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Pogue
Mulgrew can’t step up to the plate even if he wanted to because the union movement in this country has chosen to become partners with government and business. You can trace some of this back in education to the actions of Al Shanker from the ’75 fiscal crisis through the 80′s when he partnered with big business in the early years of the deform movment. That’s a point where the UFT/AFT only played lip service to core issues like class size reduction and started talking about standards and accountability – for educators but no accountability for the politicians. Just check the politicians the UFT and AFT supported for the last 30 years.

Another aspect is that the union movement in this country was build by a militant left and Shanker was notorious in attacking the left and red-baiting. That has not stopped – just see the UFT attacks led by people like Leo Casey and Jeff Zahler, with the notorious attack on the ICE/TJC presidential candidate Kit Wainer in the 2007 election. The general attacks on the left and purges of leftists from unions on this country has been part of the fabric of the attack by big business, with the UFT/AFT partners all along.

Note: SHanker became AFT pres in 1974 as part of his attack on his former mentor and predecessor Dave Selden who opposed the Vietnam War.

It won’t be long before some of the notorious UFT flacks jump in to defend Shanker.

My point is that Mulgrew cannot just shift direction even if he wanted to. Such a shift in the union would require an active and informed and militant membership. And a democratically run union to assure the loyalty of people. If we had such a membership, they would never allow Unity Caucus to get away with what they do and their control would be threatened.

In a side note, the actions of New Action are even more of a sellout than Unity if that is possible because many of them have been around for all of these events and used to have pretty much the same analysis. In fact, many of the leaders used to be under the same kinds of attacks as Kit Wainer went through and their essential silence in 2007 was a sign of just how corrupt and bankrupt they have become. That they adhere to a policy that gives them the high school ex bd seats even though they got only 700 high school votes in 2007 while ICE/TJC more than doubled their votes and got no seats. That is their major purpose: to keep the militants from ICE and TJC from getting on the ex bd and challenging Unity policies on a regular basis.

The upshot of this: get anyone you know, especially in a high school where ICE/TJC has a chance to win 6 seats, to spread the word to vote and get their colleagues to vote ICE/TJC and reject the Unity/New Action slate.