Weingarten Coopts United Opt Out National
Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through "No Excuses" Teaching
Since Randi Weingarten put AFT's full weight behind both the Clinton Campaign and the passage of the charter school and CBE stimulus bill that passed through Congress as ESSA in 2015, AFT has been shopping for a new focus to move attention away from the fact that both AFT and NEA are now entirely on board the corporate education reformer gravy train.
By the summer of 2016, it was obvious that the corporate education unions had glommed on to the civil rights initiatives inspired by Black Lives Matter. AFT's SOS March and DC Talkathon in July featured a number of high profile civil rights speakers, and the choice of the Lincoln Memorial as staging area was intended to symbolize the folding of education issues within a larger, amorphous social justice context. If AFT could not pretend to lead a march against corporate initiatives that it supported, it could put some big money behind the largely ineffectual protests of Black Lives Matter.
What has become clear since July is that AFT is still on the move to alter the perceptions of many teachers who believe AFT and NEA both have sold dues-paying members down the corporate revenue river. As a result, Weingarten and NPE have now managed to coopt the agenda of United Opt Out, which, heretofore, has been the only legitimate organization that has stood, until now, against CorpEd since 2009. Just as Weingarten took over BATs, she has now neutralized UOO, thus Schools Matter: Weingarten Coopts United Opt Out National: