Another Uprising bias: we tend to neglect activity on the West Coast. I did, however, just came across a good post from Jessie Muldoon, a member of the Oakland Education Association, on efforts to defend public schools there.
A SIT-IN by teachers, parents and activists at Lakeview Elementary, an Oakland, Calif., public school slated for closure, was in its third day on Monday, June 18 – but police were threatening to move people out later in the day, as this article was being written.
The sit-in began Friday night as a show of defiance against the threatened closure of Lakeview and four other public elementary schools in Oakland.
Last fall, the Oakland Unified School District announced plans to close dozens of schools over the next several years, starting with five neighborhood elementary schools, all of which serve Oakland’s poor and working class communities of color. The closures will limit families’ access to nearby schools, displace more than 1,000 students and relocate hundreds of teachers and school employees.
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Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of The Nation magazine and the founding editor of Jacobin. Follow him on Twitter: @sunraysunray.
