Meet Martine

In response to the Feb. 28th '07 anti BloomKlein rally, on that very day, the cynics at Tweed appointed Martine Guerrier, former PEP (the phony replacement for the old DOE) rep from Brooklyn, who had been billed as a critic of BloomKlein (way, way overrated in that characterization) as the CEO of Parent Engagement at $150,000 a year. No, this does not mean she runs parties when parents get engaged. But she might as well.

We predicted Martine, who we've always thought very highly of, would disappear into the jaws of the Tweed PR machine in our "Say It Ain't So, Martine" post back in March. And so she has. Her coming out party took place at Brooklyn Tech HS Saturday in a "Meet Martine" event. Parent Eugene Falik, a Rockaway resident, posted this report on the nyceducationnews listserv.

Well, it was a standard Education Department show.

Department employees flagrantly violated the "no cell phone" policy which prohibits faculty and staff, as well as students, from bringing such contraband as cell phones and iPods into school buildings.

Parent Engagement staff allowed the police ("School Safety") people and custodian staff to run the show.

Questions were censored, by requiring them to be submitted on index cards.

Brooklyn Tech, as usual, had a host of fire code violations. Requests to Parent Engagement staff as well as Deputy Chancellor Grimm to correct the violations, and render the building safe for the invited public, were met with stony indifference.

Attempts to warn potential attendees of the danger were blocked and shouted down by the NYPD employees. It's easy to see how students confronted with this behavior would lose their cool. It's also a good justification for cell phones because requests to Ed Department staff for assistance, and compliance with the laws requiring the owner of a telephone to make it available for assistance calls had no result; only threats of punishment, including arrest, and assault.

The one good thing that came of the day is that there is now a paper trail that will require the SED to close the school until it is brought into compliance with the fire code.

Eugene Falik

The Only Teacher Left, Has Left

The departure of Andres Alonso from the DOE to head the Baltimore school system (and WOW, it seems he was chosen and will be responsible to a Board of Education instead of a dictatorial mayor) has been viewed by some as sad. After all, he actually was a teacher. Special ed in Newark. They say for a decade before he went on to bigger things. He even became the legal guardian of one of his kids. Now there's a level of intervention. He was a Harvard grad lawyer, then on to Wall St. before he tried teaching. Compared to Joel Klein who once spent about 6 months teaching before running back to law school, Alonso made a difference at the only level where one can have an impact directly on children - in the classroom. That should be enough. But people get seduced by the bigger things. "I can make a bigger difference as a principal, a superintendent, running a school system." Sorry. If you love teaching children, the classroom is the place to be. And even then the teacher's impact is not as great as people think - unless you become the legal guardian of all your kids.

People who came across Alonso found something very likable about him. I saw him at the Javits convention center back in March when he stopped by to see the FIRST robotics tournament. He came alone. No entourage. Something sad and lonely about him.

At PEP meetings or press conferences he would speak at length with an awful lot of EduBabble. Klein seemed oh, so bored and often fiddled with his Blackberry. Some NY ed scene observers (NYESO's) felt he was being used. But I wouldn't let him off the hook so easily. He accepts the "No excuses" argument- in other words, it is the teacher's fault. Hard to fathom coming from a real teacher. Like, does he really believe paying teachers bonuses for getting higher scores is a good thing for kids, teachers, schools, education? We'll measure how much of the EduCrap thrown out by BloomKlein he really believed by what he does in Baltimore. But if he follows the script, expect massive problems with the teacher union. I bet he doesn't have the stomach for those type of confrontations. He just doesn't seem as mean as the likes of BloomKlein. But maybe they'll send him to mean school for a PhD.

It was clear that with the reorganization the Deputy Supt for Teaching and Learning, or whatever they called the job, has no real function. His replacement - Marsha Lyles. Nice lady. My former boss, once removed, for a year. Hope she brings some crossword puzzles to work. They were cheering at the announcement in the offices of Region 8 and in District 16 (do they think she is taking them all with her?), one of the most incompetently run districts in the history of the NYC school system. Lyles once ran that district. But no one could have done very much. Maybe Joe Stalin, who if he were alive today, would be given serious consideration for chancellor of a large urban school system.

At the press conference where Klein introduced all the SCHMOS who will be doing what Alonso was supposed to do (and looked like they were making a hostage tape,) he was standing alone looking for some reporter to ask him something. So your intrepid Wave reporter went up to him to chat. "Come, sit down and talk. I have some time," he said. I bet he did.

For a few minutes it was 2 former teachers just chatting - until I tried to tell him what teachers really thought - like how can Tweed implement plans if just about the entire cadre of teachers - the implementers -- were so alienated. He wanted to know even though they make mistakes, if Tweed had done ANYTHING right and how come they do not get credit for what they do right. Like, did he think the NYC press corps, led by the cheerleaders from the NY Times, were against BloomKlein and for the UFT? I didn't have the heart to tell him that when the intention is evil, the result is distorted based on the view of the observer -- sort of Einstein theories applied to the world of Tweedledom.

But the conversation quickly turned into EduBabble as he talked about studies this and studies that, all showing teacher quality is the most crucial element in education., the same line Cerf and Klein and Weingarten throw out all too often. Jeez, I thought, I had an awful lot of stinkers as teachers growing up. I probably would have been an Einstein if they had more PD when I went to school. I tried to tell him that most teachers I came across were pretty good and we learned more from each other than PD. But he was no longer listening to what a teacher had to say. He taught, he left, went to Harvard and the Leadership Academy and is stuffed full of EduBabble.

Good luck Baltimore.

For an extremely favorable piece on Alonso, see the Baltimore Sun:

Alonso gets ahead by putting kids first
New schools CEO works hard on behalf of his No. 1 concern

ICE Strikes Back at the Evil Empire

Based on some input, the post below this on Diane Ravitch has been slightly revised. Check it out.

Over at the ICE blog check out James Eterno's excellent response to the Unity attack leaflet over Jeff Kaufman's comments about the UFT and Green Dot charter schools. Also my post on the June DA where Unity bragged about their overwhelming support and how they got ICE out of the Executive Board. As James points out, the vote actually made the point that to almost 80% of the teachers, the UFT is irrelevant. And now that New Action has replaced the ICE-TJC members on the Executive Board, it will be a complete rubber stamp Executive Board and even more irrelevant, if that is possible. For some time, I have felt that the ICE people were wasting their time and energies at Exec. Bd. meetings where the entire board is on the union payroll. But we did get to eat and schmooze, for all that was worth. And after so many years of Delegate Assemblies, I am getting the feel the same about them. Under Weingarten, whatever shards of institutional democracy there were have been shredded. Hmmm! Shredded shards - a new theme for the UFT.

The WeinKlein combo has turned the UFT into something that reminds me of the Roman ruins I recently visited, with more life in the 2000 year old Roman Forum than in the UFT Delegate Assembly and Executive Board. Attila the Klein and Rhondalia the First have made a devastating team in the sack of the UFT.

Attila and Rhondalia celebrate victory

A few choice excepts from James:
Yesterday's Unity leaflet quotes ICE's Jeff Kaufman in the Sun article saying, "This is the end of the Union." Unity neglected to mention Jeff's next line where he says referring to Randi: "She's going to leave in her wake now a real change in terms of what teachers unions are."

[the] Unity piece reverts to boasts about Randi's election victory saying how Unity's election victory was a "tremendous vote of support from all our UFT members." All of them? What about the almost 78% of teachers who didn't bother to vote? In Chicago recently, close to 2/3 of their teachers voted in their union election. I brought this fact up at the last Executive Board meeting. The UFT is a weak irrelevancy in numerous schools in NYC .

Michael Fiorillo posted this on ICE-mail:

Many good points made in your your blog posting, James.

I'd just like to add that at Wednesday's DA I had hoped to ask Randi about the Green Dot issue, but of course that was not possible, since she filibustered for well over an hour, to the point where questions and other business were an afterthought.

Had I been able to ask her, my question would have been,

"Randi, you've spoken about how "aggressively pro-union" the founder of Green Dot schools is, and that the teachers there are represented by a union. However, in the next breath you said that they are speaking with UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles, the AFT local) about signing a contract. If there's a union at a Los Angeles public/charter school that is not represented by UTLA, then isn't that a COMPANY UNION, illegal under the NLRA, and thought to have been eliminated back in the 1930's? What are you doing meeting with the boss of a charter school that has a company union - inevitably dominated by management - when the practical result is the undermining of a fellow AFT local?

Just thought I'd try to ask, but silly me.

Location for future UFT Delegate Assemblies and Executive Board meetings. The Emperor's box will be renovated but no new seats will be added.

In Defense of Teachers: Responding to Ravitch

(Revised)

Diane Ravitch's defense of teachers in yesterday's NY Sun ("Don't Blame the Teachers") led to some comments on ICE-mail. "Finally, a voice of reason speaking out for teachers about the madness of the education business," said Venice Lady, a teacher who has faced first hand the effects of teacher bashing. (See her full post below.)

I had a similar reaction - at first. But as some critical comments popped up on ICE-mail, I thought more about it. Ravitch seemed to take a narrow point of view of the problem without any political/economic analysis as to the backdrop for the "blame the teacher" syndrome, something that is sorely missing and placed too much blame on students and parents. But this is the NY Sun, a right-wing mouthpiece, (as Sean Ahern points out below) and they don't exactly encourage this kind of analysis.

While the overwhelming majority of teachers appreciate Ravitch's comments, they wonder why their own union doesn't use it's expensive PR machine to engage in a rigorous defence of teachers every day, every minute, at every press conference and in every commercial, which are often so insipid.

But the UFT seems to have different priorities (see my report on the Delegate Assembly in the post below this.) Agreeing to end seniority and take away so many of the rights teachers had is in essence is agreeing that these rules are part of the problem. It's a long road for teachers in NYC when they have to contend with both a hostile DOE and a collaborationist union. You never hear the UFT point out where the money really is when Bloomberg cuts property taxes or gives big tax breaks to corporations, instead selling a bill of goods to teachers that there just isn't enough money to make the NYC school system as good as Scarsdale.

Behind the scenes, they often take credit when these articles appear, trying to make it look like they influenced the writer. (But then again they try to take credit for making the sun shine.) People want to see their union drawing a line in the sand rather than being more worried about how things play out in the press. But when your leader is planning an exit strategy, looking like a reasonable union leader nationally takes precedence.

Teacher bashing/blaming is the only explanation to the so-called right wing ed "reformers." We are not trained. Or the problem is just a matter of our low expectations, as Margaret Spellings so outrageously said to John Stewart when he asked her what is the one thing that would make the greatest difference.

As NYC Educator points out just about every day, all the gimmicks are about an unwillingness to spend the money. Today he says: "And if he [Klein] really wanted to improve schools, he could have tried the whole good teachers/ smaller classes/ decent facilities thing. I guess it's more impressive to follow the longstanding NYC tradition of intergalactic personnel searches."

When Chris Cerf threw the usual bull at the Manhattan Institute about how throwing money at problems don't solve them, he had no response when I pointed out that the DOE hasn't tried to throw money at a school instead of closing it, preferring to spend on gimmicks like $80 million computer systems that will have zero impact. At another recent Manhattan Institute luncheon there were at least 5 mute UFT officials there to feed at the trough.

There were a few points not made or others that were emphasized in Ravitch's piece that nagged at me. Carolyn Eubanks said on ICE-mail: "What about putting the blame where it belongs: on a system that does not care about students and pits teachers and students (and their parents) against each other?"

Ravitch says: "Our children — with too few exceptions — don't have that hunger. It's not the fault of their teachers." Or "if they arrive in school with a closed and empty mind, don't blame their teachers." I agree about the blame part but I saw it as part of my role as a teacher to try to stimulate that hunger. Or unlock those closed minds. I may not have succeeded very often but when I did it was like climbing Mount Everest.

And what's with the "teachers don't know what to teach" stuff? Most teachers always knew what to teach and how to teach it - until the Tweedles started telling them they didn't. They just haven't been given the resources.

Leonie Haimson made some additional points on her listserv:

"I agree that the current tendency to blame teachers for the ills of educational systems is ridiculous– but equally absurd is blaming parents and students. The failures of our schools are due to the lack of resources and the low priority that education has, particularly in urban school systems with large numbers of minority students, the misallocation of funds, and the tendency to follow fads, and the ideological fantasies of the moment rather than make the proven reforms that we all know are necessary – like smaller classes -- that every powerful and wealthy person demands for their own children."

And Sean Ahern goes after Ravitch full throttle on ICE mail in his usual inimical style, where he posts articles from the Nation exposing the NY Sun and explores the relationship between Ravitch, Shanker and the UFT. One of the milder statements:

"If you like your pity party heavily laden with maudlin syrupy nonsense then lap it up. Sort of pathetic when so called educators rally round and cheer someone who is tickling them under the chin. Displace real advocacy with phony advocacy."

Phew! There is heavy stuff there, including references to Sean's usual babies - the whitening of the teacher staff, the '68 strike and the Zionist lobby (just the mention of which resulted in some hysterics on ICE-mail). I haven't absorbed all of Sean's points and probably disagree with most of it, but I can be pretty weak when it comes to political analysis and Sean is always provocative and worth reading - you can read it in its entirely at Norms Notes. I do feel he goes too far in his critique of Ravitch. I have more issues with her as a standardista, but I think she has been a real ally and force in the battle against BloomKlein and hopefully, mayoral control and having her voice on this side of the fence is good thing.

Venice Lady loves what Ravitch wrote:
Finally, a voice of reason speaking out for teachers about the madness of the education business. In the four years that I've been with the DOE, it seems to me that teachers are, and have been treated as if we are the "enemy" by administrators and students alike. Somehow, we are supposed to correct all the ills of society by some miraculous teaching in the classroom. Kids sleeping because they are not actively "engaged"? Our fault- never mind that maybe they are not eating properly or getting the sleep they need at home for whatever reasons. Fights in the classroom? Again, it's the fault of the teacher- if we are not teaching wonderful lessons to "engage" the students' attention, we are at fault that students may have hair trigger tempers and emotional problems that they are bringing into the classroom, and are not capable of exercising self control, no matter how wonderful a lesson we have planned on paper or the delivery of that lesson. Why are teachers blamed for all of the problems that are exhibited in
the schools? It's no wonder that so many people leave this "profession" before completing their fifth year. I can think of no other profession where so much blame is laid at the feet of the
people that most try to help those in need by providing an education as the way to get that foothold in society. I hope that the powers that be are listening to what Diane Ravitch is saying, and realize that teachers are not able to correct those problems that students are bringing into the classroom by following some TC methods in the classroom. It's time to lay some responsibility for learning on the students and the parents, too.

