Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, joined Cheddar News to talk about how the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade affects teachers as well as to point out the disconnect in preventing certain states control over gun laws while giving them the ability to completely ban abortions. "States no longer have a right to keep children safe from gun violence, yet all of a sudden, states now have this intrusive right into the very very private decisions of a family on if they want to have children or not," she said.

Closing Bell

 Randi Weingarten on States Stopping Abortions but Not Gun Violence Against Kids

Welcome back to closing bell here on Cheddar news. Now, this week, has seen a cascade of amended decisions being handed down from the Supreme Court, including striking down a new york law requiring a special need to carry a handgun outside the home. That was on thursday. And on the course today's decision striking down the landmark roe v wade ruling banning the federal right to an abortion. Joining me now is randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in America. And randy women make up around 75% of teachers in the US. My wife is a teacher, my mother is a teacher. So what is your reaction to the High Court's decision to end the federal right to an abortion? So this is a terrible decision in many, many, many, many respects, meaning all respects The effect on teachers and nurses, who are basically 90% of our membership is it is one more time going to put them in a terrible position in terms of, you know, how they help shield and and and help our kids. But let's just talk about freedoms in the same week, the people who rely on the uh separation of church and state that was just written out of the constitution. Kids who rely on states to keep them safe from gun violence. Written out of the constitution. States no longer have a right to keep Children safe from gun violence. Yet all of a sudden states now have this intrusive right to into the very, very, very private decisions of a family about whether they have Children or not. It is what you're seeing in the Supreme Court right now is an extremist ideological mentality about who has rights in this country and who doesn't and let's just call it the way it is and with thomas's concurrence now he's going after other people's rights. So gun owners have rights in this country, States don't have rights to keep people safe. Women don't have rights to make a decision with their husbands or partners about when to have Children and teachers and nurses are now put in a terrible situation about what they do in these situations. I want to talk about gun control for a moment, the Supreme Court saying that americans have a right to carry a handgun outside the home for self defense, striking down a new york law requiring a special need for such a permit. Now, what kind of consequences do you think this decision might have? This is going to be this, this decision will have many, many, many, many more guns on the streets in the state of new york. Remember this law, This was not a recent law just like the um road decision is not recent. This is a long term president. The law that they that the Supreme Court um found invalid comes from teddy Roosevelt and what essentially it says is that the new york state used to be able just like it does with motor vehicles to reasonably put limits on when somebody carries a handgun in, in in public or on the subway and now they can't put those reasonable limits there anymore. Now what have you seen in your union following the major shooting like in Uvalde texas? What are concerns? The biggest ones for teachers here? The biggest ones for teachers are the same as the biggest one for parents, which is how do we make sure our kids are safe? How do we make sure we are safe? How do we make sure that we don't have to first and foremost focus every single day on safety of people as opposed to on learning on kids learning. Um, after you baldy and after Buffalo and after Tulsa, this became very real to my members, my members all across the country, whether they were republican or democrat or independent, want their union to fight for gun safety and to fight for um to end gun violence, like what happens in other western democracies. Um and they have wanted us to do this, they they are in support of the bipartisan bill that has just passed the Senate and the House of Representatives because we know we have to get something done. But what they want is what has happened that what they want is what the majority of Americans want, which is ban assault weapons lift the age of of when a young person can get um a weapon. Handguns, you can't get a weapon to your 50 to your 21, How is it that a young person could get an a AR15, a weapon of war at 18, you know, do some of these other um, prevention methods. The one thing they don't want is they don't want to be armed and that's for good reason. How is a teacher going to be an armed guard? Our most with books, trust us with teaching curriculum, not with killing assailants. Can you talk about the psychological impact these shootings and gun drills have on teachers and students? So, you know, everybody wants schools to be safe and there's a different, there are, you know, different communities, you know, think about this differently. Um, and so whereas some communities really really want to have school security guards, others do not because school security guards have to be trained, have to know what they're doing, what happened after. Um, and, but virtually all communities I know want to make sure that we have an early warning system, want to make sure that we have mental health services, want to make sure that schools are safe and welcoming what happened after Parkland. And instead of getting the kind of, um, gun violence prevention laws through the Congress. Um, instead of getting the money for mental health services, there was a lot of hardening of schools. Now, some of that is important if there is a shooter in a school, you need to have a drill, you need to know instinctively and intuitively what to do. You know how to lock a door, How to keep kids quiet, You