MORE Steering Committee: A Lesson in Democracy

You can't talk about democracy in the UFT unless your own group has established democratic procedures itself. And if done openly, so much the better. And boy is this tough, especially as you grow and try to scale up. If I was in a caucus in contention with Unity that was not practicing democracy, I would walk because we don't need a "new boss, same as old boss scenario."

Democracy is not just about voting. It is how people deal with each other every day.

MORE is not just a caucus challenging the Unity leadership, but a fertile ground for people to nurture themselves politically and personally.

Tomorrow's MORE steering committee meeting will complete my 6-month term as the 3rd MORE Steering Committee  to take over on August 1. So far 23 people have served 6-month terms on MORE Steering over a year and a half. Both old and new steering committees - those in town - will hold a joint meeting. I'm proud of the fact that so many of these people are fairly new to MORE and to activism. And how they have blossomed playing leadership roles. Many of them did not enter teaching with a sense of "union" and are so excited to become part of that process due to MORE's advocacy.

Before I comment on the process let me know if you have heard of a transparent process revealed by other caucuses, Unity and New Action. MORE is so open we even invite New Action members to join us and even run for Steering. So far they have declined. Maybe we should invite Unity people into the tent too. Hey Unity, feel free to come to meetings and make your case.

So I have tried to be vigilant inside MORE -- arguing for distributed leadership and decision making. I know, this violates some basic precepts where strong leadership in the hands of one person is considered crucial. Note that many people viewed Julie Cavanagh as the leader of MORE when in fact she was one voice amongst many. And her focus on her family and her school responsibilities has made it difficult for her to do MORE work. If you asked me 2 years ago what would MORE be like without a very active Julie, my response would have been bleak. In fact MORE hasn't missed a beat (though Julie's wise counsel is missed).

For the first year MORE had no steering committee, which I favored. I felt people were just getting to know each other and argued for the least restrictive environment. We called it a Planning Committee, open to everyone. But by the end of last school year, emerging fron an election campaign, it was clear we had grown enough to think about forming a steering committee.

I am generally not in favor of elections, especially in small groups like MORE. But most people wanted to hold one. We decided on 9 Steering seats and had 20 people run. There was a tie so we just added one. Some were not well known by enough people and the election was to some extent a popularity contest. I also felt we should limit the terms of office for 6 months, which one member of the CORE steering in Chicago told me last week was "crazy." I told her it was the best thing MORE had done. (We also have an unofficial rule that after 2 consecutive turns on steering (1 year) one should take a break.)

Lots of lessons were learned in that first term and there was major turnover in the 2nd MORE steering which took office last Jan. 1 due to the intense amount of work required. Burnout was an issue. (And we are working on dividing the work to prevent that). There were only 2 returnees and 9 other volunteers. We decided that rather than hold an election to knock 2 people out, we would just add 2 people. To some this violated their sense of democracy. I did not agree -- rational democracy would call for inclusion, not exclusion.

While some people opposed my being on Steering due to my retirement status, others wanted my experience. (I think there should not be more than one retiree on steering.) And the fact that I was free during the day to be of more assistance. Frankly, I was so busy with other parts of my life I did not take on too many tasks - which is why I took myself off steering this time - at this point I don't want to help run an organization - leave it to the next generation. And what a generation it is. Almost no one below 40 and our youngest new leader just turned 28.

And the best thing: I can do nothing and not feel guilty.

Congratulations for those who have accepted nominations for the new MORE Steering Committee which takes office for a 6 month term starting on August 1. 

 

The current steering committee has proposed, that rather than having an election to choose 9 out of these 11 (or 10?) qualified candidates, that we simply accept all of them as new member of the steering committee.  This decision will be ratified at the MORE Retreat this coming week on Thursday, July 17 (11am-5pm, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave. @ 34th st., 6 to 33rd, D,F,M,N,R to Herald Square).

Megan Behrent has taught English at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn for 15 years. She has been a UFT delegate for FDR since 2007. In the Delegate Assembly, she has raised resolutions to support the rights of ATRs, to fight school closings/turnarounds, and to show solidarity with other unions. She is a founding member of MORE and active in the National Network of Social Justice Educators. As an education activist, she has appeared on the Melissa Harris Parry show on MSNBC and written for diverse publications including Socialist Worker, New Politics, Labor Notes and the Harvard Education Review.

Lauren Cohen entered teaching through the NYC Teaching Fellows in 2005 as a mid-year replacement for a K-2 self-contained special education teacher at a high-needs school in Harlem. She taught there for two more full school years. She spent the next 5 years at a Title 1 school in the East Village where she gained a reputation among her colleagues for speaking out against administrative mandates that were detrimental to student learning (such as canceling extended day enrichment programs in favor of test prep aligned to faulty and inaccurate Acuity results). She currently teaches at P.S. 321 in Park Slope, where the privileges available to her current students have only strengthened her resolve to fight for a more equitable system on behalf of the students she left behind. For the past two years, Lauren has worked with parents, teachers, and others in Change the Stakes, fighting against the use of standardized tests to punish schools, teachers, and students. She attended her first MORE meeting in the spring of 2012 and was thrilled to meet so many like-minded educators. She ran on the MORE slate for Elementary Executive Board in the UFT election, and she now serves as the chapter delegate for P.S. 321.

Francesca Gomes is an 8th Grade Humanities (ELA and Social Studies) Teacher at New Voices MS 443 in District 15.  She has been a member of the UFT for 13 years, and the only UFT Delegate for her school for the last five years.  She led the “Vote No” campaign at her school beginning on the first day after the 2014 contract proposal was announced.  Originally a member of Teachers for a Just Contract, she then became a member of the Independent Caucus of Educators, and is proud to have been a member of MORE since its early days.

