The teachers, who had not bargained a new contract since 2021, were ready to immediately join the Teamsters’ struggle.
Adding both to the challenge we faced and the opportunities we were in a position to grab—California spent the last year being used as Trump’s testing ground to see how far he could go to implement his fascist policies.
California led the resistance to Trump nationwide, providing communities across America with a blueprint of how to win. By December, Richmond’s black and immigrant majority-minority communities were battle-tested, angry, and not about to let the Trump attacks on their human rights, freedom of speech, trade union protections, and health benefits succeed.
On November 26, the Teamster Bargaining Committee, having accepted the state’s fact-finder recommendations, then tried to get the recommendations voted up starting on December 1, after the union held open meetings to discuss the agreement. At both the Local 856 union meetings, the members—much to the surprise of bureaucratic leaders—were very skeptical about what was actually in the proposed teacher settlement. The most frequently asked questions were:
- Had the teachers been offered a settlement to end the illegal second-class citizenship of special needs students?
- Did the teachers’ union contract have new protections for immigrant teachers whom Trump has targeted for deportation?
- What had been offered on class-size reduction?
- Was there new language to guarantee the hiring of more paraprofessionals, school nurses, and psychologists?
It was already clear to most members that better offers on wages and benefits would be forthcoming if the Teamsters local voted down the agreement and prepared to strike together with the teachers.
On December 2, a majority of Teamster Local 856 members voted down the proposed settlement by a 47% yes vote to 52% no vote. So the fight was on. The Teamster vote moralized the teachers, the students, and community, all of whom were so glad that the Teamsters, who are far more vulnerable and more easily replaced than many other workers, chose to fight for the whole united workforce, by choosing to ignore all the divide-and-conquer management rhetoric—a rhetoric that might well have carried the day a year earlier.
The Teamsters went out on strike on December 4, followed by the striking teachers on December 5. Thousands of community members, including students and parents, ignored the advice of UTR tops to keep the students at home. There were dozens of community/worker meetings. What had started as two separate ordinary labor negotiations became a citywide uprising opposing fascist President Donald Trump’s right to govern this nation as a dictatorship.
The street celebrations that broke out when the schools were reopened demonstrated the great joy in the movement we are building—the joy of struggle—which can sweep the nation under an independent leadership that won’t accept no as the answer.
6. Building the Movement Now:
Justice for George Floyd, Justice for Renee Good—Defeating Trump’s Attacks on American Democracy—Lessons of the Richmond, California Labor Struggle
UTR’s solo strike action was completely inspiring, but it also pointed out a formidable obstacle we must overcome to turn our excellent “why we can’t wait” strategy into reality.
We need a mechanism to make our coordinated state-wide strikes happen now or in the near future. Our strategy always premised using mass democratic union meetings to guarantee that everyone had full information on where different local bargaining sessions are at, what demands were being rejected out of hand, and what new concessions the school districts want from us. No democratic statewide membership meetings (including “remote” participation) have ever been even proposed by our statewide CTA/NEA bodies.
Since the bold mass resistance in Los Angeles to Trump’s invasions (from Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis to Venezuela)—and now even threats to Greenland, California has been in many ways seen throughout the US as the leadership in the national fight against Trump and his increasingly fascist program. In general, the diverse communities of California have been recognized as the most consistent, committed, and courageous of the nation’s communities in their determination to defeat Trump.
From our first student walkouts starting a year ago, California teachers have participated in resistance marches, mass actions in the streets, and campaigns to defeat Trump’s racist and unconstitutional attacks in California and to counter his anti-democratic schemes to bias election results in a number of state and federal elections.
Most recently, we have organized teacher/community defense guards to protect our students, their families and our communities and to prevent ICE action at our schools and other community gathering places. Our unions have been the most active in every aspect of the resistance movement. We have learned numerous lessons from our students, and are, in many ways, experienced battle-tested leaders of California’s resistance movement.
California communities, especially Los Angeles, have been the tyrant Donald Trump’s testing site for his most aggressive and vicious policies, including attacks on free speech at California’s most highly-respected universities. He has launched cruel and violent mass deportations, militarized U.S. cities, assigning National Guard troops and Marines to the streets, all to back the gestapo formed in L.A. and other communities.
California’s anti-Trump, pro-democratic, anti-fascist and anti-war resistance forces have ceaselessly organized mass actions to demand Trump’s removal from office.
On the international front, Trump’s failing attempt to take over Venezuela, coupled with his threats to impose colonial regimes on other Latin American and Caribbean nations, have a greater meaning in the context of his racist anti-immigration policy in California. In the delusional narcissistic and unhinged mental world Trump lives in, he imagines what he wants is what he gets. America’s would-be Hitler imagines he can ethnically cleanse the immigrant communities in the U.S. and then turn to transforming the deported immigrants’ countries of origin into the U.S. colonial slave states.
As teachers, we have many actions by Trump and his fascist base to make crystal clear why the people of California “cannot wait” to defeat Trump and remove him from office. Other labor unions have issued calls for bold unified actions such as holding a general strike in May 2028. In reality, this proposal is itself evidence for the urgent need for action NOW.
We need a general strike now, not two years from now. Trump’s absolutely predictable attacks on the unions will begin long before 2028.
Hitler and Mussolini’s fascist movements started to physically attack union members, especially members of most left-wing antifascist unions, long before either Mussolini or Hitler made themselves “legal dictators” of their respective nations.
The primary aim of any fascist regime is to lower the living standard of the vast majority of their people to give their own capitalists a way to reap greater profits and win a competitive advantage to be used against their international capitalist competitors.
We are the major large and powerful union membership with an immediate strike perspective that could develop into a general strike in California. We have hundreds of thousands of union members whom we could call on to join our statewide actions, if we refuse to let management or various misleaders’ tactics undercut our collective action strategy.
Our union and nonunion farmworker brothers and sisters cannot wait until some future date to strike. They are under attack now and in danger of Trump’s unrestricted shoot-to-kill ICE gestapo forces returning to California for a new round of lethal attacks against them. We should be out together. Similarly—a number of California longshoremen locals support preventing any U.S. military aid from getting to Israel, and say they are ready to strike now but for some legal entanglements their union is currently bound up in. The only way for the longshoremen to break through this alleged restriction is to strike now.
Our new movement cannot allow itself to be paralyzed by legalisms. Trump can be defeated. But the question is entirely a question of the balance of power between Trump and the American people determined to defend democracy against him. If we act with the full consciousness of the illegitimacy of the Trump tyranny, we can organize and unite our strikes into a movement strong enough to inspire thousands of other workers and hundreds of communities. The more outrageous Trump’s reaction, the more this movement will grow and the more determined it will become. Such movements have defeated Tyrants far stronger and smarter than Trump in the past. Our California teachers’ movement has the possibility to inspire a movement strong enough to defend democracy, if we see ourselves as the leaders many of us are already becoming.
We must be independent of opportunist, timid, and cynical politicians and pundits. We must not rely on weak-kneed, “respectable” misleaders. We must fight for ourselves—see ourselves as our own leaders, be our own heroes.
This wisdom of sages and fighters is ancient and still true today—if we do not fight for ourselves, we can be sure “our” politicians will not fight for us—nor will anyone else. And if we fight only for ourselves, and not for an entire movement for justice, what are we? And if not now, when?
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