WASHINGTON—Say what you will about the Teachers/AFT, but they’re not afraid to speak out on controversial issues.
From the war on Iran to Medicare for All, the 3,000 delegates to their convention in mid-July in D.C. pulled no punches.
Their just-concluded convention in D.C. included resolutions demanding not just an end to the U.S. war on Iran but a cutoff of funding for that conflict.
The war by both Israel and the U.S. on Iran is “unjust, poorly planned, and an unproductive war of choice,” their resolution says. It condemns that war and Israel’s war on Lebanon, too. It calls GOP President Trump’s excuses for the war both provocative and unconvincing.
“The AFT calls upon Congress to act on its constitutional authority to declare war, as elaborated in the War Powers Act, and require the president cease his undeclared war with Iran,” the delegates decided.
The union “opposes funding the war with Iran and calls for that funding to be redirected toward investments in education, healthcare and other public goods that strengthen our communities, expand opportunities and improve lives.”
And the union openly backed not just universal health care in general but Medicare For All in particular. Use of federal taxpayers’ money for vouchers to parents of private school kids is anathema, the AFT declared. And all of that was just for starters on the list of issues tackled by the union.
“Health care…is increasingly controlled by profit-driven actors focused on maximizing profits for the few, not high-quality care for all,” the AFT declared. “Privatization, deregulation, and financialization of health care weakened health systems and harmed patients and workers” while putting 500 hospitals “under control of private equity firms.” Other unionists call those financiers “vulture capitalists.”
AFT said the result is “poorer outcomes and higher costs.” The biggest and best solution, delegates agreed, is “single-payer government-run” Medicare For All, thus ridding the U.S. of the private health insurers and the profit motive.
Tax the billionaires, AFT declared. Establish safe-staffing standards for the nation’s hospitals and nursing homes, where thousands of AFT members, especially in New Jersey and Texas, work. Fund Planned Parenthood and ensure full reproductive rights. And launch campaigns to elect pro-worker lawmakers and to battle both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
And given ICE’s killings of peaceful observers Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as they were cataloging ICE sweeps, AFT delegates voted for a resolution to “abolish ICE in its present form.”
And the delegates decided AFT should pull its pension money away from firms and funds that oppose collective bargaining or that push to privatize public sector jobs—such as teachers’ and support staff jobs.
In between those resolutions and denunciations of the white nationalist right and its campaign to censor teachers, students and schools, the delegates re-elected their three top officers: Often-outspoken New York City civics teacher Randi Weingarten as president, plus Secretary-Treasurer Fed Ingram and Executive Vice President Evelyn DeJesus.
And Weingarten, in turn, took on the Trump regime and its legions of sycophants, inside MAGA and out.
All this action and more occurred as two key events for the nation’s teachers and their students are fast approaching. One is the beginning of the school year, with many systems now starting classes before Labor Day.
The other is the November election, a must-win for the Teachers’ campaign to reverse anti-public school President Trump’s depredations, including his destruction of the federal Department of Education—an agency AFT had a large hand in creating almost 50 years ago.
“Despite constant attack by President Trump, his billionaire and trillionaire cronies, and the extremists on the Supreme Court and in the Congress, AFT made great gains,” said Weingarten. Data show it’s now the second-largest union in the AFL-CIO and #3 in the country, with 1.875 million members.
But all those gains and more are in jeopardy, as are basic freedoms, she warned.
The November election “will decide whether we are a country governed by the people or ruled by the powerful. A country of opportunity or oligarchy. A country whose people live in freedom or in fear,” she said. Weingarten then said she’ll hit the road to boost voter turnout and protect the right to vote, too.
That’s a big deal, as Trump has mused about sending troops into the streets, especially of Democratic-run and pro-worker cities, to intimidate voters and seize ballot boxes, among other moves he’s pushing.
AFT will counter not just by organizing and get-out-the-vote plans but by its new Democracy Defenders corps of activists to monitor the polls and blow the whistle on Trump’s troops and MAGA intimidation and harassment of voters.
“Remember that warning-about the barbarians at the gate? Well, the barbarians aren’t at the gate, they are inside, including at the highest levels of government,” Weingarten declared, referring to a book of that title about the wolves of Wall Street.
“The president and his cronies are abusing government powers to punish political opponents. Every day they find new ways to attack voting, presumably to entrench themselves.
“Their war on working-class Americans includes stripping collective bargaining rights from one million federal workers, including members of our union, in the biggest act of union-busting in U.S. history. All while engaging in the most blatant corruption in modern American history to enrich themselves.”
Weingarten reminded the convention that the concerted right-wing assault on democracy and on public schools as engines of democracy “didn’t start with Trump.” It dates back to an infamous memo, crafted for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by a noted corporate lawyer, Lewis Powell, whom GOP President Richard Nixon later named to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Scholars say that the 1971 Powell memo’s impact dwarfs his subsequent Supreme Court rulings. He laid out a detailed plan, including paid propagandists in the guise of scholars, corporate-funded research institutes—with the American Enterprise Institute in the lead—and exploding corporate campaign contributions, including lobbying dollars spent in Congress and at state capitals to counter “enemies.”
The Powell memo has also set much of the national agenda for the last 55 years. The way to start to overturn the impact of the memo is not just to get out the vote, but to protect the vote, Weingarten said.
“Here’s the math: 1.3 million AFT members and their families live in a place where there is a competitive race in November. 600,000 of us are in battleground gubernatorial states. 464,000 live in the states with the seven top U.S. Senate battleground races. We need to flip four seats to win a Senate majority that works for working folks.
“And we have more than 1,000 members and voting family members in 86 critical, competitive congressional districts. We only need a net gain of three seats to win a working folks’ majority in the U.S. House.” Which is why AFT aims to put 25,000 volunteers on the streets, plus the Democracy Defenders, Weingarten said.
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