USA: Teacher leader arrested
On 7 March, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten was placed in handcuffs and arrested along with 18 other activists during a protest against the closure of 29 public schools in Philadelphia which, according to Mayor Nutter and the School Reform Commission, are poorly performing schools.
AFT North East Regional Director Mark Bostic spoke of a “reckless strategy that won’t help kids and won’t save money. These harmful closures will only destabilize neighborhoods and destroy schools. Local teachers, parents and community members are standing together to demand a moratorium on harmful closures”.
Weingarten gave a speech to the crowd before her arrest noting that “Kids have suffered cut after cuts. The powers that be don’t care about opportunity for children.” The AFT President also texted that “when you’ve exhausted all the legal remedies and none of the powers that be will listen to you, then you’re forced to take actions which may lead to an arrest.”
About the closing schools, she said: “It will cost more to close these schools — $25 million — than it will to keep them open, $24 million.”
