Some 15,000 Maryland teachers, government workers and other public employees rallied and marched in Annapolis last night to protect public school funding and workers’ health and retirement security. Bills before the state legislature call for big cutbacks in all three.

Before marching to the State House, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the crowd that rallied at Navy-Marine Corps Stadium:

We keep hearing from politicians that they’ve got to cut, cut, and cut. I want to ask you something, where did they ever get the nonsensical idea that you can cut our way out of the hole they put us in?

Destroying economic security and our fragile economic recovery is bad policy and is just plain wrong. Scapegoating teachers and other public workers is bad policy and it is flat ass wrong. Jeopardizing our children and America’s future by hacking up public education is bad policy and it is just wrong and it won’t go on in the state of Maryland.

Here’s more on the rally from Union City’s Chris Garlock:

Terry Jefferson, a 20-year special education teacher and member of AFSCME Maryland, which spearheaded the event with the Maryland State Education Association, said, “The way things are going; I don’t even know what my future looks like.”

IBEW 26’s Larry Greenhill Sr., standing amid the huge crowd thronging Lawyer’s Mall, said he was there “to support Maryland’s public workers” and to protest the state’s attempt “to balance the budget on the backs of their workers.”

Added Earl Beatty of ATU 689, “We have to support workers not only here, but in states across the country. This is the time when we all need to get out and fight for what’s right.”

For more on the rally, click here.