Educator  Spotlight

Member Spotlight: Abir Ismail

I was proud that MFT signed the proposed Arms Embargo Letter Resolution to pressure the Biden and Harris administration to stop funding the murder of innocent civilians in Gaza.

I was devastated when I saw that AFT refused to sign the proposed Arms Embargo resolution. As a union member I had the false expectation that union leaders would stand on the side of justice and human rights by taking the non-controversial action of demanding for the U.S. to stop sending military aid to bomb innocent civilians in Gaza. Historically, unions have played a monumental role in revolutionary social change around the world. One notable example being the involvement unions had in ushering the end of Apartheid South Africa. It has become clear to me throughout the last year the utter disregard that our union truly has for human rights and the safety of civilians both abroad and locally.

As an educator, knowing that my pensions are being utilized to decimate schools and pulverize children overseas rather than being reinvested into schools and community programs locally devastates me. My pensions are being used to create new forms of generational trauma rather than create cycles of healing. The worst part is that my union AFT, an institution that was placed to support me, has done nothing but silence me. 

Everyday, I wake up horrified seeing multiple generations of a single family being annihilated with my pension. I feel sick to my stomach seeing the body parts of children scattered across the rubble. It takes everything for me to pull myself together and drag myself to work everyday. I can not understand how anyone can look at those images, and not feel disgusted.

Injustice is not complicated. If you truly stand for justice you should stand for the rights of any human no matter what they look like or where they are from. As educators, the murder of innocent children should move you. As educators, every life should be valuable to you. If we reject this proposal, we will be remembered in history as enabling a genocide because the truth is there is no neutrality in genocide..

-Abir Ismail

November, 2024

TAX Day Speech April 15, 2025 

As a Public School educator, I can not stay silent when our tax dollars are being used to massacre children in Gaza instead of being invested into our future generations. 

Right now, our public schools are being stripped of the resources they need.
Budgets are being slashed. Special education programs are being gutted. Teachers are being overworked and underpaid. Class sizes are growing, and the quality of education is deteriorating.

How is it that my tax dollars can fund missiles, but not support students with special needs?[Pause]

In Gaza, nearly every educational institution has been reduced to rubble.
Tens of thousands of children have been burned alive and dismembered— their body parts scattered among the ruins of what used to be classrooms, playgrounds, homes.
Children who wanted to become doctors, artists, teachers — erased from this earth, with the help of our tax money.

Ahmed was just a little boy when his remains were found; carried by his 11-year old brother in a little blue backpack dripping with his blood. 

‘Ahd Bseeso, was just a teenage girl when she had to have her leg amputated without anesthesia on her kitchen table after her home was struck by a missile.

Sidra Hassouna, was only 7 years old when her body was dismembered with half of it missing as she hung from a ledge.

My very own friend lost her loved ones and their children due to the bombardments, with the children’s bodies being completely melted with nothing left to bury.

Imagine if that was your child.
Your student.

This is not hypothetical. This is reality.

And back here — while our government writes checks to this brutality — they are telling our own children they don't matter.
That their reading specialist is too expensive.
That the para in their classroom has to be let go.
That their special education needs are "unaffordable."

Let me be clear: This is not just injustice. It is violence.

As educators, as community members, as people with even a shred of humanity — we must say: No more.

There is no neutrality when children are being slaughtered.
There is no justification for genocide.
And there is no excuse for abandoning our schools while we bankroll bombs.

To our legislators, to the State Board of Investment:
Stop using our tax dollars and pensions to murder children.
Start funding the future we claim to believe in.

We are watching. We are organizing. We will not be silent.

Money for schools not for war.