Seattle educators are strike-ready!
Yesterday, SPS walked away from the bargaining table and does not have any upcoming bargaining sessions scheduled, and then released their own bargaining update that is not telling the full story. SEA added some annotations to provide greater clarity.
![The Declaration of Independence consists of 27 grievances against the British Crown, King George III. In 1776, slavery is legal in all 13 colonies. In the draft of the document, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following condemning slavery:
He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Only "domestic insurrections among us" remains in the final document. The rest of the passage, directly blaming the Transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery in the colonies on King George III, was intentionally omitted to protect the economic interests of the men in power.
Jefferson’s grievance arguing that one wants to be free from British rule because of slavery, then when no longer under British rule, it becomes more challenging to justify slavery. By ignoring the horrors of slavery in a founding document, it has allowed the United States to spend the preceding 250 years ignoring racial injustice and the need for reparations.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:viybygdfjksinkn6z34h3hfy/bafkreiae2qjxz2ksba2mx2aok2ml6ftvkf4mfacgqsvbwzzho6qrgbgr6e)
![Bargaining Kickoff Rally. As negotiations began with Seattle Public Schools, Seattle Education Association rallied to show solidarity with the Bargaining Team. There were speeches, chanting, and comradery-making among members. A link to contract proposals was also shared. [pictures of members wearing SEA union shirts].](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:viybygdfjksinkn6z34h3hfy/bafkreiffsjqixlt4grachaippmpmoniqhcez2kujbs7svpnglpss4vie54)
