“It’s like the Arab spring, but it’s a teacher spring,”
In some schools, teachers don’t assign homework because their budget for books is so small that they can’t afford to risk a student losing a $200 textbook. ( Sue Ogrocki/AP)
Leaning over the overpass going under the Oklahoma State Capitol Complex, a group of a dozen women in rain jackets hold signs as oil tankers pass under, honking their horns in support for the striking teachers.
“It’s like the Arab spring, but it’s a teacher spring,” geography teacher Toni Henson said, smiling as thousands of teachers march past picketing the Oklahoma state capitol and calling for higher wages and funding for schools.
The protest takes to the street Wednesday as hundreds of teachers will begin a 110-mile march from Tulsa to Oklahoma City stopping at closed down schools along the route to rest. Teachers in Kentucky have gone out on strike too and Arizona may be next.
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter who covered everything from Lula & the Brazilian labor movement to major league baseball. He spent years covering union organizing in the South for The Guardian and was labeled by the New York Times as an "abrasive gadfly" for exposing within the labor movement.
Raised in a UE union family in Pittsburgh, Elk was illegally for union organizing at Politico in 2015 and used his NLRB settlement to start the crowd-funded Payday Report. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and is fluent in both Pittsburghese and Portuguese, which he learned when attending journalism school at PUC-Rio de Janerio. Email: [email protected]
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