Get Out the Vote, or Photo Ops?

UFT Unity appears to opt for the latter

At the October Retired Teacher Chapter meeting, the UFT political director said something about working to help Congressional candidate Laura Gillen in Freeport, where I live. Two years ago, she ran, state Democrats did little or nothing to promote her, and my district elected some MAGA yutz.

I don’t want that to happen again. I’ve contributed to Gillen’s campaign a few times, and wanted to participate in this UFT event. I waited for details, heard none, and eventually asked several people in UFT to find out what was going on for me.

I regularly get email from RTC, some of which is written by Chapter Leader Bennett Fischer, and some of which is just general announcements from the union. I searched for this event and saw it nowhere. Finally, after I asked multiple UFT contacts, someone found me the details, and I showed up.

UFT knows where members live. It would not be at all difficult to do targeted recruiting—inviting locals, like me, to participate. But that didn’t occur to any of Unity’s Very Smart People. Instead, I had to battle to find out where and when it was. I also speak Spanish, useful in a town like mine (or even the one they sent me to).

There were a lot of VIPs at the event. NY State Attorney General Tish James was there, as was Lt. Governor Antonio Delgado. Laura Gillen was there, and so were our local State Senate and Assembly candidates. Also at the event were 5 or 10 folks from UFT, most of whom I knew, or knew of.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been at an event with low UFT turnout. The summer before last I went with Norm Scott to a SAG-AFTRA demonstration in Manhattan. Someone had forwarded me something from AFT, so we went. Why on earth did UFT send a half a dozen staffers and not tell membership? Lots of us would support unionized actors.

In any case, I was evidently supposed to register for the Gillen event. I would have, too, if anyone had bothered to invite me. Since I had not, someone at the event signed me up to canvass homes in Hempstead, not too far away.

Why was the UFT turnout so meager? Evidently there was some sort of announcement, but it only went out to a small circle of UFT Big Shots. This led me to believe a photo with the VIPs, for Unity, was more important than the actual work. This was hard for me to understand. Isn’t working to elect our endorsed candidates more important than a photo op?

I asked one of the UFT people whether I should go out and start knocking on doors. He told me I should wait and see who I was partnered up with.

I was referred to some guy from NYSUT, who was helping various people. Every time he started to help me, it seemed, he was called upon to help someone else. I asked who I was paired with, and he finally determined I was not on one of the predetermined routes for NYSUT or UFT. I therefore had no partner. It took him about half an hour to determine that, as I stood around and watched the UFT contingents go out in groups of two or three. I went by myself, and did the work.

The job wasn’t bad, though it would’ve been easier if I had a partner. I didn’t quite understand the app at first. I knocked on a door of someone who’d already voted before I realized the app alerted me not to do that.

In Hempstead, people were generally kind to me. I have an AFT jacket I bought somewhere, and people recognized the insignia. I was also wearing a CF Martin hat, and one guy talked guitars with me for a while. Everyone who was actually home seemed to support our candidates, and one woman made it a point to tell me she votes every chance she gets. (I do that too.)

On the way to Hempstead, I called Bennett Fischer, who told me something similar had happened to him. He heard about a canvassing event in Bayside, Queens. A NYSUT rep mentioned it to him, and asked if he could send an email to the chapter. But it was already the day before, and there wasn’t enough time to get it through the slow and convoluted UFT email bureaucracy. (Perish forbid our non-Unity CL should be able to simply send an email to those who overwhelmingly elected him.)

Bennett went to Bayside alone. When he got to the parking lot where they met, he found about 10 or 12 UFT members. Not all of them went canvassing. But they all got pictures with Melinda Person, NYSUT President, and whoever the candidates were.

Bennett also told me about long delays setting up phone banks at UFT. He started asking about them in July. AFT had them set up in August. The Very Smart People from Unity told Bennett they were waiting to hear from NYSUT. For reasons that elude me, they don’t set anything up themselves. UFT phone banks began in late September.

On Saturday, while I was walking the streets of Hempstead, UFT sent 25 people to the Women’s March in DC. I was not aware of this march. Had they announced it, whether or not they hired another bus, UFT members may have gone on their own. But they didn’t. (I’m sure they’ll get photos though.)

While we’re on the topic of buses, I already wrote about one that RTC never heard about. I recall seeing it featured in NY Teacher. Had UFT bothered to inform our 200K members about this event, there could’ve been a significantly larger turnout. Aside from GOTV, isn’t it important to activate and mobilize the membership? Given the way Unity plans (or not), you wouldn’t think so.

Instead, it appears they regularly send out a few Unity stalwarts. They send them here. They send them there. Instead of a union, we send out a clique, a club of staffers. They reliably go out, reliably get photographed, and reliably get reported upon in NY Teacher.

All they would’ve needed to do, for any of these events, was send an email to tremendously increase turnout. This is not rocket science. On Saturday, I heard one of the Unity people, who had two partners, saying they would get this done in no time. Doubtless he was right. While it wasn’t that hard to do alone, the fact is we could’ve covered far more territory, far more effectively, with more volunteers.

We need an active union. Unity is content with one that’s asleep. If three out of four UFT voters can’t be bothered to drop an envelope in a mailbox, that increases Unity’s odds of winning. That’s why there’s no electronic voting in UFT elections. That’s why they put such feeble effort into supporting causes that may rouse our dormant activism. Apathy is their best friend, their most reliable supporter.

I don’t know what will happen in tomorrow’s election. I’m very relieved, though, that Unity is not in complete charge of politics, federal, state, or local. In politics, you win by thinking outside the box.

Unity fails to think even inside the box.