Picture this: educators from San Diego to San Jose, LA to Sacramento, all at once taking to the streets and withholding our labor, demanding the conditions and wages we’ve been denied in contract after contract. Students and families joining the pickets across the state, expressing collective joy for a vision of fully-funded schools. 

The “We Can’t Wait” campaign, lead by the California Alliance for Community Schools (CACS), has begun — uniting 14 educator unions across California that share a contract expiration date of June 2025. In November, CACS held a meeting between bargaining teams from each union. Our OEA bargaining team has started drafting proposals ahead of that deadline, with an eye toward statewide coordination for similar demands: fully-staffed schools, higher wages, and stability for our students. This should only be the beginning: all union members must be involved in statewide organizing in a bottom-up push. Superficial coordination between union leaders will not cut it. To actually win these demands statewide, it will take a groundswell of organizing between rank-and-file educators. 

Specialists in Oakland could meet with those in another district to identify common issues; school sites could adopt “sister schools” in another city to generate media; veteran strikers in LA or Oakland could share strategies with teachers in San Diego who haven’t struck in a generation.
A statewide strike is possible, and it’s up to us — the rank and file — to make it happen.

Oakland  RANK AND FILE CAUCUS