When we created AFTexposed.com a few weeks ago, we paid particular attention to the American Federation of Teachers’ connection to ACORN. [See a related sidebar below.] Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT, had previously been the president of the United Federation of Teachers–the New York City teachers’ union.

Bertha Lewis, before becoming the CEO and chief organizer of ACORN, had headed up the New York chapter of ACORN.

Weingarten’s UFT had hired Lewis’s ACORN to help unionize 28,000 day care workers and bring them into the UFT fold. Just what exactly does the UFT know about child care? From ACORN itself:

“For us, it’s an educational issue and a moral issue and an economic justice issue,” [Weingarten] said.

From 2006 to 2008, ACORNcracked.com has been able to account for over $1.2 million in dues dollars from New York City teachers going to ACORN. And Weingarten earned a special recognition from ACORN earlier this summer at its 39th anniversary gala, hosted by chief AFT rival, the National Education Association.

Weingarten and Lewis are so tight, Lewis introduced her “sista from another mista,” Randi Weingarten, at a Working Families Party event in 2008. You can see that here:

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When ACORN came under fire for widespread voter registration fraud accusations, Randi Wiengarten stood with her fringe comrades to defend the group in a cloak of fighting “voter suppression.”

Weingarten has brought her ACORN connections with her and now that she is on the national stage with the AFT, I’m sure that will mean only good things for our nation’s schools. Yeah, right.

Regarding AFT’s threat

But why do I bring this up and ask you to visit AFTexposed.com? We recently received a threatening letter from the General Counsel of the AFT (and CCing Randi Weingarten), demanding we shut the site down. AFT’s leaders apparently fear the information receiving wide-spread attention so they want to silence us, in typical union fashion. So a word to Randi: you’ll have to figure out how to put a website in cement shoes (after all, you are affiliated with the AFL-CIO) to silence us and stop our work. Your attempts at intimidation won’t get you very far.

We will address this further at the appropriate time, but in the meantime, please visit AFTexposed.com. Thanks.