Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!
Mulgrew and his Unity flacks must be in mourning since he never met a co-pay he didn't like.
Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026
Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the Ed Notes blog.
I'm in Manhattan and heading down to the presser and rally at City Hall. Don't expect any UFT officials to be there. But will Retired Teacher Chapter officers and exex bd members be there to celebrate a freeze on co-pays for the rest of this year?
I will be taking photos and report back tomorrow with an analysis of the rift between most of the RTC leadership and Marianne, a leading cause of the current rift within the RTC chapter that just may hand back the chapter to Unity, which will be a disaster for the future of our healthcare. Mulgrew and crew is probably moaning over the fact co-pays are frozen until Jan. 1 2027. Due to my medical condition(s) - diabetes and cancer plus the usual assorted issues any 81 year old faces, I see many doctors.
Just yesterday I left my house at 7AM to catch a ferry to 34th St (an hour and a half) and then a bus uptown to 74th St, another hour including a 15 minute walk to the Koch center, where I had blood taken (ca-ching) and a meeting with the endocrinologist nurse (more ka-ching? Next week I have 3 appointments in one day. And the co-pays come flying into my in box.
I was told the other day that Marianne has over 10k UFT retirees in her network. My election analysis has shown that Marianne brought over 9k retiree votes to both the 2024 victory in the RTC election and in the 2025 UFT election. Those 9k votes are up for grab in next year's RTC battle between Unity and Retiree Advocate and Fix Retiree Benefits. There are some serious differences between RA and FRB, some over Marianne who some in RA don't consider kosher enough politically to support plus major resentment over her support of ABC in the election last year which brought them those 9k votes.
There are also differences over the lack of pushback against the UFT leadership where FRB feel the RTC leadership (10 officers and 15 Exec Bd members ) has been weak in defending our healthcare, seemingly distracted by outside factors - very quick to support workers in other unions but I've seen nothing out there urging members to show up today.
I will be taking attendance and some photos.
NYC PUBLIC SERVICE RETIREES TO HOLD RALLY ON CITY HALL STEPS FOLLOWING $53 MILLION HEALTHCARE SETTLEMENT
WHO:
Marianne Pizzitola, President, NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees
Jacob Gardener, Walden Haran Williams LLP
Steve Cohen, Pollock Cohen LLP
New York City public service retirees
Supporters and advocates
WHAT: Following the announcement of the $53 million class action
settlement between the City of New York, EmblemHealth, and more than
250,000 retired City workers over unlawful GHI Senior Care co-pays,
retirees will gather on the steps of City Hall to discuss
what the settlement means—and why the fight to protect earned retiree
healthcare benefits continues.
Speakers will address the significance of the settlement, the impact on
retirees living on fixed incomes, and the organization's call for
long-term protections for retiree healthcare.
The Speaker's Office must permit legislation to properly protect retirees to be introduced.
WHEN:
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
10:30 a.m. ET
WHERE:
Steps of New York City Hall New York, NY
VISUALS:
Marianne Pizzitola speaking on the steps of City Hall
Retired New York City public servants gathering in support
Interview opportunities with retirees directly impacted by the healthcare changes
MEDIA OPPORTUNITY: Marianne Pizzitola and retired New York City public servants will be available for interviews immediately following the event.
MEDIA CONTACT: Deborah Schonfeld
Communications Consultant
In
2024, UFT sent an incredible 734 delegates to the national convention
in Houston, even though its voting strength is not dependent on how many
delegates it sends. UFT delegates to the convention had a voting
strength of 16% of all delegates, but sent 27% of all convention
delegates. This was an overwhelming show of force. No other AFT local
even sent 70 delegates. Meanwhile, the bottom 90% of union locals and
state federations represented at the 2024 convention sent less than 10
delegates each.
How much did UFT spend to send 734 delegates from
New York City to Houston for 5 days and 5 nights in 2024? A probably too
modest $2,000 per delegate would come out to at least $1.5 million. And
the bill was likely much higher than that.
Needless to say,
most union locals don’t have that kind of money. And even if they did,
their leaders would have to justify to their members why they would
spend their dues for this kind of expense. If the national AFT election
is already locked up, why bother? And so the de-mobilizing, demoralizing
cycle of rule by political machine repeats itself every two years.[i]... The Future of Our Schools Collective
Late BREAKING - Randi Re-elected
Those who think the UFT/Unity leadership is corrupt, don't know the half of it. Trevor Griffey just published a piece on Jul 15, 2026 on the current AFT convention that reveals a lot of truths.
