Teachers Strikes Past and Present

                                                                                                           

                                            Teachers' Strikes Past and Present

                                                                                           2019.   by Andy Piascik

            Public school teachers in Los Angeles, Denver and Oakland have conducted successful strikes this year. Those strikes come on the heels of last Spring’s inspiring strike wave that emerged almost out of nowhere and swept the United States. That wave continued in the Fall of 2018, as teachers in several districts in the state of Washington won significant gains in pay, benefits  and school funding  through walk-outs while teachers in Puerto Rico struck to oppose school closures demanded by financial vultures who continue to ravage the island. 

            In addition to the strikes and potential strikes, teachers in West Virginia have formed WV United, according to Labor Notes reporter Dan Dimaggio. WV United is a rank and file caucus made up of members of both of the nation’s major teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers and is affiliated with the United Caucuses of Rank-and-File Educators (UCORE). Teachers in West Virginia kicked off the strike wave in the Spring and were soon followed by teachers and other school staff in Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, North Carolina and Kentucky who held large-scale walk-outs that in some instances led to the statewide closure of schools for extended periods. Similar actions also took place in individual municipalities such as Jersey City, New Jersey.

2018: A Spring of Unity and Militancy

            In every instance, there was a tremendous degree of unity. Rank and file participation was robust, rallies were large and often quite spirited, very few teachers crossed picket lines in those places where schools weren't completely closed and the public was highly supportive. A number of commentaries have noted that Donald Trump carried a number of the states where the strikes occurred, where union members are generally a lower percentage of the workforce and have fewer collective bargaining rights.  

            Among the many themes of the strikes, there were at least two that relate directly to their red-state hue. The first, widely commented on, is that reactionary state governments have been especially aggressive in their assaults on the living standards of the majority of their populations. In the face of dramatic tax reductions on corporations and the wealthy, attacks on workers and unions, and the undermining and underfunding of education and other public programs, teachers who have often not gotten raises for years while working conditions deteriorate, finally said Enough. 

Many Trump Voters Among the Strikers

            Another theme was that people’s class allegiances emerge as struggle intensifies, and the fact that some of the striking teachers voted for Trump is almost irrelevant as they engage in actions like the recent walk-outs. The focus on whether the strikers voted for the worse of two horrible presidential candidates is certainly of great interest to the punditocracy but serves intentionally to obfuscate the fact that the struggle between the Super Rich and the rest of us will unfold primarily in workplaces and on the streets, not in voting booths.    

            There were fissures between union officers and some rank and filers who believe officers in Oklahoma, for example, were too timid in calling off a strike that had not yet achieved all of the teachers' objectives. In West Virginia, teachers remained out in defiance of union officers who tried to end the strike. Efforts by nervous officers to curtail or even prevent strikes echo events in Wisconsin in 2011 when workers occupied that state’s capitol building before union bureaucrats shut down the protests and essentially told the workers to go home and find a Democrat to vote for.

The fissures in the teacher unions will not go away and a galvanized rank and file may emerge that can address that timidity. That much of the work in preparation for and during the recent strikes was done outside official union channels speaks well to the possibility for desperately needed changes in union structure and culture.

Another Teachers’ Strike 40 Years Ago

            In the early stages of the neoliberal epoch in the 1970s, public school teachers in Bridgeport, Connecticut went on strike for many of the same reasons exactly 40 years ago. The Board of Education and the Bridgeport Education Association (BEA), the collective bargaining representative of the city’s 1,247 teachers as well as about 100 other school professionals, had been at loggerheads for months. Connecticut law forbade strikes by public school teachers, however, and many Bridgeporters were caught off guard by the picket lines on the first day of school.

            Much like the strikes in 2018, there was widespread public support for the teachers. Hundreds of supporters, including students and their parents, joined the picket lines. At one site, members of a neighborhood group played an especially active role in urging students and parents to either join the picket line or go home.

National Teacher Strike Wave

            Like the 2018 strike wave, the walk-out in Bridgeport was one of many that September. Teachers in Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Seattle and numerous smaller cities and towns saw schools closed because of strikes, and some of those actions lasted for several weeks. It was the Bridgeport walk-out, though, that was the longest and the most contentious, as teachers faced a local power structure determined to crush the strike.

            In what were the early stages of the austerity agenda of the business class, Bridgeport’s teachers had seen wages and benefits lag and classroom sizes grow in the years leading up to the 1978 strike. They had accepted a concessionary contract in 1975, causing salaries to fall all the way to the bottom in Fairfield County (as they are today) and among the lowest in the state. There was also a growing exodus of teachers from Bridgeport to higher-salaried jobs in nearby school districts, another trend that remains in 2018. 

