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- UFT DA and RTC Back to Back Meetings: The Stockholm Syndrome
- David vs Unity Goliath in TRS Election as Fear and Loathing Works as Unity Delivers 30K Petition Sigs for Tom Brown
- Menin to Mulgrew: Send Para Protesters to Mamdani Event, RTC Exec Bd Meeting Today
- Norm Update: Where have I been, Where Am I going?
- Retired Teacher Chapter Exec Bd meets gets sad news, Analysis of Texas Dem Primary - Surprise - Real Progressive Won, Is Iran winning?
- More Recent Articles
Recent retiree: My first retiree meeting and I am appalled. Retiree delegate responds: Yes. The only thing that could have made it worse would have been a
Mulgrew visit and, I guess, a Tom Brown performance. It made me want to
cry. Recently Retiree: Yes. It made me very sad. All that work to win a historic election and this is what they do with it.
Arthur reports on DA and RTC Retiree Michael Brocoum: I
attended the RTC meeting at 52 Broadway. Bennett Fischer stated
that The UFT is trying to deal with the copay issue. With all due
respect that is laughable. Copays exist because of Mike Mulgrew. Mulgrew
asked the City to institute copays to free up some money for active
worker raises essentially pitting active workers against retirees.
Additionally Bennet Fischer asked for people to man phone banks to
support the UFT's (Mulgrew) pick for District 3 City Council. The union
(Mulgrew) supports Carl Wilson. You can be sure that to get the UFT
(Mulgrew) support he had to agree to not actively fight to protect
retiree healthcare. I rose up to speak and asked attendees to vote for
Layla-Law Gisiko who is supported by Marianne Pizzitola. We still have
our traditional Medicare because of Marianne. Please vote for Layla-Law
Gisiko and ignore any calls from the UFT phone banks. Bennett Fischer was not pleased to hear my statement and criticized me for mentioning Mulgrew in this healthcare fight. Sad.
Norm:
Did you notice Bennett attacking Mike Brocoum for going after Mulgrew,
labeling it as
a personal attack -- the Unity crowd heckled Mike but no word from
Bennett about them. What next, getting reprimanded for being critical of
UFT policies? Could Bennett have objected to mentioning the "union
Leadership that made the
deal to force us into Medicare Advantage" or the "union leadership"
that went to the city council to try to amend the law that guarantees
health care coverage for all municipal employees and retirees and their
dependents - to put retirees in a different category so they could force
us into MA or make us pay for our Senior Care if we wanted to to stay
in traditional Medicare? Arthur Goldstein report of RTC Meeting: It was pretty remarkable to hear Bennett Fischer stop a speaker
from saying that Michael Mulgrew imposed copays on us, deeming it a
“personal attack.” That, in fact, is not a personal attack. It’s a
statement that, as far as I know, is true. The copays were put in place to make his crappy Medicare Advantage plan look better. A
personal attack would be saying your adversaries spout fairy tales. It
would be saying some people can’t handle the facts. It would be saying
your adversaries make everything a conspiracy, or that those who
disagree with you are enemies of the union. Michael Mulgrew said all
those things at a UFT Executive Board meeting I attended. Norm: Watching Bennett over the past year and a half, he bends over
backwards to defend Unity and criticizes their critics - in public,
while privately he will be critical. I can be the only one with my hand up and he will avoid calling on me because he's concerned I may go after Unity (which I will). I've been Tom Murphyized by Bennett. Retiree Delegate after the meeting: I debated paying the $50 to join Retiree Advocate and decided not to. I paid what I thought were dues for years and found out I was not a member. I'm not giving them more money.
