Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with me your girl, Daniel Moody recording from the home Bunker, which is where I feel like I'm going to spend the rest of my life because stepping outside of our front doors these days seem more dangerous than fucking ever.
And I don't say that. I say that tongue in cheek kind of, but like also really today I engage in a conversation with the president of AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten, who you have heard on this program before, and sometimes I have to like stop myself and realize how quickly things have devolved in this country, you know, for folks who may be new to listening to me, I am a former educator. I have a
master's in early childhood education. I taught in Washington, d C. And then I went into education policy, where I worked down the hill, you know, and then worked as a lobbyist for you know, several nonprofit organizations and foundations and you know, think tanks before I found myself full time
in media. And what I will say is that education is one of the most important pillars foundations of democracy, and there has not been a time in our nation's history where education hasn't been the battle ground for progress
in this country. You can look at the integration of schools right that took place after Brown versus the Board of Education, which I just want folks to wrap your mind around the fact that if Brown versus the Board of Education is challenged at any time in you know, the next few years, we will go back to segregated schooling. Because that's the kind of supreme court that we have that if we had in nineteen fifty four the Supreme court that we have now, integration of schools would have
never taken place. And so when we see the attacks happening on schools, on teachers and on administrators for teaching the truth, for trying to build empathy and compassion in young people by teaching them about people and communities outside of their own, we know very well what the plans are to continue the hateful indoctrination of white children so that they can bear no responsibility and want to change
nothing because everything is great. Why would you change everything if everything is working and as always worked and has always been great, you wouldn't. You would remain complacent. The status quo would be good enough for you. But you see, the more that you know, the more that you were challenged about what you have been taught and how it has framed your perspectives on the world, the more you
are activated to change it. But if you remain an ostrich, if you remain infantilized by white politicians so that they can remain in power, then the status quo stands strong, and they double and they triple down on it. So in today's conversation with Randy, we talk about her experience this past weekend at the sixtieth anniversary of the March on Washington, where she sees education has both progressed and
regressed over the last sixty years. We talk about teachers and administrators fleeing the profession because of fascism and authoritarianism at the hands of red state governors. Folks, whether or not you have children in our public education CYCE or in higher ed, what is happening to this system has a great emphasis on whether or not we hold democracy
against a movement of American fascism led by Republicans. We are in perilous times, as I know those of you listening to me are well aware of, and what I ask Randy, and our conversation is what can people do who feel powerless? How do they get involved? And she offers up some answers. Coming up next, my conversation with
the President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to wok AF Daily the President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten, as we began another school year here in America. Randy, it was just the sixtieth anniversary of the March on Washington, and you wrote a piece reflecting on your speech and your time in Washington, d C. Honoring this really important
march and day in our nation's history. Just give us an idea of your mood and your feelings while you were there. At the backdrop of it, you know, there was a shooting that took place in Jacksonville, Florida, at the hands of a white supremacist that took the lives of three black patrons and workers at a general store.
It was well. First off, Daniel, I'm glad to be with you, and I'm glad that you do this podcast, and I'm glad that you call it what you call it in terms of taking back the word woke.
Thank you.
I'm a history teacher. I'm also you know, a union president. You think back to what happened in sixty three in the march, and then the backlash after the march, and think about what happened after the Obama presidency and the backlash after that. Think about what happened after Brown versus
Board and the backlash after that. I think that what we're seeing is that the enabling, the normalizing, and the enabling of hate, combined with ready access to guns, particularly to weapons of war, create a really dangerous situation, and calling it out is really important. Understanding what's going on
is really important. But the but just like those kids in Jacksonville, how many years ago, after that Saturday of Fear that was created, you know, after they tried to integrate lunch counters and the KKK created that Saturday of Fear of the uh Anville fear or March or whatever it was called of the KKK a riot, and they still won. The kids won, they integrated lunch counters. This was a commemoration. This was a continuation, not a commemoration.
Because there's so much at stake right now and people are awakening to what is at stake. What happened in Jacksonville is a heenous crime of a white supremacist murderer, just like what happened in Buffalo was a heenous crime of a white supremacist murderer. What those supremacists want, what people who enable them want, is to bully and silence the rest of us who are fighting for freedom and dignity and basic humanity for all, particularly those who have
been discriminated against quality and freedom. So I would say that we have to hold the families as tight as we can in the morning of the deaths of those innocent souls and fight on and fight on and fight on all at the same time. And yes, that fight includes the fight for gun safety and getting assault weapons off the streets, which America has done before and can
do again with courage. But that fight is also the fight for freedom and the fight against fear, the fight for aspiration and the fight against despair, the fight for solutions and the fight against smears, And we have to do both at the same time. And so I'm not I was devastating and horrible to hear what happened in Jacksonville. As you're leaving the march, but it has to spur us on to more action and to not be silent.
