A resolution passed in late April by the Colorado Education Association states the CEA “believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources.”
The statement went on to claim capitalism opposes “fully addressing systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy, (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality."
By itself, that statement is like a Marxist laundry list of grievances and a peek into how Communists use issues such as climate change, homosexual activism, and racism to gain power and punish their enemies. In this case, however, it came from Colorado’s largest teachers’ union with 39,000 dues-paying members.
The resolution appears to have come out of nowhere and surprised many for its not-so-subtle message.
“I was pretty much in shock from that statement,” David Illingworth, a school board vice president, told Fox News.
It was “pretty stunning,” he said, to see the state’s largest school union adopt a “radical, anti-American resolution like that and be really open about it.”
Colorado-based policy analyst Hadley Heath Manning, of the Independent Women's Forum, tells AFN the teachers union resolution was concerning for her personally because she is a public school parent.
“However, I always try to differentiate between what the line of the teacher's union is,” she says, “versus what my actual classroom teacher believes and what is actually being taught in my classroom."
The best way to know what your child’s teachers are teaching, Manning continued, is to be involved. So she personally meets with the teachers and the school principal to discuss their views and beliefs.
“Most of the time, when I can establish trust with my classroom teacher,” Manning advises, “I find that there is a big difference between what teachers believe, what teachers want, and what the teachers union is out there saying."
A 'collective' of illiterate students
Even in a statement it sent to Fox News, when the CEA was being hammered over its Marxist statement, the teachers union said its resolution reflects a “collective endeavor to create a safer and more equitable world” for students, teachers, and communities.
The word “collective” might normally be ignored in most circumstances but it’s common lingo in Communist beliefs and hence another telling clue.
“It's always Communism when the rubber meets the road," Illingworth said. "You can call it Marxism, socialism, but when they start actually putting it into practice and implementing it in all the misery and ugliness that comes with it, it's Communism, no doubt about it."
The school board leader mentioned misery because survivors of Communism say a joy-stealing, hope-robbing shared misery always follows promises of a shared utopia of sharing and caring.
In an op-ed in The Gazette, a Colorado Springs daily newspaper, school-choice advocate Brenda Dickhoner ripped the Communist teachers for denouncing capitalism and demanding “equity” when their own students can’t read and write. In the state’s public schools, she wrote, 24% of Hispanic students and 26% of black students are scoring at grade level in statewide literacy tests. Those same teachers publicly supported three bills in the legislature to get rid of those state tests.
The teachers unions also opposed a new majority-black charter school. The name of that school? “Freedom School.”
“Perhaps that’s why it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this modern-day politburo has decided to take a bold stance against capitalism,” she wrote. “A system built upon an individual’s freedom to choose? Well, we can’t have that, can we?”
