Only the left can organize? MORE evidence to the contrary -- .... an esteemed colleague in ICEUFT.
Now it is time for all of us to come forward to join the effort to repeal the evaluation law and tell the world we have had ENOUGH! .... ICEUFT blogThe always awesome Roseann McCosh sent James and I a wonderful little note earlier today about an action 50 teachers at her school, PS 8x, took this morning. This school is not a hot bed of left-wing activists. In fact, quite the opposite. Roseanne did sign up 30 members of her staff to join MORE in the 2016 election. So PS 8 on the whole supported MORE in spite of its left wing politics.
If I had to name one of the leading organizers in the UFT, Roseanne, a former Unity Caucus CL who saw the crap early on, would be at the top of my list.
When we hear of red state teacher revolts we often find that the militancy rises out of the ranks, not from an organized push from left wing activists or union officials. In fact, many in the red states are not left but center, and even right.
Some at PS 8 refereed to MORE as "those hippy dippies." But if they feel even a leftist group is fighting for them and against the Unity machine, politics doesn't matter. I wish more MOREs felt the same about people on the center-right instead of viewing them as deplorable(s).
Here in NYC, while there are many issues of concern, there are certain push button issues, like Danielson. There has been a lot of talk in MORE over the past 6 weeks about taking the kind of action PS 8x took. The red state revolts and the action at PS 8x are examples that my esteemed colleague in ICEUFT is on to something. (Also see: Why We Choose to Leave MORE - John Giambalvo and Mike Schirtzer).
Hello Norm and James,
I've attached 2 pictures. This morning approximately 50 UFT members stood in front of our school building for 10 minutes as an exercise in solidarity. We decided at our last union meeting to start with a gathering in front just to show unity as union members. We didn't want to scare anyone away by getting too militant too quickly. A couple of signs were made by one teacher and when everyone saw them they quickly got on board with “End Danielson” and teachers have had “Enough.”
Once we realized everyone liked the ideas behind the signs we got everyone to chant, "End Danielson Now" "Teachers have had enough" "Paras have had enough" "What have we had? ENOUGH!" etc…
My CL made a point that even though I wasn’t rated under Danielson I was leading the chant. I then called out the names of the other staff members who, like me, are not rated under Danielson but still chanted. Danielson Teachers applauded these staff members and thanked them for showing solidarity. We ended by entering the building together in a moment of silence to mourn our profession. Mourning our profession is why we wore black.We are going to try to do this again next week.
I thought one of you would post about it on your blog. The teacher elected to be CL next year is holding the END Danielson sign. (I’m holding the ENOUGH sign).
Hope all is well with you both.
Roseanne
From what I saw of the proposal published at South Bronx there is a call for militancy but attached to no specific contract demands. Typical of these people. PS 8 on the other hand actually had a demand on a real issue that has disturbed them and they acted based on that, not om some theory of militancy.
ReplyDeleteWhat? Talk to colleagues and fellow union members who might have political views different from yours, and perhaps even right-wing views? And who might even have something worthwhile to suggest about UFT strategy or tactics?
ReplyDeleteGod forbid! It's so much more comforting to one-up each other about how anti-racist you are, and to use that as a weapon against people you have unrelated political disagreements with...