The April 1 Shutdown and Anticapitalist Struggle in the United States

• In Event: 29.071 - Communist Study: Theorizing and Enacting the Pedagogy of Critical Pedagogy

Abstract

This paper seeks to contextualize, examine and theorize aspects of the collective resistance to corporate education reform unfolding in Chicago within the framework of a revolutionary Marxist political project. The perspective advanced in this paper is grounded in the communist political project and seeks to examine the ways that collective resistance to corporate education reform can play a role in the anti-capitalist struggle.
This presentation begins with the emancipatory imperative of immanence, which argues that an alternative future develops through struggle out of our present circumstances. The task at hand for those committed to the communist project is to analyze social movements in their current state and explore the aspects or components of those movements that could potentially serve to move towards a more revolutionary goal. This paper seeks to work towards this task by examining a particular event in the education justice movement in Chicago¬—a city-wide shutdown that took place on April 1, 2016. The analysis presented strives not only to locate potentialities of more revolutionary solidarities, alliances and political projects that may be forming in the movement, but furthermore, it attempts to pose provoking questions about the April 1 experience in an effort to engage in constructive and generative dialogue with the education justice movement developing in Chicago.
This paper also draws from the literature on revolutionary critical pedagogy (Malott & Ford, 2015; McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2001; McLaren, 2005), social movement theory (Barker, 2013; Barker et al, 2013; Choudry, 2015; Cox & Nilsen, 2014; Waterman et al, 2012) as well as trade unionism and teacher unionism (Brickner, 2016; Brogan, 2014, 2016; Compton & Weiner, 2008; Fanelli & Brogan, 2014; Fantasia & Stepan-Norris, 2004; Gutstein & Lipman, 2013; Scipes, 2014; Weiner, 2013).
The analysis of April 1 presented in this paper is informed by the author’s own personal involvement in the planning and coordination of the day’s actions as a member of one of the participating organizations. Data sources include the author’s field notes and reflections. Additionally, the analysis will also include a content analysis of the documents (such as flyers and other materials) created and published by key organizations involved in the April 1 Shutdown.
As corporate education reform has intensified globally, so too has resistance and thus it is important to understand and theorize this growing resistance nationally and globally. Chicago in particular has been a key place of strong collective resistance in the US context. Furthermore, theorizing the collective resistance to corporate education reform is necessary to better understand how it is developing, where it can be going, and how connections could be made across various social movements to form a broader movement that is rooted in and committed to the communist social project.

Author

• Michelle Gautreaux, The University of British Columbia