An underappreciated fact about the 2016 election: The massive generation gap

Obama carried the under-30 vote by 34 percentage points in 2008 and by 23 points in 2012, according to the national exit polls. Hillary Clinton may have lacked Obama’s (and Bernie Sanders’s) personal appeal among younger voters, but she still carried the under-30 vote by an 18-point margin over Trump, according to the 2016 exit polls.
....Now that it is the Democratic Party that is becoming more Sun Belt than Rust Belt, that is the favored party of revitalized urban metropolises and centers of innovation such as the high-tech sector, and that is more attuned to the millennial-generation cultural zeitgeist, older conservatives exhibit a shaken faith in the wisdom of popular majorities....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/10/an-under-appreciated-fact-about-the-2016-election-the-massive-generation-gap/?postshare=4621481490312381&tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.537d558bd78a

Here's a piece offering some hopes to the Democrats sent to my by my pal Harris. I'm not so sure about this analysis. The focus on the youth vote has a few holes.
2008- Obama wins by 34%
2012- Obama wins by 23%
2016 - Hillary wins by 18%

What will 2020 show? and what about the yutes that age out? As people age a chunk often shifts right.

And this piece doesn't answer why Bernie got the support of more young people than Hillary did - and don't forget the numbers of young who did not even vote. Enthusiasm counts and so does the message. Think of it - Bernie is older than Hillary and male. Duh! One would think that given the choice.... so why not analyze why.

Now I believe people who voted for Trump or 3rd party to spite the Democrats or over Hillary hatred will come to regret it. Dems may suck too but if you don't think that there is a difference between ruth Bader Ginsberg and  the slugs to come or the slugs like Clarence Thomas or the late Scalia -- or that the cabinet people this time are the same as under Obama you are living in a dream - soon to turn into a nightmare --

An underappreciated fact about the 2016 election: The massive generation gap https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/10/an-under-appreciated-fact-about-the-2016-election-the-massive-generation-gap/?postshare=4621481490312381&tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.537d558bd78a

By David A. Hopkins December 10 

Since the election last month, we have seen a parade of analyses examining how Clinton supporters differ from Trump supporters by race, education and geographic residence. The persistence of partisan differences by age in American elections, however, has received somewhat less attention.

Younger voters, who first demonstrated a notable relative preference for the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, swung even further toward the Democrats in the two Obama elections. Obama carried the under-30 vote by 34 percentage points in 2008 and by 23 points in 2012, according to the national exit polls. At the same time, voters over the age of 50 collectively preferred Republican nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney to Obama in both of his successful national campaigns.
Hillary Clinton may have lacked Obama’s (and Bernie Sanders’s) personal appeal among younger voters, but she still carried the under-30 vote by an 18-point margin over Trump, according to the 2016 exit polls, while voters over the age of 45 opted for Trump by nine points — confirming that the contemporary political generation gap will outlast the Obama era.

This is a significant divide by historical standards. None of the 1960s-era elections produced a comparable partisan difference, despite the decade’s prominent youth-led protest movements and memorable “don’t trust anyone over 30″ rhetoric. According to Gallup data, Hubert Humphrey led Richard Nixon in 1968 among voters under 30 by only nine points, 47 percent to 38 percent, while voters over the age of 50 preferred Nixon by just six points (47 percent to 41 percent). So Trump performed about as well among young voters in a two-person contest as Nixon did in a three-way race.

Many of the most prominent political issues of our time include a generational dimension separating the left-leaning young from their more conservative elders. Social issues such as gay rights and drug legalization divide Americans sharply by age. The Affordable Care Act drew its fiercest opposition from the elderly — who already enjoyed Medicare benefits and thus perceived little collective benefit in expanding health-care access to younger citizens. Climate change is of greater concern to those who stand to inherit the planet than to those who rule it today. Democratic candidates frequently tout their plans for enhancing college affordability and access to child care; Republicans seldom discuss these topics. Conservative efforts to lower federal tax rates on high incomes also stand to primarily benefit older — and disproportionately wealthier — voters.

 More broadly, the 2016 election exposed a key divide in the American electorate between nationalism and internationalism, between a preference for traditional social hierarchies and an attraction to new social norms. The themes of cultural nostalgia and alienation adopted by the Trump campaign were particularly primed to appeal to older generations feeling increasingly out of place in contemporary society and preferring a bygone past of perceived American “greatness” defined by a rejection of “political correctness” at home and an adherence to military and economic unilateralism abroad.

Just as the Brexit referendum in Britain passed over the opposition of a younger generation of Britons much more at ease with European integration than their parents and grandparents, the oldest incoming president in American history assembled a narrow electoral coalition that is heavily weighted toward his own age cohort. There’s no particular reason to believe that he will govern in a manner that increases his appeal to those who did not support his candidacy. A Pew survey released this week found Trump with a favorable rating of just 24 percent among respondents aged 18-29 and 25 percent among those aged 30-49, compared with 47 percent among 50-to-64-year-olds and 54 percent among the 65-and-over population.

Ronald Reagan’s famous “optimism” was to some degree an assured belief that the future belonged to conservatives. A more extensive elucidation of this view, complete with accompanying data, can be found in any number of the essays written by Michael Barone in the 1980s for the Almanac of American Politics. Barone viewed Reagan’s electoral success as proof that a majority of American voters had come to recognize the fundamental flaws of liberalism and were acting together to push their country in a rightward direction. The Democrats, according to Barone, were the party of declining central cities, out-of-fashion hippie relics, and Rust Belt anachronism; the Republicans were the party of burgeoning suburbs, private-sector innovators, and Sun Belt futurism.

Importantly, in Barone’s view, conservatives were winning the hearts and minds of younger Americans, who could be expected to take up Reagan’s torch and advance it still further through subsequent decades. As Barone and Grant Ujifusa wrote in the 1990 edition of the Almanac, “[t]he young voters of the 1980s, Republican strategists hope, and Democratic strategists fear, will carry their sunny Republicanism into the 2030s and 2040s.”
Young people may still be sunny these days, but Republicanism is decidedly not. The victories of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama damaged conservatives’ confidence that they spoke for an enduring popular majority, and the main conservative objectives of shrinking the size and scope of government, establishing American military supremacy abroad, and promoting morally traditionalist attitudes among the American public have all, to varying degrees and for varying reasons, remained unfulfilled in the years since Reagan departed the national stage.

When combined with the continuing leftward evolution of American culture in the realms of race, gender, religion and sexuality, these developments have left many conservatives — including the current president-elect — warning darkly of the imminent destruction of the United States as we know it, which in turn justifies increasingly aggressive challenges from the right to established political norms and institutions.

Now that it is the Democratic Party that is becoming more Sun Belt than Rust Belt, that is the favored party of revitalized urban metropolises and centers of innovation such as the high-tech sector, and that is more attuned to the millennial-generation cultural zeitgeist, older conservatives exhibit a shaken faith in the wisdom of popular majorities. Barone himself has taken to explicitly arguing in favor of the electoral college precisely because it might act — as it did in 2016 — to thwart the will of a national plurality that he finds ideologically and demographically uncongenial. Other Republicans have responded to social change by advocating restrictions on access to the ballot that disproportionately affect young and nonwhite citizens, to further tilt the electoral system away from their political opponents.

