Reportback
from UFT Delegate Assembly, April 17
They Shoot Teachers, Don't They?
By Marjorie Stamberg
We put out a new CSEW leaflet, “Integrate New York City Schools” (see here) which centrally took on the issue of the institutionalized racism at the city's “specialized high schools” like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science or Brooklyn Tech. September’s incoming freshman class at Stuyvesant High School will have seven black students out of a cohort of 895. This is down from 10 last year and 13 the year before.
Our leaflet was on point, as there was a resolution put on the floor by UFT high school VP president Janella Hinds. It called for “expanding admissions policies to specialized high schools,” and ''multiple measures” of admission beyond the standardized test. Supportable against the backlash of defenders of the present system of exclusionary competitive tests, but anodyne.
I spoke on the floor, saying (close paraphrase):
“I support the resolution, but it is a band-aid on a huge problem. The UFT needs to say straight-out that this is institutionalized racism. Remember that the 2014 UCLA study, on the 60th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, said that New York schools are the most segregated in the country.
“We should not have any competitive methods for entry to these schools, maybe there could be a lottery or other method. But basically what we need is AP (Advanced Placement, college level) courses at every high school in the city and quality academic programs in all the schools.
“This brings me directly to the point of ‘mayoral control of the schools,’ which is coming up for a vote and which the UFT supports. But everyone knows that the mayor, Bill De Blasio, has backed away from his so-called commitment to change this racist situation in the selective schools, just as he has backed away from the fight against the charter schools, and the terrible situation in the NYCHA housing.
“That is one example of why we call for student-teacher-parent-worker control of the schools.”Another delegate said he agreed, because the UFT resolution had ‘no teeth’ and a chapter leader from one of the elite schools (Lehman – School of American Studies) said his whole staff were upset about the situation. He offered a (fairly soft) amendment to “restudy the resolution” and come up with stronger implementation. One retired delegate (the DA is packed with Unity retirees to ensure their control over all resolutions) said she was a former chapter leader at Stuyvesant and the system “wasn't broke”, so no need to change it. Vote taken, motion passed.
On other issues, the UFT will join the union coalition for the May Day march to Trump Tower. Mulgrew said that Betsy DeVos is rumored to be making a speech at the Manhattan Institute on May Day. If confirmed, we should all come out to “greet her” and since the Manhattan Institute is very close to Grand Central Station, we could all ride the train together and show up outside the event. (Intriguing idea).
Arthur Goldstein, chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School had an interesting motion. Note that Goldstein was one of the liberals that was pushed out of MORE when MORE consolidated around the ISO-DSA. He is now with Unity.
Goldstein brought up a horrendous event in Indiana in March when in an “active shooter drill” sheriff’s deputies actually shot elementary school teachers with plastic pellets in a mock execution, injuring several, in order to terrorize them and their students. See https://www.vox.com/2019/3/24/18279542/indiana-teachers-active-shooter-training. Here is a screenshot from a video of the "drill":
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| Sheriff's deputies take aim at teachers in January drill where they shot educators in the back with plastic pellets. (Screenshot from video posted by the Indianapolis Star.) |
Goldstein said, “So in Indiana a bunch of administrators got together and thought, hey, for the next active shooter drill, let’s get a bunch of guys to take out guns and shoot the teachers, but because we're so nice, we’ll just use plastic bullets and not kill them.”
The cops herded teachers into a room, ordered them to kneel and then without warning fired pellets into their backs, execution-style! When teachers outside the room heard the screaming, they were then brought in four at a time and the shooting was repeated!! There should have been a statewide teachers strike over this outrage. But Indiana is one of the states that has passed anti-labor “right-to-work” laws, cowing public employee unions. So instead of shutting down every school in the state for a week or more, the Indiana Teachers Association lobbied legislators to amend a school-safety bill to prohibit active-shooter drill instructors from firing projectiles at teachers!
Goldstein commented that what with (Republican) mayor Bloomberg and test-prep principals churned out by (Eli Broad’s) Leadership Academy, it’s a miracle it didn’t happen in New York. More to the point is NYC police choke-holding Eric Garner to death under Democratic mayor de Blasio with total impunity. As for the billionaire ex-mayor, he switched parties again, so you now have the Democratic Party de Blasio, Bloomberg, Broad … and Ocasio-Cortez, which with charter school booster Cuomo in the lead has been in the forefront of the bipartisan capitalist war on public education. Goldstein’s motion against shooting teachers passed.
The grotesque demonstration-execution of teachers in Indiana is a graphic illustration of the decadence of U.S. capitalism.
Class
Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) is part of the fight for a
revitalization and transformation of the labor movement into an
instrument for the emancipation of the working class and the oppressed. See the CSEW program here.