What the Supreme Court May Strip from Workers The roar of the approaching storm can be both heard and felt in workplaces across the United States. The prospects inherent in a much anticipated – and in many places feared – Supreme Court decision in the case Janus v AFSCME has the political Right giddy. Among […]
teachers unions
Why I became an adjunct (against the advice of everyone that I knew…)
When I was finishing my master’s degree in creative writing I started telling my professors and family members that when I graduated I wanted to “go into teaching.” I got a variety of responses. When I was lamenting a missed a job opportunity, one teacher responded: “Good. Being an adjunct teacher was the worst job […]
Labor Against the Next War, Too
With the drumbeat of war sounding once again, the first petition I was sent opposing US strikes on Syria came from United States Labor Against War. The petition, co-sponsored by other peace and progressive groups, lays out clear rationales for its opposition to US military action: it will not solve the crisis nor make Syrians […]
Union Vote Declining But Still Crucial
In the past decade unions have greatly improved the way they do electoral politics, and if they hadn’t, Barack Obama would probably never have been our president. Though uneven from union to union, 16 years ago unions stopped simply giving money to their endorsed candidates and focused more intensely on member education and mobilization. Since […]
Who represents the working class?
There was a time when if one asked, ‘Who represents the working class?’, a reasonable answer would have been the Democratic Party. But since Jimmy Carter that party has moved to the right, supports so-called Free Trade, champions legislation that fosters financial speculation, has forgotten the poor as a group worthy of aid, and goes […]
A 4th of July Declaration of Dependence
It’s no small irony that on the 4th of July weekend our nation’s largest union surrendered a chunk of its independence. At their annual meeting in Chicago, the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly voted to support the use of student standardized test results in the evaluation of teachers. That vote alters the union’s previous opposition […]
Moving the Bar
At first glance, I thought that it was just another article about disappointing test scores. I almost didn’t click through to read it, in part because I spend so much time in my teacher education courses trying to contextualize the rhetoric about “the achievement gap” and testing and my students’ role as teachers in closing […]
Modern-day Pirates: the Republicans vs. the Public Sector
So, let’s be clear: it’s not about the budget. As the facts have emerged in the 2011 Wisconsin crisis with Governor Scott Walker’s move against public service unions, it is not about Wisconsin lacking funds. There is no credible way that Walker and his clique can argue that eliminating a worker’s right to collective bargaining […]
The Politics of “Waiting for Superman”
I fidgeted throughout the film Waiting for Superman, through the bells and whistles, the graphs, the close-ups of the five cute kids and their caring single moms, grandmas and parents, having read enough reviews, and having listened to enough critiques to know that I wasn’t going to like the film. And I didn’t, but what […]
Beware of Cabinet Officers Bearing “Gifts”
“We already have the privatization of the military…; we’ve seen the privatization of the prison system. Well, the next step is the privatization of public schools.” That prediction by Jonathan Kozol four years ago has come closer to reality with the enactment of President Obama’s Race to the Top educational goals. Besides continuing the previous […]
