Massachusetts Teachers Fight Antisemitism in Their Union

In this illuminating article, Jake Altman interviews members of Massachusetts Educators Against Antisemitism about the problems in the MTA. Altman offers suggestions for much needed union reform.

It always takes courage to speak up, but never more so than when challenging those on your own team. What happens when you are suddenly surrounded by activists who support extremist groups and political violence? This is the situation that members of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) find themselves in, as an openly anti-Israeli activist was invited to design a curriculum on the Israel-Palestine conflict and a group calling itself “MTA Rank and File for Palestine” advertise events featuring extremist organizations. Those standing against them have formed Massachusetts Educators Against Antisemitism (MEAA). Their work serves as a model for others in the labor movement.

Two of these Massachusetts teachers, who asked not to be named for safety reasons, sat down with me to share their story. They told me about their experiences of antisemitism, their efforts to change their union, how they organized to fight and finally to have exposed those within their union who claimed to represent peace but far too often celebrated the worst impulses of the human heart.

Members of MEAA overcame the hatred and fear they faced from the MTA by finding community and common cause with each other. Starting an organization to bring members together has been cathartic. As we spoke, their faces told the story. Tough and determined, they finally had a sense of relief that the public was hearing them. It has been a long, painful fight. They have created change, but they know there is much more work to do. As one member told me, they will not give in to the blind hate that has shaken too many institutions, particularly in the labor movement.

The teachers I spoke with told me they are worried that a faction of people within the MTA are more interested in indoctrination than academic engagement. At a recent hearing held by the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism, commissioners exposed curriculum resources curated by the MTA, including posters glorifying terrorists and terrorism, an image of a dollar bill folded into the Star of David, a workbook for small children that referred to Zionists as “bullies,” and a graphic that referred to President Biden as a “serial killer” and accused Israel and the United States of committing “genocide.” Commissioner Robert Leikind called the materials curated by the MTA, “an extreme, one-sided mono-narrative that conveys, creates almost a demonic picture of Israel.” Commissioner David Friedman said the MTA has engaged in, “what seems like kind of a nonstop attack on Israel for over a year.” Two days before the hearing on February 10th, teachers pleaded with their union leaders to remove antisemitic materials from the curriculum resources. The union’s board instead voted to keep them.

The story of one MTA governing board member, Joe Herosy, and his membership of an extremist group helps explain what has gone so wrong in New England's largest labor union. Herosy posted an image of a bulldozer with a Palestinian flag breaking through a fence on October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7^th.

Herosy is a member of the American Communist Party (ACP). ACP members have called themselves “MAGA Communists.” They push propaganda for terrorists and authoritarians while attempting to harness MAGA’s momentum and deploy it against the United States in a bizarre fusion of Stalinist nationalism, adoration for anyone opposing the West, and populist rhetoric. If taken at their word, the ACP has allied with foreign regimes while appropriating MAGA rhetoric to undermine the United States. In February, Jackson Hinkle, , an online conspiracy theorist, antisemite, and vocal supporter of terror groups as well as the ACP’s co-founder, said, "I Consider My Brothers In Hizbullah, Hamas, The IRGC, The Russian Army, And The People's Liberation Army In China To Be Brothers In The Struggle Against The Great Satan That Is The Deep State In The U.S. Government.” They may aim to fill a vacuum created by the increasingly unmoored mass of Americans, lost from religious traditions and distrustful of traditional sources of authority.

On February 23, 2025, leaders of the ACP mourned in person at the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Hezbollah terrorist group that among its other crimes has murdered American soldiers and Druze children, and waged a brutal war in Syria to prop up the Assad regime. The list of Hezbollah atrocities is too long to recount here. Jackson Hinkle met in person with Hamas in February 2025. In response to an IDF video documenting the horrors of Oct 7th and commemorating victims, Hinkle reveled in the violence of Oct 7th, writing “I’ll never forget October 7th. I had a great day!”

ACP member and MTA official Herosy commented approvingly on the ACP-Hamas meeting and reposted images of ACP leaders at Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral on X. MTA members would not tolerate a Klansman on their union’s governing board and should not tolerate a member of the terrorist-linked ACP on their governing board.

MEAA members who raised concerns with the MTA’s board told me that they were accused of censorship and called “McCarthyites” and right wingers for advocating for the removal of antisemitic materials from the MTA’s suggested curriculum resources. They allege that the MTA’s president, Max Page, did not defend them against these clear slanders. Extremists are weaponizing cries of “McCarthy” to divert attention from their activities. Massachusetts State Representative Simon Cataldo was also smeared with the “McCarthy” label, reportedly by a member of MTA’s governing board, as Cataldo presented evidence and questioned MTA’s president about antisemitic curriculum resources during a public hearing. Cataldo said that the heckling “showed in real time the type of gaslighting that Jews and non-Jews who raise issues sincerely about antisemitism are often subjected to in today's environment.” The MTA has not apologized, nor has it acknowledged that rank-and-file members were stonewalled when raising concerns inside the union. Instead, the MTA’s leadership accused Representative Cataldo, who brought increased public scrutiny to the union’s actions, of “grandstanding.”

