15 Days: Film Review. Or a Warning on How Teachers' Unions Are Destroying the Country.
My friend, Natalya Murakhver, recently released this powerful documentary examining the impacts and causes of America's School closures. I hope you'll join me for a private screening in Austin!
The teachers’ unions are the most powerful political force in the country. In 2020, they demonstrated the scope of their power when they showed that they could choose to actively harm those whom they are ostensibly charged with serving. Their power was underscored when they not only suffered no consequences for those actions but were richly rewarded both in money and influence. Their entire epistemology is predicated on political power. They have expanded the areas of their political activism far beyond education, and even well beyond their members’ interests. In 2020, their actions largely harmed only the children who relied on their members to teach them. But as they have expanded their remit, and as the ramifications of those earlier actions hollow-out the futures of states where they dominate, the catastrophes of their actions will spread. Everything they touch corrodes. This film is your warning (Care to join me to watch it in person? Click the button below…).
For 75% off of General Admission, use the discount code: XBRIGADE. All proceeds go to Restore Childhood, Natalya’s non-profit.
The film explodes onto the screen with a radiant Jane Fonda crowing, “COVID is god’s gift to the Left!” This exultation occurred on a zoom call with labor leaders on March 26, 2020. She then calls on the group to envision how they can “use this” to get “the world we want”. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), follows up, “We don’t have the time and the resources to fight one crisis and another. We have to fight them all together. But that’s going to take elections. If we have this president, and this senate, instead of what we need in the presidency, we won’t be able to take this terrible pandemic—that’s going to fundamentally change our lives—and get the world what we want.”
As a viewer, particularly as a viewer with school-age kids, it’s a moment of stomach-churning dramatic irony. You know what they did to “get the world [they] want[ed].” You know what it did to your kids, to your life. You also have the grim satisfaction of knowing that COVID was not in fact “God’s gift to the left,” despite the left deploying it as a weapon of mass societal destruction. In fact, you can engage in a wee bit of Schadenfreude, that in so much as it was a gift, it was a Trojan horse, whose acceptance continues to destroy the left.
As the skein of the film unwinds, we encounter parents and children of all races and all walks of life, from across the entire country. At the beginning the interviewers describe “understanding” closures and restrictions, or perhaps demonstrate a vague apprehension. Then as hope fades, and sadness grows, so, too, do stories of the same. We hear kids unwittingly describing their descent into depression, or the painful awareness of futures that are no longer theirs, futures that have drifted out of reach.
There is a funny temporal dislocation that occurs mid-film. The middle of the film shows parents and children frustrated and protesting school closures, and the growing awareness of, and anger at, the role teachers’ unions are playing in keeping schools closed. But a touch later the music, which has been almost entirely in a minor key, slips into major. As it does so, Natalya, the narrator and filmmaker, describes her sense of hopefulness that schools would re-open, now that President Biden had assumed office.
Of course, that didn’t happen, and from this point on is when the tone of the film transforms from mournful to righteous anger. At this point, a torrent of betrayals tumbles forth, as disclosures of previously submitted FOIAs and other revelations are brought into the daylight. We watch as interviewees—a large preponderance of whom were, or are, registered democrats—begin to realize that the Biden campaign and administration, far from working to get schools open, was instead colluding with teachers’ unions and others to keep schools CLOSED. All, as Natalya bluntly declaims, “So they could GET. MORE. MONEY.”
I describe this as a funny temporal dislocation, because the actors who had been working to keep schools closed in order to extort political gain had been doing so since March of 2020, though many of the interviewees in the film sincerely believed they had been doing the opposite. It is this dislocation that allows the growing sense of betrayal to come through, as one after one, the various people in the film realize how they have been failed, how their trust was abused, and what the people doing so traded that trust for. We see confusion supplanted by anger, as people realize the person they voted for was not in any way working on their behalf to get their kids’ school open safely, but was instead working for vested interests like the teachers’ unions whose chief goal was to keep schools closed, in order to maintain negotiating leverage, and extract money.
For me, the whole premise of being hopeful that schools would re-open due to Biden’s assumption of the presidency was laughable. I had been mired in COVID data since March of 2020. I was fully aware that the closures were not scientifically merited, but politically motivated. I remember when the American Association of Pediatricians (AAP) made its union-pressured about-face to push to keep schools closed rather than open. I didn’t know that it had been the teachers’ unions that had put pressure on the AAP, but I knew for damn sure that it wasn’t because of any new science they’d uncovered. From all I could tell, the only thing that had happened was that Trump had said schools ought to open, and it seemed that was enough to completely re-orient their morality and understanding of their professional duty. I remember a conversation during that time where I yelled at a family member that “If they let Trump run on opening schools, he will win; and he will deserve to win.” The fact of the matter was, he did run on opening schools, and yet somehow, that was a losing proposition. The democratic position was to keep schools closed. Period.
Yet I, too, expected schools to re-open, and restrictions to drop once Biden assumed the presidency. For me though, the thought of schools reopening once Biden became president didn’t move my thoughts to a major key, if anything, it moved me to a rage-filled, chaotic atonality—more Schönberg than Grieg. I expected that schools would re-open when Biden became president because I was fully aware—no FOIAs needed—that it was political expediency keeping them closed. My assumption was that once the dems had won the presidency, they’d let us all go back to normal. And it made me sick. Nor could I, under any circumstances, imagine voting for someone who was holding my kids and the rest of society hostage just to gain political power. Nonetheless, I had assumed that that was what they would do, and that afterwards they’d “take credit” for opening the schools they and their operatives had been keeping closed.
As 2021 wore on, I honestly couldn’t believe they were continuing to keep schools closed. Much less that after re-opening schools, they kept the masks and test-and-trace requirements in place, not just through 2021, but well in to 2022—well more than a year after vaccines had been available, and been demonstrated not to stop transmission (i.e. that they were useless for anything but potential personal protection).
While it didn’t make sense to people who were following the government’s own published data, or the actually published science—vs. The ScienceTM—that implementing world-destroying closures and disruptions would be a winning strategy for “the left,” the media did very effectively politicize COVID. They—and every other “trusted institution” laid every death Trump’s feet—despite leftwing governments the world over suffering virtually identical, or often worse, death tolls. I remember driving up to our house in NH in 2020, and seeing on one side of the street, a neighbor with a host of Trump paraphernalia, and on the neighbor on the other side, a giant banner saying “Biden 2020” and “200,000 dead.” Clearly, in 2020, it worked. You’ll no doubt be surprised that this data-hawk didn’t keep the tally running once Biden assumed office and his “death toll” far exceeded Trump’s (no more Biden’s fault than Trump’s).
But after Biden became president, nothing changed. In Massachusetts, where I lived at the time, we still had OUTDOOR mask mandates (until May of 2021), and private gatherings were illegal, limited to 10 or fewer. And schools stayed closed. In March of 2021, after the passing of the American Rescue Act on March 11, 2021, which included ESSER III, directing $122 Billion toward funds “needed” to operationalize “school re-opening”, and the CDC relaxing school-distancing requirements to 3 feet on March 19, 2021, still, only 1 in 3 American students were back in school full time.
No one really wants to be reminded of this time. For many, that will be a reason not to watch this film—it just hurts too much. Yet the people who are least likely to watch this film are those who would most benefit from it—that is, the many, many, many institutions that have lost public trust (public health, media, medicine, pharma, government bureaucrats, the arts), and, frankly, democrat operatives. The reason these groups should watch this film, is because it documents the process, and mechanisms of disillusion of many of their dyed-in-the-wool adherents. The fact of the matter is, the only groups who haven’t lost trust in these institutions are those whose wealth insulates them from bad policy, those who have yet to be harmed by their overt politicization and/or rent-seeking, or those still benefiting from the largesse sent in their direction. Day by day, as the policies fail to moderate, and the realization of failure spreads, the number of the unaffected dwindles, and those of the disillusioned grow.
I’d like to take as a case in point, how the teachers’ unions’ push to keep schools closed caused people to lose faith in them, education more broadly, and also the medical, scientific, academic and public health community. It is a tale of self-serving activist over-reach which is being played on repeat across the world, and destroying institutional trust everywhere it is enacted.
Back in July of 2020, Rochelle Walensky, then merely a Newton mom, and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at MGH, had responded to an email from Newton’s Mayor, Ruth Anne Fuller, asking if she should move away from Massachusetts’ Department of Education recommendation for 3’ of distance, and instead move to 6’ of distance (as was being pushed by union leaders at the time). Dr. Walensky quickly replied that 3’ feet and masked was fine (per below).
Example 1
The tension between her professional views (which I still believe to be poorly informed, and politically-shaded), and her actions as a political appointee are telling. The tale they tell is of why and how people lost faith in public health, the medical community, and scientists, generally.
MGH is Mecca for the medical community. In July, of 2020, Dr. Walensky, head of infectious diseases at MGH, unequivocally supported 3’ of distancing in schools, not 6’. Yet, as CDC director, she immediately fell in-line with 6’. She justified the switch based on a variety of low-quality “studies” (studies at odds with other higher quality studies conducted by the CDC itself), but emails obtained by FOIA show that prior to the Biden CDC, which she directed, releasing its first “school re-opening guidance,” drafts had been shared with the AFT and NEA, with these groups thanking the CDC on February 2, 2021 for incorporating their feedback after a productive meeting on Friday January 29, 2021. Given that AFT president Randi Weingarten had been insisting that 6-feet of distance, universal masking and ventilation upgrades were absolutely required prior to opening as far back as July 2020 (months after European schools were open without restriction), and reiterated in August of 2020, it seems highly likely that this was one of the pieces of feedback that was “incorporated”.
But only a few months later, as ESSER III moved closer to passage with the ARA, Director Walensky started to try to move back to her original position. My guess is she felt confident that the teachers’ unions, once getting their $122 billion on top of the $67.5 Billion in ESSER I and II, would feel satisfied, and drop their 6’ distance requirement (which made schools opening at full capacity an impossibility).
Apparently having gotten wind of the potential changes to the school re-opening guidelines, the AFT’s director of “Health Issues” reached out to Dr. Walensky on March 17, to insist the mitigation measures be maintained—thus ensuring that schools remained impossible to re-open (at least where unions held sway).
Nonetheless, On March 19, 2021, 8 days after ESSER III was passed, the CDC updated its guidance for school openings to recommend a minimum of 3’ of distance, rather than 6’, citing a few more of the shoddy studies that the CDC was then churning out to justify the flip-flop.
However, in the film, Randi states that they will need at least $1 Trillion to re-open schools—not the paltry $200 Billion she’d managed thus far. And it looked like she intended to get it. And so, on March 23, she sent an extended screed to Dr. Walensky decrying the change to 3’ of distance between children from 6’, and be-moaning the many ways in which it put her members at risk. And why wouldn’t she? While ESSER I and II contained no such language, ESSER III contained language that allowed teachers’ unions to hold state education leaders and others hostage, requiring that teachers unions be “meaningfully consulted” on all return-to-instruction plans and use-of-funds (definition from the legislation below).
“Meaningful Consultation” Defined: ED guidance clarifies this as “robust and inclusive” engagement, such as meetings, surveys, or focus groups, where input must be solicited, considered, and reflected in final plans. Unions must be directly involved (e.g., via representatives), and plans must describe how feedback was incorporated. This applies to both the overall ARP ESSER use-of-funds plan and the safe return-to-instruction plan.
This email served as a shot across the bow of the Biden’s CDC. While they might be the “experts,” Biden owed nothing of his accession to power to them, and much to these unions.
How much? During the 2019-2020 election cycle, teachers unions donated more than $56 million dollars to democrats, and democrat-aligned groups, the vast majority through Super PACS, and other such groups.
How do these numbers compare with other donors? While all unions donated approximately $200 million to these entities, teachers’ unions donated nearly 3x as much as the next largest union contributor, the AFL-CIO (appx $20 M). This $56 million number amounts to more than 3% of the $1.5 billion total directed towards democrats, and democrat-oriented group in the 2020 election. But that masks the importance.
This number puts the teachers unions in contention with all but the very largest Super PACs in terms of their influence. In fact, in terms of spending in the 2020 election, they fall behind only 4 Super PACs, George Soros, and Michael Bloomberg. This alone puts Randi Weingarten, and her co-equal at the NEA among the 10 people in the world most able to wield influence over the Biden administration—and all other democratic administrations. And use that influence they did—to the immense harm of our children.
Now let’s talk a little about return on investment for these teachers unions. Typically, 45-50% of the ESSER funds were allocated to “labor costs”. Of these labor costs, a significant portion, 10-20% of total ESSER expenditures were paid out as bonuses of various sorts directly to educators. Thus, of ~$200 billion in ESSER I-III expenditures, $20-$30 billion was spent on bonuses paid to teachers. Thus, a total of around $56 million in campaign “investments”… to get back $20-$30 BILLION in bonuses alone. That is roughly a 500x return on investment.
But that’s not all. The way teachers’ unions work in non-right-to-work states, all teachers are required to join the union and pay a fee of 1-2% of their annual salary (and in some cases bonuses). Those who decline must pay a hefty fee. Thus, the more union-member (teacher and staff) salaries there are, the more money goes to the union. If we look at the chart below we can see that virtually 75% of funds were spent on potentially salary-generating activities, so let’s say $150 billion out of $200 billion.
What portion of those jobs turned into permanent, functionally-non-fireable, dues-paying members? Based on revenues from dues, quite a lot. In 2020, year-over-year revenues increased over 10%, by $63 million dollars. This means ESSER resulted in somewhere between $6.3 billion more in salaried positions. Nor was this a one time jump. While no year was as large as the jump in 2020 (due to the Trump-passed CARES act), the teachers’ unions have sustained a nearly $40 million annual increase in revenues since their initial bump in 2020. Thus, from this initial $56 million investment—extorted by keeping our kids out of school, they managed a step-function increase in membership and dues, worth approximately $40 million per year to the unions—or $200 million since they first undertook this “project.” And that doesn’t even include the bonuses they got for their members.
