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.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 1:26 pm
by mrswdk
Neoteny wrote:all of us in states where worker solidarity has been criminalized.
?
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 1:41 pm
by Neoteny
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
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:34 pm
by mrswdk
Hyperbole? Me?????
I trade in emphasised facts, I'll have you know.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:37 pm
by HitRed
My advice, leave West Virginia now. Your future is better elsewhere.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:50 pm
by Neoteny
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.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:53 pm
by HitRed
Come to Texas. Lots of growth and huge demand for teachers.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:55 pm
by mrswdk
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.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:56 pm
by Neoteny
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
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 3:14 pm
by HitRed
People got on rickety wooden boats and crossed the Atlantic.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 4:15 pm
by Neoteny
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?
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 4:20 pm
by HitRed
Detroit
1960 1,670,144
2010 713,777
They went somewhere.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 4:47 pm
by Neoteny
Yeah, all the poor people moved out of Detroit and now it is a vibrant middle- and upper-class utopia.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 4:58 pm
by KoolBak
John Denver told me WV was almost heaven....wtf?
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 5:03 pm
by 2dimes
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.
Re: West Virginia Teacher Strike
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 8:47 pm
by patches70
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.