Workers Over Billionaires: Labor Day Recap
CORE joined several allies to take the streets for Labor Day, and two CORE members took the mic to fight for public education.
It’s a long road to May Day 2028, the day labor leaders such as Chicago Teachers Union and the United Auto Workers have pinned for a nationwide strike. We must be patient, methodical, and persistent to get there, building solidarity across industries one day at a time.
To that end, CORE joined several allies, such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Starbucks Workers United, the Columbus Education Justice Coalition, Pint Size Protestors, 50501, and the Ohio State University Nurses Union, to protest the current state of affairs with a unifying demand: Workers over Billionaires. As much as the left tends to get bogged down by debates on theory and the ideal qualities of a just society, this succinct message, hailed around the country in other cities’ Labor Day protests, cuts through the noise and provides a means of consolidating our efforts.
Similarly, leftists of every stripe can unify behind the importance of education for revolutionary ends—uneducated and uncritical workers can be manipulated into believing the billionaire class is their friend. As such, CORE had the opportunity for two of our members to speak to a huge crowd at the Labor Day protest.
Their speeches cut to the heart of our dilemma as one member put it, “We are teachers, but we are also human. We are burdened with ever-increasing class sizes, a lack of essential resources, and salaries that simply don’t keep up with the cost of living. We are told to do more with less, to innovate and inspire while being stretched to our breaking point. All while billionaires like the Haslams and Wexners have more money in their pockets than they know what to do with.” The disparity between “haves” and “have-nots” only continues to widen, and public educators witness it firsthand.
The crises we face in public education are manufactured: Ohio funds its schools on the back of the working class’s property taxes, thus pitting workers against each other. Workers, including educators, who struggle to feed their own families will not support tax levies to improve their schools’ conditions, thus creating resentment between educators and their communities—and between educators themselves. Plenty of resources exist to properly fund our schools, but billionaires hoard the wealth created by Ohio’s workers and use it to lobby lawmakers, keeping their own taxes low while our struggle only grows.These remarks did not come without a glimmer of hope. CORE’s second speaker highlighted the beauty of the crowd’s diversity, comprising an intersection of race, gender, age, sexuality, ability, and creed, all fighting for each other. That’s the America of our dreams. As we see increased attacks on educators and other professionals for exercising their free expression, however, this dream will need to become a reality sooner rather than later. Otherwise, billionaires will continue to implement their vision: an America in which their prosperity is the only thing that matters. Only through solidarity can we break the stranglehold and achieve liberation for all.