Jessica Tang

Template:TOCnestleft Jessica Tang has since 2013 served as the founding Director of Organizing at the Boston Teachers Union where she has since spearheaded both the BTU’s internal and community organizing efforts. In addition to the successful No On 2/Save Our Public Schools campaign, she has successfully led the "Everyone is Welcome Here" campaign, the Annual Back to School Fair, "Less Testing, More Learning" campaign and all of the BTU Organizing Committees. In the spring of 2016 she was also elected to serve as a Vice President for the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts. At the Boston Teachers Union, she was elected to the Executive Board and delegate in 2009 and has also served as a Building Rep at the Gavin Middle School then Young Achievers K-8 Pilot School since 2007. She is also a founding member of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance MA Chapter, which was chartered in 2014.

Jessica began working in Boston Public Schools as a college student volunteer tutor and then tutoring program director at the Mather Elementary School in 2000 and then began her teaching career as a student teacher at the McCormack Middle School in 2004 before teaching at the Gavin and Young Achievers. Throughout her years in BPS she has held many teacher-leader positions including a seat on Governor Deval Patrick’s Teacher Advisory Board, the BPS Teacher Diversity Work Group, Teacher Advisory Board of Facing History and Ourselves and the BPS History and Social Studies Fellow. She is a co-founder of the Teacher Activist Group-Boston and Boston-area Educators for Social Justice Conference, co-founder of the Boston Education Justice Alliance and Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance, former co-chair of the Massachusetts Asian American Educators Association, former board member of the Haymarket People’s Fund and current board member of Citizens for Public Schools. As a teacher-activist, she has been involved in many different community organizations that are working to advance racial, social and economic justice and brings this perspective and experience of community and labor organizing to lead members of the BTU and AFT-MA.^[1]

Now What? Defying Trump and the Left's Way Forward

Now What? Defying Trump and the Left's Way Forward was a phone in webinar organized by Freedom Road Socialist Organization in the wake of the 2016 election.

Now what? We’re all asking ourselves that question in the wake of Trump’s victory. We’ve got urgent strategizing and work to do, together. Join Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson of the Movement for Black Lives and Freedom Road, Calvin Cheung-Miaw, Jodeen Olguin-Taylor of Mijente and WFP, Joe Schwartz of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Sendolo Diaminah of Freedom Road for a discussion of what happened, and what we should be doing to build mass defiance. And above all, how do we build the Left in this, which we know is the only solution to the crises we face?