Monday Wake Up Call – April 30, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Church in Malawi

At least 50,000 teachers and their allies in red shirts flooded the streets of Phoenix on Friday as Arizona educators launched a statewide walkout for increased school funding and raises for all school employees. From Labor Notes:

“You have West Virginia who stood up, you have Kentucky who’s standing up, you have Oklahoma”, said Brittani Karbginsky, a sixth grade teacher in Phoenix. “Now you have us”.

When the cost of living is considered, Arizona’s teacher pay ranks last in the nation (but in absolute dollars, Oklahoma ranks last). Average teacher salaries in Arizona have declined by nearly $9,000 since 2003.

Vox tracked the amount of money granted to corporations through state tax incentives in Arizona and found that, according to data from the state’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee and the Seidman Institute at Arizona State University, the state lost out on roughly $5 billion in corporate tax revenue since 1993 (after adjusting for inflation). Funding per student has fallen by 14%.

Welcome to another Right-Wing trickle-down economics nightmare.

After insisting for months that 2018’s one percent raise for teachers would be followed by another one percent in 2019, Arizona’s governor Doug Ducey (R) announced on April 12 that he would grant teachers a 20% raise by 2020. But, Arizona’s teachers didn’t buy that. They pointed out that the raise wasn’t in the budget. They wanted a dedicated source of funding to make sure that they were winning more than an empty promise.

This seems to be a mainstream idea. An AP poll found that 78% of Americans think teachers are paid too little. Fifty percent said they favor higher taxes to pay teachers more.

But Arizona isn’t Kentucky or Oklahoma where teachers have also organized and marched for better pay. The Arizona teachers have been called Democratic operatives. They were called masterminds of a national socialist revolution. Or, architects of a plot to legalize marijuana. From Vox:

This backlash is fiercer than in other states where teachers have protested or gone on strike. And the comments aren’t coming from the ideological fringes of the internet. State politicians, lawmakers, and journalists are making these accusations to discredit teachers who are demanding higher pay and more funding for public schools.

And the state superintendent of education, Diane Douglas, threatened to investigate striking teachers and potentially revoke their license to teach in the state.

The right’s idea always seems to be that if you cannot argue your opponent’s facts, you go for the smear. Maybe the teachers should launch a full scale attack on the sponsors of those right-wing blogs and talk radio show hosts, the way Parkland’s David Hogg did with Laura Ingraham.

Last Thursday, the state legislature adjourned without introducing any bill to address school funding. They didn’t address the plan for a 20% raise that Gov. Ducey had proposed. They return today.

So wake up, Arizona! Blame the legislature, not the teachers. Stick by your teachers. To help you wake up, here is a 1941 tune written by the Almanac Singers, while working to organize the CIO. It is sung by Pete Seeger, who was a member of the Almanac Singers at the time: