Rank and File Event: Rally for a Thriving Wage, February 7, 2022 - 11:00am-1:00pm
All-Membership meeting - Rank and File worker Led December 10, 2022
Rank and File Event: Teach-in "Open Negotiations"
Rank and File Event: Our Convocation 2021!
Anti-Racist BIPoC Caucus- AFT Solidarity with the Palestinian People
Anti-Racist BIPoC Caucus - AFT Local 1789 Pledge for Democratized Union Leadership
Rank and File Event: "Envisioning Our Union, Envisioning Our Colleges."May 28, 2021-4:00 PM
Rank and File Event: 2020 Counter-Convocation Event
Rank and File Event: Teach-in "De-Fund Admin"
Rank and File Position Statement 2020
We open this statement in solidarity with all BIPOC students and workers at the Seattle Colleges, with whom we share the struggle to achieve working and learning conditions that acknowledge our humanity and allow us to thrive.
We are a collective of anti-racist, feminist and anti-capitalist BIPOC rank-and-file members of AFT 1789. We formed this caucus to challenge the intersecting forms of oppression that white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, and imperialism produce in both our union and our colleges. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and in the ongoing pandemic of racial injustice, particularly in the wake of the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in 2020, BIPOC rank-and-file members of AFT 1789 formed the Anti-Racist BIPOC Caucus to build solidarity and fight for the rights of all student-facing workers.
Systemic racism weakens our labor movement and our ability to win collective power. In our desire to build genuine solidarity among the rank and file, we recognize a need for BIPOC rank-and-file members to designate a space where we can address our unique struggles with systemic racism-- including microaggressions, gaslighting, and tokenization-- in both our union and our colleges. For too long, our union has centered the perspectives, practices, and needs of white members, resulting in a toxic environment in which the knowledges, experiences, and demands of BIPOC members are second-guessed, ignored, and excluded.
Our caucus serves as a space for BIPOC, rank-and-file members committed to dismantling white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, and imperialism to develop power and organizing capacity free from the oppressive structures that restrict, deny, and silence our expertise, ingenuity, activism, and community. We believe those most impacted should inform and lead the work of undoing these systems of oppression in both our union and our colleges, and we established our caucus in order to:
Ensure the inclusion of BIPOC voices and concerns by dismantling white supremacist and eurocentric structures within our union and union leadership and removing barriers to access and participation via vigorous outreach, communication, and representation;
Support, build, and mobilize a strong rank-and-file-based, activist union that works from the bottom up rather than top down and that supports organizing and mobilizing workers both within our union and across our communities;
Democratize our union leadership, membership, and communication structures to ensure participation, collaboration, and transparency across our union;
Distribute union leadership and promote shared decision-making across the eBoard and rank-and-file membership via a commitment to collaboration, outreach, mobilization, and consensus-building;
Advocate that our colleges hire qualified faculty who truly represent our students and communities;
Build solidarity with our union siblings in classified and exempt staff unions and accept nothing less than a living wage for faculty and staff, as well as wage increases in our current contract;
Organize in solidarity with white accomplices in resisting the exploitation all workers face under capitalism, in addition to the specific forms of oppression BIPOC, women, LGBTQI+, workers with disabilities, and workers in the global South face as a result of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, ableism, and imperialism.
Support demands for free tuition, progressive taxation, affordable housing, and health care for all to ensure our students and our community are able to meet their basic needs, thrive in college, and improve their working conditions.
By necessity and by design, anti-racist change is collective and collaborative, requiring rank-and-file members to commit to working together. While our labor movement strives to expand democracy and power for all workers, we recognize the need for separate spaces in which to process and strategize the best ways forward. The oppressive and exploitative systems that structure our society also shape our union and its decision-making processes, elevating some voices and perspectives at the expense of others. In this spirit we welcome AFT 1789 rank-and-file members who identify as BIPOC and align with our politics to join our caucus and participate in the work of leading our union to become an organization that will fight for all of us. We also value the critical role white accomplices play in dismantling the white supremacist and eurocentric structures and processes that prevent our union from being a truly democratic, equitable, and worker-led institution. We ask our white-identified comrades to pursue anti-racist change by building genuine solidarity through rank-and-file organizing.
With an organized rank and file, we can push our unions and colleges towards the transformative changes we and our students need. As we join forces to push for transformative change, we become the active participants our labor movement needs to win power for all workers. This statement articulates what anti-racist BIPOC rank-and-file members of AFT 1789 are pushing for: an open, equitable, representative, anti-racist, feminist, anti-oppressive, democratic, and worker-focused union that allows all of us to thrive in our workplaces and communities.
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OUR POLITICS:
A democratized union led by rank and file (RAF)
Anti-racist, anti-oppression practices elevate all of us
Students’ learning conditions are faculty and staff’s working conditions
OUR DEMANDS:
A refusal to work beyond what is required in our collective bargaining agreement. In a time when we are being asked to do more with less, we cannot succumb to pressures to put in additional hours without appropriate compensation and protections.
A refusal to overload our courses. This puts our colleagues at risk of having their sections cancelled.
A commitment to report grievances to both the union, the administration, and each other.
A commitment to work in solidarity with other unions, rank-and-file workers, and community members.
A commitment to demand that our administration fight for new revenue streams for education statewide, both by demanding a tax on big businesses in Seattle as well as a state income tax aimed at the highest earners.
A commitment to organize. We must build a movement now that resists the intensification of austerity measures in light of the pandemic and the neoliberalization of higher education.
As a collective, we stand for:
Free tuition now!
Student loan forgiveness now!
Healthcare for all!
Free universal broadband internet!
Tax the rich!
Contact info:
Anti-Racist BIPOC Caucus AFT 1789
antiracistbipoccaucus@gmail.com