Saamir Baker
Staff Writer
On Tuesday, November 29th, two teachers at Science Leadership Academy were arrested in a protest with the organization Fight For 15, a group that wants to raise the minimum wage for workers.
Video of the arrest, posted on Facebook by a fellow district teacher, showed a dramatic scene. Rain was pouring down while protesters screamed “Workers are united!”
Among the 13 total arrested were English Teacher Larissa Pahomov and History Teacher Daniel Symonds. They wanted to fight for what they felt was an important social issue and had no problem doing so.
The arrest was not unexpected.
“Fight for 15 approached my union caucus, and asked who wanted to be arrested,” Ms. Pahomov explained. “So it was a planned arrest. We didn’t KNOW we would be be arrested but knew it was a possibility.”
With the knowledge of it being a planned arrest, the goal was to have 1000 people arrested by the end of the night nationwide. Proudly, that goal was reached and the occurrence even made 11 o’clock news in many areas including Philadelphia.
Immediately after being arrested, Ms. Pahomov and Mr. Symonds were driven to the police station with many other protesters, many of which being workers that only own minimum wage, to the nearest police station. They then were released one by one after being written a citation for failure to disperse, which will be paid for by the national organization FightFor15 which is a part of a service workers union called SEIU. With no charges being placed on them, they will not have anything on their permanent records.
The video was posted online shortly after Mr. Symonds and Ms. Pahomov were put in handcuffs the video. was uploaded to social media where Art Teacher Ms. Hull shared it on her timeline. Two juniors saw it, and decided everyone at Science Leadership Academy should know about what has happened, and the hashtag #FreeMs.PahomovandMr.Symonds was born.
Junior Samuel Dennis saw the post and immediately thought he had to share it. “It was cool to spread awareness about what happened.”
Students were especially intrigued by how calmly Ms. Pahomov was while her hands were being zip-tied. She explained the reason for this: “I was given advice to be as calm as possible so we couldn’t be accused of assaulting a police officer.”
Pahomov also emphasized that the entire protest was peaceful and intentional.
“There was no violence, we were all expecting to be arrested. The main point of this protest was to gain media attention, the fact it gets on the news was more important.”
The next day, Mr. Symonds and Ms. Pahomov wrote a post for their union caucus titled “Why We Fight for 15” which explained their reasoning for participating in the action.
“As union members, we stand in solidarity with all workers seeking a fair wage for their hard work. And as teachers, we take up this fight not just as employees, but as caretakers of the children of Philadelphia. We know that civil disobedience is one way that working people can assert control over their lives, and it’s one way that we can help keep poverty from unraveling the fabric of our families and our city.”
To see educators that are able to support other people’s livelihoods but also try to support children they are and are not teaching by fighting for them to have a stable home life financially and be able to see their parents is amazing in the eyes of their colleagues . Ms. Pahomov mentioned that Principal Chris Lehmann had a positive reaction when he got the news.
“Even though he was in Norway, he became aware of the situation after some faculty confusion, he was very proud and was happy everyone was okay.”
Both teachers are back in their respective classrooms teaching their students, and expect their citations to be taken care of in the coming weeks.
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