You know, I want to ask you, both as the president and AFT, but also as a former educator yourself, and as you know as a president, what does it mean right now to you and to teachers of history that telling the truth is a crime. What does it mean to librarians that they're having to remove books from shelves that teach children about empathy and truth and compassion.
Can you explain because for those people who don't have kids in the school system, who are not as connected, but understand that public education connects us all, whether or not we have kids that are in the system in this moment or not, what it means to live in this place of oppression, silencing, and fear as a teacher, a librarian, an administrator in these states.
So I think what I think you know the answer by the way in which you frame the question, which is that you know it's terrible, and people are and people take great umbrage at it, and it has had to a certain effect, the chilling effect that people like DeSantis and Abbot want. We see that in polling. But what it's not doing is it's not crushing the spirit of teachers in life variance. What it's starting to do is, and this is spoiler alert because I feel pretty optimistic
that we are going to win. What it's starting to do is it's creating activism in a way that we didn't have for a while, just like the red for ed movement around wages a few years ago and conditions. Teachers want what kids need, and they know that this is impairing kids education and hurting kids for the long run. And they take and they are really pissed about it. And the people who and and and it doesn't it crosses ideological grounds or or ideal or or ideological lines.
I guess I should say so. In the Panhandle, for example, in Florida, the teachers that had to put tarps cross the libraries.
YEP.
A lot of the teachers who teach in the Panhandle are Republicans, a lot of them probably voters for DeSantis. And they were like, what are you doing. This is my library in my classroom that I was using these books. I may have use saw these books for five or ten years. All of a suddenly you're banning them. Why so, what we're seeing in terms of teachers, and I think you're seeing this in terms of the mainstream as well.
Is that more and more it is a smaller and smaller but very well coordinated and we're very well funded group of people who are trying to ban books and erase history. And look, I'm not saying that they're not powerful. DeSantis is powerful, Abbot is powerful, Huckabee is powerful. They also have these, you know, legislators that they have now
taken control of because of jeremandering. But if you look at polling and you look at the reaction, most parents and most teachers hate this, and so it's actually activated a generation of people to fight it. And so that's why for us, we have handed out nine million books in the last few years. By July of twenty twenty four, it will be ten million. We're working with first book, We're working with others. So think about the power of a teacher's union working with its members, having these family
events all throughout America trying to ban books. We are distributing books that have diverse titles that kids see themselves in and the other thing. And I'm sure that this has gotten me in the crosshairs of the right Wing.
I think this is what triggered them. Two years ago, we said to our members, if you teach honest history, if you teach history in an authentic way, with authentic sources, we're going to expand our our legal defense fund, and we're going to represent you, and we're going to make sure you are not alone. So you have a bunch of things that are now being used in terms of activating. You have unions creating community against banning books and against
the erasure of children. You have now people like Moms Rising and Red Wine and Blue and lots of other new groups that have been created that have said enough, and you're starting to see this kind of activism together. The one thing I would say to teachers or to librarians who are alone is don't act alone. Let's create a community around you. Because the world is too and it's too you know, and and and there's a lot
of haters. So let's create that community and the connectiveness around you, and let's fight this together.
You know, I want to switch gears for a moment to talk about the rise of COVID that we are seeing.
Right.
We're seeing lots of headlines about you know, COVID making resurgence, not to the extent that it did in prior years, but that it's still present. And I saw an article about a school that part of their I guess protocol now is to keep windows closed because of potential school shootings.
Right, Okay, it's crazy right.
To keep to keep windows closed. Kids don't get fresh air all day because we'd rather treat schools like prisons than deal with guns. And I wanted to get your thoughts on a how you think that schools will deal with you know, the rise in COVID given the I mean extraordinary backlash that we saw, I mean teachers being punched and school board meetings going absolutely insane. And this is you know, hearkening back to twenty twenty one, but this idea that part of protocol in safety is shutting
windows in places that already lack quality ventilation. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on both of those pieces.
Look, it's completely surreal because what's happening is instead of this is what it says, kids are not a priority. Guns are the priority. Kids are not a priority. So if it means that to maintain weapons of war culture and not take on that issue, that you're going to actually.
Do the exact wrong thing that helps not only kids learn, But what we've learned is that ventilation is probably the number one change you can make.
