Save Our Schools- march

TEACHERS, PARENTS GEAR UP FOR JULY 30 SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH ON D.C.,

ALLIED ACTIONS AROUND THE NATION

  

Educators and families from around the country say they are fed up with so-called “reform” policies that falsely label more than 80% of U.S. public schools as failures. To counter what they call unfair attacks on teachers and public education, a growing coalition of individuals and organizations is mobilizing for a national day of action in support of public schools. 
  
On Saturday, July 30, 2011, thousands of people will gather at the White House in Washington, DC and at locations around the nation to express their desire to reclaim the right to determine the path of education reform in their own communities. The “Save Our Schools” March and allied events are being organized by a network of teachers, parents and community activists. 
  
“For too long, public school stakeholders have been treated like second class citizens in our own communities,” said Sabrina Stevens Shupe, a former Colorado teacher, who is a member of the March’s organizing committee. “Teachers’ knowledge has been dismissed because we are falsely presumed to be self-interested and incompetent.  Students and parents who vocally oppose the disruption and destruction of their schools are often entirely ignored.  At the same time, ideologues with little to no experience in public schools have made misguided decisions that devastate educational quality and equal opportunity.” 
  
Addressing high-stakes “accountability” policies, such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, Florida businesswoman and parent advocate Rita Solnet explained, “A decade of NCLB's incessant focus on high-stakes tests narrowed curriculum in many schools. Each new initiative ratcheting up the stakes behind these tests, has resulted in the abandonment of the very children NCLB sought to serve. NCLB has not improved overall achievement, and it has diminished the quality of teaching and learning. We must reverse this wrong-headed direction.” 

Mr. Duncan. You are a shining example

By David Reber, Topeka K-12 Examiner   May 21st, 2011

Mr. Duncan,

I read your Teacher Appreciation Week letter to teachers, and had at first decided not to respond. Upon further thought, I realized I do have a few things to say.

 I’ll begin with a small sample of relevant adjectives just to get them out of the way: condescending, arrogant, insulting, misleading, patronizing, egotistic, supercilious, haughty, insolent, peremptory, cavalier, imperious, conceited, contemptuous, pompous, audacious, brazen, insincere, superficial, contrived, garish, hollow, pedantic, shallow, swindling, boorish, predictable, duplicitous, pitchy, obtuse, banal, scheming, hackneyed, and quotidian. Again, it’s just a small sample; but since your attention to teacher input is minimal, I wanted to put a lot into the first paragraph.

Your lead sentence, “I have worked in education for much of my life”, immediately establishes your tone of condescension; for your 20-year “education” career lacks even one day as a classroom teacher. You, Mr. Duncan, are the poster-child for the prevailing attitude in corporate-style education reform: that the number one  prerequisite for educational expertise is never having been a teacher.

 Your stated goal is that teachers be “…treated with the dignity we award to other professionals in society.”  Really?

 How many other professionals are the last ones consulted about their own profession; and are then summarily ignored when policy decisions are made? How many other professionals are so distrusted that sweeping federal  legislation is passed to “force” them to do their jobs? And what dignities did you award teachers when you publicly praised the mass firing of teachers in Rhode Island?

Education State of Emergency: Mobilize!

Schools state of emergency

 megan

Created 05/05/2011 - 5:39pm

Posted on 05 May 2011

By Lisa Schiff
May is turning into a month of action on the part of public education supporters. From parent groups to the University of California system, teachers, administrators, parents, students and advocates will be engaged in a variety of actions to convey to elected officials and the public the seriousness of the financial crisis our schools are facing. Since the effort to get a vote on tax extensions onto a June ballot failed, there has been an eerie period of relative calm, but that is an illusory state, a quiet before the storm.
Schools, along with other critical services, have been left in a financial limbo where they must continue to operate, but must plan for unknown levels of cuts that may come in an unpredictable schedule, with unfamiliar, unacceptable changes to classrooms. Across the state, teachers are facing layoffs, class sizes are being increased, and program offerings are being reduced. Just recently in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), community members at the high school level were fighting to save a long-established music program and third year foreign language classes.
From the perspective of the education community, this fiscal chaos has reached a point of crisis sufficient to declare a state of emergency. And it is this level of alarm that needs to be conveyed to state representatives and senators, and their constituents. Actions throughout May are designed to accomplish just that task. The first of many events happens Friday in Northern California with a Senate Budget Committee hearing in Mountain View:
Senate Budget Committee Hearing
When: Friday, May 6, 10 a.m.
Where: Microsoft, Silicon Valley Campus, Microsoft Conference Center, Building 1, 1065 La Avenida, Mountain View, CA 94043