            From the outset, the 1978 strike was highly successful. Only 36 teachers, or less than 3%, reported for work on the first day of school and that number dropped in the days that followed. The Democratic mayor and the Democrat-majority Board of Education kept elementary and middle schools open at first by utilizing a small number of teaching aides, substitute teachers and accredited, unemployed teachers, but only 10% of students showed up. The city’s Parent Teacher Association, meanwhile, supported the strike by rejecting a call by the Board that they volunteer in schools and assist scab teachers.

Mass Arrests and Imprisonment

            Arrests began just days into the strike and State Superior Court Judge James Heneby began levying fines of $10,000 per day against the union. As the strike continued, Heneby ordered the union’s officers jailed. The first jailings occurred on September 12^th, the fifth school day of the strike, when thirteen teachers were handcuffed and carted off, the men to a prison in New Haven and the women to one in Niantic some 60 miles away. Those arrested endured degradations such as strip searches and being doused with lice spray. Adding further insult, Heneby imposed individual fines of $350 per person per day on the arrestees.

            Angered by the arrests and the teachers’ subsequent treatment, treatment that one arrestee later called the most humiliating event of her life, the strikers turned out to the picket lines in ever larger numbers and with greater determination and militancy. One result was that the city and school board were forced to abandon efforts to keep any schools open. With all 38 schools closed, another 115 teachers were arrested in the next few days. In all, 274 were arrested during the strike, 22% of the total in the city. As prison space became scarcer, many of those in the later waves of arrests were packed onto buses and taken 70 miles to a National Guard camp that was converted into a makeshift prison.

Standing Firm to Victory

            As the confrontation continued into late September, and with all of the other strikes around the country settled, the mass arrest and imprisonment of Bridgeport’s teachers was drawing international attention and causing local elites and city residents as a whole great embarrassment. Despite the arrests, jailings, fines and some tense scenes on a number of picket lines, the teachers stood firm. Finally, on September 25^th, after 14 school days, the teachers union and Board of Ed agreed to accept binding arbitration. All teachers, some of whom had been locked up for 13 days, were released from prison. The final terms of the agreement were largely favorable to the teachers.

New Legislation: A Setback?

In the strike’s aftermath, the Connecticut legislature passed the 1979 Teacher Collective Bargaining Act that mandates binding arbitration when teachers and the municipalities they work for are stalemated in contract negotiations. While some observers saw the law as a victory for teachers, it was still illegal for teachers in Connecticut to strike, as it remains today. In addition, a number of changes to the law since 1979 such as one that allows municipalities but not unions to reject the decision of an arbitrator, have weakened the bargaining position of teachers.  

Chicago 

No militant strike wave or reinvigorated workers’ movement followed the strikes of 1978. Rather, it was capital that escalated its offensive, one that continues to this day. Probably the most noteworthy strikes by teachers since 1978 came in Chicago where teachers walked out for nine days in 2012 and for shorter durations several times afterwards. The Chicago actions gained significant victories and illustrated to a country where strikes have become rare that they can be incredibly effective.

The 40 years from the Bridgeport strike to today precisely cover the period in which we have seen the most radical upward redistribution of wealth in human history. There is much gut-level support for radical change on many issues including the state of education and the conditions teachers work under. The wave of strikes may be an important turning point.

Moving Forward

            If that is to be the case, continued organizing and coalition-building is essential. Striking teachers in 2018 and 2019 did not face anywhere near the state repression as those in Bridgeport in 1978; there does not appear to have been as much as a single arrest during the strike wave. But entrenched power will push back hard and fast on all fronts, as it always does. The recent strike wave presents a real opportunity for catalyzing the large scale but mostly diffuse discontent among workers toward something more cohesive and better organized. That is an exciting possibility and the thousands of teachers and other school workers who stepped forward in recent months are well-positioned to make that possibility reality.

            It is of great significance that in the West Virginia strike at least, teachers refused to accept a demand by the governor that improved pay and benefits would be paid for with cuts in much-needed programs for the working class as a whole. Mainstream commentators who regard union workers as nothing more than a special interest group exclusively focused on their own well-being had no idea what to do with that one. Also of note is that, in large part because of the insistence of the teachers, the contractual gains won by some of the strikes included all other school workers and that non-union supervisors in at least several states overwhelmingly supported the strikes.

For those who recognize increased class consciousness as essential to long-term social change, the teachers’ rejection of West Virginia elite efforts to conclude the strike by driving a wedge between themselves and the other workers was an important step. Among the challenges now are further development of that consciousness and the further strengthening of the class unity it represents.

