Dr. King Saw Janus Coming

Today we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated in 1968. He's famous for his work in civil rights, but when he was assassinated he was supporting working people. He was protesting that black workers got partial pay on a day they were sent home while white workers got paid the whole day. But he knew what "right to work" was all about.

Almost half a century later, we're moving backward. Our lying, racist President labels countries of color "shitholes" and wonders why we don't get more people from Norway. Why Norway? Well, they're white over there. Why would someone from Norway come over here anyway? In Norway, they have cradle to grave health care. How many of them go bankrupt due to catastrophic medical emergency? As in most of the developed world, that number would be zero. How many of them can't afford college? Again, zero.

While few US citizens have pensions these days, Norway, rather than pump energy profits into private corporations, uses it to fund pensions. We teachers are very lucky to have defined pension benefits, and they are under assault by reformies who'd like us to use 401k funds and hope for the best. In fact, even the inventor of the 401k says it wasn't meant to replace pensions.

It's disgraceful that the President of the United States is so woefully ignorant that he regularly blurts out preposterous nonsense, and not only about Norway. Dr. Martin Luther King is likely as not rolling over in his grave. This is a man who literally gave his life for his ideals. Donald Trump has no problem rattling sabres over Kim Jung Un, another lunatic world leader, but took five deferments back when his fat ass was on the line. His feet were no good back then, but now that he's sitting around the White House watching three television screens and eating cheeseburgers before he goes to sleep, he's in perfect health.

I don't know how many states were "right to work" back when King made the above statement, but right now there are 28. After Janus, there will likely be 50. Mulgrew tells us that our new best bud, Andrew Cuomo, will work with us to circumvent Janus if possible. I'm not sure. The fact is Cuomo also enables the IDC, a bizarre arrangement under which Democrats help Republicans control the NY State Senate. Without them we might be looking at universal health care in NY State. With them, Cuomo might be able to say, "See, I tried to help, but I was blocked by those goshdarn senators."

The first thing we need to do to get closer to MLK's vision is to dump the GOP Congress and Senate. If we attain a Democratic majority, it's possible Trump could change his positions. After all, he has no moral compass, no integrity, and cares only about winning. And yes, I know we're all tired of winning, but if the only way our child-man President can win is by doing the right thing, maybe he'll come around. Of course, we have to get rid of the President ASAP too, because he's a blithering lunatic.

The next thing we have to do is let Democrats know that, if they want our votes, they'll have to start representing Americans rather than corporations. Americans want universal health care. Americans want tuition free college. Americans want better wages. I always marvel at how many of us watch the garbage on Fox and buy ideas that ultimately hurt us. I always recall being in East Berlin, seeing Pravda sold everywhere, and seeing no one buy it. What did they know that we don't?

We need to honor the memory of Dr. King. To do that, we have to fight our racist, nazi-justifying President. We need to fight for better lives for all Americans. As teachers, we need to foster critical thinking. That's a tall order considering the national movement toward reforminess, nonsensical tests, and charters that specialize in Drudgery 101, 102, and onward ad infinitum.

We need to stand together and fight post-Janus. That's a tall order, particularly considering local union leadership that opposes democracy almost as much as Donald Trump does. But it's 2018, and I'm up for both fronts.

What about you?

MLK Was a Strong Proponent of Union--Let's Honor His Memory

AFL-CIO has an entire section devoted to Martin Luther King Jr. and his ties to organized labor. Make no mistake, he would be horrified by what's going on in the United States today. While King is largely remembered for his battle for civil rights, it's less widely known that said battle included raising all boats via a unionized work force.

I have a lot of disagreements with union leadership about how the UFT is run, but one thing I hope I have in common is a strong and unyielding belief that we are stronger when we stand together. I look at our enemies, people like Michael Bloomberg and Donald Trump, people who'd have us fend for ourselves against huge corporations, and I know our best bet is to stand strong.

Trump knows it too, which is why he believes in the misleadingly named Right to Work nonsense. He knows human nature often suggests the path of least resistance, which is keeping your union dues in your pocket and letting someone else do the work. In fact, that's a huge part of our own union's issue. Even as we all pay into union, we are plagued by the twin menaces fear and apathy. I understand fear. After all, I've been watching Andrew Cuomo bloviate for years about how awful we are and how he couldn't wait to fire us. I've seen him refer to his own programs as "baloney" because not enough teachers were on the unemployment line. I don't trust anything he's had his paws on, including the state APPR system.

Apathy is something else. We are quite guilty of it, and though though UFT voting has risen to 24 from 17%, we're still nothing less than a disgrace. MLK believed in people taking a stand and so do I. As long as we're hiding in the bushes our voices will not be heard. MLK's fight was not for any one group, but rather for all of us. When some of us are oppressed, all of us are oppressed.

It's pretty sad that we're facing a President, a Senate, a Congress, and soon a Supreme Court that hasn't got our interests at heart. But MLK didn't give up against overwhelming odds and that's why we remember him. We can't allow Trump and his flunkies to move us back without a fight.

Let's honor MLK's memory. Let's not watch the grass grow under our feet. Let's stop being afraid of anything but our own apathy. MLK would want us to stand against the execrable Donald Trump and his band of thugs. Let's do so. Let's honor his memory not only today, but also next Saturday. Find your warmest winter coat and meet me, meet MORE, and meet the UFT at 10:30 AM at 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on 47th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue.

In fact, King was in Memphis to address and stand up for the Sanitation Workers when he was assassinated. Let's go to Manhattan, take our own stand, and follow in MLK's footsteps. Let's stop Donald Trump and the morally bankrupt GOP from moving us backward.

