“Florida Teachers Unions are Front Line of Resistance Against DeSantis’s Fascism.” This headline from a vital interview with Paul Ortiz in Truthout on April 1, 2023 catches the mood in the United Faculty of Florida and its large K-12 affiliate, the Florida Education Association, in the face of the current onslaught of hostile legislation and well-publicized right-wing attacks against virtually every non-MAGA person and public and progressive institution in the state. Yes, there’s fear and intimidation among K-20 faculty and students and lots of other people. But there’s also increasingly organized pushback: resistance, but also something more positive and less reactive, a growing determination to organize for a very different Florida than DeSantis and his minions want to bully us into.
Ortiz, social historian at the University of Florida and President of the UFF chapter there, provides a brief critical history of Florida, weaving together white supremacy, the state’s rich history of Black organizing, and teachers union history. As he acknowledges, fascists will continue to do damage in Florida and elsewhere. But contrary to lazy stereotypes about “Florida man” and media cliches about Florida instantly turning red, Floridians have a powerful tradition of interracial and progressive organizing to build on, and many of us continue that rebuilding. In the face of a grossly unfair and punitive new law that ends union dues deductions and threatens to decertify any teachers union that does not have 60% membership, UFF and FEA are not only fighting the law in federal court, but organizing to move faculty to eDues and build membership. In a right-to-work-for-less state with the right to collective bargaining written into the state constitution, we seek to control our own fate against a hostile political regime. With DeSantis running for President on his Florida record and with increased national attention to that record, we are organizing and rebuilding an alternative, progressive Florida against the reactionary campaign. (A new interview with UFF President Andrew Gothard on the NPR Podcast On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti is here, at approximately 18:55 to 32:15.)
In our organizing, UFF members have been supported at crucial points by the solidarity of our sisters, brothers and kin in unions and higher ed organizations all over the country, who have made calls and sent messages at key moments. Thanks! And UFF members are learning to reciprocate, to respond to the solidarity asks coming through HELU from faculty in other states. If your union is not yet a member of HELU, we urge you to join and become active.