December 26, 2024 • 23 mins
This week, Danielle is looking back at some of her favorite conversations from the last few years of Woke AF Daily. Today, Danielle revisits a discussion from last year with AFT President Randi Weingarten about the hateful indoctrination of white children in America.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, Peepsen, and welcome to f Daily with Meet
your Girl Danielle Moody. Pre recording from the home Bunker. Folks,
it is our holiday rest week here on wok F
and as we wind down the last seven years, I'm
revisiting some of the episodes that I think still bear
(00:33):
true today as we are just weeks away from Donald
Trump taking his second oath to uphold the Constitution, which
we know that he is not going to. On top
of Donald Trump's list, however, has been to defund the
Department of Education, the Department of Education that brings curriculum
(00:54):
to millions of children across this country. And so it
was fitting that one of the last conversations that we
revisit is that of the hateful indoctrination of White children
with Randy Weingarten, who is the president of the American
Federation of Teachers, who has visited wokay at a number
(01:17):
of times over the years to give us a window
into what is happening in America's public education system and
what we need to pay attention to. And at a
time when books are being banned and curriculums are being banned,
and teachers are being fired, and libraries are being ransacked.
Randy Weingarten talks about how we continue to perpetuate hateful
(01:43):
stereotypes and white supremacy inside of our classrooms. Take a listen, folks.
I am very happy to welcome back to wok Afi
Daily the President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten,
as we began another school year here in America. Randy,
(02:08):
it was just the sixtieth anniversary of the March on Washington,
and you wrote a piece reflecting on your speech and
your time in Washington, d C. Honoring this really important
march and day in our nation's history. Just give us
(02:30):
an idea of your mood and your feelings while you
were there. At the backdrop of it, you know, there
was a shooting that took place in Jacksonville, Florida, at
the hands of a white supremacist that took the lives
of three black patrons and workers at a general store.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It was so Look. First off, Daniel, I'm glad to
be with you, and I'm glad that you do this podcast,
and I'm glad that you call it what you call
it in terms of taking back the word woke.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I'm a history teacher. I'm also you know, a union president.
You think back to what happened in sixty three in
the march and then the backlash after the march, and
think about what happened after the Obama presidency and the
(03:38):
backlash after that. Think about what happened after Brown versus
Board and the backlash after that. I think that what
we're seeing is that the enabling, the normalizing, and the
enabling of hate, combined with ready access to guns, particularly
(04:07):
to weapons of war, create a really dangerous situation, and
calling it out is really important. Understanding what's going on
is really important. But the but just like those kids
(04:29):
in Jacksonville, how many years ago, after that Saturday of
Fear that was created, you know, after they tried to
integrate lunch counters and the KKK created that Saturday of
Fear of the uh Anville fear or March or whatever
(04:55):
it was called of the KKK uh and they still
won the kids one they integrated lunch counters. This was
a commemoration. This was a continuation, not a commemoration, because
(05:16):
there's so much at stake right now and people are
awakening to what is at stake. What happened in Jacksonville
is a heenous crime of a white supremacist murderer, just
like what happened in Buffalo was a heenous crime of
a white supremacist murderer. What those supremacists want, what people
(05:44):
who enable them want, is to bully and silence the
rest of us who are fighting for freedom and dignity
and basic humanity for all, particularly those who have been
discribed against quality and freedom. So I would say that
(06:07):
we have to hold the families as tight as we
can in the morning of the deaths of those innocent
souls and fight on and fight on and fight on
all at the same time. And yes, that fight includes
the fight for gun safety and getting assault weapons off
(06:31):
the streets, which America has done before and can do
again with courage. But that fight is also the fight
for freedom and the fight against fear, the fight for
aspiration and the fight against despair, the fight for solutions
and the fight against smears, And we have to do
(06:52):
both at the same time. And so I'm not I
was devastating and horrible to hear what happened in Jacksonville
as you're leaving the march, but it has to spur
us on to more action and to not be silent.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
You know, I want to ask you, both as the
president and AFT, but also as a former educator yourself,
what does it mean right now to you and to
teachers of history that telling the truth is a crime.
