Last April, Randi had an off-the-record conversation with Steve Bannon, at his request, before he was ousted. She refused to meet him at the White House. They met at a restaurant. He laid out his vision for a grand alliance of workers against elites (apparently his idea of elites does not include the billionaire Mercers, who bankroll him).
Bannon sounds like a 21st century version of Tom Watson of Georgia, who began his political career as a populist, but eventually turned into a bitter hater of blacks, Jews, and Catholics. He sought to unite people around a common ground of bigotry. Except in Bannon’s case, he is backed by Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca, funders of the bigoted alt-right. And now he is leading a crusade to replace moderate and even rightwing Republicans with bigots and extremists like Roy Moore of Alabama.
Randi found his ideas to be abhorrent.
She wrote about the meeting on Facebook.
She wrote:
“Of course I would have a conversation with Bannon…Bannon was Trump’s whisperer at the time (may still be)
“I will go into any ring I can to fight for public education;to fight for the students, patients and communities we serve and the educators, nurses, and public employees we represent;to fight for DACA;to fight against the rollbacks to rights including Title IX rights, LGBTQ rights, labor rights, and voting rights;to fight against predatory practices of student loan lenders;and to fight for infrastructure and manufacturing and good jobs, with good wages, a voice at work and a secure retirement… and to fight for an independent media and judiciary, a thriving labor movement;
“I will go anywhere I can to fight for an America that believes in fairness and democracy, and an America that fights polarization, demagoguery, tyranny and authoritarianism.
“And just on a personal level.. imagine this… I am a gay, Jewish leader of a labor union whose grandparents were immigrants- refugees from Russia and the Ukraine. I was sitting across from a man who would have barred my grandparents from coming to the US.. and is supporting someone for Senator for Alabama who would bar me from living my life…
“So of course this was a tough conversation to have….and his beliefs and positions affect me in a deeply personal way
“But the convo went no where…. because he wasn’t going to convince me about his ideas.. and unfortunately I couldn’t convince him about ours…..”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What courage! Randi personifies the target of all Bannon’s disgusting hatred: a liberal lady labor leader–and a gay Jew at that. I hope she wore a flack jacket.
*flak jacket
Not exactly surprising to either Randy or anyone else.
The article’s title is akin to …
“Randi Meets Anderson Cooper and Reports that He Is Gay and Well-groomed.”
According to Forbes: “Steve Bannon Worth As Much As $48 Million, Blockbuster Filings Reveal”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2017/04/01/steve-bannon-worth-as-much-as-48-million-blockbuster-filings-reveal/#1584d57d1f59
Not exactly the kind of guy the working class should put their trust in.
A friend of mine, a former Marine and Special Forces Medic (more than 20 years younger than I am), told me that most of the common people he met in the Middle East when he deployed there in combat situations, many of them classified, told me that those people only want to live their lives in peace.
Steve Bannon is not a guy that wants to let the people live in peace.
“Bannon says he’s a Leninist: that could explain the White House’s new tactics”
Stephen Bannon, President Trump’s chief political strategist and, after Trump, the most powerful man in Washington, once declared proudly: “I am a Leninist.” He was talking to a New York university academic who had written extensively on communism and the former Soviet Union.
“What on earth do you mean?” the professor asked him.
“Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too,” replied Bannon. “I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/06/lenin-white-house-steve-bannon
If Trump and Bannon destroy the state, they destroy the peace that most of the working class in the world want. That is not serving the working people.
Of course neither was going to convince the other of anything. There was nothing to negotiate. No agenda. Rank and file were unaware of the meeting. So why meet? You failed to report Randi’s positive comments following the meeting.
According to Intercept:
She came away a bit shook. “I came out of that conversation saying that this was a formidable adversary,” she said…“I think he sees the world as working people versus elites. And on some level, he’s thought about educators as working-class folks.
“He hates crony capitalism,” Weingarten said. “The same kinds of things [we say], you could hear out of his mouth, and that’s why it’s so — you sit there in a surreal way, saying, ‘How can you sit right next to all these elites?’”
