(This is resident RidgeCook’s beat, but in his absence and not a single word here on this matter that is important in several ways, will inadequately fill the gap.)
It’s not sexy like elusive Russian bots (in an ocean of bots), Dr. Ben’s table, Hope Hicks, and a possible Wikileaks lie which explains why the media coverage has been limited and of low quality. It only concerns a lot of people in a lowly profession in one of the lowliest states. Teachers in West Virginia.
The WV teachers strike began last Thursday, February 22, 2018 and included other state workers. #55 Strong is the organizing hashtag. 55 is the number of WV counties. (Teachers and supporters adopted red neck-ware and t-shirts, giving everyone a mini-history lesson.) Schools in all 55 counties were closed yesterday. (Mindful of how many of their students depend on the free school lunch program, teachers packed lunches for students and brought them to the picket line.) Reportedly a cooling off period as Governor Justice and teacher union leaders had struck a deal on Tuesday to end the strike. Media duly reported that the strike was over.
Then a curious thing happened:
To their union leaders, the teachers said nyet. But they used English — “We’re not going back,” was their chant. (They also exchanged their red colored clothing for black.)
From the beginning, union leaders said the decision to go on strike was made from the ground up — by teachers themselves. When asked if union leaders would support teachers if they vote to continue the strike, Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association, said, “We will always support our members.”
The proposed deal only addressed one of the demands, a salary increase, and that one was hardly assured as there is no guarantee that the WV GOP legislature would pass it.
“We’re feeling let down,” said Lori Murray, a history and civics teacher at Spring Valley High School. “You’ve given us a bunch of promises, but you’ve not given us anything to back it up with. When our governor comes out and says one thing, and then the Senate president comes out and says something completely different, how do we trust that?”
Plus:
Teachers have said they want a long-term fix for funding of the Public Employees Insurance Agency. Until they see that in writing, teachers said they won’t return to work.
As WV teachers have noted, the increasing cost of health insurance and out-of-pocket medical costs would quickly eat up a measly 5% salary increase. And as of 2/16/18 PEIA changes unite teachers and all state employees (Gazette).
…During the PEIA call-in hearing late last year, PEIA encouraged state workers to apply for the Children’s Health Insurance Program to cover their families because they knew employees qualified.
Ironically, this was at the same time that CHIP was being threatened by Congress. It is obvious that the PEIA board no longer has a representative for the working people of West Virginia.
(Walmart must be pleased to see a state following its lead.)
So, all WV schools remained closed today, Thursday March 1, 2018. (There’s a Go Fund WV teachers’ strike. And/or put on a red bandanda (je suis bandanas rouge) in solidarity with the strikers.)
Update: Jake Jarvis:
BREAKING: All schools in West Virginia will be closed again Friday because of an historic, statewide teacher strike. It will be the seventh day of the strike.
Update 1.2 Strike continues
West Virginia public school teachers will strike for an eighth day Monday [3/5/18] because the state legislature didn’t meet their demand for higher pay and better benefits over the weekend.
All 55 counties announced school closures for Monday. About 20,000 teachers walked out February 22, keeping almost 277,000 students out of class.
Update #2: To keep an eye on – 40,000 so far but not yet strong in Oklahoma. Conditions and compensation for OK teachers (and KS and MS) have become deplorable. Note: An Oklahoma law prohibits a teacher’s union from striking or threatening to strike “as a means of resolving differences with the board of education.” But if teachers walk out to protest the state Legislature, that would be different, said Doug Folks, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union.
Also: note: About one-fifth of all 513 Oklahoma public school districts — 91 — have a four-day school week, something that has become synonymous with education in Oklahoma. Many districts have been forced by state funding cuts to find a way to trim expenses without trimming jobs, said about a dozen superintendents who responded to a Tulsa World survey.
Update #3 West Virginia governor signs bill to give striking teachers pay raise
Except it was about more than a salary increase:
Separately, the governor agreed to set up a task force to address the state health insurance program on March 13.
though it’s unclear if teachers will go along as the raise appears to be paid for by cutting general services and Medicaid.
Latest chant from the strikers is: put it in writing. Doesn’t seem to refer to the pay increase; so, stay tuned.
Sid Hatfield and his deputy Ed Chambers were also brought up on chargers of destroying the Mohawk mining camp in McDowell County. On August 1, 1921, Hatfield, Chambers, and their wives traveled unarmed to the McDowell County courthouse to stand trial. Upon reaching the courthouse, Hatfield and Chambers were shot and killed by waiting Baldwin-Felts agents. Miners in West Virginia were outraged at the deaths of Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers. In the weeks following the August 1st assassinations, miners organized and armed themselves across West Virginia.
[Source: West Virginia Coal Wars (1912-1921) – Wikipedia]
The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired, and the United States Army intervened by presidential order.
On August 30, 1921, President Warren G. Harding declared martial law for the entire state of West Virginia, and 2,500 federal troops arrived on September 2, bringing with them machine guns and military aircraft armed with surplus explosive and gas bombs from the recently concluded World War I. Facing a large and well equipped fighting force, the miners were forced to stand down.
Didn’t want to belabor the historical reference but did provide a link. And perhaps the “je suis bandana rouge” suggestion is too subtle.
Harding is on most lists of worst Presidents. Wonder if he’s dead last for West Virginians.
In addition to West Virginia having been important in the labor/union movement, at the WV constitutional convention (beginning November 26, 1861) that may or may not have been legal, a proposal for public education passed. (WV was admitted to the union as a state on June 20, 1863 — the Supreme Court’s final decision in favor of WV was in 1870.)
Heather Dockray:
Bit hyperbolic. I’d adjust it to:
Why did we have a plethora of stories about Trump farting and a gazillion comments on that by self-identified Republicans/conservatives and Democrats on blogs, including this one, and 2 measly comments to and no evidence than more three people read this diary about the WV teachers’ strike?
Since no identifiable Republicans hang here, because few Democrats care about: Unions. Poor people. Women.
Because no one is tweeting about it? Because people are more into symbolism and hashtags than bread and butter issues?
Agree with your last sentence. (and the rest)
Re Trump: How does he get to impose tariffs all by himself?
Short answer, sort of. Too many intervening feedback loops preclude even a possible definitive yes or no answer.
However, that’s worthy of a real discussion. A necessarily complex and long one that includes the prinicipals and purpose of reporting, the US history of it, and where we are today and how we got there. At a high abstract level, “news” should satisfy what an informed citizenry should know. Who is the arbiter of that what? The owners and government officials. That led to a certain amount of tension once the cost of printing press publications declined and other voices entered the fray. (Early on it facilitated the rise of many new christian religious denominations.) Then we have to add in what do people want to know? And that is an impediment to all the decision makers because people like garbage.
Thomas Paine with his Common Sense pamphlets may have been the peak point in what a faction of the decision makers wanted the people to know and what the people wanted to know. However, their was no public stamp of approval on that by that faction of decision makers other than behind the scenes facilitation of the publications. It served them well and the royalists were unable to successful compete with them.
However, Paine’s later writing weren’t welcomed by those same decision makers who had split into two new factions and their voices formed the MSM, quickly discovering that garbage sells. Pampheteering remained for the alternative voices. it took a very long time before a faction of the MSM ran with abolition and even longer for suffrage and prohibition. (The common cause of the last two was rational but impractical and ultimately demonstrated to be counter-productive.)
Labor/unions went beyond pamphlets and established newspapers. Meanwhile, other publishers learned to sell eyeballs to advertisers by sensationalizing garbage. Smashing unions also smashed their newspapers. To the delight of the owners and reduced the competition for other newspapers. It also reduced the range of reporting in MSM publications.
Radio added a new wrinkle because it wasn’t that costly to set up and broadcast. It was like FDR’s twitter machine. A way to get around the dominate newspapers. To preserve that his team set up the FCC. But, like much of the New Deal legislation, owners have fought back and through the politicians that they buy in multiple ways, the FCC is practically functionless today.
Early TV news was closer to public service announcements than what it has become. TV is expensive and therefore, it needed to sell massive numbers of eyeballs. Thus, entertainment (and as cheap as possible) dominated. TV news journalism improved from the early days by reducing its reliance on print journalism and engaging in primary reporting, but for a long time, it financially retained the public service ethic. Turning news into another profit and entertainment gave us bad news reporting and bad entertainment. The cheapest form is cable “news.” And where do they get their stories from? The owners, MSM print, politicians and business (including “defense” contractors) lobbyists, and out of the asses of “talent.”
As blogs began to proliferate, the WMD didn’t materialize, and eyeballs for MSM news (both print and TV) declined, MSM journos began looking at them for source material as to what people want to know. Slight wrinkle as many of the blogs with the most eyeballs weren’t independent entreprenuers but funded by “the owners.” Facebook didn’t become a viable alternative. But twitter is like the holy grail of what interests people. If we ignore the degree to which it too is manipulated. Overlook that people can’t be interested in something they are unaware of. And if it can’t be reduced to 144 characters, it’s too complicated for general interest.
However, the owners and MSM (where most people still get their news) remain the decision makers as as to what gets aired and published. Thus, Trump thumbs up and Bernie thumbs down. What an informed citizenry should know about still ends up on page 22 if at all. Yemen thumbs down and $50,000 Russian fake Facebook posts during the 2016 election, big thumbs up. In my last check on the WV teachers strike, there has been some “page 22” print coverage, an NPR report clucking about the teachers closing the WV schools, a few seconds on one cable news show, and tweets by lefty journos. Same amount of attention and interest as seen on this site. (No wonder they don’t get why the DP has become a loser rump party and endlessly commenting on Trump’s farts isn’t go to change that.)