It's time for lawmakers to finally get the problem solved now

Parents group calls for reform of NCLB

Parents across America. Our proposals to reform NCLB

The US Congress is considering how to revise No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the most important federal law that governs our public schools.  NCLB has been extremely damaging in the eyes of most parents, and needs fundamental reform.  Unfortunately, the Obama administration plans to make it worse in many respects.

Parents Across America has developed our own blueprint, based upon less testing and privatization, more parent input, and a greater emphasis on evidenced-based reforms that have been proven to work to improve schools, such as class size reduction.  Our complete blueprint was featured on the Washington Post Answer Sheet, and is posted on our PAA website as a pdf here.

Please sign our petition in support of our proposals, and send a message to the President and the US Congress now!

Then  join us, as we fight for better schools!

Our children, our schools, our voices.

http://parentsacrossamerica.org/

CTA's State of Emergency campaign

The “State of Emergency” campaign came to Main Street in Santa Clara today, drawing media attention to local impacts of the Legislature’s stalemate on the state budget crisis.

Silicon Valley teachers, parents and labor leaders held a news conference on Main Street to dramatize that their urgent demand for state lawmakers to extend some temporary taxes is really about “Main Street priorities” like protecting our schools, public safety and communities from devastating cuts.

Speakers were Don Dawson, CTA Board member and San Jose educator; teacher Tracy Pope, president of United Teachers of Santa Clara (UTSC); UTSC member, teacher and Santa Clara Unified School District parent Viola Smith; teacher Dave Villafana, president of Cupertino Education Association; Santa Clara Unified parent Stephen McMahon, president of the San Jose Teachers Association; San Jose firefighter Jeff Welch, president of San Jose Firefighters Local 230; and Anna Schlotz, lead organizer for the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council.

With tax deadline day looming on Monday, April 18, speakers thanked the public for paying the taxes that fund our services, but reminded them of the consequences of massive cuts if some temporary taxes are not extended. The governor is seeking the tax extensions as part of his balanced approach to ending the state’s crisis. Lawmakers have made $12 billion in cuts already, and must extend the taxes to close the remaining $15 billion deficit, said Don Dawson, a teacher in the East Side Union High School District and a member of the CTA board of directors.

Superintendents? Leaders? Why School Reform often fails

Stop Waiting for a Savior

By TIMOTHY A. HACSI

DID Cathleen P. Black, the former publishing executive who was removed last week after just three months as New York City’s schools chancellor, fail because she lacked a background in education?

In this respect, she has had quite a bit of company over the decades. In 1996, Washington hired a former three-star Army general, Julius W. Becton Jr., to take over its low-performing schools; he left, exhausted, after less than two years. For most of the last decade, the Los Angeles Unified School District was run by non-educators: a former governor of Colorado, Roy Romer, and then a retired vice admiral, David L. Brewer III. They got mixed reviews. Raj Manhas, who had a background in banking and utilities, ran Seattle’s schools from 2003 to 2007, balancing the budget but facing fierce opposition over his plans to close schools.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who had hired Ms. Black without public discussion, quickly replaced her with a deputy mayor steeped in education policy. But the real issue is not the superintendent’s or chancellor’s background, but the excessive emphasis that politicians, educators and parents place on the notion of leadership rather than on empirical evidence about what improves education.

Even as the specific fixes advocated for schools have changed, the role of school-district leaders has gotten greater attention — and the selection process has become more political.

It doesn’t always take actual success to be lauded and promoted, nor does an education background guarantee anything. Roderick R. Paigebecame superintendent of Houston schools in 1994 and in 2001 parlayed his “Houston miracle” to become President George W. Bush’s secretary of education, and the point man for the No Child Left Behind law. That Houston’s test-score increases and low dropout rates were mirages did not impede Mr. Paige’s ascent or the emphasis on testing as a magic bullet.