Good question for Randi.
Diane Drat–I cannot find the article, but FYI: I read this morning that Mercer has SOLD HIS STAKE IN BREITBART.
(Repeated from another thread–CBK.)
Yes, claims he’s not a white supremacist after all. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-robert-mercer-renaissance-technologies-hedge-fund-20171102-story.html
mklonsky thanks for the link. Now THAT’s a newsflash.
Yes, well, he sold his share of Breitbart to his daughters. His daughter Rebekah may well be worse than he is.
Zorba At least in his open letter, Mercer rejected being associated with white-supremacy, as well as bias of any kind against minority groups. I took a deep breath over reading that, even though the truth of it is still to be shown–hopefully by his daughters also.
Catherine Blanche King.
So you bankroll a racist rag for years and your not a racist.
I think it might be Mueller time for Rebekah .
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-donor-asked-data-firm-if-it-could-better-organize-hacked-emails-1509133587
Joel Herman He may have had a “come to Jesus” moment when it all became so public–the letter implied that. But like all of these fairylanders, who knows what’s going on in their heads.
I don’t believe in deathbed redemption stories; deathbed being a metaphor for Mercer’s forced resignation from Reniassance Tech. The skeptic in me wonders if Mercer will continue funding Brietbart through Rebeka & other back channels. Breitbart’s existence has always depended on billionaire gifts, similar to Murdoch’s funding of his newspaper empire.
Rebekah Mercer is a stalwart supporter of the alt-right.
“Randi meets Bannon and reports that he is intransigent”
Where did she meet him, under a bridge?
By the rock she just crawled out from under.
It’s no secret that Bannon’s MO is driving wedges up organizations that support the Democratic party. Why would Weingarten allow herself, as a representative of teachers, to be within 1000 miles of this deplorable person? Worse yet, why would she validate his faux populist image by announcing his view on teachers as working class? I think he used her as a tool to drive a deeper wedge between the teacher;s union and the Democratic Party.
Another interesting point here is that the meeting was set up by right-wing media mogul and Trump ally, Chris Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media Inc. Ruddy approached Randi about the secret meeting according to Ruddy, “because Trump “likes her” and supported opening a conversation to see whether there was common ground.”
What is it in Bannon’s career as a hedge fund manager would lead anyone to believe he is a Leninist that supports workers? The only thing hedge funds have done for workers is put them out of work and destroy their pensions. Bannon is seriously delusional. He is hardly a man of the people.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-trumps-top-guy-told-me-he-was-a-leninist
The quote about Bannon admitting he was a Leninist had nothing to do with supporting the working class. This is what The Guardian quoted Bannon saying.
“Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too,” replied Bannon. “I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
Destroying “everything” in the government, something that Trump is currently doing as he systematically dismantles every government agency, would take the U.S. Constitution with it and turn the U.S. into a battleground with the country’s cities burning and states breaking away from the union.
If Bannon has his way, the Civil War that would follow would be bloodier and more destructive than the 1st U.S. Civil War under Lincoln. Without a central government, the country would dissolve into warlords: racists and white supremacists vs everyone else that doesn’t agree with them and then it would be havoc with IED’s blowing up all over the place.
The establishment is more than just a handful of corrupt billionaire autocrats and elected officials. The establishment is also guided by the U.S. Constitution and it’s Bill of Rights.
Why did it take seven months for this to be revealed by a Bannon friend? Why would she agree to meet with a known bigot and white nationalist? Randi Weingarten would make a deal with the devil before she would mobilize the rank and file! https://theintercept.com/2017/11/01/steve-bannon-aft-teachers-union-randi-weingarten/
Randi opposes totalitarianism, but does she support the sort of pedagogy that really militates against it?
Randi, and all teachers, please heed this (from Anne Applebaum, in today’s Washington Post):
“Totalitarian ideologies never die, and neither do their appeal, and so their consequences must be carefully re-explained for each generation. Supremacist and imperialist ideas make people feel better; mass movements offer confidence and safety. History is always available for rewriting, and wars can always be refought. France’s border wars with Germany lasted for centuries; Serbia’s modern struggle with Kosovo dates to a battle that took place in 1389. We will be refighting our Civil War 700 years from now, too, so we might as well prepare for it.
