Randi Weingarten, the most prominent teachers union official in America, made a comparison last week that is both self-aggrandizing and bizarre.
Speaking at the American Federation of Teachers's annual conference, Weingarten recalled that Mike Pompeo once called her “the most dangerous person in the world,” at which point she compared herself to civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr. because he had once been described as the country’s “most dangerous” black man.
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But Weingarten did not stop at merely pointing out that they had both been called “dangerous.” Rather, she went further to make the comparison explicit.
MLK and others, Weingarten said, “challenged deprivation and discrimination, they fought for a better life for their families and their communities, and I am honored to be in their courageous righteous company” (emphasis added).
It is very likely that the only person to ever put Randi Weingarten in the courageous righteous company of MLK is Randi Weingarten.
Weingarten has dedicated her career to advocating against school choice. In doing so, she fights to ensure children are forced to go to certain schools based on nothing else than their ZIP code — whether or not that school is actually right for an individual student.
She bragged that 90% of parents “choose” to send their children to public schools because of their supposed quality. But, in 2022, only 22% of Americans gave public schools an “A” or “B” grade when asked. The real reason so many children attend is that a government monopoly on K-12 schooling, which Weingarten’s job is to defend, gives most parents few options unless they have enough money to pay private school tuition or are lucky enough to receive a voucher.
Is this the kind of thing that Weingarten believes warrants a comparison between her and MLK? Evidently, yes. But it is quite bizarre because while MLK fought for school desegregation and the end of Jim Crow in order to open up more opportunities to future generations, Weingarten’s policies do the exact opposite.
In many cases, her policies preclude primarily disadvantaged children from having the opportunity to thrive in school. This is clear when considering her advocacy against school reopenings and to end voucher programs and charter school expansion.
There is quite literally nothing about either Weingarten or MLK that warrants a comparison between the two. One led the movement to end Jim Crow and is considered an American icon. The other leads the movement to keep low-income children in failing public schools.
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Weingarten’s comment should be met with the same ridicule as Rep. George Santos’s (R-NY) when he compared himself to Rosa Parks because he was told by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) to sit at the back of the House chamber during the State of the Union address.
The statements are equally foolish and self-important. And, crucially, they each come from some of America’s most reliably ridiculous people.
Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.