What Is At Stake In The 2024 Elections: A Democratic Republic Committed To Liberty And Justice For All

WHEREAS, America’s governing documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, even the Pledge of Allegiance that is taught to school children—describe the United States in aspirational terms as a democratic republic committed to “liberty and justice for all”; and

WHEREAS, over the course of almost 250 years, the United States has fallen short of these aspirations: At various times in our history, Indigenous people; African Americans; Latinos; Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders; women; LGBTQIA+ Americans; members of minority religious faiths, such as Judaism and Islam; working people; and immigrants have been denied, overtly or by impact, the freedom and rights accorded other Americans; and

WHEREAS, in the continuing quest to fully realize liberty and justice, we have been part of movements that have bent the long arc of our nation’s history toward those values, increasingly sharing the fruits of democracy among all, even as there remains much work that needs to be done; and

WHEREAS, two great institutions in which the AFT participates—the labor movement and public education—have been central to the expansion of freedom, justice and democracy in the U.S.; and

WHEREAS, we are facing a reversal of this progress as the 2024 elections draw near:

• Free and fair democratic elections have come under attack in two fundamental ways: first, by assaults on the universal franchise with voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering and by assaults on nonpartisan election officials and procedures, and second, by the refusal of Donald Trump and the ultra-right MAGA faction in American politics to accept the results of an election when it doesn’t go their way. As we approach the four-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, one of our two major political parties is dominated by those who still refuse to concede that their candidate lost the 2020 election and who refuse to promise that they will accept the results of the 2024 election.
• The basic institutions and principles of U.S. democracy—from the rule of law to ensuring that laws are enforced without fear or favor—are under attack. There are too many examples of such lawlessness from the presumed Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, to ignore or dismiss. Trump, who has been convicted of 34 felonies by a jury of his peers, has declared that if elected, he would act as “a dictator” on “Day One” of his term of office. At his direction, his lawyers have argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that as president, he should have immunity from criminal prosecution if he ordered the overturning of democratic elections, a coup d’etat, or even an assassination of a political rival. And Trump is not alone. In clear violation of the norms of democracy and the separation of powers, the speaker of the House has called upon the Supreme Court to overturn the former president’s criminal convictions. SCOTUS justices with clear biases and conflicts of interest have refused to recuse themselves from cases that involve the Jan. 6 insurrection and the question of presidential immunity.
• Organized labor has come under attack, with the SCOTUS continuing the anti-union animus that characterized Janus v. AFSCME and undermining the right to strike in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. Universal Brotherhood of Teamsters.
• Public education has come under attack, with various MAGA-dominated states adopting universal voucher schemes designed to undermine public schools.
• Academic freedom and free speech in education have come under attack, with various MAGA-dominated states adopting legislation and executive orders that outlaw the teaching of history and concepts opposed by those in power, that enable the widespread banning of books in schools and libraries in their disfavor, and that inhibit peaceful protests on campus. Congressional hearings are being used for McCarthyite-style inquisitions of education leaders.
• Reproductive freedom has come under attack, with the SCOTUS overturning a half century of precedent and ending the federal guarantee of the right to choose whether to bear a child (Dobbs v. Jackson). Several states have passed draconian anti-abortion laws, calling into question women’s right to control their own bodies and compromising accessibility to birth control and in vitro fertilization.
• The civil rights of people of color have come under attack with the SCOTUS decision striking down affirmative action programs in colleges and universities (Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard) and by MAGA state governors and legislatures taking actions against diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
• LGBTQIA+ people have come under attack by a Supreme Court that has struck down anti-discrimination statutes (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission) and by MAGA state governors and legislatures denying gender-affirming healthcare and targeting LGBTQIA+ youth and students for discriminatory treatment.
• Religious freedom has come under attack with SCOTUS decisions that have dismantled the wall of separation between church and state (Carson v. Makin, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District).
• Efforts to address the effects of climate change have come under attack, as the issue has become politicized by MAGA politicians who deny its reality.
• The very humanity of marginalized and stigmatized communities has come under attack with campaigns of hate and dehumanization. Presumed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has used the tropes of Nazis to assail immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the nation and has described his political opponents as “vermin.” In the wake of Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas war, there has been a deluge of antisemitism and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate in the U.S.:

RESOLVED, that the AFT recognizes that the stakes in the 2024 elections—the presidential, congressional, and state and local elections—are as fundamental as the core political identity of the United States, and whether we remain a democratic republic committed to realizing our aspirational goal of “liberty and justice for all”; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT condemns the attacks on free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power to the choice of the voters, as well as the attacks on democratic government, as violative of the principles on which the U.S. was founded as a free society in which government is based on the “consent of the governed”; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT condemns the attacks on the great democratic institutions of public education and the labor movement, and recommits itself to vigorously defending and promoting these institutions. They are the primary vehicles in American society for education into democratic citizenship, and the means for providing economic opportunity and advancement to all Americans; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT condemns the attacks on fundamental rights such as the freedom of expression and thought in education, on fundamental rights such as women’s health care decisions including reproductive freedom, on the rights and freedom of marginalized and stigmatized communities, and the campaigns of dehumanization and hate that have been directed at these communities; and

RESOLVED, that given what is at stake in the 2024 elections, the AFT commits itself to an all-in campaign in the defense of a free nation, governed in a democratic republic and committed to achieving liberty and justice for all.