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that Shook Us Up  \nPermalink  \n[https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5734r9qd](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5734r9qd)  \nJournal  \nBerkeley Review of Education, 9(1)  \nAuthor  \nGordon, Craig  \nPublication Date  \n2019  \nDOI  \n10.5070/B89146461  \n[eScholarship.org](eScholarship.org) Powered by the California Digital Library  \nUniversity of California  \nRunning head: SEVEN DAYS THAT SHOOK OAKLAND  \nSeven Days that Shook Oakland and the One that Shook Us Up  \nCraig Gordon  \nCorrespondence concerning this article should be addressed to Craig Gordon. Email:  \n[cbgord@gmail.com](cbgord@gmail.com)  \nSEVEN DAYS THAT SHOOK OAKLAND  \n“One! We are the teachers!”  \nOn Friday, March 1, 2019, a mass picket line of striking Oakland teachers, other district workers, students, and community members chanted loudly as we surrounded La Escuelita Elementary School in Oakland, California, to block school board members from meeting to impose cuts to classified workers (e.g., office workers and custodians) and vital student programs.  \n“Two! A little bit louder!”  \nAs a longtime Oakland teacher and our union’s designated organizer for one of seven school clusters in the district, I helped to coordinate this mass picket line. Oakland Education Association (OEA) members traveled from the pickets at their schools on the seventh day of an astonishingly powerful strike to actively support district workers and students, many who actively supported our fight.  \n“Three! We want justice . . .”  \nTwo days earlier, more than a thousand picketers shut down the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board’s attempt to meet, and we were poised to do so again.  \n“for our students!”  \nWe insisted that the district meet our demands for the schools that students deserve by reallocating its overspending on top administrator salaries and consultant contracts—not by cutting student programs and our fellow workers’ jobs.  \nThis concerted solidarity represented a sharp break from our strike of 1996, which lasted 26 days. Then, as now, OEA demanded that the district “chop from the top” to support school sites. We called for the district to cut spending on central office administrators to pay for smaller class sizes and to retain experienced educators by raising pay from the lowest in the county to the median (Oakland Education Association, 2018) . 1 In 2019, we also demanded that the district reduce its exorbitant spending on consultants (Oakland Education Association, 2018),2 provide more counselors, nurses, and other student-support staff, and abandon plans for school closures targeting Black and Brown communities.  \nBut in 1996, OEA tacitly allowed the district to interpret “the top” and “central office” to mean not only top administrators but also low-paid classified workers represented by other unions. This divide-and-conquer strategy worked: Leaders of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—primarily representing custodians, food-service workers, and aides to students with disabilities—and Service Employees International Union—representing office workers, school security staff, and paraprofessional classroom aides—denounced OEA at school board meetings during the strike. They echoed the district’s charge that OEA was a mostly white union that hurt Black workers, students, and families in Oakland (Olszewski, 1996) .3 In 2019, OEA seemed to correct this historical error by repeatedly stating our opposition  \n1 According to financial reports submitted by all school districts, OUSD spends a far higher percentage of its budget on administration and far less on classroom instruction than any other district in Alameda County, year after year (Oakland Education Association, 2018) .  \n2 According to state records for 2016–17, OUSD spent more than three and a halftimes as much per student on consultants and service contracts than the state average for districts","cbCaitBTg5QmcSSY","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaitBTg5QmcSSY","pdf",176526,"English","# SEVEN DAYS THAT SHOOK OAKLAND\n## Coordinated picketing and demands\n## Comparison with the 1996 strike\n## Tentative agreement and shifting momentum","[{\"question\":\"What was the main action taken by Oakland teachers on March 1, 2019?\",\"answer\":\"They surrounded La Escuelita Elementary School with a mass picket line to block school board members from meeting to impose cuts to classified workers and student programs.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the article emphasize about union demands regarding spending?\",\"answer\":\"It stresses reallocating overspending by “chop from the top,” cutting central office administrative costs and consultant contracts, and protecting student programs and worker jobs.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the author connect the 2019 strike to the 1996 strike?\",\"answer\":\"The article argues that 2019 represented a sharp break from 1996, when OEA tacitly let the district interpret “the top” in a way that divided unions and undermined solidarity.\"}]","Seven Days that Shook Oakland and the One that Shook Us Up | PDF",1792080086,18]