What does it mean to librarians that they're having to
(07:41):
remove books from shelves that teach children about empathy and
truth and compassion. Can you explain because for those people
who don't have kids in the school system, who are
not as connected, but understand that public education connects us all,
(08:03):
whether or not we have kids that are in the
system in this moment or not, what it means to
live in this place of oppression, silencing, and fear as
a teacher, a librarian, an administrator in these states.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So I think what I think you know the answer
by the way in which you frame the question, which
is that you know it's terrible, and people are and
people take great umbrage at it, and it has had
to a certain effect, the chilling effect that people like
(08:46):
DeSantis and Abbot want. We see that in polling. But
what it's not doing is it's not crushing the spirit
of teachers and librarians. What it's starting to do is
And this is spoiler alert because I feel pretty optimistic
that we are going to win. What it's starting to
(09:08):
do is it's creating activism in a way that we
didn't have for a while, just like the red for
ed movement around wages a few years ago and conditions.
Teachers want what kids need and they know that this
is impairing kids' education and hurting kids for the long run,
(09:34):
and they take and they are really pissed about it.
And the people who and and and it doesn't it
crosses ideological grounds or or ideal or or ideological lines,
I guess I should say so. In the Panhandle, for example,
in Florida, the teachers that had to put tarps across
(09:57):
the libraries, YEP. A lot of the teachers who teach
in the Panhandle are Republicans, a lot of them probably
voters for DeSantis. And they were like, what are you doing.
This is my library in my classroom that I was
using these books. I may have usedaw these books for
five or ten years. All of a suddenly you're banning them.
(10:19):
Why So, what we're seeing in terms of teachers and
I think you're seeing this in terms of the mainstream
as well is that more and more. It is a
smaller and smaller but very well coordinated and we're very
well funded group of people who are trying to ban
(10:41):
books and erase history. And look, I'm not saying that
they're not powerful. DeSantis is powerful, Abbit is powerful, Huckabee
is powerful. They also have these, you know, legislators that
they have now taken control of because of jeremandry. But
if you look at at polling and you look at
(11:04):
the reaction, most parents and most teachers hate this, and
so it's actually activated a generation of people to fight it.
And so that's why for us, we have handed out
nine million books in the last few years. By July
(11:26):
of twenty twenty four, it will be ten million. We're
working with first book, we're working with others. So think
about the power of a teacher's union working with its members,
having these family events all throughout America trying to ban books.
We are distributing books that have diverse titles that kids
(11:48):
see themselves in and the other thing. And I'm sure
that this has gotten me in the crosshairs of the
right wing. I think this is what triggered them. Two
years ago, we said to our members, if you teach
honest history. If you teach history in an authentic way,
with authentic sources, we're going to expand our our legal
(12:10):
defense fund, and we're going to represent you, and we're
going to make sure you are not alone. So you
have a bunch of things that are now being used
in terms of activating. You have unions creating community against
banning books and against the erasure of children. You have
(12:32):
now people like Moms Rising and Red Wine and Blue
and lots of other new groups that have been created
that have said enough, and you're starting to see this
kind of activism together. The one thing I would say
to teachers or to librarians who are alone is don't
act alone. Let's create a community around you. Because the
(12:56):
world is too divisive and it's too you know, and
and there's a lot of haters. So let's create that
community and the connectiveness around you, and let's fight this together.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I want to switch gears for a moment to talk
about the rise of COVID that we are seeing right.
We're seeing lots of headlines about you know, COVID making resurgence,
not to the extent that it did in prior years,
but that it's still present. And I saw an article
about a school that part of their I guess protocol
(13:34):
now is to keep windows closed because of potential school shootings.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Right, Okay, it's crazy right to.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Keep windows closed. Kids don't get fresh air all day
because we'd rather treat schools like prisons than deal with guns.
And I wanted to get your thoughts on a how
you think that schools will deal with you know, the
the rise in COVID, given the I mean extraordinary backlash
(14:05):
that we saw, I mean teachers being punched and school
board meetings going absolutely insane. And this is you know,
hearkening back to twenty twenty one, but this idea that
part of protocol in safety is shutting windows in places
that already lack quality ventilation. So I just wanted to
(14:28):
get your thoughts on both of those pieces.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Look, it's completely surreal because what's happening is instead of
this is what its iss. Kids are not a priority.
Guns are the priority. Kids are not a priority. So
if it means that to maintain weapons of war culture
and not take on that issue, that you're going to
(14:53):
actually do the exact wrong thing. That helps not only
kids learn, but what we've learned is that ventilation is
probably the number one change you can make. Good ventilation
for any kind of respiratory illness, for any of the
(15:15):
climate issues that we've seen this summer, when schools are
one hundred and five, workplaces one hundred and ten, all
this you need air conditioning. So good ventilation really good
in terms of respiratory illness, or really good in terms
of climate issues and weather issues. And frankly for those
of us who are asmatic or really good in terms
(15:35):
of those kind of issues too. And a disparate proportion
of our black and brown kids are asthmadic. So and
I say that as an asthmatic, So you know, so
the ventilation that starts with proper air circulation, and if
you don't have good AC, you know, HVAC systems in
(15:57):
the school, you've got to open windows and you to
have a good fan. And so it just says that
kids are not a priority these and then they turned
kids and teachers into a pretzel to try to figure
out how to deal with all of this. But that
is the irony of that guns are more important, just
(16:18):
like during COVID, bars and restaurants were more important than
opening schools. I love when the extremists start telling me
all about you know what happened in Europe. I mean
we and I'm really glad Mehdi Hassan just did this.
He debunked a lot of the myths. Kids got COVID,
kids were vectors for COVID. There's lots of people who
(16:42):
died from COVID. There's lots of kids who were orphan
because their parents died or grandparents died because of COVID.
But we from April twenty twenty, we're the first ones
to put out a report that said we need to
have schools reopened. They're really important, but we need the
safety measures. You can't do one without the other. You
(17:02):
need to do both.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And to have.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
American government led by Trump that prioritized you know, bars
and restaurants rather than schools, and then say, look at
what happened in Europe. Well, Europe prioritized schools being opened,
and we're and the problem, the dilemma right now is
(17:27):
that because of all the conspiracy theories and all of
the odjita that happened at the end of COVID, and
you know, on mass and vaccines and all of this,
we're not going to have an appropriate or proper public
health system directing us or guiding us about what to do. So,
(17:51):
this is what I would say to people, and this
is what we're doing. Fight like hell to get good
ventilation in a school. That is the number one thing
that we can do. And let's make sure that we
don't stigmatize people who wear masks or who need to
wear masks. And let's do and try to figure out
(18:14):
the other mitigating factors that we need, because COVID is
still a respiratory illness, and we need to make sure
both COVID rsv all of these respiratory illnesses. We need
to make sure that we are giving people the best
guidance for how to protect their health and safety, whether
it be kids, whether it be teachers, whether it be
(18:36):
kids families or teachers' families.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Last question for you, Randy, is this. You know, schools
like we started out at the top, have always been
on the front lines for social justice in this country.
It is they have always been a battleground and for
people who want to get involved, for people who see
(19:01):
their school boards being taken over, for people who see
their teachers fleeing because they no longer want to teach.
What can regular people who are not necessarily a part
of AFT. What can they do to support their public schools,
their communities, their administrators and teachers and students.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
So I would just say there's one there's one recommendation
I would make, and I want to kind of link
it to our new campaign, which is just get involved
in whatever way you can get involved. You know, lots
of schools have you know, some open something day night
(19:46):
for community that welcomes community in. Be involved in a
local school, do some tutoring, do some reading with kids,
do something that gets involved in the of the community.
Because the most important thing we can do right now
is connection and community. That is the most important antidote
(20:09):
to this hate and division and fear and crossing ideological
lines and doing the things that really kind of lift
up communities and lift up kids, and it becomes infectious
that people then start talking to each other. It doesn't
matter if they're Republican or Democrat or independent. Most people
(20:29):
still in America want basic decency and basic humanity. So
what we've tried to do, and this may sound counterproductive, counterintuitive,
is that as okay, we're fighting the fights as they
ban books, we're giving books out as I said before,
we're fighting to make sure that people can teach honest history.
(20:50):
But what we're also trying to do is deal with
the issues of loneliness, learning losses, reading literacy, and bringing
together really kind of lifting up solutions for the problems
of families and kids have, for the problems that we
see all the time, and really trying to lift this up.
(21:12):
So this whole year we're doing a campaign, you know,
and how do you deal with loneliness? Let's wrap services
around schools, and let's together fight these social media companies
who could in a day deal with and change the
algorithm and change and they could actually emphasize children's health
and safety as opposed to making money, and they'd still
(21:35):
make a lot of money. So parents and teachers together
are working on telling and pressuring social media companies to
change their algorithms. We're working on wrapping services around school
We're actually working to make experience or learning the norm
career tech ed, giving kids lots of different options, particularly
as this economy creates more and more new jobs. Why
(21:59):
aren't we doing that? Stop with the testing, testing, testing,
Let's actually work with our hands and make schooling fun.
And then let's really help teachers, help kids how to
learn to read, so kids have books that they want
to read. But also what are the tools of the
trade and doing things like that. So we're really trying
(22:20):
to get into what are the solutions that transcend ideology.
What are the things that we can do together as
a community, because once we do that, these extremists they
won't they will They only are effective when they can
(22:40):
create anger and fear.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And so let's create love and engagement around schools dealing
with the issues that people really care about.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I tell you, Randy, every time that I speak to you,
I say that you're doing the Lord's work and I
appreciate your leadership and your voice every time that we
have the opportunity to speak. Thank you for making it
time to join wok F.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I'm back at you. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
That is it for me today, dear friends on wok
F as always power to the people and to all
the people. Power yet woke and stay woke as fuck.
Good morning, Peepsen, and welcome to f Daily with Meet
your Girl Danielle Moody. Pre recording from the home Bunker. Folks,
it is our holiday rest week here on wok F
and as we wind down the last seven years, I'm
revisiting some of the episodes that I think still bear
(00:33):
true today as we are just weeks away from Donald
Trump taking his second oath to uphold the Constitution, which
we know that he is not going to. On top
of Donald Trump's list, however, has been to defund the
Department of Education, the Department of Education that brings curriculum
(00:54):
to millions of children across this country. And so it
was fitting that one of the last conversations that we
revisit is that of the hateful indoctrination of White children
with Randy Weingarten, who is the president of the American
Federation of Teachers, who has visited wokay at a number
(01:17):
of times over the years to give us a window
into what is happening in America's public education system and
what we need to pay attention to. And at a
time when books are being banned and curriculums are being banned,
and teachers are being fired, and libraries are being ransacked.
Randy Weingarten talks about how we continue to perpetuate hateful
(01:43):
stereotypes and white supremacy inside of our classrooms. Take a listen, folks.
I am very happy to welcome back to wok Afi
Daily the President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten,
as we began another school year here in America. Randy,
(02:08):
it was just the sixtieth anniversary of the March on Washington,
and you wrote a piece reflecting on your speech and
your time in Washington, d C. Honoring this really important
march and day in our nation's history. Just give us
(02:30):
an idea of your mood and your feelings while you
were there. At the backdrop of it, you know, there
was a shooting that took place in Jacksonville, Florida, at
the hands of a white supremacist that took the lives
of three black patrons and workers at a general store.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It was so Look. First off, Daniel, I'm glad to
be with you, and I'm glad that you do this podcast,
and I'm glad that you call it what you call
it in terms of taking back the word woke.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I'm a history teacher. I'm also you know, a union president.
You think back to what happened in sixty three in
the march and then the backlash after the march, and
think about what happened after the Obama presidency and the
(03:38):
backlash after that. Think about what happened after Brown versus
Board and the backlash after that. I think that what
we're seeing is that the enabling, the normalizing, and the
enabling of hate, combined with ready access to guns, particularly
(04:07):
to weapons of war, create a really dangerous situation, and
calling it out is really important. Understanding what's going on
is really important. But the but just like those kids
(04:29):
in Jacksonville, how many years ago, after that Saturday of
Fear that was created, you know, after they tried to
integrate lunch counters and the KKK created that Saturday of
Fear of the uh Anville fear or March or whatever
(04:55):
it was called of the KKK uh and they still
won the kids one they integrated lunch counters. This was
a commemoration. This was a continuation, not a commemoration, because
(05:16):
there's so much at stake right now and people are
awakening to what is at stake. What happened in Jacksonville
is a heenous crime of a white supremacist murderer, just
like what happened in Buffalo was a heenous crime of
a white supremacist murderer. What those supremacists want, what people
(05:44):
who enable them want, is to bully and silence the
rest of us who are fighting for freedom and dignity
and basic humanity for all, particularly those who have been
discribed against quality and freedom. So I would say that
(06:07):
we have to hold the families as tight as we
can in the morning of the deaths of those innocent
souls and fight on and fight on and fight on
all at the same time. And yes, that fight includes
the fight for gun safety and getting assault weapons off
(06:31):
the streets, which America has done before and can do
again with courage. But that fight is also the fight
for freedom and the fight against fear, the fight for
aspiration and the fight against despair, the fight for solutions
and the fight against smears, And we have to do
(06:52):
both at the same time. And so I'm not I
was devastating and horrible to hear what happened in Jacksonville
as you're leaving the march, but it has to spur
us on to more action and to not be silent.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
You know, I want to ask you, both as the
president and AFT, but also as a former educator yourself,
what does it mean right now to you and to
teachers of history that telling the truth is a crime.
What does it mean to librarians that they're having to
(07:41):
remove books from shelves that teach children about empathy and
truth and compassion. Can you explain because for those people
who don't have kids in the school system, who are
not as connected, but understand that public education connects us all,
(08:03):
whether or not we have kids that are in the
system in this moment or not, what it means to
live in this place of oppression, silencing, and fear as
a teacher, a librarian, an administrator in these states.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So I think what I think you know the answer
by the way in which you frame the question, which
is that you know it's terrible, and people are and
people take great umbrage at it, and it has had
to a certain effect, the chilling effect that people like
(08:46):
DeSantis and Abbot want. We see that in polling. But
what it's not doing is it's not crushing the spirit
of teachers and librarians. What it's starting to do is
And this is spoiler alert because I feel pretty optimistic
that we are going to win. What it's starting to
(09:08):
do is it's creating activism in a way that we
didn't have for a while, just like the red for
ed movement around wages a few years ago and conditions.
Teachers want what kids need and they know that this
is impairing kids' education and hurting kids for the long run,
(09:34):
and they take and they are really pissed about it.
And the people who and and and it doesn't it
crosses ideological grounds or or ideal or or ideological lines,
I guess I should say so. In the Panhandle, for example,
in Florida, the teachers that had to put tarps across
(09:57):
the libraries, YEP. A lot of the teachers who teach
in the Panhandle are Republicans, a lot of them probably
voters for DeSantis. And they were like, what are you doing.
This is my library in my classroom that I was
using these books. I may have usedaw these books for
five or ten years. All of a suddenly you're banning them.
(10:19):
Why So, what we're seeing in terms of teachers and
I think you're seeing this in terms of the mainstream
as well is that more and more. It is a
smaller and smaller but very well coordinated and we're very
well funded group of people who are trying to ban
(10:41):
books and erase history. And look, I'm not saying that
they're not powerful. DeSantis is powerful, Abbit is powerful, Huckabee
is powerful. They also have these, you know, legislators that
they have now taken control of because of jeremandry. But
if you look at at polling and you look at
(11:04):
the reaction, most parents and most teachers hate this, and
so it's actually activated a generation of people to fight it.