UFT Delegate Assembly Report June '07

Paranoia will Destroya

June 13

The June DA's are always poorly attended anyway, so I decided to take a break. No leaflet. Just show up and enjoy the festivities. But why sit and listen to all the Weingarten bullshit for her hour report? The important stuff is going to the pub afterwards. It was almost 5 when I left my house and arrived around 5:40. I felt naked without a leaflet as people were coming up asking me for it. Hey! Over 10 years at just about every DA with something to hand out. I've become a habit.

I picked up an agenda - 7 resolutions to discuss in addition to the usual reports, question and new motion period. Oh! I remember. They didn't get to them at the May 9th DA (remember- the cancelled demo against BloomKlein) because Deputy Mayor David Doctoroff and all the LSOs and SCHMOs from Tweed were given time to speak.

So I go into the visitor section and they're just coming to the end of the 10 minute question period, which is like, the very top of the agenda. Did Weingarten talk all this time? She asks if anyone wants to extend. Marcie Licari, CL of Clara Barton is standing up saying she wants to extend but Weingarten acts like she doesn't hear her. Marcie calls out that Randi said she would call on people from each section so she waited patiently but her section was never called on. "Now Marcie, this is a democratic body and the question was called," the Great Democrat says. Marcie responds that she has been standing for 10 months waiting to be called on.

Now the wheels begin to turn in the head of the GD. "Well this is out of order but I don't want to read about this on the blogs so let's take a vote on whether to let Marcie ask her question." She does and it loses. Sorry Marcie. And sorry GD. I guess you have to read abut it on the blogs, but if you want my advice I would spend less time reading the rantings of us lunatics, as your Unity Caucus leaflet referred to us. Lunacy is catching. But then again if you catch our lunacy you might actually become a union leader who stands up for the members.

I've been here for 5 minutes - jeez.

I'm in the back with TJC's Kit Wainer and Peter Lamphere. Peter has buddies out in LA and will get more info on what is going on out there, particularly in relation to class size.

Peter shows me the Unity leaflet on Green Dot. I howl with laughter at the latest Jeff Zahler work of art which attacked Jeff Kaufman (without naming him) for his quote that charters will be the end of the union (the leaflet rephrases it as the end of the UFT but we know that will never happen -- the Unity machine will always be there to glom off members' dues.) But it is a sign of how sensitive an issue Green Dot is, particularly when a nationally known blogger like NYC Educator has been hammering on Green Dot Randi as she tries to make her national rep in prep for becoming AFT President in July '08. (Strong rumor yesterday that AFT Pres. McElroy will retire, paving the way for Randi.)

ICE lunatic Jeff Kaufman proclaiming charter schools will prove to be the end of the union.

Now Zahler is the new staff director replacing Michael Mendel because to Randi, Michael was not tough enough. He would never write a leaflet like this. But Randi's paranoia (increasing by leaps and bounds as snitches at the palace have been telling us) requires attack dogs while she is traipsing around the country. Zahler, who has been so proud of his red-baiting leaflets, addressed the members and made a less than thrilling impression. He said something about only delegates should be seated - that's it Jeff, show how tough you are by eliminating the 12 seats in the visitor section - maybe a response to the wonderful video I took last time. I heard someone mutter "we want Michael." Can't wait to see Zahler run a DA.

Finally, we get to the 7 motions - gee, they couldn't dig up another Deputy Mayor or more DOE officials? The heavy one comes first - the resolution on military recruitment in the schools. I'm not going to go into this in depth here because I am not up to speed on the nitty gritty details.
I should point out that Leo Casey spoke. He is NOT a delegate. DID you hear that Zahler? But that should be rectified when Casey becomes HS VP when Volpicella retires soon. Now there's a popular choice as even Unity people consider Casey, who will justify any flip-flop by Randi with lengthy historical analysis and name calling of any one opposed, one of the most intellectually dishonest people in the history of humanity. Well, maybe just the UFT.

That no one from the opposition called a point of order galls me. Sometimes I wonder how people expect to organize against Unity if they won't stand up to the heat of Unity attacks at the DA. Kaufman did it consistently (Bruce Markens used to do it, as I did - pat on the back) until Jeff got disgusted with the DA and frankly, there's no one left with the balls to do it.

There is some interesting irony in this debate. UFT'ers Against the War has been the force behind this reso and people have been going out to the schools to oppose the military presence in the schools. Lisa North and Gloria Brandman from ICE have been major players in this organization, with the support of by Megan Behrent and Peter Lamphere from TJC. There have been others involved too.

Jerry Frohnhoefer, CL of Aviation HS gets up to oppose the motion and defend the role of military recruiters. You can hear the oohs! and aahs! from the audience which is clearly for the resolution, as is the leadership. I see some people on the left (politically) looking at Jerry in disgust. The problem on the left is a lack of respect for the point of views of people like Jerry. You may not agree but when principled people have something to say, they should be heard. Of course, not knowing Jerry, they assume automatically he is a hack. I've made that mistake myself about others.

Fortunately I know Jerry. When I think about remaining active in union politics so many years after retiring, I think of the wonderful people I meet. Jerry is at the top of my list.

I first met him only a few months ago when he left Unity Caucus to run with ICE as our VP for vocational schools. Now Unity is a black hole -- you go in but never get out, so Jerry is unique. His son is a captain serving in Afghanistan. Many teachers at Aviation HS are vets. Aviation has a large ROTC program for kids. I was there on Saturday for a robotics tournament and was called "Sir" more times than I can count -- not like when kids used to say "Yo! Scotty Boy!"

Jerry made an excellent presentation which I will do justice to and also include points from both points of view in another post. (I just talked to Jerry and he is heading out to Spokane WA for his daughter's graduation with an MA in Fine Arts. Her thesis is based on her 6 years of military service.) One of the people opposing Jerry was Jonathan Lessuck from Progressive Labor Party and ICE who also ran with us in the election.

That ICE had Jerry and Jonathan on the slate may be a sign the Unity leaflet is right - we must be lunatics. Unity doesn't get it. Lunacy is the wave of the future.

Now it is the end of the meeting and the Great Democrat calls for a vote on 6 resolutions all at once. Meeting adjourned. And it's off to the pub - my main man from New Action, Ed Beller, the only one in the responsible opposition that I have a shred of respect for, and that wonderful couple Bob McCue and Alice O'Neal. Bob, one of the best English teachers in the history of the world, has been an ATR for the past year. That he was an active CL at ParkWest HS before it closed won't help him get a job, especially with his max salary. Thanks Joel and Randi.

They are already a few drinks ahead. I should have skipped the DA and gone straight there to get a head start. Maybe next time. But what would the Great Democrat do for blog reading?

LA Dreamin' Part 2

We've been tracking information on the LA teacher union as a basis of comparison to our friends and neighbors in Unity Caucus here in NYC. Note the call to teachers to boycott required after-school faculty meetings and the emphasis on class size as part of contract negotiations, the kinds of actions some teachers in NYC were hoping to see from the UFT. It's hard to make judgements from a distance so if anyone has information pro and con, let it fly.

Labor Notes May 2007: http://www.labornotes.org/

How Los Angeles Teachers Won a Year-Long Contract Campaign
by Joshua Pechthalt and Julie Washington

[Editor’s Note: Labor activists seldom get a chance to reflect on campaigns in the heat of the moment. In this issue we print the reflections of leaders of the Los Angeles teachers union on their recent contract campaign.]

Members of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the union representing Los Angeles public school teachers, ratified a three-year agreement with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on March 14 by a 90 percent margin. The vote ended a year-long campaign that won gains for Los Angeles teachers and demonstrated the effectiveness of broad, rank-and-file based organizing combined with member mobilization.
The new contract gives UTLA members an across-the-board six percent salary raise for the first year with re-openers for the second and third years. (In a separate agreement a few months earlier, UTLA and the other unions representing classified employees, building trades, and others, were able to maintain health care benefits at their current levels.)
UTLA also won a first-ever class size reduction and a cap on class sizes. Since the early 1990s, the district had unilaterally increased class size during recessions when the district claimed it was in a fiscal crisis.
In addition, the local won protection for union activists by requiring the district to mediate before administrative transfers can take place.

YEAR-LONG CAMPAIGN
The contract campaign was as unconventional as the contract itself. Beginning last March, UTLA leaders rolled out a campaign to involve the members in choosing and prioritizing their concerns.
Typically, UTLA’s 25 or so standing committees put forward bargaining proposals to the UTLA House of Representatives, which then adopts the bargaining package.
This year, UTLA school chapters were asked to meet and discuss which issues they thought were most important. Then, the union rep at each school fed that information into a central data-base set up through the UTLA website.
Almost 300 schools participated and developed a list of priority issues. Each UTLA area (UTLA is divided into eight geographic areas averaging about 5,000 members each) then used that information to develop the contract demands at their monthly area meetings, the Board of Directors, and finally at the House of Representatives.
An issue developed regarding the salary demand, however, that created problems for the union leadership. While the language in the bargaining proposal stated that the union would wait until after the state budget was adopted before making a salary demand, the proposal also mentioned that it would take a 14 percent pay increase to raise member salaries to be among the highest in the county.
The press jumped all over this, charging UTLA with making an unreasonable demand, while many members thought this really was the demand and were delighted. When the House of Reps eventually adopted an initial nine percent salary demand, some members were ticked off that it had been unilaterally “lowered.”
Lesson? The only figure to put out is the actual demand, not a longer-term goal.

ESCALATING STRATEGY
Contract negotiations lagged during the summer and didn’t pick up in the fall, except for the agreement on health care benefits in October. The union and the district accused each other of not taking negotiations seriously.
In response, the union adopted an escalating strategy, starting with weekly Red Shirt Tuesdays, a Class Size Caravan in November, and a mass demonstration at district headquarters in December.
Red Shirt Tuesdays were solidarity-building activities in which all UTLA members at a school would wear UTLA t-shirts and send in a group picture to the union’s monthly newspaper.
The Class Size Caravan, while not a mass mobilization, was an attempt to draw attention to the outrageous class sizes in Los Angeles. With much press fanfare, UTLA rented a school bus to go to different school campuses around the district where teachers met the bus to deliver information on excessive class sizes at their school.
With negotiations making little progress, the stage was set for the December 6 mass demonstration. Up until that time, UTLA leadership had yet to prove to the district that the members were ready to fight.
December 6 proved it and then some, as over 10,000 UTLA members poured into the streets at district headquarters in downtown Los Angeles and at another site in the San Fernando Valley. These were among the largest demonstrations in UTLA history, comparable only to those around the 1989 strike.
The success of December 6 was fueled by the intense anger teachers felt about the increasing stress in their jobs and the lack of respect they felt from the district. But some novel organizing strategies also helped.
Two weeks before the demonstration, UTLA released all of its 150 area “cluster leaders,” who volunteer to make contact with the 700 UTLA chapter leaders, for a day-long meeting. But this was not one of those top-down affairs in which the union leadership gives orders from on high.
Instead, the cluster leaders from each area made their own plans about mobilizing their areas for December 6 and even brought in their own ideas for the demonstration. One area leader suggested that UTLA ask members to bring their flashlights to LAUSD headquarters in order to “shine a light” on the huge district bureaucracy. UTLA accepted this proposal and at the demonstration thousands of UTLA members, on cue, shined their flash-lights on the 29-story district-owned Beaudry building, along with a search light rented by the union.

STRIKE VOTE
By the beginning of January, however, an agreement was still a long way off. UTLA called on teachers to boycott required after-school faculty meetings. This scared the district so much that it called off faculty meetings for the three weeks the boycott was in force.
UTLA then called for a day of informational picketing, leading up to a strike authorization vote in February. Furthermore, UTLA conducted a massive radio ad campaign emphasizing the broader benefits of the union’s demands for students and their communities, in particular lower class size and local control of the schools.
By now, the district was taking negotiations seriously and called for nearly daily discussions. District officials were convinced that UTLA members were ready to strike and they wanted to avoid this at all costs. The radio campaign helped solidify public support for the teachers, who were championing the needs of students, not just themselves.
This situation led to what UTLA leaders called “the settlement moment” just as UTLA began taking the strike vote on February 12. In the course of a week, the district withdrew all of its concessionary proposals and gave ground on nearly all of the union’s priority issues.
The lessons of this contract fight are clear. UTLA leadership led a campaign based on the wishes and activity of the members and posed the issues in terms of school reform, not just “bread and butter.” This campaign led not only to a far better contract than previous ones, but also created organizing opportunities for the future.

[Joshua Pechthalt serves as UTLA/AFT Vice-President. Julie Washington is UTLA Elementary Vice President.]

Green Dot, Randi - Jeff Kaufman Comments

There's been much ado about Green Dot charters and possible collaboration between the UFT and Green Dot. Today's NY Sun addresses the issue below as does a follow-up article in the LA Daily News which I posted at Norm's Notes.

Weingarten and UFT ideologue Leo Casey (who will find a way to justify just about any UFT policy) repreesnt the "new union" movement, which means to me they are not old-line trade union leaders. Instead they look to be partners with management. (There's a lot more to analyze on the implications - another time.)

What to make of the flirtations between Weingarten and possibly LA's teacher union head AJ Duffy will also take some analysis. Jeff Kaufman's quotes below represent a mainstream view of many unionists that the underbelly of the charter movement - remember, the brainchild of Albert Shanker - is really an attack on public education and on teacher unions. Like, let's build reform on the backs of young, committed, low-salaried teachers who burn out and get replaced - like who needs tenure if you don't last long enough to gain it.)

Many young teachers who want to make a difference often enter the system with an anti-union bias, partly as a result of the general anti-union attack going on in the mass media. Meeting union hacks in schools does not help.

Being far away from the scenes in Chicago and NY I may be wrong. With Chicago and Debbie Lynch, who I initially saw as a real contrast to Weingarten (despite emails from Weingarten - where in a weird convoluted argument she attacked me for being anti woman - and Leo Casey claiming I was wrong and saying "Debbie is one of us") I was part right in terms of Lynch's attempts to make the union more democratic (I base this on reports from George Schmidt.)

I was questioned by one correspondent based on yesterday's post "LA Dreamin" where I posted that comment. My response as to how I see a comparison between AJ Duffy and Weingarten was this:

"There is a different dynamic going on based on the politics of the leadership which has a more radical bent than the UFT plus the mayor's history of being a union activist.

"Maybe a lot more trust than one would have in Bloomberg plus I believe from other stuff way more of a commitment to building a more democratic union with an activist rank and file, the total opposite to what Randi wants to do. They also come from a place of running as part of a reform in the union and in the system - not like Unity which has been part of the system as collaborators (and still is I firmly believe) for 45 years.

