There was a huge mob massing outside of the California Teachers Association headquarters in Burlingame when I arrived for CTA Strike School on Saturday. It was the usual sea of Amazon keffiyehs, an ocean of performative activism and please-notice-me antisemitism in the courtyard, in all of the fashion colors that Amazon offers. I noticed a number of women wearing two of these scarves, one around their shoulders and one over their genitals. This seemed like a bold new chapter in cultural appropriation, but it was hard to work up the energy to care.
It was Saturday morning and we SFUSD teachers were preparing to strike. So off to Strike School I went.
I followed the signs and found a line to finish the sign-in process.
As I waited in line, UESF Vice President of Substitutes Nathalie Hrizi was taking photos of the hundreds of us who’d shown up for strike captain training. She was wearing large, crudely crocheted watermelon wedge earrings she probably bought on Etsy. She snapped away avidly at us.
Our paychecks are going down each year. No kidding. My take-home pay has been steadily going down since our last raise. Also — and I don’t care what Phil Kim claims on his text newsletter — our paychecks are still not correct.
When I had worked my way up to the sign-in table, she snapped a picture of me getting ignored by a blonde colleague in a keffiyeh. I guess I’m known as the unapologetic Jew in the room. After a hostile moment, the woman finally flipped a corner of her scarf over her shoulder and reluctantly handed me a Sharpie.
“Oh, wow, I said, cheerfully trying to achieve union sisterhood. “Nice keffiyeh! Is your family from Jordan?”
She glared at my Star of David and hissed at me. “This. Is. To. Free. The. Palestinians.”
My Star of David is made out of Hamas rocket fragments.
I peeled off my nametag and pressed it onto my sweatshirt. “Good luck with that.”
Her keffiyeh was Jordanian, not Palestinian.
I laughed to myself as I moved into the cavernous, standing-room-only auditorium, searching for an open seat and uneasily rubbing my Star of David.
There are three main contract demands about things that have pushed me to the breaking point.
First of all, SFUSD has hundreds of unfilled special education support positions that remain unfilled year after year because nobody can afford to do these jobs for what SFUSD pays and provides in benefits here in our absurdly expensive city. Every year they just cancel the unfilled positions and start over again in the fall, reposting the job postings as if anybody new is going to magically materialize. It’s delusional.
Second, our paychecks are going down each year. No kidding. With the new calendar year, my health care costs went up while I got a zero cost-of-living adjustment. My take-home pay has been steadily going down since our last raise. Also — and I don’t care what Phil Kim claims on his text newsletter — our paychecks are still not correct. This month, all of us certificated educators got notified on our new pay statements that our credentials have expired.
Our credentials have not, in fact, expired. But that’s not what my official paystub says, and no amount of groveling and apologies from human resources and the department of technology will win me over four years after the ongoing Empower fiasco.
Third, our youngest teachers who are building their careers and starting their families are getting clobbered by the rising healthcare costs we are facing. It’s no wonder that so many educators quit SFUSD five years into their careers — just as they’re becoming masters of their craft. Work in SFUSD or have a family? It’s up to you. We are asking them to make an impossible choice.
It doesn’t help that nobody on any side of the conflict seems to care about accuracy or sincerity. During her presentation, Nathalie talked about how hard it is to be a “single mom” on “one paycheck.”
I nearly did a spit-take, which the woman sitting next to me couldn’t help but notice. “That’s absurd,” I said. “Her father is one of the richest venture capitalists in California.”
The woman frowned. “That isn’t right. I actually am a single mom on one paycheck.”
It is isolating to be a Jew in this union. We are not friends. I ate lunch with another Jewish teacher out in the parking lot, away from the festival of cosplay in the courtyard. As usual, we had a great conversation, but we did not feel welcome with all that enthusiastic Jew-hate on display.
Later, during marching and chanting practice in the parking lot — yes, marching and chanting practice — I carried my sign and marched in a circle with my region, yelling in response to our inconceivably peppy chant leader’s calls.
Nathalie stood off to the side, taking pictures on an iPhone. When I passed, she gave me a big false smile and raised her hand to her novelty earrings, modeling them.
“Nice earrings,” I said. “How’s your dad feeling about that billionaire tax?”
Her smile fell and I marched on.
That’s how bad this is. My pay, benefits, and working conditions are so messed up I am willing to spend time with these people — and they with me.
And that is the secret of all union strikes. We strike together because we have no other options.
See you on the picket line.