"We took down a powerful group of billionaires with people just like you."
–John Ford, President of the Jefferson County Education Association
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| Jefferson County Education Association President John Ford speaks at Miami's Troublemakers School |
maintenance workers. Also attending were activists from worker centers, the Communication Workers of America (CWA), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the AFL-CIO, housing advocates, and troublemakers. I attended with staff and members from the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association (OCCTA) and the Orange Education Support Professionals Association (OESPA).
I was most impressed with John Ford, the President of Colorado's Jefferson County Education Association. He explained how the teacher union reorganized, established strong community alliances and mobilized union members to ensure that the school board's majority Tea Party members were recalled and replaced with members who support public schools, teachers and students.
His message serves as a valuable blueprint that can be used nationwide to replace all current board of education members who do not serve the best interests of the students, teachers, parents and community.
How did a teacher's union fight the Koch brothers and win?
John Ford explained that he grew up in a family with union values. He knew that collective power and collective action were the best weapons to beat back people who threaten our livelihood and profession.
In 2013 the Jefferson County, Colorado school board suffered a hostile takeover from the Tea Party. Ford stated that apathy was the reason for their success. Their takeover left teachers feeling depressed, defeated and fearful. Ford said that fear paralyzed the membership. It was then that he decided to run for president of the Jefferson County Education Association. He said he ran "to start the process of changing who we were and get our own house in order."
Ford explained, "We said to ourselves, if we don't change, we die. With that mentality we restructured the makeup of our board, changing it from a regional board to an operational board based on skills."
According to Ford, Jefferson County has 154 schools with 5,500 teachers and 4,000 union members. The union leaders worked to mobilize their own members and get the message out to all teachers before getting it out to the community. Teachers trained first with the consistent message that they would bring to the community.
The message started out as 'secrecy, waste and disrespect', but eventually evolved to the message 'accountability, transparency and respect', which they felt was more of a message of hope. Throughout the recall campaign, the message was repeated by the media outlets and echoed on the recall ballot.
Teachers were mobilized to get the message out to multiple people –first colleagues and then community members.
Ford said, "We mobilized 1,000 teachers to knock on 110,000 doors to fight the message of the Americans for Prosperity and the Koch brothers. We took down a powerful group of billionaires with people just like you."
Ford presented the bull’s-eye model of organizing. The bull’s-eye, or center ring, contains the members most actively involved in union activity, including officers, staff, stewards and committed activists. Sympathetic members and supporters –those who come to events, keep up with union correspondence, but are not engaged in the day-to-day activities of the union, represent the second ring. The third ring represents those who are not involved in the union, but have a connection to someone who is involved. The outermost circle is made up of the large number of people who have no connection with the union. The goal is to always be directing people towards the center of the circle, the bull’s-eye.
One of Mr. Ford's most powerful statements was that teacher unions must avoid apathy and a sense of comfort. We need to build membership, give each member a role, and model grassroots organizing methods to take back our profession. Unions cannot be regarded as mere service-oriented organizations where members go to seek help. Rather, we must restructure them to ensure that all members are a voice in our profession and community.
Mr. Ford's blueprint could be successfully implemented in Orange County as we work to replace Orange County Public School board members who:
- promote policies that disrespect teachers and students, such as excessive testing, a broken evaluation system, and manipulation of students' grades;
- support a budget that places over $400 million in reserves, the highest percentage of reserve funds among all Florida school districts;
- decline to respond to or meet with teachers to discuss pertinent issues;
- fail to recognize that the time needed to complete the mandated tasks given to teachers far exceeds the time within the contracted 37.5-hour workweek;
- fail to conduct research, but blindly support harmful District and state positions that harm teachers and ultimately our students.
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