Oy! Having spent 4 hours over 2 days at Albert Shanker Hall listening first to Mulgrew and then endless reports that chewed up most of the RTC meeting, I said thank goodness for the chips and oreo cookies. Above are some of the comments from retirees. I have a lot to say about both but not enough time to write it all down. So I will focus here on the DA. Arthur covered both meetings remotely in depth. Both meetings exposed the differences riling both retiree and active UFT members opposed to Unity Caucus. The ABC DA chat group during DAs is worth the price of admission (free). While I gnash my teeth at DAs, I don't expect very much from the Unity leadership. Or from the RA-RTC leadership and their dwindling core of delegates. One of the delegates I respect a lot resigned recently. People are saying "what's the point?" I'm thinking the same but go for the entertainment value. Mulgrew will talk forever. A faux Unity unsigned reso will be placed on the new motion agenda. Most of the people called on will be full or part-time UFT staff. And even if a new motion from a non-Unity gets raised and even approved, it will get buried and put on the bottom of the agenda for the next month. Or year. Or decade. There were a few big issues: The secret survey to tell the leadership what issues the members think are important that the leadership will ignore and won't reveal the outcome to the membership with the usual arguments that we must be secret - ignoring the successful open negotiation tactics of the Chicago and Los Angeles teacher unions which have won them better recent contracts than the UFT - much better. Arthur mocks the 500 member negotiating committee which is a PR stunt. At the end it will be a few people in the room -- I've urged oppo people to not sign the non-disclosure agreement and boycott but most don't agree with me. Members are hand chosen by leadership with a few token oppo voices who are sworn to secrecy so that they can't even consult with the people who elected them. Let me jump to Arthur's comments:There was an amendment asking that we lowly members know the results of
our survey asking what our priorities are. The first two people who
spoke in opposition are full time Unity employees. The third is a part
time Unity employee. I’m not sure about the fourth, but I’d bet dimes to
dollars she's Unity too..... I was struck by how much Unity employee Stuart Kaplan sounded like
Trump supporters do. Just this morning, I saw video of actor Dean Cain
saying Trump was playing 5d chess, and Kaplan said we have to keep 5
steps ahead of the DOE. Given Unity’s abysmal record of selling out
retirees, among other things, I’m not seeing five steps ahead. In
fact, if Kaplan is correct, Mulgrew should no longer bloviate for an
hour at a time. He should hide in a bunker with whomever the other two
men in a room happen to be. That might make it easier for him to keep on
selling us contracts and health plans we aren’t allowed to read. Mulgrew used his filibuster to lobby for TRS pension election candidate Tom Brown and claimed in an LOL moment that they are independent. We know David Kazansky was removed as pension rep 2 years ago for speaking his mind too much and then subsequently fired for being too friendly with Amy Arundell. Arthur commented: Mulgrew speaks of the trustees as though they are deities. No, he
claims, they make their own decisions, completely independently of what
he may want. That’s very hard to believe. How can a trustee work as a
UFT officer and be completely independent? Worse, how can a trustee sign an actual loyalty oath to Unity and be trusted to work in our interest even if it isn’t shared by King Mulgrew? Won’t they be purged, just like former trustee David Kazansky was, if they fail to please the king? The other major issue came from the MORE people, who had two resos circulating - one on supporting May Day, which did not get raised and the following from Kate McCreary from the Beacon School, where MORE has a base. As reported by Arthur: Kate McCreary, Beacon HS—Resolution for next month. Stop sale of bombs and
bulldozers to Israel. Since 10/7 provided 27 billion, Israel killed more
than 72K, bodies pulled out of rubble every day. UFT supports for dem
Senators who disapproved. Endorses them blocking bombs and bulldozers
that make Palestinian state impossible. Bombs have destroyed countless
schools, prevented children from learning, destroyed all the
universities, destroyed homes, ability to get food and health care. 60%
of people in our country believe in this. Our support can make a
difference. Well done, says Mulgrew. Sean Rockowitz (UFT Staten Island borough rep) —Similar resolutions have divided membership, urges no vote. online yes—509 n—370 room y 175 n 122 58%, placed on next month agenda
We probably will see some leadership attempts to modify it. Or else add it to the back of the agenda where it will die. If they put it up next time up front, that would be a sign of cataclysmic change in the union with its neo-con history. Now think about this reso passing for the next meeting despite Sean's signaling possible leadership opposition, while Mulgrew issued no signal. (LeRoy Barr had the rep of raising his glasses as a signal to the Unity faithful on how to vote.) Is this a sign of some divide in the leadership over the growing Democratic Party (and even some Republican) opposition to Israeli genocide? I doubt it. Remember the outrage and attacks on Amy Arundell just over a year ago over her relatively mild criticisms of Israel? Just a few months later, the leadership was endorsing Mamdani. Now verging on BDS? There must be some Unity hacks gnashing their teeth.