Despite the attacks, the challenges, and the intimidation, Massachusetts teachers stood up to intense hatred and won a victory. Rather than leave their union, they decided to stay and to fight. They have followed Walter Reuther’s mantra from his own efforts to save the American labor movement from extremists. In 1948 Reuther wrote, “exposure, not repression must be our goal. We must get the Communists out of the political back alleys and walk them up Main Street in the full light of informed opinion. No sober public examination of their unadorned doctrine and purposes can fail to reveal them as frauds.” This applies to all extremists. The teachers I met with told me that they are fighting for equal treatment. They do not want others subjected to hate, and they will not accept it for themselves, their students, or their communities. People are free to exercise their opinions. When they do so in public and on behalf of the largest union in New England, they should expect public scrutiny.

I asked them how they did it. At a time when antisemitism has swept through higher education and K-12 unions, it is an important question. They had simply had enough of the propaganda lies, the vitriol, and the inhumanity masquerading as peace activism. They came together and organized. Among other things, they started a WhatsApp group, attended every union meeting, formed their own advocacy group, created a social media campaign to get public attention, and organized petition drives to demonstrate public support, including support from parents. They challenged the MTA leadership’s actions at MTA meetings, reached out to allies, legislators, and Jewish organizations in Massachusetts, worked to change internal policy, and publicly told the story of what had happened to their union. When they found little safe harbor for Jewish and Israeli-American members inside the MTA, they created their own organization.

The union members I spoke to are not sanguine about the scope of the problem or the scale of their victory. From Massachusetts to Chicago, from Ann Arbor to Los Angeles and San Francisco, higher education and K-12 unions have embraced antisemitism and actively support political violence against mainstream Jews and Israelis. One of the MTA members I met shared a heartbreaking letter with me written by a now-former member of United Educators San Francisco who can no longer take “the escalating hate and intimidation” inside that union. The labor movement must redeem itself. We cannot turn our backs on the Jewish community and on so many of our Jewish members.

That antisemitism has become widespread in higher education and even the K-12 labor movement is undeniable. Randi Weingarten, Larry Summers, and Jonathan Greenblatt spoke about antisemitism at the World Economic Forum in January 2025. Weingarten acknowledged that there are extremist elements within her unions and that AFT does, in fact, have a problem, which the national organization is working to address. This rational approach, while perhaps valid in less trying times, assumes people will listen. The loudest voices on campuses and in K-12 have not been interested in dialogue.

What to do about the problem in AFT and in the rest of the higher education and K-12 labor movement must be the new focus of debate. Weingarten’s union has hosted further discussions and education on antisemitism and brought Israeli voices into its union’s discussion. Important work. However, it fails to acknowledge the source of antisemitism in the labor movement must be fought head on. Extremists who have no interest in polite dialogue, debate, or intellectual growth cannot be educated out of their antisemitism. Core elements behind the campus intifada and allied activists in K-12 education will not accept a challenge to their ideology. Rank-and-file MTA members confirmed this was their experience.

When faced with extremism, union dissidents must look to the labor movement’s own playbook to make change: Form a group of union members with shared values to advance a common-sense agenda. Organize a one-month dues strike to demonstrate broad support against an extremist tolerant leadership and demand change. Organize a slate of candidates to run in union elections. Pool resources and craft a strong vision that appeals to most members. Work to create a sense of shared endeavor and cooperation rather than working to create endless division. Look to and teach about past examples where good faith trade unions fought against extremism in the labor movement. Unfortunately, as the members of MEAA realized, talking, education, and conciliation may not work when forces within the union have no interest in facts or empathetic understanding. The forces of hate must be confronted head on and exposed in the public square.

There are, though, more allies to be found in the labor movement, and the time has come for a national organization to confront extremism in the labor movement. Unions whose members have experienced violence at the hands of the “campus intifada” are speaking out forcefully. A Transport Workers Union member at Columbia-Barnard was assaulted by rioters who stormed a campus building on February 26. John Samuelsen, the International President of the Transport Workers Union, told the public, “in the eyes of some of these trust-fund baby ideologues, harming the blue-collar TWU workforce at Barnard is seen as acceptable collateral damage in their quest to advance their political cause.” Samuelsen called for the prosecution of rioters who attacked a union member. Joseph Rose, the president of TWU’s local union at Columbia-Barnard urged Barnard College President Laura Rosenbury to act decisively: “I pray it doesn’t take something catastrophic to happen before Barnard addresses these concerns that we at the TWU have continuously raised.” Jewish and Israeli American trade unionists and the broader Jewish and Israeli community are not alone in their fears of a movement that puts politics before people and propaganda before facts.

The broader “small-d” democratic labor movement must do something to redeem itself for its Jewish and Israeli members, and for members who just want their unions to get on with the job of faithfully representing them at work without glorifying political violence. More education, as Randi Weingarten proposed at the World Economic Forum, is not enough. Labor must confront hatred and support for political violence by counter-organizing and reclaiming individual unions from leadership in the grip of extremism or apologists who give extremists cover. The brave women and men of MEAA show the way forward for us all.

Jake Altman, Ph.D., is a former union official and the author of Socialism before Sanders: The 1930s Moment from Romance to Revisionism. He has been published in City Journal and Tablet.