Revised (Corrected) Update: UFT's MORE Caucus Wins the Moral Victory

REVISED UPDATE: UFT ELECTION ANALYSIS --INCLUDING INCLUDING TABLE ON TURNOUT ISSUES-- FOLLOWS THE ELECTION DETAILS; NEW ACTION EXECUTIVE BOARD ASSUMPTIONS
MORE (Movement of Rank and File Educators) Bests New Action 2 to 1, Taking New Position as #2 Caucus, across a few divisional levels.
Considering the brazen negligence of the union to emphasize the United Federation of Teachers election, what with the buttons and posters for the municipal elections while keeping the union election on the hush-hush, this is a relative victory for the new MORE caucus.
Also, the union, cynically knowing that it has a lock on the retiree vote, rigged the rules to allow the retirees to have greater power.
An interesting question is how many unions allow their retirees to vote?

* * *
REVISED ICE-UFT REPORT
It is very telling how the Unity capitalizes on voter alienation, demobilization and simple apathy; yet in spite of all this, MORE bested New Action. The most striking voting result feature is that Unity won a minority plurality (45 percent) at the high school level. Translation: at the high school level, a majority oppose the Unity leadership.
The stark facts as reported at the ICE-UFT blog:

Here are the slate numbers for the 2013 and 2010 elections.

2013 High Schools Ballots Returned: 3808 Votes Counted: 3595
MORE: 1430 (40%) NEW ACTION: 452 (13%) UNITY: 1592 (45%)
The remainder are people who split their ballot.
2010 High Schools Votes Counted: 5203
ICE-TJC: 1369 NEW ACTION: 774 UNITY: 2595

2013 Middle Schools Ballots Returned: 1879 Votes Counted: 1875
MORE: 398 (21%) NEW ACTION: 161 (9%) UNITY: 1185 (63%)
The remainder are people who split their ballot.
2010 Middle Schools: Slate Votes Counted: 2881
ICE-TJC: 248 NEW ACTION: 421 UNITY: 1981

2013 Functionals (non teachers) Ballots Returned: 7704 Ballots Counted: 7113
MORE: 951 (13%) NEW ACTION: 754 (11%) UNITY: 5167 (73%)
The remainder are people who split their ballot.

2013 Elementary Schools Ballots Mailed: 34,163 Ballots Returned: 7331 Ballots Counted: 6870
MORE: 1140 (17%) NEW ACTION: 534 (8%) UNITY: 5111 (74%)
The remaining votes are those who split their ballot.
2010 Elementary Ballots Returned: 10,292
ICE-TJC: 703 NEW ACTION: 978 UNITY: 7337

2013 Retirees Ballots Mailed: 58,357 Ballots Returned: 22,462
MORE: 1490 (7%) NEW ACTION: 1880 (8%) UNITY: 18,155 (81%)

TOTAL SLATE VOTES, 2013: 40,400
MORE: 5409 (13.4%) NEW ACTION: 3781 (9.4%) UNITY: 31,210 (77.2%)

Something is wrong with the UFT electoral system when New Action gets only 13% of the high school votes but wins half of the UFT Executive Board seats for the high schools while MORE's 40% will get MORE no representation on the Executive Board.
It is obvious that a clear majority of the high school teachers who vote do not want a Unity monopoly on power. Had this been a traditional two party UFT election, there would be truly independent opposition representation (no Unity cross endorsement needed).
Two other stories emerge at first glance. First, the turnout was pitiful as only 43,138 ballots are being counted. More significantly, 22,462 of those votes are from retirees. That constitutes 52% of the voters. I would question if having retirees as the majority of the electorate is healthy for the union.
In addition, Mulgrew's vote will more than likely drop in a major way compared to 2010 among active UFT members. It appears many members did not vote for the opposition but they certainly didn't vote for the incumbent. For the next election, those members need to be persuaded to vote.

* * *

POST-ELECTION ELECTORAL ANALYSIS:
Before any Unity operative or any media journalist bandies about president Michael Mulgrew's apparent 84 percent victory, certain hard facts need to be acknowledged. A close examination of these facts will blow away any pretense that this election victory is any kind of victory that Unity or New Action can be proud of, let alone claim a mandate.
A crucial part of the story is that 52% of the voters in the 2013 vote were retirees, as the ICE-UFT blog, the source of the above details, attests.
(This is an essential fact that Unity caucus' press release, hosted on the UFT website, conveniently skips over.) This shows that Unity is very cynical in terms of how deeply it attempts to cultivate support among the rank and file.
--That it relies on people that are finished with the New York City educational system.
Unity cultivates the retiree bloc, touting member benefits. Yet, as an observer of the UFT scene noted three years ago, this allows Unity to ignore actual conditions of working in the classroom.

