A New Vision for Our Retired Teacher Chapter

We've gone astray and need to regroup.

Trust is an elusive thing. And yet, it’s vital. I have great respect for some people. Some are family. Some are friends. Some are people with whom I do business. There’s some crossover in those categories. As individuals, they may have little in common. But everyone who has my respect also has my trust. I don’t know about you, but for me, lack of trust is a deal-breaker.

I will not really open up, or remain open, to anyone I don’t trust. Sometimes, though, people know they can’t be trusted. When that happens, they no longer bother asking for trust. Instead, they demand loyalty. This means, of course, that they don’t trust you either. Two cases in point—Unity and more recently, Retiree Advocate.

It’s about a year and a half since we toppled Unity’s machine. I saw it coming, and I was over the moon. I saw us, retirees, as leaders. We could move our union out of the self-serving patronage mill that is the Unity Caucus, and into a new future that would serve members.

The way to do that, of course, is by being member-driven. It seemed a simple task. After all, we had a clear mandate. All we needed to do was follow it. Our mandate was to battle to preserve and battle to retain our health care. To do this, we needed to ally ourselves with those who’d support our cause. (This was particularly important as UFT bosses would and did do all in their power to hinder us.)

Our natural allies were obvious. Even as our union leadership betrayed us, sold us out, and lied to us, Marianne Pizzitola and NYC Retirees were out in the street, on Facebook, on YouTube, in print media and pretty much everywhere you looked. They supported us against Unity, and we won the election. That, of course, is why Unity passed their resolution about “election interference.”

Unity wants us threadbare, shoeless, without allies, wholly dependent on their alleged beneficence—orphans in the storm. As they don’t trust us, they try to restrict and regulate us. (Freedom of Association is part of the US Bill of Rights, but don’t burden King Mulgrew with pesky details.)

Meanwhile, Unity buys off candidates so they won’t support what we sorely need, namely Intro 1096. Our RTC chapter passed a resolution I wrote, overwhelmingly, in support. On the agenda this month is another resolution I wrote, promising to continue support for whatever numbered resolution takes its place. We need to not only pass the resolution, but also, as we are able, get off our collective asses, financially support and march with NYC Retirees at every opportunity.

Unity betrayed us with a phony-baloney Medicare Advantage plan. Mulgrew got up on his hind legs and promised all of our doctors would take it. That, among other promises, was not true at all. As they’ve betrayed our trust, we cannot take them at their word. We can no longer agree to contracts we are not allowed to read in full. It doesn’t matter what Unity’s hand-picked, make-believe health care committee decrees.

It is absurd for us, as grownups, to even be asked to vote on a contract we aren’t allowed to read.

Furthermore, we cannot depend on Unity to get our voices out. We must use other means. I’m familiar with that. In fact, it’s what I’m doing right now. I’ve been published in the Daily News, the NY Post, Chalkbeat, Huffington Post, and elsewhere. No one silences me, and I’m proud to be a voice for my brother and sister unionists.

For a while, I used to cover meetings live on Twitter. Once, in the UFT Delegate Assembly, Michael Mulgrew announced that someone was “tweeting to the press.” That was absurd, of course, as I was tweeting to whoever wanted to read. Still, I stopped and simply continued taking notes. Several Unity patronage recipients approached me and my laptop with wagging fingers, but I refused to close it. (They’ve yet to pass a rule against note-taking, but that could come any day now.)

Thousands subscribe to this Substack. Many, many more thousands subscribe to ABC’s Substack, and I write for them sometimes as well. Our chapter can break through Unity’s wall. We need not depend on them to get our word out. We don’t need their permission to communicate with you, and with a little work and imagination, we can reach a whole lot more of you. We can be heard whether or not King Michael Mulgrew deigns to share his royal email list.

If I were your RTC chapter leader, you’d hear directly from me on a weekly basis, and Unity would have absolutely no say over what I wrote.

We can whinge and moan that we are not called upon in the UFT Delegate Assembly. However, we must bear in mind that the DA is a wholly scripted event. It’s not, in reality, a union hall in which rank and file are heard. In fact, on the two occasions we brought resolutions to the DA, we were snookered, and ended up handing Unity unmerited victories. We have to be smarter than that.

Like Marianne and NYC Retirees, we must take our cause to the streets. We must take our cause to social media. We must take our cause to traditional media. Many of us already have contacts. We can and will use them. Furthermore, despite Unity’s Orwellian “interference” resolution, we must enlist the help of our friends. Anyone reading this knows I do not consider UFT bosses to be our friends. It is, in fact, imperative that we protect ourselves from their machinations.

We cannot go, hat in hand, to Unity, and ask them to please, please, allow us to make our case, or do this or that.

We need to stand up and let them know we are here and we will be heard. In 1857, Frederick Douglas wrote, “Power surrenders nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” It’s as true now as it was them. We can be cordial. We can say please and thank you in conversation. But there’s also a time to be blunt. The Unity Machine responds only to threats. What are threats?

Threats are victories. NYC Retirees have prevailed not only in actual court, but in the court of public opinion. When Fix Para Pay beat Unity by three to one, they all of a sudden decided paras needed Respect. Curiously, the previous year, and when Mulgrew had 450 million to give them pensionable raises, they weren’t even an afterthought.

Unity also lost to retirees, but they’re demonstrably ageist and assume us to be gullible, shuffleboard-playing stereotypes who struggle to chew our oatmeal. They therefore tossed us the crumb of a $105 SHIP co-pay refund. While that refund sounds, well, better than nothing, it entails more redundant, unnecessary paperwork than any principal’s demanded of me in my 39-year teaching career. We need to fight to not only limit the paperwork, but also to reverse the co-pays altogether.

Intro 1096 accomplishes that. We need leaders who actively, passionately support it. We need a union that works in our interest all the time, not one that considers itself smarter than us and therefore pursues its own agenda, and certainly not one that simply tries to buy us off during election season.

We are many. We are determined. We are powerful. We can come together, and we can do better. I see it, and we will do it together.