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The COVID-19 crisis and subsequent economic collapse along with the national uprising against police brutality and systemic racism have cast a glaring light on the nature of American inequality on the healthcare, criminal justice, and economic fronts.  It has never been clearer that as most Americans struggle, the elite thrive.  As a Forbes piece put [...]

Whereas, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the wealth inequality that has existed in the State of California by not only forcing millions of Californians into the unemployment line, but also allowing the ultra-wealthy to collect pandemic profits in the stock market rebound; and Whereas, 14.9% of Californians are currently unemployed, with a majority of job [...]

This weekend we celebrate Labor Day, but how many of us have any idea where the holiday came from or what it celebrates?  The first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 in New York City and was proposed by the Central Labor Union (CLU) at a time when American workers were struggling [...]

What should post COVID-19 crisis America look like? This summer your national union, the American Federation of Teachers, was thinking big at its biennial convention in late July.  Clearly, the activist spirit sweeping the country was in the (virtual) air.  Building on some of the work we have done here in San Diego along with [...]

In the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd murder, we shared the National AFT and CFT statements of outrage and solidarity with the protests against police brutality.  We are pleased that the statewide body of which we are a part has clearly stood with the Black Lives Matter movement and is committed to not just [...]

The battle is on in earnest. Recently, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell said it out loud: drop dead blue states—and public sector workers in particularly.  More specifically, McConnell took a strong stand against providing any more financial relief to devastated states and local governments in the midst of a pandemic that has caused the biggest [...]

At present, it seems like there is no leadership in America.  Indeed, as we watch the Trump Administration ignoring their own guidelines as White House aides get sick and the national response slides into a chaotic patchwork quilt of ineffective policies, one might just conclude that we are dealing with a tragic case of national [...]

AFT 1931 has long supported bold new political and policy initiatives that move beyond lip service to effectively address the two great issues of our age—historic economic inequality and climate change.  To that end, AFT 1931 has adopted resolutions that called for the construction of more public transportation, opposed the Keystone Pipeline, supported climate literacy [...]

The Need for Change By AFT Intern Lora Mathis The fight against the climate change crisis is a fight for the future. Changes in our environment are taking place at an unprecedented rate, and they don’t call for passivity as a response. In the face of the pandemic, we are all being called to look [...]

For the last several months, a coalition of labor, community, and environmental groups have been meeting to help forge an alliance in support of a local version of the Green New Deal. In the midst of this process, we have all been hit with the COVID-19 crisis, and, as we watched the disaster capitalists seeking [...]