Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!
I maintain that Eva Moskowitz alone has cost the UFT more union jobs - and dues - than Janus ever will. For our union to support darlings of hedge fund charter supporters (Paul Tudor Jones, Hedge Funds, Charter Schools, and the IDC), is outrageous.
NYSUT/UFT supporting pro-charter and IDC traitor Alcantara (against pro-teacher stalwart Robert Jackson) is akin to giving Janus himself an award.
When I posted about the endorsements a follower in twitter -- a fairly young teacher, tweeted back:
Glad I pulled my cope money. They went with the moderate over the progressive in pretty much every race. They will never learn.
[The] UFT is the big dog in NYSUT, and I don't believe NYSUT does anything of
significance without our approval. That said, I'm struck senseless by
our opposition to education hero Robert Jackson. Jackson stood with us
through CFE. CFE was a lawsuit under which we won lower class sizes.
It's never been enforced, even though the city came up with a plan to do
so that was approved by the state. Jackson is running against Marisol Alcantara, who caucused with IDC.
What is more dangerous to teachers and ultimately anti-union and will cost more jobs - and more dues, the Janus decision or the the anti-union charter school expansion? If the UFT had mobilized the membership to stop charters we might be in a very different position. But they wanted to play in the ed deform game themselves.
Alcantara was instrumental in passing the law that will minimize the
effects of the Janus decision, which imposes a right to work regime on
all public sector employees, including teachers. As a union, stopping
freeloaders is critical if UFT and NYSUT will continue to thrive. This
was the highest priority of the union, and she delivered. That and she
voted in line with UFT and NYSUT's positions. If the charter school
people want to give her money, so what, if she always ends up voting
with the UFT and NYSUT. That is just them investing badly...
WTF, justifying their endorsement. The charter schools investing in Alcantara badly or the UFT investing its endorsement badly and sending a message to future supporters that they will knife them in the back like they are doing to Robert Jackson? (I just sent Jackson a donation.) More good stuff from Arthur's post:
Alcanatara....lists an Eva Moskowitz PAC
as one of her top donors. Another is NYSUT Vote-Cope. Why the hell are
we giving a dime to someone who supports a great enemy of New York
City's schoolchildren, parents and teachers? How on earth can we turn
against Robert Jackson for someone like that?
NYSUT made a great point of saying they opposed Senators who supported charter expansion. How does support from Moskowitz not
translate into supporting charter expansion? Eva Moskowitz eats charter
expansion for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we're supporting someone
who takes her money. It's not a coincidence, NYSUT endorsers, that
Alcantara called for a lifting of the charter cap. It's outrageous that
we're putting resources behind someone like that. How do you think that
will go over at the next COPE drive?
Arthur does a great job collecting for COPE in his school. COPE is not union dues and even those who hold their noses and stay in the union may not like the smell of endorsing an IDG pro-charter slug.
I posted the comment on a listserve and a retired UFT member commented:
The Writer... must think we are all idiots. Robert Jackson would’ve voted to do the same thing and minimize the impact of Janus. What Robert Jackson would not have done for the last four years is organize with the Republicans and stop all kinds of good legislation and school funding from going through. The UFT and NYSUT looks ridiculous opposing Robert Jackson.
The writer says if the charter school supporters, meaning the hedge fund community, want to give her money so what. Really? those are the people who support Eva Moscowitz and her horrible agenda. If the UFT keeps this up they will have trouble convincing members to voluntarily signed up to pay dues.
That Robert Jackson is the victim is incredible. There are few people who have done more for education than Robert.
Alcantara won last time when the seat was unoccupied, the opposition was split and people didn't know how bad she would be. There is a lot of activity and fund raising for Jackson. But the hedge funders are pouring money in. The real estate interests, biggest power player in NYS, also likes having a Republican senate.
If you know people in the 31, that runs from the west 30 along the river all the way to the top of the Bronx and maybe into Westchester, tell them about Robert Jackson.
Janus vs the people who voted to have di Blasio pay rent for charters or offer them space in public schools, which ends up undermining the school? Which is doing more to weaken the union?
In one of the [Bushwick's] storefront’s Gothic windows, someone has taped up a recent cover of the New York Times
Sunday Review section. “Millennial Socialists Are Coming,” reads the
headline, while beneath it a metal placard nailed to the building’s
facade cautions visitors striding through the parlor’s entryway to
“Watch Your Step.”... Peter Rugh, The Indypendent, The Next Big Socialist Win
The Independent has a story on Julia Salazar, 27 years old and a
democratic socialist, running for state assembly in Brooklyn against the candidate who is out of the old Vito Lopez empire - so she may have a tougher go than Ocasio-Cortez did -- her older male opponent is also Hispanic.
This district covers
the area where I spent most of my teaching career -- I'm thinking of
going up there to help out. I still sort of know the politics -- the
young candidate has a more uphill battle in that she is going up against
the machine but it is also run by Hispanics. But she has the growing DSA machine working for her:
Peter Rugh's story is a
must read for its insights into the left and the DSA methods.
The Next Big Socialist Win (in North Brooklyn)
Julia Salazar wants to put working-class demands front and center in Albany. But first, she has to defeat a wily old party boss.
First there was Ocasio-Cortez, now it's Julia Salazar running an
energetic campaign across North Brooklyn to become the first openly
socialist New York state legislator in decades.
FOX was crowing about the losses of long-shot candidates endorsed by the new socialist wing of the Democratic Party let by Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. But the game is in its earliest stages.
Every day I seem to read a reference in the NY Times to socialism or stories talking about capitalism.
Bernie Sanders certainly has raised the issue, but he was presented as an outlier and just an old lefty grouch. Then came the Ocasio-Cortez victory in the Dem Party primary that shook both conservatives and liberals - that a 28-year old would openly declare herself a socialist. Then came Cynthia Nixon and even de Blasio jumping on the bandwagon. Who's next, Cuomo?
