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AFT exec council: Obama’s the one for teachers
Jun 26, 2008 1:22 PM
Citing his commitment to take on the key challenges facing AFT members and the nation as a whole, the 41-member AFT executive council voted unanimously on June 23 to approve a motion recommending that delegates to the 2008 AFT national convention endorse the candidacy of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president of the United States.
The action followed a resolution adopted overwhelmingly by the UFT Delegate Assembly at its June meeting that asked the AFT — the UFT’s parent organization, with 1.4 million members nationwide — to explore an Obama endorsement at its upcoming national convention.
“The executive council agreed that Sen. Obama offers the best solutions to the important issues facing the country today,” said AFT President Edward J. McElroy. “When the AFT’s delegates meet in convention in July, we will ask that they accept the council’s recommendation and place the AFT’s full support behind electing Sen. Obama.”
During the primary process, the AFT turned out a record number of members in 14 key states with an unprecedented political and mobilization program on behalf of Sen. Hillary Clinton that involved door-to-door contact, mail and personal member-to-member telephone outreach. With Clinton’s candidacy concluded, these efforts will now be continued and increased during the general election campaign in support of Obama, McElroy said.
“We’re proud of our member-driven, grassroots campaign efforts during the primary, and we look forward to mobilizing an expanded effort on behalf of Sen. Obama,” McElroy said. “AFT members are an electoral force to be reckoned with, and we will prove it again by helping elect Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States.”
The AFT executive body’s decision came within days of the UFT Delegate Assembly’s June 16 meeting, where delegates voted to “urge the AFT to explore at the July convention the endorsement of Sen. Obama,” the presumptive Democratic Party nominee. The resolution also pledged the UFT to “work tirelessly devoting such resources as are legally permitted to elect a president and a Congress who will support the right to free universal public education, fair and decent working conditions, freedom of association and the needs of working families.”
Speaking on the motion, UFT President Randi Weingarten argued that Obama was infinitely preferable to the presumptive Republican hopeful, Sen. John McCain. “It’s not even a choice,” Weingarten said, adding that to be most effective in the fall campaign the AFT was obligated to decide before the convention adjourned.
