Count me IN!

“Count Me In!” was the theme of this year’s AFT national convention held July 20-23 in Boston. From political action and organizing to professional development and disaster relief, the convention’s “Count Me In!” center invited delegates to consider the many avenues that engage members at the grass roots and make our union stronger.

In his keynote address before more than 4,000 delegates and guests, AFT president Edward J. McElroy emphasized the importance of member involvement in organizing and politics, and asked the delegates to return to their locals prepared for an unprecedented effort to activate their union colleagues.

The convention also highlighted the union’s efforts to help the thousands of AFT members affected by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma last year. Delegates also heard from Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who received a lifetime AFT membership card, and Han Dongfang, a leader in the Tiananmen Square protests who continues to be a voice for workers inside China through Radio Free Asia and his Web site.

Delegates re-elected the union’s top officers, elected an executive council that includes seven new vice presidents, and passed a dues increase. They voted on resolutions dealing with such issues as U.S. policy in Iraq, the full-time/part-time academic staffing crisis, No Child Left Behind, union organizing, healthcare reform, public services and more. The AFT honored the work of the Amel Centre for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture on behalf of Darfur victims. Delegates also saw a presentation on the Special Olympics that invited them to become more involved in the program.

Here’s a summary of the important business of the union that occurred at this year’s convention.

The AFT president called out the duties that individual union activists accept on a daily basis—from volunteer organizer and building rep to ER&D leader and precinct walker in a political campaign. “You and your colleagues who do this work each and every day, you are the power of this union,” McElroy said. “You fight the fights, you win the victories. We all need to go out and enlist more members into your kind of activism because so much depends on the members of their union saying, ‘Count me in!’”

McElroy detailed many of the immediate and long-term threats facing the AFT, its members, and the children and adults who depend on them. The current administration’s economic policies, he said, “have led to a widening gulf between the very rich and the very poor—and they have left many in the middle class teetering toward the latter.” The White House also is behind plans to destabilize and privatize Social Security, and “now there is another threat to retirement security—the collapse of pension promises,” McElroy added.

Volunteers and activists built the AFT, and they still hold the key to the union’s future, McElroy said. “Frankly, we have lost some of that activism as we have relied less on members and volunteers and become bigger, more structured and dependent upon union staff. We have to make sure that members don’t look at union membership more as a service than as a way to be part of a cause.”

He mentioned several projects begun over the past two years that exemplify this spirit: the “Let’s Get It Right” campaign to fix NCLB; the Activists for Congressional Education (ACE) network, which builds long-term relationships between rank-and-file members and their Capitol Hill representatives; and the AFT e-Activist program, which uses new technology to quickly connect members to Congress.

“We are going to continue to develop this grass-roots political mobilization,” McElroy pledged. “There is no other way to achieve what our union needs to do.”