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- 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?
- Cults: Unity Caucus Channels Republicans as UFT Delegate Assembly Echoes Trump State of the Union,TRS Election Adds Another Purged Unity Defector
- Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow While I Shovel and Shovel and Shovel and...
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“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 Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026 Watching the Republicans leap up for joy at every Trump lie and bit of misinformation at the SOTU brought echoes of recent UFT Delegate Assemblies where we see a similar reaction from (fake) jocularity from the Unity Caucus cheering committee. The longest SOTU and most boring speech in history reminded me of some of Mulgrew's long-winded reports at the DA. There was no better example than the Feb. DA where the main item was the endorsement for TRS of Unity candidate Tom Brown as one Unityite after another rose to give praise - and oh the cheers when the vote was taken to endorse him. Oppo people, like the Dems at the SOTU sat on their hands. There just weren't many of them and even for those who were there, there was no coordination. More and more oppo people are just not bothering to attend -- a boycott of sorts, like the Dems who stayed away from the SOTU. The only group that had a strategy - sort of - was ABC people, but I was lukewarm to not opposing Tom Brown on the grounds he was one of 3 Unity shills who would do whatever Mulgrew tells him to do. The argument for David Kazansky is that he would now be an independent voice - and yes, for 9 years he was a union leadership voice - publicly - but I suspect behind the scenes he was willing to ask questions about the fees we were paying, the role of private equity and investment strategy. MORE on the whole has never felt the DA was an important venue. And the vaunted 300 Retiree Advocate delegates that replaced the Unity 300 in the June 2024 supposedly game-changing election which has not changed the game very much have been disappearing from the DA in droves, thus negating the impact of that election. MORE claims 100 DA. members but few show up, so the Unity staff and loyalist CLs dominate the room. Remember ARISE? No signs anywhere that they are alive since the embarassing 14% vote in the 2025 UFT election. Even I, an over 50-year DA attendee, even when I wasn't a delegate, no longer see it worth it to hand out leaflets. I like to attend for social reasons to schmooze and hang out with my pals. The real changes in the UFT are happening underneath the covers and I am glad to be part of the various fragments of people connected to ABC. Mulgrew helps build the new opposition in the UFT What the hell is happening at the UFT that 2 former pension reps are challenging the Unity candidate for TRS rep? Former UFT special rep Frank Panebianco is joining former 9-year Teacher Retirement System rep David Kazansky, pushed out of the job by Mulgrew two years ago and fired last June, in the race for TRS rep against Unity loyalist Tom Brown. Panebianco was among those staffers fired by Mulgrew. Is
he a plant by Unity to divide the oppo vote? The guess is he is not but
genuinely pissed off at the leadership. Is Unity cheering his candidacy
against David? I'm thinking not as he is popular and may well draw
votes from Unity and turn this into a 3-person race. And of course David
is popular in Untiy and will also draw votes. In a secret ballot, no
matter the pressure from the leadership, there will be defections. Unity
may punish district reps who don't turn out the vote -- we get a
post-election report on the vote breakdown for every school. The key for
Kazansky is to build a strong network of schools that will vote for him
- right now there are 6 weeks to get 1000 signatures for each
candidate. He has a shot at winning no matter what, but even if Brown
wins the network built in the campaign can be used in the future. That two long-term Unity pension experts have challenged Unity candidate Tom
Brown is indicative of the same kind of cracks we have been seeing in
Uniy over the past few years. The massive retiree and para oppo wins in
the 2024 chapter elections were clear indicators - the removal of Amy
Arundell from Queens started a trend and her ability to bring some
serious elements of Unity along with her in last year's union election
has created a potential new oppo block in ABC outside the usual caucus
suspects. Despite the firings by Mulgrew last June, while scaring some
of Unity back into the fold, has still left some people seething. (One
well-known school-based Unity recently declared privately "I'm done with
them." Are they ready to be openly part of an oppo group like ABC? That
may take some time and also depends on how capable ABC looks over the