I pointed out that Unity received 54% of the vote in last year's election but gets 100% of the 750 delegates, thus shutting out the points of view of a significant proportion of UFT members from national and state educational policy debates (those 750 are also NYSUT reps).
85% of AFT Locals Do Not Send Delegates to Convention while our dues fuel the UFT spending a million and a half on covering expenses for Unity members.
A way toward democracy is to have the entire AFT membership vote instead of the Unity dominated delegates. This major change occurred in the UAW which led to Shawn Fein's election. Chris Bohner recently wrote in Labor Notes, “Direct Elections for Labor Leaders Make for More Militant Unions.”
You can see why the threat of losing the NYC local election is such threat to Randi and the AFT/NYSUT/UFT union hierarchy, one reason why ABC's insurgency has made them nervous. Don't think the recent 10k para bonus designed to weaken para anger at their situation is not connected to the threat. ABC had over 100 paras run with them and the para functional chapter is the second largest with 27k members to the 70k retiree chapter, which Unity lost. If the insurgency in these two groups aligned with the growing dissatisfaction among working members, there would be a massive shift in educational unions, especially with both Chicago and LA being progressive unions. Why haven't the revolted after a decade or more in power? Randi has the power of the purse to support them - or not - in their local struggles.
Trevor:
......leaders of AFT locals,
including mine, would be more open to subsidizing convention delegate
travel if they thought convention business was directly tied their union
members’ needs, and if they thought their delegates’ participation
would make any difference whatsoever on decisions made at the
convention.
The fact is, once delegates elected by their locals
arrive at an AFT convention, they find themselves operating within a
one-party state run by the Progressive Caucus, which in turn is run by
the Unity Caucus of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT)— the largest
AFT local in the US.
UFT delegates have dominated AFT
conventions through slate elections at the local and national level for
over half a century. Every AFT President for the last 62 years emerged
out of UFT leadership, except for four years from 2004-8 when Edward
McElroy served two terms as a “transitional president”following Sandra Feldman’s diagnosis with breast cancer..
The AFT has been controlled for over 50 years by one caucus - a national version of Unity called The Progressive Caucus. Of course our beloved 750 local Unityites are the main instrument of control. They also control the NY State Unity.
Lois explains:
The Unbeatable Slate: Progressive Caucus Dominates AFT for More than 50 Years
The
issue that shapes union leaders’ decisions to effectively boycott the
convention is the perception of a lack of democracy within AFT.
Financial
barriers to sending delegates thousands of miles away for five days of
convention deliberations are significant, and union leaders who express
concerns about the costs of convention attendance shouldn’t be dismissed
as simply lacking solidarity.
But leaders of AFT locals,
including mine, would be more open to subsidizing convention delegate
travel if they thought convention business was directly tied their union
members’ needs, and if they thought their delegates’ participation
would make any difference whatsoever on decisions made at the
convention.
The fact is, once delegates elected by their locals
arrive at an AFT convention, they find themselves operating within a
one-party state run by the Progressive Caucus, which in turn is run by
the Unity Caucus of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT)— the largest
AFT local in the US.
UFT delegates have dominated AFT
conventions through slate elections at the local and national level for
over half a century. Every AFT President for the last 62 years emerged
out of UFT leadership, except for four years from 2004-8 when Edward
McElroy served two terms as a “transitional president”following Sandra Feldman’s diagnosis with breast cancer.
Today,
the three top officers of AFT and every one of the 43 national Vice
Presidents are all members of the Progressive Caucus. They run as a
single slate that depends upon bloc voting. The leader of the caucus is
the President of the union, who is also at the top of the slate. A
recent google form to join the Progressive Caucus even called its slate
“Randi Weingarten’s slate.”
One can’t simply declare one’s
intention to join the caucus as a candidate for elected office, as
candidates for elected office do in the US. You have to be invited. And
most of the people invited are representatives of the largest labor
unions in the federation. Inclusion on the slate provides direct
personal access to the President, who can provide favors in the form of
spending and staff support for causes that officers care about. But
inclusion also requires supporting every candidate on the slate. Failure
to do so will get you kicked off the slate and effectively lock your
union local out of national power.
Once most of the leaders of
large unions pledge to turn out their delegates to support the union
President, the election is all-but-over. Support has been traded for
access before the votes have even been cast. Slate voting— which allows a
delegate to simply check one box for an entire slate instead of voting
separately for 46 different officers— tilts the scales even more by
creating a disincentive for even thinking about the merits of individual
officers.
Anyone in AFT who dares even exercise their right
to participate in union elections outside the Progressive Caucus has to
position themselves against the entire power structure of the union—
including the President— whether they want to or not. Unless the Caucus
splits, which so far it never has, such challenges (recently by small
groups like By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN) are dead on arrival.
Since so many locals can't afford to send delegates to the AFT conventions, not only 46% of NYC teachers are left out, but the small locals all over the country too.
AFT Re-elects Officers, Hears from Union and Political Leaders, Passes Suite of Resolutions at 2026 Convention
National Teachers Union, at Highest-Ever Membership, Caps Four-Day Confab that Drew 3,000 Delegates to DC
WASHINGTON—The
1.88 million-member AFT wrapped its 89th biennial convention today,
with union delegates voting overwhelmingly to re-elect President Randi
Weingarten, Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram and Executive Vice
President Evelyn DeJesus to new two-year terms.
In six packed sessions over four days, more than 3,000 delegates debated and passed resolutions
on a range of pressing issues—from reclaiming the promise of public
education, to protecting immigrant communities, to rebuilding public
health, to preparing for the age of artificial intelligence, to tackling
the affordability and student debt crises. Dozens of breakout meetings
and receptions covered rural issues, faith and religion, international
solidarity and more.
AFT President Randi Weingarten said: “Our convention theme was ‘fighting for a better life for all.’
That’s not a mere slogan—it’s the promise and potential to be together,
to work together, to bargain together, to protest together, to vote
together, to act together to bring about change—real, lasting,
life-improving change for every person in America.”
The union heard from a bevy of high-profile guests and speakers,
including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, U.S.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former U.S. Attorney General
Eric Holder, former Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams, Democratic nominee
for D.C. mayor Janeese Lewis George, Pennsylvania state Rep. Jen
Mazzocco, former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, IAM Union International
President Brian Bryant, and IAM Texas State Council President and Texas
state Sen. Taylor Rehmet.
Outgoing American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees President Lee Saunders, the first African American to lead the union, received the AFT’s Bayard Rustin Human Rights Award,
and labor leader Dolores Huerta was honored with the AFT’s Lifetime
Achievement Award for her decades of work with the United Farm Workers.
And after a rousing Saturday address from Association of Flight
Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson, delegates unanimously passed a
motion from the floor pledging support for the campaign to unionize
Delta flight attendants.
At
the onsite Activist Hub, delegates signed more than 1,000 “Free D.C.”
postcards addressed to state governors to demand they recall their
states’ National Guard from their deployment in the District of
Columbia.
Weingarten,
who taught social studies and civics at Clara Barton High School in
Brooklyn, N.Y., was re-elected to a 10th term Saturday night, while
Ingram, a high school band director in Miami, and DeJesus, an early
childhood educator and reading specialist in New York City, were elected
to sixth terms. The union also elected 43 vice presidents from around
the country.
AFT Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram
said: “There is only one way we all win and that is working together to
push back against the forces that are so eager to tear us apart. That
is why I have made union work my life’s work and why I remain committed
and ready to serve this union as an officer. It is a distinct honor to
work with the best this country has to offer, in order to ensure
everyone has a real shot at success, happiness and security.”
AFT Executive Vice President Evelyn DeJesus
said: “As the onslaught of ICE attacks against Latino communities
continues, today I stand prouder than ever to be the first Latina
officer elected and re-elected six times to serve the 1.88 million
members of this powerful union. We must look out for, show up and
protect one another, because only together can we make a better life for
all. Sigamos luchando por la democracia, la libertad y una vida mejor
para todos.”
“Our
delegates and committees tackled the issues keeping families up at
night, from the affordability crisis, to defending immigrant
communities, to the reassurance that AI won’t take our members’ jobs, to
the protection of democracy as a whole,” Weingarten
added. “To create an America where everyone has the education, economy
and opportunity to build a good life; an America where everyone’s
dignity and rights are respected; an America whose democracy not only
endures but finally lives up to its noble ideals, will take all of
us—standing together.”
Click HERE for more convention highlights. All passed resolutions can be found HERE.
The UFT leadership continues to
be in bed with the establishment political machine that often is not
aligned to our values and not held accountable for making decisions that
affect us. The uft is the democratic establishment and Mulgrew will try very hard to keep the Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Grace Meng, Hilary Clinton, Randi weingarten etc etc etc power going along with his own.
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Before I get into thoughts on the recent election, tonight is a Fix Retiree Benefits Zoom. Stop by and check it out. The goal is to do one hour from 7-8 but it might run a bit longer. I need to write a lot more on what's going on in the retiree chapter and might get a chance at the zoom tonight.
Congrats to all my still in-service friends on the end of the school year and another step to retirement. But I should point out that a number of my colleagues in ABC ended the school year writing about how much they still love teaching ever two decades in.
I'm about to head out to a DSA celebratory beach party that will last all day.
Tuesday I speculated on the election outcome. I expected a closer race in 7 where Reynoso had the advantage of the Nydia Vazquez and his own machines, which turned out to be barely machines at all, a sign of the deterioration of the Dem Party generally and how non-competitive it has been nationally. National and local media were going nuts in shock over the big 3 wins by Mamdani as all losing candidates were backed by the Dem machine led by Hakeem Jeffries. And if Mamdani had allowed Chi
Ossi to primary him, guess what?
Jeffries will face a primary next time
and if he was smart he would take a run for Chuck's Senate seat, though
DSA will probably go for that, though I'm not sure there is enough DSA
muscle to win a state race. Or Jeffries might just do a turn around if he's a good politician. But DSA should also keep its discipline and talk of a 2028 candidate is fantasy at this point, though Ro Khana is beginning to look like an acceptable candidate along the lines of Brad Lander has been. Not as left but not center.
It was a smashing victory for DSA which also elected 16 members at the state level and is spreading outside NY.
Reynoso was more embedded in traditional
backroom political dealmaking and backed by the low-expectations wing of
the labor movement, in which politics is mostly a matter of making safe
bets on electing and reelecting traditional corporate Democrats — even
in cities and neighborhoods where it’s clear that the horizons have
shifted in a more expansive pro-worker direction. That approach to politics was decisively defeated.
Center Dems don't seem to have enough of a ground game left, relying on endorsements and ads but not enough of a GOTV game.
I would apply the same idea to UFT elections where the only way to defeat Unity is with a ground game, which the oppo has never developed.
I've been a fringe member of DSA
for about 8 years even when I disagree with a bunch of their positions
but love the energy and organizing ability. I attended South Brooklyn
branch meetings until the pandemic. They live up to the democratic label
with extreme democracy at local levels. I get to vote on so many issues
and leaders. Recently I've hooked up with a group of DSA in Rockaway
and we canvased for Mamdani. They are even having an all day beach party
in Rockaway today.
Tuesday was also a smashing loss for the UFT/Unity leadership. Look at this graphic:
An ABCer on FB commented:
Michael Mulgrew and the UFT leadership not only once again backed a losing political candidate, they did so:
a)
when every single poll had him behind the candidate that ultimately won
— at one point Goldman was polling nearly *thirty points* behind
Lander, and
b)
without a vote from the Delegate Assembly, the only body in the UFT
with the authority to make political endorsements (unless the Delegate
Assembly votes to kick the decision to the Executive Board, which to be
clear in this instance they didn’t)
Three out of four lost, though I liked the Bores endorsement which was interesting since the UFT endorsed Micah Lasher last time for the state assembly, as I wrote about a year ago:
What happened I wonder for them to abandon Lasher? Maybe the Tier 6 issue stuck?
Mulgrew endorsed every one of the three losing Congressional candidates. The
UFT endorsed Goldman over Lander without an endorsement vote from the
Delegate Assembly while Mulgrew lied, claiming NYSUT endorsed Goldman.
Which means someone somewhere in the union (guess who?) made a
decision to undemocratically exercise their political prerogative over
the members. Doing this not only violated the UFT
constitution, but more importantly it’s flat-out wrong and selfish, and
made all the more so when you consider that whoever this presumed
"expert" was backed a candidate that lost by nearly 30%.
