Ed Notes Online: GOTV

Showing posts with label GOTV. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

#UFTElection2022 - Unity doesn't want Turnout, Turnout, Turnout - With less than 25% returns - Help get out the vote in the UFT election -

No matter what the UFT leadership says, the reality is that a big turnout doesn't help them. So in subtle and not so subtle ways, they act to suppress turnout except in places they think they have a lock on the vote. They opposed electronic voting.

Take a look at this rule I didn't notice till Peter Lamphere pointed it out:

Check out the voting instructions on the UFT website:
If you have not received a ballot by Monday, April 18, you can request a ballot from the American Arbitration Association by calling 800-218-5524 (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. only) or sending an email to UlerioS@adr.org. Requests for ballots must be made promptly – no later than 5 p.m. on Friday, April 22.

So folks who don't get a ballot can ONLY make the request during spring break?! A number of folks are going to be out of town, try to request when they return, and be disenfranchised.

Think of this rule. I do not remember getting replacement ballots being so restricted but memory may be failing. We will raise the issue with the election committee.

They actually brag about the low turnout as expected in union elections while ignoring high turnout in places like Chicago where they vote in the schools and have had 60% turnout. Maybe a union leadership that actually works leads to turnout. (The Chicago election is concurrent with ours and there are three slates running so that will be a test of sorts after a dozen years of CORE being in control - plus a new presidential candidate.)

MORE put out these great suggestions for GOTV --

Help get out the vote in the UFT election

UFT election ballots will be arriving in member’s homes next week!

Like any election, the UFT contest will be won or lost based on turnout. It’s crucial that MORE members motivate our coworkers to vote - turnout in previous elections has averaged around 24% and increasing that number will help ensure that we win some of the key seats in play in the elections.

Make a list of members of your chapter, and ask each of your colleagues to share with you when they vote in the election. This is the most fundamental thing you can do to help drive turnout. You do not need to ask who they voted for.

You can collect pledges to vote UFC by asking your co-workers to complete this digital form, (or use the paper pledge form and send photos or scans of completed forms to info@unitedforchange.vote so that we can add the pledgers to our reminder lists).

Have a ballot party where members bring their sealed ballots to school (copy the attached sample flyer). Take a group photo of the members with their ballots. If there is a mailbox close to your school, walk together before or after school to mail the ballots together. Please note that these parties should be non-partisan and open to all chapter members. There shouldn’t be a transaction of cash or item, including food, in return for completing a ballot. However, MORE has funding available ($20 for small chapters with 40 or fewer members and more for larger chapters) to help pay for refreshments at these events - please fill out this form to request - funds are limited, so it’s first come-first serve.

Fill out this form to request “I voted UFC” stickers Give members the stickers when they report they have voted. Have members take selfies of themselves mailing their ballots and selfies and share to the chapter

Create a UFT election thermometer that tracks the percentage of UFT members who have mailed in their ballot (copy the template on the next page).

Create the base of a turnout tree. As UFT staff members self-report to you, add leaves to the tree with the name of each UFT member who has mailed in a ballot.

If you have already distributed the UFC trifold and MORE flyer, make copies of this UFC platform flyer https://bit.ly/voteufc (if you don’t have access to copies, please fill this form to request funds to help make copies).

Turn up the heat in the UFT election!

This thermometer shows how many chapter members voted in the election.

Only 24% of UFT members voted in the last election

Let’s make sure everyone in our school votes this time!

Ballots are due to the AAA Monday, May 9th @ 8AM. If you have not received a ballot by Monday, April 18, you can request a ballot from the American Arbitration Association by calling 800-218-5524 (Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. only) or sending an email to UlerioS@adr.org. Requests for ballots must be made promptly – no later than 5 p.m. on Friday, April 22.F

Voting Party!!!

Gather in the library on Tuesday 4/12 at 4pm - Bring your sealed ballot in the UFT Elections!

We will take a group selfie with the ballots, enjoy some snacks and refreshments, and go mail them together!

Ballots are being mailed to your home this week. Only 24% of UFT members voted in the last election - let’s make sure everyone in our school votes this time!

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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 Extended

Wednesday, April 6, 2022