 We are gonna get started here with 133 people on and anticipate we'll have more ahead. So my name is Barbara Madaloni and I am an organizer with Labor Notes. And we are here tonight to talk about the organizing that's been happening that is happening around the safe school reopening. And a couple of things I wanted to talk about that before I introduce our panelists and tell you a little bit about how the evening's gonna go. First of all, that Labor Notes has been working really closely with educators across the country, primarily through the United Caucus of Rankin File Educators, which is a network of caucuses within education unions that are looking to transform their unions into more democratic rankin file and militant unions. And in doing that work, I feel like we've had meetings every week. We've had national meetings beyond the UCOR network to really bring educators together to solve this unifying issue that we're all addressing, which is how do we address going back to school in a way that is safe for everybody that addresses the funding issues, the public health issues, and preserves public education as a public good. And in the course of doing that, we really began to understand that it was important that we help a broader array of people know that this is happening, understand why it's important, and think about how they can join the struggle. So that's how we came to have this webinar tonight, and to open it up to a broader audience that includes educators, but beyond educators. And one of the things I was just talking to the panelists about before we got started, that I think is really central to thinking about this struggle, and that is that the nature of the pandemic and the sense of uncertainty about that and vulnerability within that, and our federal and in many ways, state and local responses to those that have been so devastatingly inadequate have exacerbated the inclination to make decisions about this on an individual level. So educators are being asked if they're willing to go back in the school or not. Parents are being asked, will you send your child in? Parents are making decisions to pull their children from public schools and put them in learning pods. And we know as workers, as unionists, that those individual decisions are not the way we build a better world or not the way we come to a world and decisions that are gonna work for all of us. And so more than ever, this is a time when we have to be thinking collectively, and I think we have to be naming the impulse and the way structures are working at us to make individual decisions and be very clear that these are decisions that we have to make together, not only within our buildings and within our education, worker unions, but in the broader public good. Our leadership, our elected leadership has failed us, but we can and always must save ourselves. And so part of what we hope to talk about tonight is how we can do that and how it is already happening. So we've got four panelists tonight from three different places, from the coalition to safely reopen schools, which is a Massachusetts-based labor coalition and the Massachusetts Nurses Association. We have Rudy Renault, Rudy, Wave, and Donna Kelly Williams, who is president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, from West Virginia United, the Reconfiled Caucus in West Virginia. We have our comrade, Jay O'Neill, and from the movement of Reconfiled Educators, the Reconfiled Caucus that has been just doing, like breathtakingly kick-ass work in New York City, organizing both first to shut schools down and then to have a safe reopening. We have Ellen Schweitzer. So we're gonna have each of these folks take some time to speak from their position about the work that they're doing and how they understand that work. And then we'll have time for questions. In the comment section, feel free to put your question, my comrade Joe, who you can't see, except for his beautiful labor notes graphic. It's gonna be keeping track of the questions in chat, and he'll be helping me know which ones we should pull out. So go ahead and write your questions, and we'll get back to those after we've heard from each of our panelists. Okay, so with that, I am going to hand things over to Rudy and Donna. It may be that when one or the other is talking, you wanna mute yourselves. We were getting a little feedback earlier. It's not that anybody was unmuted except the speaker. So you should just figure that out. Okay, so Rudy and Donna, go ahead. And Rudy and I decided at the beginning that I will start it off, and then Rudy will pick it up from there. So thank you very much for putting this all together, and it's always great to see you, Barbara, and all of our friends in labor. So just an overview. The Massachusetts Nurses Association represents 23,000 registered nurses and healthcare professionals across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, including school nurses, and a variety of different venues across the state, including those in the Department of Mental Health and other departments with special needs. And we also represent nurses that are in public health. So we have a great concern regarding the return to school, and for anyone that has been watching this pandemic as closely as we have going on six months now, we know that this has been a novel virus, that we has been very unpredictable, and that we have had to make various U-turns throughout the course of this. But there were some things that we knew at the onset of this that really do apply to the reopening of schools in the safest way possible. And first and foremost is we are 100% behind ensuring that schools be able to open as safely as possible. We don't have to reinvent the wheel here because there is scientific proof of what we need to do to ensure the safety of not only our students, but our staff and everyone who is working in the building. And then on top of that, you also have to be thinking about the people that they are going home to. So we saw this firsthand in March when we started to see an increase of COVID positive patients in our hospital settings and the lack of resources that were available to do the protecting of not only the patients that were in the hospital, but the very people that were responsible for taking care of those patients. The lack of PPE despite the fact that this is not the first pandemic that we've ever seen or practiced for or had the potential for. We've had Ebola, we've had Spanish flu in 1918. We also had the threat of anthrax and smallpox after 9-11. So we have been preparing for what could potentially happen, but all the preparations weren't in place despite the fact that scientifically we knew what we'd have to do. Should we have to face some type of a pandemic like this and the resources weren't there. There was no looking at the science. There was no practice drills like there was after 9-11 to ensure that everyone was fit tested for N95 masks, which were proven to be the safest way for someone who would be out and about or caring for patients with any of the potential viruses or bacterium that could be surfacing as a result of germ warfare. We knew back then that was almost 20 years ago. We knew what we needed to have in place. Every registered nurse in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts working in the hospital had to be fit tested for an N95 mask. And what that mask needed to do was fit very tightly on your face. It's the one that looks like a cupcake. It's very thick and fits tightly to your face. You had to be sized because it had to fit so tightly. And those were very small faces needed to have a smaller sized mask. And then depending on what the virus or the bacteria was, there were certain additional personal protective equipment that needed to be in place, whether it was a virus that could attach to your hair or get in through your eyes or attached to your clothing or on your shoes, on your hands, all of those things had to be taken into consideration. So fast forward, we're hit with a pandemic in March and we don't have those resources available to us. Suddenly, there aren't enough N95 masks. So what we saw in March was the CDC, who at one point had the highest level of PPE or personal protective equipment, listed in the order it needed to be in place to provide the highest quality of protection for everyone. We saw that standard lowered, lowered to the point of going from the protection of an N95 mask to a bandana or a T-shirt pulled up over your face, which clearly did not prevent the spread of the bacteria. What we saw in the hospitals was a mixture of patients and the response of those on the front line was indifference. We weren't part of any of the discussions going forward. And as a result of that, the Mass Nurses Association sent weekly letters to the governor of Massachusetts outlining what we as nurses were seeing on the front line of caring for patients. The schools were already closed at that point. Most of the state was in quarantine and nobody was moving around. And yet we saw patients coming in in droves as we tried to sort out what were the provisions and protections we needed to have in place to continue to protect as many as we could. But we weren't part of the conversation. The front line workers were excluded from any part of that conversation. So we forced ourselves by making that letter, not only available to the governor, but we posted it everywhere we could so that everyone would know what we were facing. So I just want to take what we've learned as a result of that and apply it to what we need to have in place, looking forward to having a safe re-entering of our schools. And we've really thought about this because we've been preparing since we've had a little bit of a time to draw our breath in to prepare for the next surge. And unfortunately, that is really what we're seeing as a slight increase. And the more we have people moving around together, we're seeing that going in the direction of increasing the risk of a second surge. We've also often are also seeing as schools have begun to open, many of the schools, especially the universities have had to quickly shut down again because they didn't have the provisions in place. So I want to just go over very quickly, some of the things that we've highlighted. And then I'm going to turn it over to Rudy about how we are working together to ensure that this information gets out everywhere and really to learn from the mistakes that happened early on. This is a novel virus. Nobody has 100% of the answers. The science is moving as quickly as it can, but not everybody is listening and really applying the science in the safest way possible. So as we all work together to ensure the safest for our children in schools, for all of our staff, it expands beyond teachers and students. It is the janitors. It is the people in the cafeteria. It is the people that are at home, that are receiving those teachers and children, bringing whatever they gathered in school back home. So first and foremost, I want to talk about the ventilation. The ventilation in the school system has to be enough that we don't have any stagnant air. Now we've seen some work being done in the airplanes, but what we haven't seen in the last 20 years, in most of our, especially our poorer communities in an effort to really bring schools up to the level that we need to have them. So as a result, we're looking at a pandemic now where we have school buildings that are so old and so under care for that we can't retrofit them to provide the proper ventilation that we need to keep our children and our teachers safe. All of our work is safe. So those are public buildings that have really been neglected. And some of the more affluent communities have had newer schools built. They may be able to work at getting that ventilation up a little quicker, but there's a disparity in what we have available to our students and what we need to have in place going forward. So accessing the community resources, this was an idea that came out of the coalition and Rudy's going to go into a little bit more on how the coalition came together. But for those areas where the schools may not be available to be retrofitted, there are other, there could be other community resources available, buildings that have been vacated or for many workers that have moved to working from home, there might be opportunities to move classrooms in that direction. So these were some of the recommendations that were coming out of the coalition as we looked at what was working and what were we applying from what we learned in the hospitals to now going to another building, another setting of where we have a potential for the virus. So the, the ensuring of proper social distancing. Now this is, this is going to be a real tough one in, especially in some of the younger grades, especially where, how many years have I heard from teachers? And I'm also the mother of a teacher. So I need to throw that out there as well. The size of the classrooms. And when you take the size of that classroom and you try to put social distancing in place, when we know that six feet apart is really the safest way to go. That doesn't exclude people from being exposed. What that means is based on what we have, the science shows us that at least six weeks, six, six feet apart will actually help to decrease the spread of the virus. I have seen in some of the documents going forward, a stretch to maybe make it three feet, but why are we going to mess with the science that we know is going to prevent the spread of this virus. The sanitation for all of the PPE equipment and for all staff. One thing that we learned about the sanitation is when you have a lack of ventilation in a confined space and you're trying to do extreme cleaning, which is what we need to be doing in sanitation during this COVID virus, you need to be sure that the offgassing of those cleaning products have the proper ventilation to get them out. The last thing that we want to be doing is exposing people that are in the confined space of a classroom or any type of a room within a facility to have that offgassing of the cleaning products be there in such that way. So we also need to have the infrastructure in place that you can wash your hands. That's been proven to be one of the safest things that we can do going forward is the ability to wash our hands. And many of the classrooms don't have the ability to put a sink in or even have access to a sink close by. So that's a real problem. So besides the safe cleaning practices, the health and welfare of special needs students, this is going to be another challenge. And I know that some of the school nurses have actually put together some of the risk categories of those students that will require those teachers and caregivers and other people in the classroom to have increased protections of PPE and more resources available to them to protect all of the staff as well as the children. Another problem that we have identified that continues to be a problem even in the healthcare facilities today is the access to testing and the availability of quality testing. We need to be very, very careful with the testing that we are adopting as the model for going back to school because so many of the testing devices and the people doing the testing has been proven to give you both false positives and false negatives. Using that science, again, we need to ensure that we have the right amount of testing and we have the safest way to test and we develop something that is, as Barbara said, it can't be, I'll do it this way and you do it that way. We need to rely on the science that says we all need to be doing it this way if we're going to ensure the safety of all. We also need to make sure that we have enough school nurses in the schools. Many, many years ago, I've been a nurse now for 46 years and I can tell you that at one point I did a brief time as a school nurse just kind of pinch it in while a couple of nurses were out. I was split between two schools. You can't do that, especially now with the pandemic, you need to ensure that there is a healthcare professional in all of these schools because the responsibility of the healthcare of the entire school team is really the responsibility of the school and public health nurses. So we need to ensure that we have that adequate resource there as well. I'll go into transportation and there's a whole bunch of other things but I do want to, I could talk a dog off a bone as Barbara knows. So I will turn it over to Rudy. If Rudy wants to put together how this coalition kind of came together and how we're putting everything that we've learned through the hospital as nurses at the bedside as school nurses in coalition with our partners. So thank you Barbara. Rudy, I'll mute now. Hi everybody. Thanks Donna. That was a great, great recap of the important points of the position statement. And hi everybody. And thanks for inviting us, Barbara, and Labor Notes. And so about four weeks ago, we were contacted from some of our school nurses who were feeling very anxious about what was going on and feeling like, well, we have this expertise. And our own union has all this, you know, evidence based science on what's really important, like what matters when it comes to going back to school and, you know, we want our voices to be heard. So we thought about that and thought, you know, we shouldn't just do something that's just from the MNA and just from the point of view of school nurses, we should have a coalition that complements what the teachers unions are also saying but try to make this wide and, you know, to really include other voices of not just labor unions, but people who are actually experts in the field of health and safety and public health. And so that's what we did. So we reached out to folks and started having zoom meetings and we, our first job was to come up with a statement, a position statement, and I'd like to share it with everybody. But I don't know how to share a document on the chat, because it's not an online document so I can't just share a link but I'll figure it out or maybe Barbara could send it to everybody after. Yes, I think I have the most recent copies so I'll get it up there. Great. So we worked, it was a painful process but good. And usually what is good sometimes is painful to get there with a lot of editing but everybody had really important edits. We also invited and in the creation of this paper, it wasn't just these other public health experts, but you know, parents and people who worked in other positions within the schools, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, anybody who you know could see something from a different perspective. And so I'd say now we have what our, you know, final position statement is, and it's ready to go out and so we meet every Monday at two and we just talked this past Monday that we think we are on to our final draft and we're going to send it out but, you know, and we're probably going to, you know, we'll get press hits but what good is a position statement if we aren't doing some organizing to back it up so the plan going forward from here is to take our coalition and to include our folks and teachers and to hit the districts first that we're that having the toughest time with their school committees. Where the school committees are, you know, not listening to what the experts have to say and want to rush people back into the schools and so we want to, you know, first start having meetings with all the players in these specific districts, and then to work on an organizing plan to pressure the school committee into doing the right thing. And so that's cut that is how we've all come together and and I think that's it from from from our part and so yeah, thank you everybody. Great, thank you so much Donna and Rudy and stick around for questions I am working on getting a file into a Google Drive that I can share. And I just want to sort of highlight for that since I've been fortunate to be invited into these calls that we really have decided that this coalition is going to work together with the with the educator unions, so that we can say like where most effectively push people into like militant organizing and push on the school committees and build coalition power around that so it's not the educators alone. So thanks very much. Going to now ask Jay to speak about the challenges that come up with trying to take this what seems like someone in chat posted like this is a unifying issue like none we've ever seen. And yet, those of us who are doing organizing or recognizing real challenges and pulling that work together so Jay, if you could speak to that. Sure. Thanks Rudy and thanks Donna thanks Barbara for for having me. Yeah, so just to give you a little background I'm a member of the West Virginia United caucus that's just a caucus of rank and file educators in both unions in West Virginia and any and aft we kind of had a weird situation here we don't have collective bargaining and any given school, you could be a member of either one. So down the hall I'm any a down the hall for me I have people that are aft. So of course our caucus has both because we work together all the time. And we're not in leadership of our union which is important to know so a lot of the active stuff we're trying to do is just, you know, pushing our union in the right direction. I've got some slides I'm going to share with you to kind of keep me on track. Oh wait host disabled attendee screen sharing so maybe I won't and I'll just tell you. Joe can fix that. Yeah. Make sure. Jake and screen share. Oh, hang on. I think I'm good. Joe. Great job. Here we go. Um, guys so one thing we say a lot in our caucus and I think a lot of the caucuses is be the union you want your union to be and so that's what we've been trying to do all summer long. We're a state level caucus for our unions keep that in mind. And just in by about late June it was clear that cases were rising I think this is true everywhere, and teachers are starting to get really concerned about the return to school. I think a lot of people, you know, April May had kind of thought well the fall things will be mostly normal but it's starting to become clear. That's not the case. We're hearing nothing from state union leadership like it's just like radio silence doesn't seem to be any clear plan. So we got people together to share their concerns, because it was clear, there were a bunch. One of the first things we did is we kind of host these, we call them like forward facing zoom calls that just any teacher or service personnel and West Virginia can register for. This one up here this is just the event on Facebook normal numbers for us we didn't not advertise this anything specially through a Facebook event up and we had over 4000 people saying, you know, they were going or interested. There's only 20,000 teachers in the entire state. So this was kind of like what it was clear that people really wanted to talk about these things. So we had a zoom call maxed out our account. We did breakout groups to really listen to people's concerns we had facilitators who took notes, and through that call. We produced this document and just says West Virginia school reentry concerns and you can see it's broken down into categories we just compiled that from the notes we took and you can see they're just questions teachers thinking through a regular school about how in the world this is going to work with coven and it's some of the concerns Donna mentioned earlier just lots of the normal things aren't going to look so normal. So we put this out as a PDF, and we just said, you know, run with it with your local Board of Education with your, you know, local superintendents ask questions I think we've had it downloaded over 1200 times now and just also using it to kind of agitate and people bringing it to their workers and saying like look we don't have answers for any of this. Nothing. And as we had set up this call, you know we have people registered through a Google Doc. We noticed and I just put a clip of it here in the left, a lot of parents registering, which is weird because our caucus page is just that it's a caucus, you know, in teacher but somehow parents, I guess we're finding it because we're the only one kind of talking about this we had a ton registered so looking back through we thought you know we've got to do something with parents to and bring them together. So, we talked to a parent organizer who works with a group here called family, the family's leading change. And she was all about jumping in with us on this work because she had a lot of concerns and her parents had a lot of concerns. I posted another call just a couple weeks later this one you can see 5600 people said they were going or interested it's like blowing our minds because you know the biggest call we've ever had like event like this is maybe a couple hundred people just said they were interested. But this one was really great because we got parents and teachers acting as facilitators and all the breakout groups like co facilitators. And it was a really cool thing because I think everyone that participated realized we're all on the same page. And they try to pit us against each other a lot but really we all had the same concerns. And kind of from that bigger call, it spun off into a lot of kind of one on ones and other phone calls and text and emails with parents and teachers and we worked to kind of develop our own list of recommendations because at this point it just seemed like everybody was freaking out, everyone had a real plan for what we wanted school to look like or what we thought would be safe. So, together, we came up with this plan. We use this the logo our students first which is what was used in the charter school fight the year before so it was really recognizable to people and they knew what it meant. And we had all of our website and we had all of our recommendations on this is just some of them. Basically the main thing and our biggest thing is what we started with the just start schools remotely, you know, only move into in person instruction after 14 days of no new cases. So that was kind of our main thing. And through this we worked to, you know, as they were saying before try to build a coalition so we brought together. Some of the parent groups we've been organizing with some other nonprofits I'll put the list of some of the other ones. Some of our local, local unions and just trying to get people on the same page of course we're trying to get the state level unions as well but we're kind of an opposition to them so it's pretty much anything that comes from us a lot of times it's just shunned, but we were getting locals to sign on and getting other groups and really got some response with this you know we put out a press release. We set up an action network I think we sent close to 2000 emails to the governor to the state superintendent into the state school board president. And in our state, the governor and kind of the state superintendent have a lot of power over these things and they keep saying the governor is the only one that has the power to make us go remote so that was kind of, he's kind of been our target from the beginning. I will say through this. By the end of July the governor had come out and moved our start date back we were supposed to I would have already been with students right now. Now we don't start until September 8. So right after Labor Day. So that was positive. We were getting a little movement but not everything we wanted to see. So that was something to push with people. So another thing we did is we did an action in front of the West Virginia Department of Education this is at our state capital kind of on the quad in front and she can see these is actually teachers and parents, which again I love having everybody together you can see they've got signs. Most of boards that are spread out there are six feet apart, and there's 30 of them. So it's supposed to be kind of like a high school classroom and we wanted to point out nobody's room is this big, like there's no way to socially distance people like this. And the reason we were there is at this moment they were having a West Virginia State School Board meeting which surprise surprise they're not allowing any delegations in because of COVID, you know, and it's only the State School Board members in their socially distance and it's locked down otherwise and so we just wanted to feel it's in there to speak at your meeting and yet you're opening up schools all across the state in a few weeks. We had good press coverage with this, our State School Board President walked right into kind of the trap we set, you know, and when the person from the press asked him, you know, why aren't you letting them in he's like, we can't have 12 or 1314 extra people in here what if one of them's positive. So he made our point for us pretty well. At this time to we had asked we keep reaching out and asking the unions to join us. One of them said yes and we got very excited and then pull the no show this is state level unions at the thing another one had said no but throughout this week and because of the effort we had done. They both unions at the state level, we're kind of echoing our language and so they both came out separately and said yeah we want to see a remote start to school. You know, and not going back they said a little different one said for nine weeks one said with no new cases but we were just thrilled to get them on the record was something because until that point. It had really been nothing. So, through all this. We felt like there was some momentum and things were happening and we were getting some some small wins like getting the unions on the same page with us. We saw the State Department of Education adopt some of our recommendation by the way, he made a big announcement. This is a few weeks back, and he said you know on Wednesday in our press conference I'm going to make a big announcement about education. Well, this is what it was. They came out came out with a color coded metric to tell you when it was safe to return to school. And he had said, you know, we talked to out of state experts in state experts, just everyone we got all the best people on this. Which turned out as you can imagine that's not true he just took the Harvard Global Health Institute metric and tweaked it and spit it back out and call it West Virginia's and the interesting thing that we noticed as a caucus was, they changed the numbers for what qualifies as green, you know, or orange or red or yellow so we put out this graphic just an hour or two after his press conference and it made a lot of waves. He just said they moved the goalpost and if you look the Harvard standards on the left. There's nine green counties and by the way our school districts here are done by county so each county's a school district. Look at West Virginia is on the right there's 41 in green. So it's just clear, you know they're trying to paint this image that's much safer than it is because we want to get those kids back in school. Because of the kind of the ruckus we start up with this and even contacting the media and saying you know you've seen this. The following Monday, the governor came back out and rescinded a lot of it he moved the metrics back down to Harvard's except for the, the green one, it's still a little higher but it's better. Still not what we want, but better. So, you know, we've had all the stuff happen. Lots of organizing work going on bringing lots of people together. Big meetings lots of conversations had some wins, you know, we got our unions to finally take the right position which I'm going to be real we were not sure they were going to. One of our recommendations was the West Virginia Department of Ed set up an anonymous hotline to report problems as school reopened they never said they were going to do that but magically about a week ago it appeared on their website. So we're going to count that as a win for us. We also pushed for having local school improvement councils actually doing the return to school planning. And we got the governor to shift his metrics back and make it safer. But and as Barbara alluded to, we're still headed back to school in two weeks, you know, we've done all this, we pushed, I feel like almost as much as we can at this point, made a lot of waves. And we're still there. So, you know, I've been back at school now, not with kids but back in my school, working for four or five days now and you know when I'm talking to teachers, it says since that everybody knows this isn't going to work. And it feels like we're just pretending that it is and a lot of them are just still saying I hope, I hope the governor does the right thing maybe he'll still make that call we've got two weeks I really hope he does the right thing. But he's, they're keeping us on their toes though right like it's, I was talking to Ellen earlier today it's like as you saying it's shock and all right it's just things keep changing so you can't get used to anything so one thing that he's doing now is in case counts at nursing home or correctional facilities is just one case. For instance, there's a nursing home in my county right now that they just noted that 31 people, you know there's an outbreak 31 residents there have it but they're only counting that as one in the metric because it's a, as he says a closed environment it's not affecting anything else so it's clear they keep tweaking it to send us back to school. So clear at this point that this is not actually about keeping people healthy or safe, you know, it's, it's about capitalism right it's about, you know, reopening schools so parents have a places in their kids so we can get people back to work. So for us as a caucus, we're at this point of we need to reassess. We feel like we've kind of done everything we can do in this direction and look at plan B. And I'll tell you, you know, I was just having this conversation earlier today and just trying to wrap my brain around it and then a couple hours later a teacher came in my room and was just like, I think we've forgotten our power. We don't have to do this, you know, this is up to us we can make a difference we can change this we can shut it down and I was like, this is music to my ears. So, that's pretty much all have I just say that you know, we did all this work. But as organizers know you know sometimes you've got to change direction because it's clear that we're not making an impact with that but we got two weeks so time will tell what will happen in West Virginia so stay tuned. Thanks everybody. I think finishing with like time will tell what will happen in West Virginia. This kind of makes me remember things that have happened in West Virginia. So it's a good good ending just a couple things to pull out one, a detail they've asked in the chat if you can share that document on safe reopening if you can share it and then I'll also send it out. I also just want to point out that shortly around the same time that your governor was doing your map, our governor here in Massachusetts was doing his map. I love what you were able to do with that in terms of redoing the map based on based on better metrics and Massachusetts. What we've been doing is each district is listing how many educators from other cities and towns work in that district. So showing that this idea that these school districts are isolated, as if there's not lots of back and forth. And, you know, so we have memes up, you know, 96 people in Newton, work in Newton actually Newton because it's such an expensive summer. I think it has like 150 educators work in other towns because they can't afford to live in Newton. But that's been a strategy that we use and the other thing I just want to pull out. And it goes to like, let's wait and see what's going to happen to West Virginia. There's a long struggle. I've come to understand that over the last few months that that we're we're taking on struggles one at a time. What I find myself thinking is that our goal has to always be that we're building power and we're building collective power. And then we will, we will build enough power to be able to withhold our labor to refuse to reenter the buildings. But we have to be thinking about the steps that we're taking and the steps that you've taken are to build power. And now we have to, now you have to reassess what's our next step for building power and how do we address the sense the pandemic has created for people that we don't actually have power. I'm not sure we're giving workers an opportunity to really know their power again in a world that feels overwhelming and like we don't have any power. But that's our job as organizers, just to give everyone an opportunity to experience collective power. And that phrase feels like a great introduction to Ellen and the movement of African file educators from New York. So Ellen. Everyone's great to be here. Just to repeat for anybody that joined the call late in New York City public schools. I'm a member of a teacher and a member of the movement of rank and file educators which is known as more. I don't know if you can see my t shirt here. And we are the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers at the UFT which is the New York City local educators. The West Virginia United Caucus we are not nor have we ever been in leadership in the union so we're also doing this organizing outside of leadership. Actually a lot of what Jay described surprisingly is very similar in some ways to our experience in New York City but I have to say, we definitely never had an event with 5600 people that is incredible I'm stunned and now I feel like whatever I have to say is dramatically less impressive here you go anyway. So I do have some big impressive numbers not as much about our caucus per se but the just the scale of the project in New York City. We, this one local of New York City educators is huge there's about 125,000 active members and about additional 80,000 retired. There's about 1400 public schools in the New York City system so that's 1400 separate worksites. And here's a really surprising fact I learned during the pandemic which at first I did not believe and had to look up and verify. About one in every 300 residents of the United States the entire United States is about one in 300 Americans is a New York City public school student. I don't know if that, you know, strikes you but to me I when I heard that I thought wow and it is it's over 1.1 million students so we're talking about when we talk about our working conditions and our students learning conditions we're talking about lots and lots of people. And that, you know, also makes very clear as Donna said this is a massive public health issue it's not just a concern for the teachers. I remember. I also mentioned these numbers because it's also describes the scale of the effect of the decision to open the school buildings or close the school buildings that effect is immense in New York City and you know most educators are not epidemiologists or infectious disease experts but you know it was pretty obvious to us in March, how important that decision was, and especially when you consider the large number of students and staff that ride mass transit on a daily basis so I'm going to talk a little bit about March because I think our experience in March and the the resulting lack of confidence in the city and the school system leadership really. It really informs our approach to the fall semester. So, you know, educators spent the week or two probably most people in New York City spent that time before schools were finally closed in March talking on a daily basis about the virus you know you just heard it in the hallways when are they closing the schools and why haven't they closed them already what's going on. And what was eerie was it felt like there we weren't hearing health and safety concerns being taken seriously by the city politicians by the bosses of the school system, and largely even by our own union leadership. So, we realized, you know, we had to have these conversations with each other and take action ourselves because felt like no one else was listening or taking action. So was the role of the more caucus and all of this. And I would say a lot of what we did was listening. We were those listeners when others weren't and we're taking the concerns of the rank and file seriously in our schools. And we were listening to those who began to reach out to us. So a lot of what we did early on was just provide a space for folks in different schools to share with each other, affirm each other's observations about the situation how dire it was. And in particular, there were stories that were told by workers in school buildings where students and staff had tested positive for COVID. And yet the Department of Education was telling school administrations not to share that information with the school community. And that was really alarming to a lot of people and made members and other school buildings realize the same thing could be happening to them. Not only were they withholding information that do we seem to be outright lying about following their own health and safety procedures that they declared that they were following and then we have all this evidence that they weren't. So all of that added up, you know, again contributed to that realization by many educators that we needed to take matters into our own hands. And that's when the sick out idea became popular. So more, you know, in hearing this being talked about in lots of schools we announced that week an emergency zoom meeting I think that might have been my first experience with zoom scheduled for for Saturday March 14. And on Friday March 13 a large percentage of workers in the school system had already called out sick, including myself and I have a son in the school system and you know didn't want him to to become sick. So I stayed home with them, and many students had already stopped coming to school during that last week before they finally closed the building so on that Saturday zoom call we had a much less impressive 400, maybe 450 people attending the call, but that was way more people than any other meeting the caucus that had ever called lots of people found out about it through their coworkers and also through some of the parent organizations that more members had had worked within the communities. And it was at that meeting when we realized really the potential mobilization of the rank and file in response to these circumstances. And just as a comparison quickly before the pandemic hit. The more caucus had about 100 members and I would say generously half of them actively attended meetings. So even if I include the less active caucus members. That's fewer than one in 1000 members of the local were members of the caucus of the more caucus so at many schools there wasn't a single soul in the building who had even heard of the more caucus, and and really even worse there were and there still are schools with that haven't had any union meetings in years so people don't have basic knowledge about the Union in general, and certainly they don't have knowledge about you know different caucuses. You know this is a result of the, the approach that our, our union leadership has taken which is kind of a service organization doesn't really actively disincentivize is getting involved in that in the union. So, I, we did one of the things more did the summer was a series of training sessions for new caucus members. And I presented at the initial session which was just an intro to the uft and I had to really look at the basics like you know what is a bargaining unit and lots of people just didn't even have any of that basic information. So anyway back to the sort of explosion of activity around the sick out planning. Lots of people called in sick over the weekend and then it was by late Sunday that the city finally announced that students would no longer be reporting to the school buildings. So out of that explosion of action and contact of the caucus, and also recognizing that our working situation circumstances are about to change in pretty dramatic ways. And also in some unknown ways ways that were hard to predict. So a couple of important committees were formed. Early on, one was the health justice committee, which I have not been attending and I can't describe as extensively as I would like to but I can say that they work really hard to develop an extensive critique of you know the failure to support student and community health in New York City and not just about covert although yes regarding that too. And of course we know the effects of covert are tied to the existing inadequacies and injustices and in our health systems. In addition to that critique they developed extensive proposals for supporting the physical and mental health of students and communities in the city. So that health agenda that they've developed has been the basis for a lot of demands by different groups of educators in New York City and parents and other community members. And another committee that developed right after the school building is closed is one I've been working with which is called the working conditions committee. And that was formed in an effort to try to keep track of and have a, you know, a more nimble response to what we expected would be some problematic changes in the amount of work and the kind of work we'd be expected to do. So, you know, both of these committees had a mix of long time have a mix of longtime teacher activists and newer folks, and have continued meeting either weekly or every other week throughout this entire time through straight through the summers, the So, but I want to emphasize, most importantly, one thing that we in more have prioritized and understood as being crucial to affecting the kind of change we want to see is continuing to organize at our own work sites. And that, well, I mean, I guess now we have remote work sites, but so that might seem obvious and not need to be stated that that's so important. However, there can be a temptation, especially when you have a lot of, you know, some people coming out of the woodwork who want to get involved to seem to agree with you, it's very tempting to focus on on talking with and organizing with those folks who already agree with you. And it feels good to be agreed with and it feels good to be validated in your views and in your understanding. And that is important. There's a definitely a time and a place for that and those conversations are generally easier than conversations with somebody who isn't so sure they agree with you. However, the only way to mobilize and transform the union is to mobilize a critical mass of the rank and file union membership and not just the subset of people who already agree with you. So that's been something we've been trying to continue to focus on and sometimes there's the temptation to do, you know, could be easier work. But one way to stay focused on that is to, again, continue to listen, identify workplace based issues that are of concern to the members, you know, listen to those concerns involve folks and conversations about how we could address those concerns, what sorts of actions can be taken. And of course these days there's no shortage of concerns and you know no shortage of actions to take. So, I guess I'm afraid of taking too much time so I think I'm going to skip over some stuff I was going to go into. But I can come up with some specific examples if there's time later on. So I'm just going to say quickly my school at a large high school were fairly well organized. And I, I'm not the shop steward or what we call the chapter leader, but I was in the past and I know a lot of coworkers and I had their contact information. The parent shop steward refuses to share the contact information. And this is this is really hard when everyone's at home working from home because you can't walk down the hall and talk to somebody or like you know bump into them in the lunchroom and say you know hey we've been talking about this, get their contact information and move on. I did an action, which again I'm not going to get into now the details but I did an action in in March around a problem and, you know it took me a few days of texting and emailing and calling folks that I already knew to try to get, you know, get them to reach out to other people that they knew maybe in their departments or committees they served on or just folks they were friendly with, and build that contact list. And that kind of like grunt work is really important and irreplaceable like it just has to be done. So, a lot of one thing we've had to recognize as a caucus that people need activists don't have those contacts they're relatively new in their schools, or they just haven't made those connections with their coworkers yet and and really even though we're trying to do this organizing remotely for the time being the basic approach right is the same that it's always been show yourself to be someone who cares about your coworkers working conditions and your own you care about fairness and justice you listen to your colleagues you stand up for them you stand up for yourself. And when you can, you gain the trust of others use those networks to you know to organize and to and to communicate. And of course that's more difficult now but but still possible and still absolutely necessary. And I would say another big difference with the present is there is an intense sense of urgency. And that sense of urgency makes that kind of slow painstaking work of talking to your colleagues and gaining their trust seem even, you know, less appealing than some sort of imagined attractive shortcut that you you might be tempted to try to take and the problem is they're really there just isn't a shortcut. So recognizing that that's the unexceptional reality that's always been there in an even in this exceptional time is something I think we need to constantly remind each other. There's just no substitute to that kind of relationship building. And so in an effort to support people in this work another major project more developed in the past couple of months is the creation of district committees. There's 25 or 30 different school districts they don't really make independent decisions from like the general Department of Education but it's just a way to subdivide the, you know, population of workers. And it makes a little bit more manageable so we had a little more manageable chunks of about 50 schools, and those district committees are originally formed or, you know, support newer rank and file activists as they're trying to reach out and mobilize the members in their schools in this way. And many activists are really only in a position to maybe have like a conversation with a few, a few of their coworkers maybe try to get them to take some really simple initial basic action like maybe signing a citywide petition against an unsafe reopening of the school buildings. But you know in these committee meetings people get an opportunity to, to share what the situations are in their schools and get some advice and some questions answered by some of the more seasoned activists. So really we're trying to focus in, to the extent we can on that really school specific granular level to identify what the possibilities are in these different work sites, and just help, you know, people move a few of their workers to the next step, and you know, keep building from there. So some of the actions people have done have been, you know, writing collectively writing letters to their administrators expressing safety concerns or writing letters to parents expressing safety concerns, or concerns about the blended learning which right don't get us started. And, you know, it's in some of the more organized schools people are able to have open conversations with another sick out in September that may be needed. And it's good we had these committees set up because then when a few days ago when our uft leadership finally started talking strike. We were in a much better position to feel this barrage of questions and concerns that have come up because the leadership is only talking about a strike they're not actually mobilizing and preparing for one. And so we've got it, you know, at a ton of questions come in. We've tried to be helpful we have created toolkits of information and suggested actions that we have. We've been doing that really for months and we've now added to that toolkit things about suggestions about how to prepare for strike answering answering frequently asked questions about the strike and of course the uft leadership should be doing this but they're not. So just like in March, people are coming around again because they're listened to and they can get support and they can get answers. And just so you don't, you know, get the impression that we're all like gearing up for a strike and we're all organizing ready to go we're not. I still am not really sure what the uft leadership is thinking or what they're doing. We're very concerned that their strike demands didn't include input from the membership. And are very, very limited to a few like a very short health and safety checklist which is is insufficient. And haven't mentioned the budget cuts and the threatened layoffs of the announced layoffs of 9000 educators. Just not part of any discussion of the strike and also refuse to demand 100% remote instruction which is what we did in the spring and then the buildings were open for kids that needed meals or a safe place to be and work, which was, you know, small percentage but we are most we're arguing that that should be the model for the fall as well. Anyway, so we're getting new information every day and I'm really glad to have the more network to communicate and strategize with. And we're just taking it day by day I'm sure even during the time I've been in this call there about like 100 texts on my phone of people talking about what's been said just now. Great. Thank you, Ellen, and all the panelists. I want to take a moment to just again pull out some things from what Ellen said that are, I think, worth raising up. You know, you talk about that what you started with was bringing people together and listening to them. As organizers we talk a lot about doing one to ones and I think one to ones are essential. But we can forget the step that we're actually doing a one to one so we can get people talking to each other. And I think in this case and it goes back to like some of the first words Donna started with about how, you know, the crisis hit frontline health care workers were not a part of the conversation about what needed to happen. And things got awful because that was the case. And, and the lessons that MNA and the coalition to safely reopen learning this we have to actually listen to the frontline workers and to science about this and as organizers, when we bring people together. We are explicitly saying you're the experts here. Let's name the problem. And then let's us name and organize around the solution. And so I feel like, you know, and I talked earlier about moving from an individual decision making frame, and this moment to a collective frame. We really is organizers have to be very clear about what are the ways that we're bringing people together to hear from each other and learn from each other and come up with collective solutions. And I think in lots of ways. That's what what more is doing and doing it and more and West Virginia and I just want to sort of say this out for labor, whether you're an educator, or whatever industry you work in. They're doing it within the union, but not as part of the elected leadership. So, that's what we do and I love Jay's headline on all of his, his PowerPoints was be the union want your union to be. We need to do that now more than ever. So we have a couple of questions out there want to take a little bit of time. I'm going to just sort of say there's sort of four kinds of questions. Put them out and invite the panelists to pick up any one of those that you want to. I was also like, if you heard something as a panelist from one of the other panelists that you also want to respond to. That would be great. So, some of you already spoken to this but there was a question or two questions early that had to do with really how you're bringing parents in. How you are, what's the experience interacting with other community organizations, and I would add to that. Other examples, or maybe some of the experience you've had in the coalition, Donna and Rudy of like labor, the other labor unions supporting this work. So when we start with that set of questions and just jump in panelists. That's done and Rudy, please jump in. So, like so many things. And we know in Massachusetts from the try to school fight many years ago and our many fights on the ballot for safe patient limits. We've had to reach out and we've already established many of the relationships that we consider to be solid going into this fight. We have worked collectively with so many other unions because if you look at health care very much like education. There's so many intersections of other professionals and workers in the field that you interact with all the time. And that expands even to your, your parents of your students and your parents of our patients and our co workers and family members so Rudy, I think we've all kind of come together by identifying an issue and then reaching out and saying, hey, we're getting together we want to do this as safely as we can. The elected officials are not calling on us to give them the inside track of what's actually going on on the ground. And we need to do it. We need to take control over this and at least let people know that we are there to be their voice that we're not afraid to speak up, but we need to hear from you and what your concerns are, and we're happy to engage with you to bring these issues forward. I was going to say, you know, organizing is hard. Coronavirus and a lot of ways it's made it a lot of harder because as Ellen saying you can't walk down the hallway and talk to people but in this one instance. I think with parents in some ways, some of this has made been made easier because they are feeling the exact same anxieties. We are as teachers like it's just this unifying issue right now that everyone is feeling and sensing so for us pulling in parents has mainly just been finding, you know, that person or that that group that's got those connections and once you've got that I mean they're just they're just on because it's their concern too. So that yeah that's been one positive thing I guess about organizing and trying to pull parents in because normally as teachers it's very hard work but this has been a unique moment for us. I guess I would just for myself say two things about that one is it's important to remember that parents are workers to remember that it's not like there's workers and parents and they're separate and so when we're reaching out to parents to be remembering that we're reaching out to people who have networks that are other worker connections. And the other thing I've been thinking about a lot in terms of working with parents is that and I'll go to Donna's example of here in Massachusetts where we defeated an attempt to raise the number of charter schools. We were told and the polling would have suggested that parents were against us and against public education and that was the narrative that was out there. And we were often acting in response to that narrative without actually having talked to anybody. And what we discovered in the campaign was when you talk to parents about public education they actually really valued it and they didn't want charter schools there were reasons they were making that choice. But I worry some in terms of the ways the narrative is being built right now around school reopening that that that we are being led to believe because of some subset of parents that that's what parents want. And that they're opposed to us and this division that this wedge is being put between educators and other workers. Right. How come nurses are going back in. Why aren't teachers going back in grocery clerks are going back in how come teachers aren't going back in and then educators and and parents and I think that's total bullshit. But the only way we can discover that it's bullshit is if we talk to each other. And not to the not to the means. We don't want to talk to the means we actually want to talk to human beings. So another sort of questions have come up relative to funding. And certainly I was thinking about this. You know we start to say like what we need for the schools to be reopened safely for human beings to enter them. We're talking about a major investment in funds. Donna was talking about and I saw Jay and and we're nodding their heads vociferously about just the conditions that most of our public school buildings are in. What does the funding fight look like. And and what does that look like relative to the, you know the different economic status of our students and schools and the economic injustice in the country. So we have schools where they're going to be able to more quickly either go back or they're going to have their learning pods. So how do we how do we bring the fight for economic justice and public and fighting for public schools into this given the amount of money that we haven't been given for a long time. I mean has been depleted for public schools. How do we make this a part of a fight of any of you started to do that work at where you just looking down the road and going. Okay, I see that down the road. I'm going to jump in and try and take a stab at this. One of the things that I learned that is kind of out of my, my purview as a nurse, taking care of little kids and little babies was understanding the ventilation aspect of a return to school and the way I can reiterate it is in the hospital, there is a ventilation requirement. There is a ventilation measurement of being able to continue in the operating room to do a procedure. That is a combination of the nurse in the operating room and the HVAC ensuring that there is adequate ventilation and a level of humidity humidity that will decrease the transmission of infection. So that you decrease the amount of opportunity for bacteria to spread. So having learned about that. And just what you said Barbara, I think that we have to be very specific when we talk about what it is that we need. So if we talk about ventilation. Okay, okay, you can do your own ventilation or you seem to have enough money to make sure that you retrofit to get that we need to put out what is by determined by science the adequate ventilation that is required in schools. This is it. This is where we need to get to. And this is, and now we need to find out how we're going to apply it. I think that's part of the work that the coalition did was kind of break it down into steps. So I think we have about 16 different steps of measurement that we need to identify for going forward. I did talk a little bit about the testing, which we still haven't got a good handle on the testing. There are so many false positives and false negatives that are actually impeding our ability to move forward in such a way that we can trust what we know to be fact. Somebody is going to be a transmitter of the virus if they have COVID positive. We need to fix this so that we have accuracy in the ability to test so there are certain measurements that we have to put the criteria in. We need to throw it up there and hope it sticks. We need to identify what it needs to be and be very specific and have that be the application just as we did early on over 20 years ago with the N95 mask. There was extensive testing as to what do people have to have in place in order to protect themselves if there is germ warfare with anthrax or smallpox, especially after the exposure during 9 11. We've learned so much over the years. Why are we not taking what we've learned? What good teachers have taught us and good scientists have made us aware of and putting it into the safety of not only our students, our teachers, our workers, but our patients that are going to be impacted during the next surge of not only this virus, but the potential for other viruses that are coming down. So what we put in place now is going to protect us for the future. One way of thinking about that. Yeah, go ahead, Rudy. Well, you know, and to add to that on the funding, I think, you know, there's the macro question of it, which is that we need more progressive taxation and we have to tax the rich. Because we've been starving our school systems in our towns and cities for a really long time. But also, I mean, we're in a kind of an acute crisis though. And so what do we do right now? I was on my city council for nine years, two of which I was city council president and learned a lot about funding. And there's so many myths, even held by city councilors and school committee people, which is, you know, sometimes to me is just infuriating that people believe you can't take like currently right now, I believe if any city or town has a non essential capital project going on, it should stop. They shouldn't do it. I think that money should be moved to the schools right away. And I think even, you know, but then so many city councilors, a lot of times, you know, with the way it works in Massachusetts is that the schools get the money from the city council who who approves it or town meeting. And then the schools, you know, we don't approve it line item by line item for the schools but it's a chunk of money that gets sent to the schools. And at any time during the year, the city council can send money over to the schools. But city councilors sometimes have in their minds well that's capital project we can't touch that. And it's just not true you can there's, there's buckets of money within a city and town that, you know, right now in Greenfield, they're looking at dredging up upon to make an ice rink. Ice rink. As much as I would love that. I love ice skating. We don't need it right now. And that will also send a message to people who want that ice rink. This is what we're forced to do something that is should is recreational that should be for everybody has to be put on hold now because it's been starved for so long and I think people need to feel the impact of that and we do have to take from one bucket and put it to the others and those who don't understand that, you know, this this impacts all of us, I think it will make them see it to and it'll be a good organizing tool, but part of this I think too is to, you know, for the acute situation is to go to cities and towns and one by one you have to talk to these elected officials and explain, you really can move that money. This is why you have to move that money. We don't want to forget that we can tax the rich either. As you said very absolutely both of those. And we can cancel debt. Lots municipalities are hands are tied by debt that we can just cancel. We're going to wrap up really soon but I see a question up here that I imagine is on lots of people's minds. So I'm going to ask Ellen to help us think about it. And that is in New York, there's the Taylor law that says you public sector workers are not allowed to strike how are you taking that up into more caucus. To Jay, you know, how are we, how are we thinking about Jay you already figured out how to do that you're just going to strike in West Virginia. So, how are you thinking about the fears that people have around taking work actions like strikes. I mean, frankly, a lot of what we've been dealing with in the past few days is just trying to correct some of the, the misinformation that the UFT leadership seems to be propagating maybe not directly from the top but somehow there are mid level. So representatives in the union leadership that are implying or saying very wrong or intimidating things about the consequences of strike so you know but we're also being trying to be straightforward. We produced and disseminated like a frequently asked questions document that we've gotten some positive feedback on it helps clarify some of these questions. You know, we're being straightforward about the real negative potential consequences which are you can be fined two days of pay for every day that you've gone straight. But some of the other misinformation out there like they're going to take your pension they're going to cancel your health insurance and some of these other, you know, dramatic threats, or the contract is then totally null and void are not, you know, are not the case. You know, I'm learning myself. I haven't really been around at a time when I mean even though I've been teaching in the DOE for a long time but not at a time when one strikes been talked about this openly. So, yeah, it's difficult people are scared and nervous I would say I feel most for the newer employees of the system that maybe haven't you know accumulated savings and they probably still have student dead some kind and those those folks are pretty nervous. So, it's, you know, you don't you don't want to lie you don't want to over promise and say like hey this is absolutely nothing to be worried about but at the same time. Sometimes it feels like the uft leadership is trying to use this to intimidate people into possibly accepting kind of a crappy deal. I mean that has happened in the past. You just want to make sure that that that is not the result of what happens here, but it's hard. I mean it's it this is the kind of activity that these none of these people have ever taken before, or been in a position to really I think one thing in 2018 that that really helped us that I'm having to find people up again is just your leverage. I mean in our state there's a teacher shortage like you're not going to fire you there's nobody to replace you with. And especially right now. I'm assuming in every other state it's similar to hear tons of early retirements. A lot of people are resigning. There's no substitutes. Nobody wants to sub. I mean, you have a ton of leverage right now and I think we just have to keep reminding people of that. Thank you. I like finishing on that question, because it is about remembering our leverage and also remembering that our job as organizers is to give people opportunities workers opportunities to experience the collective power. The more we experience ourselves taking collective action and know that power the more power we will build. And if we build enough power. It doesn't matter whether or not strikes are illegal. Like we really that's where we have to always come back to that. I want to thank all of our panelists. You guys are awesome Rudy and Donna and Jay and Ellen before you all sign off. If you have questions and want to help in your own organizing. We'll organize at labor notes.org and we'll follow up with you and if you are an educator who is a Reagan file member who is working on developing a caucus for your to transform your union to be the kind of caucus and work that we've seen tonight. Please hit us up at Barbara at labor notes.org or Joe at labor notes.org. Thank you all very much. Solidarity. Stay strong. Stay well. Good night.