Will Educators Reject Democratic Party Ed Deformers? Obama, Leonhardt, Jeffries

With the Democratic Party in flux over so-called progressive and centrist wings, when it comes to education things get fuzzy. In which camp are supporters of elements of the ed deform agenda -

high stakes testing, teacher evaluations based on such tests, calls for the end of tenure and LIFO, and at the top of my list - charters - fundamentally an attack on public school teacher and their unions that will make Janus look like a picnic? (Note - if Betsy DeVos had her way there would be NO public schools and no unions.)

Note the relationship between Obama and Netflix' Reed Hastings, one of the most vicious anti-union ed deformers. So we know all about the Obama assault on us that made George Bush look like a light-weight. And Obama is a centrist. 

We also know that Cuomo is an ed deformer at heart when he thought that would play well but has backed off on some of that - but not charters. 

Rising powers, especially black politicians like Cory Booker and locally, Hakeem Jeffries, are praised to the sky. Read this piece:

Why JoCrowley's Loss Could Be Good News for Hakeem Jeffries ...https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/.../hakeem-jeffries-house-democratic-leadership.html

and see Obama redux on education. I found the article on Jeffries frightening. (And ironic in that he went up to Albany with us to stand against Cathy Black as chancellor but after that turned.)

Every time I see a piece praising a Dem Party candidate who is a known ed deformer, I figure that's another shot at the growth of a true progressive movement that would not only talk about single payer health care as a public service but also funding great neighborhood public schools and taking on the phony "choice" movement. But from the progressive wing like Bernie, Warren, and even the new darling Ocasio-Cortez, we don't see education on the agenda.

Reading super charter supporter David Leonhardt in the NY Times, who wrote "it’s worth noting that, so far, progressive activism has been much more of a positive for Democrats than a negative", I find it interesting how little progressive activists avoid the ed deform fault lines. He has been writing about the Democratic Party and its future. Does he realize the anti-union charter movement is one of the elements undermining the Party?

Yesterday the stories about how Eva's high school lost 70% of its teachers was making news, which ed deformers ignore. I mean why care about schools that can't retain teachers when you blame teachers all the time for the problems in the schools? Yes, teacher bashing looks to be as rampant in the Progressive wings as in DFER. No matter the modified rhetoric of Evan Stone and E4E - Randi writing op eds with Evan is a joke -- they are fundamentally anti-union and anti-teacher.

Read Gary Rubinstein's latest:

• Gary Rubinstein's Blog

TFA CEO Has Three Big Ideas For New Corps Members — And Two Of Them Bash Teachers - Teach For America and the Teacher Bashing Movement are inextricably linked. Diane Ravitch also urges you to check out: "Gary Rubinstein gave a delightful talk about education reform and its distortions at his alma mater, Tufts University, in April. It is very enjoyable. Please watch."
I won't get deeper into the Eva story since our blogging buddies have taken it on:

• Chaz's School Daze:  Success Academy's Manhattan High School Has 70% Of It's Staff Leave
• NYC Educator Moskowitz Academy Retains Only 20 of 67 Teachers, Graduates 22% of Its Students - Why is that? Did they all suck? I mean, that's what Eva mostly says about us. We all suck. That's why we need Moskowitz Academies.

Chaz connects the teacher sieve at Eva schools to her attempt to make it easier for her to hire teachers by reducing qualifications to fogging a mirror. 

"No wonder Eva Moskowitz had SUNY 's  Charter Board try to weaken the teacher certification system for charter schools since her network experiences extremely high teacher turnover and eventually the influx of freshly minted "newbie" teachers will dry up as fewer college students are going into teaching, especially as the economy is on an upswing and teaching salaries and lack of respect cannot compete with other professions."

Leonie Haimson took Leonhardt to task on his recent pro-charter puff pieces. He praises the New Orleans post-Katrina "miracle" where the public school system was wiped out and replaced by charters, ignoring the increase in funding that ensued based on a report by Doug Harris:

Doug Harris maintains that he doesn't even have to attempt to disentangle the differential impact of increased funding in NOLA schools on student outcomes from their charterization, since in his estimation, it was unlikely that philanthropic support or increased local spending would have occurred without privatization happening first.  Thus he posits that the political will to fund schools properly was an effect of charterization, and thus not a possible cause of their academic improvements - a speculative argument at best.

Well, I do think that the wealthy give only to charters because they are anti-public schools and anti-union. But we need to argue for full PUBLIC funding of schools not private money.

I'm reposting Leonie's full piece below the break.

NYC Public School Parents

More sloppy & non-fact based journalism from NY Times on charter schools - David Leonhardt David Leonhardt's latest NY Times column touting charter schools is full of bogus claims and sloppy journalism.

YAFFED Files Federal Lawsuit Against New York Governor, NYS Education Commissioner, Board of Regents Chancellor Alleging Unconstitutional “Felder Amendment” Denies Yeshiva Students Right to Basic Education

One of the most substantive, alarming  press releases I have ever read.... Leonie Haimson

Funny how when people think of welfare they see certain people of color but not Hasidic. I wonder to what extent the demands for people on welfare to work will include them. Does public education money flow to these communities? Hell yes.

I worked in Williamsburg where the local Hasidic had effective control of the local school board with their voting block - they had 3 of the 9 seats and allied with the Greenpoint people to screw the 95% of the kids of color in the public schools in the district. They established a bi-lingual Yiddish school which is still in operation. At one point $7 million disappeared into the vapor and the District office was invaded by FBI -- the blame went to the two District Supt who both died of cancer before the judgement. The Hasidic community got off scot free. The early 70s were the earliest days of my activism and I attended all the monthly school board meetings and we raised issues at these meetings and the people running the operation were not happy -- we even worked with the community in school board elections where I learned you could not beat the machine with the Hasidic block vote.

Here are a few excerpts from the press release which you can read in full below the break.

...... the [Simcha Felder] amendment creates a carve-out that relieves ultra-Orthodox yeshivas from following the rigorous standards set in state education laws for all other non-public schools, these yeshivas continue to benefit from hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars annually.  Federal money flows to yeshivas through programs such as Title I, II, and III; Head Start and child care contracts; the E-rate telecommunications program; and food programs. For example, non-public schools in the largely Hasidic neighborhood of East Ramapo received approximately $835 per student in federal Title funding in 2016-17. In addition, state and city funding is provided to yeshivas through Academic Intervention Services (AIS), Nonpublic School Safety Equipment (NPSE), Mandated Services Aid (MSA), the Comprehensive Attendance Program (CAP), EarlyLearn, Universal Pre-K, child care vouchers, and New York City Council discretionary funds.

Approximately 45% of Hasidic households in New York are poor and another 18% are near poor.  In the largely Hasidic area of Williamsburg, the median household income is $21,502, compared to the Brooklyn median of $46,958 and the city median of $52,737. Hasidic communities in Brooklyn have a greater percentage of families receiving cash assistance, food stamps, public health care coverage, and Section 8 housing vouchers, as compared to Brooklyn and New York City as a whole.  For example, 33.8% of Borough Park residents utilize Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps; in Williamsburg, the number is an astounding 51.8%. The Brooklyn total is 23.8%, while 20.4% of all New York City residents receive SNAP food stamps.

https://www.yaffed.org/lawsuit1
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 23, 2018
Contact: Anat Gerstein, anat@anatgerstein.com,
             Lynsey Billet, lynsey@anatgerstein.com,

YAFFED Files Federal Lawsuit Against New York Governor, NYS Education Commissioner, Board of Regents Chancellor Alleging Unconstitutional “Felder Amendment” Denies Yeshiva Students Right to Basic Education

Hundreds of Millions of Taxpayer Dollars Support Schools that “Graduate” Students with Few Skills; Poverty Rates and Public Assistance Sky High

DOE Spends on more bureaucrats; Mulgrew Sister is a DOE Bureaucrat

James Eterno reports on the spending spree without a squeak from UFT officials.

DOE ADDS AT LEAST $2.5 MILLION IN NEW CENTRAL BUREAUCRATS

I also received this from a contact

Mulgrew’s sister works for a DOE office I’ve never heard of, and is on advisory board of for-profit corp that just got $2.2M from Gates Foundation. Kathleen Mulgrew-Daretany: NYC DOE Time Lab

Listen, I have relatives who I do not align with so maybe it's not fair to taint  Mulgrew with his sister's job or blame the lack of UFT response on the DOE tossing more money overboard on more slugs. The UFT is a partner with the doe and will shut up. But it is interesting to speculate on what gets said at family dinners.

https://www.unlockingtime.org/about

About Us

Unlocking Time is a national project that empowers K12 school leaders to adopt new time strategies that fuel student-centered learning. The project will gain new insights on how U.S. schools structure their time, provide a rich set of resources to help K12 school leaders align time and resources with their values, and provision administrators from eligible high-need schools with new master scheduling tools and services to implement new time-based strategies.

The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

dvisory Board Members

Darryl Adams: Former Superintendent, Coachella Valley Unified
Karin Chenoweth: Author & Researcher, EdTrust
Marilyn Crawford: School by Design
Jackie Gran: New Leaders
Terry Grier: Former Superintendent, Houston ISD
Crystal Harden: Principal, Green Street Academy
Casey Haugner-Wrenn: Asst Commissioner, Tennessee Dept of Education
Rick Hess: American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
Bob Lenz: Buck Institute for Education
Kathleen Mulgrew-Daretany: NYC DOE Time Lab
Bev Perdue: Former Governor of North Carolina; Digital Learning Institute
Michael Rettig: School Scheduling Associates
Jeff Wetzler: Transcend Education

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2018/07/gates_foundation_gives_22m_school_schedule.html

Memo From the RTC: 9 to 5 The Musical – Democratizing the Workplace

My other column in this week's WAVE.

Who knew how political 9 to 5 would be when they chose it a year ago in the context of today's metoo movement? I never saw the movie or the show before. Very powerful workplace and pro-feminist story.

The show runs though August 5.

If there are no tickets online, get in touch with me or show up about an hour before the show and there are always some available at the door. A big cast with some gorgeous people (I won't be sexist here) and wonderful dancers, a few who are out of the LaGuardia HS dance program a decade ago.

The Nuclear Option - Unity Caucus Trolls Be Warned - People Pulling Dues May Look to Alternatives

Unity Caucus, Reform (and Repent).

Warning to Unity trolls --- many of us are discouraging people from pulling dues - telling people to stay in the union. That may not last forever.

If the current structure of the union stays the same there will be moves to get people to not just not pay dues but to take that money and fund a move to organize an alternative. You guys will go nuts and attack the shit out of them and accuse them of dual unionism. You will say they are being funded by the Koch bros (they used to say Ed Notes was funded by Bloomberg).

But imagine even 100 people kicking in $1400 bucks to start an ad campaign to get people to join them. They would say how pro union they are but that Unity has failed some crucial tests of unionism.

I don't expect Unity to change, as the AFT convention proved when 750 slugs backed Randi all the way in everything she does -- it is going too far to compare this to Republicans backing Trump, so don't even try that.



With MORE becoming what it's become and no real viable alternative to Unity, where do people go? Initially, they will still gravitate to an opposition group, thinking Unity can be taken down - remember that was what Solidarity and Portelos was selling last time and when I tried to point out the realities I was accused of not wanting to win. Even of they have a slate this time, between them and MORE and New Action there is so little presence in the schools the election results for next year are already in --I always maintained you can judge by how many people show up to a Delegate Assembly to challenge Unity -- and it is less than ever,

With UFT elections coming in 6 months I am sitting on the hammock and doing what I can to get people to boycott -- to me it would be a joy to see Unity have no loyal opposition to point to -- people don't vote because there is so little at stake.

Even in the high schools where there is a real contest, less than 5000 out of 20,000 vote. So MORE/NA won with 2350 votes out of a potential 20,000. It will be no different this time. MORE HS Ex Bd people cannot claim to rep high school teachers in the real world -- only the 2350 who voted for them. And the 2250 who voted for Unity - well, they get rep from the other Unity people. Meanwhile, those 2350 high school people had no voice in Pittsburgh.

What about 2 thousand elementary school people who voted for the opposition or the 1300 middle school people --- no voice on the Ex Bd or at the AFT and NYSUT. In a proportional rep system they would get a few Ex bd seats and some AFT delegate positions. That would bring some political diversity to the UFT -- those disgruntled people might not be leaving so fast.

Let's see what happens over the next 3 years. The danger is if the Koch type people use e4e to do exactly this. Don't think Randi is not aware of this danger and that is why they are trying to co-opt E4e.

So, the Unity machine may be able to keep membership through threats and intimidation. But one day some people may just decide to look for an alternative.

David Remnick on Democratic Socialism, DSA, Ocasio-Ortiz

Following up on my upcoming column in The Wave, posted a few hours ago -

There is no such thing as democratic socialist because you can't have democracy under socialism. ------ My Right wing dinner companions at, appropriately, a Russian restaurant on boardwalk at Brighton Beach (plus other comments like, we were the least worst slave nation and that Moslems were bigger slave traders -- I was drinking straight vodka and was numb anyway. (They did bring up how many nations' elections we have tampered with, thus walking the line between excusing Russian actions and denying them.)

I urge everyone to spend some time with right wing Trump supporters where you won't go 15 minutes without them talking about locking up Hillary. But have some vodka handy.

What people call socialism these days is Eisenhower Republicanism!”... Frances Fox Priven, The New Yorker

[DSA founder Michael] Harrington, in exposing the harsher realities of American life, sought to push the Democratic Party left. “Put it this way,” he once said. “I’m a radical, but, as I tell my students at Queens, I try not to soapbox. I want to be on the left wing of the possible.”  “The left wing of the possible” reflects how Ocasio-Cortez practices politics.... When I asked her about her political heroes, though, there was no mention of anyone in the Marxist pantheon. She named Robert F. Kennedy...... For many older Americans, “socialist” is bound to have a ring of the sinister or the antiquated. This is generally not the case with a generation whose most formative political experience was the economic collapse of 2008-09. In 2016, the Institute of Politics, at Harvard’s Kennedy School, polled people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, and discovered that support for capitalism was surprisingly low. Fifty-one per cent of the cohort rejected capitalism; thirty-three per cent supported socialism.... the group is “a big umbrella organization for left and leftish types, from Bernie-crats to hard-core Trotskyists.”

Come November, Ocasio-Cortez is almost certain to become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Will her democratic-socialist identity push the Party to the left?

----- David Remnick, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Historic Win and the Future of the Democratic Party

Let's get to the task at hand -- taking about socialism as I did in this week's column in The Wave. (Talking Democratic Party Politics – Is Socialism on the rise? - Norm Scott in The Wave).

Well, clearly people on the right and even liberals are not very clear about socialism or groups like Democratic  Socialists of America (DSA) which Alexandria Ocasio-Ortiz is a member of - her election has focused attention on the DSA. (My right wing dinner companions were so dismissive last night they were ready to bet me that Joe Crowley would beat her in the general election from  third party line, pointing out that only 9% voted in the primary and so many people will be horrified at her socialist identity they would come out in force to defeat her. Since they watch FOX news or listen to Rush let's assume they got this sunny report on her demise from them.)

I'm interested in DSA and I am glad it's a big umbrella of the left though I expect some people whose DNA is splitism will forge disagreements that may fracture the organization. My recent experience with DSA ideologues in MORE has made me wary, especially when they supported an undemocratic process that makes a mockery of the word "Democracy." I guess some Democratic Socialists are not all that democratic.

There seems to be no less shock from the liberal (as opposed to left) side of the fence, as epitomized by The New Yorker editor David Remnick who did a long profile piece on Ocasio-Cortez. Remnick and most of the rest of the world runs against the wishful thinking of the right who would much prefer a powerful boss-like Crowley as a model for the Dem party than Alexandria who could galvanize millennials to vote. She seems, on the surface, to be from the DSA wing that views FDR as a model. I think that's a myth, as I've heard the left denounce FDR for saving capitalism.

Remnick included an interesting summary/history of DSA, which I'm including here below.

....how was [Ocasio-Cortez] going to own her identity as a democratic socialist.

In 1988, Edward Kennedy attended a ceremony at the Roseland Ballroom, in New York, celebrating the life and work of Michael Harrington, a founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, the author of the best-selling book “The Other America: Poverty in the United States,” and a professor of political science at Queens College. The Kennedy family, in general, admired Harrington, no matter his ideological allegiances. In 1963, John Kennedy declared himself shaken by Dwight Macdonald’s long review in The New Yorker of Harrington’s study of poverty. Shortly before J.F.K. was killed, he told aides that he wanted to wage a battle against the slums, the hunger, and the inadequate medical care that he had read about. The fight was left to his successor. And, thanks largely to the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty—to Medicaid, Medicare, and expanded Social Security benefits—the poverty rate dropped, from 22.4 per cent in 1959 to 11.1 per cent in 1973. At the Roseland ceremony, Ted Kennedy said, “I see Michael Harrington as delivering the Sermon on the Mount to America. . . . Among veterans in the War on Poverty, no one has been a more loyal ally when the night was darkest.”

Harrington, in exposing the harsher realities of American life, sought to push the Democratic Party left. “Put it this way,” he once said. “I’m a radical, but, as I tell my students at Queens, I try not to soapbox. I want to be on the left wing of the possible.”

“The left wing of the possible” reflects how Ocasio-Cortez practices politics. Her agenda is in line with the Sanders agenda: single-payer universal health care, equal rights for women and ethnic and sexual minorities, a fifteen-dollar minimum wage, guaranteed employment. “No person should be too poor to live” is her credo. She told me that in criminal-justice reform she is sympathetic to the abolitionist movement, which calls for the closing down of many prisons.

When Ocasio-Cortez is interviewed now, particularly by the establishment outlets, she is invariably asked about “the S-word,” socialism; sometimes the question is asked with a shiver of anxiety, as if she were suggesting that schoolchildren begin the day by singing the “Internationale” under a portrait of Enver Hoxha. When I asked her about her political heroes, though, there was no mention of anyone in the Marxist pantheon. She named Robert F. Kennedy. In college, reading his speeches—“that was my jam,” she said. R.F.K., at least in the last chapter of his life, his 1968 Presidential campaign, tried to forge a party coalition of workers, minorities, and the middle class.

For many older Americans, “socialist” is bound to have a ring of the sinister or the antiquated. This is generally not the case with a generation whose most formative political experience was the economic collapse of 2008-09. In 2016, the Institute of Politics, at Harvard’s Kennedy School, polled people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, and discovered that support for capitalism was surprisingly low. Fifty-one per cent of the cohort rejected capitalism; thirty-three per cent supported socialism. A later edition of the survey found that fifty-one per cent were “fearful about the future,” while only about twenty per cent were hopeful. John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the institute, told me that he was so surprised about the results of the survey that he repeated it to make sure they were accurate. Based on further research derived from focus groups around the country, Della Volpe said, “these young people are thinking of Canadian health care, not the U.S.S.R.,” when they speak of socialism. What they want to see, he said, is “like a combination of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, the Square Deal and the New Deal.” But many young people are wary of participating in politics, because the role of big money seems so decisive. Della Volpe considered it a hopeful sign that, while millennials showed a deep distrust of politicians, many were also finding sources of optimism in new figures on the scene, ranging from the student activists in Parkland, Florida, to political candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The reasons for anxiety are manifest. Broad statistical metrics back up the idea that income inequality has increased and that the middle class is languishing. Seventy-eight per cent of Americans working full time live paycheck to paycheck; nearly half do not have four hundred dollars at the ready. Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard and a director of the Equality of Opportunity Project, points out that while ninety per cent of people born in the nineteen-forties outearned their parents—the traditional American expectation—this number has fallen to fifty per cent for people born in the nineteen-eighties. The “American dream” of social mobility, moving from the bottom fifth to the top fifth, is twice as likely to be fulfilled in Canada. In the meantime, wealthy élites insure that their children—through expensive educations and countless other privileges—retain their status. Colossal resentment is the result, and Trump, with his preternatural skills as a TV-trained populist demagogue on the right, was able to build a movement on it.

Ocasio-Cortez keeps to a minimum her denunciations of Trump, as if the critique went almost without saying. She is more voluble about her view of capitalism. “I do think we are in a crisis of late-stage capitalism, where people are working sixty, eighty hours a week and they can’t feed their families,” she said. “There is a lot that is economically dystopic in this country. So that’s why people are open to change.”

But what first appealed to her about the Democratic Socialists of America had less to do with theory or ideology than with the simple fact that she kept seeing members at rallies for every cause she cares about, from the Hurricane Maria rescue effort to Black Lives Matter. She defines her politics as a struggle for “social, economic, and racial dignity.” The distance between here and there—between establishing a set of values and policies and then finding a way to pass them into law and pay for them—is not at the core of her argument. She knows it is a long road. “I want to get there,” she said. “I want to live in that country.”

This is an old dream. In the nineteen-tens, the Socialist Party of America had more than a hundred thousand members, ranging from Lower East Side garment workers to Nevada miners, and Eugene V. Debs ran as the Party’s Presidential candidate five times. In that era, there were hundreds of Socialists in public office, two in Congress.
D.S.A., which was founded in 1982, is not a party but a dues-paying organization, and it has seen a bump in membership recently, from five thousand in 2016 to more than forty thousand today. The first co-chairs were Harrington and the author Barbara Ehrenreich. David Dinkins, the former mayor of New York, was a member of D.S.A. There’s no question that some members are Marxists in the traditional sense; some want to see the destruction of capitalism and the state ownership of factories, banks, and utilities. Jabari Brisport, a D.S.A. member from Brooklyn who recently ran, unsuccessfully, for City Council, told me that the group is “a big umbrella organization for left and leftish types, from Bernie-crats to hard-core Trotskyists.” Julia Salazar, a D.S.A. member in her mid-twenties who is running for the New York State Senate with the ardent support of Ocasio-Cortez, told Jacobin, a leftist quarterly, that a democratic socialist “recognizes the capitalist system as being inherently oppressive, and is actively working to dismantle it and to empower the working class and the marginalized in our society.”

Ocasio-Cortez and, for the most part, the people around her speak largely in the language of Sanders. Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, and yet in the most extensive speech he ever gave on the theme—at Georgetown University, in November, 2015—he did not mention Debs. Rather, he focussed almost entirely on Franklin Roosevelt and the legacy of the New Deal. He said that he shared the vision that F.D.R. set out in his 1944 State of the Union speech, what Roosevelt called the Second Bill of Rights. Sanders pointed out that universal health care was “not a radical idea” and existed in countries such as Denmark, France, Germany, and Taiwan. “I don’t believe government should own the means of production,” he said, “but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal.”

Left-of-center political terminology has long been a welter of confusion. “What’s in a name?” the American historian Sean Wilentz writes in the journal Democracy. “Franklin Delano Roosevelt called himself a Christian, a Democrat, and a liberal. . . . The only Americans who considered Franklin Roosevelt a socialist were right-wing Republicans.” Norman Thomas, who ran for President six times at the top of the Socialist Party of America ticket, was irritated by the notion that F.D.R. had carried out the Socialist platform. He hadn’t, Thomas said, “unless he carried it out on a stretcher.” For decades, liberals have sensed that “liberal” is so toxic for the broader electorate that many of them, including Hillary Clinton, adopted the term “progressive,” which has a distinct legacy. On the left, the sharpest bolt of opprobrium one can hurl is “neoliberal”—a term that makes little distinction between Bill Clinton and Augusto Pinochet.

Frances Fox Piven, a political scientist and a former D.S.A. board member, told me that, while these terms are fuzzier than they once were, “socialism,” in the practical politics of the young, describes above all a disgust with widening inequality. “When people say they are ‘socialists,’ they are reacting against unrestrained capitalism,” she said. “I don’t know that it has much meaning beyond that. There are volumes written about the historical, theoretical work by socialists and their critics, but I don’t think that that’s what’s moving these young people. They are moved by the idea of an economic system that is tempered, constrained, and restrained by democratic values. There were a lot of debates in the seventies and eighties between Maoists and theoretical socialists, some of whom were a little crazy. That has nothing to do with what’s happening now.” Michael Kazin, a co-editor of Dissent and a D.S.A. member, agreed: “The radical left’s major influence in American history is to push liberals, progressives, to the left. And that is going to be the impact. I don’t believe we are going to have a socialist transformation of America in my lifetime.”

Ocasio-Cortez and her circle focus less on the malefactions of the current Administration than on the endemic corruption of the American system, particularly the role of “dark money” in American politics and the lack of basic welfare provisions for the working classes and the poor. When they hear conservatives describe as a “socialist” Barack Obama—a man who, in their view, had failed to help the real victims of the financial crisis, while bailing out the banks—they tend to laugh ruefully. “I think the right did us a service calling Obama a socialist for eight years,” Saikat Chakrabarti, one of Ocasio-Cortez’s closest associates, said. “It inoculated us. But people focus on the labels when they are not sure what they mean. What people call socialism these days is Eisenhower Republicanism!”