Perhaps the best-known school leader today is Michelle A. Rhee, who was schools chancellor in Washington from 2007 to 2010. She aggressively took on the teachers’ union, but made more headlines than lasting reforms.

Bill Gates and the Soap of Education

                                 Bill Gates and Soap of Education

                                          

     Bill Gates recently claimed class-size doesn’t matter.

     Mr. Gates, I need to talk to you about soap.
    I teach fifth grade in Castroville, California, and a former fifth-grade student, Rojelio (Ro for short), sends me powerful and disturbing gifts. He is twenty-seven now and freshly released from prison.  His gifts, although welcomed because they represent an ongoing seventeen year teacher-student bond, also unnerve me. Ro says they are for “hanging with him all these years.” His gifts have included a newspaper belonging to Charles Manson (A Christian Science Monitor – go figure), and four Sudoku puzzles completed by Sirhan Sirhan. Today he gave me a bar of soap. Inscribed on it are three letters, PIA -- Prison Industries Authority.
     My student has been incarcerated for thirteen-plus years - since he was an eighth-grader. He got the newspaper and the Sudoku puzzles when he was on the same tier as Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan. He played chess--a game I taught him in fifth-grade-- with both men. 

   Rojelio’s mom called me, “Mr. Karrer, Ro is coming home on Sunday. Can you straighten his ass out? We’re having a party for him. You wanna’ come?”
     Can I straighten him out? Probably not.  Will I keep on trying to help him? Yes.
So, today right after class, we met at Starbucks. He spotted me and walked to my car, big grin under his nose. He had put on lots of weight. Last time I saw him was in Salinas Valley State Prison, over two years ago. He was in ankle chains, waist chains, then chained from his waist to his ankles, and handcuffed.
      But today, we hugged and he passed me a paper cup with the soap in it.  He said, “Got a present for you, pretty rare. I’m surprised the correction officers let me take it out. It’s worth a couple bucks on E-bay.” He laughed and added, ”Plus, with the cutbacks we only get half a bar now.”

        He didn’t get an education in prison. I have sincere worries that he was in no way rehabilitated. He has little to show for thirteen years of incarceration. Basically he walked out of prison with one thing and he gave that to me - a prison issue bar of soap.
       Mr. Gates, you don’t get it. Those of us teaching in the urban areas see communities and children wallowing in pitiful, desperate poverty. You have no idea how distressed my students are. Nor how slim their margin of survival is.  Last year, fifty percent of my students had set foot in a jail or a prison to visit a family member. The many staggering deficiencies which accompany that reality are overwhelming and swirl around in a negative critical mass, pulling down students’ academics, motivation, and life’s bright shine. Rojelio is the end product of that wretched poverty. And unfortunately he’s not alone. Armies of kids are in line behind him waiting to join gangs.
     You say good teachers are the most important variable in a classroom. Well, you are wrong. It is home life or lack thereof. All teachers can do is assist. I’d like to think I do.  If you think we are so important, then aid us – by helping these kids who need the most. So many of my kids end up in jail or prison. Actually, in communities of raw despondence, smaller class size does matter. It’s one of the very few things that can impact the despondence of their daily lives.  But you think it doesn’t and you are a billionaire. I’m just a front line teacher.  What do I know?
   As for Ro, the odds are stacked against him. He’s never been in a plane, never held a meaningful job, didn’t finish school past eighth-grade. He’s a validated gang member and a felon with one strike. There’s a sixty percent recidivism rate waiting for him.
   As for me, I missed Ro’s coming back party, but I’m going over for dinner. I also hope I won’t be receiving any more presents from him.
   Class size matters Bill Gates, it matters big time. You need to clean up your thinking. And if you want to borrow some soap to do it I have some… unfortunately. 

Paul Karrer

Teacher

Save Our Schools March

Save Our Schools March.

Exon Mobil, $156 million. Bank of America, $1.9 billion. General Electric, $4.1 billion. Chevron, $19 million. These highly profitable companies, and many others like them, received these extraordinarily large amounts of money back as tax refunds. Yes that’s right, Republican lawmakers at the state and federal levels are trying to convince the American public that we need to decimate critical services like Medicare and public education so that we can hand over our money to these companies.

