Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Oct. 12 12:15 PM - Marianne and MulgrewCare Truck at Two Must Show Healthcare Rallies Wednesday - City Council and Delegate Assembly -Turnout numbers count

If you are a retiree, tomorrow is the day for you to show up and be counted at one or both events.

The city council will be voting soon on the future of your health care. Tomorrow 12:15, press conference around 1 at City Hall, followed at 3:30 a few blocks away at 52 Broadway where we show numbers to Mulgrew and crew. Keep the pressure on both the politicians and UFT leadership.

For working UFT members, this is the first delegate assembly of the year. Show Mulgrew you won't accept healthcare cuts.

Reports are coming in on new deductibles and co-pays. If we are silent it will only get worse.

Norm

Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022

I posted yesterday about the two rallies coming up on Wednesday:

Rally Wednesday Oct. 12 Protest Changes in NYC Admin Code as NYC Firefighters Union Push New York City Council to Stop Messing with Retirees’ Healthcare

We hear the big screen truck will be joining us with Mulgrew videos following us downtown on Broadway. We have sound and speakers - and Marianne Pizzitola will speak at both rallies - a bunch of UFT war horses met with her on zoom last week to fill her in on how the UFT operates. Her videos below are a sample.

Here is a new leaflet focused on the DA.

Here is the posting by The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees

NYC Employee & Retiree Benefits at risk

Dear Current Employees (those on the job!) and Retirees,

We want you to know that the Municipal Labor Council has agreed with the City to sell off our protections and health benefits by trying to legislate a change to Administrative Code 12-126, the law that guarantees our healthcare and that we won our case on. If you think your union might be one of the ones not telling you the truth, you should read our brief fact sheet linked below and then head to our website and FaceBook page. We have a team of lawyers and generations of retirees, former union leaders, and commissioners, and attorneys, and deputies, behind us. Learn the truth behind the message you are hearing.

We are asking everyone who cherishes the healthcare benefits they earned to come to City Hall and let the City Council hear and see you!   Urge them NOT TO CHANGE Administrative Code 12-126 and protect us from those urging changes to a law that has protected us since 1967.

We then will head down the block to UFT HQ and tell Michael Mulgrew of the UFT to keep his hands off our benefits and stop selling them for his own wages!

We want full transparency in the accounting of the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund and the Retiree Health Benefit Trust! The time is now to stop using funds that were meant to protect us as slush funds.

PLEASE COME OUT on Wednesday, October 12^th, 12:15 pm at City Hall before we head to UFT HQ at 3:30.   See the attached flyer for detailed instructions.

IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT WE HAVE A STRONG SHOWING SO THE COUNCIL KNOWS WE MEAN BUSINESS!

LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE!

Here is the RALLY INFO FLYER AND THE ISSUE FACT SHEET

We are also including our most recent videos on our YouTube Channel

Debunking more UFT misinformation. It never ends.

The Friday Night Q&A

More UFT misinformation

The Unions are being lied to by the MLC

Active Unions need to listen! Mulgrew doesn't want you to hear this! This change of law will affect ALL EMPLOYEES too!!

Active workers! more helpful info!

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Your friends, and retirees in SOLIDARITY...

The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees

**************

Donations are Needed! It is fall, copays, inflation, etc, but we need to keep donations coming in to fund our October litigation!

TO DONATE TO THE LEGAL FUND

Donation Instructions to Support Our Class Action Suit Against the City To Protect Our Retiree Healthcare:

We worked decades for our benefits! Let’s make sure the City and the MLC don’t take them away!

A suggested $25 Donation* will help start the fight to keep our current benefits. Give more if you can, and/or often! If you cannot meet the minimum suggested donation, we appreciate whatever you can give towards this fight for our benefits. We also added the option to make your donation recurring (monthly) as was requested.

The fundraiser group is incorporated as a Non-Profit. ALL proceeds go to fund the organization and its legal challenge. Volunteer retirees are running this effort. Our 501C3 is pending.

TO DONATE, HERE ARE 4 SIMPLE WAYS!

1.Zelle using email NYCOrgofpublicserviceretirees@gmail.com

2. Make your check out to:
NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees PO Box 941
Venice, FL 34284 (our treasurer lives in FL)

3. Or click on this Paypal link:
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=Q4VWJEYVJ9HTW&Z3&fbclid=IwAR0pEOc51x9xhc-CBb8vqAIkX97Bgg1Z02f1r9gQh9S3dOsVmAdob5jBbw8

4. We Now Accept Donations via VENMO

VENMO is a Phone App or can be used on a PC or Tablet
You can download and install the Phone App from the Android Play Store or Apple App Store. There may be fees involved using this method.

Our ID is: @NYCRetirees

If you are on this list, it is because you subscribed to hear what we are doing as an organization that represents all NYC Municipal workers in protecting their Health benefits in retirement. Currently, we have a FACEBOOK page located here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/888622578669131

If you are not on FACEBOOK, we will be updating you here. And Check our website for FAQ www.nycretirees.org

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter and pass this to a friend to sign up too!

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"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Online

Ed Notes Extended

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Oct. 12 12:15 PM - Marianne and MulgrewCare Truck at Two Must Show Healthcare Rallies Wednesday - City Council and Delegate Assembly -Turnout numbers count

Rally Wednesday Oct. 12 Protest Changes in NYC Admin Code as NYC Firefighters Union Push New York City Council to Stop Messing with Retirees’ Healthcare

NYC Employee & Retiree Benefits at risk

Your friends, and retirees in SOLIDARITY...

The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees

**************

Donations are Needed! It is fall, copays, inflation, etc, but we need to keep donations coming in to fund our October litigation!

No comments:

Ed Notes Extended

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Oct. 12 12:15 PM - Marianne and MulgrewCare Truck at Two Must Show Healthcare Rallies Wednesday - City Council and Delegate Assembly -Turnout numbers count

NYC Employee & Retiree Benefits at risk

Your friends, and retirees in SOLIDARITY... The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees

**************

Donations are Needed! It is fall, copays, inflation, etc, but we need to keep donations coming in to fund our October litigation!

No comments:

Your friends, and retirees in SOLIDARITY...

The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees