Sectarianism is circling the drain. Schemes to turn the left into a larger version of a tiny little group of smart alecks are dropping dead. Please stop trying to make it work. And now a moment to reflect on the death of the purest and most successful sectarian of our time, James Robertson, founder of the Spartacist League.
...their [Sparts] arrogance and delight in pissing on their opponents - the old 'political monopoly' fetish that characterized Trotskyism that they made their key ideological feature - was [James Robertson's] gift to the left.
The Sparts consistently have the highest amusement value of any of the sects...
Aren't the Sparts set up and paid just to stir the pot among lefties?
Also, pour one out for the recently departed ISO.
--------Comments on FB on the death of the Spartacists' founder James Robertson.I've always been on the periphery of the left. Over the decades one of the most sectarian Trotskyist groups has been the Spartacists --- A few were/are still in the UFT at some point but left the Sparts. There has always been some disdain toward Sparts.
This morning [Thursday] at Tweed, Chancellor Carranza spoke about his opposition to the long-standing DOE practice of allowing charter schools to use the DOE mailing lists. He said no final decision has yet been made to change this practice– contrary to what reporters had already been told about this as late as last night and parents this morning. He asked for parents to make their voices heard about whether they wanted this practice to continue or not.The press release below came out earlier in the day but there seem to be some backtracking by the chancellor and Di Blasio.
For more on this issue, see our press release here, with quotes from parent leaders, which among other things points out that DOE is the ONLY school district in the country that provides this info to charters voluntarily, helping them recruit their students, take their space and their funding, which is now costing our schools more than $2.1 billion per year. See also Diane Ravitch's blog, which hypothesizes that the Mayor chickened out when the news leaked out prematurely and he got blowback from the wealthy and powerful charter lobby.Grace Lovaglio streamed Carranza's remarks to CPAC on Facebook live. He addressed the student privacy and charter school recruitment issue for about ten minutes at 36.25 minutes in. A rough transcript of his remarks follows:Carranza says that he has not gone to any parent meetings where he has not heard about the “predatory nature” of charters and all the mailings. He tells the story of one parent who told him that only one of her children not to get the mailings is the one who tested gifted and not the ones w/ IEPs. The Mayor has spoken that this is not okay. …now somehow this has become that the district is going to cut this off. I cannot speak to whether or not this is going to happen.
The DN editorial which apparently scared de BLasio off and once again insulted parents by calling them mushrooms and by claiming the opposition to the practice of letting charters use student info was led by the teachers union, which as far as I know has never said a peep about this.The Chancellor says no final decision has yet been made on the issue of providing student information to charters for marketing purposes - *More on this fast-developing and changing story here from the Daily News here.* This morning at Tweed, Chancellor Carranza spoke about his opposition to...
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-edit-de-blasio-vs- charters-again-20190411- smbwzldlavhq5hncjkd3gvu7z4- story.html
 | NYC: Faced with Charter Pressure, DeBlasio Backs Downby dianeravitch |
I’ve met plenty of ATRs with those licenses and I’m sure this incentive isn’t truly open to them. This plan is ridiculous on several levels. Teaching for me (and most teachers I’ve known) is a vocation. A monetary incentive denigrates it to a job - something unpleasant you do only for money. This will not encourage stability in those schools or neighborhoods - it will do the opposite. I started my career in MS 301 then called JHS 120 - many of the teachers there attended it as kids and were originally from the neighborhood. I also grew up in the neighborhood - still one of the poorest and worst in the country. The older teachers there were teaching the grandchildren of their first students. Back then most teachers stayed in the same school they started, for their entire career. I ended up getting excessed and was placed down the block in Jane Addams. I had some of the same kids I taught in 120 as high school students. Many of the teachers back then still have lifelong friendships with their former students. Bloomberg ended these neighborhood schools with his business model. The business model destabilized not only the schools and their staffs, but also the heart of what a teacher should be. It created detachment in all facets of school governance and interpersonal relationships. That the Uft would present this, in the last contract, is an example of how oblivious they have become to the nefarious reality that Bloomberg has created. I don’t believe the chancellor actually believes this has any chance of working, it is just a façade. Otherwise, he actually is what the Post called him today - “a total pathetic twit”.
We call upon our union to defend us. We call upon our union to stop the harassment of the senior Teachers of Adult Education....This statement was read at the April 8th UFT Ex Bd meeting:
Right or wrong, the [Kentucky] sickout teachers voted with their feet. This is a big problem for school districts, but also for unions. The stated purpose of exclusive representation is that it brings labor peace because such differences are handled internally by the union and a single position is agreed upon. If a minority of teachers can shut down a district against the directives of their union, then there is in fact no exclusive representation.Yes, labor peace -- we have seen that time and again - there is a partnership between a teacher union and the city and DOE -- they will stop sickouts and other wildcat actions. But when unions are weak, as they are in the red states, shit happens. In fact the unions tried to argue this to stop Janus -- that a weak union can lead to chaos from the ranks. Someone like me with Anarchist/libertarian tendencies, tend to have mixed feelings. While supporting a strong union, I also chafe under the yoke of a Unity Caucus dominated union. For those calling for change in the way the union is run there is often a contradiction in how far to go in being critical.
Neither school districts nor unions seem to be contemplating the ramifications.... Mike Antonucci, EIA, Vox Populi?
Several large school districts shut down after the sickout was called by KY 120 United, identified as a grassroots organization of teachers, but one that apparently has some pull with district superintendents.I posted another Anonucci story about the wildcat actions - Kentucky Unions Attempt to Undercat Wildcat Action...
If that isn’t confusing enough, both the union and KY 120 United announced that teachers would return to work today, but a smaller wildcat faction rejected the idea.
