Today we voted and who can miss an ugly orange sweater like that?

It is the ugliest sweater I own. I bought it at Target on sale. It is bright orange. It is the color of a construction vest on the interstate. I bought it because I know how the IEA RA works. I’ve gone since Bob Haisman ran ’em.

I wear it because I know that the leadership will always claim they don’t see me at the microphone.

Former IEA President Anne Davis would actually call on me. Sometimes. If I had a point of information, she would let me ask it and then ignore it and move on to the next mic.

I wore the sweater at last year’s RA so that I could ask IEA Executive Director Audrey Soglin a question about the IEA’s role in selling out our right to bargain local teacher evaluations. I was at the mic halfway through her speech. The first at a mic. But it took twenty minutes and my whole region standing behind me waving their hands before Swanson would call on me.

He denied it was on purpose. The spotters just missed me. In that ugly orange sweater.

I bring all this up because we voted for RA delegates today.

If I win I pledge to stand at the mic and ask about the attempt by leadership to sell us out on pension taxes, tenure and seniority rights.

I’ll be wearing the ugly orange sweater. They’ll say I’m hard to see from the podium. But I’ll be easy to see from the floor.