Still organizing, still fighting
By Felicia Bruce
As retirees, most of our careers have spanned decades, and we have developed knowledge, wisdom and experience to share. We know what it is to walk among giants.
Many of us came of age in the labor movement with leaders like the late AFT President Albert Shanker. Today, the names and faces of the giants are different. Leaders like AFL-CIO President Liz Schuler and AFT President Randi Weingarten are carrying the movement forward.
Some of us marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. We participated in sit-ins and walked miles for civil rights. We knew the names Emmett Till, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney. Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan were household names to us. But we did much more than witness injustice. We fought injustice.
We are the generation that persuaded a Republican president to create the Environmental Protection Agency. We didn’t just burn bras and march, we authored the Equal Rights Amendment. We created Earth Day, and more than 50 years later it’s still inspiring action. We helped end a war. We secured the right for 18-year-olds to vote. We did more in a generation to expand the franchise and protect the planet than any generation before or since. We’ve been making “good trouble” for decades, and we’re not done yet.
We give substance and style to the slogan, “Activists never retire.”
As retirees, we are often called the daytime army of every union in America, but we are so much more. We may not be paying dues from a regular paycheck any longer, but we sure as hell are not done contributing yet. We still educate. We still vote. We still show up.
Get AFT’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
We also have a message for union presidents: Put your retirees to work. Every union with a retiree council should be asking those retirees to help elect union-endorsed candidates. For unions without a retiree council, now is the time to build one; reach out to your state and local Alliance for Retired Americans chapters. The ARA is a great partner, and its mission is aligned with the AFT.
Retirees may not be knocking on doors in 100-degree heat, but we can phone bank remotely or in Central Labor Council offices. We can talk with fellow retirees, in-service members and their families, friends, and neighbors. We can put the working family priorities at the front and center of city and county commissions across America. We can go to school board meetings to see “how the sausage is made” so to speak. We can learn to hustle, and I don’t mean dance. We can become an AFTerburner. We can write letters to the editor, take pictures, post on social media and amplify the union message for union-endorsed candidates and promote union solidarity in dozens of ways. Seniors are the most reliable, consistent voting bloc, not just in Arizona and Florida, where our numbers are huge, but in every state.
We’re not sitting at home eating bonbons and playing mah-jongg. We are all in and we know “we’re all in this together.” Old and young, men and women, Black and white, Latino, Asian, Native, gay and straight, in-service and retiree.
Don’t leave anyone out, and don’t leave anything on the table. The stakes are too high for all of us. We know how to mobilize, we know how to organize, and we get the job done.
Felicia Bruce started her career decades ago as an educator on Long Island and has spent a lifetime giving meaning to two union slogans: “Union for Life” and “Activists Never Retire.”
Bruce began as a middle and high school social studies teacher and concluded her classroom career teaching children with special needs. Along the way, she served as public relations director for a 6,000-member public service union and worked as a consultant to addiction treatment programs.
Today, she serves as president of NYSUT Retiree Council 43 in Florida and president of the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans. She recently celebrated 50 years of union activism.
Want to read more posts about AFT members and our priorities and concerns? Sign up for our e-newsletters here.