One other challenge facing the burgeoning motion among teachers is the fact that the underfunding of education has proceeded at a higher and faster pace in places with higher percentages of students of color, particularly African Americans. Seriously addressing this point and developing strategies accordingly through their unions, in the networks they’ve established and in coalitions they join will go a long way in determining how broad, militant and effective all of those organizations will be. Events of recent week indicate that teachers and other school staff are determined to build on the terrific start of last Spring and may be on the cusp of reinvigorating the labor movement with much-needed militancy.  

 

Bridgeport native Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author whose most recent book is the novel In Motion.  He can be reached at andypiascik@aol.com.

SCUSD Imposes a Plan for Distance Learning - Lets see what teachers do !

 The Sacramento City Unified School District adopted a distance learning plan Saturday after starting the school year two days before without one. The teachers union says its teachers will not follow the plan.

The two groups have been working for weeks to determine how much time teachers will spend in direct instruction via video conference calls and how much time students will be asked to learn asynchronously, or independently

The district decided to move forward without an agreement with the union. The plan is the same originally set forth less than a week ago on Aug. 30

The district is calling for more time spent in synchronous instruction and less time doing independent work. Although both plans meet state education requirements, SCTA’s relies more on independent study in favor of face-to-face screen time. 

The Sacramento Bee has an editorial on the impass. 

Administrators do not teach., Teachers do.  Lets see what happens next. 

Watch Bernie Sanders' full speech at DNC: 'The future of our democracy i...

Chyna

School Funding - Yes On 15

Defend Public Schools

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SCUSD Proposal for English Learners is Totally Inadequate

SCUSD Proposal for English Learners is Totally Inadequate 

 To: SCUSD School Board In the new Learning Accountability and Attendance plan,

 We know that English learners, particularly young English learners, require face to face social interaction to advance in English. We do not find plans to provide English learners with the required designated English Language Learning instruction. In your plan you have listed 60 minutes per week of instruction. That is totally inadequate. A child can not learn English with this minimal instruction. 

 It is clear under SB 98, that the district receives specific and designated funding for services to English learners. We do not find plans to track and apply the funding specifically for the English Learners. You are required to show that the supplemental money you receive for English learners actually improves the learning achievement of English learners. (Ed. Code, § 43503(b). We do not find evidence that you are going to measure, record, and report this achievement. 

 We advise the district to revise your plan to describe how the district is increasing or improving services in proportion to funds generated by low-income students, English learner and students in foster care under the local control funding formula (LCFF) as required by the continuing SB 98 legislation.

 As we have advised you for four years, your planning has not shown that funds generated by English learners are principally directed and effective to meet the needs of the students who generated them. Now, in your present proposed Learning Accountability and Attendance plan, you are again required to show how the funds generated by English Learners are principally directed and effective to meet the needs of the English learners who generated them. Should your plan fail to demonstrate evidence of this required direction of funding, we may need to oppose the approval of your plan.

 Parents of English learners are more likely than other parents to not have substantial internet connectivity. How will the district provide needed additional support to non English speaking, or limited English speaking parents as required by SB 98 ?

 In your required effort to support mental health and social and emotional well-being of pupils and staff during the school year, it is essential that many of the specialists and counselors providing services be bilingual in the languages spoken in the district. We do not find plans for providing certified bilingual counselors in the district. Your plan should be improved in this area. 

 We request specific and detailed responses to our continuing concerns. 

 Dr. Duane E. Campbell.

 Dolores Delgado Campbell Co Chairs – Education Committee 

 LULAC/Sacramento 

League of United Latin American Citizens 

 PO Box 162790 Sacramento , Ca. 95816

Quality vs Quantity: Distance Learning in SCUSD

Quality vs Quantity: Distance Learning in SCUSD: To download a pdf of this comparison in English, click here. To download a pdf of this comparison in Spanish, click here. To view SCTA’s SmartStart Proposal, click here. To view SCTA’s Elementary Daily Schedules, click here. To view SCTA’s Secondary Daily Schedules, click here.

Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement - Today on the National Mall

 Fulfilling our Obligations, and  Passing the Torch

 
"When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.
 
Rabbi Jacob Prinz, Speech at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963
 
"I appeal to all of you to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete. We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution...."

John Lewis, Speech at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963
 
We in the Black Freedom Movement of the 1950s and 1960s held countless mass meetings in churches and community halls in Black communities throughout the Jim Crow South. On August 28, 1963, for the first and only time, we gathered before the Lincoln Memorial for a mass meeting on a national scale, joined and witnessed by the entire country. We called this mass meeting "The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom".
 
No one who was there can ever forget it.
 
We were there.
 
