During my nineteen year community organizing career, we (and most other organizing groups) typically had two types of campaigns.

In one, the community issues were identified through scores, if not hundreds, of house meetings and individual meetings. Leaders of those efforts would meet with organizers to develop strategies to work on those issues. We’d start with small actions, leading to large-scale negotiations. We’d generally win, and the organization was much stronger afterwards. Though our member institutions paid dues, foundations who truly understood organizing and had a long-term vision for what was possible supported us doing this kind of work.

In the other, we either ran after foundation money or the foundation money ran after us. Funders would identify their priority issue or issues, and we’d sort of figure out a way to do a “shotgun marriage” between those issues and the issues identified by our constituents. We’d carve out some time paid for by these funds to do some of the first kind of organizing, but had to spend more time on this second kind, which sometimes led to concrete wins for our leaders and members, but more often than not did not lead to stronger organizations.

The American Federation of Teachers today announced they’re starting an AI training center for teachers and the real question is which one of those two examples is their origin story:

OpenAI and Microsoft Bankroll New A.I. Training for Teachers www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/t… gift link

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) July 8, 2025 at 4:47 AM

Did AFT members and leaders spend the past year recognizing that districts were dropping the ball on providing guidance to teachers, and explore ways they fill that vacuum? And, then, did they spend time inviting members to reflect on what their AI priorities might be – how to teach the ethics of AI to students? Are there some areas, like with ELLs, that AI could be helpful and others where it was not? What could be gained and lost in having AI develop lesson plans and assess student work?

And, then, after identifying these issues through an extensive listening effort among their members, did AFT leadership then develop a plan for how the union could systematically experiment and offer guidance?

Finally, after all that was done, did the AFT go to the big AI companies and say, “This is our plan. Do you want to give us money to implement it?”

Or, did AFT just run after the money?

I have a lot of respect for AFT president Randi Weingarten and don’t believe she would, but I have no inside knowledge – just what’s in The NY Times article.

Certainly the Times article tells an origin story of the second way.  But that definitely doesn’t mean it’s accurate.

But we’ll all know the true origin story of this effort by its results, or lack of results, a year or so from now.