Retired from work, not from the fight

It's not surprising that Renee Potter decided not to stay at home during the midterm elections, even at 82. Instead, Potter, who is the AFT Washington state retiree chapter member and a member of the AFT Retirees Program and Policy Council, traveled to Cincinnati to help get out the vote. When organizers asked where she wanted to be deployed, she simply said, "Wherever you need me."

Potter is not alone. Across the country, AFT retirees are giving up their well-earned free time and their comfortable beds to travel hundreds of miles from home to make sure their fellow union members get to the polls as a part of AFT Votes.

That group includes Jacqui Berger, a retired professor who traveled to Akron, Ohio. Berger retired in 2020 but remains active in AFT-related trainings, the New York State United Teachers retiree council, as well as local and national political work through the AFTerburners, a network of AFT retirees who engage in political advocacy, voter education and grassroots campaigns. "I love being part of the AFTerburners," she says. "I've made new friends from all over the country. It's been great getting to know new people."

Activism isn't something the retirees stumbled into, but they decided to get involved in different ways. Berger traces her activist streak back to junior high, when she joined a walkout to protest a dress code that barred girls from wearing pants, except on the coldest days. "I guess I've always been involved in something," she says.

Berger spent about 20 years teaching at SUNY Empire State College and nearly as long as a member of United University Professions, eventually serving as a union rep, chapter president and for a time a member of the statewide executive board. All of it was training for everything that came after, she says, including two terms on the Amherst, N.Y., town board, where she garnered more votes that any other candidate on the ballot, including in the race for town supervisor.

Potter's path to activism started with her family, where community involvement was just something that they did, she says. That instinct led her to join the fight for a voice at Pierce College in Washington state as an adjunct faculty member and member of the Pierce College Federation of Teachers. A union colleague pulled Potter into retiree organizing after she retired in 2017, and from there she joined the AFTerburners.

For many years, Berger wanted to join a political deployment but stayed close to home to care for her mother. This year, she took the opportunity to be deployed and landed in Akron, a city she says is both a world away and similar to her native Buffalo, N.Y.

"They are both industrial towns that have seen things change over time. Plants have closed, and people have struggled. It's that same labor story," she says.

Meanwhile, Potter is spending two weeks in Cincinnati surrounded by fellow volunteers who, she says, will likely feel like old friends by the time she leaves. It isn't her first trip for a campaign; she has canvassed in Arizona, and as a college student she campaigned in Chicago for Ted Kennedy when he ran for president.

The work is a mix of long, uneven hours and the occasional conversation that makes the whole trip worth it. Berger has knocked on doors where people flatly told her to leave; she has spent evenings phone banking and texting thousands of voters at once. One call stands out for Berger: It was with a woman "who needed to vent about everything that was wrong." By the end of the conversation, the woman had agreed to start making calls herself. "It's good to talk to someone who feels the same way you do and who thanks you and appreciates you making the phone call," says Berger. "It's really worth the effort. We need to get people motivated and to know that they'll be supported."

Potter has seen the same dynamic back home, where she encouraged her retiree chapter to "adopt a district" and her fellow retirees volunteered to help by sending handwritten postcards for the voter outreach effort. "That's what happens when people get involved," she says. "Sometimes all it takes is someone saying 'we need to do this.'"

The retirees believe that personal contact has the power to change outcomes and that silence is its own kind of vote. "A lot of people have opinions or complain about what's happening but they don't vote," says Berger. "We need to convince a lot of people that their vote matters because people think it doesn't matter anymore."

Potter agrees. "I just don't understand how people can sit on the sidelines when there's so much happening in the world. I've always believed that people need to get outside themselves, become aware of what's happening around them and find ways to get involved," she says.

That's why these retirees plan to keep going. Berger is already looking ahead to the next presidential election in two years. Potter says she intends to keep knocking on doors "for as long as I can."

Neither sees their effort as a break from retirement. Instead, they see it as a way to keep on serving. As Berger puts it: "I may be retired, but I'm not finished making a difference."

[Adrienne Coles]