"These people did win -- sort of like what if ICE/TJC should ever win. We would probably have to tread carefully too given what happened to Debbie Lynch.

"It is a minefield but I could be wrong but also have a better sense of trust as to where these guys are going and their willingness to admit mistakes and backtrack.

"I know where Randi is going and it's deal making all around and no move to democratize the union. When one person makes all the decisions like Weingarten does there is always a bad result. As bad a result as when BloomKlein make all the decisions. We need checks and balances all around and when the entire UFT Ex Bd is on the payroll..."

Those in NYC who like to look at the ability of reformist movements in the unions in LA and Chicago to win an election as some kind of hope are barking up the wrong tree as the Unity Caucus equivalents in those towns had nowhere near the power and money and machine as Unity does in NYC.

End of the UFT Is Talk, After a Parley in L.A.

BY ELIZABETH GREEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun

June 11, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/56244

A possible deal with a Los Angeles charter school group has infuriated opponents of the teachers union president, Randi Weingarten, with one opposition leader decrying "the end of the union." The charter group, known as Green Dot, has been battling its local teachers union over how much to protect teachers.

Ms. Weingarten last month visited Los Angeles and held friendly meetings with each side — and left open the possibility of a partnership with the charter group. "We'd like to build a relationship," her special representative for high schools, Leo Casey, said.

Leaders of the New York City union's opposition caucus, the Independent Community of Educators, learned about the trip from a Los Angeles Times editorial, and lashed back in angry blog posts. Green Dot teachers are unionized, but not through the city union, and they lack protections such as traditional tenure or privileges for senior teachers. ICE leaders called Green Dot's contract anti-teacher.

Ms. Weingarten defended her visit with Green Dot's founder, Steve Barr, during a meeting of her union's executive committee, but she failed to satisfy some. "This is the end of the union," an ICE leader who sits on the executive committee, Jeff Kaufman, said. "She's going to leave in her wake now a real change in terms of what teachers unions are."

Mr. Kaufman's caucus won 10% of the vote in a recent UFT leadership election, but lost all its seats on the executive committee. Mr. Kaufman admitted the blow would dampen the caucus's power, but vowed to keep up pressure via blog posts.

Some education experts praised Ms. Weingarten's outreach as a rare display of leadership from a union head, contrasting it with her West Coast counterpart, A.J. Duffy, the president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

The union's battle with Green Dot escalated last month when teachers at an L.A. high school voted to abandon the public district and join Mr. Barr's group. United Teachers Los Angeles had fought previous expansion attempts by Green Dot, and a teacher wrote in the Los Angeles Times last week that the union also managed to squash teachers' push for change. (In an interview, Mr. Duffy denied that any bullying took place.)

Ms. Weingarten's visit, when she met with Messrs. Barr and Duffy, was an attempt at peacemaking, Mr. Casey said. But he said the trip also continued an ongoing conversation between Ms. Weingarten and Mr. Barr. It had been on Ms. Weingarten's schedule for two weeks — well before tensions escalated, a union spokesman said.

Ms. Weingarten said she wanted to visit the Green Dot schools, whose union status is unique among charter schools and which boast an 81% graduation rate, in order to see them for herself. After visiting two, she said she was impressed. "They are very teacher-centered," she said. "It's obvious, the teacher professionalism and collaboration that is the center of these schools."

Several sources said Green Dot's founder has been looking to expand his network into cities beyond Los Angeles. Ms. Weingarten would not say what her next step would be with Green Dot, and Mr. Barr declined to comment for this article. Mr. Casey said the relationship is part of a broader United Federation of Teachers plan to organize what he called the "progressive pole" of the charter school movement, citing groups in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Many union leaders strongly oppose charter schools, which are privately run but publicly funded. Ms. Weingarten has taken a softer stance, even opening two charter schools of her own.

"She gets that choice is coming to public education, so she's out in the front, instead of just waiting to get run over by it like some of her colleagues," Andrew Rotherham, the co-director of an education think tank, Education Sector, said.

During her trip, Ms. Weingarten also met with the philanthropist Eli Broad, who gave Green Dot $10.5 million last year.

Ed. Note: Broad also gave UFT Charters $1 million.

LA Dreamin'

Some very instructive points in this article and George Schmidt's comment comparing the reactions of teacher unions in LA, Chicago and New York. Debbie Lynch won election originally with what seemed to be a reform agenda over the Chicago equivalent of Randi Weingarten's Unity Caucus, though Debbie also had long-time ties to Al Shanker.

AJ Duffy in LA also won election with a slate of various caucuses that defeated an incumbent leadership that could be viewed as a Unity Caucus equivalent. But Duffy and his team have very different political points of view than the leadership in NYC and have a long-term strategy as opposed to the very short-term goals of the UFT which always looks for the quick PR value and then runs on to the next big thing. And there's got to be a different mind set between dealing with a mayor in LA who was a teacher union organizer and Bloomberg. But the problem with handing over control of schools to a mayor is that you never know who you might end up with. That is why any governance plan requires some serious level of oversight.

From almost the day I started teaching I thought the school system (and the UFT) was in serious need of reform. To see the reform movement captured by the likes of BloomKlein and their allies like Eli Broad nationwide is due to a great extent to the collaboration people like Randi Weingarten and other union leaders who are always defensive about protecting teacher rights because they have no vision for how a school system should look and seem more intent on impressing the powers that be and the press as to how "cooperative" they can be.

Actually, I believe they are way more in line with the BloomKleins of this world than they are with the rank and file teachers. Look at the connections with the Clintons who have played a role in these "reform" movements that end up with teacher bashing. And follow the line to Clinton billionaire buddy Ron Burkle who tried to buy the Tribune newspaper chain with Eli Broad, who has so much praise for both BloomKlein and Weingarten (he gave the UFT charter schools $1 million.)

Some of our colleagues in TJC have contacts in LA and we will monitor what is happening out there.

George comments: 6/10/07
The reason Debbie Lynch was ousted was that she didn't heed the voices of the "rank and file" against these bullshit corporate "reforms." And she just lost her bid to get back into office by a huge margin because her opponents (the Chicago version of Unity) successfully portrayed her as having sold out the membership during her brief three years in office (2001 -2004). The fact it, the "mayoral control" model of corporate school reform that the newspapers all back was in place in Chicago for six years (1995-2001) under Chicago's version of Unity before Debbie ousted them by opposing their sellouts. The exciting thing in Los Angeles is that the leadership of UTLA can't fall prey to this phony fascist version of "reform" despite what all the New Democrats" and their media are saying if the membership remains active. As we know in Chicago and you've also learned in New York City, mayoral control is not in the interest of teachers, children, or democratic public schools. No matter how big the opening bribes are. Hopefully, the Los Angeles union will reverse its support based on how much we've learned already in Chicago and New York (and Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and now New Orleans... among others).

George N. Schmidt Editor, Substance Chicago www.substancenews.com

Union leaders in a bind
Reform-minded UTLA chiefs struggle to win over teachers
BY NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN, Staff Writer

With momentum growing for drastic reform at Los Angeles public schools driven by the superintendent and mayor, the politically powerful teachers union finds itself on the front lines of a potentially divisive battle.