next few years. And don't forget that Unity 54% vote in the election. It
takes some time for people who have been in a cult to wean themselves
off. This look good for Unity - short term on the surface - but many of these
people have actually learned some organizing skills, albeit in the
rigid confines of Unity. But once freed, the creativity flows and
excitement at the freedom grows. It is up to the legacy oppos to figure
out how to join forces if they want to defeat Unity. There is a soft
strucrure in place within the ABC coalition by the alliances built in
last year's election and ties that bind continue to be built. The Mulgrew reign of terror may work to keep staffers in fear and in line but the firing of well-liked and competent people also sends a message and degrades the structure from underneath. The firing of District 30 rep Ashley Rzonca has riled chapter leaders and rank and file in the district and is creating a cloud of resentment that will ultimately morph into open opposition. I never knew Ashley until she was fired last June and have come to see her abilities in various strategy sessions. Then there is Pissgate where a photo of Amy was placed in a men's room urinal at the Delegate Assembly and the culprit wasn't found despite months of investigation by an outside lawyer and despite cameras. There is a lot of residual fear and loathing of Mulgrew and his administration throughout the ranks. LeRoy Barr's retirement and the flippant way he announced it at the January DA that surprised Mulgrew won't help as he was able to keep many of the troops in line. Will LeRoy loyalists begin to jump ship too? He is still in charge of Unity Caucus so he will be a factor. Some say the simple solution for Unity is to replace Mulgrew and some see the Mike Sill rise as a solution. BTW- Mike was once a protege of Amy Arundell who was his boss. The woim toins.
Do
you want to build your caucus or do you want to win an election? That
was a question asked of leaders of the RA caucus and unfortunately it
looks like caucus first. The same with NAC and MORE -- they will gladly
take 14% of the vote forever as long as they can control their caucus.
At a recent meeting one non-UFT person told me "it's all about control -
having power in a small fishbowl." If the legacy caucuses wake up and join a movement like ABC, Unity would be in trouble. David Kazansky speaks about the responsibility of the TRS Trustees.
A substantive, no-spin conversation about retirement security for NYC educators and retirees. Former three-term TRS Trustee David Kazansky.was interviewed by Daniel Alicea on WBAI in part 1 of a 2 part interview on Sunday. • David’s storied career as an educator, unionist and trustee • What really happens inside the TRS boardroom • Private equity and pension transparency • Fiduciary duty and divestment • Tier 6 and what reform would actually take • The upcoming TRS trustee election — and what’s at stake Part 2 also drops here next week and will be aired the next time Daniel hosts Talk Out of School. Let’s stay informed. — Dan Alicea
Learn more about David at WeTrustDavid.org
Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026 - noon  | | My backyard this morning |
 | | My front "lawn". |
So
it's been another busy week - or not - depends on your point of view.
I've been loving the snow and the shoveling despite my wife's constant
hocking me to hire someone. Why should I when I relish doing it - and
besides I won't be 81 till next week?
Here's my backyard which I
won't touch - snow might be gone by May. Why should the snow bother me?
I'm retired and don't have to go
anywhere, so I have the luxury of spending some time shoveling, going in
to warm up and taking another round? But I will admit that yesterday as
I was shoveling a young guy walked by with a shovel and offered to help
so I paid him to work along with me and, yes, a 27 year old can do it
faster than an 81 year old.  | | Only half done. |
Speaking of which, the snow plows locked my driveway in again - I'm on
the wrong side of the street - so I have go out and do a shift now. Be back
soon. 2 PM - I'm back. Look at the job I have to do and only half finished. Had some tea and pretzels. Too tired to write.
Back out at 3:30 and finished the job so I can get my car out. Back at 4:30. More tea. ---- For further reading: If the Dem party cared about this country it would dissolve itself - Ryan Grim Dem Party Ooops - For further reading, minutes before the State of the Union - I will be doing my hair.
Wenell Potter post on his Healthcare Uncovered substack: Big Insurance Earnings 2025: Stock Buybacks, Earnings Per Share, Market Capitalization
The
seven largest for-profit health insurance conglomerates took in nearly
$1.7 trillion from their customers in 2025 ($175 billion more than in
2024) and they booked more than $54 billion in profits.
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