Trump Creates a Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela While a Real One is Right Here in Our Schools
A created political farce played out with the frightening consequences for war against Venezuela resting in the balance on its border with Colombia this weekend, as the Trump Administration unsuccessfully tried to force the first of $20 million of unsolicited “humanitarian aid” into the country. This had nothing to do with concern for the Venezuelan people and everything to do with undermining the legitimate government of Venezuela. It should be called the food as a weapon campaign. Meanwhile teachers in Oakland California who are going into their 4th day of a strike could really use that wasted money to shore up the attack going on against education in their city and the entire U.S. for that matter.
The will to make quality education accessible in this country has long since left the station but under Trump and his Secretary of the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, champion of the for profit charter school system, the decline has become precipitous. California, the richest state in the country, has been little or no help in coming up with a plan for the crisis.
Teachers in the U.S.: Unsung Heroes
In my estimation public school teachers, entrusted to teach all our children to become critical thinkers, are the hardest working and most underappreciated group anywhere, working in a system that neglects them and sets them and their students up for failure. In the last couple of years teachers’ strikes have emerged as energizing and leading the way for all of organized labor. There have been teachers’ strikes, with varying degrees of success, in a number of states including West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado, Illinois and most recently in Los Angeles. Their demands follow a similar pattern. Most of them call for a pay increase for teachers who have notoriously been underpaid and undervalued. In the Oakland strike teachers are asking for a 12% pay raise over three years, hardly a greedy demand seeing that represents a 4% yearly raise or just about enough to keep up with inflation and cost of living. Oakland educators are the lowest paid in the Bay Area, where rents have risen 40 to 50 percent since 2012. The skyrocketing costs of housing have caused more than 18% of teachers to leave the district each year, including 600 last year.
I am not an economist but If Jeff Bezos and Amazon was ever forced to pay taxes I would think that could pay for a 15% or a more deserved 20% raise for all 3.2 million public school teachers in the United States per year. Why not?
But in all these strikes pay raises has been only one demand while most of them were about safety issues and quality of education in the class room. The CONTINUE READING: Trump Creates a Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela While a Real One is Right Here in Our Schools | Dissident Voice
