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AFT President Randi Weingarten gathered AFT leaders and national organizers in a virtual town hall Feb.19 to deliver an urgent call to action: On March 4, stand up for our schools. Fight for our communities. Protect our kids.
The call to action is part of the AFT’s newly launched nationwide campaign, “Protect Our Kids,” mounted in response to the Trump administration’s threat to cut the Department of Education and the funds that go with it—a move that ultimately amounts to a large-scale attack on the nearly 50 million American children who attend public schools. Speakers shared their plans for the day, in addition to resources to help the nearly 1,000 attendees plan their own community-level actions.
Mobilizing to protect public schools
AFT President Randi Weingarten laid out the urgency of the moment, emphasizing that March 4 is only the beginning of what needs to be a sustained drumbeat of action.
“If we care about the 26 million kids who get Title I [funding], if we care about making sure kids have their reading specialists or making sure that kids [with disabilities] receive services, if we care about kids in rural schools—if we care about any of that, we have to be out there on much more. We don’t have to have big elaborate plans, but we have actions everywhere. It could be a teach-in. It could be a walk-in. It could be a leaflet. It could be a meeting with parents or the PTA. It could be so many different things, but we have to be out there.”
Weingarten highlighted that while national media coverage is important, grassroots organizing in local communities will turn the tide in the court of public opinion. “If we really want to connect with the people in America, with our parents, with our communities, we have to be in the streets and in our states.”
The goal, she said, is to ensure that “our kids get the schools they deserve.”
The stakes: What’s at risk?
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) provided a stark warning about the consequences of dismantling the Department of Education and the funds it distributes, particularly for students from working-class families, like she is.
“When I was a kid, my mother took me to work with her. She worked in the old sweatshops in the city of New Haven in Connecticut. The conditions were horrific; dangerously hot in the summer, colder in the winter, unsanitary, no ventilation. She’d say to me, ‘Get an education, go to school, so you don’t have to live like this.’ I did, but access to public school was the key. If kids from working-class families do not have access to schools, they cannot build a future.”
Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of the United Teachers of Dade in Florida and a special education science teacher, emphasized how personal the consequences are.
“This is about taking away resources,” she said. “I am a special education science teacher—that means that you’re taking away programs for my kids. That means that my students that have special needs—whether it is intellectual disability, learning disability, visual impairment, hearing impairment, perhaps they had a traumatic brain injury—these are kids that have very specialized programs that we will not have programming or funding for.”
DeLauro noted that as organizers, AFT members are in a unique position to stop the cuts. “Do what you all know how to do, then,” she said. “And that is that.”
Organizing at the state and local levels
Union leaders across states shared their strategies for mobilizing their communities. Jessica Tang, president of AFT Massachusetts, stressed the importance of engaging members where they are. “It doesn’t have to be a perfect action,” she said. “We have to meet our members where they’re at too.”
Tang explained that actions like walk-ins, town halls and community partnerships can gradually build activism.
Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, noted that actions should encompass as many locals as possible, both large and small, and that this is an opportunity for list-building—a key component to creating sustained advocacy.
“We want to make sure, again, that we’re not only hitting our large locals but our small locals, our rural locals, our suburban locals, and getting everybody engaged … so that when we continue to have these bigger actions, we have a list of people ready that we can call upon.”
Resisting authoritarian attacks
Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, framed the action as a fight against a larger authoritarian agenda: “CTU is going to name the bully,” she said. “The bully is Donald Trump and all of his squad members that are rooting through our information and trying to scare us out of our democracy.”
She also reminded participants that all our actions have to be anchored by our students’ needs. “Remember, everything that we talk about in terms of policy has an impact on children. So it’s not Title I—it’s after-school activities for the Black children who live on the far south side of Chicago. It’s also our queer and transgender students who need a force field of protection. We have to anchor our work in the needs of our young people.”
On March 4, Chicago educators plan to walk students home from school, engage with parents in their cars, go door-knocking and make phone calls.
Building national resistance
Beyond local efforts, national coalitions are stepping up. Patrick Gaspard, former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and current president of the Center for American Progress, framed the fight as essential for democracy. “Education is an intentional high-priority target for them.”
He urged activists to focus on the power of storytelling. “We can’t talk about 7.5 million children with disabilities. ... Instead, we have to talk about 10-year-old Lucy in Springfield who is wheelchair-bound but is a firecracker and ready to lead the country if she’s given fairness of opportunity and dignity. You all as educators understand the power of real storytelling.”
The sustained fight for public education
The March 4 mobilization is not just about one day—it is about building a sustained movement to defend public education. Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party reminded activists that history shows movements grow through public courage: “When you stand up in public, you give other people permission to stand up. ... The power is always in the hands of the people.”
Weingarten concluded, “Go and mobilize. Do one of these actions. Let’s show them that communities all throughout America do not want cuts to education funding, and that our kids matter and we are the ones fighting for them.”
Resources
See a complete list of speakers and watch the webinar here.