Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visited the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City. Sec. DeVos was invited to speak at the ASU+GSV Summit. During her speech, a group of protesters rallied outside the hotel speaking out against the Secretary’s aggressive anti-public education agenda. AFT Utah was proud to be numbered among that group of protesters. AFT Utah President, Brad Asay, was a scheduled speaker at the rally. Brad stated the following, “Ninety percent of our kids attend public schools yet Secretary DeVos would do all that she can to actually privatize our schools with the voucher system…[Utahns] support public schools, not privatization, not vouchers, not austerity measures” (Desert News, published May 9, 2017).
Around 100 community members and public education supporters gathered to show their displeasure for privatization and recent policies put into place by Secretary DeVos. It’s our duty as union members to stand up in the face of adversity to protect our profession and to protect our students. Without our voice as professionals, Corporate America will attempt to capitalize on our education system at the expense of our students. We MUST fight to keep business out of public education.
We are excited to announce our upcoming Annual Membership Meeting and Delegate Assembly. It will take place on June 24th at 10:00 a.m. at the Utah Labor Center, 2261 South Redwood Road, in Salt Lake City. As seen in our posts on Facebook and via e-mail, refreshments, drinks, and lunch will be provided at this meeting. There will also be door prizes and drawings for attendees. If you wish to be a delegate for your local, please contact your local Presidents, or the AFT Utah office (801)972-1974, or reception@aftutah.org.
There is a minor business portion of this meeting, but the majority of time will be focused on rebranding ourselves as a union. The theme of our member meeting is Empowering “U”. We will be discussing practices and strategies to ensure each of you are the voice and face of our Union. We’ll be discussing changes and gathering input of how we will present ourselves as a union. We need to lead out in defense of public and higher education employees, not be part of the status quo. Empowering “U”, represents protecting working families in addition to standing in solidarity with AFT locals across the nation. We are union proud and union strong, and represent the only labor union for public and higher education.
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