PROTECTING PUBLIC EDUCATION FROM RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM

WHEREAS, our communities, schools and union are under attack by strategically funded extreme right and MAGA political factions that seek to dismantle public education as a public good through disinvestment, disenfranchisement and direct attacks on individual and community efforts to increase equity and transparency in school funding; and

WHEREAS, at the same time, these bad actors recharacterize their efforts and claim to be in service of low-income children and families of color, despite their long collective record of attacking and destroying neighborhood schools and other community-based support systems in the very same Black and brown communities; and

WHEREAS, efforts by these entities have included the voucher schemes across the country; and

WHEREAS, groups like the State Policy Network and Moms for Liberty, and school privatizers like Paul Vallas, seek to silence authentic curriculum to further obscure and exclude Black history (an effort gaining ground across 36 states^[1]), ban books as part of a radical anti-Black and anti-LGBTQIA+ agenda, and exploit legal asylum-seekers as political props, enlisting support and engagement from documented hate groups; and

WHEREAS, attempts to ban books and tax schemes to rob public schools of funding come from the same people, the same groups, the same bank accounts, and they are connected with similar efforts nationwide; and

WHEREAS, conservative megadonors and their dark-money organizations seek to influence elections ranging from local library and school boards to Congress and the presidency, often explicitly campaigning on their plans to further attack, censor and dismantle public education nationwide. Their goal is to elect radical extremists like Ron DeSantis and bring back the likes of Betsy DeVos; and

WHEREAS, all of these efforts aim to erode public trust in the rights and benefits of public education as a public good and advance a radical overhaul of our nation’s commitment to public education to inform our citizenry and strengthen our democracy; and

WHEREAS, the same groups attack public pension systems and exacerbate shortages of public educators; and

WHEREAS, our union democracy has faced and defeated threats from right-wing campaigns, lawsuits, social media attacks and other interference with our democratic processes; and

WHEREAS, our own members, from classroom teachers and support staff to union leadership, have experienced targeted threats and harassment from extremist groups and their supporters because of our work supporting schools as institutions of inclusive democracy:

RESOLVED, that the AFT stands in solidarity against well-funded forces that want to destroy our union and public education as we know it, and we will fight these entities in order to protect our students, our schools, our members, our profession and public education as a public good; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT will speak in one voice as a union when we condemn their attacks on libraries, LGBTQ+ students and their families, and our ability to teach an accurate and more complete history of our nation, including teaching about the insidious nature of white supremacy, about Black resistance, and about the contributions of other historically excluded populations such as the Asian American and Pacific Islander diaspora, Native nations, migrants and refugees, and others; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT will continue to support and advocate for policies and state laws requiring honest and inclusive curriculum such as Black history, Latino history, genocide and holocaust studies, reparations won and Native American history, among others; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT refuses to ignore the connections between the inflammatory, anti-inclusion rhetoric of right-wing politicians, their funders and their supporters, and the ongoing threats to and attacks on schools, libraries, other educational spaces, and the students and workers endangered each time such rhetoric incites action, ranging from personal attacks to system wide bomb threats; and

RESOLVED, that we recommit to educating ourselves as members of the AFT through workshops, webinars, resource groups and other professional development to better understand the history, role and threat of these groups attacking public education as a public good. We will work to better understand their goals, how they operate, how they exploit our political and nonprofit systems to dismantle public education, how they seek to make educational spaces less inclusive and democratic for our students and families, and what we can do to protect our schools, our communities and our union from their attacks; and

RESOLVED, that as AFT leaders, we commit to engaging and supporting new educators in this work, sharing additional information with members at our committee and building-level meetings, and participating in union efforts to organize against these attacks; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT will support progressive revenue campaigns that force the same wealthy elite who fund attacks on our schools to pay their fair share so that we can fund schools and other community needs, and we will endorse and support candidates and elected officials who share our priority to protect public education as an institution of inclusive democracy; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT will increase our strength to defend against these attacks in partnership with our allies and coalitions, including United Working Families, Grassroots Collaborative and Black Lives Matter at School; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT commits to bargaining for the common good as a central value of the AFT.

Adopted May 28, 2025