Joe Biden’s Wife Attends #RedforEd Teachers Event in Illinois Ahead of Primary

Honored to have Dr. Jill Biden speak with our #IEARA2020 delegates! Thank you for speaking
Facebook/Illinois Education Association
Michael Patrick Leahy

Dr. Jill Biden spoke to the Illinois Education Association (IEA) on Friday, where she tweeted out this salute to the #RedforEd movement.

The former vice president’s wife, who has a doctorate in Education, and has taught English courses at a community college in Virginia since 2009 and taught at a community college in Delaware for 15 years before that, appeared a week and a half ahead of the March 17 Democratic presidential primary in Illinois.

As Breitbart News reported in February 2019:

A well-funded and subversive leftist movement of teachers in the United States threatens to tilt the political balance nationwide in the direction of Democrats across the country as Republicans barely hang on in key states that they need to hold for President Donald Trump to win re-election and for Republicans to have a shot at retaking the House and holding onto their Senate majority.

This teachers union effort, called #RedforEd, has its roots in the very same socialism that President Trump vowed in his 2019 State of the Union address to stop, and it began in its current form in early 2018 in a far-flung corner of the country before spreading nationally. Its stated goals–higher teacher pay and better education conditions–are overshadowed by a more malevolent political agenda: a leftist Democrat uprising designed to flip purple or red states to blue, using the might of a significant part of the education system as its lever.

The IEA event at which Dr. Biden spoke on Friday was the group’s annual three day Representative Assembly, where the organization’s agenda for the year is set. Among the topics discussed on the first day of the gathering was “Engaging in School Board Elections and Referenda.”  Dr. Biden was a featured speaker on the event’s second day, which was described in the official agenda as “Red for Ed Day.”

Northern Public Radio reported on Biden’s remarks:

“Our secretary of education will be an educator who actually knows what it’s like to be in the public schools.”

When she said “educator,” it drew a large response from the crowd. . .

Jill Biden also addressed teacher concerns from the need for mental health resources and student debt relief.

“Joe’s vision is bold and progressive and, most importantly, achievable,” Jill Biden said. “Because anyone can have a plan. Like I tell my students all the time, it’s not enough to want to do well. You have to turn in the essay. You have to do the reading. You have to deliver on the promises you make.”

Joe Biden has been supportive of the #RedforEd movement, but the movement’s leadership –in Illinois and around the country–has been largely comprised of Bernie Sanders supporters.

In October, for instance, when the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike for 19 days, both Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), made personal appearances to support the strikers, but Joe Biden did not.

Though the founders and current leaders of the #RedforEd movement, which began in Arizona in March 2018, are almost universally Sanders supporters, the heads of the national teachers unions–the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers–as well as their state counterparts have focused their #RedforEd activities more on attacks against President Trump than on choosing between Sanders and Biden.

Sanders and Biden are competing head-to-head in Democratic presidential primaries in six states on Tuesday–Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Washington, North Dakota, and Idaho.

One week later, the two compete again in Democratic presidential primaries in four more key states: Illinois, Ohio, Florida, and Arizona.

When the results from those primaries are known, those #RedforEd movement leaders around the country who are closely tied to the Bernie Sanders campaign may need to decide if they support Joe Biden in the general election against Donald Trump with the same level of intensity they have supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries.

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