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D.C.’s Walter E. Washington Convention Center was buzzing Sept. 11-15 at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference, a much-anticipated celebration of Black excellence teeming with high-profile political celebrities, passionate activists, policymakers and advocates. Amid it all were AFT members mingling and mixing, not only claiming their niche at AFT-sponsored sessions on education and labor, but contributing to—and reveling in—the heady celebration of accomplishment, community and culture.
For the 10th year in a row, the union held professional development sessions for educators and union members attending the ALC. Panel discussions featured Kimberlé Crenshaw, co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum and the founder and executive director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School; Derrick Johnson, NAACP president and CEO; Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), a longtime champion of public school advocacy; and other luminaries. The AFT also welcomed participants to its nearby headquarters for an informal luncheon highlighting opportunities to engage in various AFT programs, followed by professional development sessions on increasing the number of Black educators; strengthening experiential learning; handling threats to diversity, equity and inclusion programs; and effectively utilizing artificial intelligence and social media.
Confronting the problem
Kicking off the AFT sessions, Nicole Austin-Hillery, president of the CBCF, described how crucial educators can be as they inspire students to reach their own potential. Kortne Edogun-Ticey, deputy director of the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans, described the array of resources available to educators to support those students, urging them to tap into funding through her office. “In this time of fear-mongering and anti-DEI, there’s a narrative out there that this work is not happening,” said Edogun-Ticey, but she reeled off a list of success stories, like the Black students leading academic achievement in Chicago and the intentional groups formed to target Black student success in places like Los Angeles, Portland and Denver.
But problems persist. For example, the panel discussed the deplorable underfunding of historically Black colleges and universities. Even as enrollment rises, a recent study showed that the federal government underfunds HBCUs by $13 billion, said Glenda Glover, vice chair of President Biden’s board of advisors on HBCUs and former president of Tennessee State University.
Meanwhile, a shortage of Black K-12 teachers deprives children of connecting in meaningful ways with the people leading their classrooms. Until he was in the eighth grade, said Anthony Harmon, an AFT vice president and the United Federation of Teachers (New York) director of staff, “All my teachers … were white. I didn’t know that I could be a Black teacher.” Today, just 8 percent of New York state’s teachers are Black, which is why the UFT started “grow your own” programs that put outstanding New York City students and school-related professional staff through teacher prep programs.
The group also talked about how just being Black is still an obstacle to success. Despite degrees and titles, said Myles Hollingsworth, a Howard University student and the NAACP New York State Conference Youth and College Division president, “At first glance, we are already discarded, undermined, discounted, undervalued. … Access to opportunity is a trouble area for young people.”
Kaye Wise Whitehead, founding executive director of the Loyola University Maryland Karson Institute for Race, Peace and Social Justice, also highlighted the discrepancy: “How am I in the ivory tower and I’m the mother of two Black sons who can’t get home?” she asked, referring to the fear every Black parent has that their children will encounter biased, deadly police (or civilian) behavior. Whitehead described how she leverages her position as a respected academic to begin to make change: In addition to the important work her institute does to address social injustice, she named the organization after her father, creating a legacy of Black recognition at her institution. “We have to be activists,” she said. “If nothing’s left standing, our work is left standing.”
AFT Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram added that we also have to bring along friends and family as we move forward. “You can’t get a college degree and then get bougie and forget where you come from,” he said, urging participants to talk to that old uncle who “embarrasses everyone” at the family reunion. “Have these conversations and meet people where they are.”
Kimberlé Crenshaw noted that we must overcome “age-old dynamics” to really move forward, including “the idea that civil rights constitute a zero-sum game,” as if giving Black people more rights takes something away from someone else. She talked about how backlash increased anti-Blackness after President Obama was elected, and how the weaponization of CRT, or critical race theory, is preventing us from examining a very real history of sustained inequality. Much like asbestos, she said, “Our institutions have been built with toxic materials. If we want to live lives without that toxicity, we need to have the capacity to figure out where that toxicity is … and how to rebuild our institutions without it.”
In another panel on Wednesday, AFT President Randi Weingarten joined D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, National Education Association President Becky Pringle, Black Swan Academy founder Samantha Davis and Advocates for Justice and Education executive director Rochanda Hiligh-Thomas to examine the effects of school vouchers on academic progress. Evidence shows that vouchers don’t improve academic performance and that they hurt public schools by diverting taxpayer funds to private institutions, Weingarten said. “We should be focused on adequately funding public schools to get kids the resources they need.”
The importance of elections
Thursday’s panel connected the dots, as Weingarten put it, between progress, voter engagement and elections. She noted that while the vote is a “sacred responsibility,” we must go beyond voting. “Elections are not a destination,” said Weingarten. “They are a muscle to be used so we can create educational opportunity and economic opportunity.”
The NAACP’s Derrick Johnson warned that the far right will try to distract us, using ethnic, racial and religious differences to divide—but the election is not about those things. “It’s about rich folks, the capital class, seeking to remake democracy in their financial interest.”
Rep. Bobby Scott pointed out all we have to lose in this election. As the ranking member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, he understands that “who controls Congress determines what we can appropriate.” As American Rescue Plan funds—which provided the biggest investment in K-12 education in the history of the United States—begin to run out, basic resources like Title I and free lunch are at stake.
Marcia Howard, teacher chapter president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Educational Support Professionals, described exactly what kind of difference funding—and elections—can make. Minnesota is a “wealthy” state, she said, with a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in its state Legislature. Education was funded to the tune of $5 billion; all children have free lunch, regardless of family income; and paraprofessionals get unemployment during the summer months, when their school paychecks stop. “Collective might” has made her state a model of providing for the public good, she said.
Terrence Martin, president of AFT Michigan and an AFT vice president, described another success story, this one in Detroit: The schools had been taken over by the state, targeted to become charters, but in the end, the city won an elected school board and, said Martin, “It’s the power of the people that saved the school district in the city of Detroit.” Martin said the union had to be vigilant, because everything could have flipped at any moment—much as the presidential election could flip. “It’s going to be up to the folks in this room to take the message back, to take the fight back into our communities to [make sure] we elect the first Black woman president.”
Ingram got personal. In a moving moment, he had all the Haitian American educators in the room stand and, recalling President Trump’s disparagement of Haitian immigrants, said, “An attack on one is an attack on all.” Preventing Trump from winning office, he said, is up to all of us. “We’ve got to be truth tellers,” he said. “We need everybody to come together to fight this fight.”
[Virginia Myers]