NEW ACTION GETS 9% - ANTICIPATES GETTING 18 PERCENT OF EXECUTIVE BOARD SEATS New Action, the caucus that fuses with the dominant Unity caucus, is such a bemusing entity. Sells its soul for seats at the table. It is a total cognitive disconnect, it ignores that its partner Unity brings on the train of conditions that are destroying our working conditions. Their latest blogpost acknowledges that its nine percent of the vote was a set-back. It ignores that it lost its number 2 position to MORE. Yet, due to its power sharing agreement (in exchange for not challenging president Mulgrew [Unity]) it gets executive board seats. By my math, if they are getting 10 seats out of 55 they are getting 18% of the executive board seats.

WHY THE JANUARY, 2013 EXPANSION OF THE RETIREE VOTE ALLOTMENT?
Furthermore, Unity, recognizing the huge pro-Unity skew among retired voters, and their greater proportional turnout, reconfigured the voting rules in January, 2013, to expand the pull of retired members. See this piece from Gotham Schools, this March:

Certain to make an impact are retirees, whose votes go overwhelmingly to Unity. It’s worth watching how big that impact turns out to be, since those votes have gained influence through a rule change made by the UFT this January. The total number of retirees’ votes counted had been capped at 18,000 since 1989, which meant that an individual retiree’s vote counted for less than an active member’s vote — about seven-tenths of a vote in 2010. The union raised that cap to 23,500 retiree votes in January, and because a high percentage of retirees vote, Mulgrew could potentially receive an even higher share of the votes than in 2010.

But, why the January, 2013 expansion of the retiree vote allotment? Could it be that Unity was facing a strong challenge from the MORE caucus? Note how no division other than retirees went over 74 percent for the Unity slate, yet the winning percent that Unity is able to cite is 84 percent. The retiree vote was instrumental in allowing that to reach that level.

Serving, retired	2007	2010	2013
In-service	24989	29005	20722
Retirees	22427	24978	22462
Total	47416	53983	43184

Yet, the counted retiree votes were capped at 18,000 in the 2007, 2010 elections. As Anna Phillips said, writing during in the 2010 election, the concern was that retirees could “outnumber active UFT members and effectively govern the union.” The cap was raised in January, 2013, to 23,500. (Funny how that figure was reached. 22,427 was the number of retirees voting in 2007.) Given that retirees voted at 52 percent of the total voters in 2013, for the first time in the majority of votes cast (see above table), they do now govern the union.
In March, Mulgrew went to Florida to speak at a retirees' luncheon. We imagine that if he were an in-service teacher, like Julie Cavanagh, the MORE presidential candidate, he might be inconvenienced to make a long-distance trip during a non-vacation time.

HOW PROGRESSIVE TEACHERS SHOULD APPROACH THE RETIREE QUESTION
Nevertheless, this should not be a point of antagonism by progressive teachers. What we should be pointing out is that the Unity faction is collaborating with conditions that will make it far harder for teachers to have the opportunity to reach and enjoy retirement as the retirees are enjoying. Unity has ceded the narrative of education failure to the deformers. Related to this is Unity's agreeing to the quota of seven percent of teachers per year targeted for termination via unsatisfactory ratings. With all the ramped up stress that teachers are going through --that Unity is not fighting, but just counseling teachers on how to comply with the mandates that it has never questioned-- the Danielson Frameworks, the Common Core, the data binders, the increased administrator/network leaders (or consultants) harassment, it is likely that there are thousands that will quit the profession, for their physical and mental health, and thus not be able to enjoy a full UFT retirement. Progressive teachers need to find a way to reach retirees to let them know how their union has acceded to working conditions that are thoroughly nightmarish compared to what they experienced.
LOW TURNOUT ACROSS DIVISIONS, BUT MUCH HIGHER TURNOUT FOR RETIREES

Division	Ballots mailed	Ballots returned	Percentage participating in vote
High schools	19040	3808	20.0 %
Middle schools	10807	1879	17.4 %
Elementary schools	34163	7331	21.5 %
Functional,	51040	7704	15.1 %
Retirees	58357	22462	38.5 %

PRONOUNCED ACROSS THE BOARD DECLINE IN TURNOUT IN EVERY DIVISION
It is striking that that there has been a fall-off in turn-out, across the school level types.
The anemic turnout can really be cast as the doing of the Unity caucus, for the union did little to authentically get the message out that there was an election. Beyond that, before and during the election, it has kept the members in a passive alienated state, it has the president and district reps speak in a loud barking style, as though that serves the members. It does not foster mass participation; it fosters a jolted state on the part of the listener. This is how Unity likes things.
Never will you hear Unity sincerely reach out and listen to the members, as UFT ELECTIONS: A VICTORY FOR MORE," as MORE pledges to do in the next three years.
TURNOUT IN SOME OTHER RACES The turnout among the practicing teachers was pronouncedly low –even lower than the turnout of registered New York State voters in the last presidential election.

Entity	Election	Turnout measure	Turnout rate
New York State,	2012 presidential election, general election	Voting-eligible population, ballots counted turnout rate	53.6 %

Source: “2012 General Election Turnout Rates,” United States Election Project, Department of Public and International Affairs, George Mason University, March 25, 2013
NO ADDRESSING OF THE RETIREE SKEW, CITED ON THE OCCASION OF THE LAST ELECTION THREE YEARS AGO
Excerpt from April 12, 2010 piece by Rick Hess, "Voice of Classroom Teachers Stifled... By UFT Election Rules," at Education Week, April 12, 2010

What you might find surprising about the UFT election, though, was the degree to which it was dominated by people who aren't teachers. Might this help explain the UFT's focus on gold-plated health care, pensions, and employee prerogatives, even at the expense of measures to attract talent or address instructional quality?
In last week's UFT election, 28% of the 36,907 elementary teachers voted, 20% of the 11,697 middle school teachers voted, and 30% of the 19,931 high school teachers voted. The result: a total of 18,713 ballots were cast by elementary, middle, and high school teachers. (These data are all available at New York City's Education Notes Online).
Those teacher ballots were swamped by votes from retirees and "functional" teachers. What exactly is a "functional teacher," you ask? Good question. The UFT New Teacher Handbook reports that examples include "attendance teachers; guidance counselors; hearing educational services; laboratory specialists and technicians; nurses and therapists; paraprofessionals; school secretaries; social workers and psychologists; [and] speech teachers." There are 45,889 functional teachers. Twenty percent voted, yielding 10,629 ballots.
And the union's 53,560 retirees voted at a 50% rate, yielding 24,978 ballots. Now, a recent rule change diluted the impact of retiree votes so that they count "only" for about 0.7 of a standard vote. This adjustment meant that the retirees cast the equivalent of about 18,000 votes. As Anna Phillips at GothamSchools reports, active union members voted at about a 24% rate, while the 53,000 retired members voted at a rate of about twice that.
So, do the math. From classroom teachers: 18,713 votes. From nurses, lab specialists, school secretaries, and such: 10,629 votes. From retirees (after their votes were diluted): 18,000 votes. So, 60% of the votes counted were not cast by active classroom teachers. That doesn't make it easy for reformers focused on improving work conditions and pay for today or tomorrow's teachers to marshal the votes for change.

Another observer of the election scene, Mike Antonucci, addressed this skew and Mulgrew's special advantage:

The largest teacher’s union local in the nation sent out 173,407 ballots, of which 43,138 were returned (about 25%). The most interesting detail is that Mulgrew received 34,919 votes, even though only 20,722 ballots were returned by working public education employees. How is that possible? Because 22,462 ballots came back from retirees – including many from Florida, where [the] UFT has offices, and Mulgrew can visit on the union’s dime, but his challenger cannot.

Is it any wonder, then, that the NYC Educator blog penned its latest post, "The United Federation of Retired Teachers"?

UNITY NEVER DEBATED IN ANY FORUM, live or Internet-discursive
MORE has won the moral debate. MORE and its lead members have consistently expressed deep concern for the issues surrounding education today. For example, here is Julie Cavanagh's November, 2012 statement on Race to the Top. And here is a critique, April, 2013, of Unity/New Action's Mulgrew's endorsement of Race to the Top, and a lengthy piece, also this April, with a deep analysis into the profound threats to New York City teachers, and Unity's role in abetting by these threats.
Unity and New Action's leader, Michael Mulgrew, shied away from ever debating MORE's presidential candidate.
Aside from a few weakly argued posts at a pro-Unity blog, Unity never defended its atrocious record. All of that receding from engaging the issues or defending its strategic posture or record, all the while, MORE's blog and about half a dozen blogs in New York City (in fact, all teacher blogs except for one) consistently plugged for MORE.
MORE on the other hand, has had its members appear in print, radio and television media, opposing the Unity perspective of education in the couple of years prior to the election. Never did Unity's Mulgrew appear in like media and directly articulate why he takes the strategy of mass professional suicide that Unity is pursuing.

