Jeff Hill, Filmmaker offers a screening of

Loose Change - 2nd Edition

Plus a bonus 5 minute introductory segment of particularly interesting
film clips

8:00PM - Friday, April 18, 2008

The Echo Park Film Center
1200 North Alvarado Bl., Los Angeles
323-484-8846

Suggested donation $5

more information:   call Jeff at 310-497-6327

Friday, April 18th 

~ Saturday 19th ~ Sunday 20th 

6:30 PM to 9:30 PM

UTLA Headquarters

2nd Floor Auditorium - 3303 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles - Validated parking available

Developing a vision and creating an action plan for a quality education.

Workshops and Cultural Celebration.

Tour of local schools on Friday, April 18 from 12 to 3pm.

(Buses will leave from the UTLA Building parking lot)

Continental Breakfast and Lunch provided

For more information visit http://www.trinationalcoalition.org/english/index.html

Registration fee for U.S. and Canada: $50.00 US. Checks payable to UTLA/Trinational

————————————————————————————————————————————

Send registration to: V

ia mail- Socorro Orozco/Trinational, 1160 West 27th Street,

Los Angeles, CA 90007 •

Via email- socorro_orozco@hotmail.com • Via fax- (323) 258-5367

Organization___________________________________________Name of Participant ____________________________________________

Street Address _____________________________________________________________________________________Zip_________________

Work telephone____________________________Home Telephone_____________________________Fax___________________________

Email ____________________________________________________Arrival date__________________Departure date_________________

Need private housing or Hotel ____________________________________________Need translation Yes No

I will host a teacher from Mexico from New Orleans Sorry, I can’t host, but will contribute $__________________

I will visit schools on Friday Yes No

Eighth Annual Trinational Conference

to Defend Public Education

Trinational conference to defend education

By Sarah Knopp | April 11, 2008 | Page 14

LOS ANGELES–Public education activists from Canada, Mexico and the U.S. will meet here April 18-20 at the Trinational Conference in Defense of Public Education.

Hosted by United Teachers Los Angeles, this will be the eighth such conference since 1993. The goal is to coordinate efforts to fight the de-funding of schools and attacks on teacher organizing that have accompanied the free-trade agenda of NAFTA.

NAFTA and its neoliberal agenda has reached its tendrils into public education, with governments and the private sector pushing parallel agendas of the craze for testing, charter schools and an effort to undermine teachers’ organizations.

In past years, the conference highlighted efforts to combat these attacks. For example, the British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF) led a successful strike in the fall of 2005 to defend teachers’ rights and beat back attempts at privatization. Jinny Sims, former president of the BCTF, has been a leading participant in the Trinational Coalition and has spoken to teachers’ unions all over the U.S. and Mexico about what kind of organizing it will take to win justice in the schools.

Similarly, 70,000 Oaxacan teachers (Section 22 of the SNTE teachers’ organization) struck in 2006, for more than five months in a bitter struggle over the future of education in the Mexican state. The last Trinational Conference was held in Oaxaca in 2006 in an effort to build international solidarity with the struggle and to defend teachers from repression.

By contrast, "U.S. participation has lagged until recently," according to Rosemary Lee, UTLA member and leading coordinator of this year’s conference. However, privatization has hit the U.S. schools with a vengeance recently, a process accelerated by Hurricane Katrina and the shuttering of almost all public schools in New Orleans. Charter schools have become the norm there, and are used as an excuse to strip teachers of collective bargaining rights.

Parent, student and community representatives from New Orleans will participate in the conference, as will Puerto Rican teachers, fresh from a 40,000-strong strike. At stake in that strike was the very right to strike itself, in defiance of Law 45, which outlaws public sector strikes in the U.S. colony. Additionally, teachers fought to maintain the right to participate in a democratic union, for higher salaries and against creeping privatization efforts.

UTLA’s decision to host this conference is a step forward. "All are looking forward to working with UTLA," Lee said, "because we are one of the largest and most progressive teachers’ unions in the U.S."

It will take large, militant, coordinated actions, with solidarity from social and community struggles, to push back against the forces that would like to slash education budgets, privatize the administration of education and strip teachers of their ability to organize effectively. Hopefully, this conference will be one step in the process of building those struggles.

http://www.socialistworker.org/2008-1/669/669_14_Education.shtml