When billionaire and voucher enthusiast Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s Education Secretary during his first term, funded an attempt to dismantle public schools in Detroit, she nearly succeeded. But the teachers organized rolling sick outs, said the AFT Michigan President Terrence Martin, successfully thwarting the effort in spite of both politicians not being at all sympathetic to their interests. 

Martin and AFT Texas President Zeph Capo talked with CFT President Jeff Freitas on a panel discussion at the CFT convention, “How We Fight Back.”

Martin gave some background on Detroit schools.

“It’s all Black, all Brown, and all poor children,” he said. “Ninety percent of the children are at or below the poverty line.”

Rather than let the state stop funding the schools, they organized. The sick outs that closed schools got the attention of lawmakers, and they passed legislation that gave them a fresh start financially. 

“We got our voice back in the city of Detroit, with an elected, empowered local school board that was taken away from us through emergency management,” Martin said, telling the delegates they could clap for that. “We’re now in a school district that’s thriving, and since 2017, we’ve got our local empowered, elected school board. Our student enrollment is up, and union contracts are fantastic.”

Freitas asked Capo how he was able to build power in a state where he wasn’t allowed to collectively bargain, and like Martin, Capo talked about how they win regardless of the political party in power. 

Contracts are nice, Capo said, but there are other ways to get power. He said the union focuses on getting what they want codified into state law and district policy. 

“We harness angry people and provide them with pitchforks and turn them on Governor Abbot,” he said. “We have to be directly involved in the streets and directly in front of them. We tie our legislative ballots to our school district fights and arm our members and our locals with knowledge and information and support to be able to win their fights and move our agenda across the state.”

The panel ended with Martin and Capo talking about what they plan to do going forward. 

Martin said they’ve found local leaders who will act without waiting for what state or national people tell them is the most important thing to do. 

“Our members want to see us doing things,” he said. “We’re really now empowering our folks to do things to lead in action and not just be responsive but also be proactive.”

Texas is not really a red state, Capo told the delegates, but a non-voting state. He talked about Harris County, the most populous county in Texas, where Houston is located.  If people voted there, he said, Republicans would lose. Capo said he’s been looking at what happened in California in the ‘90s, after Governor Pete Wilson made an anti-immigrant ballot initiative a platform of his 1994 reelection campaign.

“The damage that Prop. 187 did and how it lit people up is very similar to what’s happening around all the DEI nonsense and the overreach of these policies,” Capo said. “Frankly, how goes Texas, so goes the rest of the country. If it ever changes, if it ever does what California did, they will never be able to win the White House again.”