Fighting for a Better Future

On December 4, 2024, Randi Weingarten gave the keynote address for the 25th Annual David N. Dinkins Leadership and Public Policy Forum at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics. Dinkins, the first African American mayor of New York City, was known for celebrating his city’s diversity and for supporting families through initiatives such as keeping schools open in the evenings. Serving as mayor from 1990 to 1993, when crime was high across the country, Dinkins had to contend with widespread fear. But his initiatives were effective and crime fell. Most importantly, he restored hope and gave New Yorkers a path forward. With this keynote, Weingarten is following in his footsteps, showing how we can build a better life for all.

Along with reading this excerpt of Weingarten’s remarks, watch the full forum by going to go.aft.org/sty.

–EDITORS

I want to start by talking about two fellow New Yorkers, first the man for whom this forum is named, Mayor David Dinkins. Mayor Dinkins was elected with a swell of hope amid a sea of fear. Dire challenges—the crack epidemic, homelessness, fractured city services—were all made worse by a deep fiscal crisis. Mayor Dinkins addressed them with humility and humanity. His policies centered on helping children, families, and communities—from afterschool programs to community policing.

I was the counsel to the United Federation of Teachers at the time, and had started teaching in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in September 1991, just weeks after the Crown Heights riot—the incident that was the turning point in his mayoralty.

David Dinkins loved the city he called the “gorgeous mosaic.”¹ He believed New York could prosper if we respected our diversity, if we found common ground and pursued mutual goals—each of us important and distinct pieces of the gorgeous mosaic.

I am honored to deliver a lecture named for him. Etched in me from that turbulent time is an understanding that, in public policy and politics, we are always in a race between hope and fear, aspiration and anger.

We are in another turbulent time. My remarks are an attempt to chart a path forward—a path that leans, as Mayor Dinkins did, on hope, not fear, recognizing full well that fear, anger, and a sense of powerlessness in many ways fueled the results of the 2024 election.

Which brings me to another New Yorker who looms large today—actually a former New Yorker, Donald Trump. It’s fair to say that his approach is quite different than Mayor Dinkins’s, and that the United States is at a turning point with his reelection.

My primary purpose today is not to analyze the election—this esteemed university has plenty of intellectual firepower to do that. But I think incumbency, inflation, immigration, and identity were at play. (Yes, I love alliteration.)

When people feel powerless to improve their lives, they often vote to punish the incumbent. Indeed, incumbents are being voted out across the globe.²

Inflation. In our fractured society, Americans had at least one thing in common: the cost of housing, gas, and eggs is too high.³

Then, as the Wizard says to Elphaba in Wicked, you must have a scapegoat to blame, which in this election became immigrants.⁴

Finally, identity. Of course, race and gender played a role. But so did class, big time, as evidenced by Trump’s gains among non-college-educated voters of all races.⁵

With all these factors interacting in this election, how do we begin to understand what happened? I start with people’s economic well-being. We know that millions of Americans share deep fears and doubts about being able to support themselves, let alone supporting their families. Two charts speak volumes to me.

One (above): the trajectory of wages since 1979 for men with a high school degree. Those workers make 17 percent less than they did 45 years ago.⁶ This is downward mobility, and it has real economic consequences, but it also inflicts psychic wounds on a country that has long believed each generation would do better than the last.

The second chart (below): for the first time, Democrats won the richest third of Americans while losing low-income and middle-class Americans.⁷The party of working people lost working people.

These trends began after the 2008 financial crisis, when people perceived their government was doing more to bail out big banks than help families recover. And while Democrats tempered those trends in 2018 and 2020, it swung back hard this year. Indeed, in 9 of the last 10 federal elections, one party or the other has lost control of the House, Senate, or White House.⁸

People suffering economically and feeling powerless to change their condition expressed their dissatisfaction through their vote. But other sources of agency and opportunity exist. Americans don’t need a strongman promising to “fix” their lives. Education, good jobs, and the labor movement are ways people are able to empower themselves. My union works to strengthen these engines of opportunity. And in this election, voters overwhelmingly supported both public schools and workers’ rights when they were on the ballot, including where Trump won.⁹

So yes, I am worried about our democracy, and whether we are headed toward autocracy and fascism. I am worried about our fundamental rights. But, as Cas Mudde, a political scientist who specializes in extremism and democracy, recently posted on Bluesky, “The fight against the far right is secondary to the fight to strengthen liberal democracy.”¹⁰

Pathways to Opportunity

Public education and growing the labor movement are vehicles for creating agency among Americans. They are requisites for Americans to prosper and for democracy to not just be salvaged but strengthened. These pathways to opportunity require fair public policy. And our test for policy is twofold: Will it help make people’s lives better? And does it respect people’s humanity?

It’s why, for example, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pramila Jayapal have all said that if Trump means what he has said about enforcing antitrust laws, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and capping consumer credit rates, they will support it.¹¹

But if Trump does the bidding of Big Tech, Big Oil, and the billionaires who bankrolled his campaign, as early signs suggest,¹² we must expose this monumental betrayal of the working people who voted for him seeking lower costs and a better living standard. And we can reconnect with these voters by fighting for policies that help working- and middle-class Americans have a better life.

Whatever Trump does as president, Americans who care about our democracy have to recognize the needs of and respect the agency of low-income and middle-class Americans. This means breaking with decades of neoliberal, trickle-down economic policies.¹³ Policies that have disempowered and disconnected us from each other and hollowed out communities and the American dream while consolidating power for billionaires.

That means learning from another New Yorker, Franklin Roosevelt, who enacted policies that gave all Americans a fighting chance to succeed.¹⁴ And strengthening the two best pathways to opportunity—public schools and unions, through which all Americans can attain a better life. Where we fight for dignity and respect for all.

In a world of great distrust, of great unease, AFT members—who work in preK–12 education, higher education, healthcare, and public services—are trusted. We are trusted because we make a difference every day in the lives of others. While we may punch above our weight, the AFT’s 1.8 million members make up just 0.5 percent of the country’s population. None of us can do everything, but each of us can do something to reclaim the promise of America.

Organizing Workers

I am going to throw down a gauntlet. If Trump wants to make good on his populist promises to working-class voters, he will support all workers’ right to organize and join unions. Which, by the way, his new secretary of the Department of Labor has supported.

The economic advantages of union membership are clear. Union members enjoy higher wages and better benefits.¹⁵ Union households have nearly four times the wealth of nonunion households, and they are more likely to own a home and have a retirement plan.¹⁶

Support for unions is at the highest level since 1965.¹⁷ Almost 90 percent of Americans under age 30 support unions¹⁸—a group that swung toward Trump in the election. Nearly half of nonunion workers say they would vote to join a union if they could.¹⁹ Yet only 1 in 10 workers in America is in a union. In fact, Americans are 13 times more likely to have an Amazon Prime membership than to have a union card.

One cause is five decades of efforts by billionaires and big businesses to decimate unions, speaking of Amazon. De-unionization is a significant factor in the surge in inequality and the decline of the middle class over the last 40 years.²⁰

No wonder so many working people feel hopeless. Feelings of loneliness and hopelessness and lack of agency are especially acute for young men.²¹ Just take a listen to the manosphere podcasts.

Unions—and safe, welcoming, and engaging public schools—are antidotes to the anxiety and isolation that so many feel. Yes, people form and join unions to have agency—to control their own destiny. And unions, like public schools, allow people across races, backgrounds, and political beliefs to connect, see they have common interests and values, and build solidarity.

Conversely, the downward mobility and anxiety facing working people today are the result of a trickle-down economy enabled by our political leaders. Over the last 40 years, a new set of economic rules have prioritized wealth over work, corporate profits over worker pay, shareholder returns over societal value, and the bogus claim that, in a plutocracy, economic benefits somehow will trickle down to the rest of us. This system concentrated power in the hands of billionaires and big corporations, giving them wealth and influence at levels exceeding even the 19th-century Gilded Age. It’s no coincidence that as worker power has diminished, wealth has been consolidated at the top, inequality has grown, and public confidence in democracy has weakened.²²

Yes, of course, we need to grow the economy—which is always the pretext for neoliberalism. The myth goes like this: unregulated and unbridled markets, with no guardrails, will solve everything. This neoliberal trickle-down philosophy doesn’t work, hasn’t worked, and will never work for anyone but the rich. Yet it keeps getting repackaged and resold to the American people with promises that this time it will be different. It’s like an ex claiming that this time they’ve really changed. It’s time to break up with trickle-down neoliberalism once and for all.

As a teacher of history, I have looked back to an earlier time of economic crisis and turmoil—the Great Depression—for inspiration on a path forward.

Think about 100 years ago—the 1920s—not just flappers, speakeasies, and The Great Gatsby. It was a time of immense economic inequality and unprecedented wealth at the top, racism and lynchings, immigration crackdowns, tariffs and trade wars, isolationism, a president who first coined the America First movement, and policies that led to the Great Depression. It was also the time of the original progressive movement, which advocated for social and political reforms to help the working class, to fight against political corruption, and to reduce the political and economic influence of the ultra-wealthy and big corporations. Progressives and politicians like New York Governors Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt were focused on solutions that made life better for people, ideas and policies that later became the New Deal.²³

Once FDR was elected president in 1932, these progressive policies led the country out of the depths of the crisis, especially for the least advantaged Americans. One of my sheroes and a Progressive Era reformer herself, Frances Perkins, served as FDR’s secretary of labor. Perkins pressed for the landmark Wagner Act, giving workers the right to organize unions and bargain collectively. She fought for the first federal minimum wage and maximum workweek and chaired the commission which developed legislation that became the Social Security Act. Roosevelt and Perkins believed in reforms that would propel opportunity for generations and fundamentally restructure America’s economy to benefit working people.²⁴

The decades that followed saw union membership in America surge, and with it the creation of the greatest middle class in the history of the world. But starting in the 1970s, neoliberals and corporate interests coordinated to weaken or dismantle these policies, which has led to our current inequality, economic insecurity, and crisis of democracy.²⁵

So let’s gather inspiration from those progressive reformers who showed us that we must match times of great anxiety and hopelessness with great ambition. Laws and policies and institutions must meet the moment. Congress must pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. Increase the minimum wage. Rewrite economic rules to stop big corporations and billionaires from rigging capitalism further in their favor. Let’s keep building upon the Affordable Care Act and guarantee Social Security for generations to come. And finally invest adequately in public education.

And if the powers that be in this country fight against this agenda, we fight back. We must create an economic movement for all families to be better off—and that takes organizing in our communities and the halls of power. Whether it’s transforming a high school, organizing a community literacy event, participating in a local election, supporting a local union, cleaning up a park, or any civic participation that builds agency, trust, and community.

My union will do our part. AFT members are making a difference in the lives of others every day, paving pathways to opportunity and fighting for respect and dignity for all Americans.

We are in a race between hope and fear. For hope to win, this requires all of us. The simple truth is that we all do better when we all do better. We must fight for the promise of America for all of us—for our freedoms, for our democracy, and for working folks and kids to have real agency and opportunity.

Randi Weingarten is the president of the AFT. Prior to her election in 2008, she served for 11 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2. A teacher of history at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn from 1991 to 1997, Weingarten helped her students win several state and national awards debating constitutional issues. Widely recognized as a champion of public schools and a better life for all people, her commendations include being named to Washingtonian’s 2023 Most Influential People in Washington and City & State New York’s 2021 New York City Labor Power 100.

Endnotes

1. D. Dinkins, A Mayor’s Life: Governing New York’s Gorgeous Mosaic (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013).

2. D. Rising, J. Lawless, and N. Riccardi, “The ‘Super Year’ of Elections Has Been Super Bad for Incumbents as Voters Punish Them in Droves,” Associated Press, November 17, 2024, apnews.com/article/global-elections-2024-incumbents-defeated-c80fbd4e667de86fe08aac025b333f95.

3. US Inflation Calculator, “Current US Inflation Rates: 2000–2025,” usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/#google_vignette.

4. R. Mitchell, “The Politics of ‘Wicked,’ Explained,” Elle, December 2, 2024, elle.com.au/culture/entertainment/wicked-politics-fascism-explained.

5. W. Frey, “Trump Gained Some Minority Voters, but the GOP Is Hardly a Multiracial Coalition,” Brookings, December 5, 2024, brookings.edu/articles/trump-gained-some-minority-voters-but-the-gop-is-hardly-a-multiracial-coalition; and J. Alonso, “Education-Level Voting Gaps Are Highest Among Men, White People,” Inside Higher Ed, November 8, 2024, insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2024/11/08/men-and-white-people-vote-differently-based-education.

6. BLS Reports, “Report 1089: Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2019,” US Bureau of Labor Statistics, December 2020, bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-earnings/2019.

7. E. Xiao et al., “Poorer Voters Flocked to Trump—and Other Data Points from the Election,” Financial Times, November 9, 2024, ft.com/content/6de668c7-64e9-4196-b2c5-9ceca966fe3f.

8. K. Schaeffer, “Single-Party Control in Washington Is Common at the Beginning of a New Presidency, but Tends Not to Last Long,” Pew Research Center, February 3, 2021, pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/02/03/single-party-control-in-washington-is-common-at-the-beginning-of-a-new-presidency-but-tends-not-to-last-long.