The union leadership continues to be in bed with the establishment political machine that often is not aligned to our values or not held accountable for making decisions that affect us.
DSA has been a hot item in the mainstream press with the emphasis on the growing threat to the Democratic Party by both the right and the so-called "moderate" Dems, which is really corporate/AIPAC friendly. James Carville positively lost it, joining Trump in seeing a threat to the nation by DSA wins.
Think of the Corp Dems calls for DSA to stay out of the Dem Party and form their own party. The James Carville off the wall comments. Imagine they replaced the Green Party in a much more effective manner and ran a third party presidential candidate, thus making the Dems a sure loser. Oh the howls of protest for them doing exactly what they are being told to do if they did not be part of the big tent?
Most Dems still say the party is big-tent even with the extreme views expressed by some winning candidates. Now never forget that our own beloved UFT/Unity leadership are very much part of the anti-left Dem Party going back to the Shanker roots of supporting the Vietnam War. The Mamdani endorsement was forced on them by the stark choice of him or Cuomo - and the clear direction of the momentum. But make no mistake, the UFT fundamentally is where it was politically in the Shanker years.
The UFT leadership engaged in a vicious red-baiting attack on DSA as recently as January, 2025:
Well I was wrong on that as it was clear Cuomo was going down and give Mulgrew credit for hopping on board with a winner, though it may not help much in upcoming contract negotiations.
The Unity crowd toned down their critiques of MORE and ARISE with the rise of ABC, a big tent group that both ARISE components and Unity see as a bigger threat, as it proved in the election with their 32% compared to the ARISE 14%.
How come the DSA crowd centered in the 14-year old MORE Caucus has failed to develop a ground game in the UFT,
as evidenced by the 14% vote in the 2025 election for the ARISE slate?
Remember, the other two caucuses in ARISE are retiree RA and the mostly
retiree New Action, so MORE was expected to carry the load and clearly
failed. The failure of DSA people in the UFT compared to the success of
DSA on the larger playing field is worth exploring in a follow-up but
here's my initial view: MORE began in 2011 as a big-tent operation but
post-2016, the DSA/ISO (now defunct) leadership decided to narrow the
tent with a move to the left that pushed out even fellow-leftists, many
of whom have drifted to ABC.
One of the keys has been the hemorrhaging
of MORE members who leave teaching or jump out of the intensity of the
regular classroom. Or jump from school to school. I came into my new
school after 3 years of teaching when I got my full appointment as the
resident big mouth radical and turned many people off. It took me 5
years to begin to gain the trust of my colleagues and yes, I modified my
big mouth radicalism. I heard Hasan Piker last week make the point that
newly organized often go over the top and it takes years to learn to
temper things as you work with people not of your views.
The internal big tent vs narrow tent struggle in MORE was between the older lefty ICE people and the younger International Socialists who at one point according to internal memos, considered giving up on the MORE project until they came up with the idea of going to DSA to recruit teachers into MORE - and they were so successful they were able to dominate by 2018 and push the ICE people out, this cementing MORE as a hard left caucus, which meant they could never win a UFT election on their own, as they found out when they ran alone in the 2019 election, thus forcing them into alliances with United for Change in 2022 and ARISE in 2025, with increasing alienation from a strong minority that either doesn't want to run in elections or doesn't want to compromise with other groups that don't adhere to their rigid ideology.
Big tent vs narrow tent
Unlike the DSA in the big tent Dem Party, the DSA faction in MORE believes the caucus must remain small tent pure. I contend that if the original MORE as big tent that included people from ICE had been adhered to, MORE would be a contender. Let me give you one example of a hard-core MOREista I was friendly with a few years ago. She texted me asking where I stood on Israel about a year and a half ago and I replied I was still working things out due to my growing up in the post-holocaust era. I was Done. Ghosted.
The DSA has proven it can be a major force on all levels of politics with a big-tent approach in the Dem party and internally there is some room for a variety of caucuses to operate. Is that a perfect solution to democracy? I had offered that type of idea at the very first meeting of MORE -- let ideas compete in an open way. But that's not the way of ideologues.