After almost 8 decades of red scares and witch hunts, it's safe for socialists to go back in the water. But watch the intense attacks to come from both the right, center and even the left, especially from the left wing purists who disparage Bernie and Ocasio-Cortez for not being "authentic" socialists ---- in future posts we will get into the differences between the social democrats and the Marxist-Lenists and its various wings from the Trotskyists to other sects. For those of you who ask what does this have to do with the UFT? Well, a lot, but I'll keep you in suspense.
Peter Rugh, author of our lead story here (I did a long interview with him for an ed story he was doing and found him so knowledgeable), makes this point:
the fact that a high-profile candidate like Nixon would
embrace ideas that once elicited visions of Stalinism in American minds
indicates how far socialism has risen in the public’s estimation and how
much political clout DSA is garnering. But the organization’s growth
and electoral success have also posed new strategic challenges.
Peter goes on to talk about the isolation of socialists in this country and part of the reasons why -- these little competing sectarian grouplets which all think they are the only ones with the answers.
Banished from the mainstream political arena in the United
States, Marxism has survived — barely — through two main poles of
activity. One, in academia; the other, through small grouplets whose
members, never numbering more than a few hundred, tout a near-unified
political outlook and attract recruits in ones and twos through
social-movement activism.
By avoiding engaging in the mainstream political arena -- mostly by disparaging the Democratic Party -- which does deserve its share of disparagement - but then attacking those on the left who venture forth and at times feel they have to shave back their positions. That affects the purists on the left.
Socialism has thereby avoided sullying itself
with the form of political activity Americans engage in most: the
two-party electoral process. It has maintained its ideological purity
while managing to be awesomely irrelevant.
He could be talking about how MORE is organizing. Rugh does not neglect the dangers of working in the Dem party:
Not that fears of engaging with the Democratic Party
aren’t well founded. It has a way of vacuuming up social movements’
energy and subverting the outcomes activists are fighting for.
DSA is an attempting a new method of electoral engagement... In addition to his role as a co-leader of DSA’s local New York chapter,
Younus helps train DSA activists across the country in basic campaign
organizing. Canvassing is covered, obviously, but also communications,
social media, research, district analysis and resource allocation. “The
goal is to strip away the power of the consultant class,” he said.
“There’s this idea that there are keepers of secret information, but
really, that information should be democratized and shouldn’t cost
absurd sums of money. Candidates who truly represent the communities
they are coming from should have access to that, their campaigns should
have access to that and grassroots activists especially should have
access to that, so that they can be engaged at this level and not need
millions of dollars to do it.”
I will be publishing left wing attacks on people who work with the Democratic Party -- I've been called an opportunist for even bringing it up
Here are some of the stories I am collating for those of you who have missed them -- they are tied together by my own weird logic.
=====
Here's another DSA endorsed candidate who will probably be in the House with Ocasio-Cortez --- things are looking interesting
Detroit: Rashida Tlaib Just Won An Election That’ll Likely Make Her The First Muslim Woman In Congress
Tlaib raised more money than her Democratic competitors, and won the endorsement of the Detroit Free Press. She was also backed by a host of organizations on the left, including the Sanders-aligned Our Revolution and Greater Detroit Democratic Socialists of America, which identifies Tlaib as a member.
===
I posted this before (https://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2018/08/can-pro-coal-democrat-in-west-virginia.html) but wanted to include it in this list.
This is counter article on a center Dem who had been in the military and then went into teaching and was a leader of the teacher strikes and a hero to many other teachers. He also voted for Trump but now regrets it. This is the other side of the "let's everyone go left" even if the district is 97% white and conservative.
Jul 17, 2018 - He has built support in a deep red coal-country district by riding a wave ... are focused almost exclusively on flipping seats in suburban districts, ...
===== Then look at this review from last Friday's NY Times Arts: Review: In ‘Prairie Trilogy,’ All-American Stories of Socialism
What does it mean to be a socialist in America, and why do people get so angry, and angrily terrified, when some Americans espouse socialism as a fairer system than the one in place? These questions have been coming up more frequently in recent years, prompted by the rhetoric and policy propositions of the recent presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders and the ascendance of younger politicians, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congressional candidate from New York who is unabashedly aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America.
You may find an engaging answer to at least the first of the above questions in “Prairie Trilogy,” a collection of three short documentaries made between 1977 and 1980 and directed by the regional filmmakers John Hanson and Rob Nilsson. Now playing in New York in restored form, the movies are companion pieces to Mr. Hanson and Mr. Nilsson’s 1978 feature “Northern Lights,” a fictionalized tale of the real North Dakota labor union called the Nonpartisan League, which formed about a half a decade before America’s involvement in World War I.
Hard to understand NYSUT endorsement of IDC Alcantara not only b/c of Robert Jackson’s stellar education record but
also b/c Alcantara is one of the biggest recipients of donations from
the charter lobby incl the billionaires boys club Waltons, Daniel Loeb,
etc. etc. ..... Paul Tudor Jones, Hedge Funds, Charter Schools, an..
When
Cuomo "brokered" the "return" of the IDC to the Dems he began twisting
the arms of the unions and others to support them against challengers....
There has been no one more loyal to teachers, parents and students than Robert Jackson and many of us appreciate it (I just sent him a 100 bucks). But not the UFT or their clones in NYSUT.
I published a few pieces including a letter from the dissident Ex Bd members urging them to not endorse any IDC backstabbers.
Mr. Ojeda’s apparent surge has prompted comparisons to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
the populist Democrat from the Bronx who knocked off a senior member of
the House leadership in a primary. But Mr. Ojeda is not a leftist
candidate: he does not want to abolish ICE or provide Medicare for all.
He is pro-coal, while denouncing how coal companies stripped the state’s
resources and left none of the wealth behind. He supports a public
option to buy into Medicare and a pathway to citizenship for some
undocumented immigrants, but he opposes universal background checks for
gun buyers. And like 73 percent of voters in his district, he voted for Donald J. Trump in 2016. It is a choice he now regrets.... NYT, July 17, 2018
I've been trying to post pieces on both sides of the Democratic Party divide. Go Left or Go center and even right - blue dog. The left says this is Hillary territory and a loser. In West Virginia districts like this the idea of going left may be a sure loser. But when you are bringing back unions you are framing a left argument in terms people can understand - where left and right working class can unite. I was immediately caught by the opening:
The woman in the Grateful Dead T-shirt approached the man in combat boots with the military haircut.
“Are you … ?” she asked hesitantly.
“Ojeda,” he confirmed.
“Thank you!” the woman gushed. “I’m a teacher.”
Richard
Ojeda, who became the political face of a statewide teachers’ strike in
West Virginia, posed for a selfie with the woman, Jennifer Renne, who
teaches middle-school math.
An
outspoken populist, Mr. Ojeda is running for Congress on a wave of
labor activism thanks to voters like Ms. Renne, and he is doing
surprisingly well as a Democrat in a district that President Trump won
by nearly 50 points. Some Democrats see in him a model for how they can
win in Middle American places where their party used to prevail, but has
been decimated in the Trump era.
Ojeda would be anathema to many on the left, but the left has been overjoyed at the West Virginia teacher movement, so I see him as part of a unifying factor between left and center and even right -- he and many of the red state teachers did vote for Trump. If we see a resurgence of the Dem Party in areas where they were turned to waste, even if it is not left, is that a bad thing? Some on the left think it is but I will get to that another time.
Imagine Ojeda and Ocasio-Cortez in Congress together. I bet that would work.
Can a Pro-Coal Democrat in West Virginia Carve a Path for His Party?
Image
Richard
Ojeda, a Democrat running for Congress, campaigned in Logan, W.Va., in
early July. He has built support in a deep red coal-country district by
riding a wave of labor activism sparked by a successful statewide
teachers’ strike.CreditAndrew Spear for The New York Times
Ron Dellums, the son of a longshoreman who became one of America’s
best-known black congressmen, a California Democrat with a left-wing
agenda that put civil rights and programs for people ahead of weapons
systems and warfare, died early Monday at his home in Washington. -- NY Times, July 30, 2018
I didn't know all that much about Ron Dellums until I read the NY Times Obit and was impressed in every way with him as a politician.
Michael Fiorillo also tapped into the Dellums story with this link:
Robert Scheer, a great radical journalist, reflects on the the legacy of the great Ron Dellums (whose uncle was a legendary West Coast leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters), who died on Monday.
Usually I post a bunch of excerpts but I want to get outside and breathe some non-air conditioned air and smoke some pipe bowls. So maybe some additions later. We need more Dellums.
It’s remarkably difficult to do left-wing politics in cities. The
economic growth we’ve seen over the previous several decades has largely
been concentrated in them.... When the left goes after the Clintonites in blue cities, it is going
after them in the places where they are strongest. The story is
different in the red states. In the 2016 primaries, Bernie Sanders won
22 states. The bulk of these are very white, very red, and have small
urban populations. In many of them, the Democrats have a negligible
presence in statehouses:.. By contrast, if you go into a primary in a state where the Democratic
Party has a negligible presence and where the demographics already
favour Sanders-style campaigns, the chance of successful entry is much
higher. Clintonite Democratic opponents in these primaries are likely to
be less professional. They will be less politically skilled, less
well-connected, and possess inferior resources. These are the places
where the left can easily begin to displace Clintonites from the
Democratic Party ballot line. --- Benjamin Studebaker
Another interesting find from Michael Fiorillo who says:
If you think about it, his thesis may correlate/ be supported by the red state teacher strikes...
Studebaker offers some ideas -- that there are possibilities in red states with a progressive program ---I'm not so sure but why not? He says with the Dem Party so weak in these states they are ripe for a takeover by the left. I wonder whether the Democratic Socialists (DSA) are active in these states. I did hear of some action in the teacher movement.
A wing of the left absolutely rejects moves to work within the Dem party or reform it, holding out the everlasting wish for a labor party. by posting Studebaker articles it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with them but am offering them up for further review. My basic tenet at this point is that looking at the landscape it is hard to go along with the claim that there is little difference between the parties unless you come from the position that both of them support capitalism. Maybe long-term capitalism is coming down but right now I'm interested in the short term, ie. Can NYCHA be fixed and how? We can't wait for the end of capitalism - an active base in the Democratic Party might be able to force changes. I don't see any other option that make an attempt to reform the party.
And with a recent activation of a left wing in the Dem Party and groups like DSA supporting some candidates (as opposed to the Greens which runs its own candidates -- and has failed to build enough of a base - compare them to the organizational work being done by DSA.)
There is a part of the left which believes the Democratic Party is
beyond hope. They think it’s too corrupt, too beholden to rich people
and corporations, and that it’s a waste of time and energy to try to
change it. Even in articles which express support for running
progressive and democratic socialist candidates on the Democratic Party
ballot line, concessions are routinely made to this faction. Jacobin recently ran an interview
with Seth Ackerman, in which Ackerman advises the left to run
candidates as Democrats, provided those candidates are beholden to
outside activist groups. But even this piece is far too pessimistic
about the prospects for penetrating the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party can be captured and transformed through the
primary system, and it’s time more people explicitly and
unapologetically say so. The left has underutilised the 2018 election
cycle because too many people don’t yet understand this. We could have
Sanders-style primary challengers in many more races in 2020 if, you
know, folks would actually try. We don’t need to reform the electoral
system, we don’t need an American Labour Party, we don’t even need
campaign finance reform (though of course it would be nice)–we just need
people to run for stuff and support those who do.....
