Recently I was stunned to read that American Federation of Teachers, the union I belonged to before retiring had come out with anearly endorsement of HRC.
Sorry, but my initial reaction was WTF? The union that supported her but when BO won the nomination went on to support him in 2008, and then quickly learned that had been punked with the appointment and subsequent rule of a pro charter Sec Ed and worse? The one that had worked in huge numbers for that first campaign then was conspicuous in its absence of huge numbers in the second? Already endorsing HRC ? To me, that just did not add up.
The Rest of the Story
Published on Monday, July 13, 2015 by The Washington Teacher Teachers Say No Freaking Way to AFT Endorsement of Hillary Clinton by Candi Peterson Snip Even though AFT's press release explained the process of how members were polled, including several town hall meetings, multiple surveys and a "you decide" website, the announcement of the endorsement erupted a firestorm of outrage from AFT teacher members nationwide on twitter.In the course of hours, many teachers hurled questions at @Rweingarten and @AFTunion twitter accounts asking, when was there was a poll of the membership and requesting links to all of the polls.
Renowned NY Teacher *blogger, Arthur Goldstein (known as NYC Educator) said "...AFT Link says they used telephone town halls and a web-based survey, I didn't even know existed."
Katie Osgood, a special education teacher from Chicago said "I know many AFT members too and have not heard one person polled either." Mary Ahern called it "B.S. and queried how many of the over 1 million members responded?”
Activist teacher members and others lamented that the AFT endorsement of Clinton was a clear reminder of President Randi Weingarten's autocratic leadership style that treats teachers like passive herd-driven professionals rather than independent thinkers with a voice.
Naturewoman tweeted to AFT, "guessing you did not poll your members! No to Clinton who promotes Teach for America and charters!" Mr. Stevens echoed "Clinton endorsement is a joke & local union voices are being silenced to retain AFT union funding."
Minnsanity added, "AFT tried to shove NCLB, common core, PARCC and now Hillary on us - we ain't buying." Barmak Nassirian summed it up best in his tweet, "sad day when political expediency trumps legitimate representation of members' real priorities."
Given no one could locate AFT’s poll of members', the Badass Teachers Association (BAT) took matters into their own hands by conducting a poll on Face Book. So far 1240 teachers endorsed Bernie Sanders and only 84 endorsed Clinton. One teacher said "Weingarten has this thing about giving false information via polls... It's scary."Some of our AFT members are taking matters into their own hands and have created a petition to demand AFT rescind their Hillary for US president endorsement. Click here for the petition. So far 1,109 have signed on.
Well its clear that the leadership supports an early endorsement of HRC. The membership is apparently not so unified.We will see.