<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content=text/html;charset=Windows-1252 http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.7600.16821"></HEAD>
<BODY style="PADDING-LEFT: 10px; PADDING-RIGHT: 10px; PADDING-TOP: 15px"
id=MailContainerBody leftMargin=0 topMargin=0 CanvasTabStop="true"
name="Compose message area">
<DIV><FONT face=Calibri>As an AFT member, I can say that Randi Weingarten does
not speak for me and many of the rank and file organizing
against/around bureaucrats like her in order to build a genuine fight-back. The
article below is from the AFT rank and file's perspective about the emerging
movement (from below) developing in the teachers unions in different parts of
the country and shows a different perspective than that of the bureaucratic
leadership.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Calibri>-Justin </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT
face=Calibri>--------------------------------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV>
<H1 class=print-title>Education Reform: The Real Deal</H1>
<DIV class=print-submitted><FONT face=Calibri><A
title="http://labornotes.org/print/blogs/2011/07/education-reform-real-deal
CTRL + Click to follow link"
href="http://labornotes.org/print/blogs/2011/07/education-reform-real-deal">http://labornotes.org/print/blogs/2011/07/education-reform-real-deal</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=print-submitted>By <EM>Mark Brenner</EM></DIV>
<DIV class=print-created>Created <EM>Jul 8 2011 - 1:05pm</EM></DIV>
<DIV class=print-content>
<DIV id=node-3456 class="node-story node"><SPAN class=submitted>by <STRONG>Mark
Brenner</STRONG> | Fri, 07/08/2011 - 1:05pm</SPAN> <SPAN class=clear></SPAN>
<DIV class=meta></DIV>
<DIV class=content>
<P>Tired of being scapegoats for all the ills of the public schools, 200
teachers from 15 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Mexico were in Chicago July 6
for the National Conference to Fight Back for Public Education.</P>
<P>The attendees—and there were more of them than organizers had expected—came
for a variety of reasons. All were upset about the attacks on teachers and
students. Some were already leading fights against the attacks as reform
officers in their locals. Many wanted to find out how fights were being carried
out in other cities. Others were dissatisfied with their locals or their
national unions.</P>
<P>Rob Panning-Miller, a Minneapolis high school teacher, said he wanted to hear
from the horse’s mouth how various “reforms” such as charter schools and new
forms of teacher evaluation are playing out on the ground for classroom
teachers. What he hears from his union’s national leaders about changes in
particular cities, he said, is often quite different from what teachers in that
city have to say.</P>
<P>Many at the meeting saw a lack of leadership in their national organizations,
the NEA and AFT, which have reacted to the demonization of teachers by endorsing
too many elements of President Obama’s “Race to the Top” agenda for schools.
That agenda relies on standardized testing, substitutes merit pay for seniority,
strips teacher tenure, ousts teachers deemed “ineffective,” and privatizes
public schools by converting them into non-union charter schools. </P>
<P>The effect is to place the many burdens of poor communities at teachers’ feet
and to encourage school districts to break the rules to show progress—as
scandals over cheating on tests in D.C. and Atlanta have shown.</P>
<P>Panning-Miller ousted a 22-year incumbent when he ran for president of the
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers in 2006. Now an executive board member, he
said teachers in the Twin Cities are grappling with the spread of charters. “The
district is essentially saying, ‘We don’t know how to educate your children, so
we’re giving up and contracting out,’” he said.</P>
<H3>No Joy in New York</H3>
<P>Kelley Wolcott, a Brooklyn high school teacher, was motivated to attend after
seeing the way her union, the United Federation of Teachers, navigated this
year’s city budget negotiations. </P>
<P>New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg slashed $1 billion from services—after
extracting another $60 million in concessions from teachers. Schools will see
2,600 teaching vacancies go unfilled as well.</P>
<P>Bloomberg had threatened for months to fire 4,000 teachers.</P>
<P>“It was devastating to see how the UFT operated, to see the lack of
democracy,” Wolcott said. “They didn’t care about people who had real things to
offer.” </P>
<P>Wolcott came to Chicago after spending two weeks in a tent city, dubbed
“Bloombergville,” erected outside New York’s city hall to protest budget cuts.
Now she’s convinced activists like herself need to do more to transform the
union.</P>
<P>“We want our union to serve the membership and the city as a whole,” she
said, adding that union leaders are “more sympathetic with the political agenda
in D.C. or Albany than what their members want or need.”</P>
<P>Nowhere was that more clear to attendees than in this week’s headlines. Their
conference was the day after the National Education Association’s annual
convention, during which the union officially joined the AFT in endorsing a type
of teacher evaluations that have led to mass firings in places like D.C.</P>
<P>Although the NEA convention endorsed Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential bid,
Rosa Jimenez, a Los Angeles high school teacher, was skeptical that putting more
union resources into elections was a winning strategy. “Look at what’s happening
in California,” she said.</P>
<P>The state returned to Democratic control with Governor Jerry Brown’s victory
last November, but Brown won’t close corporate tax loopholes or tax the rich,
and signed a budget that trimmed $3.4 billion from education.</P>
<P>“We put so much money into elections and it isn’t working,” Jimenez said,
advocating more money from the national unions to the locals to train teachers
to be organizers.</P>
<H3>Inspired by Reform Victories</H3>
<P>Wolcott said she was inspired by reform efforts inside union locals in cities
like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago, where the <A
href="http://coreteachers.com/" rel=nofollow>Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators
(CORE)</A> <SPAN class=print-footnote>[1]</SPAN> swept elections for top office
in the Chicago Teachers Union last year. “It’s a real ray of hope, that we can
fight back from the grassroots against this campaign to destroy us,” Wolcott
said. </P>
<P>CORE hosted the conference, organized together with <A
href="http://labornotes.org/2011/01/education-reform-union-way"
rel=nofollow>Progressive Educators for Action (PEAC)</A> <SPAN
class=print-footnote>[2]</SPAN>, the reform caucus inside the Los Angeles
Teachers union.</P>
<P>Even where reformers have won power, they haven’t been able to beat back all
the attacks that hurt teachers and students, as both PEAC and CORE members
testified.</P>
<P>Chicago’s mayor just rescinded teachers’ scheduled raises, while state
legislators passed a bill weakening seniority, advancing performance evaluations
that could be tied to student test scores, and erecting high hurdles before
teachers can strike. The Los Angeles teachers union agreed to a contract this
month with four furlough days. The schools will lose 2,000 library aides and
counselors.</P>
<H3>Where to Find the Money</H3>
<P>But the Chicago Teachers Union is engaged in a campaign with potential. The
union is targeting the financial sector, saying that rather than take advantage
of deals made in flush times, Bank of America and other big banks should
renegotiate financing contracts that are costing the school system $35 million a
year.</P>
<P>After the conference, participants rallied with the CTU at Bank of America.
The union held a march and rally after meeting with the banks the day
before.</P>
<P>The union is also demanding that the city reshape its spending priorities.
Chicago drains $250 million yearly from schools and doles out cash to
politically connected developers and big banks through a “tax-increment
financing” scheme, which was supposed to subsidize development in blighted areas
but instead handed out millions to build luxury housing and big-box retail
stores.</P>
<P>“There are over 100 schools that don’t have stand-alone libraries because
Chicago’s elected officials are spending millions on political patronage and
calling it economic development,” said Jesse Sharkey, CTU vice president.</P>
<P>The union has rallied teachers, parents, and community members to mount
actions, including taking over the showroom floor of one of the largest TIF
recipients, a Chrysler dealership in Chicago's tony Gold Coast. A CTU-sponsored
People’s City Council Meeting—a community town hall—drew 1,200 parents,
teachers, and students and 15 council members yesterday for a listening
session.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt Tahoma">
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #f5f5f5">
<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=norissa.gastelum@gmail.com
href="mailto:norissa.gastelum@gmail.com">Norissa Gastelum</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, July 07, 2011 11:24 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=educationforall@lists.aktivix.org
href="mailto:educationforall@lists.aktivix.org">educationforall@lists.aktivix.org</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [Educationforall] Article: Head of US teachers’ union
decries danger of “revolution”</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Possible discussion article for the next meeting.
<BR>-Norissa<BR><BR><BR>" Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who addressed the 2010
AFT national convention, has given the union millions of dollars. In return, the
AFT has helped implement joint labor-management “teacher effectiveness” projects
across the country, which include performance-based “merit” pay and other tools
to further victimize teachers.......<B>To say that the AFT is in the pocket of
the corporate and financial aristocracy in the United States is no figure of
speech. Having seen the loss of dues income—resulting from their complicity in
the destruction of hundreds of thousands of teachers’ jobs—the union executives
have secured new sources of revenue from billionaire opponents of public
education. In return, the AFT has assumed the role of a labor syndicate,
disciplining teachers, opposing any struggle, and guaranteeing school districts
and charter schools a supply of highly exploited, cheap
labor."<BR></B><BR><BR><BR><BR>
<DIV id=content>
<H2>Head of US teachers’ union decries danger of “revolution”</H2>
<H5>By Walter Gilberti and Jerry White <BR>21 June 2011</H5>
<P>Earlier this month, the president of the American Federation of Teachers
(AFT), Randi Weingarten, visited Detroit to meet with local union officials. The
AFT-affiliated Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) has increasingly faced
opposition by teachers for its complicity in the destruction of their jobs and
living standards and in plans to privatize the public schools.</P>
<P>DFT President Keith Johnson, who barely won reelection in a January vote that
was widely believed to be rigged, worked closely with Weingarten, then-Detroit
schools Financial Manager Robert Bobb and Detroit Mayor Bing to ram through a
contract in 2009 that cut teachers’ pay by $10,000, destroyed seniority and
tenure protections, and integrated the DFT into the process of firing so-called
“underperforming” teachers.</P>
<P>Like Johnson, Weingarten is a thoroughly discredited figure. She has
collaborated with the Obama administration’s attack on public education on a
national scale and overseen the destruction of the gains won by educators over
decades of struggle. She has cultivated the closest of ties with the bitterest
opponents of public education.</P>
<P>Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who addressed the 2010 AFT national
convention, has given the union millions of dollars. In return, the AFT has
helped implement joint labor-management “teacher effectiveness” projects across
the country, which include performance-based “merit” pay and other tools to
further victimize teachers.</P>
<P>At a meeting of roughly 100 school-level building representatives at the DFT
headquarters, Johnson introduced Weingarten with the comment, “We are a school
district and profession in crisis.”</P>
<P>The AFT leader began her comments with a demagogic attack on “anti-union,
anti-teacher, anti-government people [who] are attacking public education by
dividing, dehumanizing, delegitimizing and de-funding.” The union, she said, was
the “force against the power of evil” and the only organization that “fights at
the bargaining table and the ballot box.”</P>
<P>Her remarks were aimed at presenting the Republicans as the sole opponents of
public education, while whitewashing the role of the Obama administration and
the Democrats. The AFT backs the Democrats at the ballot box not because they
defend teachers. They do not. The AFT does so because the Democrats carry out
their anti-teacher attacks with the assistance of the unions, thereby preserving
the institutional and financial interests of union executives like Weingarten
and Johnson.</P>
<P>The AFT president soon got around to her most important point: the attack on
public education was provoking massive opposition in the working class, which
could escalate into a threat to the entire corporate and political order.</P>
<P>Weingarten said she did not want a “Les Mis strategy” or “to see kids
fighting a revolution.” The AFT, she said, knew “the right way to fight,”
pointing to the 2009 contract in Detroit as the “foundation to stop this
attack.”</P>
<P>In the context of the bitter struggle to defend education that teachers,
parents and youth confront, Weingarten’s reference to “revolution” and “Les
Mis”—the award-winning musical based on the famous work <EM>Les Miserables</EM>
by 19<SUP>th</SUP> century French novelist Victor Hugo—is telling.</P>
<P>Hugo’s work tells the story of the initial revolutionary struggles of the
French working class, lower-middle classes and urban poor in the 1830s against
the retrenchment of monarchial rule following the disintegration of Napoleonic
Europe. It focuses on the life of Jean Valjean—a laborer imprisoned for 19 years
for stealing a loaf of bread who ends up fighting on the barricades during the
June 1832 rebellion in Paris.</P>
<P>In her association of the current struggle with these earlier revolutionary
upheavals in Europe, Weingarten expresses fear of the growing radicalization of
teachers and other sections of the working class. She is aware of what is being
said by teachers and workers--the disappointment and anger over Obama and his
complete support for Wall Street. The words “capitalism,” “revolution,” even
“socialism” are increasingly heard. Workers see the upheavals in Egypt, Greece,
or Wisconsin, for that matter, and express solidarity and a desire to emulate
these struggles.</P>
<P>The metaphor of the street barricade--which commonly divided the
revolutionary elements from the forces of reaction in so many struggles
throughout 19th century Europe—is particularly apt. Weingarten is well aware
that in the coming upheavals she and her fellow labor executives will be with
the ruling elite on the other side of the barricades.</P>
<P>Like other officials within the AFL-CIO hierarchy, Weingarten is part of an
increasingly wealthy upper-middle class stratum whose incomes are out of the
reach of ordinary teachers. According to the <EM>Wall Street Journal</EM>,
Weingarten received total compensation of more than $600,000 for 2010, including
$194,188 accrued from New York City’s United Federation of Teachers before she
left to become president of the AFT. Her counterpart in the National Education
Association, Dennis Van Roekel, received $397,721 in salary and benefits.</P>
<P>These sums were amassed while the unions signed contracts robbing underpaid
teachers of thousands of dollars each year and sanctioned the destruction of
their jobs. At the same time, the union officials sit on corporate and political
boards where they aid and abet corporate interests and the Obama administration
in the destruction of public education.</P>
<P>During the course of the Detroit meeting, one building representative asked
Weingarten why the AFT accepted $6.3 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, which, under the name of school “reform,” was spearheading the
attack on teachers and the spread of charter schools.</P>
<P>Weingarten’s answer should be posted above every under-served and overcrowded
classroom in the Detroit Public Schools: “I am proud of getting money from
Gates,” she said. “The more money we get from Gates, the less we take from union
members. I refuse to be demonized by billionaires. If they want to give us
money--fine.”</P>
<P>To say that the AFT is in the pocket of the corporate and financial
aristocracy in the United States is no figure of speech. Having seen the loss of
dues income—resulting from their complicity in the destruction of hundreds of
thousands of teachers’ jobs—the union executives have secured new sources of
revenue from billionaire opponents of public education. In return, the AFT has
assumed the role of a labor syndicate, disciplining teachers, opposing any
struggle, and guaranteeing school districts and charter schools a supply of
highly exploited, cheap labor.</P>
<P>At the height of the mass demonstrations of workers and students in Wisconsin
earlier this year, Weingarten was attending a conference with Obama’s Education
Secretary, Arne Duncan, charter schools advocates and billionaire foundation
representatives in Denver, Colorado. The topics of discussion centered on how
best to institute Obama’s “Race to the Top” education agenda and insure the
removal of the “incompetent” teachers supposedly infesting the education
system.</P>
<P>Weingarten’s praise for Gates was apparently too much even for the generally
friendly crowd of DFT representatives. Replying to a few moans and groans from
the audience, Weingarten pointed to Johnson and said, “Don’t call this man a
sellout or me a sellout. We can’t win by screaming--I’ve fought Giuliani and
Bloomberg--we’re in a different time now.”</P>
<P>In her 14 years as president of the UFT in New York, Weingarten collaborated
with the mayor’s office. Nevertheless, her reference to “a different time now”
makes it clear that the union executives have thrown in their lot entirely with
the corporate and political enemies of public education, asking only that they
be made junior partners.</P>
<DIV id=article-tools>
<P>Share this article:</P>
<UL>
<LI><A class=facebook
href="http://facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles%2F2011%2Fjun2011%2Fwein-j21.shtml&t=Head%20of%20US%20teachers%E2%80%99%20union%20decries%20danger%20of%20%E2%80%9Crevolution%E2%80%9D"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>Facebook</A>
<LI><A class=twitter
href="http://twitter.com/share?original_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles%2F2011%2Fjun2011%2Fwein-j21.shtml&text=Head%20of%20US%20teachers%E2%80%99%20union%20decries%20danger%20of%20%E2%80%9Crevolution%E2%80%9D&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles%2F2011%2Fjun2011%2Fwein-j21.shtml"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>Twitter</A>
<LI><A class=digg
href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&bodytext=&tags=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles%2F2011%2Fjun2011%2Fwein-j21.shtml&title=Head%20of%20US%20teachers%E2%80%99%20union%20decries%20danger%20of%20%E2%80%9Crevolution%E2%80%9D"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>Digg</A>
<LI><A class=reddit
href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles%2F2011%2Fjun2011%2Fwein-j21.shtml&title=Head%20of%20US%20teachers%E2%80%99%20union%20decries%20danger%20of%20%E2%80%9Crevolution%E2%80%9D"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>Reddit</A>
<LI><A class=delicious
href="http://delicious.com/post?v=2&notes=&tags=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles%2F2011%2Fjun2011%2Fwein-j21.shtml&title=Head%20of%20US%20teachers%E2%80%99%20union%20decries%20danger%20of%20%E2%80%9Crevolution%E2%80%9D"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>Delicious</A>
<LI><A class=stumble
href="http://stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://wsws.org/articles/2011/jun2011/wein-j21.shtml&title=Head%20of%20US%20teachers%E2%80%99%20union%20decries%20danger%20of%20%E2%80%9Crevolution%E2%80%9D"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>StumbleUpon</A>
<LI><A class=blogger
href="http://blogger.com/blog_this.pyra?t&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles%2F2011%2Fjun2011%2Fwein-j21.shtml&n=Head%20of%20US%20teachers%E2%80%99%20union%20decries%20danger%20of%20%E2%80%9Crevolution%E2%80%9D"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>Blogger</A>
<LI><A class=email
href="http://wsws.org/tools/index.php?page=sendlink&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles%2F2011%2Fjun2011%2Fwein-j21.shtml&title=Head%20of%20US%20teachers%E2%80%99%20union%20decries%20danger%20of%20%E2%80%9Crevolution%E2%80%9D"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>E-Mail</A> </LI></UL></DIV></DIV><A
href="http://wsws.org/articles/2011/jun2011/wein-j21.shtml">http://wsws.org/articles/2011/jun2011/wein-j21.shtml</A><BR>
<P>
<HR>
<P></P>_______________________________________________<BR>Educationforall
mailing
list<BR>Educationforall@lists.aktivix.org<BR>https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/educationforall<BR></BODY></HTML>