Introducing MI-CORE: A New Radical Voice for Michigan Educators

by Gavin Buckley

For years now, Michigan’s education system has not only provided inadequate learning conditions for its students but also unacceptable working conditions for its educators. And it’s no secret why.

Michigan has one of the steepest increases in child poverty. We are home to some of the most racially segregated district lines in the entire U.S. (check Grosse Pointe). We are dead last in school funding and teacher salary growth (even behind D.C). We have hoards of unqualified “entrepreneurs” profiting off charter schools (thanks, DeVos). Many of our schools and students from Detroit and Flint live daily with lead-poisoned water. The rate of college students registering for teacher certification programs has dropped by over half and many school workers need a second job to barely make ends meet.

In short, the ruling class of our state, from DeVos on down, set their eyes on decimating our public schools and they have largely succeeded. Our elected officials and union leaders have failed to do anything to stop the increase of high-stakes standardized testing or school closings in black and brown working class areas, or do much of anything but say “students and teachers matter” while willfully ignoring the root of all our problems.

Enter MI-CORE, the Michigan Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators. We are a brand new small-d democratic union group modeled after CORE, the caucus responsible for the historic 2012 and 2019 Chicago strikes, and West Virginia Educators United, the caucus that organized West Virginia’s recent state-wide strike. We are social justice educators and unionists committed to creating schools and workplaces that advance economic justice, racial justice, and democracy. We call for equitable public education as a human right. We envision our unions as places where all school workers can fight and win the schools their students, their communities, and they deserve.

In the five months since we launched, MI-CORE has grown fast. What began as five teacher organizers in a Dearborn living room has already grown to a hundred-member caucus with formidable potential. We’ve started a Facebook group for Michigan educators interested in mass action that has quickly shot up to 1,500 members. We’ve connected with educators fighting for the basic rights of themselves and their students in Ann Arbor, Avondale, Roseville, Fenton, Detroit, Dearborn, Hamtramck, Pontiac, Utica, L’Anse Creuse, and others. We’ve learned from organizers in Los Angeles, Chicago, West Virginia and Arizona.

We’ve confronted Boards of Education in public meetings across the Metro area. Recently we brought 140 strong to an Avondale School Board meeting to protest the closing of an alternative school. You may remember hearing Hussein Beydoun bring the house down at the College for All Town Hall with Representative Rashida Tlaib. Maybe you’ve even seen our recent literature outlining our positions on the expansion of virtual learning.

And we are just getting started.

We won’t stop organizing until Michigan’s educators are unified and ready to beat the ruling class, but we need your help to get there. If you know any teachers, counselors or school staff in Michigan, share our information with them.

If you already work in a school or are interested in doing so, join MI-CORE so we can get more democratic socialist voices in our unions. If you’re just fired up and want to join the fight, look out for our next action at a local school board and show up in solidarity or share our lit on social media.

Gavin Buckley is a Detroit Public Schools teacher, DSA member and MI-CORE organizer. He can be reached at COREMichigan@gmail.com.