With approximately 250,000 in attendance, and tens of millions watching on network TV, the March on Washington was the largest gathering for racial justice, economic equality and human rights ever assembled to date. Martin Luther King, Jr. called it "the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation."
 
We are surviving members of Dr. King's inner circle, student activist leaders from the Nashville sit-in movement and Mississippi voting rights campaign and singers who performed from the stage at that historic gathering in Washington. Some of us 2 worked primarily with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); others were among the leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Dr. Clarence B. Jones, as lawyer for Dr. King, and Courtland Cox, representing SNCC, served on the planning committee for the March with lead organizers Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph.
 
The March on Washington took place fifty-seven years ago today.
 
We remember it like yesterday. We remember Dr. King's iconic speech, as we remember each of those who addressed the crowd: fourteen of the nation's most important religious and moral leaders including eminent Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy; presidents of national civil rights, labor and student organizations.
 
With the death of our dear friend John Lewis, none of March on Washington speakers are still alive.
 
We mourn Congressman Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian, who died just six weeks ago; we mourn dear friends and mentors who died in the last few years, including Julian Bond, Amelia Boynton, Dorothy Cotton, Vincent Harding, Joseph Lowery, Jack O'Dell and Harris Wofford; we mourn our beloved Martin King, taken from us at the age of 39; and we mourn Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Orange, Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, Fred Shuttlesworth, Hosea Williams and so many others beloved sisters and brothers in the movement we lost over the intervening decades.
 
Our numbers are diminishing. Those of us who remain feel a heavy burden of moral responsibility. We remember the old African saying: if the surviving lions don't tell their story, the hunters will be remembered as "heroes".
 
We feel obligated to accurately recall the true story of our nonviolent movement to transform our country. We affirm the direct lineage from the Black Freedom Movement of the 20th century, in which we were immersed, and the Black Lives Matter Movement and renewed Poor People's Campaign of the 21st century which we profoundly admire, and wholeheartedly endorse and support.
 
For decades America portrayed the 1963 March on Washington as a symbolic apotheosis of peaceful social change, racial harmony and reconciliation. Yes, the 3 March was a uniquely powerful demonstration of the struggle for racial justice. But this struggle continues, as systemic racial injustice persists.
 
We feel a heavy burden of responsibility as together we face this moment of moral reckoning throughout America.
 
On May 25, we witnessed George Floyd's 8 minute, 46 second suffocation under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
 
Just a few days ago, we witnessed police in Kenosha, Wisconsin fire seven shots at close range into the back of Jacob Blake.
 
At this inflection point in U.S. history, we are duty-bound to honestly recognize our failures as well as our achievements as a nation since Dr. King shared his dream.
 
"Power concedes nothing without a demand," Frederick Douglass insisted. "It never has, and it never will."
 
In August 1963, we came to Washington in the spirit of what Dr. King called "the marvelous new militancy" of the young Black activists in sit-ins, freedom rides, boycotts and marches throughout the South.
 
In the spirit of Frederick Douglass, we came in force to make demands.
 
Economic justice and a living wage
 
On August 28, 1963, we marched to demand an end to legally sanctioned segregation. We achieved this demand the following summer with the enactment of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act. Tragically, however, Dr. King's dream of a racially integrated society has been abandoned. Today in 2020 de facto segregation in housing and education persists, and there has been no progress in reducing the corruption of white supremacy on the allocation of resources to schools, or the distribution of income and wealth in our society.
 
Nearly sixty years after the March on Washington, the net worth of a median white family in America remains ten times greater than that of a median Black family in our country. A wealth gap of this magnitude violates the fundamental principle that 4 everyone is created equal; it can and will be eliminated when an electoral majority deems it morally unacceptable.
 
We cannot forget that the March on Washington was for jobs as well as freedom.
 
Fifty-seven years ago, we marched to demand a national program of public works, including job training, for the unemployed. Today, when our society suffers from the most severe economic insecurity and mass unemployment since the Great Depression, we renew our demand.
 
On August 28, 1963, we marched to demand a $2-per-hour minimum wage across the country, a wage equivalent to $17-per-hour today.
 
Today, in 2020, the federal minimum wage is a woefully inadequate $7.25 per hour. This is unacceptable, a return to the "starvation wages" John Lewis rightfully deplored in his speech to the March.
 
In a time of pandemic, our essential service workers are front-line soldiers, risking their health and lives for the health and lives of others. We call them "heroes," but this is hypocrisy, because we do not treat them as such. At minimum wage, they are forced to take multiple jobs, to push their family well-being to the brink. This is unacceptably dangerous for workers, and their children, and it is unacceptably dangerous for our society as a whole. We must learn from our failure to contain Covid-19 and from the unnecessary deaths of so many people.
 
