In the wake of the Nov. 5 elections, we find ourselves once again living in interesting times. We’re entering a period in which we’re likely to see many regulatory and judicial attacks on unions and public education. Now, more than ever, we must stick together to preserve our union, uphold our union values and protect our UFT institutions.

We have faced headwinds before and survived to tell the tale. Over the decades, we have lived through many different presidential administrations, including Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Let’s remember that our union stood strong in the face of the anti-union U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Janus case in 2018, and we’ve dealt before with union-busting labor secretaries and public-school-hating education secretaries. We’re going to get through it this time, too, but it will take all our shared experience, all our wisdom, all our organizing skills and a great deal of trust in one another.

In this issue of the New York Teacher, the UFT is celebrating our school related professionals — the paraprofessionals, school nurses, school counselors, occupational and physical therapists, speech teachers, school psychologists and social workers, school secretaries and others who protect, nurture and nourish the children in our school communities. These are our children and our communities, and it is our UFT-represented SRPs who serve as the first — and sometimes the only — line of support our students encounter, whether they come to our schools as U.S. citizens or as migrants from distant shores.

Public schools don’t turn children away. Public school educators teach every child. School related professionals serve all our students. That’s who we are. Even with a new federal government that seems poised to turn a blind eye to the most vulnerable among us and that threatens deportation instead of love and support, we will not turn away these children. Our school related professionals will be working harder than ever before to support them. And UFT retirees will support our SRPs now more than ever.

How can we do that? By keeping our union strong. We retirees spent our professional lives in New York City serving children from all walks of life and from every corner of the globe. Many of us worked as school related professionals, and many of us continue to serve our communities in retirement using the skills we acquired during our public school careers.

We served our students through good times and bad, and we built a union that fights for the resources our communities need. The public school system is not a perfect system, and we don’t live in a perfect society. But strong unions make strong communities, and unionism gives us the collective strength and the collective voice to get things done. By fighting for our union and for our rights as union members, we lift up everyone.

UFT retirees have got this. We show up, we organize and we’re not easily fooled. We look out for one another, and we participate in the life of our union and in the life of our communities. We learn from our mistakes and from our shared experiences. We know how to roll with the punches, and we always support one another.

The union makes us strong.