In my final days in MORE I
proposed they were more of a club or advocacy group in the UFT, which I
was fine with - just not a caucus in UFT elections and I have been
proven right. My advice is to not run as a caucus in UFT elections but
to be open to whatever members who do want to be involved do so. ABC
would be the perfect place for them to land. If MORE followed my advice,
ARISE would be dead, it it already hasn't died and we would have one
group facing Unity head on, with an actual chance to win in 2028. But
don't expect practicality to win out.
The New Socialist Revolution: Zohran Mamdani's remarkable night
Mamdani cannot impose his will on the Democratic Party like
Trump has on the Republicans. The moderate, institutional Democratic
faction lucked out; they will not, for now, be driven to extinction.
They will not suffer the fate of all the Republican politicians who
stood against Trump over the last decade. Luck,
though, comes with caveats. Within the five boroughs—this beating heart
of Empire—they are going to have to fight for their life.
I attended the March 3rd (my birthday) Retiree Teacher Exec Bd meeting on Tuesday after rushing back from a weekend jaunt to attend The Philadelphia Flower Show, the nation's oldest and largest horticultural event, held annually since 1829. Most people I know think that I'm nuts and after attending the meeting I agree with them.
There was an election taking place and I wanted to be there to stand up for the candidate I favored in a 4 way race. (She didn't win.) The RTC constitution gives the EB the right to replace any elected position, though when we try to replace the dozen delegates (out of the 300 we elected), the UFT says we can't -- you know, because they say we can't. We were told by a former Unity delegate that when they ran the chapter and had vacancies, Tom Murphy just replaced them. They make rules up as they go along.
The lack of aggressiveness by the RTC leadership only emboldens bullying by the UFT/Unity leadership. I think it goes beyond that and detect some fear by the ideologues in RA of adding new delegates who might not be pure enough ideologically --- but that's only my guess. One RTC Exec Bd member pointed out that adding a new batch of delegates would invigorate our contingent at the DA which has been shrinking to the point of irrelevancy, perhaps the major failure of the RA hierarchy.
There was an opening on the RTC Executive Board due to the resignation recently of Daniel Harkavy due to an illness - cancer that seemed to escalate quickly. We found out on Tuesday that he died on February 20, a real shock to many of us who had enormous respect for Daniel for his sense of humor, smarts, and judicious non-partisan advice. I wanted to touch base with him after he resigned and am kicking myself for failing to do so. Daniel taught chemistry at Brooklyn Tech for 26 years.
At the RTC EB meeting last Tuesday, Arthur Goldstein, who got to know Daniel, paid an impassioned tribute to Daniel and followed that up with this post.
I'm not sure how Daniel came to be part of the RTC EB - I didn't know him before. He tried to steer a neutral course during the UFT election follies last year, signing petitions for both ABC and ARISE, and attempted to run with both slates but was made to choose by ARISE. He ran with ABC because he felt ABC had the better chance to win but remained cordial with everyone.
When ABC had a petition signing in Bayside, where Daniel lived, he showed up and met Arthur and was introduced to one of our officer candidates who is also a chemistry teacher who graduated from Brooklyn Tech a year before Daniel began teaching there. He was thrilled to meet her.
For someone I barely knew, his passing was especially upsetting because when he posted he was in the hospital I intended to touch base with him as a fellow cancer patient who went through some tough days over the 6 months of chemo. To have been stricken with a deadly cancer at such a relatively young age - he was 63 but count the time leading up to it - is so sad and makes me feel relatively lucky at having reached 81 recently and still be fairly mobile and active.
I barely knew him but will miss him.
Daniel was open and respected for openly saying that if he felt ARISE had the better
chance he would have run with them. The ABC crew respected him for that view and we felt that if he would
have been allowed to run on the ARISE too, he would have gotten 46% of the
vote, the highest total of any non-Unity person in history.
I
advocated running hundreds of people on both slates and might have
actually sneaked a few people in. At some point the people who made that
decision for ARISE need to be held accountable. Actually, the entire
leadership of ARISE.
As to the election for his replacement, as I said, my favored candidate who also ran with the ABC slate did not win and lost to someone who had no connection to the movement we built among retirees over the past 5 years. A very nice guy, by the way. But a message was sent by the New Action/Retiree Advocate dominated RTC EB and the result is not a positive development for a united front in the 2027 RTC chapter election. Details next time.