We must treat our essential workers with respect and care. The least we can do is make sure that we pay them a decent wage that will bring them out of poverty.
 
We renew our demand for a national program of public works, and a living wage for all American workers.
 
Securing and exercising the right to vote
 
On March 28, 1963, we marched to secure the vote for all Americans. We achieved this demand two years later, with the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Tragically, however, we have experienced a terrible, relentless backlash.
 
Seven years ago, the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder eviscerated the most important federal protection Congress had established to protect voting rights in states with a deep history of voter suppression. Immediately, many of states enacted legislation to curtail access to voting and suppress the vote, especially among Black citizens.
 
We urgently appeal to Congress to restore the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We demand that access to the ballot for all citizens be guaranteed and expanded for all citizens in every state.
 
On August 28, 1963, we marched to demand enforcement of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution by reducing congressional representation from States that disenfranchise citizens. We renew the demand that our Constitution be enforced in the face of widespread voter suppression today.
 
In his electrifying speech fifty-seven years ago, John Lewis deplored racist systems that deprived Black people of their Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.
 
"'One man, one vote' is the African cry," he said. "It is ours too. It must be ours!"
 
He urged all citizens able to exercise their right to vote to remove from office all morally corrupt politicians who "ally themselves with open forms of political, economic, and social exploitation."
 
Before Dr. King shared his dream of the future, John Lewis demanded that we wake up to the national nightmare of the present. "We must say: 'Wake up America! Wake up!'"
 
Every American has a sacred obligation to honor the memory of countless martyrs who died to protect our voting rights. Citizenship means nothing if we abandon our collective power of the ballot. Voting is our moral and political responsibility as citizens, and it represents the collective power we must exercise to save our country.
 
In this moment of national emergency, when our democracy is threatened as never before since the end of Reconstruction and the entrenchment of Jim Crow terror throughout the 6 South, we call on all qualified Americans to exercise your power as citizens to register and vote.
 
We applaud and support the urgent work of next generation voting rights defenders and organizers including the M4BL Electoral Justice Project, the Black Voters Matter Fund, and the student activists of the Andrew Goodman Foundation. Together these young leaders are fighting to secure our Constitutional rights and mobilize the vote in Black and other communities of color throughout the United States. We honor them, support them, and follow them.
 
"The marvelous new militancy"
 
We as a nation remember Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream, as we should. But we must not forget Dr. King's urgent call to action on that day.
 
"In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (Yeah), they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men (My Lord), would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. (My Lord) Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds."
 
In his speech to the March, Dr. King asked us to imagine redemption in the most concrete terms.
 
He emphasized that redemption can only come from organized nonviolent protest attentive to "the fierce urgency of now." Indeed, he warned us that "[I]t would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment." He meant it literally. "There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights," he said. "The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."
 
Dr. King made it clear that our movement depended on the "marvelous new militancy" of the nonviolent student activists in the Black community: tens of thousands of young people engaged in lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, Nashville and cities throughout the South; the young people risking their lives on the Freedom Rides in South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi; the young people who came together to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the youth of Birmingham who filled Bull Connor's jails and desegregated the most racist city in the Jim Crow south.
 
Above all, Dr. King praised the young activists for their steadfast courage and unwavering commitment to disciplined nonviolence on the front lines of the struggle against racist violence directed against them, and he lauded the increasingly multiracial nature of their nonviolent direct-action campaigns.
 
"We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. (My Lord) Again and again (No, no), we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. (My Lord) The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people (Hmm), for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny [sustained applause], and they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
 
​Read More. 

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/todays-statement-from-movement-veteransaugust-28-2020

Latinas Advanced Women's Suffrage

                      

As much as I am proud of the 19^th Amendment Centennial celebration, I remind us that women of color, Latinas, Asian American, Native American, and African American, have also participated in acquiring suffrage for American Women. 

 As a Latina, Native American  Emeritus professor of history, I will introduce 2 Latinas who participated as their situation, state, time and place would allow. 

In  Laredo, Texas, in 1914, Jovita Idár,  was a journalist  at La Cronica, a Spanish language newspaper,  and  an activist focusing on the  civil rights struggle. 

Idár wrote about equal rights for women, encouraging women to get educated and become independent from men. She started La Liga Femenil ( League of Mexican American Feminist).  She and her husband established the local Democratic club in Laredo, Texas. 

Lucy  ( Lucia) Gonzáles Parsons  was a  activist and labor organizer who fought for the rights of workers and the liberation of women.   In 1879 she became active in the Chicago Working Women’s Union.  She called for a suffrage  plank in the Socialist Party platform and demanded equal pay for equal work.  She was a founder of the IWW , the Industrial Workers of the World. 

