A new direction
AFT supports candidates with a vision for quality education, healthcare for all and national security

Anyone who tells you that this election is about the war is right.  Or at least half right.  There are two wars under way—the war in Iraq and the war against Americans' economic security—and both should weigh heavily on voters' minds as they go to the polls in November.

The war in Iraq will certainly command voter attention, just as it did last summer at the AFT national convention. Delegates unanimously adopted a resolution calling for “a rapid and timely” end to the war and for leaders who will “put a stop to the unending military presence that will waste lives and resources, undermine our nation’s security and weaken our military.” That means a Congress that won’t rubber-stamp the status quo but will honor its oversight duties, the resolution stresses.

Fewer politicians talk about the second war—the attack on economic security at home—but its effects are as far-reaching as they are destructive. It’s the policy-driven war on decent wages, affordable healthcare, high-quality public schools, reasonable college tuition and retirement security. In this war against working Americans, you’d be hard-pressed to find a neighbor or relative who hasn’t been caught in the crossfire.

■  The economy has grown for five years, but real family income is lower now than in 2001. Wages and salaries today make up the smallest share of the economy since the government began keeping records in 1947.

■  The administration and congressional majority continue to shortchange public schools; the federal No Child Left Behind Act continues to ramp up demands but falls $53 billion short of promised funding for schools.

■  The number of Americans who lost health insurance over the past six years is three times greater than the number who found jobs; families fortunate enough to keep their health insurance have seen costs rise $4,500 in five years. AFT convention delegates backed a resolution that calls for a single-payer healthcare system.

■  Student aid for college has been cut, Pell Grants have been frozen and loan costs have risen—all at a time when public university tuition has soared by more than 50 percent over six years.

■  The drumbeat to privatize Social Security continues, as does pressure to push workers out of traditional pensions.

These facts suggest our nation is headed in the wrong direction. The fight for change—for leaders and policies that can take the nation in a new direction—is already under way.

“Our members are looking for candidates who are willing to make changes and support the causes we believe in,” says AFT president Edward J. McElroy. These are candidates “who support quality education and healthcare for all, who support raising wages for working families, who have an interest in the security of the country.”

As AFT members in Montana mobilize to unseat a U.S. senator who has been linked to corruption, they also are fighting  a state constitutional “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” (TABOR) amendment—backed by out-of-state interests—that would strangle public services. In Ohio, AFT members helped lead the effort to get a minimum-wage increase on the ballot, and they will be campaigning for a new governor and U.S. senator who will bring jobs and decent wages back to the state.

AFT members in Michigan will fight to re-elect a governor who supports public schools and will try to give her the tools to do even more, including an education-friendly state Legislature and a ballot measure to help stabilize school revenues. In Maryland, AFT members are working to elect a new governor who won’t demonize urban schools and use the No Child Left Behind Act for a hostile school takeover. AFT Pennsylvania is campaigning hard for a new U.S. senator who won’t cater to far-right groups or rubber-stamp everything coming out of the White House.

Featured on these pages are some AFT colleagues who have taken up the fight. They’ve said “count me in” when it comes to supporting national and economic security and a new direction for America.

COMPASSION: BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND
Michigan teacher puts people before ideology

Michigan teacher Cindy Doyle will be looking for an old friend this election season. Not a “who” but a “what,” this friend has been conspicuously absent in recent years—hidden behind boarded-up Michigan businesses that haven’t bounced back from the 2001 recession; stranded on a Gulf Coast rooftop following the Katrina debacle; trapped in an overflowing emergency room filled with uninsured and underinsured Americans.

The friend Doyle hopes to find is the politics of decency and compassion. Autumn afternoons and weekends will find this middle school teacher from suburban Detroit walking the precincts, dropping the campaign literature, making the calls from her union-sponsored phone bank, talking to friends and neighbors—doing whatever it takes to help point the state and the nation back in the right direction.

She won’t be alone.

“More people are signing up to help in this election than ever before,” says Doyle, who for a decade has helped spearhead political action for her AFT local, the Macomb Intermediate Federation of Teachers. Member sign-up sheets for political action were already brimming in late August, as more and more people began to connect the dots between an eroding standard of living in Michigan and the policies that helped usher in the slide.

On one side, Doyle says, are the leaders who showed courage and fought the trend at considerable cost. The union is solidly behind the re-election bid of Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who has fought to keep factories open, schools funded, educators protected from healthcare cuts and retirement plans safe from attack. Unions across Michigan also are backing candidates for Legislature who will join
Granholm in the struggle, and congressional candidates who will pursue those goals at the national level. And the union is educating members and the public about key propositions that are likely to land on the ballot, such as a school funding initiative and a “taxpayer bill of rights” scheme that could destroy public services in the state.

“People are energized about this election,” Doyle says, and it’s not hard to understand why. The consensus view is that this trend, this race to the bottom, simply cannot continue either in Michigan or the nation. It’s been hastened along by a reckless foreign policy that’s taken a devastating toll, she adds.

And in a state like Michigan, you don’t have to look far to see the effects of less-than-compassionate policies and policymakers. Teachers who have been denied decent wage increases and suffered rising healthcare costs have been reaching deep into their own pockets to buy materials for their students. Outsourcing of jobs has crippled communities and devastated tax bases. Even now, five years after the last recession technically ended, “there are places that look like we’ve been bombed,” Doyle says. “You see good union jobs and wages gone—it affects everybody.”

A FIGHT FOR STRONG URBAN SCHOOLS
Maryland educator wants a supportive governor

When Claudette Edgerton-Swain entered teaching 32 years ago, there wasn’t much doubt about which school system she would call home. “I attended Baltimore public schools. I knew I had something special to offer as a teacher, and I wanted to give back to the city,” she explains.