As the Republican victories of 2014 and 2016 confirm, there is no youth-led “permanent Democratic majority,” in part because our electoral rules and institutions tend to provide Republicans with a built-in advantage in close elections. Plus, there are simply lots and lots of baby boomers and pre-boomers, and they vote more reliably than their children and grandchildren.

But if the young will respond to Trump’s ascendance by resenting the disproportionate political and economic power of the right-leaning old, the old will continue to resent the increasing cultural power of the left-leaning young. The power of the presidency simply does not extend to authority over the national culture, and the institutions that do exert substantial cultural influence — the news media, entertainment industry, educational system, and so forth — can be expected to serve as centers of resistance to Trump and Trumpism.

Cultural backlash can be a powerful tool for winning elections, but it’s very hard to actually deliver on promises to move an entire society back in time.

What Bernie Sanders Gets Right About Identity Politics - NY Mag

...racial justice and gender equality cannot be achieved without confronting economic inequality — not when people of color and women are overrepresented among the financially disadvantaged. And it’s difficult to see how the Democratic Party will ever take aggressive action to combat inequality, unless its downscale wing becomes both larger and more class conscious.   Any discourse that encourages working-class voters to see social democratic

policies as irrelevant to their struggles does more to protect economic privilege than to promote social justice....
NY Mag, What Bernie Sanders Gets Right About Identity Politics

This NY Mag piece is one of the better ones I've read in analyzing the Bernie vs Hillary campaign vis a vis identity and class politics. (I included 2 graphics that represent both sides of the constant battle.) Under the guise of the Clinton allies criticizing Bernie for not paying attention to identity politics - and he was not artful in addressing this issue - the real undercurrent was his calls for income distribution, which given the number of Dem Party wealthy supporters, was a no-no. We can't ignore race -- I've asked white guys time and again - some who have racist ideas -- if you and Obama were walking down a street - and you are holding a bazooka - and Obama carries a briefcase - who gets stopped by cops? They just don't answer -- but this article also points out that the higher economic status black people reach, the less contact they have with the criminal justice system -- though obviously there will always be Sandra Blands whose story has been used as a battering ram. But Bernie offered a unifying economic theme and Trump walked in and stole the thunder with a divisive theme.

This captures some of the essence of the article below:

....in Reed’s framing, Sanders’s calls for expanding the social welfare state and taking a more adversarial approach to financial regulation are less relevant to the average black family than the way the senator’s plan for free state college would undermine private, historically black colleges and universities; even though only 2 percent of black college students attend such institutions, and Sanders expressed openness to amending his proposal to accommodate such schools..... Sanders was rarely eloquent in connecting his economic message to the lived experience of black voters.
Less concerning than Clinton’s attempt to exploit this weakness, was the way her narrative was internalized and amplified by some advocates of social justice — and has, thus, outlived her campaign.

And this:

The problem with class-blind identity politics.

At a debate in February, Sanders was asked if he thought race relations would improve under his administration.

“Absolutely,” the senator replied. “Because what we will do is say, instead of giving tax breaks to millionaires, we’re going to create millions of jobs for low-income kids.”

Legal analyst and racial-justice advocate Imani Gandy derided Sanders’s answer, tweeting, “Sandra Bland HAD a goddamn job. She still ended up dead. Jobs is not the solution.”...
But her specific critique is unsatisfying for a few reasons. For one, it’s not clear why criminal-justice reform is considered a “racial issue,” while expanding federal employment or the social safety net is not: None of these reforms target racial disadvantage explicitly, but all would disproportionately benefit people of color.... And “Sandra Bland had a job” remains a favorite slogan among some advocates for racial justice. (As does the considerably more asinine “Goldman Sachs didn’t shoot Michael Brown.”)

ASIDE: [By the way -- to show you the ties between our UFT/AFT leaders and the Hillary wing of the party -- anytime the left-leaning opposition bring up income or class issues - the leadership red flags go up - literally - they redbait - there go those socialists - or maybe Bolsheviks - again - class warfare. But Bernie was about class unity and he tried to talk past an often divisive identity political argument.]

Here are some highlights I extracted but read the whole article.

[Clinton] framed Sanders’s emphasis on the importance of economic redistribution as an affront to the causes of racial, gender, and LGBT equality. “Not everything is about an economic theory, right?” Clinton asked a crowd in Nevada this past February. “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow — and I will if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will — would that end racism?” Clinton went on to ask whether forcing Wall Street’s largest firms to separate their commercial and investment banking wings would “end sexism” and “discrimination against the LGBT community” or “make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?”

Her supporters didn’t think so.
----
Clinton’s “single-issue” charge wasn’t grounded in Sanders’s neglect of racial and gender equality in policy terms. Rather, it referred to the greater rhetorical emphasis he placed on issues of redistribution — and the attendant implication that economic justice is a central, unifying concern for Democrats of all colors and genders. It was an objection to the politics of class solidarity.

------

For the left to overcome its infighting and realize the promise of the rainbow coalition, it will need to be on guard against this particular brand of liberalism; because an identity politics that disdains class solidarity is one that will fail the most vulnerable members of the marginalized groups it claims to represent....  the growth of the Democrats’ upscale wing has coincided with a vast increase in economic inequality.... The class divide within the Democratic Party is growing at the same time that the divide between classes in the United States is doing the same..... a Democratic Party increasingly divided between a predominately white professional class, and a largely nonwhite working class, left-wing identity politics

Rahm Emanuel was saying "Fuck the UAW" from his perch at the White House (as Barack Obama's Chief of Staff) long before Donald Trump was Tweeting attacks on the Steelworkers Union head - George Schmidt

I suspect that many people who claim to be "progressives" will have the same kind of self-serving amnesia about the incoming administration as they did in blaming "No Child Left Behind" for the attacks on public education during the first five or six years of the Obama administration.... George Schmidt

George sent out this missive to his email list this morning - for the Obama apologists over, if not open attacks on unions - other than teacher unions - by default. But let's not forget Democrat Rahm Emanuel's FU to Karen Lewis. The neglect of the unions by both the Clinton and Obama admins and Democratic Party in general is part of the equation of the Trump victory. Yet the unions are branded as part of the fabric of the Dem Party, in particular our own AFT/UFT/NYSUT.

Here is George's full comment.

HYPOCRISIES AND IDIOCIES. I can't wait to watch the December 7 Board meeting and to witness myself the stuff I missed. The corruption of Forrest Claypool and Ronald Marmer should remind us that Rahm Emanuel was saying "Fuck the UAW" from his perch at the White House (as Barack Obama's Chief of Staff) long before Donald Trump was Tweeting attacks on the Steelworkers Union head from the President-elect's perch. 

As I read the hyperventilating about the upcoming Trump administration, I'm reminded that it was only eight years ago that Barack Obama sat with Arne Duncan at the "Dodge School of Excellence" (an AUSL "turnaround" school) and announced that Arne would move from the great job he had done as CEO of CPS to the job of U.S. Secretary of Education. I suspect that many people who claim to be "progressives" will have the same kind of self-serving amnesia about the incoming administration as they did in blaming "No Child Left Behind" for the attacks on public education during the first five or six years of the Obama administration. If you're still wondering, you can read BACK ISSUES at Substance or re-watch "Waiting for Superman" as a couple of many reminders.

School Scope: Parent Objects to My Position on School Choice

Published Dec. 9, 2016 in The WAVE, http://www.rockawave.com/news/2016-12-09/School_News/School_Scope.html

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School Scope: Parent Objects to My Position on School Choice

By Norm Scott

The WAVE received a letter commenting on my column (Vouchers are Coming, Vouchers are Coming!)  link - http://www.rockawave.com/news/2016-12-02/School_News/School_Scope.html regarding the privatization agenda of Donald Trump and his proposed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The author, a public school parent, wrote, “If you publish my remarks please omit my name to protect my daughter.” Since The WAVE doesn’t print anonymous letters, I’m using this column to print the letter here. The facts stated in the letter about school performance have not been verified since we do not know what school his daughter attends. I understand the position of a parent who has a negative view of the zoned school his child attends and feels vouchers and charters and religious schools are better options and calls for the oft-misused “choice” as an answer. The letter also touches on a number of other issues, including my attack on Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos – too many to respond in one column. So I will do a series of responses over the next few columns.

For today I’ll just say there is a direct correlation between student performance and family economic means, no matter what the school. Thus a school with high numbers of students with high poverty levels will look bad statistically even if per student spending looks high on paper. The average is often bumped up by the high costs of addressing special needs students. Here is a quick breakdown of average costs per student in the NYC schools.

District Name: New York City Department Of Education

Instructional Costs per Student: $16,177, 80%

Instructional Salaries per Student:$8,677, 43%

Instructional Employee Benefits per Student:$4,792, 24%

Other Instructional per Student: $2,708, 13%

Support Services Costs per Student: $4,099, 20%

Total Instructional & Support Costs per Student: $20,276

- See more at: http://www.cbcny.org/sites/default/files/InstructionalAndSupportMap.html#sthash.LVcneTy2.dpuf

The ultimate aim of putting schools in the hands of privatizers is to lower the costs of the teaching staff. In one public school in Brooklyn co-occupied by Eva Moskowitz’  Success Academy charter chain, which has 40 schools in the city only one teacher remains after 3 years. How good an idea is it to have massive teacher churn with inexperienced and often non-certified and untrained teachers? Taking money out of public schools to give vouchers to people to go to religious schools on a national level would be a massive violation of the separation of church and state that was one of the basics of the establishment of this nation, where many settlers were running away from religious persecution and didn’t want to see the state playing any official role.

Check out a piece written by Howard Schwach, former WAVE editor and founder of this School Scope column, published at his On Rockaway web site where he touches on democracy and public schools. “I have often written that public education is the touchstone of our democracy. If kids or all races and religions are not brought together for their school years, they will never understand each other and democracy will suffer. There is a broad consensus in America that public schools must be protected, despite the fact that many are struggling to fulfill their core mission of educating all children.” Howie also delves into Betsy DeVos’ path of destruction which has left Michigan schools in disarray: https://onrockaway.com/commentary-trumps-education-commissioner-pick-wants-to-destroy-public-education-and-thats-not-hyperbole/.

Here is the parent’s letter – I hope to have some more dialogue with him and he’s welcome to contact me for a chat.

Let's Try School Choice

“Mr. Scott’s recent editorial objected to school vouchers because he believes it will create a withering away of our public education and our democracy.  I hate to break this to him, but our public education is already broken and our representative republic is in danger.  New York City spends over $23,000 per student per year, and yet my daughter’s zoned school has a passing rate of 11% in English and 7% in math on the statewide exams.  At our nearest high school, only 11% of the students graduate college-ready.  I have concluded that too often the education bureaucracy is more interested in the needs of the people that work for the institution than helping children.  This is a cruel disservice to the taxpayer, country, and most importantly to our children.

Too often quality public education in our country is dependent on the ability to live in affluent communities.  I see too many parents take on too much debt to live near a quality school.  I see too many working poor parents spend too much precious money on prep programs hoping to get their children into quality schools.  Every child in the United States deserves an opportunity to be educated to their abilities regardless of their parent’s income.

Ad Hominem attacks on the Secretary of Education nominee, attacking people’s motives for their votes, attacking private schools, or attacking religious schools does not help your argument.  The harsh reality is our current education system is failing and major changes are needed. I can only conclude that this systematic failure requires a complete overhaul of our education system.  Expanding school choice is best way to reach children of all socio-economic levels and is the most efficient way to realign our education system to the needs of the actual students.  Charter schools and vouchers need to be tried and, where successful, should be built upon and expanded.”

Norm spews ad Hominem attacks daily at ednotesonline.org.

Moskowitz Lies and Distortions: Eva's sneaky, misleading argument. Here's what's missing

The Daily News gave Moskowitz propaganda space to argue she can help integrate the schools - really what she is doing is lobbying for more space to push out public schools and take over entire school buildings.

I picked this info up on an email thread - source unknown.

Talking points:

a) the % of students who are special ed; or ELLs or title 1 eligible
b) the enrollment by grade level (which would tell you what's she's counting)
c) to portray the charter schools as saviors and the antidote to racial segregation is disingenuous as charters are notoriously for skimming off the top which is to say cherry picking their kids which is to say reducing diversity.
d) are these aggregated numbers

2014/15 (the last year for which complete data is available on NYS website):

Success Academy, Bed Stuy1: 2.1% white
2015-16
Success Academy, Bed Stuy2: 1% white
Success Academy, Bx1: 1.1% white
SA: Bx1: 1.1%white
SA: Bx2: 1.1% white
SA: Harlem: 1.1% white
SA: Bensonhurst: 53.9% white; 16.7% Black, 19.4% Hispanic
SA: Bergen Beach: 11.5% Hispanic; 85.2% Black, 1.6% white
SA: Rosedale: 82.6% Black, 14.7% Hispanic, 0.5% white
SA: Springfield: 93.5% Black, 3.8% Hispanic. no whites
SA: Washington Heights: 71.6% Hispanic, 11.4% white, 15.3% Black
SA: Cobble Hill: 29.6% white, 33.2% Black, 26.9% Hispanic
SA: Williasburgh: 30.1% Black, 55.2% Hispanic 9.9% white

So....with the exception of Cobble Hill SA is hardly an integrated school. And Cobble Hill's student pop is driven at least in part by the demographics of certain neighborhoods where she had co-located - as a way to set up a base of operations for her future political ventures.

 Read Eva in the DN, Charting a course to integration: Let charter schools help --- if you can stomach it.

 Here is a short selection - as much as I can take before gagging.

It’s time to make integration a priority.
Consider Success’ Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, school. It’s a model of diversity: About a quarter of the students are white, a third are Hispanic, a third are African-American, and more than half are from low-income households, a level of diversity virtually unheard of in surrounding schools. At the Brooklyn School for Global Studies, with which we share a building, 4% of the students are white and 85% are economically disadvantaged; at Public School 29, a school just four blocks west, 74% of the students are white and only 10% are economically disadvantaged.

Success Academy Upper West attracts students who are zoned for some of the city’s most desirable schools, including 73 applications in 2015 from families zoned for PS 199, the vaunted elementary school at the center of that recent integration battle.

Hey Eva - how many of those 73 applications to your school actually took your school over PS 199?

What Chalkbeat Leaves Out in Thomas Fordham Inst. Report on Firing Teachers in NYC

Gates funded indeed - comment from Ed Notes reader on Chalkbeat report.

It takes two years of consecutive “ineffective” ratings to dismiss [a tenured teacher] in New York City, roughly a third of the time it can take in Los Angeles, in some cases. (In response to the report, New York City education officials said teachers can be removed for incompetence, even without two ineffective ratings.)   ... Chalkbeat, 

New York City is among the hardest places to fire a low-performing teacher, report claims, screams the headline from Chalkbeat reporter Alex Zimmerman.

Peter Lamphere, as top level a math teacher as you can find, received 2 U ratings in a row at Bronx HS of Science due to chapter leader activities and was going to be given a 3rd U which would have cost him his job before the UFT helped parachute him out of the school. Now, once he was safe they should have made him the poster boy for why we need tenure and to show that even tenure won't protect you from political vendettas. If Chalkbeat were honest journalists they would have pointed to the issue of the retaliation of the oh too many vicious principals and even site the Lamphere story --- read all about it here -

Peter Lamphere on Rosemarie Jahoda: What Does It Take To Get Promoted to Principal in NYC?

The irony is that Rosemarie Jahoda persecuted the entire math dept - including exhibiting racism against black teachers ---and is now being rewarded with the principalship of top school Townshend Harris. A petition to protest this act is being circulated:

STOP Rosemarie Jahoda from being appointed the PERMANENT principal of Townsend Harris HS

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2016/12/08/new-york-city-is-among-the-hardest-places-to-fire-a-low-performing-teacher-report-claims/

Despite changes in state law and several attempts at overhauling teacher evaluations, New York City remains one of the most difficult places in the country to fire an ineffective teacher. That’s according to a report released Thursday by the conservative-leaning Thomas Fordham Institute, which ranked New York City fourth out of 25 large, geographically diverse school districts in terms of how hard it is to fire low-performing teachers.
The findings offer another piece of evidence that the national effort to remove ineffective teachers through harsher evaluation systems — which have already been significantly rolled back in New York state — has not taken hold locally. 

 Conservative leaning? Do they even try to explain what that means? Why not say a clearly biased report from anti-tenure ed deformers?

And you can read more about what Jahoda and principal Valerie Reidy did at ed notes achives:

Ed Notes Online: Fact finder calls on Bronx Science administrator to ...

Apr 27, 2010 ... The fact finder, Carol Wittenberg, concluded that Ms. Jahoda and UFT Chapter Chair Peter Lamphere should transfer out of the school, that the ...

ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Ed Notes Online: Bronx High School of Science in the News Jan 8, 2009 ... Math teachers in particular blame a new administrator - Assistant Principal Rosemarie Jahoda - for verbal abuse, claiming they are ... ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Ed Notes Online: Bronx High Story at NY Times - Drilling Down ... Sep 18, 2011 ... At that time, 20 of the school's 22 math teachers accused Rosemarie Jahoda, the math assistant principal, of harassing and intimidating new ... ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Grading UFT Leadership on Class Size: When Ed Notes Called for Zero Tolerance on over-sized classes - Oct. 2000

The class size issue has gotten buried in all the ed reformy crap over the past 20 years. Arthur Goldstein, CL of Francis Lewis HS had a recent experience in his school with the UFT class size provisions of the contract and is bringing the issue back on the agenda. I revisit a reso I brought to the DA in Oct. 2000 which passed unanimously. Shows how meaningless it can be to get stuff passed and then ignored. Arthur raised the issue at Monday's Ex bd meeting.

Arthur Goldstein--MORE-- at Dec. 5 UFT Ex Bd meeting:

At this juncture it’s vitally important that we support our members, our students and our community.

Last week I learned that Deborah M. Gaines, an arbitrator who gets paid $1600 a day, found it reasonable that Francis Lewis High School teachers with oversized classes be released from one C6 assignment per week. She also found it reasonable that Forest Hills High School teachers be released from on C6 assignment per week per oversized class. Thus, if I have two oversized classes, I’m relieved from one C6 assignment. If a Forest Hills teacher has two oversized classes, she’s relieved from two C6 assignments.

First, it’s ridiculous to think it’s easier to teach two oversized classes at 214% capacity Lewis than at Forest Hills. Second, it’s ridiculous to contend the DOE-sponsored “action plan” of releasing teachers from C6 assignments makes up in any way for oversized classes. Teachers don’t need a period off from tutoring when they have oversized classes. Students in oversized classes don’t need less tutoring either. The DOE, which claims to place “Children first, always,” clearly doesn’t give a golly gosh darn about our working conditions, which are student learning conditions.

More importantly, this remedy tells principals everywhere they can make as many oversized classes as they wish with no consequence. Why should they care if teachers give one fewer day of tutoring when they can create fewer classes with impunity and save thousands of dollars by cramming students in like sardines? Today I went and counted, found 33 oversized classes, filed five grievances and got eight corrected. That is eight more than the arbitrator managed to fix and I’m on day one.

An action plan needs to address and discourage oversized classes. This does neither, and in fact tells principals they can abuse the Contract, us, and our students with impunity. Let's let members know with absolute clarity that we don’t play this game.

I ask that the UFT let both members and the DOE know we absolutely oppose oversized classes and will not tolerate nonsense like this. I ask the United Federation of Teachers to make sure Deborah M. Gaines never get another contract as arbitrator.

Also how many oversized classes are there in the city as we speak, and what’s our plan moving forward?

Schoor—We will get an answer. Grievance department not here.

Janella Hinds—Grievance department is reviewing this situation. We are evaluating this plan for Lewis. 

Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator has been writing about the class size travails at his school, Francis Lewis HS, one of the largest and more overcrowded schools in the city. Here is his most recent report: Class Size in the UFT Contract which details some of the faults in the UFT contract class size provisions.

As a member of various opposition parties in the UFT since 1970, we always had to battle the leadership on the class size issue. At the very least we wanted to see the loopholes closed. But they seemed perfectly happy with the status quo and nothing will change until the contract changes. But the leadership has not fought for contract changes since the late 60s.

In between caucuses when I did Ed Notes as an independent, I made class size a major issue -- which was how I came into contact with Leonie Haimson after a delegate asked me if I was associated with her - and we should all donate to

Class Size Matters - Please give to Class Size Matters.