Progressives and democratic socialists have embraced pessimism about capturing the Democratic Party as a shibboleth–you aren’t really
left-wing unless you don’t believe in it. Many of them refuse to even
try to do it. This is why it’s taken two years since Bernie Sanders’ run
for president (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in New York) for
many people on the left to even begin debating the point.
I'm not sure how apt this analogy is and I'm not sure I agree with him and will be exploring this issue in the upcoming series of posts but Studebaker, has some interesting blogs focusing on reforming the Dem Party sent out by Michael Fiorillo and I will be posting some other pieces from him. Here is another interesting piece arguing against proportional rep - which I have been in favor of: The American Two Party System is Actually Pretty Great -
I want to debate strategies for reforming the Party not necessarily into a social democratic party but at the very least take us back to the New Deal.
Then there is this from a wing of socialism - there are many wings.
How on Earth do you have so many Democrat/Green opportunists on your contacts --- A response to my raising questions on a FB thread of a certain brand of socialist (there are too many brands to count.)
Yes Virginia, if you are not in on this particular little socialist bubble you are an opportunist. I've seen a hell of a lot of socialists be as opportunistic as could be. And then there are the purists who toe the same line their entire lives. I asked these people if as I social democrat like Bernie I was in the club and received no response. I guess not.
I consider myself a leftist but am so annoyed at so much of the left - I made the mistake of commenting on that thread and most of what I said was ignored while I received lectures. If you don't agree you are shunned. A lot of the left lives in a bubble which prevents them from being able to really be able to talk to the majority of people they supposedly would be working to bring the ideas of socialism to light (I think I come from a place that these people should be working to win over). If I challenge socialists who are teachers about the failure of the left to really organize in NYC schools, I get excuses. Most of them don't seem to have any real relationships outside their political world. I should invite them to Thanksgiving or Passover.
Since I consider myself on the cusp of being some form of socialist, but also since the 2016 election, I feel we have to take a shot at turning the Democratic Party into something viable enough to take us to at the very least an FDR/New Deal type of reform. Not far enough and we need to keep fighting for more but finding a path to that is murky. Bubble socialists don't have any murk. They have the answers and they do not include the Democratic or Green Party. I'll get into where these factions of socialist are coming from as I sort more of it out in future articles.
So, I've been engaged in inner political conflict over the direction of the Democratic Party - hope for reform or hope for extinction. I was leaning toward the latter. At least until the 2016 election. I often vote for left-leaning 3rd parties in presidential elections -- locally we don't have much choice for a 3rd party. I was very disappointed in Democratic presidents like Carter, Clinton and Obama - all fundamentally anti-unions and worker. But Republicans have been a horror story.
So where do we go? There are always calls for a 3rd party. The Greens? They have had a very hard time building infrastructure and basically and up siphoning votes from Democrats, though they claim they get them from both parties. Will Democratic Socialists (DSA) turn into a wished for 3rd party on the left instead of the Greens?
We particularly would like to urge NYSUT to endorse: Jessica Biaggi, Robert Jackson, John Liu, Zellnor Myrie, Jessica Ramos, and Jasmine Robinson in their respective New York State Senate primary races. Especially since the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there has been heightened interest and a groundswell of support for progressive challengers to the status quo. Each of these candidates is running on a progressive platform..... Excerpt from Letter to UFT
The 7 opposition voices on the UFT Ex Bd have spoken out with a letter to the UFT leadership as described by Arthur Goldstein, an Ex Bd member, at NYC Educator blog where he has an apt description of what the IDC is. (UFT High School Reps Letter to Leadership on Opposing IDC
You've probably heard of the IDC, or the Independent Democratic Conference in the NY State Senate. They were elected as Democrats but caucused with the Republicans. There are a whole lot of bills that have been passed by the Assembly but withered and died in the Senate, not the least of which was one proposing universal health care for New Yorkers. We support candidates who oppose those who allowed this to happen.
The letter specifically talks about Robert Jackson:
We
would like to highlight the career and contributions of Robert Jackson
in particular. Jackson is an activist who has dedicated his career as a
public servant to public education and children. In 1991, as CSB6
President, Robert Jackson co-founded the Campaign for Fiscal Equity
(CFE). Jackson was lead plaintiff as CFE sued the State of New York for
failing to properly fund NYC's public schools. The trial court agreed.
Jackson walked 150 miles from New York City to Albany to dramatize the
case. Jackson served in the NY City Council for a decade, where he
earned our respect as Chair of the Education Committee. Jackson was
honored with the UFT’s John Dewey Award in 2012.
For the UFT not to endorse Robert Jackson would be a crime in not showing loyalty to people who have delivered in the past. I usually don't give money to politicians but Jackson is one I do. Donate here.
Would anyone be shocked to see the UFT endorse an IDC candidate even if they take charter school blood money that is destroying public education and teacher unions? Not me.
Are IDC candidates and charters proud to be associated with guys like Paul Tudor Jones who supports sexual predator Harvey Weinstein? Student First Jennie Sedlis, say something.
Leonie Haimson reports:
Paul Tudor Jones, billionaire hedge funder and so far the the sole donor to ParentsVote PAC, (which is contributing to Alcantara and Jesse Hamilton campaigns and administered by Students First NY, started by Michelle Rhee and now headed by Jenny Sedlis, who calls herself co-founder of Success Academy charter schools ) also heads the pro-charter and extremely well-funded Robin Hood Foundation.
Jones was also on Harvey Weinstein’s board, , and supported Weinstein staying in power nearly to the bitter end, discouraging the board from firing him even after the NYT article came out.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Taeka Haraguchi<info@actionnetwork.org>
Date: Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 12:32 PM
Subject: Hedge Funds, Charter Schools, and the IDC
Politico's Bill Mahoney reveals that "The first super PAC spending in this fall's elections comes in the form of charter school supporters backing the IDC."
