DA Today: Hiding Mulgrew in Plain Sight - Scripting, Rehearsals. Shutting down critics: Internal polling on Mulgrew not good

Autocracy is autocracy, whether in Russia or 52 Broadway.

Unity has a new campaign strategy.... 60, or 130 or 200 thousand glossy flyers to United Federation of Teachers members. And you know who’s mug was missing? Mulgrew’s. His name’s not on there, at least on the teacher ones. I mean, it’s not a surprise they won’t let him debate. If he had a huge lead a debate costs nothing, makes you look open, confident. But this election they are shaky, and not confident in his performance when he doesn’t control the chair. But leaving his grin off tens of thousands of leaflets? ... people are so angry at him, some of that anger gets turned into anger at the UFT, which is bad for all of us......... 

Jon Halabi, Campaign Strategy: hide Mulgrew

I was going to blog about how Unity leaflets and shills are hiding Mulgrew by not mentioning him but damn, Jonathan beat me to it with his incisive post.

They may have even done some internal polling. They would have discovered what every teacher knows: Michael Mulgrew is not very popular. 

I had some confirmation through various sources that they have done internal polling and it ain't good for Mulgrew. I'd be shocked if you saw him run again in 2025.

One place they can't hide Mulgrew is at the monthly UFT Delegate Assembly, which insiders tell us is the most stressful thing for Mulgrew - and was for Randi too. After all, despite almost total Unity dominance of the DA, even a few critical voices scare the hell out of the Unity hierarchy in even a semi-open forum. And Mulgrew is particularly bad at spontaneous. In the past he used to make numerous visits to schools. I haven't heard of any at all, even to Unity friendly schools.

After his bad performances in October and November, Unity has tightened things up to totally shut out non-Unity voices, which prompted his opponent Camille Eterno to call a point of order as a form of protest for shutting down ABU - All But Unity. And by the way -- it is not even much rank and file Unity but almost all people in salary who get to speak.

Scripting, Unity speakers bureau, practice, practice, practice

We hear from inside the fortress that they actually run DA practice sessions with live bodies in the actual hall - twice. In fact at this very moment Mulgrew may be practicing where to look - maybe with a seating chart - to review the questions he will be asked to eat up those ten minutes. Unity will toss on some motion to eat up the ten minute motion period. 

 

And of course Mulgrew will filibuster for an hour -- practice that report Mike, including the tepid attempts at humor.

 

And this time they will be ready for interruptions with a finger on the remote mics to shut them down. 

 

If a motion manages to slip through, there is always a "call the question" Unity hack ready when given a signal -- like Leroy Barr taking off his glasses. 

You see autocracy is autocracy, whether in Russia or 52 Broadway.

 

More from Jonathan:

He’s taking the blame for Unity mishandling the pandemic, sending teachers into unsafe conditions, not backing us enough, or soon enough, inventing “instructional lunch.” He’s taking the blame for sucking up to Andrew Cuomo, looking like a dishrag instead of a union leader. He’s taking the blame for the UFT getting pummeled in the Spring 21 primaries – and Adams – one of the two guys we wanted to stop, becoming Mayor. And he’s taking the blame, despite Unity trying to keep it out of the news, for Unity and the MLC trying to privatize retirees’ Medicare.

In any case, they are hiding him.

They will try to hide Mulgrew at today's DA. There will be many people taking notes on the DA to assure an unbiased report so look for them over the next few days.

 I will be outside with RA people supporting OT/PT protests,

Retiree Advocate Outside March 23 UFT DA 

Stop by and say hello. I will be the guy wearing a Mulgrew mask.