Janice Manning is currently a fifth grade Special Education Teacher in an Integrated Co-Teaching Classroom at P.S. 503 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.  This is her 10th year teaching in New York City Public Schools.  She started her teaching career as a fourth grade teacher in Fort Worth, Texas.  After teaching in Fort Worth for a year, she taught English as a foreign language in Znamenka, Ukraine as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  She began attending MORE meetings in January of this year and is passionate about working with other educators to organize ways to improve education for ALL students.

Megan Moskop is a current member of the steering committee. She is a Special Education teacher and UFT delegate at M.S. 324 in Washington Heights, where she began teaching in 2009 through Teach for America. Megan was raised by educators in North Carolina, and her first “real” teaching job was in Malta as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant.  In addition to her work MORE, she serves as Learning Labs Director for the Manhattan Young Democrats, and she is a member of Teachers Unite. Deeply thankful for and inspired by her own teachers and students, Megan is committed to the improvement of learning and working conditions in schools everywhere, starting here.

Francesco Portelos is an engineer turned middle school STEM teacher. Over the last two years he has become a very strong advocate for educators and students. His advocacy did not come without sacrifice. After speaking up, he became a target and was removed from his teaching position. This did not stop Francesco. He ran and won the UFT Chapter Leader position in his school even though he is forbidden from entering the building. He has been successfully mobilizing and supporting his chapter and many other educators who read about his fight and seek his guidance from around the city and around the country. His objective is use his knowledge, leadership skills and out-of-the-box thinking to bring MORE to a point where they are successfully filling the great void left by our UFT Leaders. Read more at www.educatorfightsback.org  Follow on Twitter: @MrPortelos

Kevin Prosen is chapter leader at I.S. 230 in Jackson Heights, Queens.  He campaigned as part of MORE’s slate for the executive board in last year’s elections, and has organized mass grievance campaigns at his school involving up to 35 members of his chapter.  He has been active in the MORE chapter organizing committee this year and has been organizing outreach to other chapter leaders in the city. His writings on UFT issues have appeared inJacobin andSocialist Worker.

Mindy Rosier is a native New Yorker who graduated from Marymount Manhattan College with a B.A. in Psychology and Elementary Education and Fordham University with an M.S. Ed in Early Childhood Special Education. She has been a teacher for 17 years, including 3 years at the NY Foundling Hospital and currently 8 years with the Department of Education in a District 75 school.After seeing the hardships that her school has endured and after researching the education system itself, she became active to promote an improvement in the quality of education for all children.

Mike Schirtzer is a lifelong Brooklynite, graduate of the NYC public schools and CUNY, teacher and UFT Delegate. Teaching has always been and still is his lifelong dream and his work here in MORE is just a continuation of fulfilling the goal of being the best teacher he can be! He has planned and mobilized several events, forums, and ran for UFT & NYSUT office as MORE. He was on the original planning committee, first steering committee, and organized MORE’s social media, press, contract campaign, and South Brooklyn groups.

Patrick Walsh a three-time elected UFT chapter who believes that the only force  that can  save our profession from the predators is our union and the only force that can save our union from itself is us.

AFTERBURN
Some people warn that by being so public we are putting a target on their backs for Unity to shoot at. One transgression in their schools and the Unity buzz machine will start backbiting. Believe me, I get Unity people picking and choosing their targets and attacking MORE behind the scenes with comments like "look at the people you have". Even if true I counter with "have you taken a close look at the people YOU have?"

Lee Sustar on #AFT14 Convention: Lots of Tough Talk - But Watch What They Do

....to Randi Weingarten, "fighting forward" apparently means embracing the New York contract as a template for the entire union. The supposed benefits of the deal were hammered home throughout the convention. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose administration negotiated the agreement, spoke to delegates through a recorded video message, following a breathless introduction by UFT President Mulgrew.

Tellingly, actor Cynthia Nixon, who took to the podium as an education activist in New York, was the speaker to offer a more accurate assessment of the UFT contract. It was a deal, she said, that corporate education reformers would give their "eyeteeth" for. Moreover, Weingarten presented the de Blasio deal as part of a wider pro-teacher, pro-public education trend in the Democratic Party. Thus, the AFT has partnered with Democratic National Committee member Donna Brazile and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to create Democrats for Public Education. .... Lee Sustar, The Socialist Worker

Lee Sustar does a comprehensive job in analyzing what went on at the recent AFT convention in LA, including behind the scenes reports (see my sidebar for my written and video reports - with more to come). I always look forward to sitting with Lee in the press section at these AFT conventions. His sharp eye and ear often clue me in to what is really going on. Lee writes in the Socialist Worker, the newspaper of the Internationalist Socialist's. A number of ISO members are NYC teachers, some of whom are involved with MORE.

It is a long piece, but worth reading. Here is an excerpt   describing the panel originally set up for Karen Lewis and newly elected LATU President Alex Caputo-Pearl - dubbed the militant wing of the AFT. Randi intervened and forced Mulgrew and others on the panel to dilute their message. (I will post the videos soon so you can see for yourself.)

THE CONVENTION proceedings were organized to marginalize critical voices. The Unity/Progressive Caucus control of the agenda kept delegates in the dark as to when the politicians' speechifying would stop, when convention business would resume and what issues would come to the floor.