"Well done", says Mulgrew. Remember the reaction when MORE was pushing BDS? How far behind are we before a BDS reso makes a serious move? Boy, it you want an example of how quickly politics can turn, here is an example. Not long ago I was ambivalent about BDS. No longer as one outrage after another piles up. (The triple tap targeting and murder of the female Lebanese journalist is one more chip in the Israeli support wall.) UFT leadership tracks Dem Party central - Mulgrew was a Biden delegate. Randi was on Dem Central Committee - until she resigned, indicating her finger is in the air. Schumer is the perfect example of Dem party failure --- his Senate choices in Michigan and Maine are getting slaughtered. He doesn't oppose the war in Iran but wants to have a say. Talk about out of touch leadership.
Speaking of out of touch leadership: So, is UFT leadership moving away from corporate Dems and to the left while a good portion of the membership trails? Or are they onto something? Last year's election results looked like a repudiation of the left with the legacy caucuses of ARISE getting only14% of the vote. The ABC "everyone is welcome" 32% share was interesting given that Pres Candidate Arundell was a pro-Palestinian rights leftist. That vote came from left, right and center - anti-Mulgrew people who liked the ABC "all are welcome" mantra.
The problem with the leftist legacy caucuses is that they don't run to win, but to make their point. The one time they won was the RTC 2024 chapter election when they eschewed ideology and worked with Marianne and the NYC Retirees, which was open open to left, right and center. It was clear last year they didn't have a chance and yet spent enormous resources and money in running a losing campaign that humiliated them. I don't see the legacy people learning their lesson as they will see a vote like this one on Israel as the UFT membership moving left when in actuality it is the leadership playing politics. We don't know where the membership stands -- on Israel there is a definite move by the whole country but what would a referendum in the UFT show? The leadership of MORE always felt they could be hard left and the membership would morph and come to them as capitalism degraded. I always felt there is as much if not more of a chance people move right and not left if society degrades. James Eterno always said Unity would never let the oppo to out social justice them and that still holds. There was some reluctance by a minority group in MORE to unite with the other legacy groups because it meant they had to compromise. The theory to stick to their ideology and wait for the membership to catch up. Union elections are not much of a factor to them - until they felt they could win, ignoring the victories in Chicago and LA - are their memberships THAT much different from the UFT? Or is it that we have Unity Caucus to control the members and those unions had no equivalent? I say the latter -- that the prime obstacle to changing the union is Unity and they must fall first and the oppo should focus their aim on them -- sure, go to Starbucks and every rally -- but don't neglect the prime directive. The RA/RTC crowd are thrilled to be running the chapter
on every issue but healthcare. They seem to have bought the line that
our victory last year convinced Mulgrew to give up on MedAdv. So what
will they run on next year? Not enough rallies at Starbuks?
This describes the major difference between ABC and ARISE - eye on the prize. The RA/RTC people who run the chapter - for now -- have tried to minimize Marianne's contributions and don't want to face the fact that her support for ABC tripled their retiree vote compared to them. They don't seem to want to run against Unity with her backing.
Bennett's attack on Brocoum - and me at times - for challenging Unity - and his general reluctance to stand up to them - makes people scratch their heads. Some think he is trying to curry favor with Unity so that they might be willing to support him in the chapter election. I don't think so. I think it is the Stockholm Syndrome. Once RTC moved into even a sliver or power they began to look at things from a leadership perspective. It is worth examining the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is a
psychological response where hostages or abuse victims develop positive
emotional bonds, sympathy, or dependency toward their captors. It is a coping mechanism for survival, occurring when victims identify with abusers Symptoms:
Positive feelings toward abusers, sympathy for their agenda, and
decreased fear/anger toward them, alongside mistrust of rescuers. Causes: The syndrome is rooted in fear, helplessness, and the need for survival during intense isolation or threatening situations.
