Good for them. I just looked at a bunch of photos and they are motivated.
However…
Another friend posted a sobering article. Three quarters of the OK House are running unchallenged for re-election. That’s no challenger, none, not in the primary, not in the general. Not only does that make a joke of the right to vote, of democracy, it explains a lot about the resistance, the nonchalance legislators are showing to the demonstrations, to teachers’ and parents’ pleas for dialog in the weeks and months and years leading up to the demonstrations. There’s ample video of lawmakers shutting doors literally in the faces of their voters.
The glimmer of hope is that there is a few days left before the filing deadline. So, maybe.
Steps to empowerment:
1.Unionize
2. Run canditaes for state level representatives
3. Don’t vote Republican
4. GOTV for local, state, federal elections
Get these teachers down to sign up to run. That would be amazing.
Several of them are. Actually, one of the House members interviewed by Vice is a former educator and administrator who participated in the 1990 teacher marches and I suspect that was a motivating factor for his eventual second career.
On the other hand he was the GOP chair of the House budget committee when a lot of this crap went down, so be careful what you wish for, lol.
The friend I mentioned who posted the article about the lack of challengers also took that opportunity to announce he’s running for office himself. But for US Congress, for what it’s worth, not a state position. He’s a semi-retired rock star you may have heard of but he also spent a decade or more teaching at and then running an elite boarding school in China, so it makes some sense to put him in the teacher camp. Come to think of it, the former teacher/current politician I just mentioned had him as a student, lol.
Why hasn’t Boopsie DeVos fixed all of this yet?
Cool. Keep us posted.
Here ya go!