Randi Weingarten spent last week at a teachers union convention that looked more like a socialist political rally.
That convention followed a script – and the script has been public since 2018.
That manual reads like a job description for what Randi Weingarten has spent eight years doing.
How DSA Built a Socialist Teacher Pipeline Into Public School Classrooms
The Democratic Socialists of America published the pamphlet "Why Socialists Should Become Teachers" in 2018 and has promoted it ever since.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the highest profile members of the DSA.
The pamphlet directs socialists to "take jobs as teachers (and other school-based workers) for the political, economic and social potential the industry holds."
With a stated goal is building a "militant minority" of class-conscious teachers inside America's unions.
That strategy has a formal name in labor politics: salting.
Salts are workers who deliberately take jobs at a target workplace for the express purpose of organizing it from the inside.
Local classrooms are the target workplace.
The DSA has trained them, built placement networks, and channeled them into public-sector jobs.
Education is the prime target because no other industry in America approaches its union density.
No occupational group in America is more heavily unionized – federal data from 2025 puts education workers at 32.5 percent union membership, more than five times the rate of their private-sector counterparts.
Government education is the gold mine any socialist organizer dreams of.
How Randi Weingarten and the NEA Turned Teachers Unions Into an Indoctrination Machine
The pipeline is already producing results.
DSA members have been elected to lead major unions in Los Angeles and Boston.
The Young Democratic Socialists of America held its national conference inside Chicago Teachers Union headquarters.
In June 2026, the DSA's Boston chapter published an article celebrating a militant rank-and-file caucus that has repeatedly captured leadership positions inside the Massachusetts Teachers Association – the state affiliate of the NEA.
None of it is hidden.
The curriculum is the next link in the chain.
The Zinn Education Project – which reframes American history through the far-left lens of avowed socialist Howard Zinn – is formally embedded in both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
The Washington Examiner documented in October 2025 that the NEA gave the Zinn project prime conference space, co-designed curriculum with its organizers, and described those materials in official press releases as teaching history "accurately."
The AFT lists the Zinn Education Project as an official partner on its Share My Lesson platform – the free resource distributed to AFT members and classrooms across America.
One of those lesson plans assigns students the identity of Assata Shakur – a convicted cop-killer who murdered New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1977, leaving behind a wife and a three-year-old son.
Shakur escaped to Cuba and has never been returned to face justice.
The AFT is handing her to kids as a classroom role model.
The Teachers Union Political Machine Blocking School Choice and Running School Indoctrination
None of this is accidental.
The DSA's rank-and-file strategy treats the Chicago Teachers Union as its model of success – the same Chicago Teachers Union that has become the most politically radical local union in America.
The June 2026 joint letter from AFT President Randi Weingarten and NEA President Becky Pringle – demanding that every Democrat governor block Trump's school voucher program – is not a routine union action.
It is a political mobilization executed straight from the DSA playbook.
The NEA and AFT have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into left-wing political groups and Democrat campaigns, with virtually every federal political contribution going to Democrats.
Call it what it is: a political machine that controls what 50 million American children are taught every day.
Classroom-by-classroom control was never the goal.
One well-organized militant minority, planted at the top of the union structure, pulls the entire apparatus Left – and holds it there for decades.
That is precisely what the 2018 pamphlet called for.
It is happening right now in government schools across America.
The DSA wrote it down, published it, and has promoted it for eight years.
Every school board, every state legislature, and every grandparent in America should read it.
Sources:
- Siena Rose & Nilesh Umapathy, "Beware the New Red Lesson Plan," RedState, July 28, 2026.
- "Why Socialists Should Become Teachers," Democratic Socialists of America, 2018.
- Robert Schmad, "Top teachers union invites pro-violence activists to shape public school curricula," Washington Examiner, October 21, 2025.
- "Public school districts coast to coast adopting radical curriculum from org named for 60s radical," Fox News, November 2025.
- "AFT and NEA Call on Democratic Governors to Reject Trump Private School Voucher Scheme," American Federation of Teachers, June 23, 2026.