Skip to main content

school_images.jpg

Capitol Insider 

February 7, 2025 

 

Inspiration of the week: “Angelic Troublemakers” and “Good Trouble 

When I heard a quote by Bayard Rustin this weekend, I immediately had to read more about him – an almost unknown civil rights leader – at least in my history books.  Even more than the quote cited*, I thought about you, public school teachers, when I read another of his quotes:  

We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers. 

Add that to John Lewis’ famous quote: 

Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and 

help redeem the soul of America. 

Powerful words to us today. Whether you consciously think about it or not, teachers embody the call of these two leaders to not avoid the trouble, the conflict, but to embrace it. 

 

*Let us be enraged by injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it. (Bayard Rustin) 

 

Call to Action 

MORE

 

 

Online Continuing Education Courses for Educators 

Enroll Today! 

AFT Indiana has partnered with Trine University and VESi to offer members a yearly subscription to online graduate courses for $275 per year. You can enroll in one course per term or two courses during the summer (if you skip fall or spring), for a total of 3 courses per year. 

MORE

Membership-At-Large

Any person who works in Indiana and is not within the jurisdiction of any AFT local is eligible for membership-at-large through AFT-Indiana.

Benefits of membership include $1,000,000 professional liability insurance, $5000 regardless of the outcome/ $35,000 complete exoneration legal reimbursement through the legal action trust, as well as $25,000 accidental death & dismemberment insurance.  Members-at-large can use the AFT PLUS Benefits Program for certain discounted offers.

Print the membership-at-large form below

https://in.aft.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2024/Membership-at-Large%202024.2025%20final_0.pdf

Please provide a personal email and mail the form with dues to:

AFT Indiana

429 N Pennsylvania #407

Indianapolis, IN 46204

MORE

What unions do

nyt031923_1800x900.jpg

In AFT President Randi Weingarten’s latest New York Times  column, she describes what it is exactly that unions do. Though unions are the most popular they have been in decades, anti-union sentiment still thrives in red states and across the nation. “Several years ago, The Atlantic ran a story whose headline made even me, a labor leader, scratch my head: ‘Union Membership: Very Sexy,’” Weingarten writes in the column. “The gist was that higher wages, health benefits and job security—all associated with union membership—boost one’s chances of getting married. Belonging to a union doesn’t actually guarantee happily ever after, but it does help working people have a better life in the here and now.” Click through to read the full column.

Randi Weingarten and NYC teacher Tamara Simpson

Attacks on public education in America by extremists and culture-war peddling politicians have reached new heights (“lows” may be more apt), but they are not new. The difference today is that the attacks are intended not just to undermine public education but to destroy it.

MORE