At the October, 2000 Del Ass - if memory is correct - Hillary appeared to get our support for her run for the Senate - and Randi was in a great mood after Hillary left and the meeting began.

She called on me in the new motion period and as I began to speak she told me to come up to the podium and use her mic --- unprecedented before and since I believe -- I would say that was the height of our relationship -- within months it began to deteriorate as Randi grew more undemocratic and began to push ed deform policies.

With Randi signaling support, Unity people voted to support my reso and it passed unanimously. (Of course they voted as told.) The NY Teacher printed the list around January 2001 and also the next year but that may have been it.

Here is the reso - and I think the NY Teacher should continue to print oversized class lists every year -- Dec/January is not a bad time to do it because all adjustments have been made.

Here is a reprint from my proposal in the October 2000 Ed Notes. The reason I called for the 4th grade reduction was because the city council had passed limits for grades 1-3 and I felt I was being reasonable by pushing for gradualism - at the very least let's do a grade a year - and remember, the city was flush with money at that time. I think Arthur may revisit the reso below with some modifications. Forcing the leadership to be accountable for publishing over class size lists will bring more attention to the issue.

My Oct. 2000 reso calling for the NY Teacher to print a list of every over-class size in the city

Class Size Matters
I know of a class that started the year with 39 children It is time for our union to take a position of Zero Tolerance for such high class sizes. It is just not acceptable for us to allow any teacher to work under such conditions. 

It is clear to anyone who has been a classroom teacher that class size is the single most important working condition. But if low class size is important to teachers, it is even more important to children. Despite its weaknesses, our contract does more to protect children that any educational directive from the board of education (a fact our union should be stressing.) When is the last time a board official said to a teacher: We just can’t allow so many children in a class. I will look for any available personnel currently not in the classroom to relieve that burden? It’s funny how the arrow of accountability only runs in one direction. 

Beyond our contract, early childhood teach- ers are protected by class size caps (passed by the city council) in early grades. These caps end at grade 3. Thus, class size rises dramatically in grade 4 (one of the crucial testing grades.) This causes all sorts of problems. If there are 3 classes in the 3rd grade, they get squeezed into 2. Children who are used to a certain level of attention no longer get it. Because of the testing pressure and the change in class size, many teachers try to avoid teaching 4th grade.
For years we assumed that attempts would be made to extend these caps grade by grade. But momentum seems to have faded. Now would be an appropriate time to renew calls for the extension of capping

Here is a proposal to deal with these issues: Resolved: The union will compile a list from every school and district listing all classes with more than 32 children and the reason why the class size limit is exceeded (space, class size loophole, grievance not properly filed, etc.) A report will be issued and a discussion held at the December Delegate Assembly. The New York Teacher will print the list as a way to focus attention on this issue.

And be it further resolved that the UFT will call on the city council to place caps on the 4th grade. 

Naomi Klein and The Left Took Aim at Globalization and a Warning from Pussy Riot

The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned... Naomi Klein 

When there is no truth, invasions are “liberations” and internment camps are “relocation centers.” But, as Ms. Tolokonnikova [Pussy Riot] said, “There is always a way if you really want to tell the truth.” .... NY Times

I present here a somewhat optimistic (Naomi Klein) and a warning (Pussy Riot) about how Trumpism can morph America into Putinism - it can sneak up on you real fast. I heard on NPR last night that over a period of a few years, people are much more receptive to the removal of democratic protections like free speech and even more accepting of a military dictatorship.Take this bizarre path - Trump becomes so outrageous, Mad Dog Madigan and  Flynn lead a military coup. And America cheers. Hmmm, an idea for a novel - don't steal it in case I decide to write it.

Naomi Klein, http://www.naomiklein.org/main, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein, has been a leading voice in this movement against neo-liberalism since the late 90s.

Her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, went viral beyond just the left. The day after the Trump win she wrote in The Guardian: It Was the Democrats' Embrace of Neoliberalism That Won it For Trump  - November 9th, 2016.

They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?

Donald Trump speaks directly to that pain. The Brexit campaign spoke to that pain. So do all of the rising far-right parties in Europe. They answer it with nostalgic nationalism and anger at remote economic bureaucracies – whether Washington, the North American free trade agreement the World Trade Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women. Elite neoliberalism has nothing to offer that pain, because neoliberalism unleashed the Davos class. People such as Hillary and Bill Clinton are the toast of the Davos party. In truth, they threw the party.

Trump’s message was: “All is hell.” Clinton answered: “All is well.” But it’s not well – far from it.

Nancy Pelosi feels all is OK and hasn't learned as per the NY Post- I don’t think Democrats want a new direction

Nancy Pelosi just gave Republicans another reason for celebration.
The newly elected House minority leader insisted Sunday that Dems aren’t looking for a “new direction” even after the bruising Election Day defeats and a GOP monopoly in Washington.
A defiant — and possibly delusional — Pelosi stood firm about her party’s future when pressed on what she’ll do differently to deal with Democratic discontent.
“I don’t think people want a new direction,” Pelosi told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families.”

Pelosi may have doomed the Democratic Party to extinction. I don't see them ever regaining power on almost any level other than the coasts.

She feels the only solution can come from the left, though I have little faith in the much divided left - whatever that is - we really need to define the various tendencies on the left -- and I consider myself as part of the left- at this point I line up with Bernie Sanders' social democrats - regulated capitalism - which obviously is not the Marxists who often mock the social democrats (Bolsheviks vs Menshiviks?)

Klein offers some choices between wresting the Dem Party away from the neo-liberals or going in a new direction.

People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together. Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people’s agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.
Bernie Sanders’ amazing campaign went a long way towards building this sort of coalition, and demonstrated that the appetite for democratic socialism is out there. But early on, there was a failure in the campaign to connect with older black and Latino voters who are the demographic most abused by our current economic model. That failure prevented the campaign from reaching its full potential. Those mistakes can be corrected and a bold, transformative coalition is there to be built on.

That is the task ahead. The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned. From Elizabeth Warren to Nina Turner, to the Occupy alumni who took the Bernie campaign supernova, there is a stronger field of coalition-inspiring progressive leaders out there than at any point in my lifetime. We are “leaderful”, as many in the Movement for Black Lives say.

I really don't have much hope that we can accomplish this and see another few election cycles and the possible loss of all rights to resist - see Putin's Russia as a blueprint for our future - and read this NY Times piece on Pussy Riot and Putin to see how institutions can be taken apart piece by piece and in just a few years you get arrested for publishing critical articles or demonstrating.
A Warning for Americans From a Member of Pussy Riot.

“It is a common phrase right now that ‘America has institutions,’” Ms. Tolokonnikova said. “It does. But a president has power to change institutions and a president moreover has power to change public perception of what is normal, which could lead to changing institutions.” As if to make her point, later that day the informal Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski declared that The New York Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, “should be in jail.” In October, The Times published an article about leaked pages from Mr. Trump’s 1995 state tax returns.

