Feb. 4, 2013 Blogging Team Goes Head to Head With Unity Caucus

UFT Elections: MORE vs Unity/New Action

The UFT election goes into full swing starting this Weds. Tonight's Ex Bd meeting (where I may get a bite to eat) will ratify the procedures. Petitions will be available on Weds. Feb. 6 before the Delegate Assembly, after which Unity Caucus is holding a 6:30 meeting at Fashion Industries HS so they all can get their petitions signed. MORE is working on its own plans -- and you are invited to help.

Well, with the election season, comes the Unity defense.

Have you checked out the MORE blog recently (Morecaucusnyc)?

Some of our city's top bloggers have volunteered their time to work with MORE and the writing has been fantabulous. I am supposed to be part of this crew but I have a very tough time trying to write in the voice of an organization instead of my own voice.

I know that MORE positions don't perfectly align with Ed Notes so changing tone is a chore I have not mastered. Yes, I am an attack dog and Unity slugs and hacks try to paint MORE as a subsidiary of Ed Notes. Unity people can't conceive that everyone in a group does not speak with one voice.

When our crew write official MORE pieces they go through a process where the Steering Committee (totally open to anyone in MORE) gets 24 hours to edit and approve before publishing. I bet my stuff will never pass muster since after 42 years of seeing Unity inaction it is hard to modify my venom. Really, I have a hard time giving them credit for anything. But I am on the extreme end, along with some of my colleagues in ICE who are also on the older end of the spectrum and know how Unity operates. I haven't yet convinced many of my colleagues in MORE that Unity is Vichy. Many in ICE are also with MORE but maintains an independent voice on the ICE blog. The more MORE younger gen of activists see Unity in operation close up and personal the MORE they will see the frustration of trusting them in any way. The reaction by some young uns to the early Unity attempts to suppress our lit is a sign.

Anyway, I now have the attention span of a flea. Given that all these bloggers are actually working while I laze away the days makes them even MORE awesome.

Check out the MORE blog you will see Unity flacks appearing to argue their case. Some of it is really funny in their convoluted arguments.

Bloggers have been out there analyzing the Unity position.

Assailed Teacher takes their arguments apart:

SEVEN WAYS TO DEFEND UFT LEADERSHIP

NYCDOENuts hits Unity from another angle:

Wow, Is It UFT Election Season or What? Unity Attacks

And NYC Educator uses his deft scalpel:
It's Election Season

Then there is Leo Casey who can't stay away despite supposedly moving to Washington to work for Randi at the AFT. There is no point in my going into all the details of the back and forth -- just follow the links.

Reality-Based Educator takes on the task:

Leo Casey Explains Collective Bargaining To Us

As I said, the bloggers at MORE have done some great work. Here is an awesome piece of work from one of the 4 Horsemen (3 if you subtract me) who took on the task of writing this in a MORE media/blogging committee conference call at noon on Saturday and sent back this piece in almost polished form a few hours later. We were all blown away by the work put into this.

Morecaucusnyc

DOES MICHAEL MULGREW BELIEVE THAT OUR TEACHERS’ WORKING CONDITIONS ARE OUR STUDENTS’ LEARNING CONDITIONS?

Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. This has been MORE’s stance since our inception. We understand that there is a relationship between the erosion of our rights as workers and the erosion of quality education in our city over the past 10 years.

A few days ago, on the UFT website, Michael Mulgrew used our slogan in a piece defending his actions in the ongoing battle over teacher evaluations in New York State. Unfortunately, using our slogan is not the same as believing it. His actions surrounding the evaluation controversy cast serious doubt on whether he considers the learning conditions of our students at all, let alone the working conditions of the teachers he is paid to represent.
By examining the origins of this evaluation fiasco we can see just how much Mulgrew, along with the rest of our union’s leadership, take into consideration our students’ learning conditions. What we consider a fundamental belief is clearly nothing more than an empty slogan to the ruling Unity caucus.

 Read MORE...

And one more from NYC Educator

UFT--Champion of Junk Science