The Oakland teachers strike may seem a little remote from our usual concerns about cops and camps, but actually the issues are closely intertwined. Wokeness in the strikers’ union, the Oakland Education Association, has become so malignant that half of OEA’s board itself, as well as many teachers and parents, are outraged at some of the union’s demands.
Everybody agrees that the Oakland Unified School District has offered the most generous contract in its history: huge raises and other benefits. But OEA isn’t happy: they’re insisting on “common good” items to be included, like reparations for Black students, housing for homeless students and their families, and all sorts of other perks. To point out that these things are historically not part of teacher contract negotiations seems superfluous. They have nothing to do with education. But this is Oakland, where wokeness has become a virally-transmitted epidemic. No conversation can take place without references to “racial equity” and reparations or, to put it another way, the wokes have hijacked our entire political system and made race the single reference point of everything the city does or tries to do.
We need to understand the power of the ideational fixation that currently possesses the left. They are obsessed with race, to the point of losing their objectivity (and their minds) about everything else. Look no further than Carroll Fife, for whom crushing “white supremacy” has become a drive so strong, it is like a fentanyl addict needing more drug. Every day, Fife and her cohorts awaken determined to discover racism under every bed, beneath every rock; if something happens that doesn’t conform to their viewpoint, they overlook it, and if you have the temerity to point out how blighted they are, they accuse you of racism. It’s not a formula for good governance.
What is the OEA thinking when they demand reparations as a condition for ending their little strike? The answer is, they’re not thinking at all. They’re reflexively parroting the bloated gimcrackery from the woke left, the reparations card they hope will trump everything else on the table. They’ve been awaiting this moment for many years: finally, emboldened by some electoral successes, they’ve decided it’s time to make their move. What they didn’t reckon on was the blowback coming their way, as normal people realize how out-of-touch the OEA actually is.
Look: reparations is blackmail, pure and simple: “Give us the money, or we’ll bring your polite society to a halt.” Or, in this case, they’ll bring the education of Oakland children to a halt: and if any population ever needed education, God knows it’s Oakland children. So you really have to wonder why the OEA believes that making kids dumber is the solution to anything. But then, the entire woke movement is an exercise in dumbing society down. A truly educated public would never buy into the woke agenda, which is exactly why the wokes are continuing this strike: to keep kids (and their parents) stupid.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a strong union guy. I’ve been a union member; my mom was a public school teacher and belonged to her district’s union. I acknowledge the great things the union movement has achieved for American workers over the past century. But when it comes to the OEA, they’ve gone too far. They’ve tipped over the line, from traditional concerns about wages and benefits to this woke fever dream of insane, impossible demands. I’m glad that OEA is getting much-needed blowback. But the truth is, we’ll never eradicate the virus of wokeism from Oakland politics until we deal with the labor unions that fund woke politicians. And that, I’m afraid, is going to take a long time.