American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten said Wednesday at a union conference that conservatives are “working consistently” to undermine teachers.
“Conservatives are working consistently to undermine educators in this country,” Weingarten said at the New York State United Teachers conference this week. “They’re in the same race as we are between fear and hope, aspiration and despair, democracy and autocracy. And they’re doing this because our members worked so hard during COVID.”
“We’re all in this as guardians for a better life.”
–@AFTunion President @rweingarten#NYSUTLI2022 #PublicSchoolsUniteUs pic.twitter.com/nNlbXXEzTS— NYSUT (@nysut) August 3, 2022
.@rweingarten: Conservatives are working consistently to undermine educators in this country. They're in the same race as we are between fear & hope, aspiration & despair, democracy & autocracy. And they're doing this because our members worked so hard during COVID.
— AFT (@AFTunion) August 3, 2022
A Twitter thread from AFT presented some of the other highlights of Weingarten’s address.
.@rweingarten: I know how exhausted you all are. But you continue this work because that's who you are. That's what this administration is trying to do: Help working families. This new #InflationReductionAct will help keep costs down, invest in the environment, lower drug prices.
— AFT (@AFTunion) August 3, 2022
“I know how exhausted you all are,” Weingarten told NYSUT members. “But you continue this work because that’s who you are. That’s what this administration is trying to do: Help working families. This new #InflationReductionAct will help keep costs down, invest in the environment, lower drug prices.”
Referring to teachers’ unions as “trusted messengers” in a “post-truth society,” Weingarten said it is up to union members to “strengthen democracy.”
.@rweingarten: We live in a post-truth society. That's why we're important. We are trusted messengers in our community, and we have to continue to build those relationships in our communities. It's up to us to strengthen democracy.
— AFT (@AFTunion) August 3, 2022
“What right wing extremists understand is what Americans understand: That public schools are foundational,” she said, adding, “These extremists are fighting these culture wars, and the attacks are only going to get worse. It’s a strategy to divide educators from parents, to create apathy and fear. These are the biggest tools they have to win.”
Stressing that teachers and other staff need certain “conditions” to be able to “help kids,” Weingarten said, “But we believe in public ed as an anchor in this country. Another anchor in this country? Unions.”
.@rweingarten: What right wing extremists understand is what Americans understand: That public schools are foundational.
— AFT (@AFTunion) August 3, 2022
.@rweingarten: These extremists are fighting these culture wars, and the attacks are only going to get worse. It's a strategy to divide educators from parents, to create apathy and fear. These are the biggest tools they have to win.
— AFT (@AFTunion) August 3, 2022
.@rweingarten: We need to make sure teachers to paras to bus drivers to have the conditions they need to help kids. But we believe in public ed as an anchor in this country. Another anchor in this country? Unions.
— AFT (@AFTunion) August 3, 2022
However, Moms For America Senior Director Quisha King told Fox News Digital Weingarten was promoting a “failing system.”
“Randi Weingarten says ‘kids won’t become critical thinkers’?” King said, adding:
What she fails to realize, is the way public school is going, kids are not learning critical thinking skills now. She wants to continue to push kids into a failing system because she is only concerned about her own outcomes, not the children’s. Kids are struggling academically now more than ever because of her collusion with the CDC to lock kids out of learning. That is on top of a system that was already failing to educate kids. Randi can say whatever she wants, the proof is right in front of us and parents will not let these bureaucrats determine the future of our children. School choice is on the move and not going away anytime soon.”
At the end of March, House Republican leaders exposed the unprecedented level to which the Biden Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collaborated with Weingarten’s AFT to create the national health agency’s guidance on the issue of keeping the nation’s government schools locked down during the pandemic.
The Republicans’ report noted emails between the AFT, the White House, and CDC showed the union’s “cozy relationship with the Biden Administration’s political leadership at the CDC positioned the union to impose line-by-line edits to the Operational Strategy on at least two separate occasions, despite the CDC’s past practice to keep draft guidance confidential.”
🚨 Just exposed a CDC official’s testimony confirming CDC coordinated with unions at unprecedented levels to keep kids out of school.
We now know Biden's political leadership at CDC let unions impose line-by-line edits.
It was never about "The Science." https://t.co/Qufe24Uy1m
— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) March 30, 2022
Weingarten warned NYSUT members that “elections matter,” and that “[W]e have lawmakers running in states across the country, who are denying the results of the 2020 election, spouting the Big Lie.”
.@rweingarten: We believe that weapons of war have no place in our communities. This isn't about the 2nd amendment and responsible gun ownership – this is about reasonable restrictions to keep folks safe. (3/4)
— AFT (@AFTunion) August 3, 2022
The union leader also targeted the 2nd Amendment during her address to union members, stating “weapons of war have no place in our communities.”
– – –
Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Randi Weingarten” by Florida Education Association.
Randi is is just bad. American parents I urge you to read and teach your own children to think for themselves. Trust very few teachers.
No Randi, conservatives are working to undermine communism and forced, twisted sexual oriented curriculum from weirdos like you.
you don’t put up with that in florida!
The teachers’ unions clients (those whom they represent) are teachers– not students or the parents who are primarily responsible for their children’s education. As such, teachers’ unions should not be heard on any matters other than teachers’ wages, hours and working conditions.
School board’s customers (those whom they serve) are residents, particularly parents of school age children, of the school district. They are ones who are charged with responsibility for school policy, including curriculum choices.
The idea that teachers’ unions ought to have any say in what is taught in schools is not an idea that has any logical support, is entirely up by its bootstraps and is solely the result of flagrant usurpation of authority by union leadership. It must be reined in. The stakeholders in education are not labor unions; they are parents and residents of the district generally. Teachers’ interests in their pay, hours of work and working conditions are the only interests that can reasonably be assigned to labor organizations. Union leadership assumes far more authority and power over what goes on in the schools which they do not own or fund . And teachers are in the schools only to provide what the community wants (and be fairly compensated for doing so, considering the effort they put in and conditions under which they serve)– not matters over which union leadership wrongly believes it or its clients have authority. So, unions: work hard for your clients’ interest in their pay, hours and working conditions and then beg off! You are not responsible for deciding what should be taught and certainly the future of democracy is way beyond anything that has been delegated to you.
Randi, what unionists/socialists never comprehend are THE BILL OF RIGHTS which is why we hv 3 generations who don’t know or care abt our country
And oh yeah, EDUCATORS ARE PAID WITH PUBLIC FUNDS THEREFORE THEY ARE EMPLOYEES OF THE TAX PAYERS
As a former teacher (retired)I had the chance to interact with Weingarten on several occasions. I do not know how she stays president ( i never voted for her) she always wants to take up causes that have nothing to do with Teachers. I didn’t pay dues ( and I only did for legal protection) for her to support illegals, be anti 2nd amendment and a BLM activist. She needs to be gone and get someone that represents TEACHERS
Weingarten is doing what Leftists/Marxists always do: saying what she thinks will help to maintain/increase her own power without any regard for the facts, and, quite often, in direct contradiction to facts that she obviously is well aware of.
Ms. Weingarten has it backwards. The opposite is true. She and the teachers’ unions (NEA, AFT) are working assiduously to undermine parents, the culture, governments from the local to the national level, and, most of all, the children themselves.
Note that I said the teachers’ unions. That is because many (maybe most) teachers are simply trying to do their jobs and teach.
Teachers need to dump their unions and stop being cannon fodder for the unions’ dysfunctional agendas. Governments and school systems need to stop standing by helplessly and decertify the unions. Stop being enablers in the destruction of the nation.