Here's the link to the entire article.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/23/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-historic-win-and-the-future-of-the-democratic-party?mbid=nl_Magazine%20Daily%20List%20071618&CNDID=24481169&spMailingID=13883638&spUserID=MTMzMTgyNTI1MzgxS0&spJobID=1441355577&spReportId=MTQ0MTM1NTU3NwS2

Talking Democratic Party Politics – Is Socialism on the rise? - Norm Scott in The Wave

Another example of Normsplainin'

This week's column in The WAVE, July 20, 2018, www.rockawave.com

School Scope: Talking Democratic Party Politics – Is Socialism on the rise?
By Norm Scott

Have you been paying attention to the avalanche of stories about instant media star, 28 year old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated Queens Democratic Party boss Joe Crowley in the congressional primary in June? It seems Crowley remains in charge of the Queens organization at this point. I wonder how his defeat will affect politics in Queens since he and his machine have been a gate keeper as to which people can run for which office. How much fun would it be to see more challenges in our borough and Rockaway neighborhood to stimulate politics beyond the same old same old? But let’s leave that aside for this column and address some of the bigger issues.

Ocasio-Cortez identifies herself as a socialist and is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a fast growing national organization that is gaining more attention. Some view this as a good thing that will turn the Democratic Party sharply to the left. Others view such a turn to the left as a disaster that will assure Trump and the Republicans control over every branch of government for the next generation. The constant yin-yang among Democrats reflects the conflict between the Bernie and Hillary wings of the Party. The popular terms are progressive and centrist wings. Bernie has not been identified as a Democrat but as an independent with a socialist label. Bernie has been called a Commie when in fact he is a social democrat (ie Scandinavian style), which has created some confusion since most of the people in this nation tend to lump all socialists and even progressives into one pile as “the left.” Almost every nation in Europe has a major party under the S-D label. Some of my conservative friends consider the NY Times as far left, which causes howls of laughter since the so-called “left” has an even wider range of political variation than we see on the right.

DSA members work inside and outside the Democratic Party and its members would be considered the far left of the Democrats. Other wings of the DSA are vehemently opposed to working with the Democrats – from what I’ve seen this would be the Marxist-Leninists (ML), some of whom support the Green Party while others believe that only a Leninist type party will do. (Good luck with that.) They call for a workers party.

There’s no way I can delve into the variations of socialism in this limited space so here are a few brief points (check my blog for more in depth analysis.) Pretty much anyone who is some form of socialist is fundamentally anti-capitalist and believes that system will one day fall apart, just as its predecessor feudalism did, as predicted by Carl Marx almost two centuries ago. He may have gotten the time frame a little wrong, (sort of like the people who believe the bible and claim the earth is 6.000 years old) but like global warming will one day raise sea levels 50 feet or more as the polar ice caps melt, capitalism will one day eat itself up. Which will come first, unstoppable global warming or the end of capitalism? Or will these events arise simultaneously since capitalism with its fundamental essence of profit above all else will prevent us from addressing global warming until it is too late?

I’m heading to the beach while it’s still there. If you are interested in some realistic science fiction, check out Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140. Where Manhattan is sort of like Venice – at least what is left of it above 34th St. I won’t scare you with what the rest of the city looks like.

When he’s not blogging at ednotesonline.com Norm is looking into beach front property – in Idaho.

For immediate release: Parent sues City Hall for refusing to release unredacted decision memo on class size

Posted by Leonie Haimson at: https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2018/07/parent-sues-city-hall-for-refusing-to.html

This media release is also available here.

 

For immediate release: July 17, 2018

For more information contact: Leonie Haimson; leoniehaimson@gmail.com;

 

 

Parent sues City Hall for refusing to release unredacted decision memo on class size

 

On Monday, July 16, 2018, Brooke Parker, a NYC public school parent, filed a lawsuit against the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York, challenging the almost complete redaction of a City Hall Decision Memo that contained a discussion of the reasons for the city’s rejection of several recommendations of the Blue Book Working Group, including a proposal to align the school capacity formula with smaller class sizes.  She is represented in court by Laura D. Barbieri, Special Counsel of Advocates for Justice, a pro-bono law firm.

Fuzzy Math at AFT Convention - Mike Antonucci

New York State United Teachers reported to the U.S. Department of Labor that it had 665,000 members, of whom 433,000 were currently employed. NYSUT president Andy Pallotta told the convention delegates, “I am happy to report that as of today, 85 percent of our members have re-signed a card. To give you a sense of scale, that’s over 200,000 members"

.... Mike Antonucci, EIA

Did Andy fail his math regent? Mike reports on the UFT numbers:

UFT reported almost 123,000 members to the Department of Labor. UFT told the delegates it had a 99.27% membership recommitment.
You might find that a little hard to believe, but we’ll let that slide, too. The reason is it doesn’t matter.

Interesting that the UFT is claiming almost 100% membership -- Obviously -- Jamus just took effect. I believe there are about 3000 agency fee payers -- if I remember correctly from the last election. If accurate I don't see how these numbers jive.

Let's see the numbers in 6 months to a year.

The UFT also has over 60,000 retirees, bringing the total membership to over 180,000. That's one third the membership. Will there come a day when retirees make up the bulk of the union?

The AFT reports 1.75 million members. NYSUT's 665K is about one third of the total. The UFT's Unity caucus sends 750 delegates to the NYSUT and AFT conventions, a significant total of the delegates who attend - enough to control every aspect of AFT policy and serve as an instrument of what Randi wants to do.

This is the first AFT convention I have not attended since 2008. I did go in 2006 when I sat with Mike Antonucci at the press table. I don't think Mike has attended the AFT since then but he does manage to report on some interesting aspects. 

Also read Eterno at ICEUFT: OVER 99% STICKING WITH UFT; AFT AMENDS CONSTITUTION

AFT Membership Math Is Awash in Variables

http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2018/07/16/aft-membership-math-is-awash-in-variables/

Summer News and Blues: Cataracts, Technology and a little Marxist analysis tossed in

Sunday, July 15, 2018

This post falls into the category of NOGAC - No One Gives a Crap, so why am I posting this about my life? For me so I can remember what it was like to be active when I no longer can be. So if you're a NOGAC, don't click below the fold.

'We're militant again': US teachers at convention galvanized by wave of strikes

“I am more than excited than ever,” said Weingarten. “They rue the day they decided to come after us because it’s motivated us even more.... Addressing the meeting on Friday former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said: “We have to gear up again, because the challenges we face now are truly unlike any we have seen for some time.”

This Guardian piece is almost funny if you watch some of the same-old same-old reactions coming out of the AFT convention in Pittsburgh where the 800 Unity slugs have gathered at our expense to endorse anything Randi tells them to do. Eterno has a report here.
Remember my dictum - watch what they do not what they say.

