Furious Parents Cross Picket Lines in Oakland as Teachers Continue Strike for ‘Reparations,’ Among Other Demands

Furious parents marched their children across picket lines of striking teachers in Oakland, California, on Friday on the seventh day of a strike in which teachers are demanding reparations for slavery, among other demands.

As Breitbart News noted earlier this week, Oakland’s public school teachers went on strike last week not only for increased wages, but also for a variety of other demands, including environmental change and reparations.

While the teachers’ union has scaled back some demands, its latest list still includes a demand that reparations for black students be incorporated into a deal.

Local Fox affiliate KTVU-2 reports that some parents have had enough:

This morning at Joaquin Miller Elementary School, a group of parents gathered across the street to cross the picket line together, and escort their kids to campus.

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“I’ve never crossed a picket line before in my life. Yesterday was the first day I crossed,” said OUSD parent Francesca Brown, who has a 1st and 3rd grader.
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“I’ve seen wealthy families put their kids in private school, and I just see that happening more and more if we have more strikes in Oakland. Then it’s our lower-income families stuck in a dysfunctional system, and not enough money for schools,” she said. “I support our teachers 100 percent. I think they absolutely should be paid more, but at this point, I think they should be negotiating these things while our kids are in the classroom.”

Only about 20% of black students in Oakland met or exceeded state standards in English in 2022, and only about 11% of Oakland’s black students met or exceeded California standards in mathematics in that year.

The topic of reparations is a hot one locally, with the state set to debate the proposals of a task force appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in 2020, and San Francisco considering grants of $5 million per black resident.

But neither the school district — nor, indeed, the state — can afford these staggering demands. And many are questioning whether California, which entered the Union as a free state in 1850, should pay for slavery at all.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.