School reopens Monday and there were 95,000 cases of kids getting covid just last week. The neoliberal ghouls are pretending everything is fine and kids can be 0 feet from eachother and making testing less accessible.
Meanwhile I have very elderly coworkers who will absolutely die if they get COVID and an electrical system at my janky ass school that is too shitty to run air purifiers without blowing a fuse.
My kids will get sick, my colleauges will get sick and I will get sick and infect my partner all because we apparently needed to have a fucking rager for the 4th of July for the economy to not shit out its lungs.
Fuck Amerika
We needed to elect the one person we could trust with a child's safety: Joe Biden. The only alternative would be giving those children universal healthcare and a viable future. :amerikkka-clap:
easier said than done but your union should consider work stoppages. This is literally an issue of health and safety and you aren't getting paid enough to deal with this shit. The libs would probably support you even.
oh right I forgot we live in a "democracy". My state had some pretty big teacher strikes a few years ago I'm sorry the state has blocked that off with coercion. tough times.
Though for what's it worth, if you all did actually get fired/arrested for striking, you would have all the nation's libs on your side. Think about how bad that would look on the TV, "police drag away teachers demanding that we respect the science." It would be a national media event and could maybe inspire other labor action. I do not fault you or your union for not wanting to take that risk but there are not many other options available to us anymore other than labor action.
you would have all the nation’s libs on your side
"but the good guys are in charge now, things are fixed, the teachers are being alarmist and selfish, covid is over, i need my kids at school to go to work" Sorry comrade but I think you might be overestimating libs, and especially their takes on collective bargaining and any protest that actually inconveniences power
i have very little faith in liberals (maybe that's too much) but the ones I meet all seem to really love teachers. Not like they do much to help them but they at least pay them lip service. If it's a GOP state I think you'd have a chance even if the libs are back to brunch, tell them to think of the children or whatever lib shit makes them sympathetic.
You might be surprised. Even my terrible union was an asshair away from an illegal strike around this time last year
Teachers I know in my state describe local teachers unions as essentially collaborating with local and state government –– so they're pointless if not directly harmful to the workers.
I feel you, although I have a few more weeks. The amount of gaslighting to justify having kids packed cheek to jowl in school buildings is unreal. I know for a fucking fact I'm going to get COVID again at some point this year.
It is 100% gaslighting and I feel FUCKING CRAZY. Fortunately my union is fairly militant and we are starting to get alternative reporting pathways underway incase the district tries to cover it up or downplay this.
Even my msnbc liberal parents are starting to smell the coffee and get worried but not the school.
It's so fucking weird to see them repeat the exact same playbook as last year, where they say we must take every precaution against this pandemic, except in schools, which are totally safe. I wish my union was at all militant
Ours is BARELY but a bunch of socialists just tookit over which is somewhat promising even if they are affiliated with an org I heavily disagree with
The local state university opened for three weeks in Fall 2020. In-person classes, no restrictions, student dorms packed. It was so that they could collect on-campus tuition and not the lesser fees for online courses.
One of my old criticisms of Mao was that I couldn't understand how academics are a black category. Anyone in education administration is a vantablack category after this year will certify them as the most successful school shooters in history.
We had one frat under house arrest for parties, outbreaks in dorms, and clusters in student-supported businesses.
I haven't gotten around to reading Mao yet, what do you mean by black category?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Black_Categories
The five power structures of counterrevolutionary China.
edit: Oh wait nope, they were in his larger list of Leviticus-type damnations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinking_Old_Ninth
I have to agree with this, even though I aspire to be an intellectual and go into academia. The amount of empty-brain politics from people that spend their whole life learning and analyzing systems is atrocious. Thanks for the information.
The original context of it is hard to get a grasp of for me. Like the earlier list it's based on imperial court scholars who I know warred with the eunuchs for power over the emperors, but I don't know how much of that imperial legacy lasted into the republican era Mao was confronting. In a modern context it can only be read as university academics or public intellectuals. I can see how individual professors can be counterrevolutionary but they don't have structural power. Administration through the district and state/federal levels has power and is an ideological force, dictating what students are allowed to learn and in what conditions. Fields like economics serve to reinforce capitalism but I think everyone should have a full humanities education through a university level if they want. Public intellectuals give us Jordan Peterson, but we also got Foucault and Zizek. I can't put myself in the shoes of a 1940s Chinese communist confronting republican/imperial age intellectual roles.
I've had my problems with my school admin, but they've consistently been sane and compassionate during the pandemic. Anyone above them though :gui-better:
Can you force the kids to wear masks? Or is it more brainworms from the admin or state officials there. The entire plan to open schools is a disaster. It's impossible to open schools safely with the current spread.
The kids have to wear masks but a MIT study showed being in the same poorly ventilated space for 5 + hours makes masks much less effective
Yeah, unless everyone is wearing n95 grade masks that happens when spending a long time indoors. Maybe you can get yourself an n95/ffp2 grade mask?
Obviously reopening schools is completely the wrong decision and shouldn't be happening, but yeah. Got to look out for yourself
it's legit fucking insane that people in the richest country in the world are still overwhelmingly using dogshit cloth masks instead of n95s or equivalents. i'm in :brazil-cool: and n95 (and equivalent) masks are somewhat accessible and there's been a big push from civil society trying to get people to wear them.
Here in :kkkanada: some universities were testing some random brands sold in real stores for effectiveness, and because we have very little consumer protection,
Many n95 masks didn't actually meet spec.
I think authorities know we don't have mask production capacity, so they prioritized having enough n95 masks for construction purposes.
Also the kids are kids. I doubt mask usage will be as effective than with adults (depending on the age of the kids).
Can you rig up a box fan air purifier like our one comrade has been posting about for the wildfires? Would everyone wearing n95 masks help? I know when I was in school teachers had to ask for supply donations and stuff, would be happy to throw in for a case of n95s or something if it would help.
If y'all do manage to get a strike going I'd love to contribute to the strike fund too
The way america is stuffing children into the meat grinder like this makes me absolutely furious every time I think about it, everything with the pandemic has been bad but doing this at this point is completely unconscionable.
:amerikkka:
wildcat strike
if the option is between the union killing children and coworkers and not doing that, I don't see how your conscience/fellow union members can consider the former
:sabo:
i can't imagine what this is going to do to the kids (beside kill them) :sadness-abysmal:
To answer lots of comments
We have a union that is finally radicalizing from a service union as of three months ago. They are trying to get their shit together for this fight but we are also pretty weak from years of the bourgeoisie service union model’s inevitable low engagement.
I’m organizing my school site around reporting and trying to get us to all agree to wildcat incase she gets shoved under the rug but it is going to be tricky, lots of brand new teachers or close to retirement teachers, both groups with a lot to lose
Wish I never tried to be a smart kid in school and read stuff by Phillip K. Dick and Kafka. I don't like the similarities between this reality and their fictions.