Will I see you there?

What Will Your Students Remember About You?

I wish I'd written this piece. It's perfect. As we struggle through the nonsense of corporate reforms favored by our billionaire ex-mayor, as village idiot John King musters the audacity to suggest his baseless untested programs would please Martin Luther King Jr., as Arne Duncan plays basketball somewhere and pretends he cares about public school children rather than his billionaire BFFs, this says pretty much everything.

How many kids, in ten years, are going to be saying, "I had Ms. Two-Year-Wonder and she gave the most rigorous lessons I ever had in my life."

"Yes I will never forget the time we spent twenty-six days discussing a short story."

"The best part was it was all about the Civil War and no one told us."

"I'm a much better person now that I've analyzed a seven-page story for forty-six hours with no idea what the hell it was about."

Kids, as the writer says, remember you. Genius non-teacher David Coleman, who created the Common Core, says no one gives a crap how kids feel. I'm certain, if we put Coleman in a classroom, the kids would notice right away he doesn't give a crap how they feel. For goodness sake, the man boasts about it.

But for real teachers, kids remember things. I was working at Queens College when a couple of my former students complimented me for actually having read everything they'd written. Apparently that meant a lot to them. I'm glad it did, because I spend a lot of time doing that. And those were kids who were stuck in my Regents prep class, which was likely as not the worst class I've ever taught.

I have gone to PDs where teachers, teachers, said they no longer bothered to actually have kids read the stories they were sharing with their classes. They just had them find setting, theme, tone, and whatever other things the test wanted. They wanted to make the whole process as meaningless as possible. I was pretty sure, bad as my classes may have been, that theirs were even worse.

I do believe, though, that kids will remember your kindness, caring, or lack thereof a whole lot more than whether or not you gave a mini-lesson, wrote an aim, or did whatever it was they were clamoring for that year. These things stay with you even as the Pythagorean Theorem fades into a blur.

And these are the things we teach kids. We are role models. We show them what adults can be like, what life can be like, that happiness is an achievable goal. Sure we teach our subjects, but it's our job to trick them into loving these subjects. We picked them, so we'd better have that love, and model it too.

And we'd better model a love for the kids we serve too. If we can't do that, we're no better than David Coleman, John King, Arne Duncan, and the other sanctimonious morons who wouldn't know a good teacher if one were beating them over their empty heads.

Martin Luther King's Legacy

I want to retch when I read Arne Duncan is going somewhere to pay tribute to MLK. In fact, King was assasinated while in Memphis, supporting striking workers. Duncan, conversely, is in the pocket of billionaires like Bill Gates and Eli Broad, tinkering with ineffectual pipe dreams that target working people and do nothing whatsoever to help the kids it's, ostensibly at least, his job to represent.

Four years ago, I voted for Barack Obama, hope and change. Yet, for the most part, all I see is the same corporate-friendly nonsense we saw for eight years under GW Bush. In Obama's defense, yes, he at least seemed to have gotten more votes than his opponent. And when I looked at John McCain's proposals for education, it seemed imperative to oppose him. Yet now, four years later, there seems little in educational policy that differs between McCain and Obama.

Bill Clinton had a Sister Souljah moment that he used to his political advantage. Obama has nothing whatsoever to say about that, because he's made teachers his Sister Souljah. When accused of being too liberal, he'll assert that he's all for screwing the teachers, so he's independent after all. But Obama, in fact, is not only screwing teachers. By lending legitimacy to the nonsense spouted by billionaire-backed "reformers," he's attacking what is likely one of the last bastions of vibrant unionism in this country. This, in fact, is why Gates, Broad, and the Walmart family support this nonsense.

What is being done to address the very real problems that lead to kids failing in school? Nothing. That's complicated. Far easier to blame unionized teachers and compare all-inclusive public schools to preposterously selective charters. Amazingly, with all their advantages, charters tend not to out-perform public schools. Nonetheless, all that money gets them films like Waiting for Superman, glorifying folks like Geoffrey Canada, who dismissed an entire cohort to juke his stats. Can you imagine what public schools could do, given such options? Of course, that would mean emulating the "ethics-shmethics" approach of the corporate "reformers."

How dare the corporate union-busters invoke MLK in their nonsensical and cynical attempts to bust union under the shallow pretense of helping children? Even now, uber-"reformer" Mike Bloomberg is suggesting it's a good idea to shed 33 schools of half their teachers. This would inevitably toss these schools into abject chaos, and Bloomberg doesn't give a golly goshdarn one way or the other. Because the kids, in fact, are the least of his concerns. He and his buds prefer to sent their kids to elite private schools with the small class sizes he denies public schools (despite taking hundreds of millions of dollars to create them).

And now Bloomberg, who thwarted voters to buy a third term, so as to work his financial genus on  NYC, wants to spend 350 million, at least partially to save 60 million in federal funds. Makes sense to him.

But MLK would never support these corporate "reformers." MLK would stand with working people. And MLK would know these children the corporatists purport to put "first" will grow up to be working people. In fact, teaching is a path to the middle class for kids like those I teach. Worsening working conditions for teachers not only hurts working people, but also narrows the options for these kids.

On this day, we should celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., and be absolutely confident that he would stand with us in our struggle against the cynical, ruthless billionaires who would gleefully reduce us to the status of McDonald's fry cooks or Walmart "associates."

Shame on those who sully his memory by associating their self-serving agendas with him.