What's behind the tough talk?
reports from Los Angeles on the recent convention of the AFT.
July 22, 2014
AFT President Randi WeingartenTHE AMERICAN Federation of Teachers (AFT) leadership is straining to balance growing unrest among union members and their strategy of making concessions in the name of "partnership."
That effort was on display at the union's convention July 11-14 in Los Angeles, where AFT President Randi Weingarten kicked off proceedings with a keynote address that denounced corporate education reformers as agents of the wealthy and powerful.
"[I]f they embed austerity, privatization, polarization, deprofessionalization, who will call them out on it?" Weingarten declared. "Who will mobilize the fightback in America when there's rampant poverty and inequality, when the middle class is hanging on by a thread and the ladder of opportunity is more and more out of reach. That's what they want--to effectively silence us, to wipe us out."
There's a significant change in the AFT leadership, too. Fran Lawrence, the former president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, a local that prides itself on its willingness to identify and help terminate "ineffective" teachers, has stepped down as AFT executive vice president. Her newly elected replacement, Mary Cathryn Ricker, president of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers, cuts a very different image. Earlier this year, the St. Paul teachers conducted a strong and activist contract campaign.
According to some AFT insiders, Ricker's elevation signals a shift towards a more assertive stand by a union that's been on the defensive for more than a decade. And certainly Weingarten's remarks to the delegates were a far cry from the speech she gave at the 2010 convention, when the AFT president declared that the union must "lead and propose" on questions of education reform--and then wheeled out Bill Gates, whose What's behind the tough talk? | SocialistWorker.org: