Chalk, Chains, and Change: The Radical Roots and Urgent Future of Teacher Unionism

How the UFT’s Turn Toward Deep Organizing Meets the Crisis of Censorship, White Supremacy, and Authoritarianism

At the beginning of this month I was lucky enough to get to teach at a small organizing institute put together by the UFT. The workshops centered around the organizing techniques and the underpinning theories from Secrets of a Successful Organizer by Alexandra Bradbury, Mark Brenner and Jane Slaughter (2016). The book has been widely distributed to Chapter Leaders who participated in trainings this year, and this institute allowed for more people to receive the resource, but also engage in the importance of this work as a labor organization strengthening its power. The experience was fantastic, as I worked with union activists who came in to learn how to strengthen their home school communities to magnify their voices and engage in the powerbuilding the labor movement needs now, possibly more than ever before.

Since the 2024 presidential elections I have been braced for the seismic shifts we knew were going to be coming in the direction of our country as vast divide of the culture wars driving educational and social policy drives people on both the far right and the far left to the polls and social media seems to only echo and amplify the most divisive voices. Last year’s onslaught of Federal executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), curriculum censorship mandates, coupled with congressional hearings aimed at union leaders are reshaping all aspects of the fabric of the US. These governmental actions to concentrate political and financial power with a few represent not isolated attacks but a coordinated campaign to reassert ideological control over the populace, especially those in public education. This attack on the promise of a free high quality education compel teacher unions to be more than traditional labor organizations focused only on bread and butter issues, but to evolve into the active defenders of democracy, civil rights, and academic freedom we need as we work in a political space actively looking to break collective voices in the workplace.

The executive actions that seek to eliminate DEI initiatives and limit curriculum content are the ideological weapons of White Supremacy and historical colonialism. These policies attempt to silence marginalized voices and sanitize American history. These policies and actions are effectively erasing the critical perspectives that make education meaningful and representative. In school systems like New York City, where students come from diverse racial, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds, such restrictions strike at the core of educators' responsibilities. They do not merely hinder pedagogical freedom; they compromise students’ rights to a truthful and inclusive education. As Todd DeMitchell (2020) explains, teacher unions are not neutral actors, they are political entities whose missions intersect with the broader struggle for justice. When the curriculum becomes a battleground, unions must mobilize not only to protect their members, but also to defend the democratic purpose of public education. We must continue to use our own teaching and pedagogy so that our students develop the critical thinking skills that will allow them to bend the arc towards justice and find ways for the marginalized to be equals in the conversations.

This years’ spectacle of stripping Federal employees of their union protections being upheld by congress and the judicial system removes the trust that the public once had that the government could be trusted, further ensuring that any voice that speaks truths that challenge opinions of the powerful must be silenced. During the Red Scare and the rise of McCarthyism, New York’s Teachers Union (TU), Local 5, faced intense repression, with educators being fired for alleged political subversion (Zitron, 1968). These witch hunts were less about genuine national security concerns and more about enforcing conformity through fear. Today’s political elite across our country, under the guise of parental rights and accountability, aim to accomplish the same ends: to delegitimize teachers and their unions as political actors and intimidate them into silence. The echoes of McCarthyism are unmistakable. However, history also shows that such attacks can serve as a mechanism for transformation. The decimation of the TU paved the way for the founding of the UFT, and eventually our state federation NYSUT, which was built with a more strategic, pragmatic foundation (Gaffney, 2007).

This historical lineage of resilience and resistance also includes moments of internal conflict and contradiction. The 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville teacher strikes were a defining episode in the UFT’s evolution. The fights over due process rights and union protections and the strikes ultimately exposed a rift between the union and Black community leaders advocating for community control of schools. In that fight the UFT won the battle over job protections. However, at the time it lost credibility with key civil rights allies (DeMitchell, 2020; Lazar, 2020). We must learn an important lesson from that history: solidarity must be built through genuine, reciprocal grassroots relationships, not imposed from above. This is why the UFT effort, like the workshops I had the honor of teaching earlier this month, to create chapter action teams (CAT) in every school community, and increase union participation at the school level is so important and is not just theoretical but important to advancing the work forward (Bradbury, et Al., 2016). Now, more than ever we need to learn from our historical mistakes so as to not repeat them today. As we watch the federal Government dismantle DEI programs and civil rights curricula censored across our country, the UFT must rely on those CAT structures and connect with our community allies in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of 1968 and ensure our resistance centers the voices of those groups whose rights are most directly impacted by this federal legalization of dehumanization. Without the constant and intentional effort to center and walk in concert with those voices, our efforts to resist political repression may replicate the very exclusions we seek to dismantle.

Responding to these challenges demands our union shifts from service-oriented unionism to deep organizing. The comfortable servicing model, where union staff solve members’ problems on their behalf, is insufficient in the face of a political crisis that demands collective action. Instead, we must embrace an organizing model that views every member as a potential leader and activist. As Bradbury, Brenner, and Slaughter (2016) emphasize in Secrets of a Successful Organizer, the goal must be to build structures of solidarity rooted in member engagement, not dependency. Effective organizing isn’t just about having the right values, it’s about creating a durable strategy for winning that empowers members at every level. The UFT has started that shift, but true shifts in the culture of an organization, especially one as large and intricate as the UFT takes time to become permanent. As the common phrase would tell us this is a marathon not a sprint. As the cultural shift continues it has yet to be seen if this change can be sustained, although I have much hope that it will be.

