USFFA Statement
in Defense of Black Lives

USFFA Statement in Defense of Black Lives, June 2020

In March, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in New York City, to labor union local 1199. He said: 

“And the great tragedy is that the nation continues in its national policy to ignore the conditions that brought the riots or the rebellions into being. For in the final analysis, the riot is the language of the unheard.… And what is it that America’s failed to hear? It’s failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promise of justice and freedom have not been met. It has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, humanity, and equality, and it is still true....”

We, the members of USFFA, are angry, horrified, and deeply saddened by the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black people killed with impunity by police and vigilante whites. We unequivocally condemn these killings and the system of white supremacy that supports and condones them. 

We recognize that these killings represent a system of racial violence upon which this country was built. As slavery receded, lynchings and Jim Crow segregation took its place. And as official segregation receded it has been replaced by widespread practices of residential segregation, educational inequities, health-care disparities, employment discrimination, hyper-incarceration, loss and denial of voting rights, and over-policing and police brutality in Black communities. As such, we understand recent incidents of horrific violence not as mistakes of the system, but as the design of the system itself. Equal justice under the law has never been a reality for Black Americans. Given this, we cannot be silent.

In this moment in which people are raising their voices and risking their lives to speak out against these legacies, the members of the USFFA stand together against racism, and for a better future. To that end, we commit to addressing over-policing on our own campus, and in our community. As educators, we commit to dismantling racism through our teaching, and through creating spaces in which Black students can thrive in our classrooms and in our disciplines. As scholars, we commit to fighting for positions for Black colleagues and for those whose scholarship challenges the existing racial order, and to creating a space in which those scholars can thrive. We refer our colleagues to these resources as a starting place.

To our Black colleagues, students, and members of our community: We see you. We hear you. We support you. We will defend you and your right to live and thrive. We know this repetitive trauma impacts people in different ways. We support your protesting, we support your resting, we support your doing what you determine you need to do to survive and take care of yourself and those close to you during this time. Your life, and the lives of your family and community matter.

To our non-Black colleagues, students, and members of our community: For those of you who are protesting, or speaking up in any form, we see you. Thank you for your solidarity. Your voices at this time matter. Have those difficult conversations at the dinner table, with friends or colleagues, and especially with those you know who have a lot to learn about dismantling racism. And, if you can, consider donating your time and/or money to these organizations and others that are doing this work intensively every day.

To our siblings in labor: We acknowledge that the labor movement, the American Federation of Teachers, and indeed our own USFFA local, have complex racial histories that have both opposed and enabled racism at different points in our histories. Labor must speak out whenever law enforcement unions hijack the discourse and methods of working people in order to block criminal justice reform and enable brutality. We support the efforts, for example, of theAFT and NEA to prioritize advocacy for police reform. 

We as members of USFFA have a strong voice, both as faculty and librarians who teach and shape discourse in society, and as a labor union. We commit to use our collective voice to amplify the voices of our Black colleagues, students like those at the BSU who have shared their own call to action, and other members of our community. We commit to bring the same scholarly rigor to understanding racial injustice as we do to each of our disciplines; there is no discipline in which challenging racism is irrelevant. We commit to no longer participating in the denial of white supremacy and the silencing of Black voices. Finally, we commit to ensuring that Black Lives Matter in our labor union, in our classrooms and advising sessions, throughout our campus, and in the world -- because we know that MLK was right: justice is indivisible; injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.