When Teachers Mobilize Oral Histories
When Teachers Mobilize Oral Histories
In 1977, a bill to better enforce the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) sailed quickly through the House of Representatives. Facing a Senate filibuster, its proponents weakened the proposal—making it, according to historian Jefferson Cowie, “lean, moderate, and basically unchallenging to the corporate order.”
The Chicago Teachers Union argues for proven educational reforms to dramatically improve education of more than 400,000 students in a district of 675 schools. These reforms are desperately needed and can head Chicago towards the world-class educational system its students deserve.
This article examines both the Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG) contract campaigns that have emerged among teachers unions in the years since the Great Recession and the #RedforEd strikes and mobilizations of 2018.
If the 1960’s were known as the era of vigorous student militancy in most sectors of American education, the 1970’s may well go down in history as the decade of the angry teacher.
A gallery of photos to explore.
“Culture becomes not a haven of ideas or a fixed state of experience but a social imaginary erupting out of a storied cultural real.” (Stewart 1996, 63-4)
I remember the day when my father, a West Virginia University professor, accompanied some of his students to Charleston for Undergraduate Research Day at the Capitol in February 2018.
APWU remembers the Great Postal Strike of March 1970. For more background on the successful wildcat strike that earned postal workers the right to bargain collectively for better pay and benefits.