Lucia González Parsons is one of a long list of Latinas, such as Dolores Huerta, Luisa Moreno, Emma Tenayuca, Jovita Idár, Sara Estela Ramírez,  and María Hernández who have struggled to end the exploitation of women and labor in the United States and to obtain civil rights for Latinas.

The struggle to obtain the vote in states like Texas and other Southern States was difficult, often bloody and violent. A poll tax was to be paid in order to vote. Poor Latinos, like my parents, could only afford to pay for one person to spend the $1.50 fee.  There were also Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation and limiting the rights of Mexican Americans in South Texas,  Often signs were posted in stores and restaurants saying, “ No Negroes, Mexicans, or dogs allowed.” Abuse and harassment by law enforcement including the Texas Rangers was common. Schools were segregated with facilities for Mexican American ( Latinos) dilapidated and inferior.   Speaking Spanish in or around school was prohibited and punished. 

As we speak of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,  we should do just that.  When celebrations, news stories, viral programs, and spokes persons are invited to participate in the 2020 centennial celebration include us, ask us.  Sisterhood is powerful !

 

Sources 

1.    “Overlooked Obituaries”. Jovita Idár,  New York Times, August 10, 2020.  

 

2.    Timelines of American Women’s History. Sue Heinemann. 1996.  Perigee book, Berkeley Publishing Group.

 

3.     La Chicana,  Alfredo Mirandé & Evangelina Enriquez, University of Chicago Press. 1979. 

 

Dolores Delgado Campbell. Emeritus Professor of History. American River College.

Setting Up Public Schools to Fail - The Virus

The “Great” Reopening Or Setting America’s Schools Up to Fail By Belle Chesler 

 Seventeen years ago, against the advice of my parents, I decided to become a public school teacher. Once I did, both my mother and father, educators themselves, warned me that choosing to teach was to invite attacks from those who viewed the profession with derision and contempt. They advised me to stay strong and push through when budgets were cut, my intellect questioned, or my dedication to my students exploited. 

Nobody, however, warned me that someday I might have to defend myself against those who asked me to step back into my classroom and risk my own life, the lives of my students and their families, of my friends, my husband, and my child in the middle of a global pandemic. And nobody told me that I’d be worrying about whether or not our nation’s public schools, already under siege, would survive the chaos of Covid-19. 

 Pushing students back into school buildings right now simply telegraphs an even larger desire in this society to return to business as usual. We want our schools to open because we want a sense of normalcy in a time of the deepest uncertainty. We want to pretend that schools (like bars) will deliver us from the stresses created by a massive public health crisis. We want to believe that if we simply put our children back in their classrooms, the economy will recover and life as we used to know it will resume. 

In reality, the coronavirus is -- or at least should be -- teaching us that there can be no going back to that past. As the first students and teachers start to return to school buildings, images of crowded hallways, unmasked kids, and reports of school-induced Covid-19 outbreaks have already revealed the depths to which we seem willing to plunge when it comes to the safety and well-being of our children. 

So let’s just call the situation what it is: a misguided attempt to prop up an economy failing at near Great Depression levels because federal, state, and local governments have been remarkably unwilling to make public policy grounded in evidence-based science. In other words, we’re living in a nation struggling to come to terms with the deadly repercussions of a social safety net gutted even before the virus reached our shores and decisions guided by the most self-interested kind of politics rather than the public good. 

 A Return to School? For teachers like me, with the privilege of not having to work a second or third job, summer can be a time to reflect on the previous school year and prepare for the next. I take classes, read, develop new curriculum, and spend time with family and friends. Summer has been a time to catch up with all the pieces of my life I’ve neglected during the school year and recharge my physical and emotional batteries. Like many other public school teachers I know, I step away in order to step back in. Not this summer, though. In these months, there’s been no reprieve. In Portland, Oregon, where I live, the confluence of the historic Black Lives Matter uprising, a subsequent invasion by the president’s federal agents, the hovering menace and tragic devastation of the coronavirus, and rising rates of homelessness and joblessness have contributed to a seismic disruption of the routines and structures of our community. 

A feeling of uncertainty and anxiety now permeates every facet of daily life. Like so many, I’ve been parenting full time without relief since March, acutely aware of the absence of the usual indispensable web of teachers, caregivers, coaches, camp counselors, family, and friends who have helped me raise my child so that I can help raise the children of others. The dislocation from my community and the isolation caused by the breakdown of normal social ties, as well as my daughter’s and my lack of access to school, has had a profound effect on our lives. 

