Harold Meyerson - Baltimore teachers union is the hero, not a villain

Harold Meyerson - Baltimore teachers union is the hero, not a villain

Baltimore teachers union is the hero, not a villain

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By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

For anyone who needed to gauge just how far the demonization of teachers unions has gone, the final episode last spring of TV's "Law and Order" -- the real one, not the new L.A. knock-off -- was instructive. Bracketed by the customary soundtrack "cha-chungs," the story concerned a loony former substitute teacher bent on blowing up the high school where he'd subbed. But the real heavy was a weaselly union lawyer who blocked the cops' access to the teacher's whereabouts, on the grounds of -- well, something like Marx's labor theory of value, or Walter Reuther's argument for co-determination at General Motors; it wasn't entirely clear which. Said weaselly lawyer crumbled, of course,