Teachers' Strikes: Meet the Leaders of the Movement Marching Across America

By Adam Gabbatt and Mike Elk, Guardian UK

16 April 18

Teachers around the US are taking matters into their own hands as they strike for raises and school funding – in some cases without union support

hen teachers in West Virginia went on strike in February, there was little indication that a swath of other states would follow suit.

But that action in the Appalachian state, which resulted in teachers winning a 5% pay rise, has spurred on educators in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona.

Teachers in Oklahoma have been on strike since 2 April, while school districts have also walked out in Kentucky. In Arizona, teachers are demanding a 20% pay rise and could go on strike at the end of April.

In some states the protests are being driven from the bottom up, rather than by unions, as teachers and school districts take matters into their own hands.

Here are some of the leaders of the teachers’ strike movement.

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Cindy Gaete is a 25-year-old teacher at Marshall elementary school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The daughter of Chilean immigrants, she is currently the only Spanish speaker in her school, which is nearly a third Latino.

She says it is frustrating that in addition to her teaching duties that the lack of Spanish speakers means that any time the schools needs to communicate with parents that she has to serve as translator.

“The first thing I told my principal when I got hired is that if we are a third Latino, there should not be just one Hispanic teacher in your school,” said Gaete.

Inspired to fix her school, she helped lead a 110-mile March for Education that arrived in Tulsa from Oklahoma City.

As teachers are expected to end their strike this week, she says that it’s important for teachers like her to run for office to keep the momentum. On Saturday, Gaete decided to lead by example and file her papers to run for state representative in Oklahoma 78th house district.

“Today I start day one of my campaign for house district 78,” said Gaete in announcing her bid. “For my students. For my community. Because all students deserve an equitable educational experience, regardless of race, socio-economic status and gender.”

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State representative Attica Scott is currently the only black woman serving in the Kentucky general assembly. The 46-year-old former executive director of Kentucky Jobs With Justice, she challenged a 34 year incumbent corporate Democrat in 2016 to take office and is working hard to encourage more women to run for office.

She says that one of the reasons that teachers, a field that is 77% female, are underpaid because they are women.

“This teacher movement is being led mostly by women because most of the teachers are women and it’s also one of the reasons why teachers are so under attack,” says Scott. “As so often in fields led by women those are the fields that are seen as most vulnerable by politicians.”

“The fact that we see an underrepresentation of women in elected office has a significant part to play in these attacks,” she says.

To correct the problem, Scott is helping lead an effort in conjunction with Emerge Kentucky to elect over 40 female teachers to the Kentucky state house.

“We as women in office have to make sure that we are bringing along with us our sisters across the country, who are wanting to run for office,” says Scott.

In the #MeToo era, Scott thinks that the dynamics of more women running for office could be a powerful force for desperately needed changes in state legislatures.

“I am so excited,” says Scott. “We are seeing this movement go from marching and protesting and rallying at state house to running for the state house.”

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Jay O’Neal is a seventh-grade English teacher based in Charleston, West Virginia. He and fellow teacher Emily Comer founded the West Virginia Public Employees United private Facebook group in early October. Teachers were lobbying for a 5% pay rise, which West Virginia’s governor, Jim Justice, eventually granted them in early March.

The West Virginia movement was unusual in that, at the beginning, teachers were organizing without the support of their unions – the West Virginia Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

“Originally it came out of my frustration at there being two main teachers’ unions here that want probably 99% of the same things but they work against each other a lot of the time,” O’Neal said.

“To me it was just frustrating because I felt like our issues were against the legislature but nothing was ever going to happen unless we work together.”

After O’Neal and Comer formed their Facebook group, membership quickly ballooned. By the end of January it had 20,000 members and had become a key organizing hub for teachers ahead of the strike.

Teachers in the southern part of the state began holding local actions, staging “walk-ins” at their schools – handing out information to parents and teachers – and other areas quickly followed.

“It was definitely bottom-up, not top-down,” O’Neal said. The unions soon jumped on board, and the strike was born.

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Noah Karvelis, from Phoenix, Arizona, is one of the founders of the “Red for Ed” campaign that has seen thousands of teachers take part in actions around the state.

The teachers are asking for a 20% pay rise, which they say would barely bring their wages in line with neighbouring states, and more funding for students.

A report by WalletHub, published in September 2017, rated Arizona among the worst states in the country for public school spending per student and by pupil-to-teacher ratio. In 2015, Arizona ranked third last in terms of state spending per pupil, according to the US Census Bureau.

Red for Ed held a series of walk-ins at schools on 4 April, and more than 800 schools across the state will take part in walk-ins on 11 April. Karvalis said they were inspired by teachers’ success in West Virginia.

“It’s empowered everybody. It’s shown us that you can do this, you can stand up, you can stand together and you can fight back and it’s shown us that you can win.”

The state is set to finalise its budget on 17 or 19 April. If there is no substantial increase in educational funding then the teachers could decide to strike.

“In the course of their winning, states like West Virginia have left us a blueprint. We’re following those models, we’re taking notes,” Karvalis said.

“They have been nothing but helpful and inspiring and it woke up a sleeping giant to see that.”

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Heather Cody is a 28-year-old single mother who attended Mayo Demonstration school, an innovative experimental public school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and currently teaches there.

The school was once so innovative that teachers from around the state often went there to study their non-conventional methods of group learning and refusing to assign students to grades.

However, budget cuts have decimated what was once a proud gem of Oklahoma’s education system.

“I want my daughter so badly to go to Mayo, but it’s not special any more,” says Cody.

Cody makes so little that she is forced to live with her parents to make ends meets.

After her parents offered to send her three-year-old daughter to private school because they were concerned about the low quality of public schools, she says she was determined to get involved to fight for public education funding.

“I went to public school all my life, I’m a public school product and I can’t imagine not having my daughter in a public school,” she said. “It’s so much more diverse. I just didn’t get my book smarts from there, but I got my worldly view from public school and I just can’t imagine robbing my child of that.”

Two years ago, her union president encouraged her to get involved in an emerging leaders program. A valuable program that she says gave her the confidence to take charge of arranging logistics for the 110-mile march for education from Tulsa to Oklahoma City.

“I tell you, it wasn’t hard work because as soon as the media picked up on it, my phone started ringing,” says Cody. “It wasn’t working at all. They just came to me.”

Cody says that after the march her and so many others inspired to get even more involved in organizing.

“One thing that will happen for sure is that in November, there will be a change in Oklahoma,” says Cody.

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Marq Lewis is a 42-year-old African American documentary film-maker and activist who has primarily concentrated his work on organizing against police brutality.

Lewis marched the entire 110-mile march from Tulsa to Oklahoma City during recent protests, livestreaming interviews and supporter reactions on his Facebook page, which average over 4,000 views per video with some live streams getting as many 80,000 views.

The reaction to the video has been overwhelming.

“A lot of people have been calling me crying,” says Lewis. “A lot of people are saying that they have a deeper understanding because, like me, they didn’t really understand what teachers go through because teachers don’t get on television and get heard.”

Before March, he had not really been involved in union struggles, focusing most of his work on police brutality. Lewis feels that the Oklahoma teachers’ walkout opened up new avenues between organized labor and communities of color.

“This opened a window of opportunity for people in the marginalized community to understand in a concrete way what teachers have gone through, but also to see that teachers working in marginalized communities among African Americans and Hispanics or communities that are poor white need help,” says Lewis.

“There is a still a huge disconnect,” says Lewis. “But I’m hoping that the march from Tulsa to Oklahoma City does not go down in vain, it just opens up the doors for future dialogue.”