I see ABC as their rescuers and they have more antagonism and fear of ABC than they do of their Unity oppressors. The irony is that so many ABCers have left the Unity cult and are way more militant with a greater desire to win - not just make a point - than the legacy caucuses. Watch RA and the RTC leadership in action and look for these syndrome signs. Bennett's criticism of Mike Brocoum, while ignoring the Unity jeers and boos when he went after Mulgrew, is perfect example of Stockholm Syndrome. Since winning the election, Retiree Advocate has engaged in Unity-like behavior, to the point that I no longer felt comfortable in RA and after ten years I stopped attending meetings and will not join their new membership faux democracy caucus. (I will go into more details on how this is NOT democracy.) You know when the uninformed complain about difference in the opposition to Unity within the retiree chapter, differences that will most likely prevent them from winning again, they attribute it to ego or personality and ignore the fact that there are policy differences. The differences between ABC and ARISE over the 2024 election were over policy, strategies and tactics. The fundamental capitulation to Unity is a major difference and any attempt to bring the dissonant factions together must address that point. Is it impossible to come together for an election either at the chapter level or the broader union? Yes. But only if there is an agreement to try to win like we had in the 2024 election but didn't in 2025. I'm no longer interested in wasting time on trying to send messages. As legendary football coach Al Davis used to say: Just win baby!
----- Next time I blog I'll go into detail on the RTC meeting where leadership and presenters took up an hour and a half.
I'm not coming to the DA today because I resigned as a delegate. I couldn't take all the unkindness anymore.... A (former) retiree delegate.
One day I'll get into how Retiree Advocate and the RTC leadership frittered away the potential power of electing 300 retiree delegates, many of whom don't bother attending. I'm too dumb to get the message and I'm racing to finish this before heading off to another scintillating Delegate Assembly, or Derogatory Assembly.
I’ve
worked with David (Kazansky) for nine years, and it’s been an absolute
pleasure. We have had the opportunity to attend many meetings, travel
around the country, you always attending the defined benefit pension
plans. David has always acted as a true fiduciary, always had the
interest of our members, any time we debated anything, he would always
say, how would this benefit our members? He’s taken care of a lot of
specific issues with our members, helping members..... Tom Brown
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
I graduated from the 8 month training program at Brooklyn Botanic
Garden Tour guide program last week and here is the treat of the season there - but with more to come as spring moves on. Maybe see you there one day.
The Teacher Retirement System (TRS) race is one of the more interesting I've seen in the UFT. Recent discussions about investing pension funds in city housing and other investments have raised the issue of exactly what role our pension reps play on the TRS. Do they share investment info or strategies with the membership and if not why not?
David vs Unity. Goliath
David Kazansky Gets 2500 sigs, Frank Panebianco, 1400. Needed was 1,000. Kazansky had been a pension rep for 9 years before he was moved out by Mulgrew and subsequently fired. He is currently teaching elementary school in the Bronx.
He is running as an independent with the backing of ABC as the only group to back him officially while the legacy oppo groups sit on their hands. (though some individuals have been on the campaign). Better dead than red is an old anti-communist theme. A version has infected the old legacy UFT opposition: Better Unity than opposition that doesn't meet the purity test. That is the theme of most of the oppo, which has been embalmed in a left wing ideological tomb for decades.
Panebianco, also back to teaching after being a UFT staffer fired by Mulgrew in a reign of terror. It seems to have worked, as the Unity machine saw the threat David presented and went hog wild in getting 31k signatures for Tom Brown, who is also a UFT officer. Unity is feeling enough heat to have run a massive campaign for Brown.
Of course petition signatures don't necessarily translate into votes when the election is held in a few weeks. Having third candidate Panebianco in the race certainly makes David's chances very slim. Is Panebianco a Unity stalking horse to assure a Brown win? Did they help him get the 1400 signatures? Sources say probably not.
I'm actually pretty impressed with the campaign David has run - his approach and his organizational abilities - 2.5k sigs is pretty impressive and also shows that the ABC network is still operating. Note that petitions can be challenged and last year Unity managed to knock the opposting candidate off the ballot and no election was held. I don't imagine Unity will challenge Panebianco's signatures this time and David has too many sigs for a challenge to work but they may try to go after the main threat anyway.
There are 3 teacher pension reps, all for a 3-year term, staggered so that every year one of them has to run - if there is an opponent. For decades Unity has controlled all these positions and in fact there was never an election because no one ran against them. For many years I and others have advocated for someone to run against the Unity candidate. A victory or even a serious dent in the Unity vote would break the monopoly of the TRS teacher reps who are as subservient to Mulgrew's wishes as the Trump cabinet is to his.
