April 2026
From the President
Earlier this month I was able to join a cohort of union leaders for workshops at the Labor Education Resource Center (LERC) at South Seattle College. There, I met for the first time leaders from our unions across the state, from the building trades and Teamsters, to SEIU and Washington State Labor Council. We created a place for honest communication about the challenges we face as leaders in the labor movement – in this particular time.
The obstacles we experience working within education are both the same, and different, from workers in other sectors. But I learned that the solutions are largely the same, and they start with trust and solidarity. A wise piece of advice I received from a colleague recently was, we organize at the speed of trust. Sometimes trust is hard to build, but I believe we all recognize that we’ve never needed to trust each other more than at this point in our collective lived history.
In that vein, I had the pleasure of attending APALA’s annual fundraising dinner last week, where the theme was “Unite for Action.” While it was in many ways a call to unite to resist the forces dividing us and attacking us, it was also impressive to look around the room and see how literally united we were, with both leaders and members from dozens of unions coming together to support our Asian and Pacific Islander siblings and the work they do to support their communities. A powerful reminder, that ‘we take care of us,’ as keynote Bernie Burnham, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, shared, that when we are under attack, whether from corporations, the legislators, or our own Federal government, our solidarity is our strength.
I have been thinking about this as we engage in conversations across the spaces we share, about the future of our education system at large, and more specifically about the direction for our 2027 legislative agenda. Over the next month, you will receive invitations to add your thoughts. We know that education is a hard vocation right now, at all levels, and the state legislature’s actions in the last few sessions have not helped. That’s why we need your thoughts about where we should collectively focus our legislative energies, and I encourage you to speak up!
I have also been thinking about how “unite for action” could once again break new records for turn out next week for May Day. You will read more about that in this issue of the Pulse – make plans to join in! I also want to highlight the Parent Education program rally that took place before and during the SBCTC board meeting at Seattle on the 16th. This isn’t just a sleeper wave on the horizon, this is movement!
It all leads me to one inescapable conclusion: the reason that more and more of us are standing up is that we trust that we are not standing alone. We are learning to trust that we can protect each other, and that we are in it for the long haul. We’re sharing our solidarity and standing strong to support each other. Not just this May Day, not just next Labor Day and not just the next election – but for our labor movement.
In solidarity,
Jacqui Cain, President