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EDUCATION - Ever wonder why hate-mongers and tyrants spend so much time attacking educators? In the 1950s, Senator Joe McCarthy targeted teachers and professors just as viciously as he lambasted the State Department. In the present day, crusades like Pres. Donald Trump’s and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ to replace public education with vouchers, charter schools, and right-wing indoctrination, often deceitfully promoted as “balance,” are giving Americans a crash course in McCarthyism 2.0.
Teachers now find themselves on the front line of protecting individual liberties like the freedom to read and human rights like the safety of immigrant and LGBTQ+ students and their families. This is true in pre-K to grade 12 schools as well as in higher education. There’s a reason, after all, that we call the study of history, languages, literature, arts, and some social sciences “the humanities.” It’s about uplifting people, and challenging dehumanization.
But the front lines are a stressful place to be, especially when resisting creeping fascism can threaten a teacher’s own health and livelihood. Yet it’s essential that the highly skilled, credentialed, caring professionals who nurture our diverse student bodies and their open minds hold that line, without breaking or bending a knee, through coercion or exhaustion. Showing appreciation takes ALL of us, since students’ enrichment and the freedoms we cherish are at stake.
That’s why, this Sunday, June 8, in Echo Park, for the ninth consecutive year, East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD) are inviting Angelenos to an award reception to thank the teachers in our lives and communities. This year’s honoree is Dr. Theresa Montaño, a 40-year educator who is a champion for academic freedom (take that, Project 2025!) and for holding charter schools accountable for under-performance, patterns of fraud, and shortchanging students.
Protecting public education is at the heart of the club’s mission, from supporting and defending world-class curricula in public schools to advocating for good school governance that keeps public dollars in safe and healthy classrooms that welcome and serve ALL students, including those with special needs.
Dr. Montaño personifies this mission. In addition to 15 years of teaching in K-12 public schools, she is now a professor of Chicana/o Studies at Cal State Northridge (CSUN). Dr. Montaño has become a nationally respected leader in the field of ethnic studies. Her work to unlock long-ignored histories that highlight Americans’ diversity and efforts to overcome injustice is more needful now than ever before, and under siege.
Dr. Montaño and her staying power also exemplify a tradition as fundamental to public education as struggle is to progress: the academic as activist. Those who have studied the onset, casualties, and defeat of McCarthyism may recognize how pivotal courageous teachers and faculty members proved to vanquishing that onslaught of authoritarian regression. The successful boycott for integration of municipal buses in Montgomery, Alabama, actually coincided with McCarthy’s downfall. Movements for civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, disability rights, immigrant rights, collective bargaining for public employees, and for safeguarding the environment all flourished with the death of McCarthyism.
Defending the vulnerable and defeating hate, intimidation, staggering corruption, and abuse of government for retaliation also take ALL of us. And teachers like Dr. Montaño bring out the best in us. I hope you take at least a moment to join in thanking teachers this graduation season. And I invite you to join me at Thank A Teacher with EAPD this Sunday, June 8.
(To attend Thank A Teacher with EAPD, please get ticket(s) with a donation of $45 each at www.eapd.la/donate and send an email to RSVP for each individual in your party to [email protected])
(Hans Johnson is a longtime leader for LGBTQ+ human rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns appear in national news outlets including USA Today and in top daily news outlets of more than 20 states. A resident of Eagle Rock, he is also president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), the largest grassroots Democratic club in California, with more than 1,100 members.)
