Right now, educators across California are experiencing a resurgence of layoffs and budget cuts amidst the backdrop of intensifying federal attacks. While our K-12 schools, community colleges, and universities go chronically underfunded, wealth is concentrated in the hands of 194 billionaires who, along with multinational corporations, never pay their fair share of taxes. And it’s no coincidence that skyrocketing wealth inequality has been accompanied by a surge in white supremacy, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny.

The Educators Organizing California team knows that in order to meet the moment, we must organize. Unions are more popular than they’ve been in decades, and resistance is expanding across California as educators demand fully-funded, fully-staffed public schools. We must build durable structures to talk with every member, engage every worker, connect with every community, and build the actual power to win at local, state, and national levels.  

In fighting for the schools our students deserve, we improve educator wages, healthcare, and working conditions. When we defend public education as a cornerstone of democracy, we make democracy – still illusory for so many – real for our students, their families, and our communities.

Learn more about our platform

Meet the EOC Team

Alex Caputo-Pearl

for CFT President

    • 22 years teaching in South LA and 3 years Community School Coach

    • United Teachers Los Angeles President, 2014-2020, leading initial years of union transformation, dues increase and constitutional revision, and historic 2019 strike

    • UTLA NEA VP, 2020-2023

    • AFT Executive Council, 2016-2020

    • CFT Executive Council, 2015-2016

    • Current Member, CFT Civil, Human, and Women’s Rights Committee

    • Currently involved in CFT May Day and Labor vs. Fascism work

    • UC Berkeley Labor Center Practitioner-In-Residence, 2023-2024

    • UCLA Labor Studies Fellow, 2024-2025

    • Bargaining for the Common Good National Advisory Committee, 2017-2020

    • 33 years labor/community organizer, Labor/Community Strategy Center, Bus Riders Union, Coalition for Educational Justice, Reclaim Our Schools LA

    • Writings in Los Angeles Times, New York Times, The Nation, American Prospect, New Labor Forum, Convergence, Jacobin, Labor Notes

Belinda Lum

for CFT Executive Vice President

    • 19 years of teaching Sociology and Ethnic studies: 

    • Los Rios College Federation of Teachers (LRCFT) Chief Negotiator (2020-present), LRCFT Campus President (2021-2023)

    • Inaugural AFL-CIO Immigration Policy Fellow (2026-2027)

    • Co-chair, CFT Civil, Human, and Women’s Rights Committee (2023-present)

    • Member, AFT Civil, Human, and Women’s Rights Committee (2023-Present)

    • Member, AFT API Task Force (2025-present)

    • Professional Facilitator and Consultant leading strategic planning, training, and action research

    • Past-Chair, American Sociological Association Section on Labor and Labor Movements

    • Campaign Researcher SAG/AFTRA on Telemundo / NBC Universal Campaign

    • Recipient of the CFT Dean Murakami Racial, Social, Climate Justice Advocacy Award

Cassondra Curiel

for CFT Secretary-Treasurer

    • Current United Educators of San Francisco President

    • Current CFT Executive Committee and Executive Council member

    • Current CFT Budget Committee member

    • 10 years teaching English and Language Arts  and serving as elected worksite steward

    •  Past chair of UESF Grievance Committee

    •  As UESF President has:

      • Overseen all union budgets and staff supervision structures

      • Built a city-wide Contract Action Team connected to all worksites 

      • Expanded the bargaining team and won two ground-breaking contracts

      • Led historic strike in February 2026 

      • Built successful labor/community coalition

      • Played a key leadership role in the state-wide We Can’t Wait campaign, coordinated with dozens of other locals, leading to historic contract wins and strikes across the State

      • Led UESF’s participation in organizing against authoritarianism through Bay Area Rising, May Day Strong, and other structures 

A platform for all

cFT educators

    • Deeply investing in locals to build increased, bottom-up capacity for organizing, bargaining, increasing membership density, and organizing new sectors

    • Providing accessible, relevant trainings for locals, and meaningful, ongoing support 

    • Building an independent, progressive approach to politics, using organizing to win elections, legislation, and initiatives, and to hold officials accountable

    • Developing leadership pipeline programs and ongoing political education  

    • Advocating within AFT for deep investment in organizing and national strategy

    • Developing partnerships and leading in coalitions with communities, students, unions, parents, and racial justice organizations

    • Cultivating and embodying a culture of organizing, engagement, and winning

    • Making democratic decisions with transparency and broad engagementgoes here

    • Winning great educator and classified professional contracts and policy

    • Organizing to tax the rich to fully fund schools, services, and single-payer healthcare

    • Creating parity in pay, healthcare, and workplace voice for part-timers, lecturers, classified professionals, and all

    • Aggressively regulating AI and Ed Tech, by stopping dangerous corporate partnerships, creating guardrails on use, ending districts’ massive spending on AI/Ed Tech contracts, and protecting jobs, student learning, privacy, and intellectual property

    • Fighting racism, sexism, and oppression, through organizing to protect and expand ethnic studies and equity programs, ensuring full rights for immigrant workers, standing against all forms of racism and the particular impacts of anti-Black racism, and defending the LGBTQ+ community

    • Creating green campuses and expanded climate change education

    • Organizing to shift federal priorities in order to fund human needs, climate solutions, debt forgiveness, and special education, rather than subsidies to billionaires, corporations, ICE, war, and U.S. militarism

    • Protecting and expanding democracy, civil and voting rights, and academic freedom 

    • Worked as rank-and-file and elected leaders for years

    • Transformed locals into democratic, high-participation organizations

    • Invested in infrastructure that increases rank and file leadership

    • Won hard and innovative campaigns at site, local, state, and national levels

    • Built consensus and collective buy-in, through data-driven decision-making, strategic planning, and research

    • Played leadership roles in critical coalitions, including California Alliance for Community Schools/We Can’t Wait, California Calls, May Day Strong, and Bargaining for the Common Good 

    • Developed expertise in organizing, representation, bargaining, politics, research, communications, and coalition-building

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