Labor & Employment Law

Retired Teacher Marches for California?s Schools and State?s Future

By Mike Hall

Gavin Riley taught in California’s public schools for 37 years. Today, the retired California Federation of Teachers member is in the 40th day of a 48-day, 250-mile March for California’s Future. Riley wants nothing less than to save the school system that educated him in the 1950s and 1960s, and where he in turn taught thousands more.

Sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), AFSCME and a coalition of labor, education and faith groups, the march is drawing attention to the state’s budget crisis and the devastating impact of budget cuts on Californians now and into the future.

At the California Progress Report, Riley writes that during the weeks he and the other marchers have been on the road from Bakersfield, through the San Joaquin Valley and then onto Sacramento,

[o]ur walk has allowed us to see ample evidence of the crisis: crumbling road and irrigation systems, high unemployment, foreclosed houses everywhere, overcrowded classrooms courtesy of teacher layoffs, people living under highway overpasses with few social services available, fallow farm fields and closed processing plants, to name just a few. About the only thing growing seems to be the number of new prisons in the Valley, an ironic epitome of the problem.

He recalls famous marches for justice in the 1960s, especially the 1966 march from Delano to Sacramento by César Chávez and the Farm Workers. Their march raised Californians’ awareness of the terrible plight of agricultural workers and is a model for the March for California’s Future.

That [1966] march did not end the problem, but it was the tipping point in changing the dynamic for farm workers….Today we are in need of another game changer in California.

Our hope is that this march, which actually covers more ground than the original UFW march, and the final climatic rally on the steps of the Capitol will have a similar long-term impact. We hope that the elements of the crisis in public education, public health and public safety that we are talking about at every stop will become visible to the voters of California, in much the same way the farm workers’ march helped the people of California and nation awaken to their plight.

Read his entire column here.

Riley is one of seven marchers, including five current or retired CFT members, who are making the entire march. Along the way, hundreds of firefighters, nurses, in-home care workers, students and police officers have joined and will join the marchers for parts of their 250-mile trek to the state capitol in Sacramento.

Many of the core marchers and those who join on the way are filing updates on the march. Click here to read their reports.

The march ends April 21 with a huge rally at the state capitol.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on April 13, 2010 (boomark / email).