This was sent to me by a retired chapter leader who opposed Unity with this comment -- Yeah right. She gets it.

While many are galvanized about the red state teacher rank and file rebellions, we know that they went beyond the AFT and NEA leaderships which always urge holding back. At the AFT convention they didn't even want to mention the word "strike", a PR move as they probably assume that the public shudders at the word. So work stoppage is the code word. I would bet that a number of teachers in those red states were on Hillary's deplorable list.

School Scope: The UFT and Janus – Should I stay or should I go? - Reprised

I reworked my blog (Why Stay?) on "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" for this week's WAVE column, which has a different audience -- or no audience. My word limit for published work forces me to be more concise - less wordy is better - I guess. To be published - today - I hope.

School Scope: The UFT and Janus – Should I stay or should I go?
By Norm Scott

Darling, you got to let me know
Should I stay or should I go?
If you say that you are mine
I'll be here till the end of time
So you got to let me know
Should I stay or should I go?

... The Clash, “Should I stay of should I go” from the 1982 album Combat Rock, https://youtu.be/BN1WwnEDWAM

These lyrics are resonating with UFT members after the Supreme Court Janus decision that makes paying dues to public unions voluntary, though on the surface remaining in the union would seem to be a no brainer. But some members have questioned just how much and how often the union made them feel they counted over the decades.

It's always tease, tease, tease
You're happy when I'm on my knees
One day it's fine and next it's black
So if you want me off your back
Well, come on and let me know
Should I stay or should I go?

This verse is so apt. The union leadership loves them when it needs them. This past school year we saw a number of schools being closed. The two Rockaway schools (PS 42 and MS 53) received a reprieve by the skin of their teeth and some in those schools are giving the UFT some credit for standing up for them and possibly influencing a crucial tie-breaking vote on the Panel for Educational Policy. We might see many of the teachers in these schools responding by staying in the union. But what happens in the other schools that did close or be consolidated, with teachers being tossed into the purgatory of the ATR pool where their entire career turns into being a high-salaried sub, possibly for life? They may be asking,

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go, there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know

Yes, if thousands leave the union there will be trouble, but it will be double if those who decide to remain but are agitated at what they see as a weak UFT end up being a thorn in the side if they organize internal resistance under the threat of leaving the union.

Right wing groups are organizing an active campaign to leave the union. The Rupert Murdoch owned anti-union NY Post headlined a piece called “Group wants to teach workers how to stop paying union dues.” I predict these campaigns will backfire and lead to exposing their overall assault on public workers and give some clarity to the motives to destroy the teaching profession.

Why pay union dues? I would pay just on the basis of showing solidarity with my co-workers who do pay, for the sake of school unity. Your biggest enemy is not the UFT leadership but certain supervisors and their enablers at the DOE. It is so hard to fight back even with the union. There will be some angry internal voices in schools where some people do not join the union and are barred from going to union meetings and don’t get help when they need it from the union rep. Imagine a divided school where the principal uses members vs. non-members against each other. Public schools may become like charters where administrators openly discourage unions.

There is some hope that the UFT will show its members some love.
So you gotta let me know
Should I cool it or should I blow?

Norm as a retiree isn’t affected by Janus and is cooling it so he can continue to make trouble double at ednotesonline.com.

Can you be so woke you stop laughing? BBC Video Tests Sense of Humor on the Left

When you so woke, you asleep. ... this support group is for people who are so woke they aren't having any fun....  BBC Comedy Video

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Woke

Getting woke is like being in the Matrix and taking the red pill. You get a sudden understanding of what's really going on and find out you were wrong about ...

I aspire to be more woke than I am but not so woke I inspire the non-woke or semi-woke to roll their eyes - or to make a video like this mocking me. I think of this since tomorrow is family day out on Long Island with some unwoke people.

Upon seeing this BBC Comedy satire on people who are woke to every possible slight -- political correctness to the extreme -- some MORE members said it reminded them of a MORE meeting (MORE and the Mission from God, Part II) where you can get purged for political incorrectness.

So while getting a laugh I also took seriously some of the critical comments posted at the BBC video about mocking people who have been raising consciousness about issues related to gender, race etc. Even seniors.

My favorite line in the video is when she tells the millennials they will be conservatives by the time they are in their 30s. As someone out of the radical 1960s I can testify to how true this turned out to be for so many. Maybe these times are different - maybe the current economic and social stuff going on is the equivalent to the draft in the 60s and this stuff ain't going away so we may see more staying power on the left.

I may make fun of MORE PC stuff but I can certainly say that my own insights have been broadened through the contact I've had with so many woke people -- I'm more Woke than ever. Yet can we also have a sense of humor about some of this stuff? I know we laugh a lot more when ICEUFT people get get together -- people who are also woke - than we do at a MORE meeting.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155552204996778&id=130593816777&refsrc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&_rdr

Here's the difference between a 'socialist' and a 'Democratic socialist' - Business Insider

"The academic debates about socialism's 'meaning' are huge and arcane and rife with disagreements, but what all definitions have in common is either the elimination of the market or its strict containment," Frances Fox Piven, a political scientist at the City University of New York and a former DSA board member, told Vox....

In the present day, "Democratic socialist" and "socialist" are often treated as interchangeable terms, which can be confusing given Democratic socialists don't necessarily think the government should immediately take control of all aspects of the economy.

They do, however, generally believe the government should help provide for people's most basic needs and help all people have an equal chance at achieving success....... 
In the present day, "Democratic socialist" and "socialist" are often treated as interchangeable terms, which can be confusing given Democratic socialists don't necessarily think the government should immediately take control of all aspects of the economy. ...They do, however, generally believe the government should help provide for people's most basic needs and help all people have an equal chance at achieving success. ..... Business Insider

WTF - here we have a bastion of capitalist press splainin socialism. But as I pointed to in my last post - mainstream media is being forced to pay some attention. Just never forget that they have a goal -- to disparage socialist concepts - so read mainstream media with a grain of salt. But here is at least an attempt to distinguish between Bernie soc-dems and other forms of socialism that are closer to communism -- the name change for them has been for cosmetic reasons.

As a student of history, I view the Democratic Socialists as the equivalent of the Menshiviks in Russia c. 1917. We know what happened to them when the Bolsheviks took power. But then again the entire world teamed up against the Bolsheviks and extraordinary means were necessary -- except that ended up going on for 70 years or certainly the Stalin years.

