In 2019, delegates to the National Education Association’s annual Representative Assembly were presented with a resolution. It read: “NEA will re-dedicate itself to the pursuit of increased student learning in every public school in America.”
The union voted, in open assembly, to reject student learning as a priority. To understand what the schools closed for and what they reopened to, you have to understand how that happened.
The Democratic Socialists of America publishes a document on its own website titled “Why Socialists Should Become Teachers.”
“Teaching is strategic in that education is a necessary good for the development of the workforce,” it explains. “The rank-and-file strategy is not only concerned with recruiting our co-workers to socialist organizations like DSA. The aim is to build organizations of working class people that challenge the power of capital.”
The document instructs DSA members to join NEA and AFT affiliates and organize from within, building “a militant minority of class-conscious teachers that can move our unions in a more militant and democratic direction.”
This is published on their website and has been there for years.
The Democratic Socialists of America publishes a document on its own website titled “Why Socialists Should Become Teachers.”
“Teaching is strategic in that education is a necessary good for the development of the workforce,” it explains. “The rank-and-file strategy is not only concerned with recruiting our co-workers to socialist organizations like DSA. The aim is to build organizations of working class people that challenge the power of capital.”
In Dallas, the DSA’s North Texas branch shares its physical office with Alliance/AFT, the local AFT affiliate in Dallas. Same address. Andrew Kirk is an executive board member of Alliance/AFT and a DSA member. He teaches Advanced World Geography at Sunset High School in Dallas ISD.
Jae Nam sits on the Executive Board of the Tarrant County Central Labor Council through the AFT Associate Membership Program and follows the DSA, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and Ethnic Studies Network Texas on social media. He teaches at Dr. Ellen Ochoa STEM Academy in Grand Prairie ISD.
Stu Becker is an Alliance/AFT member and a contributor to People’s World, the publication of the Communist Party USA. He has publicly called for the release of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Dallas is not an anomaly.
The DSA has chapters in every major American city. Its members teach in classrooms across the country. The document teaches them how to do it.
The DSA is not the only organization running this strategy.
In March 2026, the Sunrise Movement held an internal membership training. Defending Education, a watchdog organization, obtained the slides. Fox News Digital reported on them this month.
The Sunrise Movement has documented ties to Antifa and anti-ICE organizing and has drawn scrutiny from the House Judiciary Committee for those connections. The training slides stated the group’s “grand objective” plainly: to “structurally change the foundations of this country” in pursuit of “eco-socialism.”
Phase 1 goals include building toward “mass noncooperation,” using May Day protests as an organizing tool, and targeting college campuses for coordinated economic pressure -- the same institutional targets the DSA’s strategy identifies for inside organizing.
“While calls for a ‘political revolution’ by left-wing activist groups are not unique, these coordinated plans to put economic and social pressure on universities to achieve a socialist ‘democracy’ should raise serious concerns,” Rhyen Staley, director of research at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital. “Our academic institutions should be places of higher learning, discovery, and robust debate around ideas and policies, not weaponized or punished to achieve a ‘structural change’ to the political foundations of this country.”
The DSA is inside the unions. The Sunrise Movement is targeting campuses. While they do not share a command structure, they share a common goal.
Since 2015, the NEA and AFT have disbursed a combined $254 million in member dues to outside political and ideological organizations. This was neither for teachers nor for classrooms, but socialist activism. Defending Education documented this through the mandatory Form LM-2 filings unions must file with the Department of Labor.
Where the money went: The State Engagement Fund received $59.2 million from the NEA alone. It is connected to the Democracy Alliance, described by Politico as “the left’s secret club” -- a donor coordination network for progressive political spending. For Our Future Action Fund, a PAC dedicated to electing Democrats in swing states, received $34.2 million from both unions combined. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a pass-through that moves money to progressive causes while shielding donors from disclosure, received union dues. So did the Democratic Governors Association, the House Majority PAC, and the Senate Majority PAC. $100,000 went from AFT to the Clinton Foundation. In the 2024 election cycle, 99.9% of AFT’s federal political contributions went to Democrats and the NEA gave 98%.
The most significant financial relationship is between the NEA and the Democracy Alliance. The Democracy Alliance is a coordination network for major liberal donors including George Soros. Its purpose is to fund the infrastructure of progressive politics: policy organizations, media, voter registration, political training. With over $60 million in Democracy Alliance-connected spending, the NEA has become one of its primary funders. The financial disclosures show teacher dues financing the same network that shapes the NEA’s own policy positions. Former NEA Executive Director John Stocks co-founded the Committee on States, another Democracy Alliance-connected organization that received hundreds of thousands from the unions. During the reporting period, the NEA spent more through these pass-through organizations than it spent on its own state affiliates in ten states combined.
This is the infrastructure that kept the schools closed.
A Biden administration financed by over $100 million in union political spending could not act against union preferences on reopening.
The CDC’s guidance was edited by AFT officials and the coordination was later called “uncommon” by CDC officials themselves. The political relationship was structural, and the structural relationship was financial.
When the schools reopened, the same institutions were waiting with a plan for what would be taught inside them.
That is Part 3 (next week)!
The four parts of this series are free to every subscriber. Restore Childhood is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by readers, not advertisers. If this work matters to you, share it or become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers will get exclusive access to something connected to this work in the weeks ahead.
Watch 15 DAYS on Amazon Prime | Apple TV | Google Play | All links
Almost as if I knew this moment was coming, your wish is (partly) my command. Would love to write something with my campaign manager, who then ran for mayor of this small town, at some point soon though!
https://adanestorwc.substack.com/p/i-didnt-become-political-because?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=mzw1v
And suddenly, the hard left turn that my small town made makes sense. Housing a University known for Education degrees, the socialists and marxists came running, and then they stayed.