And yet, knowing all that, feeling it all so deeply, I would still never advocate sending our children back to school in person as Covid-19 still rages out of control. Without a concerted effort to stop the spread of the virus -- as cases in this country soar past five million and deaths top 170,000 -- including masking mandates, widespread testing, effective contact tracing, enough funding to change the physical layout of classrooms and school buildings, a radical reduction in class sizes, and proper personal protective equipment for all school employees, returning to school becomes folly on a grand scale. Of course, an effort like that would require a kind of social cohesion, innovation, and focused allocation of resources that, by definition, is nonexistent in the age of Trump. 

 Sacrificing the Vulnerable 

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How Trump Politicized Schools Reopening,

 How Trump Politicized Schools Reopening, Regardless of Safety

Diane Ravitch

 

https://portside.org/2020-08-13/how-trump-politicized-schools-reopening-regardless-safety

 

CTA : Schools Must Be Safe

CTA President E.Tobey Boyd. 

"We have said all along, California cannot reopen schools unless it is safe. That applies to all schools on county watch lists or not, and to schools districts seeking waivers from adhering to CDPH guidance, but counties are on that watch list for a reason. 

Governor Gavin Newsom was absolutely right when he emphatically said in Monday’s news conference that he doesn’t 'believe anyone should be forced to put their life and health at risk, period. Full stop.' 

Given the exponential increase in COVID-19 cases, the record number of deaths in just the last month, the growing number of counties on the state watch list, and so many unknowns that threaten the long-term health and safety of students and educators, we believe we must take all precautions and preventative action to protect students, educators and our communities. 

And now, with the cases of children who have been infected with COVID-19 in childcare right here in California, in Texas, as well as the students in Georgia, we can NO LONGER SAY, kids aren’t transmitters. Granting waivers would further exacerbate the racial and economic inequities that exists in our schools and communities. Let’s not forget 30% don’t have access to technology—Wi-Fi and computers. 

This waiver guidance certainly expands on the footnote that was in the previous guidance, however, we cannot ignore the science-based directives that have put counties on a watch list. 

Educators want desperately to be back in classrooms and schools with their students doing the work they love, but there is too much at stake to ignore science, facts and safety. 

Unfortunately, many local districts and communities don’t have the necessary resources or capacity to maintain even the most basic prevention measures of six feet physical distancing and limiting contacts, much less the other important preventative actions such as personal protective equipment (PPE), testing and tracing, or adequate ventilation and cleaning supplies.

 It is clear that communities and school districts have not come close to meeting the threshold for a safe return to in-person learning. If any waiver is considered, per the guidance, the decision must be made with parents and educators.” - E Toby Boyd, CTA President

Harris Has been Pro Education

Joe Biden just picked Kamala Harris to be his running mate. This is an exciting and historic moment at a critical time when our nation is desperate for leadership. While all of the women Biden was considering are incredible leaders, we are confident that Harris will be a real partner in governing. I’m excited for her to become our nation’s first female vice president. She will help Biden solve America’s immediate crises: a global pandemic, an economic crisis and a long-overdue reckoning on racial injustice. Kamala Harris has a long history of supporting public education. She has consistently engaged with our union and our members, from her time in state politics in California to her recent campaign for president. She’s been committed to fully funding public education; she supports the right to organize; and she has a history of fighting for voting rights, LGBTQ equality and women’s rights. When our members went on strike in Los Angeles in 2019, she was one of the first national figures to publicly support our members. And in this long-overdue moment of racial reckoning, her leadership on the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 is what we need. I have no doubt the right wing will, right away, start attacking Harris with sexism, racism and probably even outlandish conspiracy theories. We want to immediately show our support for the Biden-Harris ticket. We can’t let the right-wing attacks of Harris on social media go unchecked. Can you share this graphic with a few quick facts about her record to counter the onslaught of racism and sexism? Click here to share the graphic on Facebook, and click here to share the graphic on Twitter. To overcome the crises facing our nation, we must defeat Donald Trump—making this the most important election of our lifetime. Instead of deploying the public health tools at his disposal, Trump has downplayed the threat of the coronavirus, dismissed the advice of our nation’s top scientists and public health experts, and jeopardized students and educators alike in the rush to recklessly and unsafely reopen school buildings. Trump has fanned the flames of prejudice and made the divisions in our country much worse: the Muslim ban, the border wall, calling white supremacists “very fine people,” and blaming Chinese people for COVID-19, to name just a few examples. And as unemployment insurance expires, protections for renters run out, the Postal Service is starved, and schools and states faced draconian cuts, Trump has refused to work with Democrats to pass a real relief bill. Four more years of this will tear our country apart. We’ve got a choice between two campaigns—and two visions for America—that couldn’t be more different. The Biden-Harris campaign has offered a hopeful vision for America’s future. Joe Biden is the deeply decent, experienced, caring and competent leader America needs in this moment. He and Kamala Harris are the team we need not just to confront the enormous crises we face but to reimagine a fairer, more just nation that prioritizes America’s workers and families. That means strengthening public education, enabling unions, ensuring healthcare for all, and restoring our democracy and our sense of decency and justice. Imagine a president guided by facts and science, determined to lead with solutions instead of scapegoating; a president who listens and respects the voice and experience of educators, health professionals and other workers; who will confront racial injustice rather than fan the flames of racism; who will strengthen public education rather than tear it down; and who will cherish our environment and make our economy work for working and middle-class people rather than the rich and powerful. Biden will fight alongside us for a better life and a better future for all who call our country home. We have 84 days left to do this. And I know that, together, we can elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Let’s keep organizing, Randi Weingarten AFT president

