Thursday, December 4, 2014

Twenty Years Ago on the Round Lake Teacher Strike-- Part 1

DECEMBER 2, 1994, FRIDAY:  Missed Dino's (in Fox Lake, Illinois, where I always met teachers on Fridays for breakfast) because I overslept.  I decided to go to the high school entrance instead of Murphy School as I wanted to greet Georgia Boy.  In honor of his presence, i was wearing my University of Georgia hat and jacket.  (He had been fired from his teaching job in Georgia because of the one minute of silence requirement, something I admired him for, but he then came here to SCAB.)  I intended to call him a hypocritical carpetbagger, but settled for hypocritical scalawag.  There weren't very many people there.

I went to the strike headquarters for awhile and then to Magee and walked in front for awhile.  Evon, our social worker, and I went out on a UPS delivery (Union Postal Service) to area homes but came up short on pages and went back to the Headquarters for more.  A non-tenure teachers' meeting was going on there and these people have been great.  Only two of the 60 have crossed the line.

More to Come.  --Cooter

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