“Speaker Menin is asking for 20 people to be outside with Para Respect signs, so the mayor and others can see them as they enter,” read the email, which urged members to sign up to rally outside the venue for about two hours before Mamdani’s event started. The email, which indicated Menin put in the last-minute request to UFT President Michael Mulgrew, was sent to dozens of paraprofessionals and looped in two high-ranking union officials — Michael Sill, the secretary of the UFT and a top aide to Mulgrew, and Priscilla Castro, the chair of the UFT’s paraprofessional chapter — according to a person with knowledge of the message who was granted anonymity to discuss the private communication....
A spokesperson for the UFT said the rep who sent the message was misinformed and likely confused the Sunday protest for a larger pro-pay raise bill rally that’s supposed to take place in the coming weeks......Politico
Paras being used as pawns by Mulgrew
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
The leaked email is another sign of internal dissatisfaction in the Unity cult. Last night at exec board Vacarro made sure she said they had a person on the stage supporting Mamdani at his 100 day event. Call it Counter balance, but they only had one person supporting Mamdani while trying to make it look like rank and file paras were outside protesting and not orchestrated by Menin and Mulgrew?
I heard this about Julie Menin before she became City Council President: She wants to be mayor and will stab anyone in the back to get there. She's also a millionaire.
My guess is she is aiming to create a mess for Mamdani and set herself up for a mayoral run in 2029 in case he falters. And knowing the center anti-left politics of the Unity/UFT hierarchy, expect our union leaders to be complicit despite their backing Mamdani when it was clear he would win. They received a lot of pushback for the endorsement from the more conservative members.
Don't expect the love fest to last, Also note -- Menin and Mulgrew have a close relationship.
The issue here is the money the UFT is pushing for paras, a push that comes outside contract negotiations and would be non-pensionable.
Mamdani does not support outside the contract arrangements, something I can agree with. What's to stop the next mayor from taking away these raises? I view class size laws the same way. If they were in the contract there would be no negotiations about delays. Make Fix Para Pay a permanent part of the contract. In the UFT election ABC made this point and was attacked by the Unity crowd which apparently is OK with outside the contract deals.
Let's also point out that the push on the para raise came because the Fix Para Pay slate won the chapter election with 75% of the vote. Mulgrew was smart enough to come up with the push for more money to counter FPP, which was allied with ABC. I believe that Mulgrew move cost ABC para votes. And the Mulgrew reversal on forcing retirees into MedAdv probably cost ABC a batch of retiree votes.
Norm
Menin makes early trouble for Mamdani
The Council speaker has been increasingly critical of the mayor. It could be just the beginning.
An internal union email obtained by POLITICO indicates Menin asked the United Federation of Teachers to send around 20 people to the Knockdown Center in Queens to highlight proposed legislation — opposed by the mayor and backed by the union — that would give a pay hike to teaching aides known as paraprofessionals. Mamdani believes any pay hikes should go through the contract negotiation process.
“Speaker Menin is asking for 20 people to be outside with Para Respect signs, so the mayor and others can see them as they enter,” read the email, which urged members to sign up to rally outside the venue for about two hours before Mamdani’s event started.
The email, which indicated Menin put in the last-minute request to UFT President Michael Mulgrew, was sent to dozens of paraprofessionals and looped in two high-ranking union officials — Michael Sill, the secretary of the UFT and a top aide to Mulgrew, and Priscilla Castro, the chair of the UFT’s paraprofessional chapter — according to a person with knowledge of the message who was granted anonymity to discuss the private communication.
“Please when responding, rely [sic] all so that Michael and Pricilla [sic] will know of your reply,” the message specified.
Neither Menin nor the United Federation of Teachers denied the authenticity of the email. However, they said there were no discussions about protesting Mamdani’s 100-day speech and insisted the missive was a miscommunication.
“This is patently false. Neither the speaker nor anyone in our office had any communication with the UFT regarding this event, and we’ve had no knowledge of it,” Council spokesperson Henry Robins said in a statement.
Before I go off to the UFT monthly retiree chapter executive board meeting, I have to point out that any UFT retiree can attend, either in person or by zoom. There are always some nice sandwiches. For some reason the RTC leadership doesn't like to share this information, so I will:
-
Pension fund re-amortization and/or pension obligation bond resolution (tentative)
- Buffer Zone resolution
- Affordable Housing resolution
