From AFT: Events of the week

Dear friends,

After multiple failed attempts, I am setting aside the task of writing even a single sentence synthesizing and characterizing the unmitigated badness of these election results at the federal level. 

We are in for some terrible times, and these times will be exponentially worse for the people and communities that were targets of Donald Trump’s campaign. 

Already this week, we are learning via social media about instances of racial, ethnic, and sexualized intimidation linked to Trump’s election on college campuses across the United States. To name just two:

• Yesterday, black students at the University of Pennsylvania woke up to discover that they had been added to a social media groups titled “Nigger Lynching,” “Mud Men,” and “Trump is Love.” 
• This morning, a law student in Ann Arbor found a swastika, “MAGA,” “GO HOME RAJ,” and “January 20 we win your raped” painted on his apartment door. 

Like you, I know that acts like these, and the sentiments they make manifest, are not new. But the scale of the endorsement provided to this behavior by Trump’s election is unlike anything in my experience. I expect that we will see much more of this and that we need a plan for responding to it. 

In the very short term, I want to encourage you to share reports of instances like these to us as quickly as you can:highered@aft.org reaches all of the staff here in the department. The more we know about what is happening, the better we can assist in coordinating a response and elevating that response into the national (and international) conversation. 

There will be renewed existential threats to our union. As always, the acts that will galvanize us and help us grow are the ones that demonstrate our moral vision of what kind of communities our campuses and our country will be. 

On a more nuts-and-bolts note, I know that many of you have started reaching out to student organizations on your campuses and the advocacy organizations in your communities to assure them that you have their backs in what is to come. Please keep doing this--and mention the AFT liberally as you do it. We in DC are with them, and with you.