Letter To NEA President and Officers On Palestine

Letter To NEA President and Officers On Palestine


National Education Association
1201 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036-3290

December 7, 2023

Dear Education Union President Becky Pringle, Vice President Princess R. Moss, Secretary-Treasurer Noel Candelaria, Executive Director Kim A. Anderson, the Executive Committee, and the Education Union Board of Directors,

As union members of the National Education Association (NEA), we implore our union leaders to make the conscious and humanitarian call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. As educators, it is our moral obligation to take a stand for equality, social justice, human rights, and the universal right to education. What we have witnessed in the past two months is far from the aforementioned. The American Postal Workers Union, the United Auto Workers Union, and several other US Unions have publicly made the urgent demand for a permanent ceasefire. As a union centered around the well-being and education of children, it is time we join the call.

The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. A population of 2.2 million people who have been under a strict siege, have now been subject to nearly two months of intentional revocation of access to clean water, food, electricity, and health care. The continuous indiscriminate bombardment of US tax-paid bombs on innocent civilians has completely destroyed essential infrastructure - hospitals, residential buildings, schools, and refugee camps- with no safe haven for Gaza's children. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since November 10th, 2023, approximately 279 schools have been destroyed in Gaza and none of Gaza’s 679,000 children have access to an education. As of November 7th, Gaza’s Ministry of Education has suspended the 2023-2024 school year due to the grim reality of extensive death and displacement of students. The United Nations warns that Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children.

As educators, we can not stand idly as innocent civilians in Gaza are indiscriminately being murdered and mutilated. To date, approximately 22,000 innocent women, children, men, and elderly have been killed since October 8th. More than 6,600 of those deaths are children (one child in Gaza is killed every 10 minutes). The United Nations reports that there are at least an additional 2,000 children buried beneath the rubble. Surgeons in Gaza estimate that at least 1,000 children have undergone amputations, most without anesthesia, since the bombardment began. Entire generations of Palestinian families have been killed, from great-grandparents to week old infants. As a result of just the first week of the assault, 47 bloodlines in their entirety have been erased from the Civil Registry with the numbers climbing daily.

As Pre-K-12 U.S. public school educators, we are morally responsible to stand for innocent civilians, including the children of Gaza, who have been denied a normal childhood and an opportunity for an education under the current bombardment. We cannot continue to teach about American civil and social rights movements and leaders, while we are silent about the massacres happening in Gaza. We cannot, in good conscience, selectively advocate for children’s opportunities and privileges here in the US, while our tax dollars are funding the deprivation of those same opportunities in Gaza.

We collectively come together from all walks of life to demand our educational leaders take a stance in this time of crisis. We cannot stay silent anymore. As educators, we serve as examples for the generations to come, shaping the path for a brighter future for their children. Our actions influence the students who observe us and remaining silent implies complicity. As teachers, we value the sanctity of education, yet the children of Gaza are being deprived of that opportunity. Your leadership is desperately needed and our collective voice will make a difference in saving thousands of lives.We ask that you join the thousands of international and national organizations,the United Nations, Amnesty International, World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, the United Auto Workers Union and the United States Postal Union to urge our Government to call for a permanent and immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Respectfully,

U.S. Pre-K-12 Educators

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*The following list is organized alphabetically and not in the order of received signature