Nearly 3,500 delegates and guests attended the AFT’s 79th national convention in Boston. Delegates heard from a variety of esteemed speakers, including:

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who called the current healthcare system “both a moral and economic failure.” He said the bigger economic picture for working Americans couldn’t be clearer—that their livelihoods are being “undermined by depressed wages, job losses, evaporation of pensions and soaring costs of higher education.” Kennedy told the AFT union activists, “You can count me in to call on America to show the world that we will stay true to our values of fairness.”

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who said: “You can’t sit there and let what’s happening to our country happen. Stay committed. Stay involved. You are shaping the future of America. We’re depending on you.”

Congressional candidate Diane Farrell, who said the upcoming election is “about taking back our country” from a president and leaders in Congress who are destroying much of what unions have built over the years, including decent wages, Social Security and pensions. Farrell, a selectwoman in Westport, Conn., is running in Connecticut’s 4th District.

Han Dongfang, a Chinese labor activist who rose to prominence through the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, who said he “would be a dead person already” if it weren’t for the AFL-CIO, the AFT and the international trade union movement. Han said the labor movement in China is growing. Workers who lose everything, including their jobs and healthcare, lose fear, he said, and fight back.

AFT member Angie Paccione, who is running for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District seat. The district, one of the nation’s largest in area, includes Fort Collins and Greeley.

Fred van Leeuwen, general secretary of ­Education Inter­national, said the notion that the private sector can do the work of the public sector better started in the United States in the Reagan era. “Now we all face it.”