I wanted to go to Charleston, West Virginia, to thank the leaders of the Red4Ed Teachers Strike of 2018. Jay O’Neal of the NEA local and Fred Albert of the AFT local made it happen. I spoke on February 22, the second anniversary of the strike.
The teachers themselves were amazed by what they had done. They were outraged back then when the cost of their health insurance reduced their already meager take home pay. They met, count by county, they organized, they eventually realized they would be ignored unless they went out on strike.
Their strike wasn’t just one county or district, but the entire state. West Virginia is a right to work state. They could be fired for striking. But every superintendent closed every school and every school employee, including support staff and bus drivers, struck too.
At one point the union leaders announced a deal that included a 5% raise for teachers but not other staff, and the teachers sent them back to demand the same raise for everyone.
They won the raise but governor promised only a “commission” to study the onerous burden of health care costs. They are still waiting. The Governor, Jim Justice, is the only billionaire in the state, and he doesn’t know what it means to live paycheck to paycheck. He was elected as a Democrat, but six months after he won in 2016, he switched parties and embraced Trump.
After the raises they won, teachers’ starting pay is $37,000, and the top pay for a teacher with many years of experience and a doctorate is about $65,000 (those greedy teachers!!).
West Virginia is a poor state that has suffered through a dire opioid crisis. It has a storied history of miners’ strikes. The people I met love their state, loves it’s mountains and folkways, and are fighting for its children and its future.
The state voted for Trump, and no, he has not revived the coal industry. He has already forgotten the people of West Virginia.
Here is an account of my talk to the leaders of Red4Ed, which launched a national movement.
I met a vigorous young man who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor, named Steve Smith. He explained something I never understood. Why do poor people vote for people who lie to them? He said the people of West Virginia were lied to by Democrats for decades. So they decided it was time to try the other party, which also lied to them. The winning ticket, he believes, is the one that appeals to independents and recognizes that most people don’t trust any politician to tell the truth.
A teacher added that a large part of the voting public will go for anyone who promises to stop abortion and gays. Another teacher said a large part of the voters were devoted to their guns. During the eight years that a Obama was President, many gun owners stocked up on AR-15 assault weapons because they wanted to be ready when the military came for their guns.
Seems the legislature cares more about abortion, guns, and gays than their own children or their future.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How do I share these with other teacher union members?
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Bravo to West Virginia’s teachers!
From Heather Cox Richardson once again, confirming exactly your thesis, Diane, that Goliath can be brought down:
“Americans change politics first by changing minds. If this were not the case, Russia would not be swamping us with disinformation, and the right wing would not flood the country with talk radio and the Fox News Channel, which present fact-free stories designed to divert people from reality. And, of course, Trump would not bother spinning his own lies. People, and now bots, spreading those lies have been so assertive that a lot of folks who know they’re crap have stayed quiet, not wanting to start a fight. But speaking up to identify lies and to celebrate real American values is a crucial step toward changing the national narrative. If it weren’t, no one would be paying bots and trolls to shut us up.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-22-2020?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyMjY3NDg2LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoyODgzMTksIl8iOiJLMWpweCIsImlhdCI6MTU4MjQ3MzI1NCwiZXhwIjoxNTgyNDc2ODU0LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjA1MzMiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.OA8kGqJCgc8Dsh8cJh97gCd3Ol39ErNVhEcxBAPwd24
That’s what I also hear from my friends who support Trump (or at least the guns and abortion issue)).
It still astonishes me that people have issues with other people being homosexuals or bisexuals. So ridiculous and unnecessary. Unthinking. Childish. The fact that some are is about as consequential as the fact that cilantro tastes great to some people and to others tastes like soap.
“A teacher added that a large part of the voting public will go for anyone who promises to stop abortion and gays. Another teacher said a large part of the voters were devoted to their guns.”
Sounds like Tennessee in the country. Are you sure you were not mystically transported here?
Or rural Missouri.
So when America was great in the 1960s ( I would say the 50s but I am not sure the assault rifle was available) did anyone worry about their right to own an assault riffle. No one was coming after their hunting riffle then or now .
And in the early 1970s what was the predominant view about abortion in the protestant church. Relatively tolerant.
So what changed?