If it’s true that Baltimore is in her blood, then it’s equally certain that what’s happening in Maryland politics these days is starting to make it boil.

The teacher-mentor at Arlington Elementary School bristles when she sees incumbent Gov. Robert Ehrlich running a stream of campaign ads touting his plans to “fix” Baltimore schools. There is no mention that his administration has failed to provide support either for proven education strategies or for the resources students need, Edgerton-Swain stresses.

“Gov. Ehrlich is out there bashing us constantly, putting the schools and the teachers down,” says Edgerton-Swain. “Maybe he should have a talk with me and the other teachers spending hundreds of dollars out of our own pockets to buy materials for students. Maybe he should come out to visit us and see how hard we’re trying.”

This year, Ehrlich became the first governor in the nation to try to leverage a sweeping takeover of public schools using the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The state Legislature blocked the takeover, which would have done little more than turn the schools over to for-profit managers. But Ehrlich campaign ads continue to use Baltimore schools as a target—putting urban education in the crosshairs once again.

Edgerton-Swain, a member of the Baltimore Teachers Union, says she’ll be deeply involved in her union’s political-action efforts this year. She will work to get out the vote for Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, who is trying to unseat Ehrlich. When the city’s schools were faced with a shortfall, it was O’Malley who led the successful fight against furloughing teachers in the system. “He took a chance when he supported us,” Edgerton-Swain says. “Teachers have worked with Martin O’Malley in the past. And I don’t think that any of us would hesitate to call the office of Gov. O’Malley. I’m not so sure you’d get that opinion with the current governor.”

'WE'RE A UNION, NOT A CLUB'
Washington adjunct opposes tax cut for the wealthy

Scratch a union activist and in most cases you’ll find a passionate advocate for fairness and equity—the perfect kind of person to pull out all the stops during an election season. That’s the case with Phil Ray Jack.

Jack, an adjunct writing instructor at Green River College in Auburn, Wash., is president of the Green River United Faculty Coalition (GRUFC), a joint AFT-NEA affiliate, which represents 400 full- and part-time faculty. The first adjunct to head up a combined local in the state, Jack says he spent years staying under the radar, as adjuncts lacking tenure protection tend to do. Five years ago, however, he decided he “could stay silent no longer” and became so vocal, he talked his way to the helm of his union.

In this election season, Jack is using his outspokenness to help stop initiatives that will hurt working families and to elect officials who will do the most good in Olympia and in Washington, D.C.

At the top of Jack’s—and AFT Washington’s—initiatives-to-defeat list is I-920, a measure that would repeal the state estate tax, which currently sustains the Education Legacy Trust Fund. The fund was set up in 2005 after the Legislature reinstated the estate tax, which automatically had been discontinued when Congress ended the federal estate tax. The proceeds from the state estate tax (which last year affected 250 estates worth more than $2 million each) are used to fund education improvement. The loss of revenue would significantly hurt K-12 and higher education—increasing class size, cutting 7,900 higher education seats in public college classrooms, and reducing or eliminating financial aid grants and programs for underprivileged students.

“Washington state has one of the most regressive tax systems already,” says Jack. If I-920 were to pass, “it would be just another tax break for the few—those on top—and a burden on the shoulders of everyone else.”

Jack and the GRUFC executive board are using the most effective political organizing tool ever created—face-to-face communication—to get out the word. AFT Washington and its locals also work closely with state labor bodies to mobilize voters.

In addition to issues, the union is talking up candidates like incumbent U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and Darcy Burner, who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives from Washington’s 8th Congressional District. Both are Democrats.

Jack notes that the union tries to be nonpartisan in whom and what it supports; it won’t hesitate to endorse a Republican if the candidate takes positions aligned with labor or education interests. Yet he reminds members: “We have to decide if we’re a union or a club. If we’re a union, we need to support candidates who support us and our issues.”

'THIS IS A LONG TIME COMING'
Montana activist out to raise the minimum wage

Mona Bilden was up to the challenge. The Miles City, Mont., school teacher figured this assignment would be easier than some of the others given her by MEA-MFT, the joint AFT-NEA Montana state affiliate. She was right.

Bilden says she heard comments like “this is a long time coming,” as voters lined up at a table she set up at the town’s annual Bucking Horse Fair to sign a petition calling for an increase in the state’s minimum wage.

“People recognize that it’s almost impossible to survive on the current minimum wage with today’s gas prices and the cost of living continuing to go up,” Bilden says. “It’s just not right” that the minimum wage is the same as it was in 1997.

Bilden, the former president of the Miles City Education Association, is accustomed to assisting with her state and local unions’ political activities. In her current role as the local’s COPE (Committee on Political Education) chair, the veteran teacher has been responsible for organizing candidate forums and chairing the committee that interviews candidates seeking the union’s endorsement.

A member of the MEA-MFT board of directors, Bilden is particularly energized this fall. Along with the minimum-wage initiative, the so-called Stop Over Spending (SOS) initiative, which Bilden believes would devastate funding for public services, is also on the state ballot. And there’s the U.S. Senate race pitting the union-endorsed Jon Tester, president of the Montana state Senate, against incumbent U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns.

SOS is patterned after Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), which last November Colorado citizens voted to suspend. Montanans only need look two states south to see what could happen if SOS is approved, Bilden asserts. “When you hear what happened in Colorado and how TABOR hurt services there, it should tell you something,” she says. “We don’t need to make the same mistake.”

Bilden also hopes Montana voters don’t re-elect Sen. Burns, who has been brought to task for making public comments that have shown insensitivity to minority groups. “Conrad Burns has been an embarrassment to the state. We need somebody with dignity and integrity representing us in Washington.” She says she expects the minimum-wage initiative to bring out voters and improve the chances of defeating the SOS initiative and electing Jon Tester to the U.S. Senate.