Listen: Norm and Bruce joined Daniel on WBAI - History of the UFT - the 80s and 90s

Listen to Inside UFT Politics and History (Part 2), broadcast live on Sat : How The Nation’s Most Powerful Teachers Union Impacted NYC Public Schools from Talk Out of School in Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-out-of-school/id1490313171?i=1000531351597

It was a pleasure joining Bruce Markens on WBAI yesterday on Leonie Haimson's "Talk Out of School" program, with Daniel Alicea hosting and skillfully guiding us through an hour of UFT history covering the 3rd and 4th decades of its existence - the 80s and 90s. This was part 2 of the three part history, each covering two decades. 

In Part 1 in July Leo Casey, a high level UFT and now AFT official - he now heads the Shanker Institute -- joined Daniel and me: Listen to Inside UFT Politics and History (Part 1) : How The Nation’s Most Powerful Teachers Union Impacted NYC Public Schools from Talk Out of School in Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-out-of-school/id1490313171?i=1000529187414

Part 3 will be in September, covering the past 20 years. Despite the many changes we've seen over the 6 decades of UFT history, one thing has been constant: The absolute dominance and control by one party/caucus - Unity, a creation by one of the union founders, Albert Shanker, perhaps his most enduring legacy - creating a political structure that has seemed impregnable.

Bruce, Daniel and I covered a lot of ground, but could have spend many hours drilling down. We began with The Nation at Risk - the Ronald Reagan and neo-liberal ed deform report trashing public schools and teachers - while the impact didn't hit until the 90s and 2000s - think BloomKlein -- Shanker's support for it changed the way teacher unions were able to fight back against the deforms by enlisting the unions as partner and making way for the New Democrats - aping Republicans - like Clinton and late on Obama -- to forge ahead with policies that have often proven to be a disaster.

We spent time delving into internal UFT politics. The rise of a coalition of opposition groups to create a more serious challenge to total Unity control by beginning to win the high schools - which has pretty much continued to current times --- the MORE/NA win in 2016, for example. We talked about Michael Shulman's victory for HS VP -- on the AdCom -- the only time in UFT history that a non-Unity person was elected in 1985 and how Unity challenged his win and forced another election - Trump's Stop the Steal used Unity 85 as a model --- only to see Shulman win by over 60%. Unity changed the constitution a few years later to make all VPs elected by the entire membership - including retirees so this could never happen again.

We talked about Shanker's giving up the presidency of the UFT in 1985 and turning the union over to Sandra Feldman -- in the UFT, the successor is hand-chosen -- like a monarch of sorts. We actually had a few fond memories of Sandy, who in some ways adhered to at least some formalities of democracy in the union. But of course he overall story was suppression of opposition when they could ger away with it,

We talked about the big 13 seat opposition united state in 1991 and Bruce Markens' major victories as the only non-Unity District Rep in the 90s and how his example led to the end of district rep elections by 2002 - that was Randi, not Sandy, who actually could have done the same thing soon after Bruce's election.

A key issue in the 90s was the 1995 contract which was voted down by the membership and our experiences with Giuliani as mayor. We just had time to mention the rise of Randi Weingarten, also a hand-chosen successor, in the 90s but ran out of time before getting to the details. Maybe in Part 3 we can talk about some of the changes she broight to the UFT before leaving in 2009 for the AFT after - guess what - hand choosing her successor, Michael Mulgrew.

And of course a big part of our discussion was charter schools, which was an original idea from Shanker, and how it morphed into a dagger at the heart of teacher unions and public education -- but that issue escalates in the 21st century.

Some or the sources:
 

UFT: 50 Years:  https://www.uft.org/files/attachments/uft-50-years-book.pdf

The Teacher Rebellion by David Selden

https://www.amazon.com/Teacher-Rebellion-David-Selden/dp/0882582356

Schools Against Children: The Case for Community Control

https://www.amazon.com/Schools-Against-Children-Community-Control/dp/0853451621

Blackboard Unions  by Marjorie Murphy

https://www.amazon.com/Blackboard-Unions-AFT-NEA-1900-1980/dp/0801423651/

City Unions: Managing Discontent in New York City  by Mark Meir

https://www.amazon.com/City-Unions-Managing-Discontent-York/dp/0813512298

Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy by Richard Kahlenberg

https://www.amazon.com/Tough-Liberal-Democracy-Columbia-Contemporary/dp/0231134975

 

The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis by Jerald E. Podair

 

https://www.amazon.com/Strike-That-Changed-York-Hill-Brownsville/dp/0300109407

 

Norm Scott and Shanker Inst Head Leo Casey - Inside the History and Politics of the UFT - First Decades - Talk Out of School -

How did the UFT get so old so fast? --- NYC Board of Ed official c. 1970

There were no fisticuffs or even enormous disagreements when Leo and I appeared on the Leonie Haimson WBAI show now co-hosted by Daniel Alicea of Educators of NYC. Daniel and Leonie are alternating programs and make a great team from a parent/comunity activist and current 25 year teacher and activist in the UFT point of view.

I was a guest on the Leonie Haimson WBAI radio program, now co-hosted by Daniel Alicea, this past Saturday along with a former sparring partner, Randi assistant and now head of the Shanker Institute Leo Casey. That was part 1 of a history of the UFT. Part 2 is in two weeks and I hope we can get our (the retiree healthcare) situation discussed as an outcome of lack of democracy in the UFT. We are hoping to get a well-known voice of opposition to Unity for decades but he'd kill me if I revealed his name because he hasn't agreed yet.

But I had a lot more to say about UFT history and the moves made to restrict democracy as Shanker took over in 1964. The leading quote above is a theme I wanted to flesh out further. How the UFT changed from a pretty democratic organization in its first years under the leadership if first president Charlie Cogan who was pretty conservative and non militant but believe in the will of the members - so he was opposed to the first strikes in 1960 and 1962 but the  militant Del Ass voted to strike and he supported them. Shanker began his power move in 1962 and Unity caucus became his instrument and he would have challenged Cogan in 1964 if Dave Seldin hadn't managed to convince Cogan to get out of the way. The late 60s disasters may be tied to the restricted democracy and one man rule under Shanker.

The other issue not explored was the Shanker support for the Vietnam War and the successful attempts to stifle opposition, which was considerable. Shanker didn't want to ruin is chances for advancement in the AFL and right wing mentor George Meany. Maybe in Part 2.

https://talk-out-of-school.simplecast.com/episodes/inside-uft-politics-and-history-part-1-how-the-nations-most-powerful-teachers-union-impacted-nyc-public-schools-x7yfuvOR

Episode Summary

Daniel Alicea was joined by two lifelong and beloved UFT union activists and leaders, Leo Casey and Norm Scott. They took us through a decade by decade overview of the significant developments within the United Federation of Teachers union and how these impacted public education of NYC schools, from 1960 to 1980. This is part 1 of a three part series entitled: Inside UFT politics and history: How The Nation’s Most Powerful Teachers Union Impacted NYC Public Schools Part 1 took us through the 1960s and 1970's. Parts 2 and 3 will likely be broadcast in August or in the fall. Leo Casey is the Assistant to the AFT president, Randi Weingarten. He is also the former executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute. Leo, is a lifelong educator whose career spans his tenure as a high school teacher to being a past UFT Vice-President. Casey has recently published a book called The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective. In this book, Leo Casey addresses how the unexpected wave of recent teacher strikes has had a dramatic impact on American public education, teacher unions, and the larger labor movement. Casey explains how this uprising was not only born out of opposition to government policies that underfunded public schools and deprofessionalized teaching, but was also rooted in deep-seated changes in the economic climate, social movements, and, most importantly, educational politics. Norm Scott, has been a dissident voice within the UFT, who served as an outspoking union activist, chapter leader, and delegate during his 35 year NYC elementary school teaching career and, even now, as a retiree. In 1997, he launched an independent publication, Education Notes, a newsletter for NYC teachers which he turned into the EdNotes blog, in 2006. He is a founding member of various UFT caucuses such as, Independent Community of Educators (ICE) and Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), to the now defunct, Grassroots Education Movement (GEM).

Episode Notes

-------------------

Resources:

- UFT: 50 Years:  https://www.uft.org/files/attachments/uft-50-years-book.pdf

- The Teacher Rebellion by David Selden

https://www.amazon.com/Teacher-Rebellion-David-Selden/dp/0882582356

- Schools Against Children: The Case for Community Control by Anne Rubenstein

https://www.amazon.com/Schools-Against-Children-Community-Control/dp/0853451621

- Blackboard Unions  by Marjorie Murphy

https://www.amazon.com/Blackboard-Unions-AFT-NEA-1900-1980/dp/0801423651/

- City Unions: Managing Discontent in New York City  by Mark Meir

https://www.amazon.com/City-Unions-Managing-Discontent-York/dp/0813512298

- Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy by Richard Kahlenberg

https://www.amazon.com/Tough-Liberal-Democracy-Columbia-Contemporary/dp/0231134975

- The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis by Jerald E. Podair

https://www.amazon.com/Strike-That-Changed-York-Hill-Brownsville/dp/0300109407

Here is James' report on ICE blog:

NORM SCOTT AND LEO CASEY DISCUSS UFT HISTORY ON THE RADIO

Daniel Alicea is a New York City middle school teacher. He has formed a UFT group called Educators of NYC. Daniel is now one of the hosts of WBAI's Talk out of School. He alternates weekly with Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters. The program is live on the radio every Saturday at 1:00 P.M. In addition, every show is archived and available as a podcast. 

Please take an hour out of your day and listen closely to Saturday's show as past UFT High School Vice President and now AFT leader Leo Casey discusses the history of the UFT with our own Norm Scott. They cover the 1960s and 70's. Believe it or not, there is a great deal of agreement between the two longtime activists, Casey from the inside and Norm as a dissident but there is real disagreement on the roots of the anti-democratic nature of the UFT.

Norm at ICE email:

I was a guest on the Leonie Haimson WBAI radio program, now co-hosted by Daniel Alicea, this past Saturday along with a former sparring partner, Randi assistant and now head of the Shanker Institute Leo Casey. That was part 1 of a history of the UFT. Part 2 is in two weeks and I hope we can get our (the retiree healthcare) situation discussed as an outcome of lack of democracy in the UFT. We are hoping to get a well-known voice of opposition to Unity for decades but he'd kill me if I revealed his name because he hasn't agreed yet.

I think I know who that person is (definitely not me) and if this individual does the show, it will be just as good if not better than the first one. I wonder who Unity puts up next, if anyone.

On another note, Thursday, July 22, ICEUFT will be meeting via Zoom at noon. More details will follow.

How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party - Clintons Led the Way in Attack on Teacher Unions

This article is so good I want to print it out and eat it. Thanks to Patrick Walsh for sending this along.

Jennifer Berkshire in an in depth exposure of the Clintons' role and neo-lib Dems in leading ed deform attack on teachers and their unions, which was also chronicled as a positive by the Richard Kahlenberg book on Al Shanker (Tough Liberal), who was a Clinton partner --- instead of opposing he had the AFT/UFT work with them. [See Vera and my review in New Politics of the book where we refer to Shanker as a Ruthless Neocon].

To begin to chronicle the origin of the Democrats’ war on their own—the public school teachers and their unions that provide the troops and the dough in each new campaign cycle to elect the Democrats—is to enter murky territory. The Clintons were early adopters; tough talk against Arkansas’ teachers, then among the poorest paid in the country, was a centerpiece of Bill’s second stint as Governor of Arkansas.

.... as America ponders the mounting economic disequlibriums that gave rise to the Trump insurgency, concerned plutocrats can all agree on one key article of faith: what is holding back the poor and minority children who figure so prominently in the glossy brochures of charter school advocates is not the legacy of racist housing policy or mass incarceration or a tax system that hoovers up an ever growing share of income into the pockets of the wealthy, but schoolteachers and their unions.... Jennifer Berkshire, https://thebaffler.com/latest/ed-reform-ate-the-democrats-berkshire

This is a must read article -- for a decade we have been talking about the Clinton role in opening up the war on teachers back in Arkansas - as I said but can't say often enough, Al Shanker, head of the AFT and UFT joined them as a partner and led the way for teacher unions to walk into the world of ed deform for 30 years instead of opposing it and Randi followed along in spades -- the classic frog being boiled. Unfortunately Jennifer doesn't go the role the union played in this article. [Note to Randi haters who call her a sellout and who wish for the days of Shanker -- she was chosen by Shanker and Feldman for that very reason.]

The disappearing black teacher linked to ed deform [one third of NYC public schools have no black or Latino teachers today.]

Civil rights groups fiercely opposed the most controversial feature of the Clintons’ reform agenda—competency tests for teachers—on the grounds that Black teachers, many of whom had attended financially starved Black colleges, would disproportionately bear their brunt.