Thus, the emerging militant wing of the AFT had to find other places to express its views, off the convention floor. Important discussions took place in such venues as the AFT human rights committee luncheon, which featured Karen Lewis and Chicago community activist Jitu Brown, and meetings of the AFT Peace and Justice Caucus and U.S. Labor Against the War.

The most widely anticipated side meeting, focused on social movement unionism, was sponsored by the CTU and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), where the new Union Power slate had taken office less than two weeks earlier. Apparently concerned that CTU and UTLA might constitute a pole of attraction for militant teachers dissatisfied with the AFT leadership, union officials embraced the meeting themselves--and, as a result, added several more speakers, including Mary Cathryn Ricker of St. Paul and Mulgrew from New York City.

The room was crowded, with standing room only. As one attendee explained to others seated nearby, the UFT Unity Caucus had "ordered" its members to attend.

Because of the format--presentations by seven panelists, followed by "table talk" by delegates who then submitted questions--debate was limited. Weingarten herself stopped by to make comments from the podium, saying that she was so happy about that meeting that there were "tears in my eyes." It was unclear if the AFT president was moved by the content of discussion or the loyalty and discipline of her caucus.

Despite the restrictive format, the differences were clear. Karen Lewis described her union's efforts to mobilize members and reach out to the community to prepare for the strike, while UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl spoke about similar efforts underway in Los Angeles, which will include strike preparation in that city as well.

Mulgrew's version of social movement unionism was, in reality, organized labor's usual transactional politics with elected officials. Although the UFT president promoted his union's political outreach as the key to Bill de Blasio's victory in the mayor's race, the UFT actually backed one of de Blasio's rivals in the Democratic primary, declaring, "We don't pick winners, we make them." (The union more recently made amends with de Blasio by pouring $350,000 from its nonprofit arm into a de Blasio-controlled charity[21], in order to fund television ads backing the mayor's agenda.)

The UFT president also claimed credit for mobilizing against school closures, when in fact nearly all such initiatives were taken by groups like the Grassroots Education Movement and Occupy the DOE [22] [Department of Education]. Many activists from those groups went on to found the Movement of Rank-and-File Educators (MORE), which in part took inspiration from the CTU's CORE. In the 2013 UFT elections, MORE candidates captured about 40 percent of the vote [23], with Mulgrew's Unity machine increasingly reliant on retiree votes to pad its margin of victory.

Mulgrew also touted the new UFT contract's provision allowing teachers at 200 schools--around 20 percent of the total--to vote away decades of union rules and job protections. "You cannot touch your wages or seniority rights," Mulgrew said he told his union's members. "After that, I'm open."

By contrast, Lewis and Caputo-Pearl, while avoiding any direct criticism of the UFT or AFT leadership, made it clear that they see holding the line on such concessions as an imperative.

In her concluding comments, Lewis said that the CTU had for the past two years been sending members and staffers around the U.S. to help other locals. And Caputo-Pearl credited CORE with setting an example for his local to follow as it attempts to reverse years of decline in membership due to the proliferation of charter schools as well as concessions on wages and working conditions. He also alluded to the national network of teacher activists that is looking for a strategy on how to fight back [24]--something that the AFT and NEA leadership has been unable or unwilling to do.

The emerging militant network, however, remains small. Certainly, it doesn't figure in union electoral politics: Randi Weingarten and her slate won with only a symbolic challenge led by far-left union activists.

Even so, the sharpening of internal debate in the union is noteworthy. The AFT leadership can only go so far in raising militant rhetoric while abandoning decades of contract gains. And the militants will, sooner or later, have to move from opposing particular policies like Common Core to challenging the union leadership itself. As the attacks on teachers and public education continue to mount, the stakes in that struggle will only continue to grow.

ANALYSIS: LEE SUSTAR

What's behind the tough talk?

Lee Sustar reports from Los Angeles on the recent convention of the AFT.

Rockaway Theatre Company's Gypsy: Weekend Sellout - Some Photos

It's tough to have to spend less than 5 minutes on stage with no lines and basically nothing to do other than have the actors move you around and then spend the next 2 hours backstage until the curtain call trying to get out of everyone's way. When I'm done I'll share the column for The Wave I'm working on the total experience of observing and participating (even as a sliver) in a massive undertaking. We have 4 shows this weekend with a rare Thursday at 8PM performance - probably the only one that won't sell out. So if anyone is inclined to see a show where the lead, Louisa Boyaggi, playing Mama Rose, is being talked about by people who have seen them all as being better than Tyne Daly, Pattie Lupone and even the legendary Ethel Merman. Oh, and Louisa is a UFT member - a guidance counselor in a NYC high school.

NYC teacher Kim Simek as a blossoming Louise turned Gypsy Rose Lee

The strippers

My Video of Randi Press Conf at #AFT14

Some interesting insights from Randi on Vergara, Duncan and other issues. But not enough of a rigorous defense of tenure - rather a sense of - we are willing to help get rid of teachers. Left hanging are those teachers who have been chopped due to political persecution. Lenny Isenberg from LA asks Randi a question as do I.
A few days later there was a press conference with Mary Catherine Ricker dealing with some of these issues.

https://vimeo.com/101225540

The Ravitch Wars - Lois Weiner Reveals Fault Lines in Ravitch Position

About 10 years ago the UFT gave Diane Ravitch the John Dewey Award. When I posted about it there was outrage from the anti-testing community which viewed Dewey as turning over in his grave in outrage at Standardista Ravitch getting this awar - Jerry Bracey was ready to fly in from Seattle if we held a protest rally. My fellow ICE founder John Lawhead had loads of stuff exposing Diane's roll in initiating corporate deform -- that was how I was educated about her. But then she did an amazing turn around and critics turned to giving (qualified) praise. From my perspective I view her support for many of the things I have been involved with as being invaluable, especially when she was the keynote speaker at our film premiere. And how welcome she made me feel when I was an isolated loner at Manhattan Institute events - when she (and I) were still being invited. Even a major admirer, Sol Stern, has broken with her - from the right.

