CSEA siblings,

"Why does my union get involved in politics?"

I hear some version of that question every election season, and I want to give you an honest answer, not a talking point, because you deserve that from me. Some of you are tired. Some of you are worried. I want you to know I feel that too, more often than people probably expect from someone in this role.

Here is the truth: I am a classified employee, same as you. I have felt the same tight month, the same tired body at the end of a shift, the same worry about whether there will be enough left over for what our families need. So, when I tell you funding for public education is unstable, unions are under attack, and the protections we spent a century building are being tested, I am not describing something happening to someone else. I am describing something happening to us.

None of that stays confined to a headline. It turns into higher rent, a tighter grocery budget, a health plan that costs more and covers less, and schools where the people who are critical to helping our students learn are stretched too thin. I know how exhausting it is to keep showing up for a job that does not always show up for you. If you are carrying that weight right now, I see you, and I feel you.

That is why we cannot separate defending classified employees from defending public education, or separate defending public education from defending democracy itself. They rise and fall together. Protecting one without the others is not really protecting anything at all, and that conviction is why defending democracy is one of CSEA’s five Strategic Priorities.

I know politics makes some of us uneasy, maybe even you, and I understand that. But hear this clearly: CSEA is a big tent, and it always will be. We are Democrats, Republicans, independents, and people who want nothing to do with any of it, and I love this union precisely because of that. When you need help at the bargaining table or at a disciplinary hearing, our union doesn’t ask who you voted for. We show up and defend your job and your rights. Period.

CSEA does not endorse a party, and we do not care about the letter next to a candidate's name. We simply ask one question of them: will you protect public schools and the classified employees who keep them running? And if someone in power is working to cut our funding, hand our jobs to contractors, or take away rights we fought a century to win, I owe you the truth about that, plainly.

This is bigger than CSEA. When any union loses its right to organize and bargain, in the public sector or the private sector, every workplace gets a little less safe for the rest of us. That is not partisanship. That is workers protecting each other.

So here is what I am asking, member to member, not president to member. Elections are decided by who shows up, and we cannot do this individually. None of us can. Visit csea.com/vote and find a way to help protect your job and your rights, whether that is phone banking, knocking on doors, or simply talking to a coworker who has not been paying attention. Then visit csea.com/voterguide for your own personalized guide to the CSEA-endorsed candidates and measures on your ballot, so you walk into the voting booth knowing exactly what is at stake and where we stand.

We have carried each other for a hundred years. I am asking you to help me carry this one home so we survive to see another hundred years.