| SEARCH OnWEAC |
|---|
Participants join hands and sing "Solidarity Forever"
at the conclusion of the 2004 Summer "Organizing" Academy.
Summer Academy main page
WEAC's future is dependent on a new generation of leaders who must be willing to take risks, "agitate for change" and take on the battle to preserve our great schools, the NEA's John Stocks told about 370 key WEAC leaders Wednesday (August 4, 2004) at the conclusion of the Summer "Organizing" Academy in Wisconsin Dells.
 |
| The future of WEAC is dependent on a new generation of leaders such as these active members who are former Student WEA leaders. Student WEA members are WEAC members studying to become teachers and are enrolled in Wisconsin’s public and private universities. The five former Student WEA leaders above are now active in their local associations. Each was part of the local teams at the Summer ‘Organizing’ Academy. They are (left to right) Beth Adelsen, president of the Kenosha Education Association; Andrea Feutz, a building rep for Fort Atkinson EA; Elisha Prellwitz, public relations chair of the Clintonville EA; Maria Krechel, public relations chair of the Port Washington EA; and Ron Martin, secretary of the Eau Claire Association of Educators. Excellent young leaders and organizers such as these are the heart of WEAC’s future. If you have a student teacher in your classroom this year, please encourage them to become Student WEA members. For more information about Student WEA, go to www.student-wea.org. |
These new leaders must honor this organization's history, respect the people who fought hard to earn their collective bargaining rights, and adapt the techniques developed and perfected by their elders, but they now "will have to create their own history," he said.
Today, we face powerful forces that are attempting to destroy Wisconsin's great public schools. "Your charge is to engage this battle and this struggle," he said.
Stocks, who is on leave as WEAC's director of public affairs, is in charge of the NEA's Great Public Schools Action Plan. He said national forces, as well as forces in Wisconsin, are attempting to brand public schools as failures, reduce public support for public education, and create an environment supportive of private education and privatization.
Their strategies include:
Stocks said we must fight these efforts by:
The most urgent assignment for WEAC local leaders is to go home and organize every member of this organization to get to the polls and vote in this fall's elections, Stocks said. The only way that is going to happen, he said, is for leaders and organizers to have as much face-to-face contact with their colleagues back home and have "essential conversations" about the critical importance of having pro-public education people in public office, especially in the White House.
 |
|
John Stocks
|
The presidential election in Wisconsin, he said, will be "razor thin close," and every vote is important.
"It is up to us to make the difference," he said.
Whether organizing for the election or legislation or a fair contract, "change does not happen without a struggle," Stocks said.
Struggles for justice are rarely spontaneous; they are "planned, organized and executed with discipline," he said. That is where WEAC's Great Schools Statewide Action Plan is essential to the effort to bring about change, Stocks said in urging local leaders and organizers to "plug in" to the plan.
"Change does not happen without leadership, and it does not happen without organization," he said. "Without leaders like yourselves, change is not going to happen."
Stocks said leading an effort that gives our members the power to improve their lives and to preserve public education for future generations of children "will be the most rewarding thing you have ever done in your life." And if we don't do it, nobody else will.
"The only organization that is going to lead this effort is this organization," he said. "It is your charge, and your responsibility."
Posted August 6, 2004