OPEN LETTER TO RANDI WEINGARTEN: When Gatekeepers Become Enablers: AFT, Proto-Fascism, and the Coming Storm

Randi,

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) exists to resist authoritarianism in education, protect democratic education institutions, and amplify the voices of teachers, families, and students , especially those historically marginalized by systems of power. But in practice, under your leadership, AFT has become something else entirely. When you align with corrupt governance, silence dissent, and enforce narrative conformity on vulnerable communities, you cease to be a protector of public education and become instead a facilitator of proto-fascist consolidation.

You stand by Shari Obrenski, not as an act of solidarity, but as an act of allegiance to institutional power. You chose to protect her abusive influence in our community rather than listen to the parents and children harmed by the decisions she supports. You would not give me time, not because I was unclear, but because I would not meet you on your terms. This is gatekeeping disguised as leadership. It is the very mechanism through which proto-fascism takes root, not in spectacle, but in silence, dismissal, and exclusion.

You speak about equity while standing by Shari's involvement in initiatives that are hollow, performative, and entirely detached from material reality. She served on CMSD's Equity Task Force while actively denying equity to the students she claims to advocate for. She endorsed training every single employee on "equity" while ignoring the fact that many children didn't even have a safe, functioning school building to enter. That is not progress. That is betrayal wrapped in the language of reform.

You dismissed material evidence of harm, legal violations, neglected infrastructure, and the systematic denial of civil rights, even when brought to you by community members with graduate-level expertise and firsthand experience. That is epistemic injustice, as philosopher Miranda Fricker defines it: the refusal to recognize others as credible knowers. You talked down to us, to me, assuming your institutional position gave you better insight into our reality. It does not.

Let me be clear: this is not simply arrogance. It is politically dangerous. It collapses the very democratic dialogue required to preserve public education. It replaces truth with hierarchy, participation with exclusion, justice with obedience.

You have watched as schools like Newton D. Baker were illegally closed with no public process, no documented bids, and no respect for the legal protections that are supposed to govern such decisions. You turned your back while families like mine screamed for help, not metaphorically, but literally, in meetings, in letters, in public forums, and your only response was silence. Or worse, an invitation to sit quietly on a call with the very people harming us.

AFT's complicity is not about intent. It is about function. When you back decisions that harm disabled students, Black and Brown children, and low-income communities, when you suppress community-led inquiry and activism, and when you place relationships with bureaucrats above the well-being of children, you are reinforcing the infrastructure of authoritarianism. You are helping build the storm.

The proto-fascist storm does not begin with violence. It begins with the erosion of accountability, with the delegitimization of grassroots knowledge, and with powerful institutions like AFT deciding that public relations matter more than public trust. You have become a gatekeeper to elite narratives, not a guardian of democratic values.

And while you write books about fascists fearing teachers, let me offer you a reality check: fascists do not fear teachers. Fascists recruit them. Fascists use them. Fascists silence the ones who resist and reward the ones who comply. Fascists fear only one thing: losing power. Just like you. Just like Shari. And you both have prioritized protecting power over protecting the people. And I promise, it will be both of your legacies. You do not get to create inaccurate narratives about fascism, profit from them, all while you cruelly align your leadership with the abusers. While your leadership are the abusers. 

You have left us in the hands of Shari, a woman intoxicated by power, one who abuses teachers, parents, screws over entire communities and does nothing to shield our children from LITERAL collapsing buildings and toxic conditions, the result of deliberate, strategic neglect carried out by the City of Cleveland in coordination with CMSD, with your union leadership loudly supporting those in power creating the harm.

So Randi, you do not get to write this story anymore. Not while you ghost parents who dare to confront you with truth. Not while you protect a union leader drunk on power and performative equity. Not while you preside over an organization that has stood by while our children are neglected, our teachers are driven to suicide, and our schools are shuttered under false pretenses.

You may continue to protect Shari and the executives she serves. You may continue to speak about fascism from the safety of your national platform. But know this: when the reckoning comes and it will come, you will not be remembered as the woman who resisted fascism.

You will be remembered as the woman who enabled it. Who failed to hear the warning bells. Who failed to see the storm because she was too busy helping build it.

And when that moment arrives, don't email me. Don't reach out in regret. Because you had your chance to stand with the people and you chose power instead. And this is a promise that I will be your loudest critic from here out, until long after you have retired. Our community will have to endure the consequences of your leadership for the rest of our lives and for generations to come. You betrayed the LGBT community both parents and children. You betrayed Cleveland, the city with the highest rate of child poverty in the country. You betrayed aged-out foster youth and support the corruption that undoes some of our greatest accomplishments, like homeownership strategically purchased to accommodate my own disabilities. So again I promise, it will be your legacy! You choose to protect power, NOT the people!

I find it both peculiar and deeply troubling that Shari is involved in so-called equity initiatives that drain district funds at an astronomical rate-while the most basic, humane conditions for our children are neglected. At Newton D. Baker, students were forced for months to slide down a playground defaced with a giant spray-painted penis because the district refused to spend the money to clean it. They climbed over swastikas. Another phallic image has been left on the school building itself for over a year. This isn't just neglect-it borders on institutionalized child abuse.

And yet, AFT continues to stand by the district executives responsible for these decisions, offering them cover instead of accountability. Funny how the loudest voices for "justice" go silent the moment real courage and integrity are required.

With nothing but contempt for your complicity in the fascist palingenesis of urban public education,

River Panzarello, CMSD Parent, Aged-Out Foster Youth, Anti-fascist