AFT’s membership numbers require a lot more scrutiny and interpretation than do those of the National Education Association. NEA has affiliates in all 50 states. Its smallest state affiliate, in Mississippi, has almost 4,800 working members. It does have some members in the private sector and in other professions, but even its non-teachers mostly work in the field of public education. AFT has affiliates in only 34 states. Only 21 have memberships larger than that of NEA’s Mississippi affiliate. Counting the AFT’s branch in the District of Columbia, a total of 22 affiliates are home to the overwhelming bulk of AFT members. Fifteen of those are in former agency fee states, making AFT a lot more vulnerable to the effects of Janus. AFT has maintained membership growth because it has no presence in most of the states where NEA has lost members over the past 10 years. In fact, more than one-third of AFT’s membership works in one state, New York. One of every six AFT members works in New York City. Six percent of AFT members are state and municipal government employees in fields unrelated to education. Seven percent are nurses and health professionals. Fifteen percent work in higher education. That leaves 72 percent who work in K-12 public education. Since, on average, there is one education support employee for every teacher in the U.S. public school system, it is very likely that K-12 public school teachers are a minority in AFT. By contrast, about 70 percent of NEA members are certified K-12 public school teachers.
Despite being published at the horrid ed deform faux journalist site, The 74, this is an important read as Mike A. delves into the differences in the nature of the membership in the NEA and the AFT and why the AFT is so much more vulnerable due to its lack of presence in so many states. Mike raises the idea of whether a full merger with the NEA makes sense.
The differences in culture are so deep I find that hard to believe.
The NEA has term limits for officers though there is a top down structure there too but no one state or city dominates like Unity Caucus does in the AFT. The AFT has had 4 presidents since 1974, three of them former UFT presidents. How can this Unity power structure work within the NEA? No way I say despite the logic of a merger.
Submitted for print publication August 3, 2018 at www.rockawave.com
School Scope: When Political Labels Don’t Quite Fit By Norm Scott
I’ve been called a leftist, a socialist, a pro-capitalist, a commie, a liberal, libertarian, a progressive, a Democrat and a general nuisance. About the only label I have not worn is that of a Republican or a right winger. Right now the overall term being used for the left is “progressive” as opposed to more centrist people. But there are so many nuances to these terms which I don’t have room for this week. That de Blasio, not exactly one of my faves, and I would be viewed as fellow “progressives” makes me squeamish.
It is funny, but I often find it easier to talk to people on the right than some of my fellow progressives. Like I don’t think I could have a conversation with the mayor or even Obama that would make me comfortable. But really, what do people mean when they use the term “left” when the NY Times gets that label from the right while being mocked as centrist and a tool of capitalists by many on the left? Confusion reigns.
This column recently has been addressing the various divides in the Democratic Party between so-called progressives and centrists while also using this space to try to sort out the many facets of the “left.”
On the surface, people view liberals as being the left when in fact the anti-capitalist left is as critical of liberals as is the right.
Since socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary for his congressional seat the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have been getting a lot of notice. Her victory has gotten enormous nation-wide attention as the shock of someone declaring themselves a socialist and winning is reverberating around the political world. In the 1930s and 40s there were actually people getting elected who were socialists. Then came the Red Scare of the late 40s and 50s and even changes in election rules to more firmly entrench the two-party system which has left so many of us having to hold our noses when we have such limited options. Fundamental political reform is needed.
Take the election for governor. I despise Cuomo who is leading by 30 points over Cynthia Nixon. Do I love her? No, though she is one of the few people running for anything who has been a firm supporter of real education reform, while so many others run for the hills when faced with exposing the scams of education reform. Nixon was one of the few to support Ocasio-Cortez and since she won has also declared herself a member of DSA. DSA/NYC has endorsed her and her running mate for Lt. Governor, Jumaane Williams, city councilman representing East Flatbush, Flatbush, Flatlands, Marine Park and Midwood. Recently he was caught up in a campaign donation snafu where Glenwood Masonry gave him donations exceeding the legal limit. Duhhhh! I’m shocked. I don’t hold that against him since I pretty much expect all politicians to engage in fuzzy fund-raising. From what I’ve seen he lands on the side I favor most of the time. And my friends in his district like him.
Neither of them will beat Cuomo and Nixon’s recent praise for Bloomberg, who ran public housing into the ground and helped set up the homeless crisis while undermining public education, is disconcerting, I’m voting for Nixon/Williams because the higher vote totals they get the better the chance to keep the god-awful Cuomo tacking left, even if it’s phony.
Unknown Zephyr Teachout’s 37% the last time Cuomo ran was a shock, so even if you know you can’t win, so getting a decent opposition vote can be worthwhile. Norm has so much to say about politics and education (and other stuff) he is going to ask editor Mark Healey for an entire edition of The WAVE to spew his venom. While Mark is mulling this over Norm can be found spewing at https://ednotesonline.blogspot.com.
Party members and fundraisers gathered for an invitation-only event to figure out how to counteract the rising progressive movement..... Where progressives see a rare opportunity to capitalize on an energized Democratic base, moderates see a better chance to win over Republicans turned off by Trump.The fact that a billionaire real estate developer, Winston Fisher, co-cohosted the event and addressed attendees twice underscored that this group is not interested in the class warfare vilifying the "millionaires and billionaires" found in Sanders' stump speech.... NBC, Alex Seitz-Wald /
I have been a mega-trasher of the Democratic Party over the years -- the New Democrats - let by the Clintons - departure from New Deal politics and its partnership with corporate elite. That gave us George Bush and new Dem and neo-liberal Obama, followed by Trump. I don't want to go back to New Dem politics but also don't want to get so far out there we keep Republicans in power forever. The hot buzz about socialism is certainly a new kid on the block.
And that scares the hell out of New Dems -- note how they are branded by the press as "moderates" in this piece from NBC, part of the corporate media elite.
Make no mistake about this -- our own UFT/AFT/NYSUT wing will line up with this group over the Bernie wing --- our union was founded on the basis of anti-left ideology. Discount Randi's rhetoric. Which, given that most Dems from all wings of the party support ed deform, shows the hollowness of our union policy over the decades going back to Shanker.
Diane Ravitch just posted this as an indication of what I mean -- and she goes where Randi et al fear to tread:
Somehow I missed this article when it was published in January 2017. It is well worth reading because it explains how the mainstream of the Democratic Party paved the way for the radical rightwing DeVos agenda.
Unless the Democrats regain their pro-public education values, they will cede a significant part of their base. They cheered striking teachers in the spring of 2018, but they long ago abandoned them and their schools.
It is time for Democrats to once again be the party that fights for the common good, the party that supports public schools, not school choice, which is a mighty hoax....
While a certain segment of the left eschews the Dems and argues for a third party, that concept is not just feasible, at least at this point. I'll get into the Green party 2% solution to running for governor while attacking Cynthia Nixon and Jumanee Williams in follow-ups. No Virginia, the only solution is to throw down on the Dems at the local level and challenge them. I'm even thinking of going to local Dem club meetings.
As an often third party supporter, I had pretty much given up on reforming the Democratic Party. But the third parties like the Green, which I had voted for in the past, just seem so pathetic in their ability to make any headway. And no matter her faults, their attempts to undermine Nixon and her running mate Jumanea Williams who an take the best shot at Cuomo are, well, not going to help them with a lot of people.
So this Dem Party meeting is organized by billionaires -- imagine how nervous they are over rise of the near-dead left and brought to life by Bernie.
Look what they have to offer as their own "big ideas" which caused me to laugh out loud.
"Opportunity Agenda" unveiled here tries to equip moderates with their own big ideas. Some of the key initiatives are a massive apprenticeship program to train workers, a privatized employer-funded universal pension that would supplement Social Security and an overhaul of unemployment insurance to include skills training. Other proposals included a "small business bill of rights" and the creation of a "BoomerCorps" — like the volunteer AmericaCorps for seniors.
And they trash the New Deal which may have save capitalism:
...they say the progressive agenda is out of date. They dismiss, for instance, a federal jobs guarantee as a rehash of the New Deal. "Our ideas must be bold, but they must also fit the age we are in," Cowan said. "Big isn't enough. If it's bold and old — it’s simply old."
OK folks, this piece may be even more confusing than usual, as I try to sort out where my own confusion between left, right and center lies --- yes Virginia, I do have some libertarian - leftarian positions. I try to see as many sides of an issue as I can -- which is why I am flipping around.
The guy who taught next to me for 20 years
turned highly religious and right wing in the 1980s -- a real working class guy who
grew up in Little Italy - an Italian Catholic who came to school with ashes on his forehead at Lent. When I met him in the early 70s there was no more union oriented guy who taught me a lot about union consciousness. Then he turned evangelical.
I saw first hand how religion can operate as he first stopped doing COPE and then resented paying a union that supported abortion and so many other issues. He tried repeatedly to get out of the union and stop paying dues. He articulated the very type of views we hear from the Janus crowd. I don't abandon people like him by calling him a scab or free-loader. I try to understand.
We know there are union people who want the unions to stay out of politics but how does a union do that when the right is on the attack on every institution we value, including health care? Does the union keep hands off? On the other hand we see our union supporting even anti-union candidates, so they take attacks from all sides.
Last week I was with former colleagues -- very pro-union former chapter leaders who castigated people for not paying dues. Yet, they are center and even right leaning. I think one may have voted for Trump. One of them said that she was not left-wing but pro-union and if the union was a left wing union even she might not want to pay dues to support politics she does not agree with. That made me think more deeply than usual -- my scalp is hurting -- as I try to take a variety of views into account.
Here is the problem. Our top-down union leadership is exclusive of
member opinions when making policy. I know it sounds somewhat trite but a vibrant democratic union would be inclusive, even to the views of people on the right -- by having open debates on many issues, even if you don't agree, you might be able to find middle grounds. Some reports are that 30% of UFT members didn't vote for Hillary. Here's what I know -- Randi is choosing the next candidate we will support for President and then will manufacture some phony process. So look for the same kind of results.
In this spirit, check out these 2 articles from the left and the right.
Republicans had successfully inverted their historical brand-image as the party of the highborn, remaking themselves as plain-talking pals of the forgotten people who had so spurned them during the Great Depression. Republicanism’s payload, however, was the same as it had been in 1932. And just look at what conservatism proceeded to do to those average people once they welcomed it into their lives.
Instead of doing what the moment required, Democrats chose to help the banks get back on their feet and to stand by as inequality soared; they scolded their base for wanting too much and they extended their hand instead to Silicon Valley and big pharma. The task of capturing public anger was one they regarded with distaste; they left that to Tea Party demagogues and to Donald Trump.
From Michael Fiorillo:
The photo [in the article] shows a Trump demo in West Allis (as in Allis-Chalmers, a legacy industrial giant at one time) Wisconsin, which back in the day was home to some of the most most militant, Left-led unions in the country and was a reliable Democratic base until the 80's... As Frank says, if Wisconsin is a battleground state, we're in deep shit... Trump will be gone, sooner or later, but not Trumpismo... If the Democratic Party can't be revived, a more competent, less legally-challenged Trump will come along, and then we'd better really look out !
Some have suggested that unions might temper their left-wing politics in response to the decision, in the hopes of wooing potential members put off by union politics.... Frederick Hess, National Review. --- view from the right.
Frank writes from the left, indicating that the Dem Party needs to abandon its ties to the corporate interests, which is where the center of the party hangs out. Some of the links I've posted on ed notes with cries from the center to marginalize Ocasio-Cortez are indications. I think the use of the term "liberals" is problematic since liberals are also often free marketeers and verge on neo-liberals. It was the liberals who attacked and bashed teachers and their unions.
