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Education

The National Education Association Voted To Cut All Ties To The ADL

In a momentous vote, the National Education Association’s 7,000-member policymaking body cut all ties with the Anti-Defamation League. On July 6, the NEA’s national Representative Assembly approved New Business Item 39, committing that the NEA “will not use, endorse, or publicize materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or statistics.” The reasoning: “Despite its reputation as a civil rights organization, the ADL is not the social justice educational partner it claims to be.” The ADL has been a ubiquitous presence in U.S. schools for nearly forty years, pushing curriculum, direct programming, and teacher training into K-12 schools and increasingly into universities – often over the objections of students, parents, and educators.

Minneapolis Teamsters Fight For Safety In Summer Heat

Minneapolis – Local 638 Teamsters tabled at the northeast Minneapolis UPS hub on Thursday, July 3. They distributed flyers on heat safety and union contract enforcement. Drivers coming in, and warehouse workers leaving for the day, stopped to learn about their rights, grab some lemonade, and share experiences as temperatures reached the 90-plus range in Minneapolis. Inside the warehouse and inside package cars, temperatures are regularly five to ten degrees higher for workers. As the result of a months-long contract campaign and credible strike threat in 2023, UPS workers won strong contract language. This requires UPS to install 2500 new water fountains, 18,000 new warehouse fans, and 28,000 new or replacement delivery vehicles equipped with air conditioning over the life of the five-year contract.

Dynamic Coalitions: Organizational Solidarity In Practice

My name is Ana Inés Heras. I live and work in Argentina, although at different points of my life I also lived abroad. Since 1999 I have been working in several regions of my native country as a National Researcher for the Argentinean Council – CONICET, as a university professor and an activist. The regions we work in and organizations we work with vary over time, since our work is dynamic. Groups and people who reach out to us are integrated into our work over time at different geographical locations in our country (e.g., the North West, the North East, the Southern Andean region). Out of this work, and over the years, I supported the creation of a transdisciplinary and trans-organizational team, which works as a Co-Elaborative Research Hub, on issues related to direct democracy in different types of organizations (e.g., cooperatives, community groups, social movements).

Standing Up To Sanctions

We often hear about countries sanctioning one another as a punitive measure in place of military action, to spare lives and civil infrastructure. But there is strong academic criticism of the effectiveness of sanctions, with a key concern being that, even broad economic actions can have disastrous consequences to real people just trying to live and work. Some of these consequences are straightforward: sanctions can reduce access to fuel, food, power and so on, but they also impact some areas of society with wide reaching and lasting effects. Education, in particular, can suffer greatly, affecting lives in a worrying number of ways.

Pedagogy And Class Power: Reclaiming Freire In An Age Of Reaction

In the early decades of the twenty-first century, education has become a frontline in the ideological struggle over the future of global capitalism. The coordinated assault on teachers, curriculum, and institutions of public learning is not an isolated culture war but a structural feature of neoliberal governance. In this context, the pedagogical philosophy of Paulo Freire demands renewed attention—not as an abstract theory of “engaged learning,” but as a revolutionary praxis situated in a broader Marxist tradition of class struggle.¹ Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in 1970, emerged not from elite seminar rooms but from literacy campaigns among Brazil’s dispossessed.

Seven Supreme Court Cases That Black Americans Should Track This Summer

From voting rights to health care to workplace equality, the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on a number of issues this summer that could have major implications for Black Americans. “In America, for Black people, we’ve had a long season where our rights were generally respected,” said Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU, who has been closely following the Trump administration’s legal moves. “We have Black elected officials … Black leaders in corporate America, we have extreme poverty, but we also have thriving middle class communities. We have many areas where we have lots of highly educated black people. All of those things rest on a legal framework that allows those rights to be protected.”

Locating Ourselves In The Wreckage Of Neoliberalism

This past March, as an unusually warm winter in Connecticut prepared to give way to spring, a morning crowd at the West Indian Social Club in Hartford milled about over blueberry muffins from Costco and cartons of Dunkin’ coffee. “Democracy School” was about to begin. At round banquet tables, nursing home workers nodded intently, listening to community college students describe the budget cuts they were fighting in order to keep their libraries open in the evening, so working students could find time to study. Child care advocates broke bread with Uber drivers, and learned about their efforts to win dignified wage and safety standards. College faculty like ourselves heard stories from renters facing eviction, and from undocumented parents struggling to win health care coverage for their families.

How Do We Get The ADL Out Of Schools?