REVISED UPDATE: UFT's MORE Caucus Wins the Moral Victory

UFT ELECTION ANALYSIS --INCLUDING TURNOUT FALLOFF-- FOLLOWS THE ELECTION DETAILS
Please see revised, updated post of Saturday, April 27, 2013.

Questions Mulgrew Still Has Not Answered About Evaluation Deals

Here is a Movement of Rank and File Educators (UFT) handbill of "Ten Questions for President Mulgrew About the Evaluation Deal," from spring, 2012.
Covering issues ranging from evaluations, evaluation deals, whether such deals will go to a membership vote, TDRs, observation appeals, "validators," PIP+, the new burden of proof on teachers (rather than the New York City Department of Education) to prove that they are not ineffective, mandated unannounced observations, test-based evaluations, most of these issues are still not properly resolved, and these issues point to the central failure of New Action / Unity's Michael Mulgrew's tendency to make easy deals with mayor Michael Bloomberg for the sake of making deals. Essentially, these topics point to many of the ways that Mulgrew has failed to properly lead the membership. X the slate box to Vote Julie Cavanagh for UFT president, and the rest of the MORE slate.

X the Slate Box for MORE in the UFT Election (See article for MORE's 2nd leaflet)

The stakes in the United Federation of Teachers election are high. The choice is clear: continue the path of the destruction of the teaching profession (that the New Action and Unity caucuses' Mulgrew has helped to carry out) as a viable long-term career, saddled by the endless contract-breaking give-backs plus the curricular travesty of the Common Core, or vote for a positive alternative leadership caucus with a vision of fairness for teachers and students.
In the United Federation of Teachers elections this month, say good-bye to Unity and X the slate box for MORE caucus. Beat the April 24 deadline; mail in your ballot now. Download the full leaflet at this address.

MOVEMENT OF RANK and FILE EDUCATORS
www.morecaucusnyc.org
The UFT elections are upon us.
UFT members have a choice for new officers, and MORE believes that this choice can make a difference. The Movement of Rank and File Educators believes the teachers union can and should be the fighting force to defend public education for all students. In the classroom we will fight for small class sizes, rich curriculum, push back on the testing regime and an end of harassment and incessant paperwork. Outside the classroom we will demand a fair contract and democratic governance of our schools instead of simply waiting for a new mayor.
We will partner with parents, communities and other unions because we understand that our teaching conditions are our students learning conditions, and together we can make a difference.

Ballots are out April 3 and are
due back April 24 by mail.
We urge you and any UFT members you know to vote for a positive leadership for our UFT. In past elections less than a quarter of the active UFT membership voted for their leadership. Please spread the word to Get Out the Vote and vote in a positive alternative leadership.

Vote MORE!
Demand MORE from the UFT.
No more waiting, no more concessions to billionaire mayors
and the corporate reform agenda that ignores the needs of students, teachers and communities. Together let's build a movement to fight for the quality public education that every students deserves!

HELP US CHANGE OUR UNION
Vote MORE in the election and encourage all the UFT members you know to do the same.

Forward this message to friends, relatives, activists circles and ask them to do the same.

Watch and share our video at: http://morecaucusnyc.org/2013/03/

For more ideas on how to help GET OUT THE VOTE for MORE, please visit http://morecaucusnyc.org/2013/02/19/get-out-the-vote/

WWW.MORECAUCUSNYC.ORG

“In the last ten years, in a departure from the roots of our union’s founding, the leadership has failed to organize and mobilize the membership at the time we have needed their leadership the most. The tidal wave of unprecedented attacks on our profession, our schools and our children will not stop with a new mayor. It is time for change. It is time we demand MORE from our union.”
--Julie Cavanagh, MORE’s candidate for UFT president

Weingarten, Tisch gave in '13 to Bill Thompson for mayor; Mulgrew for mayoral control in 2002, 2009 and supports it in 2013

Uh oh, what a combination: William Thompson as New York City mayor, supporter of mayoral control; plus Michael Mulgrew as United Federation of Teachers president, supporter of mayoral control, as you can see at this November 2009 conference video, sitting to the right of New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, and supported it at last month's UFT Delegate Assembly. He has the chutzpah to say that mayoral control's 2009 form gave parents a "stronger voice."
-->>This week, you have the chance to change the latter part of this equation: replace Mulgrew with Julie Cavanagh of the MORE caucus as UFT president.