I imagine a certain class of the left may condemn Frank since there is an assumption he means the white working class - which I don't assume, as the working class is multi-cultural.
It is also worth reading the view from the right - the National Review-
Teachers’ Unions Plan to Become ‘More Political, Not Less Political’
This article led to some laughs on FB about Randi. Let's see what that means in practice. "The NEA adopted 122 total New Business Items, including commitments to promote the Black Lives Matter Week of Action."
How interesting when the UFT refused to endorse the BLM week of action back in January.
Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, warns that surveys show “many [teachers] see dues as too high” and “political activity as too leftist”; she also notes that “only half of all teachers voted for Hillary Clinton.” Internal documents from the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, anticipate that the union will lose a whopping 300,000 members. Things look even bleaker for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s other major teachers’ union, which has 15 of its 22 largest state affiliates in former agency-fee states — and already had fewer than half its members paying full dues.
Well, Kate Walsh from an ed deform group is not credible but the danger to the AFT is real, even more-so than the NEA. (I have a piece coming up based on Mike Antounucci reporting on this very issue.) While Thomas Frank says the Dem party need to tack left, naturally right wingers Hess and Addison feel left politics for the AFT is a minefield.
Somehow, the AFT’s new policies leaned further left than the NEA’s. The AFT unanimously endorsed a “public investment strategy for health care and education infrastructure,” which includes: universal health care, “whether single-payer health care or MediCare for All”; free tuition at all public colleges and universities, as well as “funding for wage justice for adjuncts”; universal, full-day, free child care; doubled per-pupil spending for low-income K–12 districts; and “taxation of the rich to fully fund” a raft of education programs. AFT further resolved that they would “call on our endorsed candidates to support these priorities, and toward that end we will embed these aspirations in our questionnaires to potential candidates seeking our support.” Swing-state Democrats, beware.
For those who didn’t get quite get the message, AFT president Randi Weingarten told reporters, “We’re becoming more political, not less political.” Let educators, would-be members, and public officials be forewarned.
=======
We had the perfect opportunity to reverse course in 2008, after a deregulatory catastrophe sent the billionaires shrieking for handouts and ruined middle America as collateral damage. That was the perfect moment for liberals to reclaim their Rooseveltian heritage by governing forcefully on behalf of ordinary people, by warring against over-powerful corporations, by demonstrating the power of the state to build a just and humane society. But they didn’t do it.
I know the excuses: those Republicans were so clever, they wouldn’t vote for Obama’s proposals, etc. But from the long-term perspective, what really mattered was the absence of Democratic will. Instead of doing what the moment required, Democrats chose to help the banks get back on their feet and to stand by as inequality soared; they scolded their base for wanting too much and they extended their hand instead to Silicon Valley and big pharma. The task of capturing public anger was one they regarded with distaste; they left that to Tea Party demagogues and to Donald Trump.
We are going to pay for that failure for a long time. The GOP should have been ruined by the financial crisis; instead the culture wars are raging all over again, with dog whistles and fights over the flag and the persecution mania of the populist right blaring from the TV screen. We’re right back where we started. The crisis went completely to waste.
For all their cunning, Republicans are a known quantity. Their motives are simple: they will do anything, say anything, profess faith in anything to get tax cuts, deregulation and a little help keeping workers in line. Nothing else is sacred to them. Rules, norms, traditions, deficits, the Bible, the constitution, whatever. They don’t care, and in this they have proven utterly predictable.
The Democrats, however, remain a mystery. We watch them hesitate at crucial moments, betray the movements that support them, and even try to suppress the leaders and ideas that generate any kind of populist electricity. Not only do they seem uninterested in doing their duty toward the middle class, but sometimes we suspect they don’t even want to win.
(This is more than just a suspicion, by the way. As none other than Tony Blair has said, “I wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.”)
Still, as we are reminded at every turn, this flawed organization is the only weapon we have against the party of Trump. And as the president’s blunders take a turn for the monumental and public alarm grows, the imperative of delivering a Democratic wave this fall grows ever more urgent.
Make no mistake: it has got to happen. Democrats simply have to take one of the houses of Congress this fall and commence holding Trump accountable. Failure at this baseline mission is unthinkable; it will mean the Democratic party has no reason for being, even on its own compromised terms.
What concerns me as I begin my leave, though, is the larger picture. Trump may be an oaf, but the vicious strain of rightwing populism he introduced is not going away. Trumpism is the future for the Republican party – it delivered Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Iowa too. Wisconsin, of all places, is now a battleground state. In the hands of a real politician, Trumpism has the potential to romp even farther.
Beating the right cannot simply be a matter of waiting for a dolt in the Oval Office to screw things up. There has to be a plan for actively challenging and reversing it, for turning around the fraction of working class voters who have been abandoning the Democratic party for decades. The time is up for happy fantasies of office-park centrism and professional-class competence.
As for me, I am off to write a few books. I’ll be back in this space in a few years and we will see how things have gone.
Thomas Frank is an American political analyst and historian. His books include What’s the Matter With Kansas?. His latest is Listen, Liberal: or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
FOX News screenshot from July 2nd, 2018, "The consequences of millennials embracing socialism" ( FOX News/screenshot) ---- NPR On The Media
With socialism such a buzz word with even mainstream media addressing it I've been using my WAVE column to try to sort things out for the poor right wingers who might come across my column --- 75% of my neighborhood voted for Trump.
As I write this I'm waiting for a national news segment on NPR's Weekend Edition on Ocasio-Cortez. I know she's striking while the iron is hot but I also think there may be a bit of a blow back when the actual vote comes in November. She needs to be seen in her district as much as around the nation because there will be some resentment and Crowley is still on the ballot on the WFP and even a modestly good showing would burst her bubble a bit.
