Schools as sites of struggle: What the ICE raids in LA and Trump's Defunding Schools Reveal

Two crises in this moment show Trump's nearly-unchecked power: Brutal deportations of immigrants in Los Angeles and the sudden withdrawal of seven billion dollars in education funding passed by Congress for this coming school year. But when these policies are seen in the totality of Trump's project, which is simultaneously ideological, political, social, economic, and cultural, they reveal education's importance as a site of struggle, demonstrating that our location as education workers is uniquely important in building a powerful movement to overturn the Right's agenda, being fueled by the wealthiest, most powerful elite in this country's history.

THIS MOMENT

The carceral state, with its extensive detention and surveillance, was started and expanded well before Trump's recent victory. Yet even for many aware of the development of "cop city," seeing ICE and DHS agents in Los Angeles, protected by the local police, conducting deportations, kidnappings, and imprisoning immigrants in detention centers, brutalizing demonstrators who try to stop these actions is a horrifying acceleration and intensification of militarizing the police, endorsed by both parties. LA was the experiment, which Trump has announced he will take to other cities, and we should take him at his word. The massive funding Trump has won from Congress to expand deportations and internments is larger than most nations' military budgets and is accompanied by expansion of the attack on civil liberties, to include cities' self-rule. As creation of the internment camp,"Alligator Alcatraz," in the Everglades and plans to deport more people to other countries show, we cannot count on the courts, lawsuits, or lobbying to stop Trump's usurpation of the government apparatus to destroy democracy. [i]

The other crisis comes with the Trump administration surprise announcement that the federal government is withdrawing seven billion dollars in appropriations approved by Congress for K-12 education, due to be released on July 1 for this coming school year. Trump's "strategic chaos" is being used to create havoc in education, throwing school districts into immediate disarray, pushing states to either compensate districts directly for this lost education funding or forcing districts to cover the financial loss themselves. While we might have had time to build broad coalitions to fight for state funding in response to money lost in the omnibus GOP legislation by reaching out to other public employee unions and constituencies that will suffer from the cuts, now education workers and our unions with parent ...