During a fiery speech to members of the American Federation of Teachers, Vice President Kamala Harris encouraged the union to “bring it on” and fight for the country’s future and its freedoms.
Saying she is a “proud product of public education,” she credited her first grade teacher with laying the foundation for her to run for president of the United States.
“I know that by nature you are visionaries,” Harris told the crowd, which frequently broke into chants of her last name. “The work you do is about a focus on the future. You see the potential in every child. You foster it, you encourage it and in so doing, you shape the future of our nation.”
During the annual AFT convention in Houston on Thursday, Harris drew a contrast between the Democrats’ future-focused vision for the United States and what she said was the GOP’s focus on the past.
“In our vision of the future, we see a place where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead. A future where no child has to grow up in poverty, where every senior can retire with dignity and where every worker has the freedom to join a union.”
Her vision for the future also includes affordable health care, affordable childcare and paid leave for all, she said.
Harris reminded the teachers that the Biden-Harris administration had forgiven student loan debt for almost 5 million Americans, providing twice as much help for educators and other public servants through the public service loan forgiveness program. As of July 2024, the Department of Education had erased $69 billion of student loans for 946,000 borrowers through the program.
“Donald Trump and his extreme allies want to take our nation back to failed trickle-down economic policies, back to union busting, back to tax breaks for billionaires,” Harris said, before calling out several of the policies in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s presidential transition project.
“Donald Trump and his allies want to cut Medicare and Social Security, to stop student loan forgiveness for teachers and other public servants. And I say to AFT, they even want to eliminate the Department of Education and end Head Start, which, of course, would take away preschool from hundreds of thousands of our children,” she said.
“America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we are not going back. No. We will move forward.”
Harris credited her work as head of the White House Labor Task Force as eliminating barriers for collective bargaining. She credited unions with many of the protections American workers enjoy today, including the five-day work week, the eight-hour workday, sick leave, paid family leave and vacation time.
Echoing a line President Joe Biden has often said over his term in office, Harris said “unions helped build America’s middle class. And when unions are strong, America is strong.”
Harris has been racking up labor union support since Biden stepped down from the ticket on Sunday. The 1.9-million-member Service Employees International Union, the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America and 838,000-member International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and several other groups have all endorsed the vice president, but the American Federation of Teachers, with 1.8 million members, was the first.
AFT President Randi Weingarten praised Biden and Harris on Thursday as “the most pro-labor, pro-worker, pro-family, pro-public-education administration in our history. Now we have an opportunity to make history again.”
Weingarten said she had an assignment for AFT members: to go full throttle through Nov. 5, shattering records for voter turnout and electing Harris as the next president of the United States.
