Why my LA teachers union kicked me out of a meeting — over antisemitism

On a recent evening, the House of Representatives of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the public school teachers union in LA, used the last official meeting of the school year to conduct a public denunciation of me and had me removed from a union meeting.

My offense: I had attended as a known Zionist and as someone who has spent years building the infrastructure to hold UTLA and Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) accountable for anti-Jewish harassment of students, staff and families.

I wasn’t there to disrupt; I was there to observe, and maybe that made me even more dangerous.

Imagine the absurdity of sitting silently while being called out for my “racist Zionist ways,” and as a “threat to free speech in the classroom” and an “enemy of unionism,” for 40 minutes straight. The incident told me everything I needed to know about how far we have come with Jewish and Israeli advocacy, not only because it was evidence of how far we have left to go, but because of the fact that they were terrified of one quiet woman with a notebook.

Jewish educators in this country are not going back to being quiet. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

We may be winning a slow war against hate. 

I have worked in Los Angeles public education for over 25 years. For most of that time, Jewish students could be harassed in classrooms; Jewish teachers could be pressured by their unions to adopt positions hostile to Israel and to Jewish identity; and Jewish families could be made to feel that their concerns were inconvenient to district administration. The machinery was opaque and impossible to navigate, because no one had mapped it.

So we’ve spent five years mapping it.

Jewish Teachers of Los Angeles (or JewTLA, a name that infuriates the union), which I lead, has spent that time doing the slow, unsexy work of organizing: building membership, filing complaints, documenting patterns, training educators on Title VI and Title VII, on fair employment, on the Uniform Complaint Process, on what the law actually requires of school districts and unions.

We’ve filed Public Records Act requests. We’ve analyzed thousands of pages of district documents. We’ve identified the systems by which anti-Jewish bias operates in K-12 schools, not as isolated incidents, but as ongoing behavior condoned by school district policies. 

Organizations like Israeli-American Civic Action Network, the National Education Association Jewish Affairs Caucus and a growing network of state-level advocates are doing the same. The Deborah Project and legal organizations like the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs are in court. We inform legislators to shape legislation in California. National Education Association Representative Assembly, another union body, will hear from us directly in Denver this July.

And UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz knows all of this. Which is why the organization under her leadership has moved from ignoring us to targeting us as an institutional threat.

Here is what targeting looks like: on a Zoom call, 160 union members ignoring the instructions of a parliamentarian and going on a 40-minute rant directed toward a woman who said nothing, and simply showed up with a notebook.

This is not spontaneous, but a response to the fact that “JewTLA” has become impossible to ignore. You don’t mobilize people against a woman like that unless her presence represents something you fear.

We are not victims of this environment. We are operators within it.

I want my colleagues, Jewish educators, Jewish parents and Jewish advocacy professionals, to understand that yes, UTLA is hostile to us, but we already knew that: Five out of the eight motions they intended to address that evening had to do with Israel/Palestine, and none about the work of educators, though the school board has not yet approved our contract, and more than 6,000 layoffs loom ahead. The greater lesson is that our presence alone is now a provocation to people who used to ignore us completely.

And we teach, teach, teach the public what anti-Jew hatred looks like in schools, and how to respond in ways that get attention. We are teaching families how to report incidents in ways that get action. We are preparing documentation for the NEA meeting in Denver. We are pushing legislation. We are coordinating our work with other Jewish and Israeli educators around the nation. 

None of this is dramatic. It doesn’t come with brightly colored flags or uniforms, and there are no inspiring chants. We don’t do marches or parades. Most of the work consists of conversations and paperwork.

But the flak is real, and flak means we are over the target.

Jewish educators in this country are not going back to being quiet. We have learned to read the policies, file the complaints, build the coalitions, change the laws, and show up. Even when 160 screens on Zoom turn hostile at the sight of us.

I’ve been kicked out of better places, but it never felt so good.

Amy Leserman is a 25-year veteran English and social studies teacher and union member, founder of Jewish Teachers Los Angeles (JewTLA) and the Education Policy Director for Jewish LAUSD. 

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