My emphasis added to “MUST BE CAREFULLY RE-EXPLAINED FOR EACH GENERATION”. The current trend in pedagogy is for teachers to explain nothing. They should be guides at the side, and the goal of education is not learning anything in particular but rather “learning how to learn” and other amorphous things. Learning about totalitarianism is vastly less important than having students engage in various fashionable processes that purportedly build their thinking skills. We maroon kids in groups with difficult texts that will never be lucid to them and call that state-of-the-art education. It’s a scandal. The current trend demotes history to the periphery; math and reading are deemed far more important. If we keep this up, we will have a return to totalitarianism, because kids will have no countervailing knowledge to oppose to what the Bannons say what history is. Already Americans do not know what Mao and Stalin represent; in the future, they will know even less. To them, Barack Obama was the most evil leader ever. In their abject ignorance, fostered by today’s insane mutant pedagogy, they’ll gladly support the new Stalin.
May I suggest you make Teacher Tom’s blog a regular stop? The fact is that when kids are allowed to learn for themselves – asking and answering their own questions and learning for themselves about the reality they live in through experimentation and trial and error – their knowledge is much more firm and less open to outside influence. If the only reason you know something is that Ms. Jones told you so, then what happens when Ms. Smith tells you something different? How do you pick? But if you’re raised to trust your own learning, you have more resources to judge between Ms. Smith and Ms. Jones or even to know that they’re both right or both wrong or they’re each a little bit right and a little bit wrong.
Deal –if you’ll read E.D. Hirsch’s “Why Knowledge Matters”.
Unfortunately there are a lot of Teacher Toms out there. Almost every teacher is a Teacher Tom, part of an army of mental clones whose minds have been stamped by the education schools. They utter the same hoary Dewey-an cliches –“learning for oneself, inquiry, exploration, experimentation are all so much better than listening to a teacher.” Everyone believes this. But just a moment’s reflection can cast doubt on these cliches. Didn’t you learn a lot from listening to adults tell you things? I did. Wouldn’t you rather learn about, say, WWI from a passionate, knowledgable teacher than from a text plonked down in the middle of your group-work table? They say the learning attained from such “inquiry” is more solid. Plausible, but is it true? For the students I see thrust into these inquiry sessions, the learning attained often seems non-existent or extremely fuzzy. That’s also been my experience when forced learn this way in professional development workshops. It seems to me that nothing beats a lucid, well-crafted lecture for conveying knowledge lucidly. Ask you own kids what they’d prefer: a great lecture or a complex group inquiry activity? Ask which they think would lead them to a better understanding of a given topic.
I agree with Applebaum: if you really want kids to learn x, you must “carefully explain” x. If you want kids to avoid opiates, you take the direct approach: you teach them about the consequences of taking opiates. You don’t just teach them reading and thinking skills and hope they’ll come across the relevant facts before they’re offered some Oxycontin. If we want Americans to possess indelible knowledge about the value of democracy and the evils of totalitarianism, knowledgable teachers must carefully explain these things. But we’re not doing that, because of the hacks in the education schools. They are a threat to our democracy.
You’re delusional if you this Deweyian philosophy is what’s taught in educational schools or that that’s what most teachers are bringing to the classroom. Education has gotten substantially less progressive since the 1970s.
Anyway, knowledge is certainly important, but how can we know anything if we don’t know how we know it? I know that Indianapolis is the fifth largest city in the United States. How do I know that? I was taught that in seventh grade social studies. I didn’t know how wrong that “knowledge” was until I embarrassed myself with it in college.
By the way, while we’re swapping reading suggestions, try James Loewen’s unfortunately named LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME. It is not, as the title implies, meant to be an attack on teachers, but rather the dismal textbooks teachers have available to teach from. Among many other errors Loewen documents, he notes that nearly all the history textbooks he looked at had a decidedly pro-Southern bent in the Civil War sections. For instance, the Civil War was fought over the issue of “States Rights”. So if the book says so and the teacher says so, how is a student supposed to know any better?
