Ed Notes Online: #AFT100, #AFT16: Waiting for Hillary, Waiting, Waiting, Waiting... and finally she's here

Monday, July 18, 2016

#AFT100, #AFT16: Waiting for Hillary, Waiting, Waiting, Waiting... and finally she's here

Monday, July 18 - 5:30 PM
I've been in the convention hall since just after 2 PM - with Arthur Goldstein and Jonathan Halabi - check their blogs on my blogroll,

twitter, and facebook accounts as they are doing a much more serious job than I am - I'm just trying to stay awake. We all have press passes and wanted to set ourselves up in the press section - of which there are 2 and both areas suck. We are behind a platform where camera people are set up blocking our view of the stage - we can watch Hillary on TVs - or we can lean over into the aisle and watch her live.

Ok, here's my day in a nutshell - up at 3:50, AM wife gets up about 5 hours earlier than usual to drive me to airport for 7AM flight. Hit massive traffic jam at entrance to JFK - but have TSA precheck godsend - connect with Jia Lee, Arthur and Gloria for coffee - flight goes well get in at 9 AM central time, get surface transit to hotel, dump stuff in room, go to convention center - run into CTU/CORE's Jackson Potter on way to lunch with CTU crew - Arthur and I join them - then joined by Boston teacher - they ask loads of questions about MORE, UFT elections - WHAT? - retirees vote and almost 50% of total?

Fred Klonsky talks AFT democracy here: Random thoughts. AFT democracy.

Back to convention hall - run into Unity fave - retired Michael Mendel - nice to see him again, get visitor passes - need a delegate - which of course we are not - to vouch for us - grab old pal who is in Unity to do so - wander around waiting to get press passes - tight security so we wait till after 2PM to get checked by secret service at press entrance - we are thrilled to get frisked by secret service -

Halabi, Goldstein and moi - photo by Gloria Brandman

we are only 3 in the giant hall by 2:30 - it is now 5:40 and Randi is talking followed by a bunch of speakers until Hillary gets here.

Press people just told us we can run up and take some photos of Randi and Hillary when they come out together and after the speech Randi will come back to the press area to talk to us and answer questions - I'm sure she will be happy to see us - but frankly I have nothing I want to ask her -

See George Schmidt on his scooter --

They keep showing archive footage - nice piece on anti-teacher conservative Regan Nation At Risk report that began ed deform - leave out that Shanker and AFT supported many of conclusions of reports - the winners get to rewrite history.

Speakers include Helen Gym from Philly who along with Leonie Haimson founded Parents Across America, Steve Zimmer who beat back millionaire ed deformers in election for LA school board. Rouses crowd with passionate speech calling for Hillary election.

Rod Sherman from NYSUT - retired Pres of Plattsburg union -- says usual stuff.

Meanwhile Arthur and Jonathan are tweeting away with funny stuff--

Arthur Goldstein Retweeted

50m Ed Lettis‏ @edbobgreen

@TeacherArthurG #MakeAmericaWaitAgain

Arthur Goldstein Retweeted

45m Liz Brown‏ @me_lizbrown

@TeacherArthurG Drone attacked her charter?

45m Arthur Goldstein‏ @TeacherArthurG

AFT is now playing Elton John and hoping for the best. #AFT2016 #WhereIsHillary

52m Arthur Goldstein‏ @TeacherArthurG

I hope Hillary has some better material about being late than the joke she told with Bill de Blasio. #AFT2016

57m Arthur Goldstein‏ @TeacherArthurG

Maybe they don't know where she is. Maybe she had to go back to the plane to find her hot sauce, says @Jd2718x. #AFT2016

6PM - stalling as Hillary is delayed - rumor she is in Cincinnati -- hey - she can just do a video and live stream it to the cardboard Hillary - from where we are seated it makes no difference.

Music or musac - people waving Hillary signs so they don't freeze to death - we can do an exercise class - or start serving sandwiches.

Mary Cathryn Ricker introducing 2 senators from Minnesota - the Al and Amy show. Al Franken is still funny. Poor Amy Klobuchar has to follow him. Amy is funny too - she is the senior senator. She quotes local poet laureate Garrison Keillor - one of our faves -- All AFT members are above average. Her mom was a teacher - and involved in one of first strikes. She mentions how her mom took her to see Hubert Humphrey speak -- in 68 we scorned Hubert and ended up with Nixon.

Amy brings up Hillary right away - maybe to remind us of the comparison. I'm thinking -- Who would you vote for now - Humphrey or Nixon in 68? Just think - the left rejected Humphrey and got the Dem Party reform they were looking for in 72 - the McGovern disaster.

She thanks Bernie Sanders and his supporters in this room -

By the way - what's going on in Cleveland? I had a vision of people rolling into the convention center packing - bazookas, grenade launchers, driving tanks up the ramps - like a Turkish coup - which the Trump takeover of the Republican Party may turn out to be similar to.

Randi is back at podium - former VP Walter Mondale is in audience.

More musac - hit me with your best shot - now another video of Hillary - but time is coming --

Randi makes intro speech - press allowed to go up front to film -- I join them and get some footage with my phone - will be posted to FB. Almost 7PM.

Hillary comes out - first time I've seen her in person. I was a big fan 25 years ago - and I am still excited to see a major world celebrity from so close up. OK - fan time over - back to seat in press section

when mild disruption breaks out with people shouting "stop deportation." They are drowned out by shouts of Hil-Ary and people surround them and put up Hillary signs to block them. I run over and get some video which I put up on facebook.

Oh, you want to know what she is saying? A lot about the seat at the table - she doesn't say stool but we know.

Read Arthur and Jonathan since they are being serious reporters. She does attack on Trump and Pence - neither one should be anywhere near children - or something like that.

They told us Hillary's speech will be 45 minutes and then Randi will come back here to talk to us and answer questions.

It's over and time for me to post this report -- maybe more later.


Bye Hillary

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"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended

Monday, July 18, 2016

#AFT100, #AFT16: Waiting for Hillary, Waiting, Waiting, Waiting... and finally she's here

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