It’s Sunday noon, the day before our spring break ends. Lucky me, eh? I get a spring break every year. Nobody but teachers is so lucky. That and summers off, what else can a person ask for? Good question. I am sitting in the middle of Somerset Mall, the mother of all malls in Michigan. Yes, I do have a good life. No doubt about it. Even though I have only taken one summer off in thirty-three years of teaching and even though I as sit here in the Mall, I am part of a sit-in with other Michigan teachers who are being besieged by the forces of fiscal restraint. My best count says that there are 75 other teachers here today. The rally goes till 2 pm. I expect some coming and going.

So if my peers are in a similar position and as lucky as I, why all the up roar? What have we got to complain about? Like the rest of America, the middle class of America is feeling the squeeze—or at least I think we are. The call for decreasing taxes has public employees around the country feeling defensive. We have endured a series of blows here in Michigan and the forecast for the immediate future is bleak. Teachers are being targeted because of benefits and retirement costs. We are doing to well in comparison to the rest of the country. Twenty years ago, though, teachers had a special retirement account that the state had set aside to be used to pay for these expenses. But the governor at the time, John Engler, decided that he could put the money to better use. That money is gone now. The courts ruled that his actions were inappropriate but refused to require him to pay back the fund. They said it would be too costly. The current governor, Rick Snyder, wants to ask teachers to pay 20% of health care; take a 5% percent pay cut and make assorted other sacrifices for the good of the state. He says the he hopes to save about 1.8 billion dollars—the same amount in tax breaks that he is giving to business. His position is that the tax cuts will create jobs. I wonder openly about that claim. What evidence is there that tax cut will create jobs? When has that happened in the past? Did the Bush tax cuts create jobs? They certainly did not create them in Michigan. As a matter of fact, the only jobs that have come to Michigan since the tech bubble burst in March of 2000--well there are no new jobs in Michigan. We saved some at places like Delphi and Visteon, but not really. Workers there took draconian cuts. Many were forced to leave. There wasn’t much of a trickle down from the rich and wealthy.

So I have to ask myself, if everyone is getting hit hard, shouldn’t I take cuts too?

I admit this is a difficult question to consider. I am asking to maintain a life style while others have sacrificed. Wait, didn’t I show that we sacrificed too when the retirement fund was raided? Yes, but in relation to other workers? Ok, is there more? Well we did assume two extra classes a year for free when our district moved to a trimester. Many schools in Michigan are now on trimesters and teachers on average have increased their teaching load 20%. That increase in productivity come without a benefit to me.

Additionally, other districts are finding that their backs are against the wall. West Bloomfield is in the same county and neighbors my district. The school board imposed a 10% pay cut two weeks ago in a secret meeting. The made the cut retroactive to the first of the year so teachers are receiving hundreds less than they were a few months ago. The teachers by the way did not agree to these concessions. The Superintendent went so far as to start a group of administration supporters who regularly attend board meeting and complain about the job performance of teachers. Teachers wear red and the protesters wear another color. It is like some game. What are coming to?

And of course we all know about the contest in Wisconsin. It looks like the public workers there are going to get Floridaed. A clerk in a predominately Republican district suddenly found over 7,000 votes that will decidedly turn the election in favor of the union busting contingent. So the first way that I answer this question about how I should resist concessions is that if there is any chance of protecting the wonderful life I have, I ought to start now rather than later. The notion of gradual concessions until the bottom falls out seems to have failed for auto workers and will certainly fail for teachers.

But there is another reason to resist. It isn’t that I oppose school reform. I think schools are too slow to reform. Too much is entrenched in tradition and in the routine of old ways. Should teacher bear the weight of that problem? Absolutely. They are not alone in it, but they cannot escape their culpability along the lines of school reform failure. However, cutting budgets is not reform. Saving money does little to improve education. Whose purpose do these cuts serve? My concessions will go where? Back to the schools? Absolutely not. Let’s not forgot the lottery lie sold to Michigan. We were told that all money from our state lottery would go to education. Ok, so maybe it does. What we weren’t told is that for every lottery dollar that goes in, another dollar from the property tax side that funds schools is cut. Net increase from lottery dollars? $0. That’s a lie in my book.

I am beginning to think schools, teachers, and public workers are part of a larger battlefield. It is not a conventional fight however. There are many sides with dogs in the fight. Perhaps the Grover Norquists of the world are the fiscal conservatives in this to save every tax dollar they can pocket. There are also the social conservatives that lost out on the budget compromise Friday when Speaker Boehner conceded on Planned Parenthood and health care. They will be angrier at the next go round. I would bet that business has a stake in this fight too. If they can wrest collective bargaining away from public workers in the Rust Belt, they are that much closer to beating private unions. That being said, it may be the unions like the UAW and AFL-CIO that have the most at stake in this one. No, concessions are not the way to go here. This is a much bigger fight. And it is this fight that brings me back to the NWP.

This is the next best chance we will ever have to take a stand on a variety of issues that center on teaching. The fact is though that is about much more than teaching, and to stand up for teaching means that we will probably have to stand up on a variety of other fronts as well. It would be nice if we could separate the teaching part from the parts that we find distasteful or too political for teachers. I certainly don’t want any piece of Norquist or the Tea Party. I don’t think I want to be part of the AFL-CIO either. My life is too sweet. But let’s be clear. Those people who disagree with me or don’t share my point of view are not my enemies. We cannot make the same mistake that those who are coming after us have made. We have to embrace them and speak to them. We need to find the words that will allow us to co-construct a path together. It will be a difficult one especially if we are to avoid losing everything that we have worked for over the years as the Project. However, we are all stakeholders and entitled to our voice. We cannot eschew confrontation just because it is uncomfortable any longer when we talk to parents, friends, and peers. Nor can we be simply cheerleaders avoiding direct action. We must reflect on our community and reform from within so that we can continue the important work we undertake. This is a struggle that we must be willing to assume for as long as it takes. We must not speak despairingly of others, but we cannot refuse to criticize ourselves in an effort to improve our practice. We all heard it before so I conclude with we must be the change we wish to see.