Serious about Systemic Change: an interview with Marco Amaral
Marco Amaral is a progressive candidate running as an Independent for the position of California Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2022. He is Chicano educator and long-time activist who teaches high school Special Education in a low-income area. Amaral lives and works in a working-class Mexican community near the US-Mexico border in San Diego, and is currently a Board of Trustees member at the South Bay Union School District. He spoke to Puntorojo about activism, education, politics and his campaign.
As an educator, how have your political principles shaped your approach in the classroom? How have your experiences in the classroom shaped your political outlook?
I have identified as an Internationalist for several years now. Internationalism pushes me to engage the scholarly and social work of people from around the world, specifically – people that are struggling against the forces of oppression and bigotry. Therefore, after years of engaging as an activist educator influenced by the work of people ranging from Frantz Fanon and Antonia Darder to Paulo Freire and the resistance work of Indigenous communities, I decided that my classroom couldn’t be confined to the limited understandings of the “American Educational Model.” Each one of my students deserves a teacher that is first and foremost genuinely interested in their socio-political well-being; a teacher that is interested in learning from the assets and experiences that students bring with them; a teacher that is more interested in meeting the students where they are at–as opposed to a teacher that forces students to be where an arbitrary test thinks they should be at.
Over these past 7 years in the classroom, both as a teacher and an instructional assistant, I have been privileged with gaining a deeper understanding of how the lives of my students impact their experiences in my classroom, and, generally, in all their classrooms. I am a better person due to the teachings of my students. As a Special Education Teacher, I have had a front-row seat to the way that our education system marginalizes our kids, from being over-policed to being under-resourced. This is why our platform is pushing to get all police off campuses, to abolish the prison system, and to provide students with dis/Abilities a truly equitable and just education system.
In fact, we can go down our whole platform and I can honestly state that the entirety of it is a reflection of the inequities and injustices that I have experienced within the confines of our public education system. Further, our students have proven once again that the main way to achieve progress in this country is to demand our goals via radical love towards one another, an organized and mobilized force of people, and through an insatiable commitment towards justice. I am who I am because of my students.
You have been an activist outside of the electoral realm for a long time. What kinds of struggles have you been involved in? How do you see electoral politics in general, and your campaign specifically, relating to social movements outside the ballot box?
My first action that I was a part of was in the streets of the Las Vegas Strip (Las Vegas Blvd). At the age 8 I was fighting alongside my mother and her union for a better contract. My mom is a Housekeeper and my dad worked his whole life in construction and retired as a public-school Custodian. I get a lot of my political formation from the class struggles that my parents were involved in when I was a kid. I also remember walking out, alongside my colleagues, in the 2006 student walk-outs for immigration reform. However, it wasn’t until I arrived to Berkeley that I made the decision to become an activist. It wasn’t the activist atmosphere that Berkeley is known for that made me an activist though, it was the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis and the shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland that sparked the match in me.
My parents officially lost their home in 2010, like millions of other working-class people in this country. The prospect of my parents becoming homeless, all while I was at an elite institution like Berkeley, inspired me to fight for everyday people. At the same time, the Obama Administration, whom I campaigned for as a high school student, was bailing out the big banks and billionaire class. This combination of events made me realize, more than any book or lecture, that there was something inherently rotten about the system we have. Seeing this drove me to get involved with the 2009-2012 California Student Movement against Fee and Tuition hikes, in addition to the Occupy Movement and the movement to preserve ethnic studies. During that time, I was arrested a couple of times, faced police brutality on more than a couple occasions, and had a front row seat to the ineffectiveness of US liberalism and neoliberal politics.
After my undergraduate experience at Berkeley, I became more involved in three specific movements: the movements against police brutality, the international movements for liberated education systems, and the movements against fascism and attacks on Labor. A major moment in my early career as an educator was the forced disappearance of 43 student-teachers from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico. I very much empathized with the struggles these students were engaging. They–like me–were young educators that believed that their student’s education was tied to greater societal and political forces; and, as conscientious educators, their job was to fight against oppressive forces for the well-being of their students.
