Working, Unapologetically, for a Better Future for Public Education

Dear MTA members,

This is my last day as your president. I gave eight years of my life to this union – and am glad I did. In fact, I am humbled that you gave me this opportunity. It has been a whirlwind highlight of my life.

In the early 2000s, I had a very good life as a professor at UMass Amherst. I loved teaching. I loved writing. I look forward to returning to that life.

But way back when, probably like many of you, I was encouraged by a colleague to get involved in helping to improve my corner of the public education world.

And how would we improve our world? Through the union, of course. 

And how would we improve our world? Through the union, of course. I had already seen what union courage looked like in the eyes and actions of the textile and warehouse workers my future wife helped organize in the South, who were demanding more for their families. So I was primed when someone who would become a mentor said – ‘Hey, why don’t you join the board of the Massachusetts Society of Professors, so we can win a better UMass?’

I was, like so many of you, hooked. While I wrote about the history of New York City and the politics of historic preservation, I found my commitment to justice – initially for debt-free, high-quality, public higher education – through my union.

About 15 years ago, many of our members were growing concerned with the direction of our union. We loved the MTA. We loved its potential, its history (181 years old this year!), its mission, and most of all, our fellow members who every day created public education in Massachusetts. But we wanted our union to stop leading an organized retreat. We wanted our union to match our values, to unrelentingly fight for the public schools and colleges we knew our communities deserved. And we wanted our union’s work to be directed, unapologetically, toward building the world we wanted to live in.

I hope you are proud of what we, together as a union, have been building this past decade and a half.

• Demanding and winning living wages for Education Support Professionals – and supporting ESPs as they took power and fought for their rights and dignity.
• Building locals where members are invited to write bargaining proposals, serve as silent reps, and make a whole lot of trouble outside the bargaining room.
• Allowing our members to entertain and then live by the simple belief that we and our students deserve better – and that you may have to withhold your labor to get it. The strikes in Dedham, Brookline, Malden, Haverhill, Woburn (pictured above),  Andover, Newton, Gloucester, Marblehead and Beverly were some of the most energizing weeks of my life. Having the privilege of supporting, cheering on, and just watching people come into their own as righteous activists, as fighters for themselves and their students – it was just beautiful. 
• Campaigns that have transformed the lives of all working people, not just our own members. Universal sick leave, paid family and medical leave, the $11 minimum wage, followed by the $15 minimum wage, which alone lifted 900,000 Massachusetts residents out of poverty. 
• Ending high-stakes testing, and uplifting the fight for the autonomy and professionalism of our members. I want to note the central role our vice president, Deb McCarthy, played in inspiring and helping to win the Question 2 campaign.
• Taxing the very rich to fund our public schools and colleges. Every day that meals are served to every student in the Commonwealth, every day that students who never thought they’d ever be able to go to college head to class at a community college, a state university, or a UMass campus, every day in the coming years when another building is repaired without dumping more debt on our students, every person who jumps on a free regional bus or rides a smoother road and a more on-time T – this was all because you as union members decided to take back some of the wealth that workers created, which was siphoned into the hands of the 1 percent.

I am so proud of having been part of a movement that insisted that power begins with members in their locals, demanding better for their schools and colleges, while always recognizing that we have the privilege and responsibility to engage in statewide fights to bring about common good victories for all working people.

I am so excited that we have incoming leaders – Matt Bach and Deb Gesualdo – committed to building this union, to continuing the transformation of the MTA into a fighting, taxing-the-rich, visionary union. I hope you all know, and are inspired by the fact that the rest of the NEA and the labor movement look to us for inspiration. 

The world is at once a beautiful and broken place. None of us alone, none of us even together in the few short years we are given, get to achieve the world as it should be.

I hope you, all 117,000 of you, across our 400 locals, feel you have been part of achieving a greater measure of justice, in your workplaces and in the Commonwealth.

But I hope you, all 117,000 of you, across our 400 locals, feel you have been part of achieving a greater measure of justice, in your workplaces and in the Commonwealth. In your union work, you fix one problem, reattach one broken shard.  And then you attach another. And another. Keep going and going – before we know it, we might have the world we want our children and grandchildren to live in.

So much of our culture emphasizes youth, that it is somehow sad to age. But as I hit 60, I see a glimmer of what older people know: There is happiness that comes with being comfortable in who you are – in your body, your mind, your values. There can be satisfaction in looking back on a life well-lived, on having a family and enjoying longstanding friends – and looking forward, clear-eyed, to new fights for justice. And there can be deep pleasure in really knowing that you contributed to making the world a little bit better.  

It will take very little time before people forget who actually helped pass this or that legislation, or put forward this particular bargaining proposal, or filed that NBI at an Annual Meeting. It won’t be long before someone will have trouble recalling who the MTA president was in 2026!

In an odd way, this feels like it could be the source of the greatest satisfaction – seeing the next generation build off of what we accomplished, thankful for predecessors but not weighed down by them, and taking on the challenges we didn’t get to.  

So, with humility and gratitude, I want to thank you, MTA members, the finest public school and college educators in the land, for this privilege of serving as your vice president and president of this incredible union. Thank you all for committing your lives to our union and to our public schools and colleges.

In solidarity, always, 

Max