Yesterday I ran a column about the Kentucky Education Association and other union affiliates in the Jefferson County school system and their efforts to get a handle on the “rogue groups” that were organizing teacher sickouts. Their primary argument was that a small number of people were making decisions affecting the livelihoods of thousands of school employees.Oh, the problem with a small number of people making decisions for the many, something we never see in the UFT/AFT.
“It’s 800 people deciding for ultimately 6,500 teachers and then all the rest of the employees,” said one union president.
We interview Gay Adelmann, parent of two and co-founder of "Dear JCPS", a grass-roots parent/teacher alliance built to fight racist policies in education and the erosion of public education through charter schools and privatization. Gay describes her involvement in the recent fight to bust the teachers union and the attack on teachers pay and pension which has produced a recent wave of sick outs in Kentucky. This put her group on the firing line from politicians looking to sneak shady policies past the pubic and union leaders who would rather cut backroom deals than lead fightback. Her story of struggle and transformation is inspiring.What’s Left? Website: https://what-s-left.webnode.com/
I missed one of my rare opening nights of the Rockaway
Theatre Company’s production of “A
Comedy of Tenors” (see my School Scope column for why) but received texts later
that night about how funny and well-done it was. I wanted to see the show
before this column was due on ISO’s opponents on the Trotskyist Sectarian Left: it’s a middle class Identitarian coup...https://www.wsws.org/en/articl
A March 20 post by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, titled “What Socialists Can Learn From #MeToo,” exposes the hysterical psychology, akin to a lynch mob, that prevails among ISO members recruited on the basis of middle-class identity politics.....Aside from my laugh out loud reaction to the name Wrigley-Field, this anti-ISO article from the faaar left 4th International has some interesting nuggets, though be careful if you read it to filter some of the hyperbole. Some of my friends on the left do not even think I should publish it because they can be so beyond the fringe - like Pluto. But --- as I say, there are some nuggets here.
In the statements issued by the ISO, there is no explicit reference to or discussion of the political differences within the organization’s leadership that underlay the crisis that erupted during the week of March 11, 2019. Readers are expected to believe that the alleged mishandling of an accusation of sexual assault, which occurred six years ago, has caused the political collapse of the International Socialist Organization.
This is preposterous and will be believed only by those who are either hopelessly naïve or hopelessly stupid.... Some are boasting that out of the wreckage of the ISO a “new model of revolutionary socialism” will emerge. They are whistling as they pass by the graveyard. Their quest for a “new model” is leading them squarely into the Democratic Party. .......World Socialist web site
In the statements issued by the ISO, there is no explicit reference to or discussion of the political differences within the organization’s leadership that underlay the crisis that erupted during the week of March 11, 2019. Readers are expected to believe that the alleged mishandling of an accusation of sexual assault, which occurred six years ago, has caused the political collapse of the International Socialist Organization.Well, anyway, there's a good portion of the left that is rejoicing at the end of ISO but everyone knows you can't kill that zombie and in some form or other they will be back. For the forseeable future, MORE will remain under the control of the former ISO block, unless there are splits among them or splits between them and the block they recruited from the Democratic Socialists.
This is preposterous and will be believed only by those who are either hopelessly naïve or hopelessly stupid. The unleashing of a sex scandal in a political organization is aimed invariably at generating hysteria, stampeding the membership and preventing an open and rational discussion of program, perspective, strategy and the interests of conflicting internal factions and social forces. Only in the aftermath of the organizational massacre, as the smoke begins to clear, do the political interests and aims that precipitated the crisis begin to emerge.
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An ecclectic group for sure:People have been emailing asking me and others - Gloria has had numerous requests too - for voting recommendations - not for March Madness but for the UFT election. Today is the big reveal. Warning - it's a long a tedious read. (I will make my final election voting outcome predictions before April 17.)
5 for Solidarity, 4 for Unity, 3 for MORE
Howrilka, Portelos, Sill, Manning, Brown, De Jesus, Lupkin, Prosen, Hinds, Severenson, Zannoni, Diaz - Below, the reasons for why I voted for whom and why I didn't vote for whom - if you dare to wade through the muck.
Interestingly, if you look up the person who replaced [Paul], you discover that she worked for Cuomo, Andy Pallota at NYSUT, and recently for Mulgrew....
So what's actually going on here?
Is there more to this story?
Why was he really fired?
......... comment on the ICEUFT blog
New Director of Grievance—David CampbellAnother postponement of my much anticipated UFT election recommendations. Maybe later.
New Political Director—Cassie Pruh
New Attorney—Beth Norton
We fought to transform our group into one that would be run by its own members, open to multiple perspectives (without any illusions that only the “leadership” had the right answers), and fit to bring the politics of socialism from below into and alongside a growing, radicalizing left — and we won.I was recently in touch with Haley who is the daughter of Marc Pessin, who played a major role in the UFT opposition in the 1970s and 80's. Marc is an ISO member? Oy! I have to give him a call.
In the aftermath of this crisis, I was furious that our victory was being cut short by the retroactive impact of leaders whose actions proved more damaging than we could have imagined.
It seems like we are at the beginning of one of the moments revolutionaries prepare their whole lives for — a rebirth of a socialist left, complete with the return of class struggle and movements for social justice. And yet, the discovery that the leaders of an avowedly anti-sexist organization intervened such that a member accused of rape was allowed to rise to our highest leadership body has been so destructive that it is hard to figure out how we can participate and move forward. ... But I keep coming back to something my dad (who is also an ISO member) raised in response to the crisis: What if our organization had imploded due to these revelations not now, at the very beginning of a rebirth of the socialist left, but once we were much further along in the development of this new left?