When Donald Trump was elected, I saw it as my duty to fight against his presidency and the forces that got him there. I saw his administration, proven by his selection of Betsy DeVos, as a direct attack on public education and my students. Consequently, I was arrested multiple times during his administration. As a consequence, I was one of the few teachers that were directly targeted by trump’s Department of Justice. In 2017 my teaching credential was taken away due to being arrested at a Trump rally in the summer of 2016. For over 4 months, I fought this unjust system to recuperate my right to be back in the classroom.
Ultimately, I won.
Since then, I have been involved in several demonstrations against police terrorism, from the murder of Alfred Olango to the murder of Earl McNeil to the national uprisings against police terror as a consequence of the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. I have been involved in hunger striking against migrant kids in cages. I have helped organize mass demonstrations against border militarization and for the rights of Indigenous people to their land.
Our campaign takes directions from the grassroots movements of our time.
To your second question. It’s simple. Our campaign takes directions from the grassroots movements of our time. This is what truly distinguishes us from any other campaign, even other “progressive” campaigns. On our team are various movement leaders. Our campaign is centered on the demands of these movements, from an education perspective. This decision to run for statewide office was not easy. However, we decided that the time was right for such a campaign – a campaign that promises to put the “public” back into public education. We believe that the majority of Californians are tired of the status-quo. By status-quo we mean the power structure constructed by both corporate parties and their benefactors and most ardent supporters – the millionaire and billionaire class. This isn’t about “power” for me, this is about creating a public education system that is truly democratic, liberatory in practice, and centers the voices and decisions of the poor, working-class, and historically marginalized communities.
We believe that the people of California want an education system ran by actual educators, not by career politicians; and education system ran by people that are directly invested in public education, not by people that have their children in private schools. We are that campaign. We are a campaign that will stand with the social movements, not just from the pulpit in Sacramento, but on streets. Shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart.
Tell us about your campaign for board of trustees. What was that campaign like, and how did the experience inform your approach as you run for a much higher profile office?
The South Bay Union School District lies in North San Ysidro, the Nestor and Palm City Communities, and the City of Imperial Beach. There are roughly 75,000 people that live in that area and we serve roughly 6,000 students. For many years, the SBUSD has been identified by a West and East dynamic. Where those on the westside, mostly in Imperial Beach, have had access to better schools and better community infrastructures, whereas the eastside, has been historically undermined by both forces within the district and political forces outside of the district.
Our campaign was the only campaign in the 2018 cycle to openly call-out this dynamic.
We were also aware that the current Superintendent of SBUSD was, and is, making over $300,000 a year, while at the same time we had employees that were being evicted from their homes. We were the only campaign to openly confront the blatant class-inequities perpetuated by our district. At the height of our campaign, I was a part of a hunger strike against the draconian practice of putting migrant kids and families in cages. Being in a highly militarized and border patrol community, I was beginning to receive many forms of personal attacks. On top of my activism outside of the campaign, our campaign was also tackling the topic of ethnic studies and a more dignified education system for students with dis/Abilities. In general, we were focused on the historically forgotten. Thus, those that have been historically dominant and in the hegemonic culture stood against our campaign in more than one way.
Groups like Patriot Fire and the Proud Boys openly campaigned against us. They even made a couple, well produced, YouTube videos against me and our campaign. They called my place of work. They left threatening messages on my car window. I was followed various times throughout the course of the campaign. Additionally, I had the local Republican Party against us, and the Democratic Party was doing us no favors. During that election, I was the only candidate running not supported by either major party. Nonetheless, I was the only non-registered Democrat to receive the endorsement of the local teacher's union, the classified worker's union, and the whole San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council. Why? Because we weren’t identifying ourselves as a “pro-union” campaign, we identified as a “pro-class consciousness” campaign. More than just being just “pro-union”, we are “pro-worker power.” There wasn’t a single campaign, independent of position, in all of San Diego that pushing our political line.
More than just being just “pro-union”, we are “pro-worker power.”
We knocked on over 7,000 doors. We collaborated with those that wanted to collaborate with us, under the condition that they were in solidarity with our message. We had hundreds of volunteers from the SBUSD community and beyond. We had an amazing team of activists, organizers, educators, and everyday people. We had a campaign manager, who is my current manager, that believed in me and tirelessly fought for our campaign.
