Montgomery and DC

It’s good to be back home, be with Michelle, and sleep in my own bed after 8 days on the road.

We went to Montgomery, Alabama last weekend for the AFT Civil, Human, and Women’s Rights Conference. Hope Coles, Shellye Davis, and Stephanie Johnson, and I joined members from around the country. Stephanie moderated a panel on Healthcare inequities as part of a task force she serve on.
We rallied for Justice on the steps of the capitol, the same place the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights marches ended.
We made two emotional visits to The Legacy Museum which traces history from slavery to mass incarceration and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice which honors more than 4400 African American men, women, and children who were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950.

Both visits were profoundly moving.

After Montgomery, it was on to DC for the AFT Planning and Policy Committee and meetings with the American Nurses Association on safe staffing and with my Congressman, Joe Courtney.
Joe has worked hard for the people of Connecticut and the nation. He has also championed workplace safety measures for healthcare and social workers.

Planning meetings are work, but work that needs to be done.
Advocating for safety at work, for safe levels of staffing, for equality in healthcare, for social justice, for the right to teach and the right to care, and for union leadership development takes planning, and supporting the work of our members is important, because our patients, our students and the public and community we serve need us to advocate.

My recent trips to the border and to Montgomery have reinforced this to me.