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‘Arab spring for teachers’
Thousands of teachers went on strike in Oklahoma this week, demanding higher wages and better funding for schools.
The Oklahoma action follows strikes in West Virginia and Kentucky as teachers follow the lead of their students, who have walked out of school and marched for gun control reform.
“It’s like the Arab spring, but it’s a teacher spring,” Toni Henson, a geography teacher, told the Guardian.
50th in Funding is NOT OK. #okleg #OKwalk4kids #OklaEd #oklahomateacherwalkout pic.twitter.com/Y9KzYhzSTl
— ImWithTeachers (@Ginnnae) April 2, 2018
Oklahoma has cut funding more than any other state in the country over the past nine years, according to the Oklahoma Policy Institute. Teachers have been emboldened by their colleagues in West Virginia, who went on strike for nine days in February, eventually winning a 5% pay raise.
Arizona, where teachers are among the lowest paid in the US, could be the next state to face a strike.
Noah Karvelis, one of the leaders of the “Red for Ed” campaign, which has seen thousands of teachers stage demonstrations in Arizona, told the Guardian watching high school students take action over gun control had “empowered everyone”.
“They’re so inspirational to us,” Karvelis said. “You don’t have to just sit there and take it.”
‘They had no right to shoot him down’
Hundreds took to the streets in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights on Thursday to protest about yet another police shooting of an unarmed black man.
Saheed Vassell, whose father said he had mental health problems, was shot nine times by officers on Wednesday afternoon. Vassell was holding the end of a welding torch and had been pointing it at people on the street.
People marched to the 71st police precinct after the rally, and projected Saheed’s name on to the building.
“They need to lose their jobs and they need to be put in jail – the same as if someone kills a cop,” said Ramel Johnson, 38. “It’s become clear they have no respect for human life.”
Black people are much more likely to be killed by police in the US. According to the Washington Post, 289 people have been shot and killed by police in 2018.
Of those, 124 were white, 60 were black and 38 Hispanic – the Post defined nine people as being of other race and the race of 58 people was unknown. Of the people whose race was known, 25.9% were black. Black people make up 12.7% of the US population.
“Justice for Saheed Vassell” projected last night on the building of @NYPD71Pct whose officers are responsible for Saheed’s murder. @EricGonzalez4DA we demand all officers who murdered #SaheedVassell be charged NOW pic.twitter.com/XrX54sQDi2
— ColorOfChange.org (@ColorOfChange) April 6, 2018
The New York attorney general has opened an investigation into Vassell’s death.
What we’re reading
Wednesday marked 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. King was celebrated across the country. But the philosopher and writer Cornel West warns that in remembering King, we should not “sterilize” his legacy:
We now expect the depressing spectacle every January of King’s ‘fans’ giving us the sanitized versions of his life. We now come to the 50th anniversary of his assassination, and we once again are met with sterilized versions of his legacy. A radical man deeply hated and held in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.
