Jan Resseger has an excellent roundup of the conditions that are driving the walkouts in “right to work” state.
The walkout is a very effective tool. No teachers, no school.
Nothing drives a legislature crazy as much as a wildcat strike because they can’t sit down with a union leader and tamp down the rage and expectations.
It seems that the rightwing strategy of passing “right to work” laws and going to court to reduce dues-paying members (the upcoming Janus decision in the U.S. Supreme Court) has backfired. Unions channel teacher demands. Despite these laws, teachers can still walk out, close down the schools, and win their demands, as long as they stay united. West Virginia, with its long history of militancy, started the movement. Now Oklahoma. Now, Kentucky. Who is next? Arizona? New Mexico? The Deep South states, where salaries are abysmal?
What was the trigger? Was it the student activism that followed the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School? Did the mass demonstrations inspire teachers to say to themselves, “enough is enough”? Pay me a living wage or I won’t teach. The straw that broke the camel’s back. The last straw.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Teachers must stand strong!
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Let’s insist Democrats walk the walk this time instead of just coming around at election time:
“With Republican legislators and governors bearing the brunt of the protesters’ fury, the Democratic Party is trying to capitalize on the moment. The Democratic National Committee plans to register voters at teacher rallies, and hopes to harness the movement’s populism.
The teacher walkouts are “a real rejection of the Republican agenda that doesn’t favor working-class people,” said Sabrina Singh, the committee’s deputy communications director. “Republicans aren’t on the side of teachers. The Democrats are.”
That type of rhetoric is a sea change from the Obama years, when many Democrats angered teachers by talking less about core issues of schools funding than about expanding the number of charter schools, or using student test scores to evaluate teachers and remove ineffective ones from the classroom.”
Democrats abandoned public schools and Republicans are ideologically opposed to the continued existence of public schools. There’s still time for either political party to decide to support the 90% of families who use these schools, but we shouldn’t accept campaign promises again. They don’t deliver.
It never should have gotten this bad, where teachers have to walk out and schools close in whole states. This was neglect. They simply didn’t care about our schools.
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I’m sure Barack Obama will pull out his comfy shoes to walk the picket lines with union members as he has done in the past.
Oh, wait.
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Amen.
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He would, but he’s too busy getting almost a million dollars per speech to investment banks, and standing silently by while residents in the neighborhood where his presidential library (aka, a vehicle for post-dated bribes) is being built on land that was formerly a public park.
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Careful, you don’t want to sound like a right-wing troll.
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C’mon, Flerp, you know that Dmitri, my Russian control agent, makes me do it.
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Beware that NYCPSP might bight your head off. Oh wait. That’s only something he/she does when meddling foreigners like me dare to put down the Democruds when in fact I put down the GOP as well. Obama was the worst, next to Trump, for public education.
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“Republicans aren’t on the side of teachers. The Democrats are.” — DNC deputy propaganda… I mean communications director
We (the DNC) just have an odd way of showing our support: VAM, firing, insulting, etc. But it’s support nonetheless!
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And Arne was the biggest Dem of them all!
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The Democratic Party is a nest of opportunists. Of course they will now pretend to favor teachers and public schools, after years of favoring privatization under Obama and then the failed Hilary, now suddenly public advocates with the wildcats spreading at the grassroots, and with their Labor Police Chiefs Randi and Lily unable to corral the rank-and-file in these states. The lowest-paid, least-organized and most-abused teachers are moving first, which is no surprise. What’s most impt now is that each striking state’s teachers follow the Virginia walkout example but not the Virginia settlement of too little won. OK teachers want $10K raise, not the paltry $6k offered. An economic walkout like this matters as a defensive maneuver to recover the money ground lost in the last decade, to get back to where they were. Big question is how will public education move forward with defensive minimal goals? Besides aggressive economic demands, the wildcat teachers have to make strong political demands–stop the privatization of schooling, stop the looting of public budgets by characterizers, stop the suffocation of teaching and learning by massive testing and tech buys.This is a moment whose time has come and whoever settles for less and goes back to sleep too soon will labor under a dismal cloud for the rest of their lives and will surrender public education to continuing decimation.
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“Charterizers” not “characterizers.” My email program rejects neologisms.
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Oklahoma provides the oil and gas industry generous incentives and low taxes to allow companies to drill and frack in the state. The teacher walkout represents the frustration of teachers that have watched the state refuse to raise revenue to support its needs to serve the public. The state passed a law that can only raise taxes by a super majority. You get what you pay for: crumbling schools, outdated textbooks, teachers qualifying for food stamps, earthquakes and polluted water. Teachers are standing up for themselves and the needs of their students.
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“Right to work” is shorthand for “right to be reduced, through lack of bargaining power, to a state of desperation so deep you’ll capitulate to any conditions offered, no matter how dismal, because you really have no choice.” I’ll admit that “right to work” does flow off the tongue easier, & demands less of an attention span.
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Right to work for less is what you are saying, eh Lenny!
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It’s not just less, it’s why they’re willing to work for less.
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Not just a living wage but a wage that equates to a teacher’s degree that they have earned. Teacher’s deserve high pay for teaching children!
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That straw is just one straw that broke the backs of many teachers in a few states.
Who owns the straw that will break the backs of most Americans and how close are we to that 2nd “shot heard round the world” — will it be a Koch straw, an ALEC straw, a Walton straw, a DeVos straw, or a Trump straw?
These psycho, arrogant, autocratic, democracy-hating oligarchs that were born to their wealth, privilege, and power are playing a very dangerous game with their straws. They are using their straws to stir up a huge hornets’ nest
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