T4CW 10.5.09: Update on Oaxaca's Schools, from Activist/Parent of Oaxaca City Schoolchild

It's not a pretty picture: Oaxaca saw an inspiring takeover of the city over the fall and summer of 2006, made possible by an unprecedented civil society movement to establish a Popular Assembly to make decisions and policy (APPO), make and defend the people's media (radio and television station takeovers documented in "Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad"), and maintain control of the city after sending police and government packing through barricades and building occupations. Throughout, the teachers remained on strike, united with other sectors of the movement through one central demand: the ouster of corrupt governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.

In 2009, Ulises remains in power. Impunity is the word that best describes the climate when people ask about any kind of resolution. And the schools are a wreck. We talk about what contributes to this situation: corruption in the teachers union, a lack of accountability and connections between teachers and parents, scarce funds, retribution for insubordination towards the PRI government still very much in power,... and how that affects working families, another generation of Mexican children, and a movement that sees teachers as leaders and models for organizing.