A Mother of Three on the Picket Lines in Oakland

I wasn’t raised to rally.

My parents didn’t have a problem with activism, but they also didn’t spend a lot of time educating me about the finer points of picket line etiquette. As a kid, the closest I got to understanding unions — or the general need for them — was repeated viewings of Newsies. I spent an entire summer entering every room shouting, “Never fear! Brooklyn is here!”