There was a very good yet depressing documentary, ” Blood on the Mountain .” Environmental activists and Climate activists did not kill coal Jobs. Mountain Top removal with all its disastrous environmental effects produced more coal with a third the labor force. The UMW sided with the Mine owners in that battle. A short term self interested attempt that they thought was going to save Jobs.
It not only killed the Jobs it killed the Union. Today there is not one major mine in the State of West Virginia that is Union. Natural Gas and the electric furnace is killing the remainder of the coal industry. As Steel and electric production needs less and less of it. But this is not happening because of great environmental concern, coal fired plants are no longer price competitive.
So workers have been their own worst enemy for quite some time and the Marxian economic effect on ethos takes decades to develop. Social issues become more important than bread and butter when you see no way out of the decline.
Which brings things a bit closer to home for me. The IBEW has backed Biden in the primary. . Perhaps some of it was a fear that Sanders label will doom him. And there could turn out
to be some truth to that. .(Part of the reason I supported his twin sister Liz) But like the UMW their real concern was Jobs in Coal, Gas, and Nuke plants that employ many of their members. The coal plants are finished and the construction of new Gas power plants is coming to a crawl. As Wind and Solar are now more competitive for utilities than building most new Gas plants. In about a decade existing plants will no longer be competitive. The Unions other concern was fracking, Sanders and Warren proposed shutting it down. But they wont have to, clean energy has already caused a glut in gas and as the priced dropped fracking layoffs have already started.
Unions and workers have for far too long been concerned with shortsighted goals that help their own members. While they miss the big picture. We have needed a Social movement attacking power and a New Deal for workers since the 70s. But we keep getting distracted by God, Gays and Guns and short sighted goals. As that has happened the working class has been crushed. White collar workers no better off than Blue.
So, Joel, I’m interested in hearing what your longer term prognostications are. It is pretty astonishing to me that we are as close as we are, this quickly, to having a Democratic Socialist running on a major party ticket for president of the United States. But I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am. These things always happen quickly. Add to the heap a little at a time, and then it reaches a critical point, and everything comes tumbling down.
I hope you are right Bob. The stakes are too high. The push back is HUUUGE !
And that is from the “(Neo) liberal elite” . The right has not even started their attack . Yes Neo Liberalism is Right wing . The fascists have not started the attack.
What is a Democratic Socialist. Neither Bernie nor the Scandinavian Countries he seeks to emulate are Socialists. They are liberal Democracies and Sanders is a New Deal Liberal. Perhaps if Yeltsin had not defeated Gorbachev we might have seen Russia turn into a Democratic Socialist State instead of a Kleptocracy.
I suspect we need to see Black Swan Moments to effect real change. Would you put it past the oligarchy to intentionally tank the economy, in order to stop Sanders, if he is elected. With the economy doing relatively well (as we measure it ) it is hard to see the momentum for radical change. 2008 was a Black Swan moment, Obama was never the President to bring change. He was never who we thought he was. His whole first Cabinet picked by Michael Froman a CitiCorp Exec. of a bank rescued by Socialism to the tune of 350 billion.
The climate may give us the moment sooner than we think.
The recent results in Nevada show Republicans the future they fear. Lots and lots of brown voters.
Good article in the Cleveland paper that asks what I think is the big question in Ohio’s voucher debacle:
“In our view, it pays to start asking larger questions about EdChoice to understand how education policy is made in Ohio. Why, for instance, did this dramatic increase in voucher eligibility occur? Why would lawmakers experiment with such an expensive initiative, when studies of such voucher programs – including a rigorous study of EdChoice – have most often revealed large, negative impacts on student learning? And, in what universe does it make sense that schools would be judged, and voucher eligibility triggered, by students’ scores in 2013 and 2014 (but not 2015-2017)?
The great uproar around EdChoice should have us asking about how policy is made: specifically, whose voices are being elevated, and whose are being diminished, when Ohio education policy is being created?”
How did a massive voucher expansion just appear, and why weren’t ANY of the public stakeholders considered until the last minute?
The Ohio legislature put in “public education policy” with zero input from 90% of students and families in the state. They’re now going to rush through a sloppy patch but how did this happen in the first place?
Why is our public education policy wholly driven by people who don’t use public schools and don’t support public schools? How did this happen?
https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2020/02/private-interests-are-wrongly-shaping-education-policies-in-ohio-joel-malin-and-kathleen-knight-abowitz.html