The last video they released, in late October, was called “Make America Great Again.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-bKFo30o2o) It showed fictional Trump agents in red armbands raping and torturing in a campaign against Muslims, Mexicans, women who have abortions, gays and lesbians.



Despite my pessimism, the battle will still go on.

Klein and others on the left were taking on this issue from the earliest days. Here is her No Logo movie, which is worth an investment in time even it you just flip through it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AUkksHVnN8

UFT Exec Board: Hottest Debates in the UFT; MORE members meet With Leroy Barr today on abusive principals

NYC Educator report: Patsy Cline Sings Crazy. UFT Practices It.
I give credit to LeRoy Barr and Howie Schoor for enabling an honest discussion on this issue. The last time I was able to participate in an honest discussion with union leadership was never (and if you're reading this, Unity, that cuts to the core of our problem)....

Arthur Goldstein savages the Unity leadership in his latest post, though recognizing the value of the debate. Arthur and the other MORE EB members are the major reason I'm getting ready to head over to tonight's UFT Exec Bd meeting. I swore I would not attend these meetings where 7 opposition people talk to a crowd of Unity people. But I've been pleasantly surprised by the kinds of open discussions, as Arthur pointed out above, haven't been taking place anywhere else in the union. I wrote about the Ex Bd meeting and the adult ed chapter report from Schirtzer yesterday -- Mike Schirtzer UFT Exec Bd Report: Adult-Education Chapter Stands Up and Fight Back

Opposition members can ask as many questions as they want, speak often and not face calling of the questions to shut off debate - unlike the DA where Unity "call the question" clones shut things down regularly. While Arthur mocks Mulgrew for not attending EB meetings or at most make a token appearance, I think not having him there is a good thing. He can be an oppressive force - with oafish comments.

Howie Schoor, whom I've known for almost 40 years - he repped my on my only 3rd step grievance in 1979 - I lost - is an amiable host.

MORE and New Action come loaded with questions and since the first meeting of the year where we raised a reso on abusive principals, there has been some back and forth with Leroy Barr. Mike Schirtzer has organized a pre-Ed Bd meeting today at 5PM with Barr on the abusive principal issue, which will be attended by people who have been experiencing conflicts at their schools. Our minimal goal is to have the UFT bring up specific principals at consultation meetings with the Farina people. That is a first step. I believe there was a meeting on Friday and we hope to get a report on the adult ed situation I reported on yesterday.

On the debate that took place last week over whether to use Trump's name in a reso - Unity says that will offend Trump supporters in the union -- I thought the long debate was one of the best I heard -- I won't mock the leadership for what is essentially irrational - as Arthur pointed out last week -- that they offended people by their very support for Hillary and spent a year trashing Trump. So to leave out his name now looks ridiculous. But I get that they are getting a little desperate with Friedrichs redux - with the future outlook not looking good for the union. They know that significant portions of UFT members won't pay dues - unless they feel they are getting something for it.

I do believe that on some level the leadership has been trying to be more responsive to people under attack -- I am getting some good reports from some people saying they feel more supported. Also some people who were asking me for assistance have gone quiet - I'm assuming the union is working with them.

Well, gotta go into Brooklyn and grab the subway - look for Arthur's report tonight or tomorrow.

Here is his report of last week's meeting and some other commentary on the use of the Trump name in the reso.

• UFT Executive Board November 28th--We Can't Risk Offending People by Mentioning Trump

• UFT Leadership--Wake Up or Give Up

• Fun Fact--UFT Team High School Has No Input from UFT High School Teachers

   

Mike Schirtzer UFT Exec Bd Report: Adult-Education Chapter Stands Up and Fight Back

There is positive energy coming from MORE holding these EB seats - people feel they can come to these meetings and raise issues with the leadership with the sense that MORE has their backs. Read Mike Schirtzer's report on the Adult Ed chapter complaint. First let me make the point that the UFT District Rep was present at the meeting where the verbal attack by Supt Mills took place on the teacher and remained silent. A more aggressive UFT is needed to put a stop to this type of aggression by DOE people.

Teachers on the consultation committee and the UFT district representative of the Office of Adult and Continuing Education (OACE) were verbally attacked by Superintendent of OACE, Rose Marie Mills. At these meetings where the divisions' teachers and principals from across NYC come together, Ms. Mills is exclusively in charge and has historically not even allowed the principals of respective districts to speak. At the last meeting the Superintendent yelled, screamed, stood up and accused UFT members of being "crazy" because they had asked to halt constant interruptions of administrators entering class-rooms to request data. Ms. Mills treated them in a threatening and aggressive manner through-out the meeting. It was extremely unprofessional. Consultation meetings, as President Mulgrew has often reminded us, are our agendas and our meetings. This was clearly not the case.

The educators that were attacked responded by signing a joint letter to the UFT executive board with a full report of the incident, they reached out to MORE to work with them in presenting to the board, came to our pre-meeting to share their letter with demands, and presented the attack to the entire UFT Executive Board. They stood up for themselves by coordinating a response and demanding the UFT leadership tale action. They will not allow this bully administrator to get away with this.

They asked that the UFT take immediate action and inform chancellor Farina they insist on her presence at the next meeting. UFT Secretary Howard Schoor responded that they will bring this up with at their consultation with the Deputy Chancellors this week and seek recourse....

....Mike Schirtzer, UFT Ex Bd member, MORE/UFT Caucus

The Adult ed chapter of the UFT has been savaged over the years going back to when we formed ICE in 2003 and David Greene, my old high school pal, told us stories of what they were doing. Some members have started coming to MORE for assistance and when they came with this issue, they were invited to attend the pre-Ex bd meeting that begins at 5PM on the day of the EB meetings. I arrived in the middle and was sort of surprised to see them so ready to stand up publicly since there has been so much fear in the chapter -- Ed Notes receives regular communications from people in the chapter. My sense is that there is positive energy coming from MORE holding these seats - people feel they can come to these meetings and raise issues with the leadership with the sense that MORE has their backs.

If you asked me a year ago whether much would come of MORE winning the high school Ex Bd seats I would have yawned -- poor people, wasting their time talking to a roomful of Unity - some of whom, slugs. But so far this time I am fairly impressed by the role our great MORE team of Ex Bd members have been playing and the Unity response. They ask for info and reports and they get them. They can ask as many questions as they want and get a fairly respectful audience. They raise resos and we see some serious discussion.

There is a somewhat different atmosphere at the EB than in the past -- maybe not as much hostility or mockery towards the opposition. This is not the old New Action with older or about to be retired people other than Jonathan Halabi -- now he is one of the oldest opposition members of the board. The EB is more diverse - color and gender - than in the past -- and blunts some of the more aggressive social justice race issues when brought up by white people in the opposition -- the optics of lecturing people of color on race doesn't play. (I went up and shook Leroy Barr's hand the other day for his wonderful speech on the complexities of race at the AFT convention - which was about as social justicy as things could get - and maybe indicative of the problems facing the Democratic Party -- economic issues were not

And best of all Arthur Goldstein does meticulous minutes published on NYC Educator - see the latest here - UFT Executive Board November 28th--We Can't Risk Offending People by Mentioning Trump and a follow-up. Arthur's voice and stature as one of the most read blogs keeps them somewhat accountable.