And now we see that Thompson has received four figure donations from Randi Weingarten and Merryl Tisch.

Credit Geoff Decker, Gotham Schools for scooping this story:

Bill Thompson lags behind his Democratic rivals in fundraising, but he’s out in front in one area of interest: support from high-profile education officials.

As he has ramped up his fund-raising efforts in recent months, Thompson has raked in thousands of dollars in donations from notable public figures in education, including American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and, most recently, Matthew Goldstein, chancellor of the City University of New York, filings show.

Weingarten, who worked closely with Thompson when the pair overlapped during previous city education posts more than a decade ago, gave $2,000 to his campaign in two installments on Jan. 10 and Jan. 11. Tisch contributed $4,950 — the maximum allowed by the city’s campaign finance laws — to Thompson’s six-month haul ending in January, which totaled more than $1 million.

In his latest three-month filing, which totaled $322,000 and ended last week, Thompson took in $500 from Goldstein, records show. Goldstein, who along with Weingarten sits on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Education Reform Commission, gave the maximum $4,950 to Republican candidate Joe Lhota, a member of CUNY’s Board of Trustees.

Click to http://gothamschools.org/2013/03/19/bill-thompson-bid-gets-help-from-high-profile-education-figures/ for the rest of the story.

UPDATED: Mulgrew addresses chicken to debate controversy

(Updates at end.)
I'm Michael Mulgrew. I'm a big Chickenhawk.
I don't have to debate anybody. I'll have one of my minions debate MORE's UFT presidential candidate, Julie Cavanagh.
I don't care if it looks like Barack Obama sending out Gary Locke to debate Mitt Romney. Maybe let her speak for 90 seconds at my delegate assembly, where roughly a solid two-thirds are Unity die-hards, well-prepped to explain my sell-out moves that would fill an old S.I. telephone directory.
I don't care if I'm ignoring Cavanagh's diplomatic request in a letter, motion at the Delegate Assembly or statement at her caucus' blog.
I don't care because I'm a big, bad Chickenhawk, lord of the Unity Caucus.

Now, some reality-based commentary on the United Federation of Teachers presidential debate controversy, Norm Scott, commenting at Perdido Street blog:

With Julie being so inexperienced and unqualified to be president according to Unity flacks, a debate should be a slam dunk for Mulgrew. I've been challenging ANY Unity person to debate ANY MORE person and so far they all duck. When they were going to send Janella Hinds to debate Julie at FDR MORE said she would only debate Mulgrew and offered another MORE person and Leroy Barr pulled her out saying she would be on UFT time and couldn't debate until after 6PM.

Statement by Red Hook, Brooklyn special-education teacher, Julie Cavanagh and original letter requesting to debate, from MORE's website:

Cavanagh Defends Her Record and Asks Mulgrew to Debate His

25 MAR, By Julie Cavanagh

Wow. While having breakfast with my husband and almost nine month old son (who is finally on the mend after more than a week of a fever ranging 102-104 every day, during the same time my best friend’s 18 month old daughter was in the hospital, who by the way, is also a teacher and a single mother of two young children), I picked up my phone to see a mention on Twitter from Arthur Goldstein (teacher and chapter leader in Queens). I frankly couldn’t believe what I was reading. Usually a mention from Arthur has me in stitches. Not this time.

Now instead of relaxing while my baby takes a nap, I am writing this in response to comments on the ICE and MORE blogs attacking my commitment as a unionist and chapter leader and questioning my worthiness as a candidate for UFT President. All of this because I, and the caucus I represent, had the nerve to insist that Michael Mulgrew engage in a forum or debate with me so that our members can be fully informed and engaged when it comes to their voting choices in the upcoming election.

First let me say that I do not feel I need to defend my role as a chapter leader. Nearly every UFT member in our school, signed my petition for UFT President, and many of my colleagues are actually running in this election with MORE.

