Mechele Dickerson

That makes sense.

Yeah.

But for the school teachers, one of the things that we can do if we're using our K-12 buildings more effectively, we can actually allow the school teachers that want to, they don't have to, to pick up extra money in their area of expertise.

Exactly.

Yeah, just the building is there.

So why not use the building in ways that can put a little more money in the pockets of school teachers and also make sure that lower and middle income children get the same educational and vocational opportunities that rich kids do.

Well, one of the divides that I think we're also seeing is there's a generational divide.

So I remember when I first started teaching courses on the middle class.

Again, this is one of the sessions where we were talking about labor.

And I had a student in the class to raise her hand and say, so, you know, we've been talking about this whole thing with, you know, rights and workers power.

And you've been talking about unions.

Exactly what is a union?

And it was jarring to me until it occurred to me that we had so demonized unions that a lot of students 15 years ago really weren't familiar with the benefits that unions actually could provide.

Students now, they know exactly what unions do.

Part of it is because I think they've looked at their local baristas who have gone out on strike.

They've looked at in the educational context, some of the graduate assistants that have gone out on strike.

I will not talk at all about sports because I'm very involved in that space at the University of Texas.

So I'm not going to talk about that.

But yeah, I think that we have to acknowledge that nothing good has happened to lower and middle income workers since we gutted unions.

I would say Jimmy Hoffa is a very bad visual.