Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Daniel Moody. Pre recording from the Home
Speaker 1: Long Island Bunker. Folks, I'm very excited for you to
Speaker 1: get into this latest episode of wok F with returning
Speaker 1: guests President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten.
Speaker 1: And what Randy lays out in this episode is the
Speaker 1: reality of what took place in the elections earlier this
Speaker 1: month in November, where we saw tens of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars that Moms for Liberty and other right wing organizations
Speaker 1: put into school board races, city council, state legislatures all
Speaker 1: to put up their right wing candidates. And what we
Speaker 1: saw from places like Kansas and Kentucky and Pennsylvania and Virginia,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and others is that the voters when very clear
Speaker 1: about what it is that Republicans are trying to do,
Speaker 1: and when they pay attention, they don't win. Right Like
Speaker 1: this is the clear message is that it is not
Speaker 1: that the Democrats and Progressives have a bad agenda. It's
Speaker 1: that the messaging needs to be very clear and very real,
Speaker 1: not only about what they are against, like you know,
Speaker 1: teaching history that is actually devoid of facts in truth
Speaker 1: banning books that are made for critical thought and empathy
Speaker 1: and compassion, but that it is incredibly important to actually
Speaker 1: talk about what you were for and what people need
Speaker 1: on top of what it is that extremists are trying
Speaker 1: to rob them of their autonomy around. And so I
Speaker 1: think I think that this conversation with Randy provides a
Speaker 1: very clear pathway and framework for Democrats Big D to
Speaker 1: be able to ride into twenty twenty four with Look, folks,
Speaker 1: I can't say this enough, and I will continue to
Speaker 1: reiterate it through the next eleven and a half months,
Speaker 1: is that this is the last democratic election if Donald
Speaker 1: Trump becomes president of the United States, and it is
Speaker 1: not the opportunity to have a protest vote right because
Speaker 1: I frankly understand that Joe Biden is a flawed candidate.
Speaker 1: I frankly understand that he is not everyone's first choice.
Speaker 1: But what you have to understand is that we are
Speaker 1: not voting for a person in this next election. We
Speaker 1: are voting for democracy, our liberty, and our freedom to
Speaker 1: be able to push back against a president, to push
Speaker 1: back against an administration, to push them to be better,
Speaker 1: and to actualize the dreams of our founding fathers.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And I say that with those flawed, enslaved holding motherfuckers, right.
Speaker 1: But you don't get the opportunity for pushback when you're
Speaker 1: living inside of an authoritarian dictatorship. Talk to people in China, right,
Speaker 1: they are thrown in jail with the quickness. They don't
Speaker 1: even learn about the uprising that happened in Tienemin Square.
Speaker 1: We know that, but that's not what is taught in
Speaker 1: their curriculums. So understand that while our democracy is incredibly
Speaker 1: flawed and imperfect, that what we are voting for is
Speaker 1: the opportunity to still have a role in shaping this
Speaker 1: country to be the best that it can be. You
Speaker 1: don't get that opportunity if you decide to sit this
Speaker 1: one out or say well, I'm not going to support Jennis,
Speaker 1: because what you are going to support is your own enslavement.
Speaker 1: So this conversation coming up next with Randy Winegarten lays
Speaker 1: out the blueprint of what parents, caregivers, teachers and administrators
Speaker 1: had happened in this last election and what it is
Speaker 1: that we need to be thinking about as we enter
Speaker 1: into twenty twenty four. Folks, I am always grateful for
Speaker 1: the opportunity to be in conversation with the president of AFT,
Speaker 1: the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Winingarten, to talk about
Speaker 1: what I believe to be one of the most important
Speaker 1: professions on one that I had the opportunity to be
Speaker 1: a part of for many years. Randy, we just finished
Speaker 1: closed out an important election cycle earlier this month where
Speaker 1: we saw many folks at for instance, Moms for Liberty
Speaker 1: and other Republican right wing groups had put up school
Speaker 1: board candidates, local state legislatures full of right wing extremists,
Speaker 1: ideology and an agenda. Talk to us about the wins
Speaker 1: that we have seen and what you think it's a
Speaker 1: bell weather for as we look to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Well, first, Danielle, thank you very much, and this is
Speaker 2: the you know, this is a week of showing gratitude
Speaker 2: and having thanks and frankly, I'm very thankful for the