We saw the classic of ed deform was a disappearing of black teachers, many from the communities and their replacement by temp TFA white inexperienced people. In NYC alone thousands of teachers of color were fired 20 years ago over licensing issues related to the test teachers had to take. I knew some excellent teachers in my school who fell into this category.

We know ed notes readers so pissed at the Dem party role in ed deform they wouldn't vote for Hillary even though it will be proven that was also suicidal. Reason? The Dem Party centrists are being forced to back off ed deform -- witness Cuomo - even though if given a choice of him or Trump I would have a very hard time.

Here is another quote about a leading Dem:

Osborne told an interviewer that teachers unions belong in the same category with segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace. “They’re actually doing what George Wallace did, standing in the schoolhouse door, denying opportunity to poor minority kids.” To document their perfidy, Osborne cited the opposition of teachers unions in Massachusetts last year to Question Two—a ballot initiative proposing dramatic charter school expansion. Voters rejected the measure by nearly two to one—the same ratio, as it happens, by which wealthy pro-charter donors dwarfed the union spending that so upset Osborne.

Jennifer ties other leading Dems into the neoliberal deform movement

By the early 1980s, there was already a word for turning public institutions upside down: neoliberalism. Before it degenerated into a flabby insult, neoliberal referred to a self-identified brand of Democrat, ready to break with the tired of dogmas of the past. “The solutions of the thirties will not solve the problems of the eighties,” wrote Randall Rothenberg in his breathless 1984 paean to this new breed, whom he called simply The Neoliberals. His list of luminaries included the likes of Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, Gary Hart and Al Gore (for the record, Gore eschewed the neoliberal label in favor of something he liked to call “neopopulism”). In Rothenberg’s telling, the ascendancy of the neoliberals represented an economic repositioning of the Democratic Party that had begun during the economic crises of the 1970s. The era of big, affirmative government demanding action—desegregate those schools, clean up those polluted rivers, enforce those civil rights and labor laws—was over. It was time for fresh neo-ideas.

The link to the union capitulation is that Shanker endorsed the Nation at Risk in 1983 and unions stopped calling for lower class sizes and other real reforms -- that education can be reformed by getting more competent teachers and getting rid of so-called bad teachers -- and also -- using test scores to judge kids and teachers.

One more quote from Jennifer for those who don't get to the entire piece below -- something all of you should send out to everyone you work with and beyond.

Today’s Democratic school reformers—a team heavy on billionaires, pols on the move, and paid advocates for whatever stripe of fix is being sold—depict their distaste for regulation, their zeal for free market solutions as au courant thinking. They rarely acknowledge their neoliberal antecedents. The self-described radical pragmatists at the Progressive Policy Institute, for instance, got their start as Bill Clinton’s policy shop, branded as the intellectual home for New Democrats. Before its current push for charter schools, PPI flogged welfare reform. In fact, David Osborne, the man so fond of likening teacher unions to arch segregationists in the south, served as Al Gore’s point person for “reinventing government.” Today the model for Osborne’s vision for reinventing public education is post-Katrina New Orleans—where 7,500 mostly Black school employees were fired en route to creating the nation’s first nearly all-charter-school-system, wiping out a pillar of the city’s Black middle class in the process.

How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party

The problem is that the Democrats have little to offer that’s markedly different from what DeVos is selling.

Read it all and tell me how it tastes: https://thebaffler.com/latest/ed-reform-ate-the-democrats-berkshire

The Roots of an Undemocratic UFT - Lois Weiner Oldie But Goodie: ALBERT SHANKER'S LEGACY

There has been a lot of discussion over the Unity Caucus "loyalty oath" or a version of democratic centralism used by most socialist parties even today. I have come to see that if an organization engages in spirited democratic debate and then comes to a decision on an issue I can see the case for the entire org adhering to the decision. "Democratically" is the key word. Unity is not a democratic organization in practice so as someone pointed out it engages in undemocratic centralism. The big problem is that Unity has basically turned the UFT into a branch of Unity Caucus and whatever Unity decides becomes city, state and national policy due to rigid, controlled election process.