In the most intense ideological battle since Newt Gingrich was in office, Republicans at state and federal levels are holding fast to plans to extend tax breaks and implement drastic cuts to a variety of social services, including education. In California, the health care community, K-12 public schools and public institutions of higher education are steeling themselves for unknown levels of losses.

But for public school supporters the challenge is doubly difficult. Not only do we need to fight more forcefully than ever for the minimal, insufficient funding that schools currently receive, we must also fight for a totally revamped approach to education. Education activists across the nation have made the painful realization that President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are no friends to the project of providing a quality education to all children. If anything, the programs and proposals of this administration have set schools back even further than under the Bush regime. Certainly they have only reinforced the approaches established by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and their destructiveness has been extended through the outrageous Race To The Top (RTTT) competition, that attempts to pass for policy.

We have no choice but to face facts--public education is under attack from all sectors of elected leadership, regardless of party. There is no one now to turn to other than ourselves, which may in fact be the best position to be in. Asking to be invited to the conversation about improving our schools for all kids has only resulted in a controlled pacification of parents, a grinding down of educators, and more sophisticated means of covering up where are schools are failing our students.

Who is Bashing Teachers?

By Stan Karp

The short answer to this question is that far too many people are bashing teachers and public schools, and we need to give them more homework, because very few of them know what they’re talking about. And a few need some serious detention.

But the longer answer is that the bashing is coming from different places for different reasons. And to respond effectively to the very real attacks that our schools, our profession, and our communities face, it’s important to pay attention to these differences.

The parent who’s angry at the public school system because it’s not successfully educating his/her children is not the same as the billionaire with no education experience who couldn’t survive in a classroom for two days, but who has made privatizing education policy a hobby, and who has the resources to do so because the country’s financial and tax systems are broken.

The educators who start a community-based charter school so they can create a collaborative school culture are not the same as the hedge fund managers who invest in charter schools because they see an opportunity to turn a profit or because they want to privatize one of the last public institutions we have left.

The well-meaning college grad who joins a Teach for America program out of an altruistic impulse is not the same as the corporate managers who want to use market reforms to create a less expensive, less secure, and less experienced teaching force.

Rhee the Reformer

The Myth of the Korean Super Teacher

Myth of the Korean Super Teacher and the 3 Bird Tragedy

   Recently, teachers at my elementary school were subjected to a poke in the eye with “data” confirming that we were among the lowest 5% of performing schools in California.  A presenter threw out the latest mantras. “It’s all about teachers. Teachers matter. In Korea, teachers are held in high esteem.”

    Whoa, stop right there reformer. Pull out a factoid (It’s all about teachers) with: no inkling of the realities accompanying it. Then “reform incorporated” pushes to transfer that one little factoid without the rest of the support pyramid beneath the factoid.  I lived in Korea, taught in Korea, my wife is Korean and although it is wretched I can speak some Korean.

      Korea’s phenomenal educational performance has little to do with teachers. It is entirely about parents. Parents who were weaned on a Confucian ethic which echoed for centuries - education is the route to success and status. Korean parents sacrifice all for their kids. One of the most disturbing and tragic outcomes is the three bird syndrome. Many educationally inspired families are separated, moms live overseas with their kids from New Zealand to Canada, anywhere the natives speak English. The dad’s reside in Korea or other nations and they work to pay the overseas bills.  If they make lots of money they can fly often and see their kids and wife regularly (eagle dads), some less monied fathers only visit once a year like a migratory bird (goose dads), saddest of all are the fathers who toil in dire solitary poverty, and reside in horrible conditions. They are separated by miles and years. These wingless dads rarely see their families. (Penguin dads) Their willingness to sacrifice their families for educational opportunity is commendable, yet sad and shocking. Teachers play no role in this.

      Educational intensity in Korea is off the scale – one-hundred days before the one and only national test date, moms and dads go to churches and temples and pray three or four times - a day and for each of those one hundred days. They are praying for high scores. Church calendars even come with these days pre-marked.

