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bargaining position (corrected)

May 12, 2011

Thousands march from City Hall to Wall Street to oppose layoffs

by Chris Arp, at 6:41 pm

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said the mayor should not have to lay off teachers given that Wall Street rebounded this year.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the size of the rally. Thousands of people attended this afternoon’s rally, according to multiple people who attended and other press accounts. Protesters came from multiple locations and then converged near Wall Street.

Thousands of teachers joined elected officials in a symbolic march from City Hall to Wall Street this afternoon to protest Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed budget cuts.

“You took the money from us, now we’re going to where you sent the money,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped lead the march along with national teachers union president Randi Weingarten and half a dozen City Council members.

The march was designed to dramatize the argument that opponents of Bloomberg are making in response to his budget, which calls for laying off more than 4,000 teachers. In a year when Wall Street’s recovery contributed to a citywide surplus, they ask, why are teachers being laid off?

“I never expected to come home to see New York act like Wisconsin,” Weingarten told the screaming crowd.

Bloomberg has blamed the draconian budget on state cuts and pointed out that the surplus this year is not large enough to plug projected gaps next year — an assessment the Independent Budget Office seconded in a recent analysis.

At least half a dozen of the City Council’s 51 members also joined the rally, vowing not to approve Bloomberg’s budget. “We pass the budget, not Bloomberg,” Council Member Charles Barron said. Council members Margaret Chin, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Robert Jackson and Julissa Ferreras were among those who cheered him on.

Council members and the mayor must come to an agreement on a budget for the city by July 1.

The three elected officials who often oppose Bloomberg, and who are all possible mayoral hopefuls — Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, and Comptroller John Liu — also attended the rally.

Sharpton’s appearance alongside Weingarten was notable in demonstrating how far the activist reverend has come from the days, not so long ago, when he supported the mayor’s education policies. Lately, Sharpton and Weingarten have been speaking together, revising the “odd couple” duo Sharpton once formed with former schools chancellor Joel Klein.

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  • Anon

    Hundreds? How about 20,000?!?

  • Elsworth

    I am shocked that Gotham Schools is low-balling this massive rally. Please update this post!

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    NBC calls it “thousands,” quotes organizers saying “10,000″

    http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Thousands-Protest-Teacher-Layoffs-Tax-Loopholes-121738474.html

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    NBC calls it “thousands,” quotes organizers saying “10,000″

    http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Thousands-Protest-Teacher-Layoffs-Tax-Loopholes-121738474.html

  • more teachers rock than don’t

    I attended the rally and was very disappointed that the emphasis was solely on the UFT. Myself and many other parents with kids, who are not teachers, were there to support teachers and protect our schools’ budgets and class sizes. We were encouraged to go, why not include a parent in the speakers? or at the very least acknowledge us from the stage. The kids who were there holding up signs like “I heart my teacher,” should have gotten some props for showing up. You can do better UFT!

    And yes, it did seem like many thousand.

  • chris

    Really, they decided to march on a state test day? So, all those students didn’t have their regular teacher on one of the most stressful days of the year?

  • http://www.anurbanteacherseducation.com The Reflective Educator

    I wonder if this article makes the turnout sound small because people turned out in so many different parts of the city, rather than a central location.

  • Mintyfresh1

    This article is a travesty. The rhetoric and placement of lowball numbers and Al Sharpton (who was evidently the star and reason for the rally) barks of yellow journalism. The article neither includes interviews from the onlookers and participants in the rally, nor the economic statistics that the UFT claim. The last straw was invoking the Independent Budget Office in a lame attempt to vail the contempt and prejudice within this article. I understand that media non-bias is fiction, on either end, but do your readers a service and keep it to a tolerable level.

  • Charterreform

    I was there today. There was a massive turnout, definitely longer than half a block. The groups were split up by police barricades. The reporter obviously only saw a small group that brken off.

  • Art Teacher

    I’m sorry but I was there and there were way more than “hundreds”! Is that a typo?

  • Charterreform

    The march was after school.

  • Nicole

    I was there as well. This article is definitely “lowballing: the turnout.
     

  • bee

    Really, “they” didn’t, the march took place after school. The march was comprised of many groups as well as teachers.

  • John Doe

    Is it just me or does anybody else think that this particular rally was not actually needed? From the way that I see things, the only person who wants to “lay off” teachers is Bloomberg. The majority of NYC voters as well as the NYC City Council does NOT want to lay off a single teacher. I just don’t understand who will be swayed by a rally of this size who has an actual say in layoffs. Bloomberg does not, nor ever gave a crap about his voters and is just a 3rd time lame duck mayor just riding his time away. I hate to sound jaded, but Bloomberg does not give a rats a** about thousands of decent tax payers marching in the streets for what is best for city schools. He has his mind set to destroy public education and the middle class. Thank God that the City Council is on the side of sanity. My point is that City Council has the back of the public even if the rally never took place. At the end of the day, I guess it is best that a rally of this size will spread the word of what should and must be done for the benefit of our public schools.

  • Guest

    Bloomberg may not care by city council members care because they will run again or for other offices.

  • Guest

     You should really change hundreds to thousands.