Speaker 2: elections just happened at the beginning of November, because they
Speaker 2: do provide a data point that we had been seeing
Speaker 2: since frankly, the beginning of the school year twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two, actually twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two to twenty twenty three, and we saw some of
Speaker 2: this in the November twenty twenty two elections, but we
Speaker 2: really saw it now in twenty twenty three, which was
Speaker 2: which is the parents want their kids to be okay. Yes,
Speaker 2: there's been a lot of anxiety because of the after
Speaker 2: effects of COVID, and frankly, during COVID went There's never
Speaker 2: been a time when schools were closed. I don't care
Speaker 2: if you're talking about you know, Florida schools closed for
Speaker 2: three months or six months, or you know a school
Speaker 2: in Chicago closed for more than that, or people being
Speaker 2: there halftime or not having sports. There's never been this
Speaker 2: kind of disruptive influence in our society in any time
Speaker 2: that we know of, So of course kids are going
Speaker 2: to be affected by this. Parents want their kids to
Speaker 2: be okay, and parents want kids to have opportunity and
Speaker 2: like school and feel like school is safe and welcoming
Speaker 2: and well rounded. That's what parents want. What has happened
Speaker 2: in the aftermath of COVID was the same forces who
Speaker 2: have always been against public schooling, who thought we should
Speaker 2: divert money to vouchers who don't like what's taught in
Speaker 2: public schools, who want a different kind of country than
Speaker 2: a pluralistic, multicultural country that comes together. What they saw
Speaker 2: is they saw that that the anxiety around COVID, the
Speaker 2: anxiety around George Floyd's murder, all of that became a
Speaker 2: fertile ground for them to create division and hate and
Speaker 2: consternation in chaos. So you saw whether it was vaccines
Speaker 2: or mass or critical race theory, that noe knew what
Speaker 2: the word meant unless you went to law school or
Speaker 2: book banning, or you know, the division about teachers. What
Speaker 2: you saw was what actually one of them told us,
Speaker 2: which was to get to universal vouchers, you had to
Speaker 2: create public school universal public school distrust. And they were
Speaker 2: doing it on a platform of huge anxiety. And that's
Speaker 2: what we had to actually understand that it was not
Speaker 2: about any of these particular issues. It was about how
Speaker 2: do we really get to what I said at first,
Speaker 2: make sure the kids are okay, safe, welcoming, well rounded curriculum.
Speaker 2: So over the course of the last many months, there
Speaker 2: have been many of us we've been saying, don't ban books,
Speaker 2: give them out. Now, We're going to teach honest history,
Speaker 2: the good and the bad, And we have to really
Speaker 2: help our kids, be connected, be resilient, we relate to
Speaker 2: each other, and have schools that are fun and interesting
Speaker 2: and safe and welcoming. And there are a lot of
Speaker 2: school board candidates that ran on a pro public education
Speaker 2: platform and on platforms like I just talked about, and
Speaker 2: they won by eighty to ninety percent of the time
Speaker 2: because people want kids to be okay. So it's not
Speaker 2: just the fight back, but it was also a sense
Speaker 2: of what should we be doing for the kids, the
Speaker 2: ninety percent of kids who go to public schools. And
Speaker 2: I think what you saw is when local folk, because
Speaker 2: school boards are basically local terrain, when you had moms
Speaker 2: and dads running for election on a pro public education basis,
Speaker 2: even with all the money that Moms for Liberty as
Speaker 2: and even with all the hate that they spewed. The
Speaker 2: end of the day, look at Central Books, look at Loudon,
Speaker 2: look at Kansas, look at Cincinnati, look at Minnesota. And
Speaker 2: that's why we we were seeing this. But we said,
Speaker 2: let's track it all. We track two hundred and fifty races,
Speaker 2: and eighty percent of the time the pro public education
Speaker 2: candidate one.
Speaker 1: Do you think, Randy that then what we understand as
Speaker 1: Democrats is going to be something that is sustainable, which
Speaker 1: is that these local elections, your school board, your city council,
Speaker 1: your state legislatures. These are things that you have to
Speaker 1: be paying attention to because the radical right sees it
Speaker 1: as fertile ground for division.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, I think it's I think that the
Speaker 2: you know, part of the dilemma for Democrats in the
Speaker 2: country is that people that that hope sells by trust
Speaker 2: in and with each other. That requires and you and
Speaker 2: I have had these conversations. It requires you talking to people.
Speaker 2: It requires activism on the ground, It requires building communities.
