The newly elected vice president of Massachusetts's top teachers' union is a longtime left-wing activist who has denounced the United States as a "fascist oligarchy," objected to national borders as a "construct of colonizers," and pushed resolutions condemning Israel as "genocidal."
The Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA)—an affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union in the United States—earlier this month elected Deb Gesualdo as its vice president. The new leadership team will take over from outgoing MTA president Max Page in July.
Gesualdo, along with the MTA’s newly elected president, Matt Bach, is a member of Educators for a Democratic Union, the MTA's progressive caucus, which works to "build a … social justice movement in our union and communities" and "dismantle structures of oppression within our union as well as other institutions." It has received funding from the Social Justice & Solidarity Fund, a group affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Gesualdo is a member. She has been open about her anti-American and anti-Israel views both on social media and within the MTA.
In a post on the left-wing social media site Bluesky, Gesualdo called for anti-government uprisings against the "fascist" United States, writing that it was "beyond me that there’s still people who think we can legislate our way out of the fascist oligarchy that is the United States." The "antidote," she added, was "working people rising up."
Gesualdo uses children’s cartoons to promote far-left and socialist ideology on social media. On TikTok, she posted a picture of Snoopy with a caption and voice-over denouncing national borders as a "construct of colonizers" that are "meant to control and exploit workers." In another comment on Bluesky, she published an image of Hello Kitty alongside the message "No war but class war."
Gesualdo has also pushed anti-Israel policies within the MTA. She helped advance a 2023 resolution for a ceasefire petition that accused Israel of carrying out a "genocidal assault" in Gaza and signed a letter calling on the NEA to stop using Holocaust education materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), accusing the Jewish civil rights group of "Zionist supremacy."
Gesualdo's rise in the MTA is a reflection of the far-left activism and antisemitism that has plagued the union in the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack.
The union's outgoing president, Page, is also a member of the MTA's progressive caucus, which endorses candidates for MTA president and vice president when they're elected every two years. Since 2014, every MTA president has come from the caucus's ranks.
Under Page, the MTA faced intense criticism, including from lawmakers in the solidly Democratic state legislature, for educational materials the union offered its teachers following the attack. They included an image of a dollar bill folded into a Star of David, something state representative Simon Cataldo, a Democrat, called "antisemitic imagery" during a 2025 hearing on antisemitism in Massachusetts's public schools, the Free Press reported. Page, who testified at the hearing, said he wouldn't "evaluate" whether the image was antisemitic, telling Cataldo, "You're trying to get away from the central point, which is that we provide imagery, we provide resources for our members to consider, in their own intelligent, professional way."
Such "imagery" includes a poster of a keffiyeh-clad terrorist holding a rifle alongside the words, "What was taken by force can only be returned by force"; a poster of the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group; and a poster calling for a "day of rage" to "decolonize this place."
Cataldo served as co-chair of the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism, created months after the Oct. 7 attack to confront the rise of antisemitism in the state. With the election of Bach and Gesualdo, the MTA appears to be reinforcing its support for anti-Israel terrorism rather than rebuking it.
Bach, who served as president of the Andover Education Association (AEA) before he was elected to lead the MTA, has a history of left-wing activism as well. Under his leadership, the AEA signed a petition calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas just weeks after Oct. 7.
"The cycle of violence must stop so that negotiations for an enduring peace proceed," the letter stated. "The road to justice cannot be paved by bombs and war."
The MTA did not respond to a request for comment.
The MTA's parent organization, the NEA, led by self-described "fierce social justice warrior" Becky Pringle, has also faced complaints over antisemitism. The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a civil rights complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last month alleging that the union subjected Jewish members to an antisemitic environment. It pointed to the NEA's 2025 Representative Assembly—the group's annual gathering—where anti-Israel delegates were accused of physically intimidating Jewish members in an attempt to prevent them from voting on a resolution banning materials from the ADL from appearing in classrooms.
