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This is the BAMN/EON's campaign flyer for leadership of the National Education Association (NEA) used during the July 2010 Representative Assembly. That same month, Yvette Felarca ran on this platform for presidency of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) at its National Convention.
VOTE Mark Airgood & Ceresta Smith for NEA Executive Board!
MARK AIRGOOD is a journeyman bricklayer-turned special education teacher. He has been a teacher 20 years in the Oakland schools. Like Ceresta, Mark has been elected numerous times as building representative and NEA and AFT local, state and national convention delegate. He is serving his 2nd term as treasurer of the Oakland Education Association. 
CERESTA SMITH is an English teacher with 20 years seniority. She is the 2009-2010 recipient of the $20,000 Jordan Fundamental Grant for implementing "Text Titans," a literacy-based initiative in her school district. She has been elected as a building representatives and a local, state and national NEA and AFT convention delegate numerous times. By any standard, these are two well-qualified candidates to fill the positions of Executive Committee members. What distinguishes these two candidates is that while, on the surface, they seem like so many of us at this convention, they have proven this year, that they, all of us, and indeed, our whole union, can grow and changes as teachers and leaders. A year ago, both Mark and Ceresta were excellent teachers, tireless advocates for their students, passionate proponents of civil rights and staunch defenders of our union. Today, they have moved from being great admirers of Dr. King to following in his footsteps and becoming civil rights leaders. If the rest of us and our union can follow their lead, we can successfully defend public education, rebuild the American labor movement, and see that the hopes and dreams of the young people we struggle to teach every day are fulfilled. Our Children Are Not for Sale Save Dr. King's Vision for America
Who would have thought that, two years after America did what no one believed was possible-rise above its racist past and elect a black person to be President of the United States-we would be fighting the fight of our lives to defend public education as a right? Two years ago when we convened our Convention, the NEA was characterized as a "terrorist organization" by Republican proponents of adopting a market economy mechanism as the commanding principle of school reform. We never backed down or apologized for being unabashed and proud defenders of public education, of Brown v. Board of Education and of all the great democratic, egalitarian and politically progressive ideals bound up with and furthered by public education. We relished the thought of being associated with opening up a new era of hope, increased equality, freedom, and much renewed prosperity for America's increasingly impoverished middle-class, working-class and poor communities.
With "Friends" like Arne Duncan, Who Needs Enemies? The thanks we received from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan for all our dedication and hard work is an unprecedented, coordinated, relentless, vicious and slanderous attack against us as teachers and professionals, the most concerted campaign to bust our union since 1981, when Ronald Reagan defeated PATCO, and a systematic, bi-partisan national campaign to dismantle public education and reverse the single greatest gain of the last fifty years: the right of every child who lives in our nation to receive a free, quality, public education.
We Must Reject the "Lesser of Two Evils" Philosophy at This Convention The greatest danger our union faces now is that we will ignore the reality of what is occurring and simply continue to either openly or tacitly back the Democrats. If we leave this convention with our old leadership intact, and so fail to make unequivocally clear to Duncan and the other politicians we are prepared to stand on principle and act independently, we will be signing on to the death warrant of our union, and quite possibly the demise of public education in this country. If, however, we elect known leaders of the growing new direct-action movement to the Executive Committee, we can get Duncan to back off of the "Race to the Top" scheme and release the federal funds to the states now, based on need.
Embrace the Joy and Optimism of Being Leaders of the New Movement It has been surprisingly easy for us to defeat large-scale, coordinated, seemingly unstoppable campaigns to close down public schools and replace them with privately-controlled charter schools or to privatize public higher education. The new movement in defense of public education, led by students and youth last fall, most importantly by those at the UC-Berkeley and UCLA-that is, marching, demonstrating, sitting-in and standing up to defend public education from pre-K through college-has led the way. Strengthening this new civil rights movement, which desperately needs our organizational know-how, financial and material support and co-leadership, is the only proven strategy we have to win. Every local victory we have won this year to defend public education, our union, our jobs, our dignity and our students' futures and lives has come about when our union members and, on occasion, union locals have been prepared to assert our political independence and to build the new student-led, campus-based movement in defense of public education.
