By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Jeff Wiggins reminded everybody that Gov. Matt Bevin said teachers who rallied in Frankfort against Republican legislation to cut public pensions had a “thug mentality.”
“The teachers said ‘thug’ meant ‘teachers helping union guys,” said Wiggins, the Kentucky State AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer who was one of 16 speakers at Saturday’s “Public Education Rally" in Paducah.
“We loved it,” added Wiggins, who is from Reidland, a Paducah suburb. “Every Thursday morning before the legislature went into session, I went down and held up signs with the teachers because they support us, too.”
Wiggins and the other speakers took turns at a microphone on the sunbaked concrete stage at Noble Park amphitheater. The sweltering heat and humidity forced most of the crowd to flee the concrete steps and seek welcome shade under nearby trees.
“Workers in this state have been under attack since 2017,” Wiggins said. “They went after us with ‘right to work’ and repealed the prevailing wage.”
This year, he added, Bevin, a Republican, and the GOP-majority General Assembly targeted teachers and other public employees. Republicans passed a bill slashing public pensions, and Bevin signed the measure.
"We have a governor and lawmakers who want us to vote for them so they can go to Frankfort and be wined and dined by ALEC and wined and dined by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and other such groups,” said Wiggins.
“They are destroying the middle class. They are trying to make a two-class system of those who have everything and the working poor.”
He urged the crowd to support pro-union and pro-public education candidates for the legislature in Tuesday’s primary and on Nov. 6, election day.
“The legislators voted in January, February, March and April, and we’ll get our chance in November,” he said. “The teachers said, ‘You vote now, and we’ll vote later.’”
Warned Wiggins, “We can’t make a change unless we elect legislators and a governor who are labor-friendly, education-friendly and working people-friendly.”
The rally was organized by Keaton Conner, a junior at Marshall County High School. She enlisted aid from the local chapter of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.
“My goal going into this was to create a place where people could speak out about the concerns they have with the education system and where we can could find out who we need to be voting for—the candidates who are supporting us.”
Conner, who emceed the rally, was at school in January when a teenager with a handgun killed two fellow students and wounded 14 more. Conner said she joined the school safety movement, but explained that she wanted a rally where other issues, such cuts in teacher pensions and education funding, could be addressed, too.
She invited Republican and Democratic office holders and office seekers. Only Democrats showed up.
They included Alonzo Pennington of Princeton and Dr. Paul Walker of Murray, candidates for Congress in Tuesday’s primary; state Senate hopeful Julie Tennyson of Paducah, and state House candidates Al Cunningham, Linda Story Edwards and Drew Williams, all of Benton, and Desiree Owen, Barlow.
The Kentucky State AFL-CIO endorsed Tennyson, Cunningham and Owen. Endorsed House candidate Charlotte Goddard of Pottsville was unable to attend, but Conner read a letter of support from her.
Rounding out the speakers’ lineup were LIUNA Local 1214 retiree Chuck Paisley, Amanda Groves of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Daniel Hurt of the Kentucky Young Democrats, school board members Sally Williams Sugg of Henderson County and Chris Taylor of McCracken County, teacher Sarah Deluna Thompson of Reidland Elementary School, and students Taylor Edwards, Marshall County, and Lane Alexander, Calloway County High School, formerly of MCHS.