Public School Teacher Goes On Food Stamps Rather Than Shop At Wal-Mart

The New York Teacher reports:

"The more you know, the less you need."

"Think globally, act locally."

These are just two of dozens of bumper stickers that Jack Powell has carefully arranged on his white van. They've become stuck in his psyche as well.

A longtime singer and guitarist with the Zucchini Brothers and a substitute teaching assistant for Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES, Powell has lived frugally for years. He works about three days a week as a sub, earning about $70 a day, with no benefits. From March to October, he rides his bike 20 miles to work when work is available.

Sometimes he works for a funeral home to make extra money. The shawl he has wrapped around himself on this winter day, he says simply, doubles as a blanket.

"I do whatever it takes to survive and live a socially conscious life," said Powell, who has a tepee in his yard.

Part of that survival — or so he thought — included shopping at Wal-Mart to take advantage of cheaper prices for himself, his partner and her two children. Then his discussions about Wal-Mart with Sandra Carner-Shafran, a teaching assistant at BOCES and a member of the Board of Directors of New York State United Teachers, started churning inside him.

Back to another of his bumper stickers: "Words become actions. Actions become habits. Habits become character. Character becomes destiny."

Powell put the brakes on his actions. Shopping at Wal-Mart? This is a place that encourages employees to get social services because it does not provide adequate health insurance or wages; sells goods made in sweatshops; and upsets entire communities by undercutting the downtown stores, then raising its prices when the locals go out of business.

"I don't like what Wal-Mart stands for," Powell said, noting the mega-chain's scanty health insurance for staffers. "Because of all those things they can lower the prices."

He and his partner agreed to go on food stamps for their family rather than shop at Wal-Mart any longer.

"I don't like to have to do that (use food stamps)," he said. However, the two children who are part of his family gave him extra courage because they had disliked shopping at Wal-Mart anyway, Powell said. They knew what the store stood for.

"I'm just trying to live my life. I try to set an example and do what I believe," said Powell. When he travels across the country to schools, theaters and festivals for the Zucchini Brothers, he sings and strums about health and environmental awareness.

Carner-Shafran, past president of the Saratoga Adirondack BOCES Employees Association, concurred. "He doesn't just say it," she said of Powell. "What he did — that's a big step." She works with Powell at the high school, which has a population of special education and vocational students, as well as GED students.

We almost don't know where to begin.Would you want your children around teachers who have such great ambition that they'd rather bleed the taxpayers dry than shop at Wal-Mart? The irony here is that teacher Powell is shaking down the taxpayers as a teacher and a food stamp recipient and the New York teacher's union consider him a hero.Note the bold quote, it appears the New York teacher's union hate middle class people who want lower prices.Via Opinion Journal