There are strict rules around the election process and the petitioning. The DOE, not the UFT, runs the elections in the schools on a day in early May. Ironically, retirees play no role in the election. Supervisors and college teachers can vote, so it requires a broad network. Two years ago, an hoc group of UFT members organized a vigorous campaign for a candidate who volunteered to run and with a tiny organizing effort he got a third of the vote. But Unity did not do a lot in that campaign. We did not necessarily expect to win that election, but to use it as a learning experience for a future run. Last year there was a challenge on some minor issue and the candidate was knocked off the ballot. So this year is the first time of a real potential election. (Expect another election next year.)
The election is run in the schools in one day by the DOE and the last one two years ago was so terribly run there was a law suit. Don't expect this one to be run much better. One interesting aspect it the results show how each school voted -- how many votes each candidate gets so there is a lot of room for analysis. Expect the Unity machine to hold its in school people and district reps accountable for the votes.
On the surface it may look like a slam dunk for Unity and it probably is. Now it's down to GOTV and let's see how well the candidates do. Unity might get 80% or 60%. Remember the 54% in last year's election. This will be a test of the Unity machine's GOTV operation, which a year ago was not too effective -- which I think led to the firings and warnings and even some demotions. But I will say that the tactics being used may work for a short time but fear and loathing of such tactics will lead to rising resistance.
I'm working on a future blog titled: Will Unity defectors become the face of the opposition in the UFT? My thesis is - and actually has been for 30 years - that Unity can never be beaten until there are cracks that lead to breaks -- and instead of trying to heal these cracks, Mulgrew has cracked down and over the long run -- those cracks and crackdowns will turn into an earthquake.
====== Afterburn: The Legacy Caucus sit on their hands
After initial reluctance, some key members of New Action supported the campaign two years ago, but MORE sat it out because their main concern is about BDS - dumping Israeli bonds. When I brought the issue to RA, one member refused to let them consider supporting the candidate over the potential BDS issue too.
This year RA and MORE are again sitting it out, while there is some support from a few people in New Action.
Ideology once again triumphs over winning, one reason the oppo in the UFT will always lose to Unity, which is already planning the 100th anniversary party of holding onto monopoly power in the UFT in 2062.
“Speaker
Menin is asking for 20 people to be outside with Para Respect signs, so
the mayor and others can see them as they enter,” read the email, which
urged members to sign up to rally outside the venue for about two hours
before Mamdani’s event started. The
email, which indicated Menin put in the last-minute request to UFT
President Michael Mulgrew, was sent to dozens of paraprofessionals and
looped in two high-ranking union officials — Michael Sill, the secretary
of the UFT and a top aide to Mulgrew, and Priscilla Castro, the chair
of the UFT’s paraprofessional chapter — according to a person with
knowledge of the message who was granted anonymity to discuss the
private communication.... A spokesperson for the UFT said the rep who sent the message was misinformed and likely confused the Sunday protest for a larger pro-pay raise bill rally that’s supposed to take place in the coming weeks......Politico
Paras being used as pawns by Mulgrew
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
The leaked email is another sign of internal dissatisfaction in the Unity cult. Last night at exec board Vacarro made sure she said they had a person on the stage supporting Mamdani at his 100 day event. Call it Counter balance, but they only had one person supporting Mamdani while trying to make it look like rank and file paras were outside protesting and not orchestrated by Menin and Mulgrew? I heard this about Julie Menin before she became City Council President: She wants to be mayor and will stab anyone in the back to get there. She's also a millionaire. My guess is she is aiming to create a mess for Mamdani and set herself up for a mayoral run in 2029 in case he falters. And knowing the center anti-left politics of the Unity/UFT hierarchy, expect our union leaders to be complicit despite their backing Mamdani when it was clear he would win. They received a lot of pushback for the endorsement from the more conservative members. Don't expect the love fest to last, Also note -- Menin and Mulgrew have a close relationship. The issue here is the money the UFT is pushing for paras, a push that comes outside contract negotiations and would be non-pensionable. Mamdani does not support outside the contract arrangements, something I can agree with. What's to stop the next mayor from taking away these raises? I view class size laws the same way. If they were in the contract there would be no negotiations about delays. Make Fix Para Pay a permanent part of the contract. In the UFT election ABC made this point and was attacked by the Unity crowd which apparently is OK with outside the contract deals.
