West Virginia Teacher Strike

by **Neoteny** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 1:12 pm

It looks like the illegal wildcat teacher strike in West Virginia is finally penetrating the conservative US mainstream media.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/05/us/west- ... index.html

They are striking for their first pay increase since 1990 and a reasonable health insurance policy. Despite being known as a red state, the teachers are receiving an outpouring of support from the working class in West Virginia in their fight for a living wage. Their bravery is a model for all of us in states where worker solidarity has been criminalized.

by **mrswdk** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 1:26 pm

Neoteny wrote:all of us in states where worker solidarity has been criminalized.

?

by **Neoteny** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 1:41 pm

mrswdk wrote:
Neoteny wrote:all of us in states where worker solidarity has been criminalized.

?

Yeah, I probably just should have just said "strike" there. You're the last person who should be criticizing my hyperbole though

by **mrswdk** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:34 pm

Hyperbole? Me?????

I trade in emphasised facts, I'll have you know.

by **HitRed** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:37 pm

My advice, leave West Virginia now. Your future is better elsewhere.

by **Neoteny** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:50 pm

Ah yes, the classic "tell poor people to move elsewhere" argument that assumes that picking up roots and leaving social networks is affordable and effective.

by **HitRed** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:53 pm

Come to Texas. Lots of growth and huge demand for teachers.

by **mrswdk** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:55 pm

If you're not prepared to up sticks and move half way around the world for work just because you currently live down the road from your high school friends and your sister then you're not worth more than $30,000 a year plus benefits.

by **Neoteny** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:56 pm

HitRed wrote:Come to Texas. Lots of growth and huge demand for teachers.

1) People can't afford to up and move
2) That doesn't fix WV education; there will always be kids to be educated
3) f*ck Texas

by **HitRed** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 3:14 pm

People got on rickety wooden boats and crossed the Atlantic.

by **Neoteny** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 4:15 pm

So instead of getting involved in democracy and changing the place you love for the better, you suggest, in 2018, that people just uproot and leave as entire communities decimated by economic hardship, by comparison to an extremely dangerous voyage risking life and family for a lifestyle of grueling hardship, to disembark at the Plymouth Rock of the neoliberal hellscape of Texas?

Texas?

by **HitRed** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 4:20 pm

Detroit

1960 1,670,144

2010 713,777

They went somewhere.

by **Neoteny** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 4:47 pm

Yeah, all the poor people moved out of Detroit and now it is a vibrant middle- and upper-class utopia.

by **KoolBak** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 4:58 pm

John Denver told me WV was almost heaven....wtf?

by **2dimes** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 5:03 pm

It's probably a pretty good place as long as you got your old hat and fiddle when the sun's coming up and there's cakes on the griddle. Maybe not as good to be a teacher.

by **patches70** on Mon Mar 05, 2018 8:47 pm

I know West Virginia well. It is arguably one of the most beautiful states of the Union. Majestic mountains, deep valleys, a natural paradise.
It is also very poor. Only Arkansas and Mississippi are poorer.

West Virginia also has the infamous distinction of being the State where the most Governors have been sent to prison for various corruption crimes. Yeah, politically it's that kind of state. Even worse than Illinois in that regard, though Illinois is probably #2 for governors getting sent to prison.

West Virginia's #1 resource is sheep. Why just last year West Virginians learned they could get wool from sheep. In WV a sheepherder is known as a pimp.
I suppose if you got a whole room full of WV teachers together you just might have a whole set of teeth if you combined them all together. Maybe. So don't feel too bad for their plight, not having a job is the least of their worries.
The only pretty women in WV are tourists.
The favorite activity by West Virginians during Halloween isn't trick or treating. It's pump kin.
In my home state of Virginia Moosehead is a beer. In WV it's a misdemeanor.
Even the ducks fly upside down over WV because there isn't anything worth shitting on.
If a West Virginian town's library burned down, it would be a terrible thing, because at least half of those burnt books probably hadn't been colored yet.
Safe sex in WV is putting a sign on a cow's ass that says "she'll kick!"
When blondes move from Virginia to WV we get a higher average IQ in both states.
Kids who graduate from WV colleges have their personalities to use for birth control, so, lucky them I guess. Or lucky the rest of us? Yeah, probably the latter.

Anyway, West Virginia is a great state, the only real negative about WV is that it's filled with West Virginians.