Summer 2025
President's Column
The last Union Spotlight issue was mailed out right around the 100 day mark of President Trump’s second term. At that time, the House of Representatives had passed their version of a budget bill, proposing to cut nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid funding, concentrating wealth in the hands of the wealthy with tax cuts, taking a hatchet to funding assistance for college students pursuing higher education, privatizing our schools with vouchers, and starving the budget for food assistance, among a host of other cuts to services that working people rely upon. We have also seen robust mobilizations in opposition to these and other attacks by the administration, in the courts, in state capitols, and in the streets.
By the time you read this issue, the Senate will likely have passed a budget that is equally damaging to working Americans and to democracy itself, and you will also have seen – and hopefully participated in – a loud and clear message sent to the Trump administration from millions of Americans: NOPE! We don’t want an America that ignores human rights and the dignity of every human being. We don’t want an America that squelches science and research. We don’t want an America that ignores the basic needs of the people. We don’t want an America built on hate!
The collective power (at least 70,000 in Seattle, 5000 in Olympia, many more in other cities throughout our state) we demonstrated on June 14th, No Kings Day, is essential to defending our democracy and fighting back against the grotesque concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. Following from the actions in March, April, and May, No Kings Day demonstrated the momentum needed to sustain our collective efforts to keeping and strengthening our democracy…or perhaps reshaping it altogether.
You may have heard about the magic of 3.5%. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan analyzed hundreds of social movements throughout the world from 1900 to 2006, finding a pattern showing that when 3.5% of the population participated in sustained, non-violent resistance they were successful in forcing a change of direction. We may not be there quite yet, but with the turnout we saw on No Kings Day (estimates vary significantly, ranging from 5 million to 12.1 million) we can see that a 3.5% turnout goal is entirely doable.
Another notable fact about No Kings Day is that the protests were almost entirely nonviolent, characterized by goodwill, celebration, solidarity, humor, fun, and love. One of the strengths of a nonviolent movement is that more people are willing and able to participate when we commit to peaceful protest. Ensuring a safe and peaceful rally or march means that barriers to participation are removed – you can feel comfortable bringing your children, where they learn about democracy and you don’t need to find and pay for childcare. The needs of people with mobility issues or sensory challenges can be accommodated within a nonviolent protest, ensuring the voices of people with disabilities are heard. People who may feel ambivalent about whether their voice makes a difference or who aren’t sure what to believe are more likely to show up, dip their toe in the water and check out the vibe. Eliminating barriers translates to greater numbers in that moment, and also to showing up again – and showing up again, and again, and again is essential to keeping the movement alive.
Our ongoing activism may be the greatest challenge before us. We are all working hard and we are all juggling multiple demands on our time. When we decide to take action as a union we have to organize and that takes time – talking to one another, strategizing, encouraging participation, coordinating all the moving parts. Sometimes people feel like time spent on union activity like this is part of their job and participation may feel like work with no pay. But it’s not!
Engaging in the life of your union (and the life of your democracy) is an investment in your quality of life, both at work and at home. Whether at work or at home, when we raise our collective voice we make a difference. Just like in bargaining, we shift from being passive recipients of decisions made about us without us, to taking our seat at the table and demanding to be heard. That’s what happened on March 4th, April 5th, May Day and No Kings Day, and our roar was heard.
While choosing to participate is a decision to stand up for what you believe in, opting out is, at this moment in history, a decision to let the obscenely wealthy and power-hungry take us where they want to go. If we don’t show up, the consequences are staggering – the healthcare of 1,860,000 Washingtonians at risk, food insecurity on the rise as basic food assistance is cancelled, life-saving, years-in-the-making research wrecked, programs designed to dismantle systemic racism and create communities of belonging banned! The lives of thousands of immigrants turned upside down even as they attend immigration hearings, go to work, and take their children to school, on top of the loss to our communities when these valued members disappear or fear leaving their homes.
We see what happens in our workplaces when we, the workers, aren’t at the table…as the saying goes, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu! Policies, funding decisions, staffing decisions…you have a valuable perspective on workplace decisions, and you are impacted negatively when that perspective is excluded. The same holds true in our communities, in our state houses and congress, in our democracy.
As union members, we are part of an enormous force to be reckoned with – working people who have a huge stake in where our country goes from here. It is our members, our families, and our communities who are most harmed by the budget cuts and tax giveaways Congress is deciding on right now, by the executive orders that have stripped away rights, opportunities and safety nets for everyone who lives in this country, and by the interpersonal hostility, division, and aggression intentionally fostered by the Trump Administration.
March 4th, April 5th, May Day, and No Kings Day have shown us that more Americans every day are rejecting the rhetoric of division and hate and othering. More Americans are standing up and defending each other. More Americans are developing an understanding of why we stand together in solidarity and the power of our collective voice to right wrongs and bring our interests to the table. More and more Americans are realizing that our government, from the newest legislator to the most prestigious seat, works for us.
I urge you, for all these reasons and for so many more, to get involved in your union – at your local, at your Central Labor Council, at our state federation, and at our national AFT. There are many ways to do that:
- Talk with your co-workers, whether they’re in your union or another union. Find out what’s going on, share your vision of the ideal workplace, and build the relationships that reinforce solidarity.
- Learn about how you, your students, their families and your center, school or college will be harmed by executive orders, funding cuts, or bad laws. AFT Washington and AFT have newsletters to help with this – reach out to Cortney Marabetta at cmarabetta@aftwa.org to find out more.
- Talk with your local union leadership, share your ideas, ask how you can plug in to union activity…and thank them for taking on the leadership role they’re in.
- When the next rally or march is announced, find out where your union plans to meet up and ask others to go with you. Wear your AFT Blue shirts (and if you need more shirts, reach out to your local leader).
We are living in a time of great challenges. But the solution to many of the problems we face is – as it often is – to get involved and to stand up for what we believe in. We can no more let the Trump Administration drag us back to some of the darkest times of our history than we can let an administration cut our pay without a fight. Right now, the unelected wealthy and the elected officials who aren’t standing up for us are counting on us to sit on the couch and decide that this isn’t our fight, but it is. It is our country, and it is our movement. It is all of us, standing together, demanding that we be represented at the table, that our needs be prioritized over those of the wealthy, and that the powers that be recognize that this country works because we work. We need working and living conditions that provide the freedom to thrive, and it takes all of us, speaking in one voice, to win them.
In solidarity,
Karen Strickland, President