We know things are tough. But how about some fightin’ words?

“Klonsky…where we get seated is the luck of the draw.”

That’s what my Region chair told me when I walked into the Illinois caucus meeting and saw that we we’re seated in the second to the last row. I hadn’t even said anything. She just knew I was going to say some smart ass thing about it..

Last year in San Diego we WERE the last row. So, I suppose there was some compromise on the leadership’s part. If you remember last year, I was seated in the last row in the caucus hall, in the last section of the convention hall, and even in the last row of the upper deck at the Dodger/Padres game for NEA night.

Today’s caucus was basic house-keeping.

President Ken Swanson in his now traditional lugubrious fashion spent the first thirty minutes explaining the terrible situation we face in Illinois. My God. It was like a funeral. Not a New Orleans funeral either. No band. No street strutting.

“Well, what do you want him to say?” says my friend Mike. “That everything is good?”

“Of course not. But where are the fightin’ words?”

Then came Reg.

Reg Weaver is a former IEA president and former NEA president. He’s retired now. And for whatever criticisms I may have had with some of the NEA positions during his tenure at leader of the NEA, Reg was known for his fightin’ words. His term coincided with Bush and NCLB. I never heard Reg speak when he didn’t rip into the basic inequality of NCLB and point to the dollars wasted on a far-away war while few federal dollars went to poor kid’s schools. And I never sat in a room of people that weren’t on their feet cheering when Reg got done speaking.

It turns out that during the last year of Reg’s term in office he was battling lymphoma.

Cancer.

Chemotherapy. Radiation.

He spoke to the Illinois caucus about how he chaired his last NEA RA with a raspy voice caused by the radiation treatments. At the time he told everyone that it was laryngitis. The doctors told him he couldn’t speak. But he told the doctor, “That’s bullshit.” Here was a leader who knows something about the value of fightin’ words.

God knows we can use them now.

By the way. Reg says he’s doing well.