Tomorrow - Monday - is another EB meeting at 6PM and even though shlepping from Rockaway is not appetizing - and neither is the food -- I may go - partly because I felt the debate over the use of the Trump name - as Arthur reported -- was fabulous and I felt the kind of discussions that should be taking place all the time -- and I also think the Trump victory has made both the leadership and the opposition see things in more common ways -- that the very union is threatened. I will try to do a follow up piece on this before I leave tomorrow for the EB meeting.

Now I have to get over to my acting class at the RTC where I will not be doing Shakespeare.

Norm in the Wave: School Scope: Vouchers are Coming, Vouchers are Coming!!! and Writing WS in Rockaway

Published Dec. 2, 2016 in The Wave

School Scope: Vouchers are Coming, Vouchers are Coming!!!

By Norm Scott

“The first American schools in the thirteen original colonies opened in the 17th century. Boston Latin School was founded in 1635 and is both the first public school and oldest existing school in the United States. The first tax-supported public school was opened in Dedham, Massachusetts, in 1644.”…. Wikipedia

With the coming Trump administration threatening to create a voucher system, we face an upcoming elimination of almost 400 years of public education. It won’t happen immediately but over time we will see a withering away of the entire fabric of free public education in this nation, and along with it I believe a similar withering away of 225 years of democracy. A viable public school system is part of the foundation of American democracy where a national identity can be forged. Break public ed and you break the ties that can bind Americans together.

Is it even worth talking about public education in the Trump Era, which the president elect has termed a “monopoly”, after appointing billionaire Betsy DeVos, the queen of vouchers, as education secretary? And thus we face the possible demise of an institution that has been the backbone of democracy in this nation since almost its founding.

The Jewish Forward posted a story titled, “Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education? That’s a Tragedy for All American Jews.”  It is worth quoting a section from the article, which can be read in full at http://forward.com/opinion/355478/betsy-devos-as-secretary-of-education-thats-a-tragedy-for-all-american-jews/

“For generations of American Jews, public education has been the gateway to American life. It was certainly true for my parents, the children of immigrants; public school taught them not just facts and figures, but alao how to be American — and how to be proud of being American. Which is why the nomination of Betsy DeVos as secretary of Education, while not surprising, is so deeply sad. DeVos is not merely a conservative and a Republican Party activist; she is one of the country’s most powerful advocates for ending public education entirely and replacing it with religious schools, for-profit charter schools and home schooling. Her foundation is widely credited as the primary engine behind the so-called “school choice” movement, which has led to the establishment of voucher programs in 13 states since 2000. Moreover, DeVos’s billionaire family, the members of which made their money in the Amway pyramid scheme, is one of the top five funders of the Christian right, having given hundreds of millions of dollars to the likes of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation and dozens of Christian schools across the country. DeVos isn’t just the fox in charge of the henhouse — she’s the shochet, the slaughterer.”

Word is that many Jews in the orthodox community voted for Trump in higher numbers than secular Jews. So for them this may not a tragedy, since orthodox Jews who don’t send their kids to public schools can use public money for religious schools, as of course can Catholics and Muslims. With the attacks on Muslims can you see some religions being “unflavored”?

Every religious organization and every wood-be religious group, even bogus ones, will try to get in on the gravy train. Charters are in heaven over the chance to take over public school functions and property. Every school can will its own curriculum, thus fragmenting the American experience into smithereens.

Rockaway writing workshops

Switching gears, I’ve been in a writing group for about 10 years. Writing groups offer a very supportive environment to have your work critiqued and due to my colleagues I’ve begun doing something I never thought I would do – writing a novel, one of the hardest things I’ve tried to do.

Now Rockaway has its own writing workshop. If you’ve been hankering to write the great American novel or your memoir, or some poetry, Claire Van Winkle, one of our local hot yoga instructors at Hot Yoga Rockaway Beach on 116^th St., also teaches composition, creative writing, and literature at CUNY and SUNY colleges and she has been offering 6-week writing workshops in Rockaway.  The next session will be offered on Wednesdays, beginning January 4. Email Claire at info@rockawaywritersworkshop for details.

Claire created a 10% discount code for WAVE readers who would like to try the 6-Class Card (listed under “Packages”). Enter code EDNOTES10 on the checkout page at http://www.rockawaywritersworkshop.org

Coming soon from Claire, writing therapy workshops

Turning the Page: Making Sense of the Stories We Tell Ourselves, a community group designed to help individuals use writing to work through problems like depression, loss, trauma, and major life changes based on a program she developed  that applies writing workshop pedagogy and clinical psychology approaches (such as cognitive-behavioral theory) to group therapy. She’s run weekly sessions at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. While the program was created for a clinical setting, Claire hopes to bring her experience to the Rockaway/Broad Channel/Howard Beach area, helping those whose  silent struggles might be alleviated through guided expression.

Claire’s bio and CV are available at  http://www.rockawaywritersworkshop.org/about-the-teacher/

Norm blogs at ednotesonline.org

 

Matt Taibbi Interviews Bernie Sanders: Where We Go From Here - Rolling Stone

One thing is clear - Bernie Sanders is not a socialist-communist but a Roosevelt New Deal Democrat - with a left twist. The New Deal  basically ran from 1933-1968 - when it started to become undone by the Vietnam War - yet even Nixon was on the whole in line with it --- in many ways we can say the Democrats began to unravel it with Jimmy Carter, Regan went after the fundamentals of the ND -- government is the problem and so are taxes -- Clinton and Obama especially didn't defend ND ideals - which also included support for labor unions -- in fact the Dems abandoned unions in so many ways -- especially with the ed deform attack on teachers - and now we face the possible final ending of the ND over the next 4-8 years (does anyone think there is a Democrat out there who can win in 2020?). This may be the first time the Republicans have had absolute control of every branch of government since just before the great depression, which is where unfettered capitalism will lead us. Here are some excerpts from the Taibbi piece.

Sanders believes it is a mistake to dismiss the Trump movement as a monolithic expression of racism and xenophobia. Trump's populist appeals, sincere or not, carried the day, and Democrats need to answer them....
those same voters just lost any sympathy many Democrats might have had by electing the race-baiting lunatic Trump. Exactly how much courting of such a population is permissible? Is trying to recapture voters who've made a racist choice in itself racist?
... Matt Taibbi interview with Sanders in Rolling Stone

Do not believe that the vast majority of the people who voted for Trump are racist, sexist or homophobes. I don't believe that. Some are. I don't believe they all are. They have turned to Trump out of desperation and pain because the Democratic Party has not even acknowledged their reality, let alone addressed it.
Our future is not raising money from wealthy people, but mobilizing millions of working people and young people and people of color...

How to deal with Trump voters was a theme in our discussions at the almost 4 hour ICE meeting on Friday. Bernie always seems to have his finger on the right button. This question also came up at the UFT Ex Bd meeting last Monday, which I will write more about later today.

