I don’t know, but it’s worth a try.

In recent weeks, David Axelrod and half the writers at the New York Times have told teachers to go back to work. And teachers’ unions, right after the media ran that Randi Weingarten puff piece, decided to shriek that they’ll die if they have to do their jobs. 

And began organizing strikes and celebrating the results.

After Chicago teachers decided to refuse to come to work and celebrated on social media, it’s San Francisco’s turn.

A group of San Francisco teachers has organized a “sickout” Thursday, saying they will skip school because they feel the district failed to adequately protect them during the pandemic.

It’s unclear how many educators plan to participate in the labor action, although nearly 500 people have signed an online petition supporting it.

“By withholding our labor, by reclaiming our time and our health, we send the message that if SFUSD, the City, State, and Federal Government do not invest in seriously addressing this pandemic (and the ongoing issues which make dealing with the pandemic so challenging for public schools), we can shut the whole system down,” according to organizers of the petition. “And we will!”

Nothing says wokeness like denying kids an education while watching Netflix. These teachers are the real heroes.

If the intention is to shut down schools with a sickout, that would be “wrong beyond words,” said Dr. Jeanne Noble, UCSF’s head of COVID response.

“Our kids have just begun recovering from a mental health crisis compounded by 18 months of isolation,” she said. “I am being flooded with emails of parents reporting that their adolescents are in a near panic state at the thought that schools might revert to remote learning. We just cannot do this to our children again.”

Depends on whom you mean by “we”.

The teachers’ organizations are making it abundantly clear that they can and will do it to kids as many times as they can get away with it.

And in cities across America, people from all walks of life are coming together, even in this divided time, to hate teachers’ unions. Maybe that can’t heal our country on its own, but maybe it also gives us all of us something we can agree on.