Michael Kane Interviews Randi Weingarten on NYC Teacher Vaccine Mandates
Watch interview here:
https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/shows/good-morning-chd/ducZn9n_Vz
Today American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union president Randi Weingarten was interviewed by fired NYC school teacher Michael Kane on CHD TV’s morning broadcast Good Morning CHD. At the Labor Day Parade in NYC on September 10th Kane had confronted Weingarten and asked her questions about educators fired over vaccine mandates. Weingarten did not engage at that time, but agreed to come on Kane’s show to discuss her new position on vaccine mandates for educators.
Weingarten is the president of the AFT which represents 1.7 million educators across the country. She was the first labor leader in America to publicly call for forced vaccine mandates for the members who pay her salary. On October 4, Weingarten walked back some of that support in an interview with Michael Kane, the Grassroots Organizer for Children’s Health Defense, and founder of Teachers for Choice. She specifically addressed NYC Mayor Eric Adams.
“What Adams did was unfair. If you’re lifting the vaccine mandates in the private sector you have to treat the public sector employees in a similar way. You can’t treat one set of employees different than another set,” said Weingarten.
When asked if she would support reinstating fired educators with back pay, Weingarten’s response was, “there should be a reconsideration process going forward” but declined to say what demands should be made for those who were impacted. As a national union leader Weingarten did not want to comment on specific local negotiations. “You can’t say teachers shouldn’t return to their jobs, but Kyrie can,” said Weingarten. Interestingly enough Kane was wearing a sweatshirt from the clothing line of Kyrie Irving during the interview.
Weingarten made clear that she may support a vaccine mandate for educators once again in the future if the public health officials deemed it to be necessary. She fully defended the vaccine mandate implementation in August of 2021 for educators and said she would “do it again” if it had to be done all over again. Kane pushed back on her support for forced mandates by stating doctors such as Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, and Dr. Martin Kuldorff of Harvard were against medical mandates.
Michael Kane was a New York City special education teacher for over 14 years who was fired only for declining the covid vaccination Weingarten supported. Kane has been suing NYC ever since in the case Kane v. de Blasio which is headed to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on October 11, at the Thurgood Marshall Federal Courthouse in Manhattan. The case has been consolidated with two other cases, Keil v. NYC and New Yorkers for Religious Liberty (NYFRL) v. NYC. All of these cases charge that the city of New York violated the constitution by arbitrarily denying thousands of religious exemptions to vaccination for both public and private employees.