Let's also point out that the push on the para raise came because the Fix Para Pay slate won the chapter election with 75% of the vote. Mulgrew was smart enough to come up with the push for more money to counter FPP, which was allied with ABC. I believe that Mulgrew move cost ABC para votes. And the Mulgrew reversal on forcing retirees into MedAdv probably cost ABC a batch of retiree votes. Norm The Council speaker has been increasingly critical of the mayor. It could be just the beginning. An
internal union email obtained by POLITICO indicates Menin asked the
United Federation of Teachers to send around 20 people to the Knockdown
Center in Queens to highlight proposed legislation — opposed by the
mayor and backed by the union — that would give a pay hike to teaching
aides known as paraprofessionals. Mamdani believes any pay hikes should
go through the contract negotiation process. “Speaker
Menin is asking for 20 people to be outside with Para Respect signs, so
the mayor and others can see them as they enter,” read the email, which
urged members to sign up to rally outside the venue for about two hours
before Mamdani’s event started. The
email, which indicated Menin put in the last-minute request to UFT
President Michael Mulgrew, was sent to dozens of paraprofessionals and
looped in two high-ranking union officials — Michael Sill, the secretary
of the UFT and a top aide to Mulgrew, and Priscilla Castro, the chair
of the UFT’s paraprofessional chapter — according to a person with
knowledge of the message who was granted anonymity to discuss the
private communication. “Please when responding, rely [sic] all so that Michael and Pricilla [sic] will know of your reply,” the message specified. Neither
Menin nor the United Federation of Teachers denied the authenticity of
the email. However, they said there were no discussions about protesting
Mamdani’s 100-day speech and insisted the missive was a
miscommunication. “This
is patently false. Neither the speaker nor anyone in our office had any
communication with the UFT regarding this event, and we’ve had no
knowledge of it,” Council spokesperson Henry Robins said in a statement.
A
spokesperson for the UFT said the rep who sent the message was
misinformed and likely confused the Sunday protest for a larger pro-pay
raise bill rally that’s supposed to take place in the coming weeks. “There
was no conversation between Speaker Menin or her office with UFT
President Mulgrew or the UFT about a protest,” spokesperson Alison
Gendar said in a statement. “Any allegation of that is untrue.” She
went on to say the legislation has widespread support and that UFT
members were at the Knockdown Center to support the mayor. While
helping to stage a protest would mark an especially contentious course
of action, even taking on the mayor in more traditional ways carries
risk for the speaker.
Before I go off to the UFT monthly retiree chapter executive board
meeting, I have to point out that any UFT retiree can attend, either in
person or by zoom. There are always some nice sandwiches. For some reason the RTC leadership doesn't like to
share this information, so I will:
RTC Executive Board
April 14, 2026, 1-3pm, Room 19H
AGENDA
1. CL Report – Bennett
2. RTC Healthcare Committee Report – Gloria or Mike
3. RTC Labor Solidarity Project Report – Bobby
4. Resolutions for consideration
4. RTC Delegation vacancies
5. New Business
Topic: RTC Executive Board Meeting
Time: Apr 14, 2026 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
April 1,
Wow, it's April 1 and I haven't blogged in 3 weeks. Happy Passover - we head to cousin in Jersey later for a festive meal and an eating frenzy. We bring the Haggadah and yarmulkas. And charoset. My belly is aching already. Why haven't I been blogging? Some people were concerned enough to check on my health, which has been good so far (next scan is end of May).  And had a lovely lunch with a former student celebrating Chinese New Year and my birthday. Nothing I love more than meeting up with people I knew when they were 12 and seeing them all grown up. But more important, she's become a friend.
