The CTU House of Delegates voted to adopt the following resolution at its December 5, 2018 regular meeting.

WHEREAS the Trump Administration has forced a record number of immigrant children into federal detention centers from Central America and Mexico;

WHEREAS free trade policies like NAFTA and US military interventions in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala in the last 40 years have caused millions of people to flee state and civil violence, economic displacement and poverty in those countries;

WHEREAS teachers in Canada, the US and Mexico are forming stronger ties and strategies to fight back against policies designed to dismantle public education and attack our students and their families across the continent;

WHEREAS the Chicago Teachers Union recently sent a delegation of members to Orizaba, Veracruz to participate in the 13th annual Trinational Conference of unionized teachers in our three countries, Puerto Rico and Costa Rica;

WHEREAS teachers in all three countries have an express interest in resisting economic policies that help the 1 percent while undermining public education, in helping immigrant families escape poverty and violence, in establishing culturally relevant curriculum that affirms the identities and history of our students, and of indigenous people/communities;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the CTU shall affirm the decisions of the 13th Trinational Conference to share contract language and align our demands across borders to build solidarity and power of teacher unions throughout the hemisphere, especially considering that the British Columbia Teachers Federation has the same contract expiration date as the CTU contract; 

Fight standardized testing, like the PISA, designed to weaken teacher autonomy and union power;

Develop stronger and more frequent communication channels with our brothers and sisters in Mexico and Canada to produce common understandings, research, educational materials and solidarity statements;

Strengthen the ties between like-minded educator union locals in the United States through outreach and inclusion in the trinational effort;

Establish regular forms of solidarity to support teacher strikes wherever they pop up and educate our respective memberships about these key struggles; and

Engage in the reflection process in order to solidify and strengthen our commitment of international solidarity work.