Submitted for publication, November 30, 2018, www.rockawave.com
School Scope: I Don’t
Get It
By Norm Scott
I don’t get it: That
the opposition caucuses in the UFT can’t seem to come together to run against
the ruling party of the UFT – Unity Caucus – which as controlled the union
since its inception almost 60-years ago. So unless there’ s a change, three
groups will be competing for the roughly one quarter of those who bother to
vote against Unity in almost every election, though in the high schools the
opposition vote is generally over 50%, which has allowed the opposition to win
the seven high school executive board seats. UFT elections every three years
are stacked in favor of Unity, especially due to the potential votes of
retirees, who are happy campers who have left their classroom concerns far
behind. They might as well not waste their time running at all, which perfectly
suits me. The UFT is fundamentally a one-party system and we should treat it
that way. I say boycott the elections,
which by the way, 70% of the members do anyway by not bothering to vote in the
first place. Hmmm, maybe they figured it all out way before I did.
I do get that
hundreds of UFT retirees threw themselves into the midterms and made a
difference in a number of Democratic Party victories, with some of the biggest
coming in the NY State Senate which flipped away from the Republicans. We can
only hope we see some of the education deforms that both parties have supported
begin to slip away. The charter industrial-complex tossed loads of money the
Republican way, hoping to get the current cap on charters in NYC lifted. If the
Dems end up selling out on this issue (like de Blasio sold out softly to
charters after running against charters in his first election) they will pay a
stiff back-tracking price.
I don’t get it
that 90% of Republicans support Trump, whose 45% popularity is at its highest.
It seems that 75% of the people on the west end of Rockaway voted for Trump. I
looked around the crowded polling station when I voted straight Democratic
ticket for the first time (well, almost straight. I couldn’t vote for Cuomo so
I went for former Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Minor). I ran into some fellow
liberals who looked around furtively and showed
me their crossed fingers. I watched the issues raised by local
Republicans in recent campaigns and I wonder about Republican values. Did any
of them even talk about climate change to those who live on the very edge of
threatened communities? Or do they support the fossil fuel industry’s profit
grubbing at the expense of all of us? Do they talk about the fundamental
anti-union positions of the Republican Party, which supports the idea that
corporations are people too and it is a fair fight to have the individual
worker have to stand up against them without the institutional support of a
union? And as you can tell by my opening, I’m not a union acolyte.
I don’t get the
85% evangelical support for Trump over the issue of the unborn when he clearly
doesn’t give much of a crap for the born.
Norm’s column will be born again next week while he keeps
blogging at ednotesonline.com
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6 comments:
The are obsessed with packing the courts with right wing ideologues and they have been largely successful thus far. Climate change and quality of life issues are not on their radar.
Look at the spreading anti neoliberal uprising in France . These are the working class. Banker Macron and the Brussels dictators have been exposed.
Could be both left and right.
They are anti globalists. Civil war is coming to Europe.
A full blown nationalist uprising is underway in France. It is already spreading to Holland and Sweden
Here’s something no one will write about - the sun is acting strangely and if it continues we’ll all be praying for global warming. I’ve looked at the data.
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