I haven't totally abandoned UFT politics - I got to all the meetings and am in chats with lots of people and organize a chat n chew in person meeting with people connected to the group formerly known as ICE when school is out for a week - so far have had two and holding another one next week at our favorite diner. Over 10 have showed so far - mostly retirees but some working - and I find people really like to meet in person rather than zooms. A lot of the talk is about the rift in the opposition, including retirees since the UFT election wrangles that began in the summer of 2024, which has led to my pulling away from Retiree Advocate for a number of reasons beyond the election, which I will delve into if I ever blog again after this one. (Meanwhile keep reading Arthur who I consult with often.) I have been doing other stuff too. I entered an intensive guide training program at Brooklyn Botanic Garden back in September and my final "exam," a 50 minute rest tour, is April 8. There are 21 people in the group of trainees and we have been meeting on Saturdays all day -- a great group of people - you can't go wrong hanging out with people who love gardening. I also do tours in Murray Hill where I'm also taking private pilates lessons at a studio on Madison Ave and E. 39 St. I'm feeling real good from those. I hope to get back to hot yoga soon. And walk, walk, walk - ironically which I do when I am in Manhattan but don't do when I am in Rockaway. And going to a gym and lifting light weights. At the height of my chemo I looked like a skeleton. (It's been a little over a year since chemo - and remember I handled all the petitioning details for ABC in the midst of the chemo. I still have the neuropathy and of course the diabetes due to the deformed pancreas. And I still work with the construction and video crew at the Rockaway Theatre Company where Man of La. Mancha opens for a 3 weekend run tomorrow night. No more attempt at acting for me. We have such a pool of enormous talent - the fourth person to hit Broadway from our crew is Baby Byrne, appearing in, ANJELLICLE CATS. I remember her as Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls about ten years ago. (She's on the right). I was an aspiring gangster in that show (back row).
Oh, and also having fun with some UFT Si Beagle classes. In the fall I overdid it and registered for tours I couldn't make but did make the drawing and painting classes. This spring I limited myself to the latter every Thursday -- over 4 hours of relaxed drawing and painting. I went whole hog and brought lots of paints. I may sit in my garden and paint all summer. My 81 Bd - gift:
I've been doing some other stuff too, but can't seem to remember what. I'm 81 after all.
The Kazansky/Brown race for TRS heating up as hundreds attend an ABC info zoom -- report coming soon. I attended the March 3rd (my birthday) Retiree Teacher Exec Bd meeting on Tuesday after rushing back from a weekend jaunt to attend The Philadelphia Flower Show, the nation's oldest and largest horticultural event, held annually since 1829. Most people I know think that I'm nuts and after attending the meeting I agree with them. There was an election taking place and I wanted to be there to stand up for the candidate I favored in a 4 way race. (She didn't win.) The RTC constitution gives the EB the right to replace any elected position, though when we try to replace the dozen delegates (out of the 300 we elected), the UFT says we can't -- you know, because they say we can't. We were told by a former Unity delegate that when they ran the chapter and had vacancies, Tom Murphy just replaced them. They make rules up as they go along. The lack of aggressiveness by the RTC leadership only emboldens bullying by the UFT/Unity leadership. I think it goes beyond that and detect some fear by the ideologues in RA of adding new delegates who might not be pure enough ideologically --- but that's only my guess. One RTC Exec Bd member pointed out that adding a new batch of delegates would invigorate our contingent at the DA which has been shrinking to the point of irrelevancy, perhaps the major failure of the RA hierarchy. There was an opening on the RTC Executive Board due to the resignation recently of Daniel Harkavy due to an illness - cancer that seemed to escalate quickly. We found out on Tuesday that he died on February 20, a real shock to many of us who had enormous respect for Daniel for his sense of humor, smarts, and judicious non-partisan advice. I wanted to touch base with him after he resigned and am kicking myself for failing to do so. Daniel taught chemistry at Brooklyn Tech for 26 years. At the RTC EB meeting last Tuesday, Arthur Goldstein, who got to know Daniel, paid an impassioned tribute to Daniel and followed that up with this post. I'm not sure how Daniel came to be part of the RTC EB - I didn't know him before. He tried to steer a neutral course during the UFT election follies last year, signing petitions for both ABC and ARISE, and attempted to run with both slates but was made to choose by ARISE. He ran with ABC because he felt ABC had the better chance to win but remained cordial with everyone. When ABC had a petition signing in Bayside, where Daniel lived, he showed up and met Arthur and was introduced to one of our officer candidates who is also a chemistry teacher who graduated from Brooklyn Tech a year before Daniel began teaching there. He was thrilled to meet her. For someone I barely knew, his passing was especially upsetting because when he posted he was in the hospital I intended to touch base with him as a fellow cancer patient who went through some tough days over the 6 months of chemo. To have been stricken with a deadly cancer at such a relatively young age - he was 63 but count the time leading up to it - is so sad and makes me feel relatively lucky at having reached 81 recently and still be fairly mobile and active. I barely knew him but will miss him. Daniel was open and respected for openly saying that if he felt ARISE had the better
chance he would have run with them. The ABC crew respected him for that view and we felt that if he would
have been allowed to run on the ARISE too, he would have gotten 46% of the
vote, the highest total of any non-Unity person in history. I
advocated running hundreds of people on both slates and might have
actually sneaked a few people in. At some point the people who made that
decision for ARISE need to be held accountable. Actually, the entire
leadership of ARISE. As to the election for his replacement, as I said, my favored candidate who also ran with the ABC slate did not win and lost to someone who had no connection to the movement we built among retirees over the past 5 years. A very nice guy, by the way. But a message was sent by the New Action/Retiree Advocate dominated RTC EB and the result is not a positive development for a united front in the 2027 RTC chapter election. Details next time.