Second, I certainly do not need to defend my attendance at Delegate Assemblies. While I do attend, often, DAs are not a democratic forum. As I am sure the commenters on the ICE and MORE blogs know, and as all Unity folks know, the room is not even large enough for all of the CLs and delegates to be seated and when you do go and sit, you listen to Mulgrew practice his stand up routine for an hour or so, after which you *might* have the chance to ask a question or bring a resolution to the floor if Mulgrew recognizes you. Regardless, it is an effort in futility because it really doesn’t matter what you say, ask or bring to the floor; the ruling Unity caucus will disagree with it or vote it down, since they control the DA. If the UFT leadership actually held Delegate Assemblies each month that were informative and provided fair and ample time for discourse and discussion, I would be there in a New York Minute. As this is not the case, I attend as many Delegate Assemblies as I can, but sometimes other events such as a childcare issue, my son being ill or an important meeting in my community to bring a new partner into Red Hook to service children and families with disabilities will take precedence. I do not need to go to the delegate assembly to prove who I am or that I am committed to my union; I act every day in a way that highlights why I should be president of the UFT.

I am a mother and a teacher. I have been a teacher for thirteen years, and have been working with children with special needs and their families for even longer. I have stayed in the same community and school since moving to NYC in 2001, because I am committed to the process of leading school change and improvement from the school level. I became chapter leader at the request of my colleagues a few years ago and have worked hard with them, our parents, and our principal to make sure our children and our teachers have the best learning and working conditions possible. I fought for my school during the dictatorship that my union handed to the mayor, during a co-location of a charter school in my building that my union didn’t adequately help fight (which is difficult since the UFT leadership chose to co-locate its own charter), while our class sizes rise steadily and our budgets are slashed, while teacher’s choice was eliminated and insultingly reinstated to cover no more than a few boxes of pencils, while ATR’s rotate in and out of my building- some of whom have approached me on the brink of tears desperate for someone to listen to their struggle, during a time of a tidal wave of assaults on our children, our schools, and our profession.

Throughout this time, I not only worked in my own school community, I worked with parents and union members across the city and the country to fight back. You can find links to some of my work here, but I will list a few highlights: I co-wrote/edited/produced/and narrated a film that stood up to corporate education reform, a film that has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people in every state and on every continent (except Antarctica); I have appeared on several TV and radio programs and written several articles where I have spoken out forcefully against corporate education reform and for the schools our children deserve – and I was invited or asked in every single case to participate, so while those in Unity caucus pretend to not know who I am or what I have done (but yet ”know”, falsely, that I am not at DAs) apparently the national media does; I have also worked with other union members in the city and nationally – I helped organize a conference, and attended and facilitated, in Chicago in the summer of 2011 with other teacher union members; I helped lead the solidarity efforts with Verizon workers at the end of that same summer. I have sued, with a parent and a student, Mayor Bloomberg for the right to protest school closings and co-locations on his block and successfully organized and co-led that protest. I was the only teacher petitioner in the effort to stop and overturn the appointment of Cathy Black and also recently the only teacher on record to join with parents in sounding the alarm of student and teacher data privacy issues regarding SLC/inBloom data systems (Randi Weingarten, by the way, sits on inBloom’s advisory board). I say all of this not because I think anything that I am or that I do is so special, I share this information to highlight the outlandishness of the attacks from people whose usual line is there should be no attacks on union folks because we are under attack from outside forces and therefore need ‘unity’. I also share this because these are the things the president of a union should do.

Beyond of all of this, if Unity caucus can attack me for the number of times I went to the DA (this year I believe I have been to four DAs), the number of grievances I have filed (none), the number of UFT trainings or committees I have attended (none), then I wonder why they nominated Randi Weingarten as their presidential candidate, since she never attended a DA as a chapter leader, was never a chapter leader, and therefore never filed a grievance, attended the trainings, etc.

I personally do not think any of those things are what makes someone qualified to run our union. What matters is leadership. What matters is vision. What matters is the philosophy by which one will govern and represent the membership. I believe in a union that is member led and member driven. When I, or a candidate from MORE caucus, become president of the union, you will not have to attend a DA and sit idly and listen. The DA will be yours. When we take over leadership of our union, we will organize, support and build fighting chapters at the school level with elected district representatives who are trained organizers. When we run the union, leadership and staffers will make salaries equivalent to the teachers we represent — there will be no extra perks, no double pensions. When we lead our union, you will not go more than three years without a contract, at least not without organized job actions and a fight.

