NYSUT Comes to Town, Reminds Us We Need to Know Our Place

O.k. friends I am fresh from spending what seemed like an eternity but was only a few short hours with the brighter bulbs of my state wide union affiliates from NYSUT. If I had to use an analogy as one of our dear addled colleagues attempted to do in the waning hours of Town Hallism, I would say the message from NYSUT Prez Dick Ianuzzi was:  Hey folks I got us the best deal we could hope for : half a turd  sandwich. But look on the bright side, we don't have to eat the whole thing. 

Tell you what mes amis, if the Wyrd Sisters mixing up that nasty ass batch of brew on the beach in MacBeth ever earned the  sobriquet "equivocating hags," the mofos we think are looking out for us on a statewide level owe them a copyright infringement suit that would put spangly Faberget studded gloves on all of Michael Jackson's kids.

Dick Ianuzzi to his manifest discredit was totally at home playing the Chesire Cat in the low hanging branches of the Albany Kingdumb. He  clucked his tongue and sighed with heavy knowing whenever a real live rank and file, battle hardened teacher asked him to stop pussy footing and kick some ass. The patrician condescension in every response from this stiff who's tarried too long at the union dues trough boiled down to one simple premise : None of YOU know what I KNOW. And to that I say Dick, take a page from the Romney repatriation of illegals act and recall your talking pointed, out of touch, politically eunuchized self from service and make way for the next  Al Shanker or the  next Big Bill Haywood cause brother you aint nothing but another Randi Weingarten concession stand operator.

We need to be careful not to let our passions get the best of us says this NEA/AFT mouthpiece. What we need to do is remember that we are negotiating with enemies. Oh thanks Dick I thought Lil John King, Lil Mario Cuomo and the goddamned flatulent, dentured Board of Regents were our friends.

The Reagan/Bush what the fuck do I know? moment came when Hamburg Teacher Union President John Mrozek asked NYSUT Prez. Ianuzzi point blank, What's up with Hamburg, where the hell do we stand anyway, since our Sup crapped the bed and ruined all hopes of settlement on APPR?  Mrozek cleverly alluded to the  kitschy NYSUT notion introduced earlier that we are "a family" and referenced his own district as wayward children who wouldn't be corralled in essence by yet another megalomaniacal asshole posing as a Superintendent. Doesn't this out of touch dumbass  union hack try and tell the guy how he was on the phone at the wire when the deal failed to go down and he was talking to Mike Deeley and the union President, and.... and at this point, Maria Somebody who is going to serve on an Obama committee reminds him, "Dick, he IS the union president..." and anyone in the room who can find their APPR with both hands emits a heavy, union dues laden sigh and says, you don't even know who the fuck you're talking to and you are trying to bullshit him about where things are. He is the guy you were talking to and he has been left in the goddamned dark after risking life and limb for principle and you, the NYSUT dude don't even know who he is or that he was in on everything there was to be in on yet still he doesn't know squat. He is now asking you publicly what the hell did I get my membership into Dick? And your response is My dog ate my homework.

Another of this so called leader's aphorisms is "We don't do ourselves any good by dying on the barricades." Hmmmm. Is this Ghandi talking or is this more of the Randi Weingartenization of our unions? Well let's have another look here gutless wonder. After Bobby Sands and another 9 IRA prisoners starved themselves to death in the Maze Prison, Margaret Thatcher sacked the idiot who provoked this whole mess in the first place and essentially, in spite of what the 10 Downing Spinmeisters will tell us, CAPITULATED to practically ALL  of the IRA prisoner's demands.

 Not that I expect Phil Rumore to don traditional Subcontinental garb and enlist himself in a hunger strike but the principle remains intact whether it's 1947 or 2013. We are willing, we are angry, we are ready to stand up to the various bullies and billionaires who seek to demonize us and replace us with cheap interchangeable parts who don't talk back. And when we look for leadership we get fucking Eeyore whining that we need to be careful and there's a lotta bad and beware if I may wax Cat Stevensesque. Dick ianuzzi doesn't see any benefit from us dying on the barricades. Well I do. And if he has been so neutered by the bullies and billionaires that he'd advise us to keep cowering behind the barricades I can only ask you my friends, brothers, sisters and colleagues Don't be a Dick. Stand Up the way they did in Chicago. We have a template for success courtesy of CTU and their actions but with Bambi and Donn Knotts at the helm we may as well push carts at Wal Mart cause this is the saddest, wimpiest, most gutless, nutless brand of unionism I have ever seen. We deserve better. We need to demand better. Solidarity and Sanity. We need a MacDuff not another Polonius.  Peace.