[Resisting the billionaire-ification of their city, workers and
their families are offering a community-centered vision at Parker
Elementary. And it’s working. ]
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TEACHERS AND PORT WORKERS HAVE TAKEN OVER AN OAKLAND SCHOOL  
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Don Macleay
August 5, 2022
The Progressive
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_ Resisting the billionaire-ification of their city, workers and
their families are offering a community-centered vision at Parker
Elementary. And it’s working. _

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In what may at first seem an odd alliance, teachers and port workers
in Oakland, California, have joined together to oppose charter school
expansion and a new baseball stadium proposed by luxury real estate
developers.

Forming a group called Schools and Labor Against Privatization, or
SLAP, they began their campaign with a strike
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port and public schools for an entire day in April. In May, parents
and teachers with SLAP took over
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Elementary School [[link removed]] in East Oakland,
which was slated to close, and kept it running to provide services to
students over the summer. 

Oakland, like New Orleans, Denver, St. Louis, and other metropolitan
centers, has long been a target of the charter school industry.
“Oakland has been a veritable charter boomtown,” KQED reported
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2019. “There are now 45 charter schools attended by about 30 percent
of the city's K-12 students, up from thirteen charters in 2003.
Largely as a result, the district lost about 17,000 students in those
16 years.” Many Oakland schools have seen parts of their school
buildings leased out
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private charter operators. 

As charters expand in Oakland, district administrators have been
closing down public schools. The latest slate of closures
will shutter seven schools
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three of which serve as community schools
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act as hubs for providing their families with nutritional, medical,
dental, and mental health services. Some of the schools on the hit
list have no nearby alternative public school. 

Of course, there are nearby private charter schools. The cost of
closing those schools and then of running schools further away from
where students live is never addressed
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the administration and closure supporters. They do talk a lot about
what the saved money _could_ be spent on, yet there is no provision
to do so in their new school budget.  

At the same time that Oakland public schools are increasingly
threatened with closure and privatization, the city of Oakland is also
considering a sweetheart real estate deal surrounding a sports
stadium. A plan
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forward by city officials would tear down the Oakland Coliseum—where
the major league Oakland A’s are based—and replace it with a new
stadium complex that includes high-end waterfront apartments. Dubbed
the “Howard Terminal Ballpark,” it would be built over what is
currently a functioning port facility. 

Both the stadium deal and the public school closures center on John
Fisher, a local billionaire and heir to the Gap Inc. fortune who
chairs the board of the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, the
largest network of brick-and-mortar charter schools in the country. He
also owns the Oakland A’s, and has threatened
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move the team if the stadium relocation plan falls through. Opposition
to Fisher, who supports privatizing both the port and our schools, has
played a significant role in SLAP’s formation.

Add this all up and one finds teachers, longshore workers and assorted
pro-labor, pro-public school activists organizing together against
privatization. 

For two months, they continued to unofficially operate Parker
Elementary School, which they refer to as “liberated.” Volunteers
slept on campus and took shifts handling supervision and donation
drop-offs. They offered their own summer community school program for
students, complete with a graduation ceremony. 

Then on August 4, security staff with Oakland Unified School
District forcibly removed
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occupying Parker Elementary in an effort to retake the school
that broke out in violence
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Dozens more community members and at least five school board
candidates turned out in opposition. One candidate, Max Orozco, told
local news outlets he was handcuffed and beaten
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district security, mentioning chest pain and showing
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cameras broken skin on his lip. 

“I ask the city of Oakland and OUSD to investigate what happened to
me and other members of the community and remove...all the people that
allow and approved this attack on Parker community,” Orozco
tells _The Progressive_.

The two unions representing both groups of workers (ILWU Local 10 and
OEA) are not officially affiliated with SLAP, but many of their
leaders are members. Though a district statement claimed officials
had changed locks and set an alarm at Parker, SLAP members
have remained
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inside and outside of the school and plan to keep operations
going.  

“There is a long history of linking school privatization with other
privatization, such as of port land,” says Divya Farias, a special
education high school teacher and union member. “Activists have been
working to bring the two issues, and the two unions, closer.”

VanCedric Williams, a school board trustee for the district where the
port is located, was one of only two board members to vote against the
school closures. 

“It was hard to see that only two of us stood up to the district and
the board,” he says, adding that he was glad to see the efforts at
Parker.  “I had some good conversations with people who are very
clear on the importance of Parker to the community and want to have
input on what the school should be.” 

Most of the port workers are Oakland residents, many of them parents
to children in local public schools. The injury from school closures
and loss of port jobs is felt across the city—but grassroots
solidarity and direct action offers hope. 

“School closures and port privatization are one and the same and
speak to larger issues around privatization in Oakland,” says
Hillary Chen, an Oakland teacher, local activist, and part of the
community running Parker school. “People have a positive view of the
ILWU and wanted to work with the longshoreman. There were already
personal connections.”  

_Don Macleay is a long-time school volunteer and a community activist
living in Oakland, California. In 2016 he was a candidate for the
Oakland Unified School District board._

_Since 1909, The Progressive has aimed to amplify voices of dissent
and those under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal of
championing grassroots progressive politics. Our bedrock values are
nonviolence and freedom of speech.  Based in Madison, Wisconsin, we
publish on national politics, culture, and events including U.S.
foreign policy; we also focus on issues of particular importance to
the heartland. Two flagship projects of The
Progressive include Public School Shakedown
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to resist the privatization of public education, and The Progressive
Media Project [[link removed]], aiming to diversify our
nation’s op-ed pages. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. _

* privitazation
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* public schools
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* longshore
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* Billionaires
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* Teacher Unions
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* ILWU
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* community organizing
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