A Letter to Women Organizers and the NEA

Yesterday, I shared an idea that came to me while I was writing the post.  The idea was about limiting women's strike actions to specific industries.  One of the industries I suggested was Education.  I noted that approximately 72% of all teachers in the U.S. are women.  I also noted that an action on this front would send a loud and clear message to devoss and trump about public education.

To be honest, many of my ideas happen I'm while writing, as did the ideas I presented yesterday.  I do think them out further and make adjustments after I first put them down in the post.  For me this stream of consciousness way of writing, I guess today it would be called 'organic', works well for me.  As I was taking my walk last night, it occurred to me that I really felt a strong urge to share one of the two ideas I wrote about with the important women involved in the Women's Movement and the National Education Association (NEA).  I searched for contacts.

Those who have leadership roles in the Women's Movement  were very willing to share their email addresses in the following site. I will be sending an email to each of these women. One of those women, I mentioned in yesterday's post, Linda Sarsour.  Ms. Sarsour was also willing to share her personal gmail address on the internet.

https://www.womensmarch.com/team/

http://nyf.org/speakers/linda-sarsour/

Next, I went looking for important individuals in the NEA; male and female.  I learned that the current
President is Lily Eskelsen García.  I was able to find her twitter address (handle?).  She is on Facebook.  She can be communicated with via pinit.  All of these methods would not give me direct access to her eyes or at least someone close to her.  I called the national office in D.C. and left a message explaining my desire to communicate with Ms. Garcia as directly as possible while enabling her to feel secure due to not knowing me 'from borscht'.  I am hoping the office will call me back, but as I write this it is 4:22 pm edt and the office in D.C. closes at 4:30 pm edt.  So if I don't hear back by mid day Monday, I'll call again.  I'm including a couple of links if you want to learn more about Lily Eskelsen García.  I'm certainly impressed.

http://www.nea.org/home/President-National-Education-Association.html

http://lilysblackboard.org/search/email+

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Eskelsen_Garc%C3%ADa

Next, I found a list of all of the members on the NEA Board of Directors.  There are one or more per state.  Again, direct email addresses were not available.

http://www.nea.org/home/49809.htm

 Then I found a listing of NEA-Retired Leadership And Contacts.  Bing, bing, bing, bing........I hit a major vein of gold. Twenty Nine Retired members, listed on the NEA web site with personal email addresses. This includes ten members on the NEA-Retired Executive Council and six members on the 2016-2017 NEA Board of Directors for Retired.

http://www.nea.org/home/1662.htm


The email that I will write to all of these people will read as follows:

Dear All,

I am writing to share an idea that I posted in the blog that I write.  I was performing a 'debriefing' in the posting dated 3/9/17, of the 'Day Without a Woman' action in conjunction with and in honor of International Women's Day.  It occurred to me that I felt a strong urge to share the following idea with those that could implement it.  I am 'reprinting the post, in its entirety, for all of you so that you might gain insight to my thoughts and how they developed:

Was this the Women's march on D.C that was held the day after trump's inauguration?  Of course not.  Did anyone expect it to be the same? I don't believe so.  Was the action successful?  In some ways it was and in other ways it wasn't.  I'm going to look at news reports about A Day Without a Woman and lay out what I think worked well and where strategies could be improved.  These will only be my opinions, for what it's worth.

I found two articles that I felt helped me solidify my thoughts.  The first thing I was looking for was some gauge of the effectiveness of what was also billed as a general strike.  the New York Times noted that:

"The municipal court in Providence, R.I., shut down because seven of the clerks and a deputy court administrator stayed home from work. Schools in Alexandria, Va.; Chapel Hill-Carrboro, N.C.; and Prince George’s County, Md., closed for the day because so many teachers stayed home."

I found these to be heartening results.  Certainly, I had hoped for shut downs which would then ripple through other folds of the fabric of our country.  Trials being postponed and therefore days taken off for March 8th will need to be taken off a second time to appear in court.  Parents having to scramble to find child care for young students not in school.  Maybe one of the parents needed to take the day off to stay home.  This, in turn has an effect on the business that that parent works for.  Although I knew it most likely wouldn't be a large enough action to cause true havoc, I did hope that there would be more shut downs than the ones listed.  But, again, these were good results with consequences that will inform future actions.

Linda Sarsour, who helped chair the event noted that, "this [was] an opportunity to introduce women to different tactics of activism".  Prior to yesterday, 30,000 women had pledged on line to participate in one or more of the proscribed protest activities; not going to work, wearing red, and not spending money unless at a woman owned business.  

The Times article also pointed out some disappointing realities. Per Todd Gitlin, an author about political movements and a former member of Students for a Democratic Society, "a general strike has to actually stop something from functioning, Anywhere it hasn’t done that can’t be counted as a success. It plays to your inner audience, not your outer audience."  The article also spoke to the fact that a large number of women could not stay away from their work place because they could not afford the loss of pay and the very real possibility of losing their jobs.  This limited the number of women that could participate in the most visible way  possible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/us/a-day-without-a-woman.html?_r=0

Reinforcing this last point, Maureen Shaw, a feminist writer, wrote, "This feels very much like a protest of the privileged – and frankly, unrealistic. Tens of millions of women have neither the benefits nor the flexibility to take the day off in protest.”  Ms Shaw was quoted in The Gaurdian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/a-day-without-a-woman-strike-feminist-protest-trump

In reading and thinking about the outcomes and how a more effective action can take place in the future, I thought of the following.  Rather than an overarching general strike, I see efforts focused on a particular industry may be more successful.  For instance, I heard today that approximately 72% of all teachers are women.   National Teacher's Day is May 8th.  Certainly with the assistance of the National Education Association (NEA),  a one day strike will demonstrate how an absence of women can bring the nation's school systems to a grinding halt.  The NEA describes itself as, "the nation's largest professional employee organization, [and] is committed to advancing the cause of public education. [The} NEA [has] 3 million members."  Not only would this put a fine point on women's necessity to provide education for our youth, but it would simultaneously underscore the absolute need for public education, thereby placing devoss on her heals.

http://www.nea.org/home/2580.htm 

The bold text, above, is the idea that I want to share with all of you.  You are the people who can make this happen.  I am a single blade of grass in the American lawn.  If any of you believe that this idea is worth pursuing, I would be all too happy to assist in facilitating communications.  I have used the 'Bcc' function with this email and made myself the main recipient in order to not expose anyone's email address.  Those of you that want me to share your email address with everyone else who has received this letter, please let me know.  It is obvious that finding all of your email addresses was not difficult, since I was able to do it by searching with Google, but because each of you has no idea who the other recipients are, I could act as a liaison to get the ball rolling.

Thank you for your time while reading and considering my thoughts.

With the greatest respect for all of you, I am


William R. (Bill) Sherman


p.s. - If any of you are interested in reading my blog, to get a better sense of my thinking, the address is:

www.politicalbill1218.blogspot.com 

If you would like to be on my once a week email on Sundays, with a listing of the past seven posts, let me know and I will place you on the email list.  Again, thank you!