We Must Unite to Defeat the Trump Regime

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We Must Unite to Defeat Trump

To Defeat Trump, Discredit His Movement, and Elect Progressives 

We, the undersigned democratic socialists, want to make clear that the priority for the left in 2020 should be the electoral defeat of Donald Trump and the Trumpist Republican Party in November. At present, the only way to accomplish that will be to vote for his Democratic opponent.

The racist, xenophobic, misogynist authoritarianism of Trumpism poses an immediate existential danger to people of color, to immigrants, to reproductive rights, to trade unions, to LGBTQIA people, to Muslims, to Jews, to members of other religions, and to democracy itself. A Trump victory would fortify our authoritarian State, expand imperial aggression, and collapse the political space for democratic and left forces at home. Reversing the creeping neo-fascism at play in our country is a strategic imperative, the most urgent political task before us.

See the statement in The Nation.

Statement  the Nation

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/defeat-trump-open-letter/

Trump’s regime is literally imposing massive casualties on people of color, immigrants, and women, by means of its work-or-starve campaign to restart the economy in the face of a raging pandemic, through indulgence of random, murderous assaults epitomized by the cases of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, by the shutdown of abortion clinics, and by virtual death sentences imposed on incarcerated persons, including those detained by the vicious Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The mob attacks on Democratic state governments encouraged by the president call to mind the reversal of Reconstruction by terrorist partisans of the old Confederacy, after the Civil War.

Thousands are dying of the coronavirus each week, disproportionately POC, particularly elderly nursing home residents, the incarcerated, and detained immigrants. How many more must be sacrificed?

As democratic socialists, we believe that the best way to defeat Trumpism as well as Trump himself is with a platform the breaks decisively with neo-liberal policies, especially austerity, privatization, deregulation, and anti-worker trade deals. But in the near term, as a practical matter, alliances are also necessary with other anti-Trump forces, for the sake of a Democratic victory in November.

We should continue to promote the interests of working people above the 1%, to take on institutional racism and sexism in law enforcement, employment, and social services, to address catastrophic climate change, and to promote public health. But our core mission need not preclude us from urging a vote against Trump. Nor should it discourage us from enthusiastically backing progressive elected officials and candidates for office, such as “the squad” in the House of Representatives.

Particularly important is vigorous support for avowed democratic socialists, such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. They must be defended from efforts to pillory and defeat them, not least so that the ranks of progressives in office can grow.  

Our electoral work will have the greatest impact when done cooperatively among all progressive constituencies, including trade unions, civil rights organizations, and community groups, as well as progressive political organizations. This collaborative approach powered the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders and helped to elect Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, among others.

Trump’s commitment to the destruction of basic democratic institutions – the right to vote, an independent judiciary, a free press, Congress as a co-equal branch of government, the sovereign character of state governments – would make further pursuit of a progressive agenda impossible. Nothing is more important than ensuring his removal from the White House in 2021.

Max Berger

Dan Cantor

Leo Casey

Carl Davidson

John D’Emilio

Barbara Ehrenreich

Susan Feiner

Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Frances Fox Piven

Kathleen Geier

Jose Gutierrez

Richard Healey

Barbara E. Hopkins

Gerry Hudson

Barbara Joye

Michael Kazin

Randall Kennedy

Jeanne Kracher

Jose La Luz

Daraka Larimore-Hall

Charles Lenchner

Stephen Lerner

Penny Lewis

Nelson Lichtenstein

Eric Mar

Bob Master

Deborah Meier

Gus Newport

Ed Ott

Katha Pollitt

Chris Riddiough

Michele Rossi

Max Sawicky

Jay Schaffner

Marilyn Sneiderman

Cornel West

Ethan Young

To add your name to this statement, go to www.dsanorthstar.org/defeattrump

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