When Unity’s stranglehold of the leadership of our union ends, the members will have representation that believes in solidarity with other unions and in the power of our collective action. You will have a union that educates, mobilizes, and organizes our members and the public and who organically partners with parents and young people. You will have a leadership that truly understands that our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions, that a harm to one is a harm to us all, and that we must stand side by side with deep roots in the communities we serve to fight for social, racial and economic justice in our schools, in our city and across the country.

I am more than ready to share who I am with the members of the UFT and I am happy to answer their questions. In fact, that is precisely the reason I sent the email below to Michael Mulgrew. I believe a union membership with a less than 30% voter turnout needs to be engaged and exposed to open discourse and conversation between the two people who seek to represent them.

Mr. Mulgrew, I am still waiting for a response.

***

Sent: Mar 14, 2013 8:01 PM

Michael,

I hope this email finds you well.

While we have differences and disagreements concerning education policy and union democracy, we both are committed to our union and the children we serve. In that spirit, we should be able to engage in an open conversation during election season so we can ensure our fellow members are informed and engaged.

To this point you have ignored outreach regarding your participation in a debate or question and answer town hall with me. I would like to directly and formally ask you to participate in such an event.

I believe that our members deserve the opportunity to ask questions of their presidential candidates and I strongly believe this kind of open and honest discourse strengthens our union: an educated and engaged membership that is listened to and participates makes us stronger.

There is precedent for an event such as this between presidential candidates during election season. As you know, Randi has participated in presidential debates in the past: one in 1999 and again in 2001.

I am open to a debate format with a third party moderator or a town hall question and answer event with the membership. My only specific asks are that the event be filmed and/or livestreamed so that we can maximize member participation, that the date, which I am open to any, be agreed to a few days in advance, so that I can secure child care and that the date be as close to April 3rd as possible, so that we provide a fair amount of time for members during the election timeframe.

I look forward to your response.

In solidarity,
Julie Cavanagh

Some added considerations:
Unity partisans attacked Cavanagh, as discussed above. Yet, in doing so, they opened Unity to criticism on the undemocratic and pre-orchestrated nature of the Delegate Assemblies (DAs). Note these issues in the comments Norm made at the MORE site, including the note on how comparatively little classroom experience the last three UFT presidents have had:

I notice you get called on at every single DA while people never get called. Please try and tell us this is just an accident and not that you are part of the Unity speaker bureau that plans out scenarios at the DA in advance. (And you played the same role at the AFT). So Julie could attend a hundred DAs and never get recognized. Julie has more years of teaching than the last 3 UFT presidents combined. And more years as a chapter leader than Shanker, Feldman and Randi combined. And we haven’t even explored the stories about how well Mulgrew defended people as chapter leader at Grady.

Help MORE's Video Ad to Go Viral

Please share this the new Movement of Rank and File Educators (United Federation of Teachers, UFT) caucus' new video ad with all your friends, family and work associates.

From the MORE-UFT caucus' website:

New Video Ad

Help us take our 2nd video viral. Share on your social media, blogs, and email to all your friends and family. Ask your UFT colleagues to check it out and share it too! The ballots will be sent out April 3rd by USPS. The time is now to expect MORE from our union. We have a choice for a new positive leadership of the UFT which will build a strong union movement along side parents, students, community groups, and other workers’ groups.

Here is the video link to watch and share http://youtu.be/mN5cSbD4TTw

MORE believes that Unity co-signed on to government policies which are leading to the deterioration of our student’s learning conditions; Mayoral control, privatization of schools, over reliance on high stakes exams, and evaluation schemes based on testing which does not take into account our children’s socio-economic conditions, are just some of the harmful polices that Unity caucus has agreed to.

MORE’s UFT Presidential candidate Julie Cavanagh states; “For more than fifty years, one caucus and one caucus only, has led the UFT. In the last ten years, in a departure from the roots of our union’s founding, the leadership has failed to organize and mobilize the membership at the time we have needed their leadership the most. The tidal wave of unprecedented attacks on our profession, our schools and our children will not stop with a new mayor. It is time for change. It is time we demand MORE from our union.” MORE believes that a democratic, member-driven union will better address the needs of students, parents, educators, and the communities we serve.

In addition to running in the UFT elections, MORE organizes events ranging from educational forums and protests to social gatherings. For information about MORE visit www.morecaucus.org. www.facebook.com/MOREcaucusNYC www.twitter./MOREcaucusNYC