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I was trying to imagine the teachers in my old school telling us kids to go pound sand for an hour while they marched outside, like good little union robots, and pounded the pavement to attract universal attention to their supposedly impoverished plight.
David Mielke, the longtime President of the Teachers Union in Culver City, far from the latest protest, just shook his head this morning when I asked him about today’s planned walkout by LAUSD’s permanently put-upon teachers.
“We are victims,” the saintly, sin-free LAUSD teachers cried out to a cynical world.
With that, they thumbed their noses at the children as they filed onto cracked sidewalks for a one-hour protest over heaven knows what.
What I Believe
One of the reasons reporters enjoy interviewing Mr. Mielke is that he says what he wants to and what he means every time.
Sort of like hanging over the back fence with your mother-in-law — pure candor flows like a whistling creek.
In his 20th year as President of the Teachers Union, Mr. Mielke is a union guy. Thinks — most of the time — like a union guy.
He also is sensitive and sensible, and that is where the appeal lies.
He wanted to say that A.J. Duffy, the Me-Always-Always-First president of United Teachers Los Angeles, was swimming in the wrong waters. He wanted to say it diplomatically.
“I am in favor of actions that bring attention to budget cuts,” Mr. Mielke said, “but — the first allegiance of teachers is to their students. My point is to involve the kids in the classroom as little as possible.”
However, leaving students by themselves for an hour does not seem to meet Mr. Mielke’s threshold.
Timing Is Off
Noting the June date on the calendar, he said it is much too close to the end of the school year to be abandoning the classroom.
“I am not crazy about taking away instruction time.
“I would say that I need another week to teach because, even as it is, I am not going to get in everything in before the school year ends.
“I support UTLA,” the Union President said. “They are my labor union brothers.”
But brotherhood, pal, has its limits.
Mr. Mielke said that when the notion of the LAUSD walkout first arose, he thought the district was going to support the action. The walkout would be kind of a chummy affair.
His question was: Then what?
After the walkout ends, “who knows what the rest of the day will look
like.”
A Leader Needs Followers
Mr. Mielke was curious about what proportion of teachers Mr. Duffy had behind him.
“This could backfire,” he warned.
David Brewer, the buffoonish, horribly overmatched “superintendent” of LAUSD, was desperately making telephone calls to likely marchers yesterday, asking them to ignore their militant colleagues out on the sidewalk.
Even after he was misguidedly named the super a couple years ago, Mr. Brewer would parade around in public wearing his admiral’s uniform from his U.S Navy days. He resembled someone’s crazy uncle who had escaped from the attic.
And so, between Uncle Bulgy, the overstuffed clown in the super’s chair, and Me-First Duffy pointing guns at his teachers, is it a wonder that LAUSD mainly graduates children with blank minds?
