Epiphany 3/8/2015: Our Top Teachers Union "Leaders" Are Working Against Us

Now that our dear friend and Democrat Kathy Hochul has wastebasketed her moronic "Don'tStealPossible" t-shirt/toque combo and restyled that vintage Betty Crocker coiffe of hers I  imagine she's got a "Thank You" card  or is it a "There, Now We're Even" card to write to full time Dumbocrat Apparatchik and part time union hack Randi Weingarten. I wasn't aware until recently that Weingrovel's robocalls on behalf of the Cuomo ticket helped tip last fall's primary lead away from Tim Wu and back towards Charter Rally Keynote Speaker Kathy Hochul. Like a lot of members in teacher's unions I was completely stupefied by the outrageous fact that a union president of such high profile was stumping for a ticket that promised nothing but destruction for teachers and their unions. To learn later on that Wu's people admitted their lead disappeared about the same time Weingarten got on the horn and assured everyone that Kathy Hochul was our kinda gal is like a 50 pound bag of rock salt stomped into the sucking chest wound. It's damning enough that she agreed to do it, but the fact that it served to install Kathy Hochul as Lieutenant Governor instead of Tim Wu is nothing short of unforgiveable.

And since the illusion of Weingrovel representing the rights and interest of teachers in any meaningful way has been entirely and irreversibly shattered I think I am beginning to understand the rest of this Gordian knot our union "leadership" is using to flog members into believing they give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about us.

Fact is they simply don't.

Let me say it again.  Union leadership from the heads of AFT and NEA do not give a shit about teachers or their rights or their livelihoods.  How could they? Well now they might in a really, really abstract ethereal way -- the way people think slapping a bumper magnet on the Explorer actually supports some poor 20 year old Army enlistee in Helmand Province getting shelled and sniped at by Taliban girl haters. It might make you feel good in the mall parking lot but it's not doing squat for the kid hunkered down taking fire from all sides.

When people like Lily (NEA) and Weinie (AFT) -- both of whom rabidly support Common Core in the face of hundreds of thousands of consitiuents who despise it-- spout their pithy sound bytes they comfort themselves that they've shown solidarity with the rank and file. Essentially they've just affixed an "I Support the Teachers" magnet to their Democratic Party fueled vehicles. They return to Democrat HQ for further orders smugly self satisfied with the delusion that they "have our backs" while rank and filers are hemmed in by Danielson drive-bys, SLOs PLAs, PARCCs, Pearson's Annual April Foolery here in NY and any number of other forms of harrassment put in play by the ed reform class in their ceaseless effort to destroy public education, deprofessionalize teaching and transfer public assets into private pockets. 

In the lamest most painless symbolic expression possible, people like Randi Weingrovel, Mikey Mulgarten, Karen McWhoo? and the rest of the NYSUT cast of hundreds enjoying fat non teaching paychecks care about teachers. But that caring ends abruptly when they get their orders from Dumbocrat Central Office to get in line, support the test and punish regimen, support the Common Core metastasis into our classrooms, support any and everyone on the privatization, corporate ed reform train. Support the very people who are working overtime to destroy public education.

I can imagine a memo coming across their ipad screens instructing them :

• Dare your members to figure out what you're doing and call you out on it. Dare them. And when they do, which they will, eventually, you need to go to your clipboard of canned responses and accuse them of creating division.
• Insist you are working for them round the clock and redirect them to take their fight to some easy strawman like the Koch Bros, ALEC or hedge fund managers. Be sure not to point them at Democrats for Ed Reform though because they are hedge managers and millionaires working against public education but they are OUR hedge fund millionaires. 

I've often wondered to myself about "the real enemies" of rank and file membership and the only sane conclusion I can reach based reading, observing them in action and listening to informed and intelligent teacher friends and colleagues is we have no bigger enemy, no more dangerous foe right now than so called union leadership who work against us at every turn to preserve their own comfortable life styles and facilitate the destruction of unions as we know them.  

When so called union leadership opposes the adoption of Opt Out resolutions as Mulgarten's UFT flunkies did a few weeks back 

and when so called union leadership threatens to punch anyone in the face who tries to take Common Core Standards away from him as the same guy did last summer (even though he doesn't use them and very likely has no idea what they even say)

and when the largest teacher union in NY helps bully WFP into endorsing Andrew Cuomo while the President of the Second largest union in the country agrees to do robocalls for the same guy's running mate I think we've got a case here folks. 

Mulgrew is a pivotal figure in all of this mess as his loyalty oath sworn UFT bobbleheads comprise the voting block that gives Weingarten an insurmountable head start in the AFT elections. Likewise in the NYSUT election the same guy using the same oath bound droolers put Karen McWho on third base and in scoring position before a single vote was even cast.  When all of this energy keeps propping up people whose policies attack and villify teachers I think you'd have to be a moron to believe for one second that Weinie or Lily or Mikey or Karen are lifting a single finger on your behalf. Oh they're lifting a finger all right but it's not on behalf of teachers. It's more in line with the one we've been getting from this clown for how many years now? 

The Reformer in Chief Shares a Message with Public School Teachers

If you want to quiz Weingrovel on any of this I am sure she's lurking on twitter spinning her endless webs of bullshit and half truthery. And if you can't find her there maybe head on down to West Virginia where state legislators are trying to unload Common Core and Randi is leading the fight to save it. You can read all about Weingarten's Vichy efforts here on Mercedes Schneider's blog.