This framework is further advanced by McAlevey and Lawlor (2023) in Rules to Win By, arguing that negotiations must be led by and grounded in the power of the rank and file. In both of the aforementioned frameworks, participatory structure, such as the CAT structures the UFT has been developing over the last year, transparent planning, and disciplined escalation are not optional strategies but essential ones (Mcalevey & Lawlor, 2023; Bradbury, et al., (2016). Public unions in NYC, including the UFT, must internalize this or similar models, developing bargaining campaigns that activate thousands, not dozens, and building larger coalitions that include other public unions, parents, students, and community allies as co-strategists, not opposition.

This organizing shift is especially urgent in high-poverty schools, where instability fuels teacher attrition and weakens school communities (Simon & Johnson, 2015; Viano et al., 2021). Research on student achievement demonstrates that faculty turnover directly harms student achievement and disproportionately affects vulnerable populations (Ronfeldt, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2013). Rebuilding stability through organizing means more than grievance processing; it means fostering relationships, developing leadership pipelines, and building a collective sense of efficacy so that staff wants to remain in the community and continue to build upon their efforts to create the community vision they have collectively built with those they serve. John Smyth (2001) argues that teachers’ work must be understood within its sociopolitical context—that pedagogy is never apolitical. In that view, organizing is not separate from teaching; it is an extension of the pedagogical mission.

Incorporating this broader sense of social movement unionism requires strategy, not just sentiment. Bhargava and Luce (2023) describe in Practical Radicals that long-term change comes through base-building, tactical experimentation, and “strategy shifts” that anticipate repression and move power intentionally. Teacher unions must be willing to question their own traditions, invest in transformative leadership development, and work intergenerationally and intersectionally. This also requires taking seriously the moral imperative of collective care, especially for those most often excluded from union power structures—paraprofessionals, new educators, LGBTQIA+ members, and educators of color.

Public education by it’s nature must be political since the ultimate goal is to create a citizenship ready to take the reins of our country’s political future (Giroux, 2022). As a result, the political role of NYC teacher unions is being redefined not by choice, but by necessity. We are being called upon not just to bargain contracts but to defend democratic education itself. We must protect teachers’ ability to teach the truth, students’ right to a representative curriculum, and schools’ role as civic institutions. Across our country, since the turn of the century teacher unions have shown they are capable of meeting this challenge, whether by surviving McCarthy-era blacklists, confronting internal contradictions exposed during the 1968 strikes, or emerging from repression to become more strategic, resilient organizations. As John Saphier (2017) notes, collaborative leadership between unions and educators is a key lever for meaningful school improvement. Such collaboration requires trust, vision, and the courage for union members to resist collective vision, even when doing so comes at political cost.

The path forward will not be easy. If we as the UFT can remain grounded in the lessons of history while committed to our values, we will not only weather the current political storm, we will be a force that reshapes the landscape, and leads other unions down the road to righteousness with us. In this struggle, the UFT is not just the defender of labor rights; we are defenders of truth, of history, and of the public good.

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References

Bradbury, A., Brenner, M., & Slaughter, J. (2016). Secrets of a successful organizer. Labor Notes.

Bhargava, D., & Luce, S. (2023). Practical radicals: Seven strategies to change the world. The New Press.

DeMitchell, T. A. (2020). Teachers and their unions: Labor relations in uncertain times. Rowman & Littlefield.

Gaffney, D. (2007). Teachers United: The rise of New York State United Teachers. SUNY Press.

Giroux, H. A. (2022). Pedagogy of resistance: Against manufactured ignorance. Bloomsbury Academic.

Lazar, S. (2020). In solidarity with those which share our purposes: The United Federation of Teachers and the Civil Rights Movement, 1963–1965. Shanker Insitute.

McAlevey, J. F., & Lawlor, A. (2023). Rules to win by: Power and participation in union negotiations. Oxford University Press.

Ronfeldt, M., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2013). How teacher turnover harms student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 50(1), 4–36. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831212463813

Saphier, J. (2017). Collaborative leadership: How unions and teachers can work together for school improvement. Research for Better Teaching.

Simon, N. S., & Johnson, S. M. (2015). Teacher turnover in high-poverty schools: What we know and can do. Teachers College Record, 117(3), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811511700305

Smyth, J. (2001). Critical politics of teachers’ work: An Australian perspective. Peter Lang.

Viano, S., Pham, L. D., Henry, G. T., Kho, A., & Zimmer, R. (2021). What teachers want: School factors predicting teachers’ decisions to work in low-performing schools. American Educational Research Journal, 58(5), 907–943. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831220930199

Zitron, C. L. (1968). The New York City teachers union, 1916–1964: A history. Humanities Press.