Marching Across California to Restore the American Dream
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(This is a cross-post from the AFSCME website.)
A massive demonstration at the state Capitol in Sacramento on April 21 heralded the end of the 48-day March for California’s Future, but the marchers’ fight to preserve public services and education has only just begun.
Thousands participated in the 365-mile march, sponsored by AFSCME councils 36 and 57, UDW Homecare Providers Union, the Coalition of LA City Unions, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and other education and civil society groups.
Seven hardy individuals set out to make the entire journey on foot, and six succeeded, including Irene Gonzalez, vice president on the executive board of L.A. County Deputy Probation Officers Local 685 (AFSCME Council 36).
Says Gonzalez, a senior investigator aide and reserve deputy probation officer for Los Angeles County:
Our message of restoring quality public education and public services, rebuilding a government that serves all Californians, and creating a fair tax system to fund our state’s future has found real resonance here in Sacramento and throughout the Central Valley.
Retired Teacher Marches for California’s Schools and State’s Future
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Gavin Riley taught in California’s public schools for 37 years. Today, the retired California Federation of Teachers member is in the 40th day of a 48-day, 250-mile March for California’s Future. Riley wants nothing less than to save the school system that educated him in the 1950s and 1960s, and where he in turn taught thousands more.
Sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), AFSCME and a coalition of labor, education and faith groups, the march is drawing attention to the state’s budget crisis and the devastating impact of budget cuts on Californians now and into the future.
Union Members Keep Marching for California’s Future and Economic Justice
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On March 5, Irene Gonzalez, a Los Angeles juvenile probation officer and AFSCME Local 685 member, set out with a diverse group of other union members for 250-mile, 48-day March for California’s Future.
Sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), AFSCME and a coalition of labor, education and faith groups, the march is drawing attention to the state’s budget crisis and the devastating impact of budget cuts on Californians now and into the future.
Last week, Gonzalez writes on the California Progress Report, that as the march entered Fresno
we came upon a 10-block long area of homeless people sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk flanked by rows and rows of tents, their only possessions being their sleeping bags and the clothes on their backs.
They are surrounded on all sides by boarded up homes. The empty, unoccupied houses, the foreclosed properties that many of these men and women once occupied, look down on them daily and seem to taunt them. Read the rest of this entry »
Back to School to Learn Labor History
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As children begin returning to school after the holidays, AFT is providing tools for educators to teach them things they ought to know about America’s labor history. A special section in the winter edition of American Educator, the union’s quarterly journal, focuses on the importance of including labor history in our classrooms.
With the key protections for workers unions have gained under attack, there is a greater need for the next generation to understand the real role of working men and women in building the nation and making it a better place, contributors to the journal say.
James Green, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, explains that learning about the role of working men and women shows students “the contributions that generations of union activists have made to building a nation and to democratizing and humanizing its often brutal workplaces.”
While their predecessors successfully fought for monumental changes that benefited all Americans (not just union members), such as passing the Social Security Act of 1935 and ending child labor, today’s union veterans can take pride in their own accomplishments. For example, they pushed for mine safety laws and workers’ compensation laws. They fought for the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
