DEFEND PUBLIC SCHOOL INTEGRATION PLANS AT THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

WHEREAS, the U.S. Supreme Court has announced that in its 2006/2007 session it will rule on what measures, if any, public school systems can take to maintain school integration; and

WHEREAS, the Supreme Court’s decision on the legality of the integration plans in the cases it has taken up—in Louisville, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington—will affect hundreds of school systems across the country and determine the future for public school integration and affirmative action nationally; and

WHEREAS, these integration programs are vital to the future of the black, Latino and other minority communities and to public education as a whole.  A loss in these cases will open a period of rapidly deepening segregation and inequality in American society and accelerate the breaking apart of public school systems into separate, unequal and increasingly privatized fragments; and

WHEREAS, the question of whether the dream of Brown v. Board of Education lives or dies will be determined by the outcome in these cases; and

WHEREAS, the AFT defends public school integration, affirmative action, equality and all of the historic gains of the civil rights movement:

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers defend the school integration plans in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Seattle, Washington, and support efforts to defend them; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT join with other unions, civil rights organizations, student organizations, churches and community organizations in supporting and participating in a mass mobilization in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate at the Supreme Court on the day the cases are heard.