Breaking News: Leo Casey Admits He Was Wrong About Bill Gates

UFT's Leo Casey in his review of Brill’s book finally admits Bill Gates is no friend to teachers and has “become outspoken in his anti-teacher pronouncements"  (as though this was a recent development.) -- Leonie Haimson

UPDATED FROM COMMENT AREA: This one really nails one of the ideological aspects:

Michael (above) is exactly right. It's a disgrace. What makes Leo's "turnaround" so unpalatable to me is that I don't believe that Leo believed what he thought and wrote in July 2010. He uses a certain leftist, ivory-tower, screed that paints all those who oppose the Unity/UFT program (lots to talk about there) as being rigid, moral purists or antiquated vanguards of the left. Leo has always understood the "evils" of Gates; his goal is to spin it all to help allow Unity to find wiggle room for further appeasement and capitulation. Contrary to what others may feel, Leo Casey is the most important Unity man in the UFT. He is Unity's "brain," organizer and "spin-master." If you don't believe me, consider the following: Why does Randi want him to move to DC and work with her? And this is absolutely another sound bite from a soul-less man named Leo.

Leonie Haimson takes down Leo Casey in this post to the NYCEnews Listserve.

But before you go on, review this video I made of the walkout at Gates's speech at the 2010 AFT convention in Seattle as they were booed and hooted at by delgates led by the Unity Caucus delegation from NYC. Watch Randi say how proud she is of them.



 

UFT's Leo Casey in his review of Brill’s book finally admits Bill Gates is no friend to teachers and has “become outspoken in his anti-teacher pronouncements"  (as though this was a recent development.)

In July 2010 in same blog, Casey attacked me for calling Gates the most dangerous man in America – absurdly comparing me to a member of a primitive tribe “ who develops rigid and inflexible conceptions of the politically impure, and then devotes nearly all of its energy to attacks on every possible source of pollution of the politically pure, no matter how minor a threat it might be.”

Never mind that Bill Gates was not a minor threat to teachers or to public education, but a very major threat, making this point hard to swallow.

But he went on:

To borrow Henry Ford’s attack line against Walter Reuther for a headline that describes Gates as “the most dangerous man in America,” as one blogger did during the AFT convention, is to indulge in a form of hyperbole that quickly shades into unrecognizable caricature. While there certainly is enough in the educational stance of a Gates to take issue with, this sort of discourse is more in the vein of a sectarian calling out “Impure! Impure!” than it is a serious political engagement. In its rigid identification of the politically impure and its promiscuous definition of the political enemy, it has all the marks of a sectarian politics of self-marginalization.

So I guess I marginalized myself by telling the truth about Gates .  Not clear exactly what the AFT did by inviting him as keynote speaker, which Casey posed as entering into a “dialogue” with him.   You can’t talk to Gates w/out letting him be your keynote speaker?  Is that the best way to establish a dialogue or instead a sign of submission?

In any case, his original attack column and a follow-up one where he tried to defend his position got loads of negative responses, without me having to say a word.  Seems like most of the teachers who commented agreed with me that inviting Gates was a sell-out.  Check them out. 

But I guess that he has figured out that even playing nicey –nice w/ Gates and inviting him to speak at the convention did not pay off.  Now Casey writes:

Teachers and teacher unions have not sought out this class warfare. To the contrary, the American Federation of Teachers made an effort to establish a dialogue with Bill Gates, inviting Gates to address our last national convention in Seattle. This overture had its critics, but it would be a serious mistake for unions to talk only to those who agreed with us. By the same token, we need to be honest about the results of our efforts at dialogue: Gates has become outspoken in his anti-teacher pronouncements. There’s not much left to discuss when he assumes such a posture.

Okay, does that mean he won’t be invited to next year’s conference?

Also check out the novelty film we made modeled after the 1984 Apple Commercial which ironically was attacking IBM - who dey? - while a very short time later Microsoft almost wiped Apple off the map as they became the new IBM.





Social Note:
Off to see Andrea Boccelli in Central Park. If it doesn't rain.

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