ORGANIZING WORKING EDUCATOR COMMUNITIES

1. BY LOCATION, 2. BY ACTIVITY, 3. BY CANDIDATE / ISSUE

IF we the little working people are going to have sustainable influence on the decisions juggling the trade offs which are made in our communities, we need to organize ourselves differently.

1. ORGANIZE BY LOCATION.

How many fellow working educator citizens does each of us know in our neighborhood, our local precinct, our local city council, school board and legislative districts? How many fellow educators do we know within 5 or 15 blocks (or miles) of where we live? How many of us are ready to work with them?

In 2012 WA. primary I was helping a candidate for state representative in the 46^th Legislative District, Gerry Pollet. His opponent was backed by the local Arne Duncan branch of the Democratic Party, and had lots of money from local admirers of Gates Foundation teacher bashing policies. Part of the 46^th is in Seattle, and the Seattle Education Association has appx. 5000 members living all over the region.  At a campaign event a Washington Education Association person mentioned there were 1,000 of 83,000 WEA members in the 46^th L.D.  I helped the campaign randomly, keeping an eye open for educator oriented events, and there were only a few times that 10 or 20 of us showed up to help Gerry.

Had the SEA / WEA / NEA / AFT members been more self organized by location, how much easier would it have been to help a genuine backer of public education without waiting for some far away union head quarters organizers?

2. ORGANIZE BY CAMPAIGN ACTIVITY.

The best way to kill long term volunteer participation is to persuade volunteers to do things they don’t like.

Community member volunteers should participate in campaign activities according to what they like the most, or what they hate the least. Campaigns are messy, and there are a lot of campaign activities which need to be done: phone banking, leafleting at public events, sign waving rah-rah on street corners, doorbelling, literature distribution, writing letters and diaries and comments on blogs and on op-eds, helping with get out the vote efforts, signature gathering, mailings …

Over 4 decades of being a little know nobody grunt on scores of campaigns, I’ve done just about every campaign activity. Some campaign activities I hate - phone banking, doorbelling. Some I really enjoy - leafleting, rah-rah.

Shouldn’t the educators who like to do rah-rah, or phone bank or …in the 46^th  Legislative District, or the 1^st Seattle School District, or the 5^th Seattle City Council District, or … kind of know each other ?! Wouldn’t it be easier for us leafletter peeps who live relatively close to one and other to self organize?

Remember - the best way to kill long term volunteer participation is to persuade volunteers to do things they don’t like. If you get people running all over some geographic region to do things they don’t like, it is a safe bet they won’t be back for the next election.

3. ORGANIZE BY CANDIDATE / ISSUE.

In 2014 Gerry Pollet (46th LD, House) is unopposed. Does that mean those of us who live in the 46th and who leaflet or phone bank or … should stay home? There are 98 state representative elections happening, there are 24 state senator elections happening … there aren’t some candidates who need help?

In 2013 in Seattle there was a school board race in which 1 of the candidates had almost $250,000 donated from Microsoft millionaires and Arne Duncan Democrats. Fortunately her opponent Sue Peters, with about $40,000, won. Unfortunately, there weren’t scores of readily available educator phone bankers and rah-rah peeps, by neighborhood, to help Sue out. In 2015 4 of 7 Seattle School Board Directors are up for re-election, and, there are municipal elections.

IF SEA / WEA / MTA / NEA members were organized by location and by activity, instead of “organized” by last minute crises determined by some far away union head quarters strategist, wouldn’t that help volunteers participate? Wouldn’t that make elected officials more responsive to the concerns of working educators?

If elected officials don’t want to help working educators or act on our concerns, surely they’d be persuaded by the fear that we’d be working to get them unemployed … by neighborhood, by precinct, by activity, by candidate?

 FOURTH – THESE FIGHTS ARE NOT ANYTHING NEW.

The Federalist No. 10

The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (continued)

Daily Advertiser

Thursday, November 22, 1787

[James Madison]

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm

…The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

… Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.