A prime example is the 750 AFT/NYSUT winner take all delegates who will be elected in May to represent the entire UFT membership at the AFT2016 convention this summer. Even if MORE/New Action got 49% of the vote the people who voted for them would get no representation - disenfranchising them and taxing them with union dues without representation. Can anyone spell Friedrichs? [MORE will debate Friedrichs at its Feb 6 meeting - all are welcome - and I will be raising this as a call for the UFT to change its constitution.] Another example is that in the retiree chapter election, Retiree Advocate got 22% of the vote but Unity gets all 300 delegates to our delegate assembly.

The roots of this system comes from Al Shanker and his cohorts. You can't really understand what is behind the system without studying its roots. Lois Weiner in a 1997 article upon the death of Al Shanker:

Borrowing a strategy more commonly used by political activists than union leaders, Shanker exercised authority through the mechanism of political caucuses, the "Unity Caucus" in the UFT, and the "Progressive Caucus" in the AFT. As is still true, these were "disciplined" caucuses, meaning that if members disagree with a position taken by the group, they may not express their opposition outside of the caucus in a public forum (Lieberman, 1997.) In the Unity Caucus, discipline extends to votes as well; to vote or speak against a caucus position carries the risk of exclusion from the caucus and the many jobs the union leadership controls (Weiner, 1976). Analyzing Shanker's mechanisms for controlling debate and decision making in the AFT, one critic compared Shanker's exercise of authority to the Leninist concept of "democratic centralism" (Lieberman, 1997). However, comparison of accounts of organizational life in both the UFT and AFT suggests that Lenin's Bolshevik party, at least until the Russian revolution, was less tightly-controlled than was the Unity Caucus under Shanker (Deutscher, 1954; Weiner & Markens, 1990).... Lois Weiner

I was emailed a link to Lois' 1997 piece elucidating some of the roots of the undemocratic legacy in the UFT going back to the early 60s. There have been some recent articles floating around delving into the roots of UFT history of lack of democracy and there has been some push back on aspects of one particular analysis coming from the International Socialists. Some people from MORE and ICE will be getting together during the mid-winter break to drill down deeper on this issue, focusing on the ideology and right wing social democracy behind Shankerism and his connections to his mentor Max Shachtman, which I delved into on ednotes.

Lois delves into this point:

As the nation's political climate became more conservative in the 1980s and '90s, Shanker's opposition to progressive political causes and his public rejection of the militant unionism that had earned him his early prominence enabled him to win the support of conservative authors and politicians with whom he had previously locked horns (Lieberman, 1995). Like Reagan and his appointees, Shanker opposed bilingual education, mainstreaming of handicapped students, and efforts to make the curriculum more multicultural. However, it is essential to note that what changed was the political temper of the period, not Shanker's ideology, which remained essentially the same as it had been since he became UFT President. Herein lies the element that connects all of the seemingly diverse aspects of Shanker's legacy, his political ideology, which requires explanation of events that one author has described as "Byzantine" (Mahler, 1997).
Shanker was a political co-thinker of a small group of former socialists, organized into Social Democrats-USA, commonly known by the acronym SD-USA. The intellectual mentor of this group, Max Shachtman, was well known in left-wing circles up until the mid-1950s as a socialist, a left-wing opponent of communism.

However, as the cold war intensified, Shachtman viewed American capitalism in an increasingly favorable light that called for forgiving many of the practices that he had previously contested. In an obituary, the theme of which was Shachtman's two deaths, one moral, the other corporeal, a critic of Shachtman' s "turn to the right" noted, "Shachtman had become an apologist for American imperialism's filthy war in Vietnam, aligned himself with the ugliest elements in the unions, rationalized the racist practices of the construction unions" (Jacobson, 1973, p. 99). 

I posted Lois article with some commentary on Norms Notes, October 11, 2007
http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/2007/10/albert-shankers-legacy.html 


This is an old but very valuable piece by Lois Weiner, a former NYC teacher and UFT delegate. Lois recruited us to review the Kahlenberg book for New Politics. (Bold was added by me in some places to highlight points we are looking at.) Lois wrote a wonderful piece on neoliberalism and education which illuminates many connections between the actions of the Democrats, BloomKlein, Gates, Broad, Weingarten (posted here on this blog recently.)

The original is posted at:

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED419805.pdf

ALBERT SHANKER'S LEGACY

by Lois Weiner

Roots of the UFT: Max Shachtman, Al Shanker Mentor

Vera Pavone and I wrote a review of the Shanker bio in New Politics: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neo-Con | New Politics which delved into the roots of Shankerism which still dominates the UFT today.

It is important for people to know how the UFT/Unity party was born out of Trotskyism and the the firmament of left-wing politics, then morphing into socialism and then into vicious anti-left right wing social democracy with Max Shachtman as a leading light - the Social Democrats USA (SDUSA) of which most of the union leadership were members of, including Al Shanker and his successor Sandy Feldman. As for Randi and Mulgrew, with the end of the cold war, it is not exactly clear if the party still exists and if it does what their relationship to it might be. Leo Casey ideologically seems to be tied to the politics of SDUSA but I don't pay all that attention. Many years ago when I was in the early stages of Ed Notes and not blatantly anti-Unity, Leo and I were in touch for a while and he was sending my comments on my commentary. Now that we are no longer at war, the next time I see him I may ask him some questions from his view for some balance with the views of my friends on the left. I'm sure my discussion here is fairly shallow. (At this time I see myself as a left-wing social democrat, which is as far right as I want to drift.)

So for those who wonder why the UFT/AFT take positions far beyond teaching, there are roots in anti-communist social democracy. Shanker learned his lessons so well at the feet of Shachtman that the leading ideologues in the UFT feel they must control every aspect of the organization not only as a power play - like what would it mean if real opposition caucuses gained a few seats -- but as a way to keep left ideology and terminology out of official bodies. Other than to use certain leftists to their advantage in order to paint the opposition as a far out left.

Shanker used the UFT as an instrument of his political ideology nationally and internationally. (See George Schmidt - The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA which Vera retyped and we published for George.


A social democratic party, as do most leftist parties, take wide-ranging positions. I find the fault lines emerge when these parties push their ideologies in the mass organizations they either control outright (Unity Caucus and the UFT) or in organizations they participate in -- like MORE and New Action, for example. And always not in the most forthright manner, which often leads to internal splits. I'll review the history of these splits and realignments in the opposition over the past 50 years in a future post - I was part of the MORE summer series this past summer when we ran an event on this topic - there is video available.

You know the old joke - put 2 Trotsyists in a room and you get 3 groups. Splitting is endemic to the nature of these parties and that is why you end up with a tower of babel on the left. But more on this in future posts where I'll delve more into the history of the groups presently involved in the UFT.

From Wikipedia, Max Shachtman (/ˈʃɑːktmən/; September 10, 1904 – November 4, 1972) was an American Marxist theorist. He evolved from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL-CIO President George Meany.

Individuals influenced by Shachtman's organisations have shared his opposition to Stalinism. A number of political organizations have emerged from the Trotskyist movement which have considered themselves to be Marxist. This broad tendency is described as "Left Shachtmanism", but does not include followers of Tony Cliff such as the International Socialist Tendency^[23] as Cliff himself was greatly critical of Shachtman's entire political life and theoretical work.^[24]
Glotzer argues that Shachtman's theory of bureaucratic collectivism has also informed unorthodox approaches within Marxism towards the class nature of the Eastern Bloc.
A number of Shachtman's former followers became leading figures in the neo-conservative movement.^[25]

Inevitably, there are UFT members to the right of the UFT leadership and we see some of that playing out today over the Garner march. But again, I'll do some political analysis in the future.

Contents at Wiki

• 1 Beginnings
• 2 Trotskyist leader
  • 2.1 Differences with Cannon and Trotsky
  • 2.2 Workers' Party Merger
  • 2.3 The Fourth International
  • 2.4 Break with Trotsky
• 3 Political evolution
  • 3.1 The development of the "Third Camp"
  • 3.2 Shachtman in the Socialist Party
  • 3.3 Death and legacy
• 4 Footnotes
• 5 Works
  • 5.1 Original writings
  • 5.2 Translations and editions
• 6 Further reading
  • 6.1 Shachtman
  • 6.2 Shachtman and others, especially the Trotskyist traditions
  • 6.3 Oral History
• 7 External links

Shachtman's wife was Shanker's assistant.

Yetta Barsh Shachtman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yetta_Barsh_Shachtman

Wikipedia

Yetta Barsh Shachtman (1925-1996), American socialist politician, married to Max Shachtman, a Marxist theorist. She wrote most of Albert Shanker's weekly ...

And see my post on Norms Notes with an article by Lois Weiner:

Norm's Notes: ALBERT SHANKER'S LEGACY

Oct 11, 2007 - After Albert Shanker's death in February 1997, the numerous .... The intellectual mentor of this group, Max Shachtman, was well known in ...

