Oakland School Strike: a huge wave of Solidarity!

(right: Schools Out! for Oakland kids!)

Yesterday's One-Day strike by Oakland teachers was absolutely incredible.

Teachers asked parents to keep their kids home. The District sang the usual song: every absence will cost our schools money, to which the teachers replied: we need to protest the tide of cuts. Well the votes are in! Of the 38,000 students, the vast majority were kept home by parents. Despite the added cost of childcare, the difficulty of taking a day off work, and other obstacles, hardly any Oakland parents sided with the management of the School District.

The District wants to settle the $85 million Oakland school deficit by cutting teacher pay and increasing class size. The deficit is equal to the size of the annual bill of Oakland's various consultants, who stand in line to advise us what our kids "need"! As one teacher mentioned to me, "bailouts, bailouts and endless wars and no money for schools."

At our local Elementary School, where my daughter goes, my partner went by to give support to the teachers. This is a 'low-performing school' where community is and solidarity is very strong. Of the 20 teachers only one scabbed. Of the 300 kids, parents kept more than 270 at home. The school was like a ghost-town.

Ms Peterson, a 30-year veteran teacher showed up at 7.30AM to picket. "I let the younger teachers arrive to picket at 6AM. I brought coffee and bagels." She then whispered that she was giving donuts to kids going in and let the "substitute" (scab) teacher deal with their sugar high! This came from an extremely dedicated teacher.

One buddy I spoke to, a large and quiet Pacific Island guy, with tattoos all over, put it simply, "you got to support the teachers, I wasn't gonna send my daughter into school." When I mentioned that only one teacher scabbed, he was shocked that even one scabbed, "that's a shame, a terrible shame!"

At a neighboring middle school all 40 teachers were on the picket line with no teachers scabbing and one "substitute" had to wade through the angry crowd of parents and teachers to get into a school where 700 students normally attend. Here, only 40 students showed up for school. There were 2 schools representing several hundred students where not a single student showed up for scab-class.

Yesterday proved once again the huge tide of support for education and teachers. The teachers' union leaders statewide and country-wide need to be less cautious in the fight to defend education. The bosses and their two political parties are out to strip public education to its core. They are not cautious.

It's time for a statewide strike of teachers and parents. The mood of support is there. The teachers really care and the parents care about the teachers. The union leaders need to step up to the mark and meet the war that's being waged against education head on.

The alternative is the slow dismantling of all the working class has won.