Statewide W. VA Teachers’ Strike Should Remind Us to Appreciate What Teachers Do

Here’s what teacher, in fact all public school employees to one degree or another:
“People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed.” — Samuel Levenson (December 28, 1911 – August 27, 1980) Teacher, American humorist, writer, television host, and journalist.

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On February 22, school teachers across all 55 county school districts in West Virginia shut down the state’s schools by going on strike. West Virginia’s teachers say they cannot afford to support their families. The strike involves about 20,000 teachers and over 250,000 students.

Here is Sarah Jaffe in the NY Times: Strikes as broad as the one in West Virginia are vanishingly rare. But when they do happen, the prove that our labor history is not that deeply buried… West Virginia’s teachers, along with the rest of the state’s government workers, never got the legal right to collective bargaining, yet even without that right, teachers and school service workers have united across a largely rural state… By rising up against austerity, they have set an example for the rest of the labor movement and made it clear that they fight for the rights of all workers rather than…

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Journalist’s Resource:Research on today’s news

Safe injection sites’ role in the opioid epidemic
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh have expressed skepticism over supervised injection sites as an effort to address the state’s ongoing opioid epidemic. Baker suggested that the research on safe injection sites as a “path to treatment” was inconclusive. We consulted the latest scholarship and found positive associations between safe injection sites and treatment uptake. http://bit.ly/2F8rkK5

Can black Republicans win votes for the GOP? Republican leaders are continually trying to draw minorities to the party, a strategy that will become increasingly important to its viability as the nation itself becomes more diverse. This collection of research looks at black conservatism and the likelihood that black Republicans can draw African-American voters, who overwhelmingly lean Democratic, to the GOP. http://bit.ly/2I0Ezdy Gun violence prevention in schools In the wake of a school shooting, conversation can quickly turn from grief to prevention. School administrators, parents and politicians debate ideas ranging from restricting gun access to arming teachers. What are schools already doing to prepare for gun violence? How do these preparations affect their students? Are these measures effective? We’ve collected recent research that addresses these questions. http://bit.ly/2FMrFiD Tens of billions in criminal restitution debt may never be paid  Federal judges are required to order individuals convicted of certain crimes to pay restitution, allowing victims to recoup some of their financial losses. A new government report finds that offenders owed $110 billion in restitution at the end of fiscal year 2016. However, the vast majority of that debt is “uncollectible.” Almost all offenders ordered to pay restitution received waivers allowing them to forgo payment because they had no ability to pay. http://bit.ly/2D0ZvgH Black children more likely to die after surgery Surgery, while often lifesaving, is sometimes life threatening. Risk of mortality varies depending on procedure type as well as other factors. A new study finds death after surgery is more than twice as likely for black children than white children. The study proposes a more accurate model that pinpoints risk factors most commonly associated with this outcome for each group.  http://bit.ly/2F6mhWo

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Women, Influence and the Neoliberal Model

A tale of two events celebrating women with very little in common…

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

On Wednesday, the Grand Rapids Business Journal will celebrate their annual list of the Most Influential Women in West Michigan. 

This celebration, will feature Lis Wiehl, who was a reporter and legal analyst for Fox News for 15 years. The event, which is March 7, is one day before International Women’s Day. Now, I don’t know if this is intentional, but International Women’s Day and the Grand Rapids Business Journal (GRBJ) event have nothing in common, except that it involves women.

International Women’s Day was started based on the exploitative working conditions of women in the garment industry, which resulted in a fire at the Triangle Factory in New York City, on March 25, 1911. One hundred and twenty-three women died that day, which led to an international outcry and the birth of a new movement led by women.

The GRBJ event doesn’t honor working class women, it honors…

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