United Teachers Los Angeles' own crew of reform leaders is walking a tightrope between privately backing reform efforts it has long sought, while publicly defending the rights of a rank-and-file that is being described as staunchly rigid and unaccepting of change.

Led by President A.J. Duffy, the small team of advisers is keenly aware that it must quickly and smoothly work to engender the support of its membership or risk jeopardizing the unprecedented alignment of leaders to spark a revolution at the beleaguered school district.

After decades of failed reforms, achievement scores lagging well behind the state averages and dropout rates estimated between 24 percent and 50 percent, the lives of more than 708,000 students and teachers hang in the balance - and with that, the health of the city itself.

"I don't think it's the union leadership any longer. It's a battle between the leadership being more reform-minded than the membership and the membership dragging down what the leadership wants to do in political and classroom advances," said Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.

"It's a tussle with the staunchly rigid rank-and-file where the reformers are on top, but they're being held back by a fear of change in the predominant majority of members."

Los Angeles teachers, who have been on the receiving end of countless promises while little has resulted from previous reform efforts, have become mistrustful of the district even as they have wielded considerable clout in district politics.

The divide is deep, especially in the wake of the backroom deal struck by the mayor with the union leadership to create Assembly Bill 1381, which would have given the mayor a substantial role in the school district.

Maclay Middle School algebra teacher Tim Henricks, who considers himself new to the profession with seven years experience, said what he sees is a membership divided, particularly between newer teachers and their more senior colleagues.

Younger teachers seem more receptive to ideas like charter schools or getting charter-like freedoms, while those who have been in the Los Angeles Unified School District system far longer may be more complacent.

"With charters, there's more freedom to do what you want without the LAUSD breathing down your neck. But the major concern is, what happens after five years and the issue (arises) of getting rid of teachers with just cause?

"It's the parents and the teachers - nothing really gets done without that, anything that's productive anyway, that moves in the right direction. Without our support, it's going to go nowhere."

Suspicious of reform
At Cleveland Humanities Magnet High, teachers have a long record of classroom success by working together closely to help students do well in core classes.

But they said that despite getting 40 percent of their graduates last year into University of California schools, they are facing increasing pressure to follow a standardized approach.
"Teachers are skeptical of the reforms that would seemingly help them because of all the strings attached," said Gabriel Lemmon, a 10th-grade philosophy teacher in the magnet program.

"Bureaucracy should fit itself around good teaching. Teaching should not fit itself around a bureaucracy."

For Duffy, the key to winning broad support for reform is local control.

"I've seen this district reorganize every 2 years for a new reform, and teachers are tired of putting their time and energy, their hearts and their souls into reforms that are not going to bring better student outcomes and more support for teachers in the classrooms and health and human service professionals at the school sites."

Mindful of election
With a union election coming next February, Duffy and his team will likely be treading carefully, especially with the district facing a deficit that might jeopardize its ability to win further increases on top of the 6 percent raise won this year.

"The union's leaders are not strongly moving forward with any reform agenda because it's a very fine line with the upcoming election," Regalado said.

And although AB 1381 is dead - defeated in the courts, with the mayor announcing he won't pursue appeals after he secured a majority on the school board - the sentiment of a "hostile takeover" is very much alive among the members who were split down the middle on support for the legislation.

As school board officials and the Mayor's Office are working quietly to develop a plan for Villaraigosa to oversee a "demonstration project" of low-performing schools, the union has sent a clear message to them: Let the schools come to you with the overwhelming consensus of teachers or we will be forced to oppose the move.

"The mayor has a nasty habit of jumping too quickly," said one official, who asked for anonymity. "What we're trying to get him to understand through back channels and get him to do is not move so quickly."

At a recent news conference announcing the mayor's decision to give up the legal fight for AB 1381, Deputy Mayor Ray Cortines emphasized that the mayor's team will not actively "pick" schools. Rather, it will look to schools that ask for the office's involvement.

Allaying fears
The mayor, a former UTLA organizer and committed union liberal, has insisted his agenda puts teachers first. He has formed an alliance with new Superintendent David Brewer III, won majority control of the school board control and embraced union leaders. But it will take all his powers of persuasion to assuage fears of the rank-and-file.

"The public schools in Los Angeles are not going to be able to change unless you have buy-in on the part of the teachers, administrators, and parents," said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center.

"The fact that the mayor came out of the teachers union, and the fact that he's a very persuasive, charismatic leader, the potential still exists for the mayor to play an important role in shaping the discussion on how to best improve the schools in Los Angeles and getting buy-in from the teachers to make that happen."

Villaraigosa said he believes any reform effort has to come from the "ground up, not from the top down," and that the union is "key to any effort to reform our schools." He admitted there will be challenges with the union, but he repeatedly emphasized one point: his long-standing relationship with the powerful organization.

"I've got a long history with them and we go way back, and my expectation is that we'll be able to work just fine," he said. "Challenges are opportunities and I can't tell you that there won't be some challenges, but I can tell you that I've got a long history with them, a very, very long history, and I think it's one that will provide the foundation for a successful partnership."

Need for change
Brewer insists he wants to work with the union but also made clear he means those who share the reform vision.

"Believe it or not, there are people inside the union that really understand that they need to change, and we just have to work with those people," he said.

What the mayor, Brewer and the union are seeking to achieve are the same core reform concepts: Small schools, greater local autonomy with teachers and principals having more control over budget and curriculum, and streamlining the bureaucracy to redirect those funds to classrooms.

Few can deny that teachers would embrace all those ideas, but the key to getting their support will likely come down to the process and showing teachers they are valued as professionals who have something to say about the reform proposals.

Wong said with public education on the forefront of public discourse, teachers feel under attack.

"There is a concern on the part of many teachers that their input is not being fully appreciated, so they resent it when people use the discussion about school reform as an opportunity to make disparaging remarks about teachers, that it's their fault," Wong said.
Union leaders believe their fatal political misstep was the decision to strike the backroom deal on AB 1381 with the mayor without involving UTLA's governing bodies.

Now they are working hard to educate teachers about the different reform options and what they would mean to them.

"These changes cause so much uncertainty for many teachers - we're not the most revolutionary of folk - and uncertainty causes folks to get very conservative in their thinking," Cleveland High's Magnet Program coordinator Lemmon said.

"So I don't know. I hope that we do something, but it seems that bottom-up or top-down, at the end of the day, it all seems about the same."
naush.boghossian@dailynews.com
(818) 713-3722

Merit Pay in Play

The NY Sun's Elizabeth Green reports that some schools will give individual teachers merit pay for performance. Randi Weingarten objects - sort of. Way back when, I attempted to bring resolutions to the Delegate Assembly calling for the UFT to refuse all proposals to institute merit pay, Weingarten blocked them by not calling on me for months. I finally got the floor at around 6:15 pm on a day when Unity Caucus was heading to an election victory party at the Hilton afterwards. Boy were they pissed that they had to listen to me for 5 minutes. Naturally they turned it down. After all, Randi had supported the plan in District 19 (East New York in Brooklyn) that gave merit pay to entire staffs for rising scores. And her plan when Giuliani was still mayor to pay summer school teachers for high scores with free airline tickets caused much hilarity all around. (That proposal has disappeared from her resume.)

Stacey Gauthier co-director of operations at the Renaissance's Charter School doesn't understand "why the union wouldn't want to support their members getting extra income."

