Hundreds of Oakland Teachers Support General Strike in Oakland Today

Teachers are joining the rest of the 99%ers who are demanding a return to democracy in the U. S. From the AP:

The Associated Press

Posted: 11/02/2011 11:31:21 AM PDT

Updated: 11/02/2011 11:31:23 AM PDT

OAKLAND, Calif.—Oakland school officials say about 360 teachers didn't show up for work, as thousands of people joined anti-Wall Street protests throughout the city. 

Oakland Unified School District spokesman Troy Flint says roughly 18 percent of the district's 2,000 teachers were absent, as compared to the 1-percent rate on a typical Wednesday.

Several teachers' unions have expressed support for the Occupy Oakland movement, which made international headlines after an Iraq War veteran participating in the demonstrations was injured in last week's clashes between protestors and police.

Flint says the district got substitute teachers for most classrooms, and where that wasn't possible, children were sent to other classrooms.

The district doesn't collect daily student attendance figures, but Flint says nothing suggests there are widespread absences.

Revving Up for Save Our Schools DC Conference and Rally

From HuffPo:

NEW YORK -- After months of planning the "Save Our Schools March And National Call to Action," educators will take to the streets in Washington D.C. in two weeks to protest what they call the generally misguided direction of education policy.

The campaign has a broad social media presence and is easily identifiable by its logo: a yellow school crossing sign emblazoned with its call of alarm, "SOS."

"We're trying to alert people to a danger," said organizer and former Oakland educator Anthony Cody. "The end goal is to resurrect the ideal of a democratic public school system."

From July 28 to 31, when teachers and activists descend on Washington, Cody and his fellow organizers will find out just how successful they've been at attracting attention.

"If we were a well-funded, orchestrated campaign with buses lined up, I'd be able to tell you how many teachers were coming," Cody said. "I do know that there are at least 15 different buses coming."

Teacher activism is nothing new, but this year has been particularly heated as several states passed laws that radically changed the gateways of the teaching profession, altering the way in which teachers are hired, fired and ranked.

Education funding has been slashed and budgets have been tightened, compounding the issues the laws have created and sparking a spate of teacher protests.
 
"What's new [about the march] is that this isn’t around a specific decision in a specific area. They're protesting the education reform milieu," said Richard Lee Colvin, executive director of "Education Sector. "They're trying to say we're heading in the wrong direction across this whole agenda."

Organizers say their gripes lie more with the overarching process for running education than with specific policies themselves.

"We're protesting the thrust of any kind of policymaking that is top down and punitive in nature," said Sabrina Stevens Shupe, a former Denver teacher and march organizer. "There are elements of this in Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind, but mostly we're fighting for fair funding of schools, for curricular development, things that support students."

"Policymakers should listen to the people who are in the classroom: Teachers and parents who understand education, what students need in order to be successful," she added.

The organizers are hoping the march will spark enough momentum to sustain an ongoing campaign.

"This is the beginning of a long-term movement to reclaim control of our schools," Stevens Shupe said.

The discontent stems from the continuation of education policies organizers say are passed down from on high, with little regard for their impact in the classroom. "We all assumed that things would change between Bush and Obama," Stevens Shupe said. "Instead, we saw the Obama administration double down on the policies of the Bush administration. That was when it became clear: We can't wait for the top to change their minds. We can complain all we want, but nothing will change until we do something."

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who created many of the policies Stevens Shupe described, says he encourages the debate.

"We all want to strengthen education in this country and we're all united in that goal," Duncan told The Huffington Post. "We have to take education to a different level. I think we all have a sense of urgency. I look forward to doing everything to see America again lead the world in college graduates."

Planning for the march began after a similar protest, called the SOS Million Teachers March, didn’t materialize last summer.

"There are always people who are willing to complain," said Stevens Shupe. "We're saying it's not enough to just talk to your friends in the teachers' lounge. Enough talking about what you don’t like. Reclaim the responsibility to make sure that our schools work for every single child every single day."

Cody had organized a group that wrote letters to Obama about education. "We decided it was time to raise the bar, to move beyond writing letters and move our bodies to DC in protest," he said.

Since then, the march has garnered a slew of endorsers, from celebrities to public officials. Yet the event has attracted criticism from some who believe the march is primarily being funded by unions.

"People say the unions are behind this. The unions didn’t come to our aid financially until we were well into this," said Rita Solnet, a Florida businesswoman and co-founder of the group Parents Across America who is helping to organize the march. "The lion's share of the money is individual $20 and $50 donations from people across the country."

"We're not some slick marketing effort," she added. "We're having people make their own signs."

According to Cody, less than half of the funding for the event comes from unions. A spokesperson for the American Federation of Teachers declined to specify the extent of the AFT's financial support.

The march will follow a conference at American University, which will feature a speech by Diane Ravitch, an education historian and former U.S. assistant education secretary who has become the de facto spokesperson for frustrated teachers. A teacher-created film that rebuts the tenets of the documentary Waiting for Superman will also be shown.

Leaders have also announced that the actor Matt Damon will take a red-eye flight from a film set in Vancouver in order to attend the march, before heading back west the same day.

When the Spirit of Cairo Comes to America

As New York City converts itself from world capital of commerce to the world capital of unrestrained opulence and greed (with a NYCDisney version thrown in for the tourists), the great gnawingly-hungry giant tosses and turns.

The next time in America when a million people go into the streets, it won't be to sing songs.  It will be to demand the heads of the oligarchs, who now think they are somehow immune from what is happening around the world.

Continue to ignore poverty and economic distress at your own peril.  From HuffPo:

Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, co-author of a best-selling book on financial crises, This Time It's Different, told Forbes today in an exclusive interview that the high unemployment rate and high levels of debt in the U.S. will sooner or later trigger serious "social unrest from the income disparities in the U.S."

The Obama administration has "no clue," he told me, what do about this terrible disparity in the economy that is bound to erupt sooner or later.

"I don't understand why people don't wake up to the crisis they are creating," he said to me just minutes after appearing at a Council on Foreign Relations round-table on "Currency Wars." . . . .