CFT 2006 Convention delegates rally with Angelides, adore Sims

 

Members of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers joined hundreds of their brothers and sisters at a Capitol rally during the 2006 CFT Convention. Delegates marched to demand that Governor Schwarzenegger honor the Prop 98 promise and restore $3 billion in missing funding to public education.

Nearly four hundred delegates to the statewide CFT convention March 24-26 in Sacramento served notice to the governor that they were prepared to follow up last year's special election victory over his mean-spirited attacks on public education with another effort this year to defeat his re-election bid. After a spirited march and rally in the rain (click here for a 3 minute video for which you must have the free Quicktime Player), Phil Angelides promised the enthusiastic crowd of CFT members to tax the rich in order to boost funding for education.

Representing the 70,000 members of the CFT in 140 locals across the state, the convention delegates marched, rallied, and spent many hours deliberating resolutions to define the organization's policies for the coming year (click here to download adopted resolutions).

They also gave up several standing ovations to Saturday afternoon's plenary speaker, Jinny Sims, who galvanized the crowd with her description of the British Columbia Teachers Federation's two week civil disobedience strike last year. (Click here to view a six minute video of selections from her speech.) That job action, with nearly one hundred per cent of the teachers in the province on the picket lines, stopped the anti-public education privatization agenda in B.C. in its tracks. After the plenary, BCTF President Sims continued with eighty delegates to discuss her union's strategy to defend public education against the corporate privatization agenda. When the alloted workshop period ended, virtually no one left the room, and the dialogue continued for another hour. Click here to order your free 26 minute DVD of Sims' entire speech.

Awards to Mack, Love, locals

The highest honor offered by the CFT, the Ben Rust Award, was bestowed this year on Sandra Mack, long-time teacher, activist and officer in the United Educators of San Francisco. Mack, a former vice-president of the CFT, and currently UESF Vice-president for Substitutes despite being "retired," clearly was moved by the occasion, bursting into tears a couple times, but recovering gracefully with self-deprecating jokes.

She noted wonderingly that at previous Ben Rust luncheons she had witnessed the award going to several of her heroes. She couldn't believe it was happening to her now, but was grateful anyway at the "clerical error," that, she said, must have been instrumental in giving it to her. UESF president Dennis Kelly presented the award to his colleague.

Roni Love, who retired from the ABC School District last year after three and a half decades of service to her students and her union (and likewise remains more active in retirement than most people who haven't retired), received the Women in Education Award. In her acceptance speech she presented a fiery picture of her worldview, decrying the racism, sexism and ageism that stood between her students and a better life.

In the annual Communications Awards: FIrst Place, General Excellence went to Union Action, AFT Local 2121, edited by Vincent Meis (newspaper); AdFacts, AFT Local 6106, edited by Karyn Cummings (6 or more pages), In Strength and Unity, AFT 1521A, edited by Velma Butler, Sandra Lepore, and Steve Weingarten (4 pages), and PVFT Flyer, edited by Carolyn Savino and Ann Sisco (one page). Congratulations to all. For a complete list of winners with judges' commentary, click here.

See convention coverage in Sacramento Bee.

—Fred Glass