Public Education is Universally Popular - If We Tell The Truth We Will Have the Support of the Nation Every time we have acceded to the politics of the Democratic Party or subordinated our principles and understanding to the political needs of the politicians, we have faltered or suffered a setback. Simply telling the truth about the character of the attack and what it will lead to has radically increased our popular support and power. However, when we have adapted to the racist and anti-poor prejudices of charter advocates, who claim that black, Latina/o and poor students of all races do not deserve or require the same learning environments as well-to-do suburban students, we have undercut our struggle to defend public education. We know from 30 years of experience that creating integrated, racially- and socioeconomically-diverse schools (most-importantly, inter-district magnet schools), lowering class size, and providing health care, nutrition and other needed services for poor students are key to closing the achievement gap based on race and class. We just need to state the truth, even though it runs against the grain of the doctrine of white populism being pressed within the Democratic Party. The biggest drawback of subordinating our union's actions to the political policies of the Democrats has been our failure to fight for the simple and popular measures needed to stop school closings, program cuts, and lay-offs ascribed to the states' budget crises. Calling for the federal government to tax the banks, corporations and super-rich who created the crisis and are growing wealthier through the crisis, would solve the funding crisis, disarm the Tea-Party right-wing populists and be enormously popular with most American voters. The whole Duncan plan of privatizing public education rests on the theory that we cannot tax the corporations, banks and rich to pay for both health-care reform and the maintenance of public education as a right. Duncan believes that if the Democrats pursue a policy of taxing the rich they will lose the financial backing they need to win future elections. Duncan is wrong, and we need to stop endorsing this wrong political calculation. Building the new, independent, integrated student-led movement is the way to win. Unlike any other candidate in this election, we have carried out the policies we are advocating and we have won. In the last year in Oakland, Berkeley, Los Angeles, throughout California and in Florida, we have stood with our students, supported their walkouts, and supported their efforts and those of their peers and university students to build a new, independent movement in defense of public education.
Oakland, CA and Florida Demonstrate that the Independent United Mass Action of Students and Unions Can Win Our biggest success in this regard occurred on March 4 in Oakland, California, when we organized a district-wide student walkout called an "Emergency Disaster Drill" that brought every student and teacher in the district out of the classroom and onto the streets to defend public education. Our action was coordinated with mass actions of students throughout the University of California system and other universities and colleges in the state, actions that made clear to the whole nation that a new movement, led by the youth, has emerged. Our union's and Oakland students' determination to fight inspired Berkeley students to march for miles from downtown Berkeley into Oakland. The courageous sit-ins of Berkeley students in November and December, sit-ins which were brutally attacked by the police and which led to numerous arrests and suspensions, gave the Oakland Education Association (OEA) and Oakland students the courage needed to fight in the first place. In Florida, we got a Republican Governor to oppose Jeb Bush and his own party and veto an education bill that would have eliminated union protections, civil rights and First Amendment protections for teachers and students, rights attained over the last hundred years. We never would have won the fight in Florida, if students in Miami-Dade had not walked out repeatedly day after day and if United Teachers of Dade (UTD) teachers had not ignored the advice of our union officials who claimed we would discredit our union and weaken our cause if we staged an illegal sick-out, and called in sick by the thousands. When we joined our students' peaceful but militant mass actions, we were on the road to victory. Tens of thousands of Miami teachers acted in defiance of the law, our customs, our union leaders' warnings, and surprised ourselves when we helped to lead the first progressive mass action in Miami-Dade that united our historically-divided and often mistrustful black, Cuban, Latina/o, immigrant and white progressive communities in a common united struggle for our shared futures. The bonds created between teachers and students, English and non-English speakers, longtime black and white Miami residents and more recent Miami immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Mexico and other nations, and among those of us who left our comfort zones and for the first time in our lives adopted the tactics of Dr. King, who we had always praised but never imagined we could become like ourselves, will shape and define the rest of our lives.
Don't Be Afraid to Win The only reason our union would not choose to build the new movement and organize our fight on an independent basis is because, as teachers and as older people, our fear of unleashing the dynamism and power of a new, youth-led movement could prove to be greater than what we know is the other choice-the destruction of our union and the end of public education as we have known it. If we conquer our fear and embrace the joy and the optimism of the new movement, we can win. |
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And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)