Power to the People

Wisconsin activists map out a statewide plan to fight funding cuts.

Photos by Bill Hurley/WEAC

What’s the tipping point for you? How angry or dissatisfied do you have to get before you take a stand? What moves you to act?

For Association members in Wisconsin, these are not rhetorical questions. They are fed up—so much so that they are rolling up their collective sleeves and preparing for a showdown in the next year with the legislature on two critical issues: adequate funding for public schools and a fair collective bargaining law for all school employees. More specifically, they want to repeal school district revenue caps, which have robbed schools of the resources needed to maintain quality education, and get rid of Wisconsin’s Qualified Economic Offer (QEO) law, which has stripped teachers of their collective bargaining rights.

How are they planning to fight? They’ve already begun. Over the summer some 600 activist members from every region of the state came together as local teams to attend the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s (WEAC) Summer Organizing Institute. That’s where they learned about the intricacies of school funding and collective bargaining, about building and using power, and about how best to inform, engage, and mobilize members and community leaders. In the process, they developed concrete strategies and wrote detailed local action plans to use back home.

NEA Vice President Dennis Van Roekel, who showed up at the Institute to offer support for this statewide effort, reminded participants that the ability to act in this way is really what the Association is about. “NEA doesn’t have power because we have 2.7 million members,” he told them. “What gives us power is 2.7 million members moving in the same direction. Collective power comes from us working together.” Yet, he said, “Sometime we are made to feel that we shouldn’t be asking for power.”

WEAC teachers and school support personnel began laying the groundwork for this current effort months ago. Last April, state delegates to the Representative Assembly adopted a collective action plan designed to build support for changes to state funding laws and repeal of the onerous QEO bargaining law.

Now they’re bringing that plan to life, using the principles of community organizing to push for needed budgetary and bargaining reforms. It’s a huge undertaking, and every local is being asked to make a commitment to the campaign.

Greg Davis, a Lodi math teacher who’s been active politically for years, says his team members—he attended along with teaching colleagues Barbara Weber and Mary Jane Nolan for the Lodi Teachers Association—did some nitty gritty planning for fall events. They strategized on ways to get more members out to the GOTV political fair being sponsored by 14 local associations, and they worked out logistics for their literature drop/chili feed coming up in a few weeks. They also made plans to support WEAC’s “I see Red day” on October 15 (wearing red indicates a promise to vote for candidates who support repeal of the QEO and revenue controls).

Davis is upbeat about all of their plans to engage members. “Members already seem to know what’s at stake this fall,” he says. “People who used to say that it doesn’t really matter who’s in office now say that it does matter. They can see now that politics does affect their daily lives.”

What will it take for WEAC members to succeed this fall? A collective will—and vigilance. As Van Roekel told them, “It’s about you. If you don’t like the way things are, change them.”

—Nancy Kochuk