Since as far back as the 1980s, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has sponsored programs aimed at fighting discrimination in K-12 education. In recent years, however, the organization has narrowed its focus almost exclusively to antisemitism at the expense of other marginalized communities. In doing so, the ADL has created a coercive environment that encourages carceral solutions and monetary donations as a fix for systemic issues. Since the start of Israel's genocide against Palestinians in 2023, the ADL's illiberal leanings have been put on full display as it voiced support for the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil...

‘DOGE Already Happened In Chicago’: Resist Through Coalition Building

On April 14, members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) ratified its new contract with 97 percent approval. The nearly year-long negotiation process was steered by union president Stacy Davis Gates, whose leadership of the CTU as a militant force for progressive politics has followed in the footsteps of former CTU president Karen Lewis. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU organizer and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) middle school teacher, was also a key figure in the process. The CTU’s contract gains and movement building suggest a mode of successful resistance during a critical time for all advocates for public education to stand up to the budget cuts and draconian policies of President Donald Trump’s second administration.

Tens Of Thousands Of Teachers In Mexico Are On Strike

For over a week, thousands of teachers across Mexico have been on strike, with the CNTE teachers union putting forward a set of longstanding demands. At the center is the demand to repeal the 2007 ISSSTE law which privatized the pensions of public sector workers including teachers. It was passed by Mexico’s right-wing governments during the neoliberal offensive, but it was part of many anti-worker policies that have continued through the administrations of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and now his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum. There are also demands for a 100 percent pay raise, a defense of public education, and support for the universities that train teachers.

Build Inspiring Alternatives To Counter Authoritarianism

We are heading down a perilous road. Vulnerable communities face growing threats. The climate crisis is outpacing scientists’ worst predictions. Authoritarianism is no longer a distant possibility — it is rising, with democracy backsliding across the globe. With Trump’s return, public services like education, labor protections, humane immigration policies, health care and diversity programs are being dismantled. Meanwhile, trust in democracy is eroding — especially among young people. As political scientist Steven Levitsky points out, part of the problem is motivational: The political right is fighting for a clear, albeit dangerous, vision. The left, by contrast, is often fighting against that vision, with fewer compelling alternatives on offer.

US Cities Need More Diverse Teachers; Philadelphia Has An Answer

Public education is at a crossroads. Federal funds for public education have been threatened over the Trump administration’s war on DEI. Mental health funds for schools have been cut. The federal government’s move to slash AmeriCorps programs is already hitting classrooms in low-income ZIP codes hard. And all the while, teacher shortages continue to rise, and stark disparities in educational opportunities persist. The future of our students depends on how we invest in and support our educators, especially teachers of color, who face systemic barriers to recruitment and retention despite their vital role in student success.

I Faced Censorship And Attacks For Trying To Teach About Palestine

At MIT, I have witnessed firsthand how institutional priorities shift under the weight of political pressures and personal allegiances. My proposal for a course that critically engages via language and linguistics with the realities of settler colonialism vs. decolonization was not simply met with skepticism; it was censored and actively surveilled, doxed, and it is still being delegitimized. My experience is not an isolated incident, but part of a larger, systemic issue that permeates education across the United States. It is a symptom of what I have come to understand as the “Palestine exception,” where conversations surrounding Israel/Palestine are subjected to unique levels of scrutiny and suppression, from academic units, to students’ newspapers and faculty newsletters, to Executive Orders and Homeland Security.

Chicago Teachers Approve Contract With Remarkable Gains

This month, 85 percent of the Chicago Teachers Union’s 27,000 active members voted on a tentative agreement covering 500 public schools across the city. A record 97 percent voted yes. The contract will run from 2024 to 2028, expiring at the same time as the UAW’s contracts with the Big Three. The negotiation drew the greatest level of member participation and support in the CTU’s history and was achieved without a strike or a strike vote. The new contract addresses both bread and butter concerns and common-good demands. Said CTU president Stacy Davis Gates, a member of the union’s Caucus of Rank and File Educators: “It was the whole buffet.”

Trump Guts Support For Disabled Students; Families Are Fighting Back

If the Trump administration and the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) have their way, the basic educational and human rights of students with disabilities will soon be eviscerated. Due to the planned demolition of the Department of Education, the rights of students with disabilities to “a free, appropriate public education” — guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — are under fire. For nearly 50 years, the Department of Education (DOE) has been responsible for distributing funds — $14.2 billion in fiscal year 2025 — to state and local school districts to enable them to educate students with a range of disabilities.

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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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