Strike Two

 It was a gray day on Thursday. My first day on the picket line. My first day back on the picket line. I was out there four years ago, On strike. Because it's something that union members do. 

It was not lost on me that the Writers Guild was also on strike, mostly in Los Angeles. My wife suggested that I take a look at their signs. For inspiration. There are lots of ways to say "we want a fair contract," or "please stop giving all the money to the people with the nice offices." 

For the record, I don't have an office. I have a classroom. Well, to be completely transparent, I have a desk in the corner of the computer lab where I teach. This functions as my office. A little behind the scenes secret here: many of the blog entries that you read here are composed on a laptop perched on the corner of that desk. This one was not. It was pounded out one the desktop in the front room of my house, where I stopped to take a quick break after spending the morning walking up and back over the same hundred feet of sidewalk, carrying a sign and barking out slogans and chants to anyone who would listen. Mostly the ones within earshot were fellow union members who were pretty much in agreement with the words I was spouting. 

But getting back to those signs. Many years ago, during another work action, I decided to write my own sign to carry. In my best handwriting I wrote, "My mom wrote me a note that says I don't have to come to school until I get a fair contract." I would love to tell you that I was besieged by admirers of my cleverness, but I was pretty quickly convinced that teacher strikes aren't about showing off. They're about showing up. 

So when I showed up with the sun on this past Thursday, I picked up a sign off the stack and started pacing. And chanting. And talking to parents who missed the messages we sent out about the teachers strike. I handed them flyers and for some I attempted to make sentences in Spanish that would explain our situation. Mostly, the kids at our school stayed home. With just a few weeks left in the school year, they got an extra day off. 

I didn't. I was busy doing my job. Walking and talking. It's for this that I want the big bucks. And an appreciation for all my cleverness.