And I came across a piece by our own Kit Wainer and Marian Swerdlow that no longer seems to be available.

Yetta Barsh on Shachtman - Marxists Internet Archive

https://www.marxists.org/archive/.../barsh.htm

Marxists Internet Archive

Aug 18, 2013 - Max Shachtman Collection, Tamiment Institute/Ben Josephson Library.

Albert Shanker, Image and Reality (Obit by Marian Swerdlow and Kit Adam Wainer)

The Rise and Fall of the UFT by Former UFT VP John O' Neill

Note how O'Neill talks about the very early days of the UFT as being as social justice and democratic a union as one could get -- some do not agree --- and that it was Shanker who took what was already a very successful operation under Charlie Cogan and Dave Selden and undermined it. Especially see page 178 for more on this. Shanker later -- 1974 undermined his mentor Shelden by running against him for AFT president and moving the AFT rightward.

https://uftrg.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/hughes1970.pdf

I was going through some old materials on my computer desktop and almost tossed this chapter of Annette Rubinstein's book "Schools Against Community Control." I'm sure there are historians with some knowledge of the split between O' Neill and Shanker over the 68 strike. O' Neill's interpretation here is one commonly accepted by the left. As one who did not cross the picket lines in 68, though I really had no clue as to the political forces I am always ambivalent about a bunch of issues. Some friends on the left do believe the Ford Foundation (under former Vietnam hawk McGeorge Bundy I believe) was out to divide the union from the community. Certainly an issue worth exploring again and again as those times were so important. Maybe when things settle down -- like in the summer -- MORE can do a series of discussions on this issue.

Note the analysis of the 1969 contract which I always used to say was the last good contract we got.

The Rise and Fall of the UFT by John Oneill 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/122373089/The-Rise-and-Fall-of-the-UFT-by-John-Oneill

================
The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

Ed Deform and Neoliberalism

People are comparing Egypt and Wisconsin. The link? Neoliberalism. Tattoo the word on your arm. Look at the entire ed deform program in the context of neoliberalism. Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" is the bible ed deform resisters. Paul Krugman on Friday referenced Klein's groundbreaking work. Now if only Krugman would tie the  string to the ed deforms and tell people that charter schools are the battering ram of neoliberal assault on the public school system. Leonie Haimson's husband, Michael Oppenheimer, teaches at Princeton with Krugman. Michael should whisper sweet anti ed deformer words in his ear.

Confused about the Democratic Party support for ed deform? The Clintons are classic neoliberals and the rest of the party is in step.

Confused about why the UFT/AFT/MulGarten crew won't put up a defense? They too are neoliberals, who are close relatives of neocons. That was why Vera Pavone and I titled our review of Richard Kahlenberg's "Albert Shanker: Tough Liberal" Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon. We could easily have called it "Ruthless Neoliberal" but didn't want to confuse people who think neolineral is a modernized version of classic American liberalism when it is exactly the opposite.

Union leaders like Weingarten differ from the anti-union neoliberals in that they feel unions should exist - naturally - but in limited format - in support of the government/corporate state more than the membership. But of course they support the concept of unions - look how well they have done as leaders who misdirect the energies of the members. That is why Weingarten is helping find ways to get rid of teachers. See NYC Educator: A Fine Day for a Sellout

With the myriad of anti-teacher crap pervading the headlines, AFT President Randi Weingarten thinks it's a good time to discuss faster ways to fire us

If things ever get sticky just watch where they stand.

What is neoliberalism?

Yves Smith at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/al-jazeera-on-egypts-revolt-against-neoliberalism.html  has the links:

In his Brief History of Neoliberalism, the eminent social geographer David Harvey outlined “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.”

Neoliberal states guarantee, by force if necessary, the “proper functioning” of markets; where markets do not exist (for example, in the use of land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution), then the state should create them.

Guaranteeing the sanctity of markets is supposed to be the limit of legitimate state functions, and state interventions should always be subordinate to markets. All human behavior, and not just the production of goods and services, can be reduced to market transactions.

And the application of utopian neoliberalism in the real world leads to deformed societies as surely as the application of utopian communism did…..

KRUGMAN ARTICLE BELOW THE FOLD

Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

By PAUL KRUGMAN