======= The Texas Primaries I'm a political nerd and follow both mainstream and alt media. On the broader political front, I get some of the best political analysis at breaking points, an alt media outpost that includes the left and the right, with the great reporter Ryan Grim and Krystal Ball representing the left. But it's always good to see what the right is thinking, though this is not MAGA right. I've been getting about 10 messages a day from Talarico -- I want to send him some money, but then I will get 20 messages a day. Not knowing enough beforehand, I did not have a dog in the race, other than the sense that Talarico had a better chance to win than Crockett, whose performance-based political acts has never resonated with me. Some view her as squad-oriented but and someone said to me she was like AOC. Far from AOC or the squad, she is more cultural than economic left. And in fact it turns out according to the analysys below that Talarico made the better economic left case. Mainstream media painted the race as the left (Crockett) vs the center (Talarico) and therefore a lesson for Dems to stay to the center. This analysis actually paints Talarico as a sort of left because he ran an anti-corporate Bernie type campaign, albeit with some religious twists while Crocket despite her performativeness actually avoided the wealthy vs the rest of us and was more of a Dem cultural Republicans already spent more than $71 million
to try to push Cornyn over the finish line, according to AdImpact, a
media tracking firm. But all that money got him to only 42% in the
primary against Paxton, who has been impeached, indicted, and rocked by multiple cheating scandals. Cornyn, still the establishment conservative, raised roughly sixty-nine
million dollars; Paxton just four million. In the final stages of the
primary, the incumbent, still trailing in the polls, released a spot for
the ages, which opened, “It’s voting time, so let’s cut through the
bullshit. Crooked Ken Paxton cheated on his wife. She’s divorcing him on
Biblical grounds.” Paxton’s camp deployed the candidate’s daughter in a
last-minute response ad, and called Cornyn “a desperate shell of a man
clinging to power.” But, on Tuesday night, neither candidate managed to
get fifty per cent of the vote, which means they’ll face off again in a
runoff, in May. In theory, Republican voters might have been ready to
throw out the last vestiges of the pre-Trump party. But not for Ken
Paxton. At least not yet. Crockett’s challenge to Talarico had less to do with ideological
difference than with style—a somewhat repetitive January debate between
the two candidates kept returning not to policy but to the question of
whether it was better to establish common ground with some conservatives
in the hope of winning their votes (Talarico’s position) or simply to
rally your side by making clear what you opposed (Crockett’s). Crockett
seemed to see enemies everywhere, and closed her campaign lashing out at
certain political consultants and reporters. The congresswoman’s team
expelled Elaine Godfrey, who’d published a critical profile of the candidate in The Atlantic,
from an event for being a “top-notch hater.” The resulting
back-and-forth on social media, between the campaign and its liberal
critics, consumed much of the race’s final days. Who's Winning the Iran War? A surprising view differs from mainstream media from the left and the right.
The right view from Saagar and Tucker on Iran winning - Saagar X Tucker: https://youtu.be/Dl78cDjOIRM?si=CTGDRVtSzXWTJYSJ More Recent Articles
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