    Still think it’s teachers that make Korea perform so well? If a child misses the bus or gets up late on test day, police bring them to test areas in squad cars. Children in hospitals are brought via ambulances to test centers. To reduce noise during the exam, commercial vehicles are not allowed within 200 meters of the testing area. Planes are not allowed to take off or land during the listening section of tests.  Taxi companies hire extra fleets of cars to make sure kids arrive on time. Oh, and in major cities work is delayed for one hour to accommodate the test takers.

Teacher Unions Matter

By Tom Alves, SJTA Executive Director

Unions matter to this country. And teacher unions matter to public education. The panic that is piling up in Wisconsin and other Republican states over whether collective bargaining rights should exist is real.  This is a concerted effort by political lackeys of powerful corporate interests (it’s easy to follow the money on this) to step on the throat of unions by framing the false message that collective bargaining is the culprit of the current economic woes.  Corporate profiteers have created this diversion to take our eye off their own culpability for the 2008 crash and the subsequent greed of corporate leaders that profited from the federal bailout.  The latest shiny ball-like distraction is that public sector pensions are the major cause of the current economic woes.  This is manipulative messaging at its finest as it shifts one’s eye off the irresponsible behaviors of corporate leaders and drives a wedge between workers.

Practically speaking, white collar and public sector unionism is all that remains of a middle class movement that has fought to guarantee equity and fairness in the workplace for the past 100 years, that includes the forty-hour workweek, health care benefits, sick leave, safety requirements, and modest pensions.  Only 12.3 percent of today’s workforce belongs to a union as opposed to nearly 35 percent in the 1950’s.  This is not because workers don’t want unionized workplaces.  As Philip Dine writes in his recent book, State of the Unions, polling reveals that 53 percent of non-union employees would belong to a union if they could.  This loss is mostly due to manufacturing and production leaving the country — nearly three million jobs (mostly unionized) have been shipped overseas since 1998.

California will not escape this attack on collective bargaining rights.  Ultra conservative forces are already planning to place an initiative on the 2012 ballot that will gut the collective bargaining law.  Wealthy right-wingers and venture capitalists have targeted their deregulation attack on public education as they advocate for reforms that force school closures, more charters and takeovers by outside organizations, and overly simplistic and flawed assessment systems for accountability purposes.

How Bill Gates misinterprets education data

Posted at 5:00 AM ET, 03/11/2011

How Bill Gates misinterprets ed facts

This was written by Richard Rothstein, a research associate at theEconomic Policy Institute, a non-profit created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. This appeared on the institute's website.

By Richard Rothstein
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates authored an op-ed published in The Washington Post late last month, “How Teacher Development could Revolutionize our Schools,” proposing that American public schools should do a better job of evaluating the effectiveness of teachers, a goal with which none can disagree. But his specific prescriptions, and the urgency he attaches to them, are based on the misrepresentation of one fact, the misinterpretation of another and the demagogic presentation of a third. It is remarkable that someone associated with technology and progress should have such a careless disregard for accuracy when it comes to the education policy in which he is now so deeply involved.

Gates’ most important factual claim is that “over the past four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled, while our student achievement has remained virtually flat.” And, he adds, “spending has climbed, but our percentage of college graduates has dropped compared with other countries.” Let’s examine these factual claims:

Bill Gates says: "Our student achievement has remained virtually flat."

The only longitudinal measure of student achievement that is available to Bill Gates or anyone else is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP provides trends for 4th, 8th, and 12th graders, disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and poverty, since about 1980 in basic skills in math and reading (called the “Long Term Trend NAEP”) and since about 1990 for 4th and 8th graders in slightly more sophisticated math and reading skills (called the “Main NAEP”).[*]

On these exams, American students have improved substantially, in some cases phenomenally. In general, the improvements have been greatest for African-American students, and among these, for the most disadvantaged. The improvements have been greatest for both black and white 4th and 8th graders in math. Improvements have been less great but still substantial for black 4th and 8th graders in reading and for black 12th graders in both math and reading. Improvements have been modest for whites in 12th grade math and at all three grade levels in reading.

The following table summarizes these results, for the earliest and most recent years for which disaggregated data were collected.

Save Our Schools Now.mov

On this day, it behooves us to remember the words of Martin Niemoller. "First they came for the communists," he wrote, "and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me." I am a trade unionist, and Wednesday in Wisconsin, they came for me. They came for you. They came for every working person in America, and their intent could not be more clear.

William Rivers Pitt

Texas cuts school budgets- Like California

Texas cuts drastically cuts public schools budgets. - Like California.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2011-03-11/save-our-schools/

Support Teachers in Wisconsin

As NEA members, we all have a big stake in stopping Governor Scott Walker's attempt to slash the benefits and take away the labor rights of teachers here in Wisconsin. He's made it clear that he hopes to be in the vanguard of a national movement to undermine collective bargaining.

For my wife Heather and me, the stakes are as personal as they can get. We're both teachers here in Sun Prairie, and, if Walker's plan doesn't get blocked, we'll be looking at a $13,200 pay cut. I don’t have to tell you how scary and disheartening that is for a family with two young children.

But what galls me the most is that this attack comes specifically because we are teachers. Our out-of-control governor is going after K-12 teachers, higher education faculty and staff, nurses, and public service workers. We all have to band together – because if it succeeds in Wisconsin, Governor Walker's strategy will be repeated in state after state. Already, the governors of Ohio, Indiana, Idaho, Florida and New Jersey are going after teachers. That's why we need your immediate PAC support to keep the pressure on.
Help the NEA Fund fight to protect public education and defend our right to collective bargaining.
Heather and I are doing our part to take a stand against Governor Walker’s dangerous proposals. I've been working the phones, mobilizing colleagues in the Wisconsin Education Association Council to call and email their legislators, and to attend rallies at the statehouse.

The sad thing is, with a little decency and common sense, we could resolve this crisis. Everyone understands that we're in a financial crisis in our country. And we're all willing to do our part to help solve it. But instead of pulling people together to find a collective solution, Governor Walker has chosen to single out and vilify one group of people - teachers, nurses, and other middle class workers.

That's because his real agenda is not just to slash our benefits, but to permanently dismantle our right to collective bargaining. You and I can't let that happen – not in Wisconsin, not anywhere.
Donate now to help the NEA fight to defend our hard-earned right to collective bargaining in Wisconsin and beyond.

The Battle in Wisconsin and rage among teachers

by Diane Ravitch.

Thousands of teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public sector workers have camped out at the Wisconsin Capitol, protesting Republican Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to reduce their take-home pay -- by increasing their contribution to their pension plans and health care benefits -- and restrict their collective bargaining rights.

Republicans control the state Legislature, and initially it seemed certain that Walker's proposal would pass easily. But then the Democrats in the Legislature went into hiding, leaving that body one vote shy of a quorum. As of this writing, the Legislature was at a standstill as state police searched high and low for the missing lawmakers.

Like other conservative Republican governors, including Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio, Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Rick Scott of Florida, the Wisconsin governor wants to sap the power of public employee unions, especially the teachers' union, since public education is the single biggest expenditure for every state.

Public schools in Madison and a dozen other districts in Wisconsin closed as teachers joined the protest. Although Walker claims he was forced to impose cutbacks because the state is broke, teachers noticed that he offered generous tax breaks to businesses that were equivalent to the value of their givebacks.

The uprising in Madison is symptomatic of a simmering rage among the nation's teachers. They have grown angry and demoralized over the past two years as attacks on their profession escalated.

The much-publicized film "Waiting for Superman" made the specious claim that "bad teachers" caused low student test scores. A Newsweek cover last year proposed that the key to saving American education was firing bad teachers.

Teachers across the nation reacted with alarm when the leaders of the Central Falls district in Rhode Island threatened to fire the entire staff of the small town's only high school. What got their attention was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama thought this was a fine idea, even though no one at the high school had been evaluated.

Thousands take stand in Sacramento for Wisconsin Workers' Rights

By Steve Smith, California Labor Federation

When Wisconsin’s new right-wing Governor decided to make it his personal mission to eliminate the rights of teachers, nurses, bus drivers and other public servants, he probably thought it would be a cakewalk. After all, Gov. Scott Walker has a Republican-controlled legislature that is on board with his radical plan to eliminate collective bargaining for public sector workers. What he didn’t count on was the extraordinary resolve of working people to stop his assault on our values. For more than a week, tens of thousands have protested at the Wisconsin Capitol. The fight back spread to Ohio, Indiana and other states where politicians are attempting to strip workers of their voice. And it didn’t stop there. All over the country, workers are standing in solidarity to beat back these attacks.

