When teachers stopped screaming

And started tilting at windmills

There are times you know exactly when and where you first heard the voices.

On March 31, almost 25,000 Oklahoma teachers and others boarded buses and carpools and met at the state Capitol for a rally. They came to show solidarity with one another and to demand from legislators more money and support for public education. And considering how, since 2008, the state has now slipped to 49th in education funding, they should really come more often. 

I wrote that a little over two years ago.

Why bring it up now?

More than 30 educators from around the state filed into the state capitol Wednesday to turn in their application packets to run for office.

That was a little over two weeks ago.

Quite a day, then, April 13, when Oklahoma Public School social studies and English and biology and gym teachers, tired of state legislators using their profession as a chew toy, decided to do something about it.

It shouldn’t have come to this. 

As Charles P. Pierce of Esquire said, “Sometimes it’s enough to yell at the right building.”

This is what happens when it’s not. 

Cathy Cummings, former candidate for lieutenant governor who helped orchestrate this educators’ assault on the capitol, is making bread when I contact her.  

“It was very organic,” she says of the moment, not the bread. “It started with just a few of us.”

Cummings, who was the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in 2014, is sane, progressive, funny. During that last election, she decided, along with her husband, to try to live on minimum wage. They moved into a small apartment. A bit of grandstanding, sure, and, sure, she got clobbered by incumbent Scott Lamb, but a state needs people like her who see the importance of theatrics in activism.

“It exploded!” she says of the teachers who filed. “I contacted county party chairs, friends that I made along the way, anyone I knew, from one end of the state to the other. And then I went on my own to recruit and promote only Democrats to try to fill every seat that was going un-opposed.”

She’s not taking credit for it all. Others were involved in recruiting and encouraging teachers—the OEA and Angela Clark Little, to name two—but Cummings contacted and recruited 25 Democratic candidates. Teachers who lean Republican, too, have filed.

“A revolution is an evolution,” Cummings says.

A great line, maybe, but she admits her candidates are novices at running for statewide elections, there may not be enough time to mount successful challenges, and, not to put too fine a point on this, most of them are broke.

“Fortunately they’re schoolteachers so they’re used to working with no money on a time crunch,” she says. “Okay, bread’s in the oven, Barry.”

“Do you need to go?”

“No. Just need to turn and watch it.”

The symbolism is wonderful. 

“What if it doesn’t work,” I ask her. “If it fails?”

“Either way,” she says, “the Republican House and Senate is on notice that people are not just going to take this lying down.”

Down at the state capitol, I spoke with Amanda Ewing, Associate Executive Director, Oklahoma Education Association for Legislative and Political Organizing, who, while excited about the potential of changing the education conversation at the capitol, knows the real battle ahead.

“If the state doesn’t increase revenues, I’m not sure what kind of difference it’ll make, no matter how many are elected.”

The other problem, more serious, is what difference does it make if the educators coming in are as narrow-minded and intellectually incurious as the people they’re replacing. Take for instance Jim Beckham (please), Superintendent of Blanchard Public Schools, who’s running in House District 42 on the same dusty, discredited platform of traditional marriage, pro-gun, anti-Obamacare, lower taxes, and securing the southern border.

Nothing says better Oklahoma schools more than getting tough with Mexico.

Longtime friend of this column, Laura Belmonte, head of the OSU History Department, says the rumblings of this go beyond education. 

“It remains to be seen whether this groundswell translates into electoral victories, but it is nonetheless remarkable that almost every incumbent in the state drew a challenger, in some cases, multiple challengers.” 

Belmonte acknowledges that in the end this may not shift the overall partisan make-up of the legislature very much, but it signals that people are tired of business as usual. 

“Many Oklahomans simply aren’t buying the message that lower taxes create more well-paying jobs and that smaller government means better government,” she continues. “When your child is suddenly on a four-day school week, in a class of 45 students, and told a program or class they love is being abolished because of budget cuts, the fiscal realities and policy priorities of the Oklahoma Legislature are no longer a distant phantom, but an upsetting daily reality. That is something that could animate voters across party lines.” 

Cummings, too, understands the slog ahead.

“For the ones that don’t get through this time, they run again next time in two more years. Then, if 15 get through or if 20 get through the whole map changes. And finally, they get a seat at the table.”

John Waldron is at the table, literally. 

We’re at Tally’s Cafe late in the afternoon. Waldron teaches social studies at Booker T. Washington, has since 1999, and he’s now running in District 39 for a seat held by Brian Crain, who can’t run again because of term limits. Waldron spends his free time knocking on doors and, at times, getting them slammed in his face. One resident told him he’s overpaid (an Oklahoma teacher on average makes about $45-thousand per year—that’s 48th in the nation. An Oklahoma legislator makes, with per diem, $38,400 … for three months work—that’s 15^th in the nation). Six hours of work a day, summers off—he’s heard it his entire professional life.

“So much is at stake here—it’s not just about teacher pay, but the very idea that the state can support a decent education system and other public services.” 

But some want to talk about other things. He’s been asked about same-sex marriages and has been told gays are going to hell. 

“But I’m here to talk about education,” he says to nobody in particular.

He’s going to need at least $200-thousand for this race, minimum. He orders a salad.

“I’m in training,” he says.

“So why are you doing this?” I ask.

“What are we doing for the future, for students, how are we preparing them in this state?”

Oklahoma has cut more from education in real dollars since 2008 than any other state—as much as anything, that’s where the decay started. Waldron talks about class sizes, the horror that was former Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi, money and focus being diverted to charter and private schools, the over-promise of lotteries, political and religious agendas, and about condescending legislators who before the filings wouldn’t even pick up the phone to talk to constituents like him.

“They didn’t have to,” he says, “most of them ran unopposed.”

Since April 13, they’re picking up the phone. 

I ask about the church membership listed on his campaign flier that’s lying on the table. 

“Why mention it? Really necessary?” I ask.

He smiles.

“Yeah. People want to know.”

It never stops, the religious pandering, but considering this new energy, at the moment, it can be forgiven. Belmonte’s right, something is happening. I’m looking for a metaphor. It’s not Don Quixote and windmills, it’s not Lech Walesa, climbing the fence at the Gdansk Shipyard, but it’s something. 

It’s hope.

It’s how a state finds itself again.

“I feel very much as though, if people do not make a stand today, so much of what is good about our state will blow away tomorrow,” Waldron continues. “That is the ‘Dust Bowl of the mind’ I’ve been talking about. This is a George Bailey campaign. I am counting on the good people of Bedford Falls to stick together, support their communities and do the right thing. Otherwise, for so many good people in this state, it will be as Woody Guthrie sang: 

‘So long, it’s been good to know you.’”

I bring up the Pierce quote.

“Yeah, I know it,” Waldron says. “They cut over $100-million dollars from education on that very day.”

“They were laughing at you,” I say. “You didn’t even matter enough not to be humiliated.”

“Yeah, so now, we’re not just screaming at the building. We want in.”

For more from Barry, read his article on the war on women.