What do you think might be the slogan of an all-day event for teachers in Massachusetts, sponsored by some of the largest and most influential teachers’ organizations in the state and their partner organizations, shortly before a presidential election?

“More pay for teachers?” 

“Protect teachers’ pensions in 2024?” 

“Better teachers for better student outcomes?” 

And who would you think would be their partner organizations? Maybe various parent-teacher associations or school administrators.

Well, the answer in the commonwealth is none of the above.

Instead, on Oct. 26, Massachusetts teachers were invited to “Books Not Bombs 2024,” an online program sponsored by the progressive Our Revolution Massachusetts and the anti-Israel “Massachusetts Peace Action.”

Yep, those are the real sponsors.

If you’re scratching your head, you probably don’t realize just how off-the-rails a lot of teachers’ unions in Massachusetts have gone.

“Books Not Bombs” is not a simple updating of the classic “butter vs. guns” economic principle from the 1950s in the hopes of ensuring we have sufficient resources for the proper education of Massachusetts children. Rather, it’s a political statement about foreign policy made in the service of the most fringe precincts of American politics. “Our Revolution” was founded to support socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, and now regularly puts forward proposals calling on people to “reject AIPAC” and support a “ceasefire now” on social media.

In case anyone misses the point, one of the supporters of “Our Revolution” corrects their “Reject AIPAC” social-media post by saying what they really want is to “abolish” AIPAC and “abolish” Israel.

The MTA Rank and File for Palestine made up of members of the state’s teachers association, advertised the “Books not Bombs” event on their Instagram page. These same  teachers believe Israel is “committing a Palestinian holocaust.”

None of this bothers the Massachusetts Teachers Association because they’ve been saying much the same thing for months. Last December, they sent a communication to the National Education Association urging them to tell the Biden administration to stop Israel’s “genocidal” war on Gaza. Their statement ignored the more than 100 Israeli hostages still in captivity by the avowedly genocidal terrorist organization Hamas.

Of course, this is brazenly offensive to numerous Jewish Americans, Christians and others who support the world’s only Jewish-majority state, particularly after the horrifying intentional murder of more than 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of hundreds of others on Oct. 7, 2023.

A large number of people who were taken aback by the MTA’s actions are, in fact, teachers. Two local unions, the Needham Education Association and the Newton Teachers Association, put out statements distancing themselves from the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s views on Israel.

“The NTA unequivocally dissociates itself from this statement, and in particular from its antisemitic dog-whistling,” said Newton Teachers Association president Mike Zilles.

Caren Firger, president of the Needham Education Association, also pointed to another obvious issue. “It’s distracting to the work that we have to do,” and that it is “not at all conducive to the environment that we’re looking to have … which is that people are accepted no matter what their backgrounds are.”

Firger asks what is perhaps the most relevant question: Even if you agree with the MTA, so what? Teachers are certainly free to have political opinions. But if an organization supposedly founded in favor of the teaching profession decides to play a hand in foreign policy and fringe left-wing politics at the expense of the teachers and students they serve, one can rightfully ask if they have lost the plot.

The MTA and their allies seem to be caught in a spiral of what Harvard Law professor and Obama administration official Cass Sunstein dubbed the “Law of Group Polarization.” The study found that “people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm.” In other words, if you surround yourself with a very narrow-minded group of people, eventually, the entire group becomes even more radical than they were in the first place.

The panels at the “Books Not Bombs” event bear this out.

Rather than having a man the caliber of Sunstein address something relevant—like, perhaps, how his theory of economic “nudges” in schools might increase student learning or health—they have MTA representative Ricardo Rosa on a panel about getting people out to vote. Rosa publicly advocated for a professor who had been fired for using an old anti-semitic trope, declaring that Zionists are “swine,” a man he described as a “good brother and scholar/activist.”

In another panel, MTA member Merrie Najimy spoke on “Releasing tax dollars by pulling back from Gaza, Ukraine and other foreign wars.” Perhaps it is heartening that the Massachusetts Peace Action is not solely anti-Israel but seemingly against any democracy in need of self-defense from authoritarian aggression. However, Najimy’s talk focused entirely on Israel. Najimy, a former president of MTA and founder of the MTA Rank and File for Palestine, claims that what Israel is doing in Gaza is “beyond genocide.”

Books Not Bombs was not about the views of Democrats vs. Republicans. The sentiments expressed by the speakers were far-left fringe, pure and simple, and emblematic of the point of view of too many at the event.

Tellingly, one of the focuses of the event was concern that the outcome of the election “will affect what is read and taught in the classroom,” as they deem education a “political battleground.” The point is clear: they want to perpetuate their fringe political views and plow down obstacles to that, including a clear majority of parents who don’t want anything to do with them.

They aren’t wrong in one sense. There is no true neutrality in a school curriculum. The question is, do you want people like this picking curriculum without oversight? Journalist John Chamberlain once pointed out that there was an educational class that saw itself as “an elite of professional untouchables” that did not look favorably on outsiders second-guessing their views or methods. This sort of thinking is made worse by the kind of group polarization that happens all too often in education schools around the country and in unions such as the MTA.

Parents, students and teachers should make clear that these fringe views do not represent them and that their schools will not be used as a vehicle to perpetuate them. They should demand that their teachers’ unions focus on their mandate. They should demand better.