9. J. Bryant, “Voters Across the Political Spectrum Gave Public Education Important Wins in the 2024 Election,” The Progressive, November 18, 2024, progressive.org/public-schools-advocate/voters-across-the-political-spectrum-gave-public-education-important-wins-2024-election-bryant-20241115; and E. Cohn and J. Sherer, “A Review of Key 2024 Ballot Measures,” Working Economics Blog, Economic Policy Institute, November 7, 2024, epi.org/blog/a-review-of-key-2024-ballot-measures-voters-backed-progressive-policy-measures.

10. C. Mudde, Bluesky post, November 29, 2024, 9:30 a.m., bsky.app/profile/casmudde.bsky.social/post/3lc3sa3wumc2j.

11. H. Otterbein, B. Gibson, and M. Hill, “This Is the New Progressive Strategy for Warring with Trump,” Politico, November 25, 2024, politico.com/news/2024/11/25/progressives-against-trump-00191392.

12. M. Wendling, “Trump Sides with Tech Bosses in Maga Fight over Immigrant Visas,” BBC News, December 28, 2024, bbc.com/news/articles/clyv7gxp02yo; T. Schleifer and D. Yaffe-Bellany, “In Display of Fealty, Tech Industry Curries Favor with Trump,” December 14, 2024, nytimes.com/2024/12/14/technology/trump-tech-amazon-meta-openai.html; and C. Domonoske, “Under Trump, an ‘All of the Above’ Energy Policy Is Poised for a Comeback,” NPR, December 9, 2024, npr.org/2024/12/09/nx-s1-5220305/trump-energy-policy-oil-renewables.

13. J. Green, The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics (New York: Penguin Random House, 2024).

14. W. Leuchtenburg, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Impact and Legacy,” Miller Center, University of Virginia, millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/impact-and-legacy.

15. A. Banerjee et al., Unions Are Not Only Good for Workers, They’re Good for Communities and for Democracy (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, December 15, 2021), epi.org/publication/unions-and-well-being.

16. A. Glass, D. Madland, and C. Weller, Unions Build Wealth for the American Working Class (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, May 3, 2023), americanprogress.org/article/unions-build-wealth-for-the-american-working-class.

17. J. McCarthy, “U.S. Approval of Labor Unions at Highest Point Since 1965,” Gallup, August 30, 2022, news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx.

18. S. Zhang, “Nearly 90 Percent of Young People Support Unions, Poll Finds,” Truthout, August 31, 2023, truthout.org/articles/nearly-90-percent-of-young-people-support-unions-poll-finds.

19. H. Shierholz, M. Poydock, and C. McNicholas, Unionization Increased by 200,000 in 2022 (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, January 19, 2023), epi.org/publication/unionization-2022.

20. H. Shierholz, “Weakened Labor Movement Leads to Rising Economic Inequality,” Working Economics Blog, Economic Policy Institute, January 27, 2020, epi.org/blog/weakened-labor-movement-leads-to-rising-economic-inequality.

21. J. Stiglitz, “How Neoliberalism Failed, and What a Better Society Could Look Like,” working paper, Roosevelt Institute, August 2024, rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/RI_How-Neoliberalism-Failed-Stiglitz_Working-Paper_082024.pdf; R. Kuttner, “Neoliberalism: Political Success, Economic Failure,” American Prospect, June 25, 2019, prospect.org/economy/neoliberalism-political-success-economic-failure; and A. Madariaga, “Neoliberalism Has Always Been a Threat to Democracy,” Jacobin, June 2, 2021, jacobin.com/2021/06/neoliberalism-democracy-populist-right.

22. T. Golway, Frank and Al: FDR, Al Smith, and the Unlikely Alliance That Created the Modern Democratic Party (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018).

23. J. Breitman, “Frances Perkins: Honoring the Achievements of FDR’s Secretary of Labor,” Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, fdrlibrary.org/perkins; and Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, “FDR and the Wagner Act: ‘A Better Relationship Between Management and Labor,’” fdrlibrary.org/wagner-act.

24. J. Bivens et al., “Moral Policy = Good Economics,” Working Economics Blog, Economic Policy Institute, October 30, 2020, epi.org/blog/moral-policy-good-economics-whats-needed-to-lift-up-140-million-poor-and-low-income-people-further-devastated-by-the-pandemic.

[Photo Credits: AFT]