Check this early morning On The Media segment on NPR we hear a rational discussion of socialism and some of the right - and even Democratic center hysteria over the Ocasio-Cortez win. Like Venezuela is not exactly what socialists consider democratic socialism. I love the part where the public libraries are talked about as being a threat because they show a form of socialism and government competency -- see, things can work -- I never hear complaints about the libraries.
Here's the intro:
The right-wing media has long painted left-wing socialism as an encroaching — and existential — threat. The Democrats, they argued, were secret socialists, looking to take over the country in the name of a Soviet agenda. But what happens when Democrats start calling themselves socialists — and socialist policies turn out topoll quite well with voters?
In the wake of self-described democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's stunning primary victory in New York last month, the word "socialism" has been trending, appearing onop-ed pages,FOX News, ABC's The Viewand beyond. In this word watch, Bob speaks with another self-described socialist, Current Affairseditor-in-chiefNathan Robinson, about how an idea once relegated to the kind of far-left newspapers given out at campus conferences has become fodder for daytime talk shows and why it might prove hard to shake.
This segment is from our July 27th, 2018 episode,The Center Folds.
Listen here:
I've been blogging about the socialist wave and how it is being dealt with in the media:
The WAVE is published weekly in Rockaway. The few people who read the column are probably involved in education so I generally write with those people in mind. But I was reminded in my writing group by a new member, a non-educator but one who has some familiarity with some top level people in the UFT through personal relationships, that I should not make assumptions as to what people know and also assume that in a general publication some non-educators might be readers. I've been trying to write for a broader audience. I should also point out that the current socialism buzz is also a threat to the UFT ideologues who founded the UFT on an anti-left agenda. The UFT/NYSUT/AFT will always land with center democrats no matter the rhetoric you hear out of Randi -- watch what they do not what they say.
Here is this week's column. I'm trying to figure this stuff out myself.
Published July 27, 2018 in The WAVE -- www.rockawave.com
School Scope: The Democratic Party in Crisis: Left or Center or Gone
By Norm Scott
“Democrats, please, please don’t lose your minds and rush to the socialist left. This president and his Republican Party are counting on you to do exactly that. America’s great middle wants sensible, balanced, ethical leadership,” tweeted one James Comey, who did as much to give us insensible, unbalanced and unethical leadership as anyone.
“What people call socialism these days is Eisenhower Republicanism!”... Frances Fox Priven, in The New Yorker.
Oh to dive into the depths of these statements but I have a word limit.
Last week I wrote about the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated Queens power broker Joe Crowley, and how she is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) which has grown four-fold since the election of Donald Trump. By the amount of commentary about Alexandria who won an election that may prove to be an anomaly, she has caused people to go nuts on the right (which has gone nuts attacking her), the center – so much angst over having the first member of the House who ids as a socialist since the late 1940s – and on a fawning left. Last weekend she appeared with Bernie Sanders in red state Kansas and they attracted 4,000 people. Scary stuff even to many Democrats. As someone on the fringe of being some form of social democrat myself, but also concerned that going too far out can turn into a disaster, the debate has been fascinating. Her election has exacerbated the schism between the progressives (the Bernie) wing and the centrists (the Clinton wing) which will only grow as the race to run against Trump in 2020 heats up.
There is a lot of fuzziness between these wings and various versions of what is socialism, so I thought I’d try to clarify some of it over the next few columns as a way to get my own fuzziness cleared up a bit.
The “socialist” label is tossed around willy-nilly and those who identify themselves as socialists fume when people like Obama are branded as socialist. Anyone who views the need for government to be active is considered socialist, like Eisenhower and Nixon, I guess. Centrist Democrats like Obama, Hillary, Biden, etc. are viewed by people on the true left as neo-liberals, as far from socialist as you can get. Neo-liberals are free marketers and include both Dems and Republicans. Education is a prime example of where the neo-liberal positions of both parties align – open things up to competition like having charters and let the market decide even as we’ve seen the market manipulated. That is why both parties - until Trump – supported the free trade agreements which have devastated workers, opposed mostly by the left and some unions when they came up – again, until Trump. That is why neo-libs of both parties have been upset, though Republican neo-libs have bitten the bullet and shut up over tariffs. (Both parties generally aligned in the views on Russia – again until Trump, but more on this another time – hint: I don’t totally diverge from Trump on NATO and Russia.)
The Democrats are viewed as being pro-union since so much of their support comes from unions. In reality, the Dems have been screwing the unions as they have shifted into identify politics and downplayed class struggle (Yes, Virginia, the old 1% is screwing us all). As union influence dissipated, so did the protections workers had and it opened the way for Trumpists to gain ground – one of the main turning points in the 2016 elections – and the Dems did it to themselves. The have allowed the FDR/New Deal coalition of the working class (both white and black) and liberals to fracture.
My own UFT is knee deep in the Dem Party and the recent Janus decision allowing people to not pay union dues is a response from the right wing to chop up unions’ ability to support the Dems. Unions have generally been anti-left wing and have kept the party to the center. So their weakening might actually open up the Dems to a shift to the socialist- leaning left which is more open to supporting workers – hey, it’s socialism.
It it is always great seeing John Lawhead at ICEUFT meetings as we did yesterday. John, Sean Ahern and I sort of founded the idea of ICE in a bar back in September 2003. Michael Fiorillo who spurred the idea of organizing a meeting when I ran into him at a UFT rally in October 2003 was also there yesterday. So one of the really fun things about getting together is the chance to delve deeply into issues - which we did yesterday - and I hope to report later.)
At the end of the meeting John announced he was organizing a study group. Study groups are important for us to get an understanding of the big picture from a long range perspective. We feel you can't make rational choices without having a deeper understanding - something missing from the current institutions - both in power and in opposition in the UFT. But more on that later. Here is John's announcement. I am hoping to go. John Dewey is a good starting place. His role in union politics in the 1930s is also worth delving into.
Dear Colleagues,
Please forward this announcement to anyone you think might be interested.
