Sunday, February 24, 2008

Breaking News - Updated

Updated Feb. 25, 2008 12:30 am

An article (Remaking Labor - From The Top-Down? Bottom-Up ? or Both?) compares 2 books on the labor movement, one praising SEIU and "Change to Win" and the other (by Kim Moody) being critical and also talking about rank and file organizing. Make sure to checkout the post below this one on how SEIUs' Dennis Rivera is undermining FMPR, the Puerto Rico teachers union that cut ties with the AFT.
Why is this important to teachers in NYC? We are certainly affected by the general weakness in the labor movement and both books address rebuilding the movement. We see in NYC schools every day the impact of a weak labor movement and hopefully, one day people will get together and challenge all the assumptions by which unions are being run (ICE has been doing some work on the issue of UFT/AFT ideology which I'll put up soon.) Anyway, you can check out the (long) article at Norm's Notes.


There are UFT members and others who feel the merger of HIP and GHI is a bad thing. Some may hand out a leaflet explaining their position at the March 5 Delegate Assembly. Someone check my facts but I believe Sandy Feldman's husband held some high position with HIP and Randi Weingarten may be on the HIP board (I'm not sure if that means anything.) The result will be a joint privatized HIP/GHI operation instead of being under public control. Instinct says that is not a good thing. Check it out here. http://socialistparty-usa.org/stopthemerger/


Ralph Nader on Meet the Press makes a hell of a lot of sense. http://www.votenader.org/
Nader on the other candidates and on the 2000 election.
People are pointing on NYC Educator today that Nadar as a perspn is irrelevant. We can agree. But the issues he raises are not.


Under Assault comments on Steven Miller and Jack Gerson's report on "The Corporate Surge against Public Schools."
http://underassault.blogspot.com/2008/02/ed-oligopolism-here-we-come_20.html

Read Howard Zinn "Election Madness" on the no difference between Dems/Reps.

No comments: