You Are Not a Goose

You have power. You have agency.

I’m always frustrated with members who paint things as hopeless. To me, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. What can I do? I’m just a goose. But you aren’t. And even if you were, there’d be a whole lot of fellow geese here with you. Optimally, in work-related matters, that would be your union.

We have your back. That’s what I want to hear from my union brothers and sisters. That’s what I want them to hear from me.

I tried to provide that as chapter leader. And honestly, I got a lot of help. As such, I was able to provide a lot of help too. That’s how it should be everywhere, but I’m frequently regaled with tales of chapter leaders who aren’t really doing the job.

It’s on us if we allow a CL like that. People don’t want to step up. It’s hard, I know. (Next best thing is to encourage someone else, someone you trust, to step up. Maybe you can talk them into it.) Even when I did step up, I had no notion how hard it would be. But someone needs to do that. It could be you. It should be a whole lot of us, actually. We need leaders who gives us confidence.

Confidence can be highly contagious.

For years, though, we haven’t seen that. Many of us, too many of us, think the UFT is something that happens downtown at 52 Broadway. All power lies in the hands of Oz, the Great and Mighty. (Or Mulgrew, the Long and Windy.) We all know the UFT Delegate Assembly is a scripted event. We all know the current president filibusters to prevent things getting discussed, or resolutions coming up. 90 minutes of yada, yada, yada and you feel like this:

One of my colleagues gave me that. I’d certainly understand an email better than a rambling dialogue. It would be clear (hopefully), ghost-written (likely), and It wouldn’t pause to tell jokes for which I have neither time nor interest. I’m a delegate, though, so it’s my job to attend the DA. (Then, of course, I report—you need to know.)

I’ve known for a long time I couldn’t count on getting my voice heard at the DA. I recall once, in one of the first meetings I attended, raising my hand after Mulgrew asked for comments on overcrowding. I thought my voice was important, as I represented the most overcrowded school in the city. Mulgrew did not concur, and called on Unity chapter leaders he knew personally.

So what can you do? The DA is one thing. It’s certainly not everything.

When I needed to be heard, I started calling reporters. I got our school into all the local papers, repeatedly. Sometimes I wrote about it myself in those same papers. Early on, with a principal who was supportive, we called UFT reps into our school. They set up a meeting, and one day, we all traveled to the Tweed.

We came to an agreement that they’d carefully check whether applicants to our school really lived in the district. We agreed to fewer selected students. They agreed to send us fewer students. It worked—for a few years. Alas, it stopped working at some point. I started writing about it again, and UFT helped us get a meeting with the school building authority.

We now have an annex instead of trailers. The rooms are a lot nicer. You don’t find a sheet of ice on the floor in the morning. You don’t have students falling through the floorboards, or staircases collapsing under them. You don’t swelter, wrapped in tin, when the AC drops dead. But we’re one of the most requested schools in the city. (I theorize it’s because we have the smartest and best looking ESL teachers. Regardless, the kids just keep coming.)

Still, I’ve learned there are ways to get the word out when you need to. I’ve leaked stories to reporters that stopped some very bad things happening in other schools. I once watched a former principal tell a current one to watch out for me because I had the ears of reporters.

That’s true, to some extent. But why? Well, it’s because I’d seek their contact info and then write them. I wasn’t always successful. But I was a lot. Sometimes they found me. Once a Daily News editor, having read my old blog, asked me to send him stuff. I must’ve sent him half a dozen things before he published one. It was a column against mayoral control.

It happened to coincide with my first run for chapter leader. I had three opponents, one of whom was strongly endorsed by the outgoing Unity CL. I wrote a piece explaining why my colleagues should support me, copied the Daily News column onto the opposite side of the page, and stuffed the mailboxes. I’m pretty sure that’s what won me the election.

I was nervous about being chapter leader. Before that, I was a teacher and blogger. I originally started my old blog, NYC Educator, to stand up against nonsensical unfair coverage of UFT in the press. Soon thereafter, Randi Weingarten brought forth the 2005 contract, which seemed awful in many, many ways. I learned about union the hard way—by writing about it. I quickly learned the Unity responses to dissension, all of which boil down to, “Sit down and shut up.”

But you always have options. I recall being approached by a member after school. He was very frustrated with something or other. I told him he was free to file a grievance, but he didn’t want to.

“YOU can do things like that, because you’re YOU.” he told me.

That’s a popular attitude in our union. But what did I have that he didn’t? I just had the willingness to open my big mouth. The thing is, though, as union, our power is in numbers. If I’m the only one who speaks, we’re not really strong. The only actual power I had was that of members backing me up. (And we’d have backed that guy up as well.)

Standing up can be scary sometimes. In my first year as CL, the principal floated an SBO that was enormously unpopular with teachers. He wrote it up and distributed it, with no input from us. He did this on a day we were having PD or something. I discussed it with staff, and we voted to table it—a suggestion from a social studies teacher, essentially meaning we wouldn’t discuss it further.

The principal was apoplectic. He screamed at me and two committee members, “I’m going to do this anyway! Go ahead and try to stop me! Bring the union, bring lawyers, bring whoever you like!” (It was pretty clear this was a less than optimal moment for discussion.)

I wandered from there into a PD meeting run by a teacher. He asked us about our plans. He called on me.

“Well, I’m getting ready to write pretty detailed lesson plans,” I told him. “I expect to be observed every period, every day, for the rest of my career.”

I believed it too, at that moment. The thing is, though, an SBO cannot even be brought to a vote without the approval of the chapter leader. Members told me, in no uncertain terms, they didn’t like it. So it wasn’t happening.

The next day, the principal apologized to the three of us who’d met him the previous day. Now it doesn’t always work like that. Principals can get pretty mad at you, sometimes. The last time that happened to me, I got a whole bunch of texts and emails. When I responded, they became more hostile. I sent them to Amy Arundell, who was then Queens Borough Rep.

Amy told me not to respond to any further emails or texts, but rather to send them directly to her. I did. She then forwarded it all to some top superintendent or something, who ordered a cease and desist. I no longer got texts and emails on the topic in question.

Where does power come from? How do we keep ourselves from becoming geese?

It’s all about having one another’s backs. As for having my back, there is no one on earth in whom I have more confidence than Amy Arundell. She will give you her very best, every day, no matter who you are, or what disagreements you have with her. As far as union politics, I’ve been with her, and I’ve been against her. It never mattered.

We have a chance, this May, to elect a real leader. We have a chance, this May, to elect a slate with no loyalty oath. We have a chance to elect a slate that not only believes in democracy, but also elicits input before making decisions—real as opposed to performative democracy. Not only does that cut against that nagging feeling of being a goose—it also places us in stark contrast with our opponents.

I’m excited and very proud to run with ABC for A Better Contract (and a better union).