AFT President Randi Weingarten on March 19 visited Kean University’s STEM Auditorium to discuss her new book, “Why Fascists Fear Teachers,” with Kean President Dr. Lamont O. Repollet in front of an audience of AFTNJ members and Kean students.
“I have a newfound respect for people who write books. This one almost killed me,” Weingarten said early on, prompting a few laughs from the attendees.
“I never thought that I as a union leader or as a social studies teacher or as a lawyer that I knew enough, but what I realized was that all the people I wrote about knew enough,” she explained. “And if I could actually write an anthology about what I was seeing, if I could actually talk about what I was seeing through the stories of others, then I thought that I knew enough to do something.”
One of the reasons why she wrote the book was “to basically lift up in this very fraught moment of time the work of education, the work that you do. And I thought the way to do it was not to just opine, but I thought the way to do it was tell a lot of stories of a lot of teachers, people who are nameless and faceless except to their own families or maybe their own unions or maybe their own kids.”
The audience included Lt. Gov. Dr. Dale Caldwell, who before the discussion credited Weingarten for “her understanding of the United States of America, her understanding of the union movement … her passion for teachers, her passion for students … her passion for making sure that everybody — no matter what you look like, no matter what kind of family you grow up with — has an opportunity to learn, has an opportunity to live the American dream.”
ABOVE: AFT President Randi Weingarten prepares to answer a question from Kean University President Dr. Lamont O. Repollet on March 19.
BELOW: AFTNJ President Jennifer S. Higgins, AFT President Randi Weingarten and Lt. Gov. Dr. Dale Caldwell following Weingarten’s book talk at Kean’s STEM Auditorium.
(Photos by Chris M. Junior)