Shame on her to think think the UFT leadership has any core values beyond money. Remember extended days, times, years, lunch duty, and the entire litany of givebacks? So when they support "a plan that would reward entire schools for meeting performance goals, but would not differentiate between teachers" that is just a foot in the door for full merit pay where teachers can get to compete with each other for the best kids and to see who can spend more time doing test practice. Sort of like let's give the first fireman up the ladder bonuses.)

The UFT is in favor of teachers at different schools competing against each other (there's a good basis for union solidarity) on the basis of no performance goals other than a narrow range of tests. And so soon after the UFT came out with a report that laments the impact of testing which just goes to prove the mantra: watch what they do not what they say. Randi's actions rather than words shows she supports the testing/standards malestrom that is destroying public education.

Note what Randi said:
"But the union's president, Randi Weingarten ... said unionized schools could not enact merit pay without renegotiating their contracts, a process the UFT could halt. "It has to be negotiated," she said. "CEI or the school leadership is not going to unilaterally do this."

Not that she is unilaterally opposed to merit pay and giving the powerful reasons why teachers who support the idea should stand against it. But that things have to be negotiated. In the UFT lexicon everything is for sale.

The entire UFT leadership should be sworn to take the hypocritic oath.

Teachers in Wisconsin have written:
"Those in government who would like to bring about the demise of public education in the interest of privatization have a multi-faceted approach. Among them is paying teachers based on the test scores of children. Plain and simple this is an attack on public education and those who teach in the public schools. "Merit pay won't make our classrooms less crowded, won't make our schools safer, won't get parents more involved in their children's schoolwork... won't improve teaching or pupil learning...(it) would encourage divisive competition in a profession that requires cooperation and teamwork... (and it would be unfair given the uncontrollable factors) that children's learning is also affected by circumstances related to their home environment, health care, nutrition, and other factors", so says Adam Urbanski, in MERIT PAY WON'T WORK IN SCHOOLS."

When in Rome....

Just back from a week in a city where buildings were extensively renovated - in 100 AD when they were already a couple of hundred years old. And here, we can't even keep Shea Stadium after only a little over 40 years. They managed to do all that building thousands of years ago most likely using slave labor. Or maybe Joelus Kleinus had negotiated a sweetheart contract with labor boss Randius Weingartenus.

And no, that wasn't me trying to jump into the Popemobile. We were in the Vatican on Monday just a few days before and missed out on seeing that event. The Pope was making a guest appearance at the Santa Maria Maggiore across from our hotel this past Thurs. evening and our rooftop had a bird's eye view. Supposedly we missed having 50,000 people outside our hotel, but we had to get on a plane earlier in the day, which was the late lamented Brooklyn-Queens Day, so eloquently laid to rest by NYC Educator. I try not to fly on that day and usually fast in lament but it couldn't be helped.

Just catching up with stuff and I see I missed a lot of goodies while I was gone. Maybe that was a good thing. Nausea and jet lag don't go well together.

The view from the roof before we left. They're setting up for the Pope's visit that evening.

Toussaint on why we need political climate change

In this speech, Roger Toussaint makes a political analysis, not like Randi Weingarten who is all about tactics and strategy and political manipulation. No matter how much she talks about how she helped Toussaint, we all know that after the disastrous UFT 2005 contract, she would have looked pretty bad if Toussaint won a smashing victory. Her assigned role was to be an intermediary with the city, not an advocate, the same role she plays between the UFT and BloomKlein. Some say that is a good thing. But to have a labor leader always accept the argument there is no money without ever pointing to the surplus or the corporate tax breaks or the massive theft by real estates interests is not our advocate and plays more of a role selling Bloomberg's positions to us. Witness Deputy Mayor David Doctoroff's using up a massive chunk of time at the last Delegate Assembly where Randi was helping sell the plan. Contrast that with Toussaint's analysis of who exactly the plan is for.

Lisa North sent this along.
This speech by Roger Toussaint talks about living conditions and who decisions are made for in NYC/US. Not talked about in this speech was the fact that Bloomberg's plan for the future of NYC does not include building more schools for the increasing population. Some have said that his plans are for more wealthy people with NO children. If they do have children, send them to private schools or move! Lisa

(Remarks by TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint at the 2nd Annual Sumner Rosen Memorial Lecture on May 8, 2007) http://www.twulocal100.org/?q=node/462

Thank you Rabbi Feinberg, Ed Ott and all the organizers of this event. Thank you all for your support in these difficult times.

I want to talk about climate change. Some of you just had two full days on climate change at the North American Labor Assembly on Climate Change. Is there anything else to say? Especially from someone who is not a climate scientist.

I want to talk about changing the political climate. I have been asked to frame the discussion and then the panel jumps in. Here's a 5-point proposition for our discussion.

1. The political climate is very important.
2. The current political climate makes any progressive change almost impossible.
3. We are entering a period where the political climate can and will change.
4. Which way it changes -- good or bad -- is up to us.
5. So the big question is: What do the groups represented here tonight have to do to change the
political climate in a progressive direction. That's our task.

Our Union knows something about message development. 17 months ago, right before our last contract expired, TWU Local 100 put ads in newspapers and issued public statements. Our message was simple.

* Transit work is difficult, dangerous, vitally important work.
* Transit workers deserve respect and consideration for the work we do.
* Safety for riders and transit workers is our top priority.
* If we are hard nosed negotiators, it is because we have been to too many funerals.

That last line is not a paraphrase or summary. It is a direct quote from full page ads in December, 2005. "We have been to too many funerals."

The response from government and the media was swift and furious. We were denounced in the press for holding the city hostage. We were called greedy, overpaid, even lazy. We were told we should be thankful we had a job with any benefits. Editorials in the NY Post and Daily
News called for my arrest and jailing. Imagine that.

The media was not reporting the news. It was trying to create the political climate we had to work in. Let me add that the press was as rabid or more in 2002. Then the Post said I was leading a "neo-socialistic jihad."

There were also editorials about transit workers in the Daily News and Post this past week. Let me briefly quote from them:

"Safety is Job One in any environment. Transit workers find themselves in particularly dangerous circumstances all the time; the need for care is that much more acute."

That's from Rupert Murdoch's NY Post. Here's another, and here from the NY Daily News, an editorial titled "The tracks of our tears."

The sad, sorry truth is that most of us pay little attention to the men and women who keep this city running. Like the transit workers out there in the dark, dank tunnels where the subway trains come screaming through. We take both - the trains and the workers - for granted. Although the former would not be there for us if the latter were not there also, laboring under dangerous conditions.

We take the risks for granted, or do not understand the perils that come with the job. But this past week, our collective conscience was shaken by the deaths of two of these men.

Meanwhile, workaday New York - all the busy people rushing to-and-fro - should take a moment to acknowledge those who labor underground, unsung and unheralded. They deserve our thanks. And Franklin and Boggs and their grieving families deserve our prayers.

Like I said, the political climate can change. Local 100 did not hire a new PR firm to get these editorials. We paid a much higher price. There is an old IWW song: "We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years." Here is the refrain:

But if blood be the price of all your wealth Good God we have paid in full

Transit workers have paid in full to keep New York moving.

Climate change is coming. I think we are in one of those historic periods where what we do in the next year or two will determine the way people live for the next generation or two. It's one of those periods where the stakes are higher than usual.

* The future of American health care will be determined.
* The future of immigration.
* Transportation policy, and all that entails.
* The environment.
* The nature of work and retirement.
* War and peace for the whole world.