Taibbi opens with this intro:

It feels like a bomb went off in Washington. In less than a year, the leaders of both major parties have been crushed, fundamentally reshaping a political culture that for generations had seemed unalterable. The new order has belligerent outsider Donald Trump heading to the White House, ostensibly backed in Congress by a tamed and repentant majority of establishment Republicans. Hillary Clinton's devastating loss, meanwhile, has left the minority Democrats in disarray. A pitched battle for the soul of the opposition party has already been enjoined behind the scenes.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won overwhelming youth support and 13 million votes during primary season, now sits on one side of that battle, in a position of enormous influence. The party has named him "outreach chair," and Minnesota congressman and Sanders political ally Keith Ellison is the favorite to be named head of the Democratic National Committee. This is a huge change from earlier this year, when the Sanders campaign was completely on the outs with the DNC, but many see Sanders' brand of politics as the Democrats' best shot at returning to prominence.

Sanders' rise is a remarkable story, obscured by the catastrophe of Trump's win. When I first visited with Sanders for Rolling Stone, 11 years ago, for a tour of the ins and outs of congressional procedure, he was a little-known Independent in the House from a tiny agrarian state, an eccentric toiler pushing arcane and unsexy amendments through Congress, usually on behalf of the working poor: expanded access to heating oil in the winter, more regional community health centers, prohibitions against regressive "cash-balance pension plans," etc.

His colleagues gently described Sanders as a hardworking quack, the root of his quackery apparently being that he was too earnest and never off-message, even in private. He had fans among Republicans (some called him an "honest liberal") and many detractors among Democrats, who often grew weary of his lectures about the perils of over-reliance on donations from big business and Wall Street.

In other words, Sanders was a political loner, making his recent journey to the top of the Democratic Party even more remarkable. He has been put in this position not by internal patronage but by voters who are using him to demand that Democrats change their priorities.

At his Washington office a week after the election, I sat down with Sanders and his wife, Jane, just after the release of his new book, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In. When he offered to get me a copy, I told him I'd already read the e-book, at which he frowned. "Does that have the pictures?" he asked. He was relieved when I told him it did, including black-and-whites from his youth in Brooklyn.

Sanders' experiences growing up in the hardscrabble Flatbush neighborhood still seem central to the way he looks at the world. All the adults in his neighborhood voted Democratic. The loss of the support of those kinds of people still eats at Sanders, like a childhood wrong not yet corrected. Thus the opportunity he has now to push the Democrats back in that direction is something he doesn't take lightly. He's spent his whole life getting to this point.
The senator and his staffers were obviously sorting through a variety of emotions, and it was hard not to wonder what might have been. But Sanders admonished himself once or twice not to look back. "It's not worth speculating about," he said.

Instead, Sanders laid out the dilemma facing the Democratic Party. The Democrats must find their way back to a connection with ordinary people, and this will require a complete change in the way they do business. He's convinced that the huge expenditure of time and mental effort the Democrats put in to raise more than $1 billion for the Clinton campaign in the past year ended up having enormous invisible costs. "Our future is not raising money from wealthy people, but mobilizing millions of working people and young people and people of color," he says.

Read the full interview:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/bernie-sanders-where-we-go-from-here-w452786

Buying the So-called Ed Press: Bill and Melinda Drop a Half Million on Chalkbeat

Purpose: to inform low-income parents and parents of color in Newark, Detroit, and New York about K-12 education

Amount: $525,042

Sure -- to really "inform" low-income parents of color or to propagandize for ed deform policies of Bill Gates?

I remember back when I used to go to Gotham/Chalkbeat events when we raised questions about their donors the response was that Randi also gives them money and even that I had given them $50. Trying to equivocate what Randi and I might give with Gates alone makes the reporting more than suspect.

I think it important to understand and analyze what biased coverage is and Chalkbeat must be looked at as much as what they don't cover as what they do and how they do or don't do it. We know Gates is against opt out so watch CB coverage of that issue - it will be subtle how they lean in to Gates' issues. And you will never see a word of criticism about all the Gates failures in ed policy. We know Gates is not pro-Trump so we might see a more aggressive crit of Betsy DeVos than we saw about Duncan and King -- even though when you shake those trees a lot of the same crap comes out of the leaves.

Gates Foundation: How We Work

Grant

Chalkbeat, Inc.

---

Date: October 2016
Purpose: to inform low-income parents and parents of color in Newark, Detroit, and New York about K-12 education
Amount: $525,042
Term: 18
Topic: Global Policy & Advocacy
Program: United States
Grantee Location: New York, New York
Grantee Website: http://www.chalkbeat.org
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2016/10/OPP1159098

Ed Deform is the NAFTA Equivalent: The Neo-Liberal Assault on Blue Collar Workers and Unions Includes Teachers

I'm writing this as a topic for discussion at tomorrow's ICE meeting. Does the analogy of NAFTA and ed deform as the same type of neo-liberal attack hold water in terms of the loss of blue collar and public school jobs as a way to lower labor costs and funnel the profits into private hands?

As we read analysis after analysis of the Democratic Party's abandonment of the working class as the reason for the Trump victory. But how many of these analysts on the left and left center delve into the Democratic Party's abandonment of public school teachers and their unions, despite the slavish worship of UFT/AFT/NEA leaders  for their almost meaningless little stool at the table?

Commentators talk about blue collar workers but neglect that the major assault has been launched by both parties on teachers and public schools. That giant sucking sound of job loss Ross Pirot warned about NAFTA in the early 90s is being echoed in the public schools by the charters and the upcoming vouchers. But no one is paying much attention to the analogy.

To me there is a similarity between a corporation going to Mexico and New Orleans and Detroit going charter - the very same idea is operating -- the same type of shift to paying lower wages. While some people are fooled by the social justice rhetoric of charters, their mostly positive response to the Trump destruction of public ed shows what they are really about. And note that some big corp just paid around $125 million for 5 charter schools in Florida.

There's charter gold in them that hills

The gold rush is on.


As long as the Democratic Party that shilled for ed deform and charters have ed deform people like Hakim Jeffries and Corey Booker and Cuomo, teachers who are being chopped will not be won over. I know my readers can't stomach what I am about to say but De Blasio was the only one who had the guts to take on Eva and he was slaughtered and backed off -- and even though so many schools are in awful shape and teachers are pissed - just see what options you have next year in the election when the choice will be DeB or an Eva Moskowitz clone -- and I bet some of the angry people who are pissed at DeB and Farina will put their head in the noose and vote for the Eva Clone because to them deB is too liberal. Good luck with that.

Trump-supporting or Jill Stein voting teachers in the UFT were so pissed at our union leaders they will never vote Democratic Party until the Republican Party screws things up so badly they have no other choice -- like imagine if non-Hillary voters find themselves with a vastly reduced pension and without a job as a giant sucking sound that makes NAFTA look like pablum decimates their jobs.

I don't see a lot of ways around this other than to think of a Bernie like party --- it would be left of any Dems and for the right wingers in the UFT out of the question but by then there may no longer be much of a UFT.