One Year Ago Today: NYC Transit Strike and a Blow to Intelligent Design

[mabfan]

On December 20, 2005, two events of significance took place.

The first one mainly affected New Yorkers. The workers for the MTA, which runs the subway and buses in New York City, went on strike and forced commuters to find other ways to get to work. If I recall correctly, the strike only lasted for one day, but it did turn that Tuesday into an adventure for many of my friends.

The other event was the ruling in the case of Kitzmiller et. al. v. Dover School District. Judge John Jones declared that intelligent design had no place in a public school science curriculum, as it violated the separation of church and state. Jones said that the entire point of the ID movement was to promote religion. As of today, the ID movement has not recovered from this blow; in fact, the Dover School Board was overturned last year, even before the ruling came down.

If you're interested in these blasts from the past, you can see what I said on this day last year here. My entries for the day included good wishes to my New York City friends and choice quotes from the court ruling.

Comments

[camwyn]

The strike was two days, or possibly three- I forget which, but not more than three. I should know. I take the PATH in from Jersey City, which is a different union, so last year I would ride as far as 33rd street, then surface and walk to 47th.

I don't know that I agreed or disagreed with the strikers' position- I never really checked the details- but my grandfather was a bricklayer, and we were taught never to cross picket lines in my family.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

My father (as you may recall from one of my posts about him) died while on strike with the Newspaper Guild. For deep emotional reasons, I don't cross picket lines either.

[sdelmonte]

I'm the son of a lifelong United Federation of Teachers member, and feel the same way.

That said, every article looking back at the strike is happy to declare it a failure. Granted, the media is anti-union, but I think that in the end, the TWU got nothing more than it could have had without the strike, aside from the enmity of New Yorkers.

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

Three days. Three horrible, horrible days that I had to navigate with a broken toe. I'm still bitter.

2 1/2 Days

[sharonaf.livejournal.com]

It was 2 1/2 days. All of Tues. and Wednes., and then midmorning Thurs. they came to an agreement of sorts. The first day that I'd actually managed to get into the office. But trains weren't running again until Fri. morning, so I still had to get creative about getting home.