I'm starting this diary as a place for SPS people to comment about the Tuesday after school action - or other issues.
I've set the comments to "Anonymous". Please use a fake name so people can respond to your comments. Do NOT write confidential stuff about fellow workers!
IF you're an SPS person and you'd like to publish diaries of your own, you should know how to contact me via email, do so & I'll set you up to be a diary writer.
I have a LOT of feelings about how effective our union is - and I think 1 of the pillars of the ineffectiveness is how processes are set up so that we can't participate unless we're willing to waste hours at meetings.
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5 comments:
I'm glad you set this up. The new SEE slate to run SEA looks good. Maybe they really will change things? When do we vote?
I was apathetic on Tues afternoon but I did spend a good deal of time pondering my lack of interst in picketing. It had nothing to do with the weather. I love fresh air. No, it was a gut feeling it would be all for nothing. It isn't a strong enough message and the only one I could thing of that might work was this: all teachers call in sick on a chosen day, hopefully administrators and support staff could participate as well, and then I think we would get community attention. Not practical, I know, but demonstrating during forced furlough time just doesn't jive. I went and had lunch with my 21 year old daughter...something fun and enjoyable since I was being told that my job wasn't important enough to fund fully.
but see, that's what I hear a lot.It won't do any good. People posting in the comments section of both Sea. Times and MSN site (both of which I read and comment in regularly) say about the Occupy Movement. No one's listening, so why bother. It's that defeatist attitude that got us the Tea Party. Democracy is for the people, by the people. That means we have to take part in our own governing. When Obama got elected, everyone sat back and let him do all the work. Then when he didn't get everything done they wanted, they stayed home from the polls in 2010. We have to keep fighting the fight because if we roll over and play dead, we all lose.
3 Sets of Comments:
First -
There are ALWAYS debates about which tactics and which strategies are the best.
And then there are ALWAYS debates about what makes particular actions and particular strategies effective.
(was that mass mailing too early, too late, too confusing ... are different debates than whether we should have done a mass mailing.)
Second
I think an optimal solution is to make sure those things people do are as effective as they can be for the number of people doing them.
There are a lot of different things to do to influence the public & participate - leafleting, doorbelling, phonebanking, letters to the editor / blogging, street corner rah rah, public testimony... are all examples.
I think it is best to help people do what they're interested in doing, or, help them do something they hate the least. People who like to phonebank shouldn't be cajoled into street corner rah-rah, people who hate phones and want to write letters to the editor / respond on blogs should have it easy to participate that way.
I think a fast way to insure people hate participating is to make it difficult to phonebank or do rah rah or ..., and, when whatever they're doing is 'organized' at the last minute and seems ineffective for lots of reasons, you're rubbing salt in the wound.
Yes ...WE ALL HAVE TO DO SOMETHING...
Third
The ins and outs of this street corner event should be on some lists that are available to anyone, and the list of supplies and duties per street corner should have been parceled out and assigned MONTHS ago.
The attacks on public education are relentless - while teacher apathy and indifference are NOT logical responses - how many teachers are fed up with
HavingTheirTimeFritteredAway?
The genesis of the phony furlough was the WEA, and the governor and legislature that teacher PAC money bought. If you think all the money per student isn't funding your classroom sufficiently, complain to NEA/WEA/SEA, and loudly. For two years after Obama was elected with over whelming teacher PAC money, the entire federal and state governments were one party majorities. NOTHING was done to improve K-12 education. Teachers got taken if their objective was better funding and operations. What would standing in the rain have done? Wear a T-shirt that said I'm with Stupid?
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