We know that Leninists don't have the same view of democracy as liberals do. Their parties operate on democratic centralism -- supposed internal democratic decision making by members of the party and then adherence to the line by everyone -- in other words - there are no minority rights or factions allowed who support the minority. Minority or diverse views being respected is a core of democracy for me. The UFT/Unity Caucus and even the alternative, MORE, both don't seem to want to hear minority views. In MORE when you express disagreement you are charged with negativity. Or if you use a few harsh words out of frustration, bad tone (Tone Policing Used as an Anti-debate Tool by Left ...).

As a public service Ed Notes will be on the case with our own distorted views of the many shades of socialism from a lifetime of bouncing around the edges.

http://www.businessinsider.com/difference-between-socialist-and-democratic-socialist-2018-6

Here's the difference between a 'socialist' and a 'Democratic socialist'

Mainstream media grapples with a left-wing wave

Is there a real left-wing wave or are we seeing a few ripples? Ed Notes will be on the case to help you decipher the issues with a series of posts on the left -- including what the hell the left is -- my right wing friends view the NY Times as left. I will be posting a follow up from Business Insider attempting to define social democracy - Bernie territory - socialists who believe in liberal democracy compared to socialist who believe in a one party system.

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/mainstream-media-grapples-with-a-left-wing-wave.php
 - Columbia Journalism Review

Mainstream media grapples with a left-wing wave

By Jon Allsop, CJR

July 2, 2018 

The last few days have been seismic for the American left. Last Tuesday, the insurgent Democratic candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scored an upset primary victory in New York, unseating heavyweight Congressman Joe Crowley. The next day, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, girding the left for a nomination fight that could put Roe v. Wade—and other settled rights for immigrants and minorities—back on the table. And over the weekend, protesters across the country marched to oppose the separation of families at the US–Mexico border.
On Sunday, CNN’s Brian Stelter discussed sharp, ongoing criticism that mainstream media outlets failed to spot Ocasio-Cortez’s rise with The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb (who is also a professor at Columbia Journalism School) and Vox’s Liz Plank. “Do you buy into the idea the press missed the story?” asked Stelter. “I think it’s pretty obvious,” Cobb replied. Don’t just follow the money, “follow the tweets,” added Plank, referring to Crowley’s huge, yet futile, fundraising advantage over Ocasio-Cortez.

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/mainstream-media-grapples-with-a-left-wing-wave.php

Why Stay? Anthem for UFTers - Should I stay or should I go? - The Clash

If I go there will be trouble, if I stay there will be double... The Clash

I'm a fan of The Clash and Should I stay of should I go is a good theme song many UFTers are facing. Try it out. (See lyrics below). The line above is interesting because if those who are most agitated about leaving due to what they consider a weak UFT in defending themselves stay they could be a thorn in the side. Thus my theory that the leadership doesn't really mind if its most vocal critics left. Remember that 12,000 UFT members voted for the opposition in the last election in 2016, a serious number of unhappy people with Unity.




https://youtu.be/BN1WwnEDWAM

With right wing groups organizing people to leave the union - see this NY Post piece - https://nypost.com/2018/07/05/group-wants-to-teach-workers-how-to-stop-paying-union-dues/

I predict these campaigns will backfire and lead to exposing the attacks on teachers and give some clarity to the motives to destroy the profession as they tie into the same people supporting the anti-union charters. (I still maintain that the school privatization movement represents as big a threat to teacher unions as Janus.

In response to the people on the ICEUFT blog who ask why they should pay in response to my comment about the problems with the UFT leadership, here is my response:

Why pay union dues? Good question. Let's just focus on the local not the big union aspect -- the union in your own school.
I would pay just on the basis of showing solidarity with my co-workers who do pay. For the sake of school wide unity - small u.
Your biggest enemy is not the UFT leadership but most likely some of your supervisors and their enablers at the DOE.

Even with the union it is so hard to fight back against these people.
Try to imagine a divided school where the principal can use the wedge against you all. It could also go the other way where some principals support the idea of a union and punish those who leave -- but I don't see this as the norm.

So an anti-union principal encourages people to leave the union -- devastate the chapter so there is no pushback at all and also no place at all to go to complain -- even if the UFT is poor in responding -- just the fact it exists can be a factor.

Now the other reason is that in a state of having to cater to get you to pay dues the UFT/Unity become more responsive and maybe even willing to fight. Don't hold you breath -- but if people actually banded together - say in a school with an abusive principal and threatened to leave the union en masse unless there was some action -- but you would give them time -- like a year.

Now imagine a whole bunch of schools banding together -- and also saying they will stay in the union but organize people to seek out other representation unless the union reforms democratically.

I've been paying dues voluntarily for 16 years since I retired because I support the concept of unionism and want to stay involved.

James Eterno just retired and is covered under his wife's health plan and could walk away but he is passionate about staying involved.
What is interesting is that the Unity crowd ignores that some of the most passionate support comes from its internal critics and Unity sectarianism means people like us will never be allowed to actually go into schools and support people.

We could mobilize a group of retirees who are not Unity in a second and I believe out critical view of the UFT would allow us to be able to really talk to people the way we do on our blogs instead of going in like a used car salesman to sell fluff.

On the other hand I could understand Unity not wanting to send in people associated with opposition caucuses, fearing they will misuse their access to organize against the leadership -- a valid point and something I've been grappling with in my developing theories of the uncaucus --- what is the point in working in opposition when there is little chance to topple Unity? (But more on this in the future.)

Look deep into the lyrics. People want to stay but it's always tease, tease, tease --- one day its fine and next its black

Reposting - Republicans Are Terrified of What Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Started

I accidentally deleted my previous post which went into some commentary on my part which is now lost in space forever. So I am just going to republish this without commentary. Sorry, a few of you left comments but they were lost too. Feel free to put them back.

I just heard a clip from Alexandria from Meet the Press in which she was asked about her socialist identification and had a good answer. (I must delve into the different socialisms very soon we know what we are talking about.)

Republicans Are Terrified of What Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Started

Jay Willis
GQ•July 2, 2018

It took the right-wing pundit class all of four days to decide how it planned to attack Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old Bronx native who won her New York City congressional district's Democratic primary on the strength of some really, really good policy ideas. Their chosen approach, however, might be characterized as a novel one. You should know, says this basic-cable talking head, that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—and this is a Certified Politics Bombshell, so please make sure you're in a place where you can audibly gasp—grew up in a house.

