From Picket Lines To Polls: US Teachers Eye Political Office

Like thousands of fellow teachers across West Virginia, Amy Grady went on strike this year demanding better health care and higher pay. Now she hopes to give state legislators a lesson by capturing a state Senate seat

Leon, United States, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Oct, 2018 ) :Like thousands of fellow teachers across West Virginia, Amy Grady went on strike this year demanding better health care and higher pay. Now she hopes to give state legislators a lesson by capturing a state Senate seat.

With labor activism catching fire and spreading to multiple US states, a record number of teachers -- 1,455 current and former educators, according to the National Education Association -- are running for office in the November 6 midterm elections.

Most of them are Democrats aiming to make the leap from schoolhouse to statehouse, to shake up American politics and to make education a priority for the election and beyond.

"I didn't foresee myself running for this," Grady told AFP in her classroom at Leon Elementary School, as her students focused on assignments at their desks.

The 39-year-old was among 20,000 angry West Virginia teachers who launched a nine-day wildcat strike in February that became the most potent display of US educator activism in decades.

It set off similar walkouts and protests in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma, temporarily shuttering thousands of schools and sending shockwaves through legislatures and President Donald Trump's administration.

"The more I talked to teachers and service personnel and different people, they were saying, 'We need somebody who can represent us, somebody who understands what we're going through, somebody who has been in the school system,'" said Grady, who has taught in Leon for nine years and is running for office as an independent.

"I decided to go for it." So did Brianne Solomon, an art and dance teacher at Hannan High School in Ashton now running as a Democrat for the House of Delegates.

Solomon resented the way the state was steadily chipping away at public school funding, even as teachers took on added responsibilities to help students with family problems, including the opioid crisis devastating West Virginia communities.

"I'm kind of fed up," Solomon said last week during her campaign fundraiser at a Charlotte bar. "I'm not a career politician, but I'm going to put my name on the ballot."