Let’s return for a moment to how ESSER funds were spent. As noted, most of the money was spent on staffing. Let’s look at what was staffed—"Learning Loss Recovery,” “Student Social-Emotional and Mental Health”—these are all things that were directly caused by teachers’ unions refusal to return, in many cases a full year after virtually every other profession had been back at work. They caused the problem, then they demanded to be paid, bonused, and expanded in their numbers in order to fix it.
What’s even more shocking, is that they were able to get these bonuses, and secure this massive jump in membership and membership dues, at a time when union teachers REFUSED to work. The chart below compares a state’s status as a Right-to-Work state (as of 2020), vs the percentage of time that kids were offered full-time in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year. The results are striking. In right Right-to-Work states, kids had far more access to full-time, in-person instruction. Where unions were powerful, they did not. Among the states with the top-10 highest rates of 100% in-person instruction, ALL are right-to-work states. By contrast, among the bottom 10—the highest of which offered just seven weeks of 100% in-person instruction—only one, Virginia, is a Right-to-Work state. A 2024 effort by the Virginia legislature to over-turn this failed, but with the likely election of Abigail Spanberger tonight, the next session will presumably see Virginia’s status as a right-to-work state overturned, leaving Virginia children worse off.
While the main purpose of this film is to shine a light on the impacts of school closures, I believe its most important function is to shine a light on the role that teachers’ unions played in authoring this catastrophe. When I say “this catastrophe” though, I don’t just mean COVID. I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that teachers’ unions are the most powerful political force in the country, and I don’t think it comes close. Earlier, I discussed the amount of money that was spent by teachers’ unions on the 2020 election—$56 million dollars—99.7%, or all but $157K, directed towards democrats and liberal causes. But this vastly understates the clout of teachers’ unions, as it ignores individual teacher contributions, which are virtually in lock-step with unions. Total educator donations in the 2020 cycle to individual candidates were ~$320 million, and another $90 million going to PACs and soft-money groups. 90% of these donations were to democrats, with $65 million+ going directly to the Biden campaign. Roughly $150 million of these donations are from K-12 educators, and the 90/10 D/R split is preserved—so approximately $135 million. Yet this still understates the amount, as it only includes FEC-itemized donations, those over $200. Extrapolations based on donation patterns would suggest that the donations <$200 would add another $30-$40 million. Thus, approximately $250 million donated to democrats and democrat-aligned causes by teachers unions and K-12 teachers.
But even this understates the financial influence of the teachers’ unions. This is because it ignores how they spend the $600 million in revenues they pull in from dues each year. Below is a breakdown of 2020 expenditures by the NEA and the AFT. We see that rather than just the $56 million, the actual explicitly political activities run to $82 million—taking our total outlay to $275 million, virtually 100% of which is spent on democrats, and democrat-aligned causes. But there are two other buckets that add up to another $340+ million, which are also frequently used for overtly political activities. For example, teachers’ unions spent $3 million on funding for a millionaire’s tax ballot measure in Massachusetts (which passed in 2022).
This makes the teachers’ unions likely the most potent political force in the country, effectively directing more than $600 million in donations, and coordinating the activities of almost 5 million members. No other group or person comes close to this. Literally 100% of this funding is tax-payer supported, as their revenues come exclusively from dues taken directly from taxpayer-funded public teacher and administrator salaries.
This is the reason that we see Randi Weingarten everywhere, advocating for every left-wing cause, and well-beyond anything educations—from climate catastrophism, to transgenderism, to open borders, to defund the police, and on and on. The teacher’s unions ARE the democratic party, because their taxpayer-funded slush fund (they currently have close to $400 million cash on hand, after having dipped $300 million into their reserves in 2020), makes them a ready source of cash—but also allows them to call the shots.
Their activism has resulted in teachers’ failing in their primary duty, educating children. Their other non-education policy priorities are destroying the states where they dominate, driving up energy prices, vitiating economies, increasing inequality, bankrupting them by flooding them with benefit-dependent illegal aliens, and pushing wildly un-popular, and scientifically fraudulent social policies like transgenderism.
These are many super villains in the COVID story. The teacher’s unions may be the worst. Watch the film.
One of the things lockdowns, and now the federal government funding lapse, have shown us is how hard it is to overestimate the volume of pain politicians are willing to inflict on people in order to get their way, or satisfy their partisans.
Thank you, a story that must be told. Your argument would be helped by the comparison to European schools, who almost all went back in June 2020!