Good ventilation for any kind of respiratory illness, for any of the climate issues that we've seen this summer, when schools are one hundred and five, workplaces one hundred and ten, all this you need air conditioning. So good ventilation, really good in terms of respiratory illness, or really good in terms of climate issues and weather issues. And frankly for those of us who are asmatic or really good in terms of those kind of issues too. And a desperate
proportion of our black and brown kids are asthmatic. So and I say that as an asthmatic, So you know, so the ventilation that starts with proper air circulation, and if you don't have good AC, you know, HVAC systems in the school, you've got to open windows and you to have a good fan. And so it just says that kids are not a priority these and then they turn kids and teachers into a pretzel to try to
figure out how to deal with all of this. But that is the irony of that guns are more important, just like during COVID, bars and restaurants were more important than opening schools. I love when the extremists start telling me all about you know, what happened in Europe. I mean we and I'm really glad Mehdi Hassan just did this. He debunked a lot of the myths. Kids got COVID, kids were vectors for COVID. There's lots of people who
died from COVID. There's lots of kids who were orphan because their parents died or grandparents died because of COVID. But we from April twenty twenty, we're the first ones to put out a report that said we need to have schools reopened. They're really important, but we need the safety measures. You can't do one without the other. You need to do both. And to have American government led by Trump that prioritized you know, bars and restaurants rather
than schools, and then say, look at what happened in Europe. Well, Europe prioritized schools being opened. And the problem, the dilemma right now is that because of all the conspiracy theories and all of the odjita that happened at the end of COVID, and you know, on mass and vaccines and all of this. We're not going to have an appropriate or proper public health system directing us or guiding us about what to do. So this is what I would say to people, and this is what we're doing. Fight
like hell to get good ventilation in a school. That is the number one thing that we can do. Let's make sure that we don't stigmatize people who wear masks or who need to wear masks. And let's do and try to figure out the other mitigating factors that we need, because COVID is still a respiratory illness, and we need to make sure both COVID rsv all of these respiratory illnesses.
We need to make sure that we are giving people the best guidance for how to protect their health and safety, whether it be kids, whether it be teachers, whether it be kids families or teachers' families.
Last question for you, Randy is this. You know, schools like we started out at the top, have always been on the front lines for social justice in this country. They have always been a battleground and for people who want to get involved, for people who see their school boards being taken over, for people who see their teachers
fleeing because they no longer want to teach. What can regular people who are not necessarily a part of AFT, what can they do to support their public schools, their communities, their administrators and teachers and students.
So I would just say there's one there's one recommendation I would make, and I want to kind of link it to our new campaign, which is just get involved in whatever way you can get involved. You know, lots of schools have you know, some open something day night for community that welcomes community in. Be involved in a local school, do some tutoring, do some reading with kids, do something that gets involved in the soul of the community. Because the most important thing we can do right now
is connection and community. That is the most important antidote to this hate and division and fear and crossing ideological lines and doing the things that really kind of lift up communities and lift up kids, and it becomes infectious that people then start talking to each other. It doesn't matter if they're Republican or Democrat or independent. Most people
still in America want basic decency and basic humanity. So what we've tried to do, and this may sound counter productive, counter intuitive, is that as Okay, we're fighting the fights as they ban books, we're giving books out. As I said before, we're fighting to make sure that people can
teach honest history. But what we're also trying to do is deal with the issues of loneliness, learning losses, reading literacy, and bringing together really kind of lifting up solutions for the problems of families and kids have, for the problems that we see all the time, and really trying to lift this up. So this whole year we're doing a campaign,
you know, and how do you deal with loneliness? Let's wrap services around schools, and let's together fight these social media companies who could in a day deal with and change the algorithm and change and they could actually emphasize children's health and safety as opposed to making money, and they'd still make a lot of money. So parents and teachers together are working on telling and pressuring social media companies to change their algorithms. We're working on wrapping services
around school. We're actually working to make experience or learning the norm career tech ed, giving kids lots of different options, particularly as this economy creates more and more new jobs. Why aren't we doing that? Stop with the testing, testing, testing, let's actually work with our hands and make schooling fun. And then let's really help teachers help kids how to learn to read, so kids have books that they want to read. But also what are the tools of the
trade and doing things like that. So we're really trying to get into what are the solutions that transcend ideology. What are the things that we can do together as a community, because once we do that, these extremists only are effective when they can create anger and fear.
Yep.
And so let's create love and engagement around schools dealing with the issues that people really care about.
I tell you, Randy, every time that I speak to you, I say that you're doing the Lord's work and I appreciate your leadership and your voice every time that we have the opportunity to speak. Thank you for making time to join wokay ass.
And back at you. Thank you.
That is it for me today, dear friends, on woke a f as always. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.