Last night, the spirit of solidarity was tangible in Sacramento, as more than 3,000 workers – teachers, Teamsters, nurses, ironworkers, janitors and many others – descended on the State Capitol to send a message loud and clear across California and the country: An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

Workers gathered on the West Steps of the Capitol for a candlelight vigil, but it turned into much more than that. Initial projections of 1,000 people turning out quickly dissolved as more and more folks poured onto the Capitol grounds.

California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski kicked off the vigil by putting the Wisconsin battle into context:

This protest is bigger than one bill. It is bigger than one state. This protest is not just about the public sector workers. It is not just about unions. This is about an assault on the working class values of this country. This is a fight for democracy that we cannot afford to lose. Not in Wisconsin, not in Sacramento and not anywhere in America.

Carrying signs with messages like “We Are ALL Wisconsin Workers” and “United We Bargain, Divided We Beg” the vigil attendees were energized and unified to fight back against any and all Wisconsin-style attacks on workers. Here in California, we’re fortunate to have a Governor who supports the rights of working people. In fact, Brown has been a staunch advocate for workers’ rights throughout his 40-year career. Brown, unlike Walker, has sought to bring people together to deal with our state’s challenges, rather than divide us. But if Meg Whitman would have won in November, it would be a whole other story.

California Nurses Association Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro:

We had our brush with Meg Whitman already. Now they have her in Wisconsin, in Ohio, in Michigan. You know where they’re not? California! We kicked their ass. We stood together, we stand together, and we will never stop standing in California. If you take on one of us, you take on all of us. We’re in this with workers around the country.

AFSCME member and University of California employee Katherine Barker reminded the crowd what’s at stake:

We are fighting for nothing less than basic freedom and democracy. We are fighting for the rights of working people to organizing and bargain for better working conditions. We are fighting for our rights. The bottom has fallen out for private sector workers. Now they are trying to drag the bottom out from under us. When you have your back against the wall, you stand together or you fall together. And you fight together. When the call is made, we have to answer the call.

Teachers have been among the most visible protesters in Wisconsin, and many California teachers turned out last night to show their support for all Wisconsin workers.

California Teachers Association President David Sanchez:

Organized labor did not create the financial crisis. Wall Street banks did. But public employees are being scapegoated. They are under attack. We will be with you today. We will be with you tomorrow. We will stand and fight together.

Sanchez later called on the crowd of thousands to raise candles in solidarity and joined labor musician Francisco Herrera in starting a rousing rendition of the song “Solidarity Forever.” Thousands joined in.

California workers are no strangers to being scapegoated for problems they didn’t create. Just ask state workers who had to live through seven years of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

SEIU 1000 President Yvonne Walker:

Governor Schwarzenegger thought he was going to break public employee unions here in California. We said: Hell No! We stood strong and beat back the attacks. We beat them back here in California. We will beat them back in Wisconsin. We will beat them back in Michigan. We will beat them back in Ohio and any damn place.

In the final analysis, the battle in Wisconsin comes down to one word: Freedom.
AFSCME’s Willie Pelote:

This is our country. We built it brick by brick from the bottom to the top. Their dollars cannot buy the labor movement. We need to create jobs not take away workers’ rights. It is time to let freedom ring for working people.

Dozens of elected officials -- including Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker John Perez, Senate President Darrell Steinberg, Senators Pavley, Liu, DeSaulnier, Hancock and Evans, Assembly Members Wieckowski, Mendoza, Alejo, V Manuel Perez, Solorio, Bradford, Torres, Buchanan, Lowenthal, Skinner and Yamada – all came out to show their solidarity and light a candle for the Wisconsin workers.

To show their solidarity, hundreds of California workers signed a special banner reading “We Stand with Wisconsin Workers” that will be delivered directly to the State House in Wisconsin as protests there continue. View photos here and here, and check out video from the vigil here and here. 
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The show of support for Wisconsin workers wasn't limited to Sacramento, and it didn’t stop last night. More than 200 people gathered in downtown Oakland for a corresponding vigil, and last Friday, 150 came together for a rally in San Diego. More solidarity events are scheduled for this weekend. Click here to find an event in your area.