Click on the UFT website to see the photos of parents and teachers, arms interlocked, circling hundreds of city schools to “protect” them from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s devastating education agenda.

That agenda fails to pay the city the $2.5 billion in state aid that schools are owed from the 2006 settlement of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, despite a $5 billion state budget surplus. The agenda also ties any increase in education funding to teacher evaluation and tenure, and calls for an increase in the cap on charter schools.

No wonder our in-service colleagues are up in arms.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew described member and parent solidarity in opposing the governor as “overwhelming” and we retirees will, of course, offer our support in any way we can as we always do.

Several of our RTC members are just back from Chicago where they supported teacher union members in their campaign against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s bid for re-election. Because of his abysmal record of school closings and support of charter schools, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis had considered running against him but was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The union threw its support to Jesus Garcia and managed to force Emanuel into an April runoff election.

As UFT retiree Eric Metzger said of his efforts knocking on doors, making phone calls and leafleting, “For the first time in Chicago history there will be a mayoral runoff.” An activist both in-service and as a retiree, he feels that UFTers in the Chicago campaign made a difference. “The race is on,” he said.

Nina Tribble is happy that the unions opposing Emanuel proved him wrong when “he felt he had it in the bag.”

Patricia Cardenas, a veteran of UFT efforts in Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, described campaigning in Chicago as “invigorating.” She lived and had her first teaching job there.

“The north lake shore area is blossoming and beautiful,” she pointed out. “And, as we often see, the 1 percent of the population is benefiting and the rest of the working citizens are not being served.”

Cardenas’ note of the inequality gap that seems to grow wider with each passing day is right on target.

But conservative Sen. Paul Ryan maintains that looking out for the middle class is “envy economics.”

Seems the only institutions looking out for the middle class are American unions.

Even New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof admitted in print that he was wrong about his former anti-union stand. As he wrote in his Feb. 19 column: “But as unions wane in American life, it’s also increasingly clear that they were doing a lot of good in sustaining middle class life.”

He later quotes Jake Rosenfeld of the University of Washington: “To understand the rising inequality, you have to understand the devastation in the labor movement. … For generations now the labor movement has stood as the most prominent and effective voice for economic justice.”

Certainly that’s what’s happening in Wisconsin, where the Republicans just passed right-to-work legislation on the heels of their 2011 gutting of collective-bargaining rights for public employees.

Data from the 25 right-to-work states shows that the legislation does not create jobs, that unemployment rates are higher and that workers earn 12 percent less and have weaker health and pension benefits in those states.

Alliance for Retired Americans Secretary-Treasurer Ruben Burks points out, “When politicians go after your wages during your working years, they are also affecting your finances during retirement.”

At a U.S. Senate hearing on the rise in the nation’s Retirement Income Deficit — the gap between what households have actually saved and should have saved — retirement experts laid the blame for the crisis on the shift from defined-benefit pension plans to 401(k)s. Testimony also cited Social Security as the “backbone” of the retirement system.

Unfortunately, the United States ranked 19th in a recent international assessment of retirement security worldwide. And now we are all holding our breath waiting for the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act in June.

It’s very clear that the benefits and rights we fought for and have grown accustomed to are once again under fire. That’s why we must remain united and committed and actively involved in protecting those benefits and rights.