Unity Caucus Slugs Go Ballistic Defending Their Loyalty Oath

To hear you guys complain about UNITY voting in a block when your own national caucus does is hypocritical. Your so called "opposition" caucus who preaches complete individual independence will vote as a block both locally and nationally.Tell your followers how all UCORE(rank and file caucuses) voted for Randi, Michael and other UNITY candidates. Time to speak the truth... https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=15921757&postID=3121675670905590265

I've been busy so I am just catching up on the comments by Unity slugs on a bunch of topics over at the ICE blog. There's a lot of the usual intentional misinformation and explanation of democracy, Unity Caucus style.

The slug is trying to say that our fellow caucuses in Chicago and other cities vote in a block based on their own version of a loyalty oath. Here's the slug's partial list:

UCORE is the national movement behind CORE in CTU, UP in UTLA , MORE in NY and the caucuses in power in Boston, Portland and St. Paul among others

Let's say they do vote in a block -- but the question is are they told how to vote and then punished if they don't vote the way they are told to?

In top-down Unity that is how it works. How do I know? Unity people tell me. I once even got a call from a Unity person during the meeting of the 750 before they left to the convention telling me how they were told to vote. There was not discussion of the issues or of having the caucus itself decide democratically which issues to support. Even if they voted as a block that is still more democratic than what they do now.

I might explain to the Unity slug(s) that democracy means much more than a vote. If the caucus of delegates engage in a democratic decision making process and then decide to vote as a block but allowing the leeway to vote the way they want individually that is a different kettle of fish than how Unity operates along the lines of the communist party of China.

Now did the Chicago TU engage in a debate that was bottom-up and not top-down dictation? I don't know for sure as there is conflicting info coming out of there. And if Chicago TU/CORE is not engaging in bottom-up unionizing and is morphing into a Unity-like caucus with loyalty oaths and top-down decision making then it would be going against UCORE core beliefs and would deserve to be criticized - and as more info flows in I would do so myself.

But our main point of contention is that the high school teachers voted for MORE in the election and there are no delegates to AFT and NYSUT representing them. The other unions mentioned have a lot more flexibility in their elections with room for different caucuses to win a share of elected positions including delegates.

For instance we met someone from Boston who told us they held their elections for delegates separately from officers and retirees don't vote like in the UFT where retirees don't vote for many position. If we dropped the retiree vote from the UFT election the MORE/NA % would jump from 20% to close to 30% and the teacher portion would be closer to a third. And if you add all anti-Unity vote totals in the election it comes to over 12,000 voters not represented at state and national councils.

These are the points the slugs try to avoid by throwing red herrings into the discussion.    

In the Chicago union where the CORE caucus seems to be the only game in town -- no opposition ran against them in the past 2 elections - which might tell you something.

They had the right to send 150 delegates - and George and Sharon Schmidt were among them. Now if you know George he has been an open critic of Karen Lewis and some of the Chicago TU leadership. If George had been in Unity he would be purged. If he is purged from CORE due to pieces like this below then that would begin to put teeth into the Unity contention that UCORE locals are just like Unity.

George recently wrote this piece charging the CTU with taking top-down action:

It's now been more than a year since the Chicago Teachers Union's contract expired and a faction of the union leadership declared, through the words of union president Karen Lewis, that the union would continue to surrender the contractual rights of its dues-paying members on behalf of building a so-called "movement" that was never voted upon by anyone.  It's now been more than a year since the Chicago Teachers Union's contract expired and a faction of the union leadership declared, through the words of union president Karen Lewis, that the union would continue to surrender the contractual rights of its dues-paying members on behalf of building a so-called "movement" that was never voted upon by anyone.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=6480&section=Article

Yes Unity Slug(s) George was one of those delegates that you accuse of being lockstep loyalty oathers. In Unity you can get tossed for not liking Hillary's pant suits.

AFTER BURN
I do have criticisms of UCORE which met this past weekend in North Carolina - I didn't go for a few reasons not the least of which is that there seems to be no stomach in UCORE for a national battle with Randi and Unity.