=======
The Texas Primaries
I'm a political nerd and follow both mainstream and alt media.
On the broader political front, I get some of the best political analysis at breaking points, an alt media outpost that includes the left and the right, with the great reporter Ryan Grim and Krystal Ball representing the left. But it's always good to see what the right is thinking, though this is not MAGA right.
I've been getting about 10 messages a day from Talarico -- I want to send him some money, but then I will get 20 messages a day.
Not knowing enough beforehand, I did not have a dog in the race, other than the sense that Talarico had a better chance to win than Crockett, whose performance-based political acts has never resonated with me. Some view her as squad-oriented but and someone said to me she was like AOC. Far from AOC or the squad, she is more cultural than economic left. And in fact it turns out according to the analysys below that Talarico made the better economic left case.
Mainstream media painted the race as the left (Crockett) vs the center (Talarico) and therefore a lesson for Dems to stay to the center. This analysis actually paints Talarico as a sort of left because he ran an anti-corporate Bernie type campaign, albeit with some religious twists while Crocket despite her performativeness actually avoided the wealthy vs the rest of us and was more of a Dem cultural
Republicans already spent more than $71 million
to try to push Cornyn over the finish line, according to AdImpact, a
media tracking firm. But all that money got him to only 42% in the
primary against Paxton, who has been impeached, indicted, and rocked by multiple cheating scandals.
Cornyn, still the establishment conservative, raised roughly sixty-nine
million dollars; Paxton just four million. In the final stages of the
primary, the incumbent, still trailing in the polls, released a spot for
the ages, which opened, “It’s voting time, so let’s cut through the
bullshit. Crooked Ken Paxton cheated on his wife. She’s divorcing him on
Biblical grounds.” Paxton’s camp deployed the candidate’s daughter in a
last-minute response ad, and called Cornyn “a desperate shell of a man
clinging to power.” But, on Tuesday night, neither candidate managed to
get fifty per cent of the vote, which means they’ll face off again in a
runoff, in May. In theory, Republican voters might have been ready to
throw out the last vestiges of the pre-Trump party. But not for Ken
Paxton. At least not yet.
Crockett’s challenge to Talarico had less to do with ideological
difference than with style—a somewhat repetitive January debate between
the two candidates kept returning not to policy but to the question of
whether it was better to establish common ground with some conservatives
in the hope of winning their votes (Talarico’s position) or simply to
rally your side by making clear what you opposed (Crockett’s). Crockett
seemed to see enemies everywhere, and closed her campaign lashing out at
certain political consultants and reporters. The congresswoman’s team
expelled Elaine Godfrey, who’d published a critical profile of the candidate in The Atlantic,
from an event for being a “top-notch hater.” The resulting
back-and-forth on social media, between the campaign and its liberal
critics, consumed much of the race’s final days.
Who's Winning the Iran War? A surprising view differs from mainstream media from the left and the right.
Watching the Republicans leap up for joy at every Trump lie and bit of misinformation at the SOTU brought echoes of recent UFT Delegate Assemblies where we see a similar reaction from (fake) jocularity from the Unity Caucus cheering committee. The longest SOTU and most boring speech in history reminded me of some of Mulgrew's long-winded reports at the DA.
There was no better example than the Feb. DA where the main item was the endorsement for TRS of Unity candidate Tom Brown as one Unityite after another rose to give praise - and oh the cheers when the vote was taken to endorse him. Oppo people, like the Dems at the SOTU sat on their hands. There just weren't many of them and even for those who were there, there was no coordination. More and more oppo people are just not bothering to attend -- a boycott of sorts, like the Dems who stayed away from the SOTU.
The only group that had a strategy - sort of - was ABC people, but I was lukewarm to not opposing Tom Brown on the grounds he was one of 3 Unity shills who would do whatever Mulgrew tells him to do. The argument for David Kazansky is that he would now be an independent voice - and yes, for 9 years he was a union leadership voice - publicly - but I suspect behind the scenes he was willing to ask questions about the fees we were paying, the role of private equity and investment strategy.
MORE on the whole has never felt the DA was an important venue. And the vaunted 300 Retiree Advocate delegates that replaced the Unity 300 in the June 2024 supposedly game-changing election which has not changed the game very much have been disappearing from the DA in droves, thus negating the impact of that election. MORE claims 100 DA. members but few show up, so the Unity staff and loyalist CLs dominate the room. Remember ARISE? No signs anywhere that they are alive since the embarassing 14% vote in the 2025 UFT election.