Maybe naively, some might say, but that win in 2018 proved to us that the people are tired of the status-quo and, more importantly, they are willing to believe that a political alternative is not only viable but able to bring about the changes most needed in our education system and beyond. We are taking that same energy, now a bit more experienced, more mature, and a bit more strategic–but nonetheless the same radical energy to the state level. There are many that will say positive things about me and many that will say negative things about me, but nobody will say that I didn’t follow through on everything that our campaign fought for. At the end of the day, that’s what we think most people want. Someone that actually believes in the things they say, not because it is politically convenient, but because it is a part of their convictions, a part of who they actually are. This is what distinguishes us from any other electoral campaign.
Your time on the board has come with some controversy. You were censured for comments at another school board’s public meeting condemning white supremacy in education. Can you elaborate on those comments, and why do you think the board of trustees found them so threatening?
This is one of my proudest moments as a Trustee, because I knew that history would vindicate me, and indeed it has. In my capacity as a teacher and union rep at the district I work for, I attended a school board meeting where parents from San Ysidro (one of the poorest communities in our district) organized themselves to advocate for the return of the school bus routes for their children. The parents believed, and I did too, that eliminating the bus routes for our most economically vulnerable students was an act of racism cloaked in the language of “fiscal responsibility”. I come from a school of teaching informed by
Lucio Cabañas. This has showed me that a teacher’s job, aside from being an academic guide for students, is “to create community, be with the community, and to be community.” So that is what I did. I told the Board of Trustees for the district I work for that their job was to stand with the people, not work against them. That their job was to try to find solutions, not to simply accept the lazy recommendations of management. That, if they were to approve the elimination of these bus routes, that they would be further perpetuating a system of white supremacy. This didn’t sit well with three out of the five members of my board.
So, they wrote a letter to the Superintendent of SBUSD and to our board showing their great discontent with me. Consequently, two white board members and the SBUSD Superintendent, who is also white, decided that they would put a motion to censure me for my actions as a member of the public at my own board meeting. What resulted was an incredible meeting that only confirmed my comments. While the public comment heavily swayed in my favor, the few that spoke against me showed their openly racist side. One of the men that spoke against me has several Nazi tattoos and one woman in the crowd yelled at and mocked a Spanish speaking woman for not speaking in English during her public comment.
The result was a 3-2 vote to censure me. Since then, we have seen people from local elected Democrats to the President of the United States call out white supremacy in our institutions and society. Since then, a couple of people have apologized to me for their role in censuring me, acknowledging my greater message. Overall, I stand firmly by what I said. Most importantly, I stand firmly with our most marginalized community members. I think this is what people found most threatening. That a worker, a teacher, in my case, an elected official and teacher, was willing to stand up against his “bosses” and stand with the community. As Superintendent of the State of California, I plan to do the same.
Given the radical critiques you have presented of public education in this country, how do you think it can be transformed into a force for liberation? What role do teachers, students, and their families, respectively, have to play?
This campaign understands that true change will come, and has always come, from the bottom. From those most involved in grassroot, community-led, organizing and mobilizing. Our hopeful election to the Superintendent position is not the “end all-be all.” It is, as we see it, part of the long, radical, journey and tradition to transform the world we live in. With that said, we believe that we can use this bully-pulpit to wield the public discourse around what public education can be and through that, create a public education system that is truly just and dignified. Bell Hooks states that “education is the practice of freedom.” We profoundly believe this to be true.
We don’t pretend that our ideas of how education can be used as a force towards liberation are nuanced or unique. This campaign is in homage to the normalistas of Ayotzinapa, to Freirian scholars, to the Indigenous Schools of Southern Mexico to Bolivia, and to so many more. Like many before us, we believe that our schools can be used as vehicles for social change. Where students, this includes teachers, not only learn about the catastrophic impact of the fossil fuel industry on our environment but are also actively mobilizing against them. Where families can use the resources of the school to organize their communities for social change. Where workers, independent of being in the same union or not, can unite themselves for a better contract. Our schools have incredible potential to be true forces of liberation.
