'Solidarity forever': Meet the ardent socialists throwing their weight behind the LAUSD teachers

[TexasTowelie]

‘Solidarity forever’: Meet the ardent socialists throwing their weight behind the LAUSD teachers strike


Every day this week, Carly Towne, 25, has pulled herself out of bed in the morning dark to walk a 7 a.m. picket line at Venice High School for two hours before heading to work. The bespectacled staff member of left-wing activist organization Code Pink is not a teacher, a parent nor a former L.A. Unified School student.

Like the 100 to 150 other members of Democratic Socialists of America and International Socialist Organization who have showed up to schools every day this week in support of the L.A. Unified teachers strike, she’s simply a devoted socialist.

Members of DSA Los Angeles, part of an organization that has emerged in national politics as the burgeoning progressive wing of the Democratic party with robust New York City and Chicago bases, have become some of the most visible non-education-related participants in the teachers strike that has thrown LAUSD’s near 900 schools into disarray.

For many of these mostly millennial age anti-capitalists, in full swing Friday morning leading a “solidarity forever” tune on the banjo and supplying teachers with free burritos, this “fight for the soul of public schools” at the center of national attention is a rare and meaningful opportunity to act on their leftist politics in real life.

Read more: https://www.ocregister.com/2019/01/19/solidarity-forever-meet-the-ardent-socialists-throwing-their-weight-behind-the-lausd-teachers-strike/