LCIP Supports Marco Amaral, Independent Candidate for California’s Superintendent of Public InstructioN

LCIP Statement in Support of Marco Amaral’s Independent Campaign for California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction

Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP) proudly and enthusiastically endorses Marco Amaral ‘s election campaign for California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction.

At a time of increased attacks against public education and teachers’ unions by both Democrats and Republicans, Marco Amaral’s campaign charts a way forward by building an independent movement campaign that is led and organized by educators, students, and the working class, not the twin parties of Capital.

From fighting for free colleges and universities, to fighting for a $70,000 teacher annual minimum salary and a $25-an-hour living wage for all classified employees, to ending the school-to-prison pipeline, ending military recruitment in our schools, and defending ethnic, gender, and women’s studies, Marco Amaral’s ten-point platform offers a powerful working-class alternative to the oppressive business model that has eroded public education under both Democratic and Republican rule.

At this critical time, Marco Amaral’s campaign seeks to put the public back into public education. As a special-education teacher himself, Marco Amaral’s campaign emerges from the grassroot struggles of the last two decades, struggles which brought together teachers, youth, workers, and oppressed communities across the state to defend and expand public education against privatization, austerity, and racist attacks that targeted ethnic studies departments and marginalized communities.

Marco Amaral’s movement strategy has already propelled him to his first electoral victory, when he was the first independent to the Board of Trustees for the South Bay Union School District in San Diego — where he recently won the position of Board President. This is a testament that when we fight, we win!

For these reasons, LCIP supports Marco Amaral’s movement campaign and the creation of labor and community assemblies rooted in the working class, the youth, and communities of the oppressed as a strategy to build from the bottom up a workers’ party that breaks with the Democratic Party, while deepening our movements for public education, workers’ rights, and social justice for all the oppressed.

We encourage you to donate to Marco Amaral’s campaign to help build this powerful movement.

You can follow his campaign at amaral4sup2022.com as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Marco Amaral Letter Requesting LCIP Endorsement of His Campaign

December 7, 2021

Dear LCIP Continuations Committee members,

Greetings and best wishes to all of you.

I write this letter to formally request your organizational endorsement of my campaign for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction – a campaign that is independent of the Democratic Party and led by educators, the community, and the working-class.

In a recent zoom meeting, I had the opportunity to convey to many of you my 10-point platform for public education and goals of this campaign. Point 10 sums it up well, we are building a conscientious public education system that seeks to not only transform education, but society as well.

I would like to stress one point that I made during my recent meeting and presentation: I very much support LCIP’s call for labor-community assemblies that serve as the building blocks of the new independent working-class party that we need so desperately. In fact, point number 1 of our platform is to “Democratize Public Education.” We truly see our schools as the community centers for democratic action and change.

Further, I support the labor movement making a complete and clean break with the Democratic Party as we build an independent working-class party. As the only independently elected leftist in San Diego County, who received wide support from the labor movement, I will gladly put forward this LCIP perspective during my campaign.

Your endorsement of my campaign is very important to me. We need seasoned organizers who can help promote campaign committees in the cities where you have supporters – campaign committees that are at the very same time organizing committees to promote labor-community struggles and independent working-class politics in our communities.

I look forward to participating with you in the December 9, 2021 National LCIP Forum. Un abrazo!

In solidarity,

Marco Amaral

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Marco Amaral Presentation to the December 9 LCIP National Forum on Immigrant Rights and Independent Politics

[Note: The following statement was delivered on December 9 to a zoom meeting on Citizenship for All and the Fight for Independent Working-Class Politics that was attended by 63 unionists and community activists. The meeting was hosted by Labor and Community for an Independent Party, LCIP. Amaral was introduced as the first candidate supported by LCIP.]

Thank you to all the speakers before me. What powerful words. I am humbled to be in this space. Thank you to Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP) for hosting this event. First and foremost, I want to recognize that I speak these words from the occupied Kumeyaay Nation, which was divided unjustly illegally, and inhumanely by a scar on the earth, which is our Southern border.[1]

My name is Marco Amaral.  I have been a special-education teacher for six years. Before that I was a classified employee for special education. I’m also a PhD student in education. I’ve been an activist and organizer in the major movements of the past 15 years for a more liberated world, including the immigration rights’ movements and the movement in defense of public education.

I am the only independently elected leftist on the School Board in San Diego County and the first working teacher in California state history to run for state superintendent of public instruction.

Ours is the first campaign for state superintendent that is truly independent. I have never been registered with either neo-liberal party, Democratic or Republican. On the contrary, I have always stood in solidarity with the working class and the poor. I am humbled to be here today to learn from my fellow comrades and to add my own sweat and grind to this collective effort.

We need to make sure that ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Border Patrol have no right to step foot into our public schools.  Our families are being separated. We need to make sure that we keep our students’ families safe and united, because if we do not center our education struggle on these most basic human rights, little else matters. We also need more counselors and school psychologists in our schools.

A liberated public education system is centered on the political, social, and economic wellbeing of all our kids. Second comes whether they can solve a quadratic formula or write a five-paragraph essay. In fact, if students don’t have to worry about their families being separated, they will more likely do well in school, and they will be able to solve that quadratic formula and write that five-paragraph essay. It shouldn’t be a radical concept to think that our students should have the right to have their families united, that they should be able to come to school with that peace of mind.

I stand in solidarity with the call to break away, once and for all, from the Democratic Party, which as previous speakers have pointed, does as much harm to our communities as the Republican Party, especially in recent memory. That’s an objective fact.

I hope to contribute to an education system that seeks to abolish ICE, an education system that creates bridges across lands and deconstructs walls, an education system that truly becomes, as Paulo Freire stated in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” the practice of justice and liberation.

I am now eager to hear the thoughts and questions from the comrades and community members during the remaining 50 minutes of this meeting. Thank you, once again, to LCIP for hosting this event. Let’s get the discussion started.

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Endnote

[1] The Kumeyaay are the indigenous people of present-day Southern California (San Diego and western Imperial counties) and Northern Baja California, Mexico.