kids need to know how to do these kind of things. So I'm not saying there shouldn't be any drills. Of course there should be some drills. But this is what happened. We went way, way, way too extreme. We went to a situation where they pretended that there was a real shooting with, with fake bullets and with blood and with other things and that just completely traumatizes kids. So we can't do that kind of extreme. We have to figure out how to keep kids safe, how to keep people safe, how to do the kind of safety measures that we need if God forbid there is a shooter, but we can't keep re traumatizing and traumatizing and traumatizing kids have been through enough. Two years of Covid was enough. All of these guns, all of these kind of violence incidents, it's too much. We need to find a way to help kids have a safe and nurturing environment and that's really what teachers want, which is why we have focused fixated and trying to end gun violence like countries like Australia and great Britain and new Zealand did after they had terrible mass shootings. So let's talk about gun reform. Both chambers of Congress have passed the biggest gun legislation in nearly three decades, sending it to President biden's desk to be signed while it's far from the full measures that democrats wanted gun reform advocates say it is a step in the right direction. What is your reaction to this? It's a step in the right direction. As soon as the look after you've all did, there were many of us in Houston for a roundtable survivors, teachers, kids march for our lives. Some of the kids from there. Um, we all talked about how something needed to be different and frankly what the House of Representatives and particularly the Senate under the leadership of Senator Murphy and Senator cornyn, they actually got to a deal that is significant enough and will save lives and that is important and it's praiseworthy. Yes of course it's not enough but it was really important for the public to see that the congress can get something done. This is why the Supreme Court, the extremes on the Supreme Court are so out of step, how dare Justice Alito who doesn't even know what happened in Buffalo say that this case, you know that that that that that that the buffalo shooter would not have been stopped by this case. The buffalo shooter Had an a. r. 15. The Supreme Court is really out of step with America now like you mentioned before, teachers have dealt with more than they should have in my opinion. The pandemic mass shootings low pay dwindling resources. So what does this country need to do to show real support for you? Teachers. So remember, Aretha franklin Song R. E. S P E C. T. Certainly do. We got to start with and and frankly parents are there. You know, I've been two Over 125 schools since last April maybe 150 schools. I've been basically on the road this whole year and from april of last year on as we were trying to make sure that all kids were back to school in person and parents and kids have been really grateful for their teachers. But what has happened is that despite getting $130 billion dollars from the federal government last year and this year to create this kind of recovery, what's happened is that schools are in the middle of every social ill and doesn't and don't have and teachers don't have the pay the respect the conditions that they need to help all kids. So instead of us dealing with pacing calendars this year, we needed to deal with the recovery from the pandemic. Instead of dealing with gun shots, gun shootings, we should be actually, you know, and and and and and these extremists talking about arming us with guns, trust us to do what we're trained to do, which is teaching kids, which is connecting with them, which is doing critical thinking and and that kind of work so that kids have their confidence and their mojo back and so what my members want, they want to be able to teach. They want to have the conditions to do that. They want to be able to have a middle class lifestyle and have the, the salaries that fit that, that's what they want. They want to make a difference in the lives of kids. Let them do that. Let them teach, give them the conditions and the pay that they need instead of these crazy culture wars and, and, and, and asking them to be armed with guns. What kind of strategies do you have to try to motivate these politicians and create these changes in these different states to get those respect resources, confidence and safety back in your schools? Well, look, I mean, first off, it's not my schools, it's our schools, it's all of our schools, the public schools belong to the public. But bottom line is this, look what just happened in terms of um, um, these terrible mass shootings in Buffalo and um in vivaldi and every single day from those shootings including june, you know, two Saturdays ago, we were out on the streets, kids and teachers and parents fighting for something different. So unfortunately elections really matter who's on the school board really matters. We have resources from the federal government. And frankly, there are states that are doing what they need to do. Like new Mexico um, new york state just did a very good budget in terms of schools and in fact, as a result, 99% of the school budgets in New york state just passed. And ultimately, when you have teachers and parents working together, you can make things, you can do different things, you can make things change. That's why I don't understand in new york city right now, after we in new york city got one of the best budgets ever for schools in the state. Why we have $7 billion from american rescue plan plan money for new york city schools. Why the mayor just cut the new york city school budget. So, you know, we need to actually have politicians stop engaging in culture wars with us, stop trying to split and parents from teachers and actually try to support the work we're trying to do to help kids thrive. That's what we need support instead of politics in our schools, randi Weingarten, president of american Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in America randy, thank you so much for being with us and everything that you do as well.