Even I, an over 50-year DA attendee, even when I wasn't a delegate, no longer see it worth it to hand out leaflets. I like to attend for social reasons to schmooze and hang out with my pals.
The real changes in the UFT are happening underneath the covers and I am glad to be part of the various fragments of people connected to ABC.
Mulgrew helps build the new opposition in the UFT
What the hell is happening at the UFT that 2 former pension reps are challenging the Unity candidate for TRS rep?
Former UFT special rep Frank Panebianco is joining former 9-year Teacher Retirement System rep David Kazansky, pushed out of the job by Mulgrew two years ago and fired last June, in the race for TRS rep against Unity loyalist Tom Brown. Panebianco was among those staffers fired by Mulgrew.
Is
he a plant by Unity to divide the oppo vote? The guess is he is not but
genuinely pissed off at the leadership. Is Unity cheering his candidacy
against David? I'm thinking not as he is popular and may well draw
votes from Unity and turn this into a 3-person race. And of course David
is popular in Untiy and will also draw votes. In a secret ballot, no
matter the pressure from the leadership, there will be defections. Unity
may punish district reps who don't turn out the vote -- we get a
post-election report on the vote breakdown for every school. The key for
Kazansky is to build a strong network of schools that will vote for him
- right now there are 6 weeks to get 1000 signatures for each
candidate. He has a shot at winning no matter what, but even if Brown
wins the network built in the campaign can be used in the future.
That two long-term Unity pension experts have challenged Unity candidate Tom
Brown is indicative of the same kind of cracks we have been seeing in
Uniy over the past few years. The massive retiree and para oppo wins in
the 2024 chapter elections were clear indicators - the removal of Amy
Arundell from Queens started a trend and her ability to bring some
serious elements of Unity along with her in last year's union election
has created a potential new oppo block in ABC outside the usual caucus
suspects.
Despite the firings by Mulgrew last June, while scaring some
of Unity back into the fold, has still left some people seething. (One
well-known school-based Unity recently declared privately "I'm done with
them." Are they ready to be openly part of an oppo group like ABC? That
may take some time and also depends on how capable ABC looks over the
next few years. And don't forget that Unity 54% vote in the election. It
takes some time for people who have been in a cult to wean themselves
off.
This look good for Unity - short term on the surface - but many of these
people have actually learned some organizing skills, albeit in the
rigid confines of Unity. But once freed, the creativity flows and
excitement at the freedom grows. It is up to the legacy oppos to figure
out how to join forces if they want to defeat Unity. There is a soft
strucrure in place within the ABC coalition by the alliances built in
last year's election and ties that bind continue to be built.
The Mulgrew reign of terror may work to keep staffers in fear and in line but the firing of well-liked and competent people also sends a message and degrades the structure from underneath. The firing of District 30 rep Ashley Rzonca has riled chapter leaders and rank and file in the district and is creating a cloud of resentment that will ultimately morph into open opposition. I never knew Ashley until she was fired last June and have come to see her abilities in various strategy sessions.
Then there is Pissgate where a photo of Amy was placed in a men's room urinal at the Delegate Assembly and the culprit wasn't found despite months of investigation by an outside lawyer and despite cameras.
There is a lot of residual fear and loathing of Mulgrew and his administration throughout the ranks. LeRoy Barr's retirement and the flippant way he announced it at the January DA that surprised Mulgrew won't help as he was able to keep many of the troops in line. Will LeRoy loyalists begin to jump ship too? He is still in charge of Unity Caucus so he will be a factor. Some say the simple solution for Unity is to replace Mulgrew and some see the Mike Sill rise as a solution. BTW- Mike was once a protege of Amy Arundell who was his boss.
The woim toins.
Do
you want to build your caucus or do you want to win an election? That
was a question asked of leaders of the RA caucus and unfortunately it
looks like caucus first. The same with NAC and MORE -- they will gladly
take 14% of the vote forever as long as they can control their caucus.
At a recent meeting one non-UFT person told me "it's all about control -
having power in a small fishbowl."
If the legacy caucuses wake up and join a movement like ABC, Unity would be in trouble.
