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On her very first day of student teaching at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, N.Y., Martha Strever pushed, pulled and pounded on the school’s door, which was locked. No one came. Where was everybody? It was, after all, the first day of school.

It turned out everybody was exactly where they were supposed to be: inside, having entered through the school’s front entrance. Strever had been knocking on a side door. Flustered but undeterred, she not only found her way inside, she also found her life’s calling.

Strever’s sentences are punctuated with laughs when she recounts the story to

Paraprofessionals and school-related personnel are often overlooked because of their support roles. They are the last ones hired and often the first ones fired when budgets get tight. This certainly seems true right now as the Trump administration withholds nearly $7 billion in education funds, effective July 1, which has hamstrung summer school programs, hindered English language support, halted professional development this summer, and left before- and after-school programs in limbo for the coming school year.

Paraprofessionals are key employees in all these programs. For example, in Alabama

It is clear that higher education is under attack. The Trump administration has frozen funding for science, from cancer research to reproductive care; has hamstrung student financial aid programs; has stripped colleges and universities of diversity, equity and inclusion programming; has strangled affirmative action designed to expand access to college; and is demanding that some institutions sign a “compact” that forces them to adopt Trump’s ideology in exchange for federal funding.

On Nov. 7, students, faculty and staff rose up at more than 100 universities and colleges across the country and

Dr. Byrce Pulliam spends his nights in a community emergency room in Southern Oregon, where the line between life and death can come down to seconds—and insurance coverage.

“I show up 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year with one goal in mind: to provide excellent care for patients in crisis. Being a doctor is often challenging, but it has become harder because our nation’s healthcare system is on life support,” he said before a House hearing on Oct. 8.

Pulliam, a founding member and chair of the Southern Oregon Providers Association, which is part of the AFT’s Northwest Medicine

Scarlett Ahmed has started counting the number of people sleeping outside the Queens Career Center in New York City when she arrives at work in the morning.

“It was already bad,” she said. “But this? This will just add to it.”

Ahmed, a career center supervisor and an executive board member of New York’s Public Employees Federation, is referring to the devastating disruption in benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The break in benefits—resulting from the longest federal government shutdown on record—has a seismic impact, reaching even programs and departments

On Aug. 14, Social Security will mark its 90th anniversary—but instead of celebrating, labor leaders and activists say the program faces the gravest threats in its history. Speaking during a virtual town hall on Aug. 7, AFT President Randi Weingarten warned that the Trump administration is pursuing policies aimed at dismantling Social Security. “They’re not going to tell people that they don’t want it,” she said. “We have to fight in every which way we can, particularly those of us who are not yet on Social Security, … for people to have it and to keep it … for our children and our

In AFT President Randi Weingarten’s latest New York Times  column, she describes what it is exactly that unions do. Though unions are the most popular they have been in decades, anti-union sentiment still thrives in red states and across the nation. “Several years ago, The Atlantic ran a story whose headline made even me, a labor leader, scratch my head: ‘Union Membership: Very Sexy,’” Weingarten writes in the column. “The gist was that higher wages, health benefits and job security—all associated with union membership—boost one’s chances of getting married. Belonging to a union doesn’t actually guarantee happily ever after, but it does help working people have a better life in the here and now.” Click through to read the full column.