Speaker 2: That's not easy when somebody is yelling and screaming at you.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: But once you have that, it doesn't matter how much
Speaker 2: money you have. You can actually win these elections because
Speaker 2: hope beats fear if you have a message that's backed
Speaker 2: by real stuff. And I think that that and I
Speaker 2: think what so you had groups like Moms Rising and
Speaker 2: Red Wine and Blue and parents together and campaign for
Speaker 2: a shared future. Lots of new groups that were not
Speaker 2: around a few years ago either. But what happened was
Speaker 2: normally parents connect to schools through PTA or parent teachers
Speaker 2: Associated parents associations. They felt very constrained because of how
Speaker 2: overtly political the right wing extremists had gotten with this.
Speaker 2: So these new groups started popping up and working together
Speaker 2: in a very loose coalition so that people saw they
Speaker 2: weren't alone. So for democrats, democrats should pay attention to
Speaker 2: what just happened, because underlying what just happened is also
Speaker 2: what has happened in terms of reproductive rights, which is
Speaker 2: people are really gnawed at upset about somebody taking away
Speaker 2: their rights. Right. So a parent, I've heard moms say
Speaker 2: this to me often, I may decide, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: a grandma. I may decide this is not a book
Speaker 2: I'm comfortable with my grandkids reading. But I don't want
Speaker 2: somebody else deciding that for my grandkids. And so what
Speaker 2: happened is when you ban hundreds of books, then what's
Speaker 2: happening is that somebody else is making that decision. I mean, frankly,
Speaker 2: the parents might you know, my grandkid's parents should make
Speaker 2: that decision. But what's happening is when you ban all
Speaker 2: these books, when you censor all this curriculum, then you
Speaker 2: are actually taking rights away from most parents. And that's
Speaker 2: what people had seen. If you you know, there are
Speaker 2: processes in schools now, some you know, we need to
Speaker 2: strengthen school Some of the processes are too bureaucratic. Sometimes
Speaker 2: people feel totally alienated from schools. I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: schools are a panacea right now, but there are processes
Speaker 2: that if you really don't want your kid to read XO,
Speaker 2: Y or Z, then they're not going to ultimately read
Speaker 2: at Y or Z. But you have to go through it,
Speaker 2: and you can't ban it for an entire school, or
Speaker 2: entire class, or entire district by pulling the book out
Speaker 2: of the library. Yeah, so I do think. I do
Speaker 2: think you're right that dem should pay attention because it
Speaker 2: is a freedom to learn and a freedom to teach issue,
Speaker 2: just like reproductive freedom is a freedom issue, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think too what you have done with AFT
Speaker 1: I think as well, is not just talk about the
Speaker 1: things that we need to be against. Right, we need
Speaker 1: to be against the book bands and against the attacks
Speaker 1: on LGBTQ kids and students and teachers trying to create
Speaker 1: safe space, but you're also developing a reimagining and a
Speaker 1: vision of what kids actually need. So I want to
Speaker 1: give you the opportunity to talk about that because I
Speaker 1: think that that too. Talking about what kids need as
Speaker 1: opposed to what they're being robbed from is going to
Speaker 1: be a essential for us as Democrats being able to
Speaker 1: win in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think often so thank you for that.
Speaker 2: Just also say I think we whether we're teachers, I mean,
Speaker 2: journalists know this better than teachers do, or lawyers do
Speaker 2: or doctors do. We also have to talk in plain English.
Speaker 2: We have to talk in a way that people can understand.
Speaker 2: We have to remember what we learned as school teachers,
Speaker 2: which is it's not what said, it's what's heard. And
Speaker 2: you meet people where they are. So if the issues
Speaker 2: right now are look at you know, the New York
Speaker 2: Times editorial last week. Learning loss is a thing. Loneliness
Speaker 2: is a thing, and we have to deal with it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't COVID was a thing. It's not, you know.
Speaker 2: And and what happens is that people feel like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, even though it's a thing. You know, somebody's
Speaker 2: gonna like the right wing often does, but it doesn't matter. Okay,
Speaker 2: let them smear. Let's deal with loneliness, Let's deal with
Speaker 2: learning loss. Let's deal with how we lure kids back
Speaker 2: to schools. Let's deal with things that help kids learn
Speaker 2: critical thinking and application in an age of AI. Let's
Speaker 2: make sure kids really master literacy, you know by the
Speaker 2: time they're in third grade. Let's really rebuild the relationships
Speaker 2: and deal with mental health issues and as I said,
Speaker 2: loneliness and looking at each other as opposed to looking
Speaker 2: at our devices. So what we've done is we've said,
Speaker 2: these are real solutions. There are real solutions to these problems.
