UFT leaders come from a less radical socialist background that was shaped by the cold war and the 1930s battles in the teacher union in NYC between hard-core communists and socialists.
Despite the AFT Ex Bd including Bernie Sanders as one of its three recommended candidates, activists on the left in the UFT - which is the engine that moves the AFT - know full well that the historical anti-left stance of the union since its founding 60 years ago has not disappeared. As recently as 2007, the ruling Unity Caucus put out a red-baiting hit job on the opposition presidential candidate for being a socialist. Since the opposition to Unity has always included a strong left component, even in the recent incarnation of the opposition as MORE (before The Faction hit the self-destruct button), we still were hearing hints of red-baiting.
We saw at the debate the other day when Bloomberg called Bernie a communist that there is the tendency to lump all people on the left in one band - Marxixt-Leninist revolutionary socialists - which is very different from Bernie's democratic socialism which I interpret more as social democracy which is a European model, especially Scandinavia, far from Marxist-Leninists. Now I do believe that Bernie decades ago probably flirted with M-L brands of socialism as I and others did. But Bernie needs to
In March 2007 Ed Notes reported on the attack on ICE-TJC presidential candidate Kit Wainer who was running against now AFT president Randi Weingarten.
Unity Propaganda Machine Treads in Dangerous Territory, March 14, 2007
From its very founding, the UFT has had an anti-left strain in its DNA. And no matter how Bernie brands himself, and his brand of socialism should be amenable to our politics, in reality our leaders see Bernie's history as being a sign that he is not to be trusted. Signs that he has flirted with more radical elements in the past with his support for the 1980s version of the Sandinistas being a clue, along with some kind words for Castro. I and many others supported the Sandinistas when they overthrew a vicious dictatorship and opposed the Reagan Iran-Contra deal to overthrow them. So most progressives supported the Sandinistas as the alternative to the old American-supported dictatorship where American nuns being raped was considered OK. Are we surprised that there were people in the streets yelling death to the yanqi that propped up an vicious dictatorship? And we hear even liberals talking about how undemocratic the Sandinistas were - but especially bad today with its own form of dictatorship under Ortega. I think we have learned to be very careful about undemocratic socialists. (Yes Virginia, I have personal experience with that type.)
As for Castro, many on the left opposed the non-democratic nature of Cuba while praising certain aspects like medical care and education --- I visited in 1978 and also praised some of what I saw. The other big charge against Bernie is his honeymoon in the Soviet Union in the 80s - horrors. Many Americans went there - and his comments that there are things we could learn from them are not that outrageous -- like they did have universal health care and an education system that was much praised. Too bad they learned more from us in terms of oligarchic capitalism which led to Putinism and then we learned from them to go to Trumpism.
Bernie need to emphasize the democratic aspect of democratic socialism vs the capitalistic socialism where government flows money to the top 10% instead of the bottom 90%.
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