“If at all”. Illinois is supposed to be in a fiscal crises. What is the budget? How does it breakdown in a pie chart? How does that compare historically? News magazines used to have articles with those details, so did newspapers. The always conservative Chicago Tribune under the previous owners always had multi-page articles with this sort of data. Their solutions were always conservative but their numbers were honest (excepting maybe errors of omission). Now, crickets.
In the past it was assumed an informed electorate would want those numbers and they were used by factions to support their causes. Now, voters are either totally turned off from politics and thus irrelevant or fanbois who don’t need no stinking numbers, just a good hashtag or pithy phrase.
Or maybe too few read or could read those reports and charts in the past and in the age of austere newsrooms, they had to go. Or maybe people are less literate than they were during the New Deal decades. Or maybe those budgets become so complex as politicians and lobbyists kept divvying up the pie and resorting the pie to the point where they don’t understand them and only a full-time dedicated news staff could decode it for the general public but and again, newsroom staff cuts only left a part-timer on the local and state budgets beat and he retired in 2000.
Except for the point about garbage that interests people in the 21st Century –
Part 1:
My Quest for Instagram stardom.
A narcissistic pursuit of internet “likes” depreciates the word quest, but that view is possibly so 20th century. Anyway, she made it to minnow level stardom with 12,000 followers. (Are those 12,000 real persons or bots?) Do millions of real persons actually carve out time in their lives to follow whatever non-thing or ordinary thing the Kardasians do everyday? And 12,000 do the same for a non-entity? (How do they even have the time to search and find such a non-entity?)
Part 2:
left me in financial ruin
So, 12,000 real persons and/or bots followed the fake life of a non-entity that went broke buying clothes and trips that 12,000 real persons or bots could envy. (Mass produced stuff and cheap vacation spots that appear on retail sites.) Not enough material for a “I did something wild and crazy and can now tell about it in a book,” but it landed her in the star role of a NYPost article.
With her confession of being a fraud, she assures her 12,000 followers that from now on she’ll be more real and that should surely vault her up the Instagram stardom ladder of success.
What’s wrong with people?
What’s wrong indeed. Many answers. Lack of the school of hard knocks. Excess parental pampering. Schools that are propaganda mills. The demise of literacy. Ennui.
Take you pick.
I’ll add, the internet illusion that anybody can become famous and a gazillionaire. All one needs is a novel schtick or app. Sadly, copycats are too stupid to see that they are nothing but copycats.
What’s wrong with them, indeed.
We live in a deeply silly culture of impulsive consumerism as the road to happiness, and that was BEFORE social media, haha. That development mostly seems to have fueled an explosion of narcissism and “professional” celebritydom as an ideal, not to mention borderline mental illness. That millions upon millions are frankly addicted spending 90% of their waking hours perusing the shit that other dopes place on facebook pages and utubz is almost beyond comprehension. It’s a new age of “humanity”, that’s fer sure.
Thanks for this diary on the great WVa teachers, it was the first I had heard of it, and it obviously then became a national story. So good spotting by you!
Thanks but I was hardly on top of this. As I mentioned at the top, WV (and that region) are far outside my knowledge base and attention. Plus, labor actions develop so slowly that only a full-time reporter on the labor beat (if any exist anymore in the era of cheapskate journalism) can stay on top of all of them.
Agree on US culture. Sociologists and psychologists have long recognized the inordinate narcissism and consumerism that beats in the breasts of Americans. Easy to overlook that “social media” (a more apt term would be anti-social media) is to narcissists what credit cards are to consumerism.
At the same time:
#1
National Democrats Stayed Away From the Longest Strike in West Virginia History
Reasons – (aka, keeping powder dry, CYA, etc.)
As if the only way for a national political party to engage in an action that is consonant with the foundations of that party is by sending in party bigwigs. (The GOP has a manual with 1001 ways to get it done.)
#2
Hot TX Democratic primary
The Culberson (GOP-Inc.) is running for reelection.
On the leading candidate:
EMILY’s List (queen bee of pro-abortion centrists) was all in with Fletcher.
Then the DCCC (a substitute for the DNC during contested Democratic primaries) jumped in with both feet:
Way to go DCCC and show your anti-union spots. In with Fletcher in TX-CD7 and AWOL on WV teachers strike. Could it be clearer? The Working Families Party
The results of Tueday’s primary:
Triantphyllis is pissed that he didn’t get the DCCC money. The Westin folks are pissed that the DCCC attack on Moser led to a backlash that kept him from getting that second place finish.
The runoff election will take place on May 22.