Use whatever term you want. Watershed. Paradigm shift. Or listen to Sam Cooke:

It's been a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come

Should we be hopeful or fearful? I say both. Clearly there is hope. If we had this meeting a year ago, with Bush and a solid Republican Congress, the future would seem impossibly bleak. Today it is less so.

But all change is not good change.

The last time things shifted for a generation was 1980, with Ronald Reagan. We are still living under that change.

What do we need to make the change a good change?

* We need stronger alliances between labor and other movements.
* We need stronger alliances between union labor and the rest of labor.
* And we need to forthrightly confront the big cultural roadblocks that block the progressive path.

The first one is about the public good. We have had 25 years of denigration of the very idea that there is something called the public good. Government has to push it forward. Society has to pay for it.

The Republican presidential debate last week was at the Ronald Reagan library. It belonged there. Reagan unleashed the open assault on the public good. The candidates fell all over themselves trying to show who was the most Reagan-like. Who would keep starving the
public sphere and push all wealth into the marketplace.

I used to think that the only public good the right wing accepted was the military. But today they even send our children and neighbors and co-workers into battle without armor. And then de-fund the VA hospitals when they come home wounded.

We need a full scale cultural counter-attack on this front.

* The market can NOT provide health care for all.
* The market can NOT provide efficient, affordable, accessible mass transit.
* The market can NOT make the environment green.

There are things the market can do. It can provide 300 TV channels and a fancier cell phone every few months. And if progressive public policy decisions are ever made, the market can try to make a buck off of them.

The market won't provide equality, or decency. It won't ensure dignity in our old age, though it will try to profit if society goes that route. We need to change the culture that worships the market and rebuild a sense of the public good, the common good.

I think this will require taking a deep breath and wading back into the battle over taxes. I offer as a proposition for debate: low taxes are an indication of a society going the wrong way.

Let me say a few words about New York City. A few weeks ago Mayor Bloomberg unveiled his big "Plan NYC 2030" to develop a more sustainable New York over the next generation. This time I did not tell the Mayor to shut up.

Two reasons.

1. He was talking about a big public initiative. It's about time.
2. And much of the content made sense. Playgrounds and green space throughout the city, a sound water supply, a superior mass transit system, and even congestion pricing for lower Manhattan.

But I have to raise the same questions I raised yesterday at the Climate Change conference. We are all for a greener New York, but a greener New York for whom? Who should do the sacrificing? And whose children get to benefit? It's not just about generations. It is also about class and race.

Every picture tells a story. Examine the photos accompanying the 157 glossy page Plan. You will see lower Manhattan, you will see Midtown Manhattan, and you will see Central Park. Not the South Bronx. Not East New York. Not Jamaica. Now read the text. You will see references to improving conditions in every borough and in every neighborhood of New York City. There is a mixed message here. Might I even say class perspectives are being shown?

We spoke out on congestion pricing because we see it as part of the mix for making NYC more livable and more viable in the future. Congestion pricing must be coupled with expansion of our mass transit system, with reducing transit fares, and with restoring the City's dwindling
funding for mass transit.

For us, this is not about making lower Manhattan a more comfortable place for bankers and lawyers to work, liveand play. It is about making mass transit effective, accessible, affordable for working New Yorkers. It is a matter of class. But in New York matters of class often turn out to be matters of race as well.

Look at a map of childhood asthma in New York. The South Bronx jumps out at you, as do other minority neighborhoods. Bloomberg's plan notes that 15,000 diesel-fueled trucks work the Hunts Point Market every day. That's true. But the trucks did not get there by themselves. They did not even get pushed there by the by the doings of the invisible hand of the market. NYC put them there. NYC poisoned the children of the South Bronx through conscious planning decisions.

We did not invest in mass transit. Instead we shut the ports. We shut down the rail lines. And the Cross Bronx became a trucking route. Childhood asthma in the South Bronx is not an accident. It is not the result of unplanned growth. It is the consequence of policy decisions pushed by big money and enacted by government. Policies soaked through with environmental racism.

And still I might take that over what has happened since: the total abandonment of public policy, planning and investment. It is a good thing that Mayor Bloomberg has reopened the possibility of government action in the public interest. It's up to us to make sure that the
policies are good one.

One specific example that might illuminate our challenge. For the better part of a generation,
government has reduced its commitment to mass transit. City and State contributions have gone down, and down again. They even cut back subsidies to the MTA for transportation for school children. And at the same time, they cut taxes for the rich over and over. The MTA
borrowed to make up the difference. Now interest to the banks on bonds is a growing burden.

Bloomberg calls for more mass transit. But he left out more money from the City and State. He talked of using the congestion pricing revenues, but not increasing the City and State share. He left out progressive taxation. And he left out fare reductions as a pull to accompany the congestion pricing push. He left all this out. We better not.

Why do I focus so much on public policy? Ask Dick Cheney. Standing on Ronald Reagan's intellectual shoulders, he said that conservation is a matter of individual decisions, not public policy. Our children are taught that if each of us does our part, we can make the world greener.

NO. Turning off the lights and riding a bike to work will not solve the problem. We better reestablish the legitimacy of the social sphere and public policy decisions. We better reestablish the proper role of government.

One more issue of American political culture that needs a climate change. I also think we need a major campaign that re-values honest work. We are losing that fight. America idolizes investment income.

Wages you can raise a family on, healthcare, and pensions have become "unsustainable entitlements". We are accused of dragging down the economy. Our benefits must be eliminated.

They actually say "unsustainable entitlements." That's from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Unsustainable!

Hedge funds are not called unsustainable. They don't think the war in Iraq is unsustainable. Good jobs and Social Security and Medicare are called unsustainable, over and over. This from the very people who say that spewing carbon based pollution has nothing to do with global warming.

Wages and pensions and health benefits are not just issues for labor negotiations. They are cultural markers that signify how society values work. Inside labor, we have many members who think their taxes are too high because public sector pensions are too high. Even in the
public sector. I think this is a culture war we have to get into if we want to keep our alliances and our ranks together.

Our notion of sustainability includes jobs you can raise a family on, jobs with health care for your family and a pension at the end. Our notion of sustainability includes parks and playgrounds, but also affordable housing and schools that work. Our notion of sustainability includes an effective, accessible and affordable mass transit system -- and good, union jobs
operating that system. Our notion of sustainability means making life livable for working people, for our children, and for our children's children.

If the lawyers and bankers come along for the ride, well, we can deal with that. But we are not giving up our seats for them.

This means we have to take a complex approach to the proposals that are out there. We will weigh seriously any proposal that can contribute to making life in New York more sustainable.

But we will also insist upon attaching the conditions necessary to meet our answer to the question "sustainable for whom?" For working people, that's who.

I started out saying that these next months will set the terms for a generation. On health care. Immigration. Transportation. The environment. Work and retirement. War and peace. And that we need alliances. Let me start the discussion with my comrades with an observation on
alliances and some questions.

* Labor is under attack.
* Labor is a key partner in any plan for progress.
* If we go down, we all lose.
* So our partners have to be much more than just tolerant of labor. You have to be affirmatively and strongly PRO-LABOR.
* If you (our partners in the environmental and other movements) need a strong labor movement, you have to help us more than you do.

So let me offer some questions to the panelists.

* What kind of alliances do we need to win?
* What do you need from us?
* What do you bring to the table?
* What's holding us back?

We have to collectively come up with the right answers or our children will hold us to account. Thank you.