All of West Virginia’s public school teachers are on strike

Educators from Beckley Elementary wanted to make sure
all students could have the opportunity to eat lunch.
Across the state, public schools serve more than
 180 thousand breakfasts and lunches to students;
 but these kids cannot receive the free meals
 from their public schools during the walkout.

West Virginia’s teachers are the 48th-lowest-paid in the country.

By Emily Stewart  Feb 24, 2018, 12:25pm EST

Thousands of public school teachers across West Virginia went on strike this week in protest over their pay and benefits, affecting more than 277,000 students. It began on Thursday, a day after West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, a Republican, signed legislation providing teachers, school service personnel, and state police with a 2 percent pay increase starting in July and scheduling 1 percent pay hikes for teachers in 2020 and 2021. The strike is poised to extend into Monday.

Teachers’ unions say the raises won’t cover cost-of-living increases, and the bill doesn’t address other concerns related to public employee insurance programs, health care costs, and payroll tax deduction options.

Christine Campbell, president of the American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia, told CNN that’s a reduction from an earlier version of the bill — which would have instead added a total 5 percent increase in wages. She also said teachers in surrounding states make $5,000 to $20,000 more than West Virginia teachers. In 2016, the average salary for West Virginia teachers ranked 48th in the country, according to the National Education Association, ahead of only Oklahoma, Mississippi, and South Dakota.

“These things got everyone here, brought everyone here, and signing a bill at 8:00 at night wasn’t going to change that,” Campbell said.

Thousands of teachers, parents, and supporters descended on West Virginia’s Capitol in Charleston on Thursday and Friday to protest. “We’d like to have a decent wage. And we’d like to have our PEIA [Public Employee Insurance Agency] fixed. We want then to quit trying to take our seniority and attacking our leaders in legislation,” said Betsy Atwater, a Fayette County teacher, told local news outlet WOKW.

Regarding the decision to extend the strike into Monday, Dale Lee, West Virginia Education Association president, told reporters at a news conference on Friday that “our members have spoken, and are not prepared to go back to work yet.”

t’s actually illegal for teachers to strike in West Virginia. They’re doing it anyway.

West Virginia’s 680 public schools employ 19,488 classroom teachers and have enrolled 277,137 students, Alyssa Keedy, a spokeswoman for the state’s education department, told the New York Times. All 55 counties in West Virginia closed schools this week and are poised to do so for at least part next week as well.

Steven Paine, West Virginia superintendent of schools, in a statement ahead of the strike said he fully recognizes and supports the work of teachers and that they “deserve more,” but “the economic realities of our state may not allow everything teachers deserve to take place immediately.” He also pointed out that work stoppages by public employees are “not lawful” in West Virginia. State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said the strike was “illegal.” Both officials also said the strike would be detrimental to students and families.

Per the Times, state food banks have helped feed students who depend on school meals during the strike, and supplemental child care centers have been set up, according to local news reports.

Thus far, educators seem to be shrugging off concerns over the legality of their move. Kym Randolph, West Virginia Education Association director of communication, told the Washington Post it’s been a long time coming. “This is a cumulative strike,” she said. “I mean, the pay and the benefits have been problems for years, and there’s constantly been the promises of, ‘We’ll take care of this, we’ll take care of this.’ It’s finally gotten to the point where, you know, the promises aren’t enough.”

Stop the drive to war

CPA statement

With the appointment of Admiral Harry Harris, Pacific Commander of US forces in the Indo-Pacific, as the new US ambassador to Australia, the Trump administration has in place the main link in its chain of command for overseeing Australia’s role in a planned Asia-Pacific conflict.

The Harris appointment came as PM Malcolm Turnbull last week concluded talks with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe, officially signing off on the deployment of Japanese military forces in Australia’s north, joining the growing US military presence in the top end.

Australia’s intended role is as a platform for land and air attacks and provision of facilities for the planned joint naval offensive, a scenario constantly rehearsed in war games and the development of the inter-operability of the US-Australian militaries. This strategy is integral to the role of the US bases on Australian soil, in particular the Pine Gap spy base.

Preparations are underway for Australia’s part in a predatory, imperialist war fought on behalf of the transnational corporations challenged by Asia’s – in the first place China’s –emergence as an economic powerhouse.

Domestically, the means have been put in place to silence voices of dissent, including the introduction of laws to jail journalists who may be caught up in a net of legislation open to wide interpretation and based on the assumption of guilt for simply doing their job.

The word “treason” now accompanies laws threatening to de-fund advocacy groups critical of government policies or in receipt of monies deemed to be “foreign influence”.

War rhetoric

In terms of propaganda, it is instructive to note some of the contradiction in the war rhetoric coming from the US and its various lap dogs, including the Turnbull government.

The government is now labeling a growing number of things deemed “foreign” to be by definition “suspicious”, first and foremost things Chinese. This, even as last November’s foreign policy white paper noted with almost salivating anticipation that China’s domestic purchasing power alone is set to grow to $21 trillion by 2030.

At the same time the Communist Party of China’s “sinister” influence has supposedly spread to universities around the country. Foreign students are Australia’s third biggest export earner, including almost 132,000 Chinese citizens studying at more than 30 Australian universities.

The white paper also attacked China’s rightful land reclamations in the South China Sea, saying it is in contravention of international law, while hailing the US as “founder and chief defender” of the “rules-based order”, in spite of the US not even having ratified the maritime law it insists China is breaking.

The government of the US is now an open and unambiguous dictatorship of money with, as its crowning achievement, a billionaire property developer. Those elements of the ruling class which support Trump and ensured his enthronement in the Oval Office have set the US on the path of the most reactionary and militaristic elements of monopoly capital toward war and destruction, no less than nuclear conflagration.

A few facts

The US refusal to accept the legitimacy of the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is part of a long-term policy – that any state in the world that follows an independent course is subject to being overthrown by the US. The DPRK, Vietnam, Cuba, the USSR (and now Russia), Syria, Venezuela, China … have all been targeted by the US politically and militarily.

In terms of the region, the notion that DPRK poses a threat to the US and international security and peace, is false to the point of absurdity.

CONCLUSION (for your enhancement)

• The danger is clear and present
• Peace movement splintered
• Need for union involvement
• The urgent need to build broad united movement against war, for peace.