Miranda Schubert Interview Transcript

"My name is Miranda Schubert and I’m a Tucson City Council Member. I’ve been in office since December of 2025.

I have been a proud dues-paying member of UCW Local 7065 since it was founded and I’m still a dues-paying member as a community member. 

I feel like it’s gonna sound a little cheesy but joining the local actually changed my life. I was part of a group of people organizing on campus before UCW was founded called the Coalition for Academic Justice and that organizing really came out of a desire to see more leadership and more of a stand being taken for the public good. The pandemic had hit and there were a lot of concerns about putting profits over public health and the well being of students. And one of the things we said a lot when we were having these conversations was that you could despair or you could organize. And so it really impacted me talking to people who felt the same way that I did. 

I’m really driven by the desire to make Tucson a place where regular people can thrive and have a good life. A reality in a society that centers the needs of working families who are struggling too much with the status quo, with the capture of politics by special interests and the extraction of wealth and water from our local community. So to me, a Tucson and a society that is union-friendly and that extends democracy to all areas of our work and education and social lives is also a better world, a better reality that everybody has access to bread and roses.

To me, the only way to have really good policy and really good decisions that change the status quo, which to be clear right now is rigged against regular everyday working people, is to have more people in those positions who live that reality and who understand it from the ground up. Where this isn’t a person in office you have to lobby to prioritize or to understand what the struggle is, but that the very reason that you’re driven to that leadership role is because that’s the only way to alleviate the struggle is to change the system.

I would say the top thing to do if you’re scared, if you’re overwhelmed, if you’re deeply deeply concerned about the direction we’re heading in, is to join your local union and to organize and to look for opportunity to create community and to have conversations because this isn’t normal, it’s not okay, and there are more of us that are worried and that understand that we need a democratic society that is rooted in the will of the people."