The teacher strikes are over for now. More teacher strikes will happen in the fall (L.A. being one of those). But that doesn't mean that the teachers are satisfied with their modest gains. They are still organizing and taking action.

One way they are doing that is by running for office against all of those anti-teacher conservative politicians.



Nearly 300 members of the American Federation of Teachers union are running for political office this year, more than double the number in each of the years 2012 and 2016. The teacher candidacies are part of a rising tide of political activism in 2018, with nearly 800 candidates running in the first round of Oklahoma's primaries, breaking the previous record of 594 set in 2006, and more than 200 filing to run in next month's Arizona primary — more than ran during each of the previous three election cycles...

There are some early signs of success, and not just among Democrats. In May, high school math teacher Travis Brenda defeated the majority leader of the Kentucky House, Jonathan Shell, in the Republican primary. In Oklahoma, three Democrats won special elections in state legislative districts in which President Donald Trump enjoyed huge margins. And in West Virginia, the local teachers union helped defeat Robert Karnes, one of its main antagonists in the state Senate, and voted in Republican challenger Bill Hamilton, a moderate more sympathetic to the union's cause.

“They’re coming big against us, and it’s not just Janus. They’re trying to privatize entire systems. They’re trying to gentrify entire cities. Their program is huge. So our response has to be big.”

- Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles

Despite all of this grassroots energy, or maybe because of it, the national Democratic Party seems to want nothing to do with the teachers.



Now the red-state movement is spreading to state and local races, attracting local excitement but little attention from Democratic power brokers. Of 17 possible congressional races in Arizona, Oklahoma and West Virginia, just four are on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of targeted races.

The teachers are so popular that West Virginia’s 3rd District race between Democrat Richard Ojeda and Republican Carol Miller changed from “leans Republican” to “toss up.”

This was a district that Trump won by 50 POINTS! Ojeda, a retired Army paratrooper who saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, became famous as a fierce teacher advocate.

And yet, the Democrats seem oblivious to this movement, while many union leaders seem out of touch.



Some are even more acutely angry with Democrats. Throughout the convention, I met dozens of AFT members upset with union leadership’s close ties to the Democratic establishment and reticence to embrace the grassroots left. In both public statements on the convention floor and private interviews, union reps admonished the AFT for endorsing Hillary Clinton seven months before the 2016 Iowa caucus and not pressing past Democratic candidates to embrace progressive policy goals like universal healthcare, universal childcare, free public tuition, and rigorous wealth redistribution.

Other AFT members at the convention criticized the national leadership, along with the National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, for lagging behind local organizers of the red state strikes this past spring. When West Virginia governor Jim Justice offered teachers a paltry concession in hopes of quickly ending the strike in February, the leadership of AFT and other local unions took the deal and called the strike off. Hours later, furious teachers across the state met and refused to return to work. The rank and file took over, launching a wildcat strike and carrying on the state’s tradition of militant workers pushing past their own union’s demands. Suddenly AFT was forced to play catch-up, as educators remained on picket lines for five additional days, ultimately winning a better deal on healthcare and public worker pay.

“The advice I gave everyone is the union is going to betray you."

- Lois Weiner, former teacher and strike organizer

One interesting development is that West Virginia teachers are being invited to lecture teacher groups around the world on how to organize a strike.



O’Neal said teachers in the U.K. were already pretty familiar with West Virginia’s nine-day work stoppage. “It was interesting how much they already knew about it, I mean, some people there knew a lot of details,” O’Neal said. “It was really cool to see that what we’ve done here had already reached across the ocean and that people knew about it.” The pair spoke in four different cities: London, Birmingham, Hull and Durham, in the eight days they were there. What they heard from the U.K.’s public employees sounded all too familiar to them.

On a lighter note, some local hero untied and set adrift a $40 million yacht owned by the family of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos from a marina in Huron, OH. This brave soul is still at large.