Dear Calitics Community,
In solidarity with California teachers sitting-in in Sacramento, I sent out the following press release earlier today:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, May 6, 2011
Contact: Campaign Press Office (916) 996-9170 [email protected]CAPITOL OCCUPATION: Congressional Candidate & Teacher Endorses Emergency
Actions; Marcy Winograd to Use Campaign Phone Bank to ‘Save our Schools’VENICE – Marcy Winograd, a public high school teacher and congressional
candidate (CA-36) will use her campaign phone bank to support the California Teachers
Association “State of Emergency” week of action, May 9-13, at the State
Capitol and across the state.
The press release continues below the jump…
In solidarity with teachers sitting-in in Sacramento, lobbying
legislators throughout the state and tabling on college campuses,
Winograd will call voters to support tax extensions to keep teachers on
the job.“Did you know California faces a state of emergency? I’m Marcy
Winograd, teacher and congressional candidate, asking you to help me
save our schools,” will be the message voters hear when they receive a
series of calls from the Winograd for Congress campaign.Statewide, 20,000 state teachers and health and human service
professionals just received pink slips. In the Los Angeles Unified
School District, 5,000 teachers face lay-offs.Winograd teaches English at Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles,
where 19 teachers received pink slips. “That’s half of our English
department,” said Winograd. “What a travesty that in one of the richest
nations in the world, we are starving our schools – getting rid of
teachers, increasing class size, and closing summer school. Why is it
that our nation always has money for war, but never for education?
Investing in our youth is investing in national security.”To support the week-long emergency actions, Winograd will join teachers
on the picket line in Los Angeles, phone bank to voters in the 36th
District, speak to classes at El Camino College in Torrance, and conduct
radio interviews about the budget crisis in our schools. The actions are
designed to pressure Republican lawmakers to pass tax extensions to help
balance the budget.“It is wrong to balance the budget on the backs of my students,” said
Winograd. “Our young people deserve a quality public education. For
some, it’s literally a matter of life and death because we know that
students who drop out of school too often drop into a life of crime –
and eventually to prison. In Congress, I will make funding education a
national priority, so we can fully staff our schools and provide our
students with an exciting and relevant curriculum.”
And this means you, Kit Bobko! — we need a union member and a teacher in Congress in the CA-36. There’s only one such person in the race to replace Harman: my spouse, Marcy Winograd. The rest of the progressives talk the talk, and some of ’em get the reflexive endorsements, but Marcy has lived the organizing life, has been active in her union (UTLA)and knows how difficult and important teaching ALL of our children is. She will protect public employees and private sector workers, too, and it will come from the heart. She will not have to do a study or form a commission to stand her ground and then advance the cause of working people.
The headlines of recent weeks include: massive layoffs of teachers and public employees in California and around the US, execution of bin Laden after paying Pakistan $20 billion to house him for a decade and conducting a $3 trillion war in neighboring countries, a failed bombing of Libya to oust an oil despot US doesn’t like, and untold numbers of deaths in Japan after a nuclear power meltdown. Of course we want schools not bombs, windmills not missiles, global warming and nuclear meltdowns. But in this campaign among the candidates for Congress, Marcy Winograd is the only one with the vision and integrity needed to achieve “Jobs With Peace”. The other candidates take their crack cocaine of corporate campaign donations that only perpetuate war and corporate greed. Marcy Winograd’s judgment on policy is well worth trusting, and I am proud to support her.
Marcy Winograd has been an organized, genuine, hard working, committed and passionate activist in the Anti-War movement, the 2006-2008 Bush/Cheney impeachment movement (Kucinich’s HR 333), Healthcare Reform movement and other progressive efforts to authentically restore the People’s voice to national government. Marcy received close to 38% of the vote in the 2006 primary and over 41% when she ran against Jane Harman in last summer’s June 8th primary.
Marcy Winograd is not a party machine puppet or party sycophant who will humbly do what the party elders & attendant drones command. Not at all. She is a terrific individual and activist. Winograd is a teacher & citizen who has inspired countless thousands over the last decade. She puts her time, money and — perhaps most importantly — her heart where her words are. Marcy is a thinker and a doer : an authentic voice the likes of which voters are hungry for in these cynical and hard economic times. Marcy is the truest and most progressive voice for for this district’s voters. She is aligned with their economic & social interests and — importantly — with their deeper values and their concerns about the directions this country has taken over the last decade.