We will challenge the effectiveness of our current power structure by centering the demands of the working class, the demands of students, teachers, education workers, and families.
Teachers, students, and their families have the complete say. When our campaign refers to “community schools,” we don’t just mean a place where kids and families can go and get their weekly meals, some clean clothes, or some legal help – all those things are important, but they limit the potential of what “community schools” can be. For us, the creation of “community schools” signifies the creation of a more robust democracy. Where schools become centers of democratic action. In fact, when our campaign states that it will challenge the whole power structure within education, we mean it. Starting with our own office to local superintendents and school boards. We will challenge the effectiveness of our current power structure by centering the demands of the working class, the demands of students, teachers, education workers, and families.
What made you decide to run for statewide office now?
Starting in late 2019, some community members, family members, and friends started to ask me what the next step was after School Board. I often resorted to asking them if they think there should be a next (electoral) step. Most people responded “yes.” The responses mostly dealt with running for Congress, State Assembly or State Senate. For over a year my, now, fiancé and I spoke about these potential plans. She was adamant about staying true to my convictions and to not get sucked in by the “political game.” For her, it was important that I stay true to myself and to that in which I have devoted my life to and that’s Public Education
I personally felt that I had outgrown the school board position, not because there is no value to it or because I wasn’t able to make real material changes through it (I was), but because I understood that if we were serious about making the systemic changes that we believe our schools needed that that required the leveraging of power and influence at a different level. My fiancé, at first jokingly, stated that I should run for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I laughed. How were we supposed to go against the State Democratic Party apparatus? How were we supposed to compete with Tony Thurmond? If running as a leftist-independent at the local level would be difficult, how hard is this going to be?
But the more and more I thought about it, and the more I talked about it with my fiancé, the more it made sense. We believed that the political atmosphere was, and is, ripe for a candidacy like this one. We believed that the people of California were demanding a working-class, independent, educator-led campaign for public education. So, here we are. About four months in and we believe that our assertion was correct. The more our campaign travels through the state, the more we are finding that everyday people in California are looking for something new and for a campaign that sticks to its word. For a campaign not led by the political or millionaire class, but by the working class. We are proud to be that campaign.
What is your view of the state’s response to the Covid pandemic in schools? How would you do things differently?
It has been a complete mess. The State of California had over a year and a half to get school reopening’s right. Yet, the year and half was mostly spent on party politics and on making sure that Governor Newsom survived his recall. Essentially, politicians put their jobs over the well-being of the people.
First, I would’ve taken a district-by-district approach. It made no sense to treat South San Diego, and the schools within it, the same way as Beverly Hills. This pandemic had different impacts on different communities and the state had the time and resources to take a district-by-district approach and it chose not to. Mostly, due to the political pressure imposed by the Right, which was aggravated due to Newsom and other Democratic Party leaders' hypocrisy during the pandemic. For example, Newsom having his kid’s at private schools and him being seen enjoying world-class restaurants at the height of the pandemic. If I have the privilege of being the nest Superintendent, I would have no hesitancy in calling Newsom out (or any governor) for their lack of leadership and consistency. Our current Superintendent lacks the political convictions to do this.
Second, I would have stood up against Newsom’s attempt to hold school districts at ransom. At the end of the Spring 2021 semester, Newsom coerced public school districts to reopen by providing them with financial incentives. While school districts like the one I’m a board member of–which still had severely high Covid rates–had to stay closed because we were not going to put our kids, families, and staff members in danger. Essentially, some districts received money, and others like mine, didn’t. This was inequitable and unjust. Again, our current Superintendent said nothing to this respect.
Third, once all schools were mandated to open, we were severely unprepared and under-resourced. To this day, the school I work for has not offered me or a single student an N95 or KN95 mask. How is it that in the 5th largest economy on Earth, we are incapable of making sure that every student gets at least a new KN95 mask every week or every 2 weeks – at minimum. Further, the reporting of “close-contacts” has been awful. I have had at least 5 students with Covid-19 and not a single letter from my district telling me to go get checked due to my proximity. I am not alone with this predicament, teachers from around the state are reporting the same issues daily. In addition to this, our student’s families lack the information and supports needed to make the most health conscientious decisions possible. Our schools lack the health social-workers to make sure our families are having their social, emotional, and health needs met.
