Teachers union behind Ohio’s May Day ‘Roadmap to Political Revolution’

Starting in early February, the nation’s largest teachers union began co-organizing school walkouts with Democratic lawmakers and the far-left eco-authoritarian Sunrise Movement, culminating in a coordinated May Day disruption event in Ohio and across the country.

Dubbed the “Roadmap to Political Revolution,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-California, and Sunrise Movement leader Aru Shiney-Ajay, kicked off a multi-phased plan that has critics sounding the alarm.

According to organizers, a successful political revolution involves the exposure and elimination of classical Western liberalism, while the roadmap includes: leveraging the optics of a youth movement, “clearing house” in the Democratic primary by replacing classically liberal electeds with democratic socialists, and co-opting the populist right through promises of good-paying government jobs. Critics, calling this roadmap the rise of Marxist authoritarianism, are now sounding the alarm over funding sources.

Through the co-organized “Project Rise Up,” the NEA, along with a cadre of far-left organizations, began coordinating school walkouts — every Friday leading up to May Day — to protest everything from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Trump administration writ large.

Ro Khanna is on Sunrise Zoom call coordinating protests nation wide to demand ICE reform, prosecution of rogue agents, and defunding.

The Sunrise Movement gets their funding from mutual aid and other means of funding. The same people that campaigned to get Mamdani elected are… pic.twitter.com/oChoZ75Q1e

— Sally (@TalkWithSally) January 29, 2026

According to federal LM-2 filings, these toolkits, educator legal resources, and guidance documents for training and student recruitment have not only been funded by the NEA, but they’re also being actively utilized across the state.

In Ohio, where public schools already grapple with proficiency gaps and where 70-90% of public educators belong to the National Education Association through its state affiliate, the Ohio Education Association, planned May Day events are scheduled from Newark to Reynoldsburg, Worthington to Columbus. Each event promotes the same “No Work, No School, No Shopping” message, found under the NEA’s centralized Mobilize.us hub.

Shockingly, government unions have not only funneled millions into these May Day events, but key findings tracked by Americans For Fair Treatment and the Commonwealth Foundation’s 2025 report, How Government Unions Fund Politics Across the Country, illustrate a “disturbing trend” of teacher union resources flowing into broader ideological activism.

“During the 2023–24 election cycle, the four biggest public sector unions…combined spent over $915 million in partisan elections and advancing progressive ideology.” The report, based upon federal LM-2 filings, tracks 86 percent of that political spending — nearly $650 million — coming directly from taxpayer-supported member dues.

The report continues by calling the heavy use of membership dues money for politics a “disturbing trend.” According to the report, that trend resulted in nearly half a billion dollars spent on Democratic politicians — 95.8 percent of all campaign spending vs just 4.2 percent to Republican candidates — “economic redistribution, critical race theory, defunding the police, promoting abortion, and opposing school choice.”

“These radicals are providing free advertising for homeschooling, showing us exactly who they are, and parents need to pull their kids out of these institutions."

— AFFT Senior Fellow @DeAngelisCorey at @theblaze 👇 pic.twitter.com/WZRrs3Dp1R

— Americans For Fair Treatment (@AmericansFair) April 8, 2026

Corey DeAngelis, senior policy fellow at AFFT, told Ohio.News that the union’s involvement in protests is beginning to expose a radical agenda.

“Their involvement with May Day protests lets the mask slip and exposes the union bosses as socialists who want to overthrow our country’s capitalist roots. Using the largest teachers union in America to fund activist training for protests outside schools is a perfect illustration of how far they’ve strayed from actually helping kids and teachers.”

The NEA’s By Any Means Necessary caucus has promoted aggressive anti-ICE tactics, including guidelines that suggest using students as human shields to impede ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. These increasingly radicalized tactics fit into wider disruptive trends in classrooms that carry real costs for Ohio students, parents, and taxpayers.

DeAngelis, telling Ohio.News that “Congress should consider revoking the NEA’s federal charter or restricting its political activity,” called the NEA’s $1.7 million bankrolling of anti-ICE protest training at schools, “indefensible.”

However, DeAngelis highlights a silver lining for Ohio’s families: “Coordinated teacher strikes and walk-ins like the ones being trained for on May 1 provide free advertising for school choice—families should be able to take their children’s education dollars elsewhere if the government school employees want to play politics and close schools.”

BREAKING: 13,357 teachers have opted out of their unions and joined the Teacher Freedom Alliance.

This is the way to hold union bosses accountable.

Starve the beast.

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) April 8, 2026

With the NEA representing approximately 102,000 educators across Ohio, Chip Rogers, CEO of Americans for Fair Treatment, told Ohio.News it’s time for transparency and accountability.

“Public-sector unions benefit from significant legal privileges, including federal recognition. With that comes a responsibility to remain focused on their core mission—not to engage in coordinated political activities that fall outside the scope of worker representation.” Rogers added that workers deserve to know how their dues are being used and to have a meaningful choice in whether to support that activity.

“At the end of the day, this is about worker freedom,” Rogers told Ohio.News. “Every teacher and public employee should have the ability to decide for themselves whether union membership aligns with their values, and organizations like AFFT exist to make sure they have that choice.”