Primaries shine a light on education

• Yesterday’s primary election results put education in the forefront of several races, including in Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker will face Democrat Tony Evers, the state school superintendent, in the general election. Walker has infamously opposed the teachers unions in Wisconsin, and Evers will strongly challenge Walker’s claim that he is a “pro-education” governor. In the Northeast, Democratic voters in two states made history: Vermont nominated the nation’s first transgender major-party candidate for governor, and Connecticut positioned former Teacher of the Year Jahana Hayes to become the first African-American woman to represent the state in Congress.
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Weingarten defines a clear ‘which side are you on?’ moment

• In a lengthy interview with Politico, AFT President Randi Weingarten defined the tumultuous moment in which organized labor is living: Union members are coming together as never before, fiercely fighting the Trump administration’s “cruelty” and “faux populism.” “The combination of an antagonistic administration and hostile high court has driven union members to the barricades,” she says. Noting the urgency of the upcoming 2018 elections, she adds, “We must be a check and balance for our democracy and for a society that is safe, welcoming and sane. ... It is a ‘which side are you on?’ moment.”
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AFT joins forces with Latino labor advocates

• The AFT was out in full force at last week’s Labor Council for Latin American Advancement convention in Puerto Rico Aug. 8-11. As Latin American workers continue to lag behind their white colleagues, and as appalling immigration policies plague the country, AFT leaders joined more than 400 delegates from a cross section of the labor movement, working to forge a better future and addressing equitable education, protections for immigrant workers, the economic impact of anti-union attacks on the island and across the country, and the power of the Latino vote.
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