Saturday, June 18, 2016

Unity-UFT Caucus Members MUST Be Called to Account - In their own schools

MORE urged students to opt out of the state exams as a means of protecting the professional autonomy of educators and fighting against a corporate education system. ... Unity-UFT Caucus leaflet, June 2016
Arthur has a follow-up post today on the Unity Caucus attack against MORE for, as Leonie Haimson put it:
How dare MORE fight for professional autonomy and against a corporate driven agenda! Who do you think you are?
NYC Educator: UFT Unity and Corporate Values
See my previous posts on this issue:
I've heard people say that they like people they know in Unity -- yet these are the very people who empower the Unity Caucus leadership to take stands antithetical to the interests of UFT members.

By now the entire opt out community is condemning the leaflet but the focus has been Mulgrew when in fact it should be the Randi-Mulgrew enablers who make up Unity Caucus.

Unity Caucus is not just an entity divorced from the 800 people who are going to the AFT convention to vote the way they are told to. Right after the DA the other day, Unity held a meeting - I saw some luscious food platters some people had -- to tell them how to vote.

I like some Unity people too. But isn't it time to hold each and every one of them accountable for the positions of the caucus they choose to join? I told a union official recently that not all of them are slugs -- I view only the nasty ones that way. They seem to feel insulted when I refer to them as slugs. Well, maybe someone can come up with a better word for what I estimate to be around 1500 Unity Caucus members, many retirees, many still based in schools, who sign on to a caucus that says it is wrong for MORE to fight against corporate deform and professional autonomy.
I wrote the other day:
If you know people in Unity Caucus show them the leaflet and ask them to pledge allegiance to what it says - and if they won't, ask them to make a public statement denouncing it -- and watch them cower in fear - all 800 of them - or more. That makes them a slug in  my book.
If you are a MORE or an independent chapter leader and attend the monthly district rep chapter leader meetings, which are often packed with Unity acolytes, isn't it time to stand up and say,

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

And for my friends in Unity - isn't it time for you to get some legs on your slug body and stand up and join us.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The meeting after DA was for new convention delegates. While they are UNITY caucus members, the meeting is a UFT meeting, not a caucus meeting.

Anonymous said...

Careful not to show how you really feel.. Attacking the entire Unity caucus is really a show of how unhinged More is becoming at the seams.

Raving Lunatic said...

Yes. Remember it's okay for us to attack your caucus, but when you attack ours you are unhinged at the seams. Also, it's perfectly fine for us to have a meeting of new delegates who are entirely beholden to our caucus and say it's a UFT meeting. That's how we wrote the rules, and once they stop working for us, we'll rewrite them. We may even declare blogging illegal. So please stop criticizing us. We make the rules, and we can make new ones any time we see fit.

Michael Fiorillo said...

Oh, I get it: L'etat c'est moi...

Anonymous said...

Anonymous: You're confusing unhinged with unbound. Unbound to Mulgrew/Randi and every other sell out piece of shit in a union leadership position who is promoting Cuomo's agenda. I guess since Cuomo's cronies are busy readying for prison or an indictment someone has to pick up the slack and do the governor's dirty work for him. Andrew Cuomo thanks you and Mulgrew and Randi for your service and commitment to the destruction of public schools and teachers. Roseanne McCosh