As we fight authoritarianism, we cannot cede government to a struggle between MAGA and corporate Democrats. Fifty years of bipartisan neoliberal reforms have hollowed out the public sector, cutting funding and shutting working-class communities out of shaping institutions important to them. Authoritarians blamed these institutions’ failures on immigrants, black people, Muslims, and LGBTQIA people. Reversing authoritarianism requires that public institutions be run by the people. This means protecting vital working-class institutions that can serve as hubs for organizing and building experiments in co-governance in which movements and government work in tension and collaboration to improve working people’s lives.

The public Community Schools model, when embedded in racial justice and combined with labor and community organizing, can support fights to protect public education and experiment with co-governance.

United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and Reclaim Our Schools LA went on strike in 2019 to win the LA Community Schools Initiative. LA Community Schools support expanded decision-making for parents, youth, and workers and receive resources to engage communities, address social justice, and provide services. They center racial justice in curriculum and school practices and are unionized. These are potentially non-reformist reforms, reforms that do not accept, and actually threaten, the status quo.