WHICH SIDE ARE THEY ON?

THE UFT OPPOSITION AND THE FIGHT TO DEFEAT TRUMP

With less than a day to election day, we are in the middle of the fight of our lifetimes.  The stakes of this election could not be clearer: if Donald Trump and his MAGA forces prevail this November 5^th, we will lose our freedoms and our democracy. Four years ago, we witnessed Trump unleash the January 6^th insurrection to overturn the elections he had lost. In this election campaign, he has acted as a would-be dictator, threatening revenge against his political opponents and fanning the flames of hatred and division. The military men who served under him describe him as a “fascist.”

The UFT’s ability to function as a union – to fight for and win what our members and our students need and deserve – depend upon the democracy and freedoms that Trump is intent on eviscerating. We have never faced a greater challenge to who we are and what we do: for us, this is an existential struggle.

The Unity Caucus is entirely committed to this fight. When you go to the phone banks where rank-and-file UFTers are talking to prospective voters, when you walk into the rooms where UFTers are filling out election postcards, and when you got on the UFT bus to go door-to-door in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, you will find yourself sitting next to Unity Caucus members. We are proud of the fact that when we will choose our slate for UFT Officers, Executive Board, and NYSUT/AFT Convention delegates in the upcoming union elections, we will only nominate UFTers who have ‘walked the walk’ in this fight of our lifetime.

In such an important struggle, it would be reasonable to assume that not only Unity, but all of the caucuses in the UFT, would be all-in. But reasonable assumptions don’t hold with the opposition caucuses, which are six ways from Sunday when it comes to the UFT and political action. Some opposition leaders, including individuals who sit on the UFT Executive Board, are badmouthing Kamala Harris and spouting old, tired dogmas about how unions shouldn’t support Democrats. Others recognize just how irresponsible such a posture of abstention from elections is, but are so hell bent on taking power in the UFT that they are willing to turn an unprincipled blind eye to the dogmatists in their coalition.

But if the opposition caucuses fail the most fundamental test of our political moment, how can we possibly trust them with the leadership of our union?