UFT Resistance Caucuses: We Need Them, But Why Not One Big tent?

We really need to just merge the opposition caucuses into one United for Change caucus.... comment on a chat

 

That was original intent of MORE from the ice perspective in 2010 when talks began.  As time went on others in MORE did not want a big tent, more of a boutique caucus which alone cannot win power in the UFT. So I gave up now on one big caucus and went back to forming election coalitions of caucuses and independents ... Norm

Reply: As great as that sounds, I don’t think it’s realistic. There are some issues that I don’t see people agreeing on. The union is just way too big for that. Ideally there would be a few healthy caucuses, like most democracies have a few relatively strong parities

Even with healthy caucuses there is competition for those few activists and a focus on caucus building. Another model would be one big caucus with sub caucuses internally that allowed for internal debates. DSA has that. I actually made a similar proposal at the first big More meeting. Recognize we start out with internal factions....Norm

 

Reply: It seems like one opposition caucus and one caucus that maintains power would pose the same problems as any two party system.

I began this series on UFT caucuses with:

• The Caucus Role in UFT in Elections: The ICE Experience: The Caucus model works very well for Unity over 62 years. Not so well for the other caucuses.

Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024

• Recent (past 30 years) caucuses in the UFT: New Action, ICE, TJC, RA, MORE, PAC, New Direction, TAC - When caucuses begin to fail they often look to merge or form new caucuses.

• How open is a caucus to new people? Does it have guard rails for membership? Do people have to agree to caucus fundamentals before becoming a member? Caucus discipline? Unity is known for its guardrails and discipline.
  

So why don't all the groups form one big caucus?  There are major differences in how each caucus operates.

 

I've been a critic of caucuses even when I was in one, some of which I helped found. I tried to see beyond the often narrow confines of a caucus, with their rules and structures, which often (and still does) drive colleagues crazy. That is why I was most comfortable in the more free-flowing ICE, which I and James Eterno sort of ran (I drove him crazy too). But let's face it, there can be no organized resistance to Unity Caucus without caucuses, so love 'em or leave 'em, we need 'em. In fact in today's UFT world, the more the merrier.

 

I'm constantly criticized for looking back to the past. But as an historian of sorts I don't believe you can move forward without learning lessons of the past. In UFT caucus history, there are loads of lessons to be learned. 

 

Currently, there seem to be 3 major caucuses beside Unity: New Action, MORE, and Retiree Advocate, with Solidarity and ICE considered minor compared to where they stood in the election 3 years ago. Daniel Alicea as EONYC last time was a sort of one man caucus but with tremendous outreach. Now he's joined New Action. But ICE and Solidarity still exist in some form.

 

ICE, which ran with TJC in the 2007 and 2010 elections fundamentally gave up official election caucus status to merge into the new MORE in 2011 with the idea to form a big tent. TJC went defunct while ICE continued with a blog, listserve and meetings. ICE was the biggest contingent in MORE at the beginning, with the International Socialists (ISO) being the second. But there were others: NYCORE, Progressive Labor Party, Teachers Unite,  TJC remnants, and non-affiliated.

MORE began with many internal factions and I proposed formal recognition of the factions which would allow differences but keep everyone together for the purpose of building a force to ultimately defeat Unity. That didn't happen.

Some of us in ICE noticed a certain segment of MORE that did not seem to believe in the vision of winning elections; having Unity in power as a foil seemed to fit their needs. Elections were not important, other than as a means to build the caucus and promote an ideology. I could see that point, though if you declare yourself a caucus how to explain not running? While mostly people were on the left, some see union work as a building block to socialism. Others  saw union work in more simpler terms - use power to improve conditions for teachers and students.

After a few years, it became clear there was a division: big tent vs. a narrow ideologically driven one. That faction didn't seem to want to win, arguing that winning was corrupting. Underneath it all was a belief that you must build a caucus with "the right kind of people" that can take power with a "unified vision". Reject people who don't agree with the dominant ideology and only make alliances with those you disagree with when absolutely necessary, but with the goal of jettisoning those alliances when the caucus is strong enough to go it alone.

Ultimately this faction did just that: It jettisoned the ICE members, actually branding the mostly leftists in ICE as right wing, and purified the MORE caucus.

But even that doesn't always work out and divisions over the 2025 UFT election have arisen, but in a new context of the possibility of winning this time, which has created new pressures throughout the Unity resistance movement.

The retiree and para massive victories created the possibility that a unified opposition can actually win. 

For most of the Unity resistance, that was a no-brainer. But the purists, a minority faction in MORE, do not want to win in a united front because that would dilute their political stances and violate their principles. And I respect that. In a recent internal vote, around 125 voted for a united front (but with specific conditions) and 35 voted against.

There is some irony in that minority position, given how often these very same people bow down to their "allies" in Chicago and LA as caucuses that actually took over their unions -- they obviously ran to win - and not initially with a very heavy social justice agenda. Win baby, just win, first and THEN change the union. As a fan of those movements who was involved with them from the early days of 2009, I have never gotten an answer to the contradiction between them and the so-called NYC version of them. I know a guy doing his PhD exploring this issue between Chi/LA and NYC. I hope he illuminates the differences - I see him heading in the direction I lean - Unity Caucus.

And here's the reality: At no point can one caucus actually win a UFT election without making alliances, so that subset of MORE will go on spitting into the wind endlessly. In my early years in MORE I urged the new caucus not to waste resources in running but to use the election to build outreach but the newbies were so excited to run. After the 2013 election, there was a year or two of stagnation - actually a slow decline over the next few years. That always seems to happen between election years.

One of the Retiree Advocate elected delegates, Lois Weiner, recently wrote an article appealing to these dissidents, an article I have some issues with but don't have the time to address them at this point. It seems the philosophy that has been driving MORE also explains the ICE expulsion:

...building the caucus then contending for power (a chronology I’ve advocated in my work about teacher union reform). To some, joining the coalition without having the caucus we want in place seems a violation of principle.

That's a standard position of the election purists in MORE - running in coalition with people not on the same page as you is a violation of principle. The theory of caucus building by reduction or purges, is very standard on the left but a philosophy that has been a proven failure in NYC and leads to a narrow ideologically driven "club" more than a caucus. Put out dog whistles to both keep people away and attract the ones you want. 

The winner is always Unity.

But here is where Lois Weiner makes her appeal to the "don't run" dissidents by differentiating NYC from the other cities:

The vulnerability of the retiree victory in its chapter election makes joining the coalition and building a progressive politics within it all the more urgent.

Proponents of union democracy and social justice teacher unionism should not wait out this election in anticipation of becoming stronger, more unified in shared principles, more democratic in functioning in time for the next election. The RA’s victory forces those who want a more militant, democratic union, in particular activists in the Movement for Rank and File Educators (MORE), a caucus inspired by CORE, to re-think the trajectory exemplified in CORE’s victory and its subsequent transformation of the CTU. CORE had and used the advantage of time we in the UFT do not have, time to build a unified caucus based on shared principles that fuse social justice with protection of economic protections for members, time to organize on its program to contend for leadership in a union election. Context counts. The comparative size of the school systems and their unions, along with decades of Unity’s rule, which has isolated reformers from possible allies in NYSUT, combined with the machine’s almost untrammeled exercise of power, its punishment of opposition and reward of those who take its orders, converge to make reformers’ task qualitatively different in New York than elsewhere, certainly in this country and possibly the world.

Credit to Lois, who I can't wait to see at the DA tomorrow, for seeing a new landscape. But let me point out a flaw that is a myth on the left - that CORE, founded in midst-2008 as a book club and won power in 2010, managed to build a unified caucus in a year and a half when they ran a campaign based on fighting closing schools and high stakes testing and defending teachers against attack and even attracting right wing supporters. MORE is now 14 years old since people first started meeting. If they haven't emulated CORE by now, then when?

MORE had to make an alliance in 2022 after their disastrous decision in 2019 to run alone (my opposition and reporting on that is what got me kicked out) and finish 3rd behind Solidarity and losing an enormous percentage of their 2016 vote. 

A few months later a key voice in that faction approached me at a DA and said, "you were right, Norm, we never should have run. As you warned it took a lot out of us even running a minimalist campaign." The 2019 lesson was learned and MORE joined UFC. And the majority still think that is correct. 

This time, as Lois points out, building a coalition to defeat Unity is even more imperative.

Next: A Way to Win: Offering a Different Paradigm for UFT elections: Less control by caucuses (not their elimination) and more from the rank and file. Plus the remarkable resurgence of the 30-year old New Action Caucus.