And so that's why for us, we have handed out
nine million books in the last few years. By July
(11:26):
of twenty twenty four, it will be ten million. We're
working with first book, we're working with others. So think
about the power of a teacher's union working with its members,
having these family events all throughout America trying to ban books.
We are distributing books that have diverse titles that kids
(11:48):
see themselves in and the other thing. And I'm sure
that this has gotten me in the crosshairs of the
right wing. I think this is what triggered them. Two
years ago, we said to our members, if you teach
honest history. If you teach history in an authentic way,
with authentic sources, we're going to expand our our legal
(12:10):
defense fund, and we're going to represent you, and we're
going to make sure you are not alone. So you
have a bunch of things that are now being used
in terms of activating. You have unions creating community against
banning books and against the erasure of children. You have
(12:32):
now people like Moms Rising and Red Wine and Blue
and lots of other new groups that have been created
that have said enough, and you're starting to see this
kind of activism together. The one thing I would say
to teachers or to librarians who are alone is don't
act alone. Let's create a community around you. Because the
(12:56):
world is too divisive and it's too you know, and
and there's a lot of haters. So let's create that
community and the connectiveness around you, and let's fight this together.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I want to switch gears for a moment to talk
about the rise of COVID that we are seeing right.
We're seeing lots of headlines about you know, COVID making resurgence,
not to the extent that it did in prior years,
but that it's still present. And I saw an article
about a school that part of their I guess protocol
(13:34):
now is to keep windows closed because of potential school shootings.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Right, Okay, it's crazy right to.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Keep windows closed. Kids don't get fresh air all day
because we'd rather treat schools like prisons than deal with guns.
And I wanted to get your thoughts on a how
you think that schools will deal with you know, the
the rise in COVID, given the I mean extraordinary backlash
(14:05):
that we saw, I mean teachers being punched and school
board meetings going absolutely insane. And this is you know,
hearkening back to twenty twenty one, but this idea that
part of protocol in safety is shutting windows in places
that already lack quality ventilation. So I just wanted to
(14:28):
get your thoughts on both of those pieces.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Look, it's completely surreal because what's happening is instead of
this is what its iss. Kids are not a priority.
Guns are the priority. Kids are not a priority. So
if it means that to maintain weapons of war culture
and not take on that issue, that you're going to
(14:53):
actually do the exact wrong thing. That helps not only
kids learn, but what we've learned is that ventilation is
probably the number one change you can make. Good ventilation
for any kind of respiratory illness, for any of the
(15:15):
climate issues that we've seen this summer, when schools are
one hundred and five, workplaces one hundred and ten, all
this you need air conditioning. So good ventilation really good
in terms of respiratory illness, or really good in terms
of climate issues and weather issues. And frankly for those
of us who are asmatic or really good in terms
(15:35):
of those kind of issues too. And a disparate proportion
of our black and brown kids are asthmadic. So and
I say that as an asthmatic, So you know, so
the ventilation that starts with proper air circulation, and if
you don't have good AC, you know, HVAC systems in
(15:57):
the school, you've got to open windows and you to
have a good fan. And so it just says that
kids are not a priority these and then they turned
kids and teachers into a pretzel to try to figure
out how to deal with all of this. But that
is the irony of that guns are more important, just
(16:18):
like during COVID, bars and restaurants were more important than
opening schools. I love when the extremists start telling me
all about you know what happened in Europe. I mean
we and I'm really glad Mehdi Hassan just did this.
He debunked a lot of the myths. Kids got COVID,
kids were vectors for COVID. There's lots of people who
(16:42):
died from COVID. There's lots of kids who were orphan
because their parents died or grandparents died because of COVID.
But we from April twenty twenty, we're the first ones
to put out a report that said we need to
have schools reopened. They're really important, but we need the
safety measures. You can't do one without the other. You
(17:02):
need to do both.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And to have.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
American government led by Trump that prioritized you know, bars
and restaurants rather than schools, and then say, look at
what happened in Europe. Well, Europe prioritized schools being opened,
and we're and the problem, the dilemma right now is
(17:27):
that because of all the conspiracy theories and all of
the odjita that happened at the end of COVID, and
you know, on mass and vaccines and all of this,
we're not going to have an appropriate or proper public
health system directing us or guiding us about what to do. So,
(17:51):
this is what I would say to people, and this
is what we're doing. Fight like hell to get good
ventilation in a school. That is the number one thing
that we can do. And let's make sure that we
don't stigmatize people who wear masks or who need to
wear masks. And let's do and try to figure out
(18:14):
the other mitigating factors that we need, because COVID is
still a respiratory illness, and we need to make sure
both COVID rsv all of these respiratory illnesses. We need
to make sure that we are giving people the best
guidance for how to protect their health and safety, whether
it be kids, whether it be teachers, whether it be
(18:36):
kids families or teachers' families.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Last question for you, Randy, is this. You know, schools
like we started out at the top, have always been
on the front lines for social justice in this country.
It is they have always been a battleground and for
people who want to get involved, for people who see
(19:01):
their school boards being taken over, for people who see
their teachers fleeing because they no longer want to teach.
What can regular people who are not necessarily a part
of AFT. What can they do to support their public schools,
their communities, their administrators and teachers and students.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
So I would just say there's one there's one recommendation
I would make, and I want to kind of link
it to our new campaign, which is just get involved
in whatever way you can get involved. You know, lots
of schools have you know, some open something day night
(19:46):
for community that welcomes community in. Be involved in a
local school, do some tutoring, do some reading with kids,
do something that gets involved in the of the community.
Because the most important thing we can do right now
is connection and community. That is the most important antidote
(20:09):
to this hate and division and fear and crossing ideological
lines and doing the things that really kind of lift
up communities and lift up kids, and it becomes infectious
that people then start talking to each other. It doesn't
matter if they're Republican or Democrat or independent. Most people
(20:29):
still in America want basic decency and basic humanity. So
what we've tried to do, and this may sound counterproductive, counterintuitive,
is that as okay, we're fighting the fights as they
ban books, we're giving books out as I said before,
we're fighting to make sure that people can teach honest history.
(20:50):
But what we're also trying to do is deal with
the issues of loneliness, learning losses, reading literacy, and bringing
together really kind of lifting up solutions for the problems
of families and kids have, for the problems that we
see all the time, and really trying to lift this up.
(21:12):
So this whole year we're doing a campaign, you know,
and how do you deal with loneliness? Let's wrap services
around schools, and let's together fight these social media companies
who could in a day deal with and change the
algorithm and change and they could actually emphasize children's health
and safety as opposed to making money, and they'd still
(21:35):
make a lot of money. So parents and teachers together
are working on telling and pressuring social media companies to
change their algorithms. We're working on wrapping services around school
We're actually working to make experience or learning the norm
career tech ed, giving kids lots of different options, particularly
as this economy creates more and more new jobs. Why
(21:59):
aren't we doing that? Stop with the testing, testing, testing,
Let's actually work with our hands and make schooling fun.
And then let's really help teachers, help kids how to
learn to read, so kids have books that they want
to read. But also what are the tools of the
trade and doing things like that. So we're really trying
(22:20):
to get into what are the solutions that transcend ideology.
What are the things that we can do together as
a community, because once we do that, these extremists they
won't they will They only are effective when they can
(22:40):
create anger and fear.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And so let's create love and engagement around schools dealing
with the issues that people really care about.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I tell you, Randy, every time that I speak to you,
I say that you're doing the Lord's work and I
appreciate your leadership and your voice every time that we
have the opportunity to speak. Thank you for making it
time to join wok F.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I'm back at you. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
That is it for me today, dear friends on wok
F as always power to the people and to all
the people. Power yet woke and stay woke as fuck.
Host
Danielle Moodie
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