“Joy is an act of political and spiritual resistance,” national AFT President, Randi Weingarten, told the delegates on Saturday afternoon of the CFT Convention.
Weingarten went on to say she’d had a speech written but rewrote it on the plane to San Diego from New York, feeling she needed to level with people about some of the terrible things happening.
“In a week like this past week, where thousands of federal employees were laid off, including half of the Department of Education, where a child who was on her way to medical treatment was deported because her parents were undocumented, where a man closest to the president, Elon Musk, reposted, on X, a tweet or whatever it’s called, that excused the genocide of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, yet at the same time a green card holder is deported without due process because he supports Palestine,” she said. “And that was just the last few days. They want us to go crazy. They want us to be exhausted.”
Weingarten brought up the importance of knowing history to understand what’s happening. She talked about Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny and On Freedom, and Russian American writer M. Gessen, also an author of several books, including one on Vladimir Putin and another on the Russian feminist protest group Pussy Riot. Both Synder and Gessen argue that we need to take Trump’s authoritarianism and imperialistic threats seriously.
There is a difference between an autocrat and a dictator, Weingarten said.
“The autocrat makes a deal with us that says you can have your private life,
just don’t be in the streets arguing with us,” she said. “The totalitarian, like Hitler, says you can’t have a private life.”
Weingarten said she was not going to curse, but she would use a lot of “c” words. Those words included community, communication, connection, and courts.
Public schools are a center of community, Weingarten said — which is one reason Trump wants to get rid of them.
Being together with your community, not being isolated, is the way to defeat fascism, she added. And part of connecting and communicating is letting people know what’s going on. Weingarten talked about an event on March 4 as a way to put a face on what gutting public education would mean.
“Really, you’re going to take this money from kids with disabilities? You’re going to take this money from poor kids? You’re going to take this money from kids who need Pell grants to go to college?” she said. “You’re going to take this money from kids who are in rural areas or kids who are learning English? Really, you’re going to take that money for tax cuts for Elon? Over our dead bodies.”
The courts have mostly been holding, Weingarten said. Another court, she added, is the court of public opinion, and that’s why it’s important to hit the streets and connect with people there.
In spite of everything, Weingarten said, she feels hopeful — unlike on November 6th, 2024 or January 20th.
Some of her reasons for hope include vouchers losing in the last election when they were on the ballot — even in states that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Labor has the highest numbers it has had since the mid 1960s, she said, and the feeling about the administration is shifting.
“Trump’s chaos is wrecking the economy. Consumer confidence is down. People are saying we didn’t vote for this,” she said. “The government failures, the stock market crash, the dictatorial alliances, guess what? They’re not popular in America, and people are starting to realize that there’s no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power.”