Speaker 2: And there's ways of creating strategically real programs across the country,
Speaker 2: seating them, scaling them, sustaining them. And so I'll throw
Speaker 2: them out. We should be giving books out of lots
Speaker 2: of different titles instead of banning them. And we've given
Speaker 2: out nine million books in the last few years. We're
Speaker 2: on our tenth million, and we're on our last million.
Speaker 2: We want to get to ten million by July twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. You can just come with me to any
Speaker 2: of these book fairs. We do the level of joy
Speaker 2: that you see with parents and kids about having a book.
Speaker 2: Plus we also are helping teachers learn more have videos
Speaker 2: available to them just in time for the issues they
Speaker 2: may not understand about how to teach their kids reading like,
Speaker 2: if a kid in your class is dyslexic and you
Speaker 2: don't know how to deal with a dyslexic kid. We
Speaker 2: now have through something called Reading Universe, which is free
Speaker 2: to teachers how to work on that. But so I'm
Speaker 2: saying we're dealing with literacy, have community schools wrap services around.
Speaker 2: Let's make sure we deal in just in time basis
Speaker 2: with issues around mental health, loneliness and things like that.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, we're working with parents to
Speaker 2: take on the social media company so profit does not
Speaker 2: replace student need as the mainstay of what they are doing.
Speaker 2: Take on the algorithms. And the last and the one
Speaker 2: that I'm most excited about is experiential learning. Most of us,
Speaker 2: we need kids to want to come to school and
Speaker 2: to get the opportunities of today and tomorrow, which means
Speaker 2: the skills for today and tomorrow. That means learning by doing.
Speaker 2: That means experiential learning. That means what happens in career
Speaker 2: tech ED. And let me give you one stat which
Speaker 2: blows my mind. Kids in career tech ED programs, they graduate,
Speaker 2: ninety four percent of them graduate on time, seventy percent
Speaker 2: of them go to college. Think about advanced manufacturing culinary,
Speaker 2: health care, the jobs of today and tomorrow. This provides
Speaker 2: kids more opportunity, not less, and it builds that kind
Speaker 2: of practical skill set. So let's start that in high school.
Speaker 2: So instead of testing, testing, testing, let's do performance bace
Speaker 2: work like that. And so we're not doing a whole
Speaker 2: laundry list of five thousand things. We're saying, we know,
Speaker 2: community schools, experiential learning, and really focusing on literacy. This
Speaker 2: will really help kids and families have the opportunities of
Speaker 2: today and tomorrow and address loneliness and learning loss.
Speaker 1: I want to tap into loneliness for a minute, because
Speaker 1: you've brought it up, and we've seen headlines about loneliness
Speaker 1: in both adults and in students, and I want to
Speaker 1: give you an opportunity to talk about that as a
Speaker 1: serious emotional and mental health issue that we should be
Speaker 1: talking about on a regular basis, and parents and caregivers
Speaker 1: should be talking about on a regular basis with young people.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, look, how how many more statistics do we
Speaker 2: need to show yes that kids are more likely to
Speaker 2: think about suicide today than they were twenty thirty, forty
Speaker 2: years ago. How many more Surgeon General reports do we
Speaker 2: need to say that mental health issues are real issues.
Speaker 2: How much more do we need? I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: if we know what can solve this, what are we
Speaker 2: waiting for? And so what you know? And these problems
Speaker 2: started before COVID, but COVID exacerbated them by kids not
Speaker 2: being together as kids and not having again. It's you know,
Speaker 2: I'm always shocked when people don't think that there was
Speaker 2: going to be an effect of COVID by you know,
Speaker 2: the by people basically not relating to each other in
Speaker 2: person for whether it was months or a year or two,
Speaker 2: it was going to have an effect. And so if
Speaker 2: we know that, if we rebuild relationships and rebuild community
Speaker 2: and then also have a systemic approach so that we
Speaker 2: don't stigmatize help that's what community schools can do, then
Speaker 2: we can address a bunch of loneliness issues proactively. But
Speaker 2: then at the same time, if we take on the
Speaker 2: social media companies, like you know several of the of
Speaker 2: the bills in Congress are trying to do, but have
Speaker 2: a campaign on a local level so parents don't feel alone,
Speaker 2: teachers don't feel alone. I often walk into a school
Speaker 2: and ask teachers and I would have my device with
Speaker 2: me and I would. I would look them in the
Speaker 2: eye and I would use my two fingers and I say,
Speaker 2: are they looking at you? Are they at the device? Yes?
Speaker 2: And that would be a conversation. That's always a conversation starter,
Speaker 2: because what happens, Danielle, is the algorithm runs a kid's life,
Speaker 2: and these social media companies say, oh, no, you know
Speaker 2: there should be parental controls. Well, what happens at eleven
Speaker 2: o'clock at night when a parent may be sleeping. At
Speaker 2: one o'clock in the morning, when a parent is sleeping
Speaker 2: and a kid gets their device, like, what are you
Speaker 2: going to do? You can't. So there are things that
Speaker 2: these companies can do. They can stop automatic scroll, they
Speaker 2: can stop notifications at a particular piece at point in time.
Speaker 2: I was in a classroom a few days ago where
Speaker 2: the teacher had a place for all the devices, you know,
Speaker 2: a very nice little storage place right at the entrance
Speaker 2: of the classroom. There's a time out that way. But
Speaker 2: there are things we have to do to try to
Speaker 2: displace the algorithm from running a kid's life instead of
Speaker 2: the relational work of maturation, which is what kids need.
Speaker 2: And so that's a fight that we're having with the
Speaker 2: social media companies. And you know Europe has done this.
Speaker 2: California tried to do a new law and immediately the
Speaker 2: social media companies went in to stop that law. So
Speaker 2: we need federal intervention to make sure that they have
Speaker 2: accountability and transparency. There should be I'll give you one
Speaker 2: more example. There should be like a hotline and from
Speaker 2: a social media company to a school. So if you
Speaker 2: see cyber bullying, it's going to eat up so many
Speaker 2: person hours in a school to figure out what it is.
Speaker 2: If you add a hotline to TikTok or to Meta
Speaker 2: and so one could track down the IP address from
Speaker 2: where the bullying.
Speaker 1: Happened originated, yeah, y to stop it.
Speaker 2: Quickly instead of taking the hours and hours of investigation
Speaker 2: that us mere mortals would have to do to deal
Speaker 2: with the algorithm. So these are the kinds of things
Speaker 2: that working together, we should be able to thwart because
Speaker 2: kids mental health should be more important than the profits
Speaker 2: that metigates or that TikTok gets.
Speaker 1: I mean, I couldn't agree more. And I just think
Speaker 1: that the way in which your organization has been able
Speaker 1: to frame these issues is things that we need to
Speaker 1: fight against, but also things that we need to fight
Speaker 1: for is going to be the blueprint for how we
Speaker 1: move into this incredibly. I think consequential as not even
Speaker 1: the word of the upcoming election cycle. And so Randy,
Speaker 1: I'll lastly tell me give you one more Yeah, please.
Speaker 2: Get me one more example before the moment we give
Speaker 2: kids agency and engagement in these kind of things where
Speaker 2: they see a future and they have those skills and
Speaker 2: they feel agency about it and engagement about it. It's
Speaker 2: a moment and we turn around America on democracy and
Speaker 2: pluralism too. So instead of kids feeling checked out or oh,
Speaker 2: there's nothing I can do about it, nobody's going to
Speaker 2: listen to me. These are the things like experiential learning,
Speaker 2: like joining the fight on against social media companies. You know,
Speaker 2: these are the things that help give kids agency when
Speaker 2: they feel like in a community they can beat back
Speaker 2: loneliness because of the recommitting to a circle of friends
Speaker 2: or community circle whatnot. So that's that agency piece in
Speaker 2: terms of learning and life skills is so important, but
Speaker 2: it also will be important and foundational to democracy and
Speaker 2: to pluralism and their civic engagement.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Please tell people how they can connect
Speaker 1: with AFT, how they can continue to get information joined campaigns,
Speaker 1: what can they do?
Speaker 2: Great? So number one. If you're on threads, follow me
Speaker 2: at Ronda Winegarden. If you're on Twitter, follow me at
Speaker 2: our Winegarden. I haven't been able to figure out how
Speaker 2: to use my nickname as my real name on threads,
Speaker 2: but maybe one day I'll figure it out and or
Speaker 2: follow us at AFT dot org. We have lots of
Speaker 2: our campaigns up there, and we are really trying to
Speaker 2: teachers and parents are the best allies kids have in
Speaker 2: terms of opportunity for the future, and we're trying to
Speaker 2: do more and more campaigns on the ground strengthening schools
Speaker 2: so every single public school is a place that parents
Speaker 2: want to send their kids, educators want to work. Most importantly,
Speaker 2: kids thrive, and so all of it is on AFT
Speaker 2: dot org.
Speaker 1: Amazing Randy As always, thank you so much for the
Speaker 1: work that you do and for making the time for
Speaker 1: WOKF Always appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thank you m H.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, dear friends on woke
Speaker 1: a f as always power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.