When I ran for CFT president last year, I campaigned on a platform that emphasized making the CFT a dynamic and influential organization, one that is relevant to our times. If CFT is to be an important player in California, we must be recognized as smart, effective, and well organized. We are working on that and we are making progress.

We have provided more training to local union leaders and to our staff. We have provided regular updates on the work so that leaders, and in turn members, will know how CFT works with them at all levels.

Politicians and the general public are becoming more aware of CFT and what we advocate. We have been on television and radio, and in newspapers, with opinion pieces published in major California newspapers.

In the television campaign against the Indian casino gaming compacts, I was featured with my title as president of the CFT clearly visible to millions. Our principled opposition to the compacts cemented our relations with unions such as Unite-Here.

The CFT and its local unions have been on the frontlines in opposition to the governor's budget proposals and the suspension of Proposition 98's minimum funding guarantee. We are in coalition with other like-minded organizations. We will win only if we are united with a broad spectrum of social program advocates.

The state AFL-CIO, the California Labor Federation (CLF), is a major contributor to our legislative clout in Sacramento and we support its activities. As a vice president of the CLF, I participate as a member of its strategic plan team, healthcare negotiating team, and its budget committee.

This election year, the CLF has developed a plan to engage at least 1 percent of union members in each AFL-CIO affiliate in California in the political campaigns. CFT can easily achieve this goal, and collectively, if we achieve it in every labor union, we will be unbeatable. We need to win elections at the national, state, and local levels - and we can.

Nationally, the AFT and CFT have been actively fighting to eliminate or significantly fix the absurd No Child Left Behind (NCLB) disaster. The "one size fits all" design of NCLB does not serve the interests of our diverse California students - in any division of education. We will continue to attack the test-as-education premise of NCLB and advocate for a system that allows us to broadly educate our students. 

The errors of NCLB are no accident. The covert purpose of the law has been to undermine public education. The goal of many NCLB advocates is to replace public schools with charters, private schools, and religious schools that would increase conservative control over instruction, and provide children of the elite with an elite education subsidized by the public through vouchers, while children of the uneducated poor are educated just enough to continue to provide a source of cheap unskilled or low-skilled labor.

The CFT, on the other hand, wants to be a driving force in building a democratic and sustainable society. To paraphrase George Lakoff, CFT will continue to fight for public service, political equality, good public schools, healthy children, care for the aged, police protection, air you can breathe, water you can drink, fish in our streams, forests you can hike in, livable cities, ethical businesses, journalists who tell the truth, and jobs that pay a living wage to everyone who wants to work.