While she has been attacked from the deform crowd, there has also been criticism from the left -- not the same type we saw over the past decades about her being a standardista bit for her ties to the unions (I often defend her for reasons I don't have time to go into).

There has been a lot of back and forth about Diane Ravitch between Jim Horn and Mercedes Schneider, two people I admire.

Read Jim at Schools Matter:  Attacking Diane Ravitch? Or Questions Too Uncomfortable for the Comfortable?

Mercedes: Kathleen Carroll Soars on the Wings of Research Blunder; Jim Horn Hitches a Ride

Buffalo teacher Sean Crowley, who savages the slugs who run his union, is also a critic where his comment is posted at Schools Matter: Read Sean Crowley

Though Ravitch comes in for a lot of love and a lot of invective, it is often without analysis. Lois Weiner digs deep into the weeds in her post on New Politics, offering praise and analysis of where she feels Ravich doesn't dare go.

Here are some excerpts from Lois' recent New Politics piece.

Probably the most important liberal defender of public education today is Diane Ravitch. In battling her former co-thinkers with the personal resources and connections she acquired in supporting neoconservative policies, Ravitch has contributed mightily to public awareness of the threat to democracy and to children in the current drive to create a privatized school system funded by public money but without collective, public oversight... Ravitch has almost singlehandedly developed and publicized a liberal rebuttal to neoliberal “reforms,” in effect substituting not only for the teacher union establishment but for labor as well....

....the overarching argument that U.S. public education was doing as well as could be expected given the effects of poverty is a serious flaw in her analysis and opens her—and the movement—to the charge that we want to defend an unequal status quo. 

Ravitch does not address the contradiction between schooling’s non-economic purposes, its role in educating the next generation of citizens and nurturing each individual’s potential, and its use as a sorting mechanism to allocate a diminishing number of well-paying jobs. Unfortunately, neoliberal reforms resonate with poor, minority parents precisely because they want the same opportunity for their children to compete for good jobs as children of middle class parents have. Calls for schools that make children happy and develop creativity will not assuage parents’ fears that their children will not be strong competitors in an increasingly punishing labor market. Arne Duncan’s contemptuous dismissal of opponents of high-stakes testing and the new Common Core curriculum as “suburban moms” who can’t face their children’s limitations demonstrates that our opponents will fully exploit the utterly hypocritical and inaccurate claim that they protect poor, minority children against white liberals who want to maintain the status quo, to advantage their own children.

Her electoral strategy also reflects a desire to return to the (idealized) past. Ravitch recognizes that big money and corporations control the Democratic Party, and her solution is to push Democrats to be the defenders of public education she says they once were. She therefore encourages opponents of corporate school reform to embrace Democrats willing to criticize (however vaguely) privatization, testing, and charter schools and defend (however meekly) teachers unions. However, she (and those who agree with this political strategy) do not explain how we will hold candidates responsible to the activists who have worked on their behalf and avoid betrayals. Yet this issue is more pressing with each election cycle and each desertion of Democrats whom progressives have supported.

Although pressed by activists to criticize teacher union leaders, in particular her long-time friend, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), for endorsing the Common Core and commending legislation that links teacher evaluation to students’ standardized test scores, Ravitch declines, arguing this creates divisions. But the divisions already exist because union reformers are challenging the local and national leadership in both of the teachers unions. The question is whether we will encourage activists to democratize their unions, to make them social movements, or whether we think the model of “service” or “business unionism” should remain the norm. 

This point by Lois and other Ravitch critics misses her support for GEM which she was able to do because GEM was not a caucus directly challenging the UFT leadership even though all the people active in GEM were also part of the opposition. And also the continuous support Ravitch gives Karen Lewis and the CTU. Here is the link.

New Politics Vol. XV No. 1, Whole Number 57
http://newpol.org/content/teachers%E2%80%99-trifecta 

The Teachers’ Trifecta

Below the break Lois digs deeper into the social justice union activists following in the wake of CORE and the CTU where I think she makes some assumptions I don't totally agree with - and from my conversations with Lois I think she is missing some understanding of how CORE took control - people think it was more social justice than bread and butter. I don't agree - and given I've been in contact with CORE folks since almost their inception, I will offer some insights in another post.

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 The “Trifecta”: Mobilization,
Social Justice, Democracy

A new generation of teachers is being politicized and radicalized very rapidly. While there is still much fear, nodes of resistance are emerging. In some cases organizations of parents and teachers opposed to testing are supporting creation of reform caucuses in unions. Teachers have been both energized and inspired by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), and terrified at the enormity of the task they face. Many are asking how they can apply lessons from those who formed the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) and then transformed the CTU.

In spring 2014, activists in Massachusetts, Colorado, and North Carolina formed state-wide caucuses in their National Education Association (NEA) affiliates. After losing a contract fight, Newark, New Jersey’s AFT union reformers won a majority in their union’s executive committee; they lost the union presidency by only a few votes. Seattle, an NEA affiliate, and Philadelphia’s AFT local now have reform caucuses, as does Minneapolis. In school districts large and small, grassroots groups of teachers and parents that oppose testing or charter school co-locations are spawning change in the local teachers unions. 

In the Los Angeles union, the second largest in the country, reformers elected to office years earlier failed to build a union presence at the school site and captured the union apparatus without developing a base of support. Activists learned from their mistakes and reorganized as Union Power; they nurtured a new culture and program of building a “member-driven union.” While Union Power worked diligently to build the chapters, developing a program modeled on CTU’s, out of 31,505 members only 7,158 returned ballots. The turnout was disappointing but was still a higher percentage of voters than in the 2011 citywide union elections. Alex Caputo-Pearl, who headed the slate, narrowly missed winning the 50 percent plus 1 he needed to be elected president but his opponent essentially ceded the run-off to him.

Union activists seem in agreement about three issues: 1) mobilizing union members during contract disputes, 2) working with parent allies, and 3) developing contract demands that embed economic issues in a program for quality schools that names social inequality, corporate domination of the government, and racism as impediments to schools students deserve. While these are essential elements themselves, they are insufficient. Too often overlooked is the centrality of organizing a union presence “on the shop floor,” that is, at the school site, developing new leaders and activists as well as fighting for democratic norms and procedures. 

Unfortunately, marginalized in discussion of union reform is strengthening union democracy. This was apparent in the left media’s coverage of the near-strike of the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT), an NEA affiliate. PAT’s leadership used the contract to defend aspects of teachers’ work that directly affect learning rather than focusing on salary. They reached out to parents and mobilized members, involving them in the contract fight. But key questions about the process were ignored. How were bargaining demands developed? Was the team elected directly by the membership? The contract campaign is the opportunity to involve more members as leaders, deepening the membership’s participation in decision-making. 

Chicago had an elected bargaining team of dozens of people and spent months gathering, refining, and voting on contract demands. Did PAT? Another question we should ask is how discussion and ratification of a proposed settlement occurs. Is the discussion organized so that union officers “sell” the proposed settlement to members—or does the process encourage members to raise questions, concerns, and problems? Contract ratification directly influences how strong the union will be in the school site after the heat of the contract fight subsides. Members have to defend the contract, so it is essential that they understand the specifics of the final agreement. In Chicago, in the midst of a strike, CTU’s negotiating team brought the proposed agreement to the union’s representative assembly, which refused to endorse it before taking it back to members for a closer look. CTU’s process has to be the standard to which we hold unions. 

The history of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), including its lawsuit against individual dissidents who formed an independent union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, illustrates why we need union democracy as well as social justice commitments.⁹ Not just member voice is needed but also power that emerges from the ranks in the shops and that challenges and informs the leadership’s actions. A social justice program combined with member mobilization is a volatile but unsustainable mixture. The combination can fuel militant struggles but it cannot translate those victories into the deep alteration in power relations on the shop floor that teachers unions need today to counter the vastly unequal power of teachers and administration. 

Herman Benson, the unofficial dean of union democracy studies, has pushed left reformers to consider the relationship between union democracy and the other elements of their agendas, arguing that bureaucratization in unions is not neatly linked to union reformers’ (left-wing) politics. Benson’s challenge to understand how the struggle for democratic unions relates to our program for social justice is a matter of the utmost importance for teacher unionism today and yet it has been ignored. 

I suggest that trade unionism’s two essential principles, solidarity and democracy, challenge notions of individual competition and hierarchical relations embedded in capitalism and expressed in power relations at the workplace. These twin ideals, solidarity and democracy, are essential in creating societies that support the full flowering of human potential. Unions, due to their unique situation in the workplace, provide the filament that sustains democracy. When unions are not democratic, even if they fight for social justice, they perpetuate hierarchical relations that disempower working people, allowing bigotry and oppression to remain embedded in social relations. Undemocratic unions cannot educate workers to create a democratic society because the substance of union life reinforces workers’ subordination to others that (purportedly) know best for them. And most often those others come from groups in the society that have more power and privilege. 

However, democracy is very fragile, and vigilant enforcement of regulations that give members the right to decide policy and elect officers is a necessary but insufficient condition. Deep, thorough union democracy depends on the union having a presence in the workplace where members understand that they are the union. This process is in turn nurtured by the union defining its members’ self-interest very broadly so that members bring their concerns into the union. 

Nelson Lichtenstein notes that “Rights are universal and individual, which means employers and individual members of management enjoy them just as much as workers,”¹⁰ but what makes unions unique is that unions represent members’ individual interests through expression and struggle for their collective interests. The accuracy of Lichtenstein’s observation is seen in the way neoliberalism has exploited the rights discourse against teachers and teachers unions, in lawsuits arguing that tenure and seniority protections conflict with the rights of children to equal educational opportunity. At the same time, a rights discourse also fueled social movements that created opportunities for millions of students who previously were excluded from education, those with special needs and native speakers of languages other than English. Neither NEA nor AFT helped these movements for increased educational opportunity, using their political clout only after legislation was introduced. The laws creating special education and bilingual education programs were flawed in taking “disputes out of the hands out of those directly involved,” as Lichtenstein argues. Yet, millions of children once refused an education today receive services. Children in these groups are better off because they claimed their (human) rights—without support from the unions. 

Teachers unions plant the seed of democracy in schools by giving teachers collective voice about the conditions of their labor. Even when collective bargaining restricts the union’s legal authority, a teachers union with a highly conscious, active membership that has assimilated the lesson that members are the union, not staff or elected officials, can exert pressure over many informal work arrangements. However, while the union’s presence provides opportunity for teacher voice, it does not automatically do the same for parents, students, or community. To the extent the teachers union does not consciously push to extend democracy in the school to include those affected by union agreements, it undermines its legitimacy and contradicts labor’s claim of speaking for working people. So while Benson is correct that as a rule when unions “raise the standards of those who are victorious, they tend to lift the standards of the class, even those not organized,” it is also the case that support for unions, including teachers unions, eroded precisely because of the attenuated impact of union victories on those who were not union members.¹¹

Bringing the “Trifecta” to Politics

Teacher union activists generally understand that the destruction of public education and the profession is a bipartisan project, even as they see individual candidates as more sympathetic to teachers’ perspective. The question I think we need to consider is not whether we need a new electoral vehicle that will project the vision of a transformed teacher union movement, but how to achieve it.

In embarking on this discussion, it’s important to acknowledge that electoral activity is not a substitute for the “trifecta” I have previously described. Nor can we ignore the success of neoliberalism’s “scorched earth” war against unions. When teacher union reformers succeed in becoming leaders of newly mobilized unions, as they have in Chicago, they are often isolated in a fairly bleak labor landscape. Education is often the sector of the economy with the highest union density but public employee unions have been greatly weakened and private sector unionism is marginal. This puts newly elected teacher union reformers in a very precarious situation. On the one hand, they see that they have few dependable allies in the Democratic Party, which is controlled by capital. On the other hand, they bargain with the people who are elected. It is very, very difficult for union leaders to argue that we need to create an independent political vehicle because in the process of creating that vehicle we may lose elections that seem to jeopardize the union’s ability to maintain the status quo, including members’ jobs and benefits. 

However, just as defending teachers and public education means doing battle with economic attacks while recognizing the dangers of doing so, advancing that struggle into the electoral sphere means facing dangers inherent in developing an independent electoral vehicle. The elite that controls the state, exercising their control through both the Democratic and Republican parties, directs the global capitalistic project that aims to destroy us. We contradict and undercut our efforts to contest that project when we support either party. Candidates cannot serve two masters—on the one hand, the Democratic Party of Arne Duncan, DFER, and Rahm Emanuel, and on the other, the movement opposing them. 

Electoral activity is an extension into the public realm of the “trifecta” of principles and politics we use in building the union: democracy, social justice, mobilization. Candidates for office (and office holders) should have the same relationship to a union and the social movement of which it is a key element as we want union officers to have with the membership. We elect candidates to carry out our program but we in turn are responsible to help them push electoral initiatives by mobilizing. Elected officials are supported by and responsible to the people who elect them. On a local level teachers unions may be able to initiate the “trifecta” through an ad hoc political coalition but such a formation is unstable. In the longer run, locally and nationally, we need a new political party. 

Many problems complicate the proposition of forming a new electoral vehicle, I acknowledge. Clearly though, the Democratic Party is owned by forces that aim to destroy everything that teachers unions must defend. We cannot give money and votes to a party that aids and abets our destruction. And if not now, when? When we are weaker as a result of unrelenting political attacks and the continued absence of political voice? 

What will this new electoral movement and vehicle look like? We know it must be democratic with mechanisms that make leaders and candidates responsible to the activists and constituencies who have put them into office. Here again we can look to what occurred in Chicago: CORE activists did not delay their challenge to the old CTU leadership while developing a blueprint of what a transformed Chicago teachers union would look like. They brought principles and a vision, developed in struggle. They honed their strategy further in carrying out that vision as union officers and staff. The same process can occur in developing a new electoral vehicle, in Chicago and elsewhere. Union Power’s victory in Los Angeles opens the door to teachers unions having an independent electoral vehicle in two of the three largest U.S. cities. 

A vibrant new movement is emerging though it is under the radar of the mass media. Teachers and parents who were previously not political and not engaged are seeing that children and the profession of teaching are being harmed by policies over which ordinary people have no voice or influence. New national and international networks are emerging among teacher union activists. Much hinges on radical activists in the United States understanding that we cannot repeat the mistakes teacher unionism made in its birth in the 1960s. Fifty years ago teachers unions could trade off power in the workplace, voice about how schools are organized, what we teach and how, for improvements in members’ wages and benefits. However, those days are gone. To protect teaching as a profession and public education we need to win the “trifecta” of democracy, mobilization, and social justice, in union life and politics.

1. See Jeffrey Raffel, The Politics of School Desegregation: The Metropolitan Remedy in Delaware (Temple University Press, 1980).

2. U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Education Awards Promise Neighborhoods Planning Grants. Press Release, Sept. 21, 2010.

3. U.S. Department of Education, A Blueprint for Reform. The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, May 27, 2011.

4. Mercedes Schneider, “A Brief Audit of Bill Gates’ Common Core Spending,” Aug. 8, 2013, Huffington Post.

5. Ann Bastian et al., Choosing Equality. The Case for Democratic Schooling (Temple University Press, 1986).

6. Amy Stuart Wells et al., Review of Research in Education, ed. Robert E. Floden (American Educational Research Association, 2004), 49.

7. Connie Schaffer, “Unmasking the Reformers; Essay Review of Ravitch’s ‘Reign of Error.’” Education Review/ Reseñas Educativas, vol. 17, no. 3, April 12, 2013.

8. Jeffrey A. Raffel, “The Changing Challenges of School Segregation and Desegregation,” Education Review, vol. 16, no. 5, Oct. 22, 2013.

9. Herman Benson, “Sober Thoughts After Inspiring Years of Union Organizing,” Union Democracy Review, April/May 2013, 3, 5.

10. Nelson Lichtenstein, A Contest of Ideas. Capital, Politics, and Labor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), p. 150. 

11. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, The Making of Global Capitalism. The Political Economy of American Empire (Verso, 2012).

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Source URL: http://newpol.org/content/teachers%E2%80%99-trifecta

Links:
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[2] http://newpol.org/category/topic/labor/teacher-unions
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[5] http://newpol.org/category/issue/57

I Defend Tenure in the Indypendent

Thanks to John Tarleton for a great editing job. Making me look literate ain't easy.

Teacher Bashing Knows No Summer Vacation

By Norm Scott

July 16, 2014

Issue # 198

 

In a closely watched case, a California judge ruled on June 10 that the state’s teacher tenure laws infringed on the civil rights of students in schools in poor communities to a proper education guaranteed under the state constitution.

Pointing to evidence that one to three percent of teachers in California’s public schools are grossly ineffective, Judge Rolf Treu wrote in his 16-page decision that teacher tenure laws “impose a real and appreciable impact on students’ fundamental right to equality of education and that they impose a disproportionate burden on poor and minority students.”

The astroturf parent group that pursued the lawsuit was funded by Silicon Valley millionaire David Welch. While Treu left California tenure laws in place until state appeals courts review his ruling, similar anti-tenure lawsuits have since been filed in several states, including here in New York. 

MORE at
https://indypendent.org/2014/07/16/teacher-bashing-knows-no-summer-vacation

Gypsy Opens Tonight at Rockaway Theatre Company in Fort Tilden

Last night was the final dress rehearsal and I put on my suit for my 5 minute stint as Mr. Goldstone where I end up standing on a chair. Don't tell me to break a leg - because I probably will.

Tonight begins the first of 10 performances. Tickets are selling out, so come on down to the theater at the very hot Fort Tilden. 

And there are scads of NYC teachers in the show. Maybe we can start a MORE chapter?

Did you know the beach there is a nude beach? A little naked sun and theater - but get dressed first.

Leon Goldstein HS teacher Steve Ryan, hoofing it as Tulsa

Steve is one of Mike Schirtzer's best friends - which he admits to only when being water boarded.

Primi Akhtar’s Valedictory Address, Queens Metropolitan High School, June 2014

I dare anyone to meet 18-year old Primi and not have enormous hope for the future. Primi is a founding member of NYC Student Union (and my adopted granddaughter) and she just graduated and will be going to Columbia. Does this age her out of the high school based Student Union? She will still be involved, though I imagine she will be raising some hell in college.

Jeff Kaufman sent this in. His wife was one of Primi's proud teachers and advisers.


Primi Akhtar’s Valedictory Address, Queens Metropolitan High School, June 2014

Welcome Class of 2014, teachers, staff, beloved supporters.

There are not enough “thank yous” to give out right now. I am really grateful to have known such amazing, talented, bright people. To each and every one of you- thank you for being the weird you that you are.

But there’s someone special who I always wanted to thank: and that’s my mother- the one who would yank blankets off me, set alarms at 6AM, and walk me to school since I was 5 years old. She was my first teacher, really. And of course, she would nourish me, with the best Bengali food ever. I would also like thank all those who have also sustained us and driven us to be who we are today-- our ancestors with their stories of struggle, our parents who work every day, our mentors and educators who guide us through compassion, farmers who cultivate our food and all the people that have labored to allow us the privilege to be here today.

So let’s give it up for them! It’s important to acknowledge how hard our people are working in hopes of a brighter tomorrow, and how we must work harder for that future that is more sustainable, humane, and of course... loving.

Those of you who know me, know that I don’t follow rules (well, for the most part). I know you are expecting a speech, but I will not give a speech today. Instead, I would like to send out my welcome, my gratitude, and my love through poetry.

But I need your help. When I say, “I’ll let them know” you respond with “I am”. “I am” is not me alone...but it’s us. We’ll do this together- a call and response. The synching may be tough, but we’ve been together for 4 years, so I think y’all will get it.

Let’s begin, and hopefully you’ll remember this one… 

I am.

Last year,

I chopped off my hair

In a Queens barber shop, under the 7 train. I remember wet clumps of my hair hitting the porcelain floors, my heart beating as though it wanted to run somewhere safe from the predictable fury of my mother.

Did you ever feel so scared, but so free? I felt like that, every time I cut it again, and again.

The following day,

Alisher noted I looked like Gandhi,

Others were shocked that I had the guts to go that far,

In a world that constantly wants to define us,

mold us to their shapes so we fit to what makes others comfortable.

I want you to look in the mirror and say to yourself.

I’ll let the world know!

I am.

Not defined by these norms and numbers, branded clothes, dollar bills and diplomas, that tell me I’m not great enough

That when I am seated in a classroom that bears a silence, as pencils circle in bubbles, forced to pick between five choices- I think for myself.  

I will always be more than what you’ve calculated of my worth. I won’t let you define me by society's standards of worthy...because

I’ll let the world know!

I am ---beautiful, different, boundless.

I’ll let the world know!

I am

not going to sit quietly. And place my hand in my lap in fear that what I have to say is not correct. Because if I do speak up, these words will uplift the fragile hearts of others to stand up, to move forward, to no longer carry the burden of the world on their own.

I’ll let the world know!

I am

not going to die never knowing who I am, and settle with this overall ability to sit quietly and never question, and let my fear stop me from creating something new and beautiful.

And keep falling under unreasonable expectations, causing my true self to wither away in efforts to blossom in society’s standard of “success”.

I’ll let the world know!

I am  

not what you think I am. These labels that say men are not suppose to cry, women are too hormonal to make reasonable decisions, that only a handful are smart because they pass these exams that everyone else  “fails”. That I must conform to straightness, because any other way is disgusting and wrong. I am told that this generation is “Worse than the last”-- even though I was born into a world where mistakes deem imprisonment, while steel bars and scantrons, stand in the way of my actual growth. Despite being boxed into prepackaged ideas and values, I will not be who you want me to be.

I’ll let world know

I am

going to discover my true self and discover our power as individuals, as youth, as a unified collective, not competing, not dividing ourselves by these digits, dollar bills, and diplomas.

And I am

going to define myself,

push against these walls

that box us, make us smaller, to fit into society’s ideals

And as I stand here as the epitome of that ideal student,

who represents high averages and test scores,

I am going to

speak up, and name what I am:

powerful, different, resilient.

And I dare you-- to put behind your insecurities, and name what you are!

And if there’s one message I can give to humanity,

it’s that we, must live where we fear to live.
Abandoning our insecurities in search of something more

and only then, will we be infinite in our worth, in our power, in our love.

Infinite

and maybe beyond.

                                                                                    -Primi Akhtar

                                                                                    from her Valedictory Address

                                                                                    Queens Metropolitan High School

                                                                                    June 2014

Thank you and congratulations to the Class of 2014!

Teacher Diversity Committee Launches Petition at Harlem Book Fair

Sean Ahern, a long time friend, and one of the original founders of the idea of creating ICE (in a bar), has focused his attention for a decade on the teacher diversity issue. And that work is bearing fruit. Check out the numbers on the drop in hiring of black teachers posted in the petition. And the TDC has noticed that the number of white teachers has dropped too because many of the new "ideal" young white recruits leave and are replaced by -what else - other young white recruits.

I know that this can be a touchy issue for some - like what are they saying? White teachers can't teach black kids? Not at all. What this is about is what a black kid sees and thinks if 90% of the teachers they meet do not look like them. Reverse that and think of the impact if a white kid went to a school with few white teachers. That doesn't happen very often I imagine. Why not?

Dear Friends,

On Saturday July 12 the TDC of NYC launched our teacher diversity petition drive on a gorgeous summer day with the generous financial support from the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), Teachers Unite and the donation of a table by the Harlem Book Fair (see photo and petition attached).

Over the course of the day members of the TDC, MORE, Teachers Unite (TU), the Coalition for Public Education (CPE), The MANY,  and People's Power collected over 300 signatures and spread the news about the Bloomberg hiring policies and why a grassroots effort is needed to change them.  Members of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) were also present and supported the effort.  We welcome the support of all races and creeds and political persuasions to stop and reverse the disappearing of Black and Latino educators from NYC schools.  

Thanks to Anna Maria,  Peter, Michelle, Seku, Everett, Michele, Marc, Ernestine, Muba, Anne, Gail, and Benita for taking the time  to launch this petition. Thanks to Michele for a great banner that will fly proudly this fall as our petition grows!  If you are interested in supporting this effort contact the TDC of NYC at teacherdiversity@gmail.com.  Feel free to download the petition and collect signatures. Return signed petitions before Dec. 1 to Teacher Diversity c/o Ahern PO Box 1025, New York, NY 10002.  They will be presented to the December PEP.

Peace, 

Sean Ahern for the TDC of NYC

Right WingNuts - AFT Commies, Include GEM Truth About Charters in Attack

Thanks to Jeff Kaufman for this gem about the GEM pamphlet being part of the Maoist AFT.

Among the literature cited was a GEM pamphlet. See front page story second document. https://americarisingllc.app.box.com/s/nhc8m8cn227vrwcb19ht/1/2203186595/19026564373/1

American Federation of Communists

Pro-communist literature handed out at AFT conference

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Chinese protestors touting pictures of Mao Zedong / AP

BY: Bill McMorris
July 16, 2014 5:25 pm
Communist pamphleteers are using the American Federation of Teachers annual convention as a recruiting ground, according to a new video.
Men with Mao Zedong-emblazoned messenger bags distributed fliers to union members as they entered the Los Angeles convention center, where thousands of teachers have gathered to discuss the state of the nation’s second largest teachers union.
Communist literature has appeared throughout the convention floor. Issues of the communist newspaper Red Flag have also been handed out to teachers as they gathered to reelect president Randi Weingarten, one of the most influential Democrats in the nation and a leader of the shadowy Democracy Alliance.
The issue, which was found by conservative researchers at America Rising, features a front page story declaring, “Capitalist Attacks on Schools Demand Communist Response.”
The newspaper compared the debate over education reform to a bloody 1960s dispute between rival Chinese communists. Several radical students were beaten to death in 1968 after asserting that a Mao-appointed college administration was staffed by “pro-capitalist anti-revolutionaries.” That violence, according to the newspaper, is analogous to the American debate over school choice.
“This struggle helped to spark a monumental rebellion against ‘the people in party leadership taking the capitalist road,’” the photo caption said. “During this Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, leftwing workers and youth tried to transform education literally from the ground up.”
Participants at the AFT gathering were critical of education reformers and proponents of charter schools, as well as the Obama administration. A participant who claimed to be a Chicago teacher slammed Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan for not toeing the union line at a Tuesday meeting.
“We see the destructive policies [Duncan] has pursued … I think we have to name the name of the main architect of these policies, the man who has taken away everything we hold dear,” a man wearing an AFT delegate lanyard said. “We have to say that no matter who it is we are gonna [sic] come for you … if you come for what is ours we are gonna [sic] take you out.”
An AFT spokeswoman did not return request for comment.