Look at this dwelling! Feast your eyes on the scale of its opulence! Why, it has a roof, and trees, and several windows! Its walls completely enclose the living area so as to protect its habitants from the elements! By golly, I bet if you were granted access to the home's interior, you might even find a refrigerator in which Ocasio-Cortez's family could store perishable food for consumption several days beyond its purchase date! How, he might ask, can someone be poor if they also eat food?

Set aside, for a moment, the fact that Ocasio-Cortez attended Boston University, which is neither "Ivy League" nor "Brown University." (Set aside, too, how creepy it is to post on social media a Google Street View image of whatever now exists at the site of someone's former home as a gotcha argument.) Cardillo's implicit assertion is that because a cherry-picked aspect of her childhood does not comport with his lazy, pernicious stereotypes about the lives of working-class people of color, she must therefore be an inauthentic liar.

The candidate responded, in order, by correcting his mistakes and putting him in a blender.

Her first point is the sicker burn, but her second one is what will matter in November. Cardillo, a Queens native and former Bronx police officer, won't address Ocasio-Cortez's "radical" socialist agenda on the merits because he understands that Ocasio-Cortez's "radical" socialist agenda is popular enough to win elections: With neither political experience nor big-donor money to her name, she unseated a ten-term incumbent by outlining a bold vision for this country in which those who live in it can lead fuller and more dignified lives. This terrifies him. And so, instead of staking out the absurd position that things like "women's rights," "housing as a human right," and "supporting seniors" must be bad—seriously, no one in conservative media tells on themselves more willingly than Sean Hannity—Cardillo abandoned good-faith criticism altogether. It went about as well as you'd expect.

Ocasio-Cortez is the first to admit that her platform isn't likely to be adopted wholesale by the national Democratic Party in the immediate future. But oftentimes, the surest sign of a viable political strategy is the extent to which its successful deployment makes your opponents nervous. If they want to have any hope of slowing the movement of which she is now the most prominent member, Cardillo and his peers will need to come up with a better plan in a hurry. Dumb tweets about a house aren't going to cut it.

 https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/republicans-terrified-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-165942526.html?.tsrc=fauxdal

 7,239 reactions

Lessons from ISIS for UFT/Unity in the Age of Janus

In a terrorist version of the “broken window” school of policing, the Islamic State aggressively prosecuted minor crimes in the communities it took over, winning points with residents who were used to having to pay bribes to secure police help.... the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, was willing — even eager — to get involved in the messy details of people’s day-to-day lives, and conversely that hundreds of people trusted them to fairly resolve their issues, no matter how trivial.... NY Times,The Case of the Purloined Poultry: How ISIS Prosecuted Petty Crime

I'll admit that I'm making a weird comparison here, but read on. The UFT leadership must win points with the members which is one reason some members view the Janus decision as a good thing --- putting pressure on the union leaders to address the major concerns of the members.

In some ways they may be trying. Parental leave was a direct response to the Emily James' 80,000 sigs petition, which after Mike Schirtzer brought her to a UFT Ex Bd meeting, Mulgrew seemed to get on the stick. There is also the seeming move to two evaluations a year despite the union's constant defense of the 4 evals -- this may have been one of the major push-button unhappiness issues in the rank and file.

But, look at the comments on various blogs about the lack of service and response from the UFT/Unity leadership on many issues - note especially the issues with the massively flawed grievance process that the leadership has not attempted to redress - even having weakened it in the 2005 contract.

Now, there are some effective people who work for the union. I was wondering that when they have to cut staff, will these be the people retained or will those who suck up effectively survive? Or will the loyalty oath prevail?

A dew weeks ago we ran into an old UFT/Unity party member who held a position who castigated Mulgrew and the few leaders who hold sway on their refusing to listen to even other Unity people who want to see some change as necessary -- it is just not in their DNA.

There are some interesting lessons in this NY Times piece on how ISIS won some level of support from the populace - by taking care of fundamental disputes. Think of this on the level of issues that arise in schools and the UFT is looked to for some assistance. Now of course ISIS had a few arrows in their quiver to enforce their decisions. But I am focusing on the fact that they were aware that gaining support is not only about top down rule but in providing some service.

Justice was swift and efficient, mostly because no one wanted to risk punishment at the hands of the militants. Yet the fact that hundreds of civilians filed complaints, including against ISIS fighters who had wronged them, suggests that at least some Iraqis believed the terrorist group would do right by them.

Even residents who suffered abuses at the hands of the militants gave them points for their policing, saying that for nonreligious disputes, they were not only fair but also willing to wade into problems that might have been brushed off by most authorities.

Would the Iraqi government have pursued the case of a stolen chicken?

“They wouldn’t have even heard this complaint because it was only for 4,000,” or $3.50, said Mr. Imad’s younger brother, Alosh Imad. “You have to have wasta — a connection to someone,” for the police to take your case under consideration, he explained. “As far as justice was concerned,” he said, “ISIS was better than the government.”

Solution to abusive principals

OK, so we don't have the power to behead abusive principals. Can we get that in the next contract? 

Or will we one day see certain people in a shrinking UFT/Unity Caucus being led to the guillotine along with their pal superintendents and principal and the leaders of the abuse supporting CSA?

Lessons from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez win

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory is a shot across the bow of the Democratic machine. Here's how it happened.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-election-crowley-democratic-socialists

The left is a very wide place, from liberal/left to the many varieties of Marxist_Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, anarchists, social democrats (like Bernie). The DSA is a wide tent and its future is always going to be threatened by sectarianism.

This Jacobin piece makes many interesting points. I haven't joined or participated in Democratic Socialists of America events yet but given the Bernie politics I fundamentally support, I guess this is where I am at politically. DSA is attracting a wide-spread range of people who consider themselves socialists, or anti-capitalists. There is much debate on the left as to how much to align with the Democratic Party -- ie - can it be reformed or should it be used to build something else. I'm thinking things through with this victory over Crowley -- the wing of the Dem party our own beloved UFT hangs out with. Never forget that the UFT/Unity party was born out of an anti-left bias and has always tacked center of the road along with alliances with neocons.

So within the UFT itself, will we see a left surge? Knowing some of the left in the UFT, including some members of DSA, I don't see that happening, but if the energy that went into the Ocasio-Cortez victory were translated to the UFT, who knows?

Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Won

By

Michael Kinnucan

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory is a shot across the bow of the Democratic machine. Here's how it happened.