It’s time that we have someone that understands what it means to work at a K-12 school at the head of our education system.
Lastly, because of the Delta variant, our district’s staff, and the staff members of districts across the state, have experienced a spike in Covid cases. This means that staff members must stay away from work for about two weeks, sometimes more. What this comes down to is a statewide shortage of substitutes at all levels. This was completely foreseeable. The state should’ve placed substitute infrastructures in place to lessen the burden of a staff shortage. Today, we have teachers that are more underpaid and overworked than ever. It’s time that we have someone that understands what it means to work at a K-12 school at the head of our education system. These, and other issues, is what inevitably happens when you put politicians in charge.
Your campaign has emphasized its independence from both major capitalist political parties. Why do you think this is so important? What kind of opposition do you expect to see from each of the major parties, and how can you combat the pressures you will face both on the campaign and once in office?
The fact is that its not just us that believes its important for this position to be independent of the major political parties, the writers of the California Constitution believed in this too. The State Superintendent position is meant to be non-partisan, but this has rarely been the reality. In this century, there has not been a single non-partisan Superintendent. Candidates have to run as “Non-Partisan,” but the reality is that most candidates are long-time Democrats or Republicans and actively seek their party’s endorsement.
Thus, we are the only campaign that stays true to our state’s constitution. This is important because the position, in of itself, has very limited “powers.” Most education-related powers still lie within the governor’s office and pen. The Superintendent position is almost purely a “Bully-Pulpit” position. A position that is used to keep state assembly and senate members, in addition to the governor, accountable to the needs of our public schools. It is, if you will, the “voice” of public education at the state level. Given the political system we have, it is almost impossible for a life-long Democrat to keep other Democrats, especially those with some form of power, accountable. We see this unfortunate dynamic play out at every level of our political system. Our independence from both major parties, gives us the political flexibility needed to effectively use our bully-pulpit position for the well-being of our public education system.
Our independence from both major parties, gives us the political flexibility needed to effectively use our bully-pulpit position for the well-being of our public education system.
We are going to face attacks from many angles in multi-faceted ways. Already, the local San Diego Democratic Party has told local elected Democratic progressives that they are not allowed to endorse our campaign, because I am not a Democrat. This shows you how “non-partisan” this race actually is. If it weren’t for local Democratic Party leadership, we would have over a dozen locally elected Democrats publicly endorse our campaign. Therefore, we expect to see this dynamic play out through out the state. Even if some Democrats want to endorse us, they will be told that they can’t and if they do, they will face consequences. We expect Democrats to do what they do best as a party, which is to act in anti-democratic modes of operation. From our Republican members of society, we expect them to target us in multiple ways. From using “Communist” scare tactics to potentially attacking us physically and everywhere in between.
Therefore, it is important for us to organize a mass-multi-generational and multi-racial working-class coalition of people to back our campaign. We believe that there is power in numbers. We expect that my name will be dragged to the point of character-assassination, especially if we get past the June primary. We will get through that and much more, but we need the help of every reader and of every person that believes that a better world is possible. Indeed, that a different world is possible.
How can our readers help your campaign?
We need four main areas of support.
First, grassroot support. If you are a part of an organization with endorsement capabilities, please get in contact with our campaign. We would be honored to go through your endorsement process. Second, we need volunteers in every county in this state. We need to knock on millions of doors to combat the innumerable amount of literature that the other, corporate party endorsed, candidates will be sending to homes across the state. Third, we need online support. We have seen what the power of social media can do. Please like and share our social media content.
Our social media handle is @Amaral4sup2022 on all major platforms. Please feel free to create content on behalf of our campaign. This, too, is your campaign. Lastly, we are a campaign that believes it can win with small dollar donations. Donate what you can to our campaign. Every donation goes a long way and will help us win as the first and only non-partisan, working-class, educator-led, public education electoral campaign in state history. We can make Ourstory! Together, ‘we can put the “public” back into public education.’
Thank you for this opportunity to share our campaign with your readers.
All Power to the People!