  • BUY ME OUT

    TEACHERS UNION …………… 1
    DEPARTMENT OF ED ……….. 0 

    What a blow to the D.O.E.  Everyone keeps their jobs in the 29 schgools slated for Turnaround or Transformation.  D.O.E. – LOSS!!!  Bluff called!!

  • Tim

    At least 10,000 were there…. so, yea, unless this is connected to the NY Post, you might as well make the headline honest

  • http://www.gothamschools.org Elizabeth Green

    Thanks everyone for the corrections. I have corrected the post to account for the size of the rally.

  • GC

    Chris, nice assumption, it shows you really have no clue and like so many are ready to blame teachers for everything – and assume the worst.  And you know what they say, when you assume…
     

  • GC

    I have been at many rallies, and I know what 10,000 people looks like – this was a lot more.  At the time the picture of Michael Mulgrew above was taken, there were already thousands of people at City Hall Park, from Centre St. around the Tweed building and down Broadway past Park Pl. to the stage. Courthouse People came from different locations, at

    different times, parents from jobs,  teachers and students from different school sessions.  It started at 4 at City Hall for most, and at 7 pm the Wall St, Water, St., the park at the Bowling Green / Ferry area was still full of participants.  A vast umbrella of organizations and company employees, parents, and lots of kids.  People are disgusted and angry that NYC DOE continues to ignore parents, students and staff, and in general at the fact that large companies got bailouts and the middle class pays out and gets nothing but cuts and nonsense about shared sacrifice.  I object to the trivialization of people’s feelings and action by saying  that today was symbolic – a person burning a flag, that is a symbolic act.  how dare Gothamschools trivialize what my students parents, and colleagues did today.-with this blurb of an article. 

     

  • Michael Fiorillo

     Some people’s hypocrisy is off the charts. 

    How dare Randi Weingarten, who is the person most responsible for saddling us with mayoral control of the schools (twice!), and who stood aside and let Bloomberg purchase a third term, presume to speak at this rally. And likewise rent-an-activist Al Sharpton, who had Klein’s hedge fund cronies pay off his tax bills in order to appear with Klein and Gingrinch attacking the public schools. They should have both been booed off the stage and repudiated once and for all.

    And then there’s Gotham Schools, which never met a corporate front group (ME$ME) that it couldn’t shill for, while comically undercounting the people in attendance at yesterday’s rally and march. The reporting was so transparently false that they had to correct it, in contrast to their usual lectures to the readership about their independence and objectivity.

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    Re ““I never expected to come home to see New York act like Wisconsin,” Weingarten told the screaming crowd.”

    Just curious, what was the crowd’s reaction to THAT one, from that particular speaker?

    Indeed, there is a limit to how far Bloomberg — and his enablers — can push the people.

    Note that Wisconsin’s right wingers are facing a recall movement.  New York City still has some catching up to do.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Michael M.

    Unfortunately, due to her explicit support for mayoral control of the schools (in 2002 and again, unilaterally disregarding the recommendations of the UFT’s own Governance Committee recommendations, in 2009)  and her de facto support of Bloomberg’s purchase of a third term, Weingarten is one of the mayor’s chief enablers.

    I’m sure the wine and canapes on his private jet are exquisite, and that she feels some perverse gratification with the verbal pats on the head she gets from the oligarchs intent on taking over the schools, but students, parents and teachers in New York City have not fared nearly as well.

     

  • homer9

     A person told me that a cop told them that the number was 40.000.

  • Obriendn

     It was difficult to gauge the number of people, but certainly there was enough to warrant coverage in the major NYC papers.  We talk about freedom of the press in the U.S. as if we were the standard that all others should aspire to. How scary is that? We can have tens of thousands of people marching on our financial center and it’s barely a blip on the radar of our fellow countrymen, but have the same thing happen in, say Egypt, and we are proselytizing about how corrupt and dangerous they are. A classic case of “Do as I say, not as I do”

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    Michael F.,

    Amen.  I am usually reluctant to weigh in on intra-teacher or UFT-internal related matters.

    HOWEVER…. As a parent leader I was disgusted that Ms. W. would support Bloomberg’s ghost-writing of the Mayoral Control law in the summer of 2009.

    “”What we’ve seen in the last seven years is a cohesion and a
    stability and resources that we did not have beforehand, and a lot of
    that was because Mayor Bloomberg said, ‘I’m taking responsibility,’”
    Weingarten said. “And that is something that can’t go unaddressed
    today, and I want to thank you for that.”
    Weingarten, who has
    talked of weakening Bloomberg’s control – an issue Albany will decide
    this month – said she wants to keep it, but with “some top-to-bottom
    accountability, some checks and balances and some transparency.”"
    http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/06/02/2009-06-02_mike__randi__gains__lovefest_for_now.html

    This shameless “lovefest” (per the DailyNews) was just prior to the world of officialdom admitting the test scores were over-inflated hype.

    But that bubble didn’t burst until AFTER Bloomberg had bought his third term.

    And NYC is still waiting for “accountability,” “checks and balances,” and (don’t laugh), “TRANSPARENCY.”  Got waivers for all of the above?

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