But a progressive model says it’s not up to the teacher, much less a textbook, to teach definitive “facts” such as whether the Civil War was fought over “States’ Rights” or “Slavery”. Rather, teachers pose the question to students, “why was the Civil War fought?” Hmmm, well, gee, how can we figure that out? Generally speaking, students on their own can usually figure out, “why don’t we see what the people themselves said?” Ah, what a good idea! So how can we find out what the people themselves said? The teacher’s job at that point is to introduce and guide students to original primary documents. Say, the secessionist states’ own Declarations of Secession. Well, gee, it says right here, in their own words, that they seceded over the issue of slavery. When students read the Southern States’ own words for themselves, they know very well how they know and it becomes much more difficult to influence them with propaganda like “States’ Rights”.
The problem with Loewen’s book is that the textbooks he cites have not been in use for many years. As I recall, most were obsolete. I read every US history textbook in use in 2002 and none was in Loewen’s book.
An even better commentator on this issue is Herbert Kohl. Specifically, “Should We Burn Babar?”
http://thenewpress.com/books/should-we-burn-babar
But if those textbooks were in use, even a while ago, then a generation of children grew up learning from them. Pretty sure I was one of them – I believe I recognized my high school history book in there.
Anyway, more generally, all textbooks are unavoidably going to suffer from biases, if not outright misinformation. Just in terms of what’s included and what’s not, the potential for bias is huge. A traditional approach teaches “facts” straight out of these books as “knowledge”, which leaves students in a poor position to question and evalulate such knowledge. A progressive approach, on the other hand, would approach this information with skepticism – how do we know that what’s written here is true? How could we find out? Is there even such a thing as “truth” when you’re talking about something like history that has so many different perspectives?
Agreed.
Dienne,
It’s the work of many lifetimes to get a solid grasp on the meaning of the Civil War…or the Reformation…or Vietnam…or global warming or…. Kids don’t have several lifetimes to devote to these tasks. As a species we’re condemned to take a lot of things on authority. The solution to teachers’ imperfect authority is not to have kids try to figure out everything for themselves, it’s to insure as best we can that teachers are trustworthy authorities.
If Randi really opposed totalitarianism, then perhaps she might allow for a little democracy in the UFT (which she still oversees via her hand-picked nullity, Michael Mulgrew) and AFT, which have literally functioned as one-party states for over half a century.
I don’t know much about how Randi runs the national division of AFT but I’m sure she doesn’t run all the state divisions and local school district branches as if she is a queen with total power.
For instance, the Chicago branch of AFT is led by Karen Lewis, and it would be hard to imagine Randi telling Karen what do do.
https://www.aft.org/news/aft-and-members-strongly-support-chicago-teachers-union
AFT just like NEA are both organized like pyramids but the tip of the pyramid, the national organization, does not dictate to the rest of the pyramid that’s made of thousands of local AFT union branches in community-based public school districts and state branches.
Every local and each state has their own slice of the pie from the union dues and they vote on how to use that money. Randi does not dictate to them. She primarily only oversees the national level, and if the membership doesn’t like what she’s doing, they can vote her out when a national election is held for AFT.
Evidently, that hasn’t happened yet.
Is it possible that most if not all of the criticism for Randi that never seems to go away is just another tactic from the Alt-Right conspiracy theory generating alternative news media machine to spread discord among their enemies?
After all, it is well known that Steve Bannon operates a Psy-Ops campaign to defeat anyone that stands in his way when it comes to achieving his goals to destroy the establishment … all of the establishment.
Instead of repeatedly listing Randi’s alleged sins (and I’m sure they exist), let’s focus on what she has done right (and I’m sure that list exists too) instead of providing ammo to our enemies, ALEX, the Trumpists, the Walton family, et al.
Correction:
AFT just like NEA are both organized like pyramids but the tip of the pyramid, the national organization, DOES NOT dictate to the rest of the pyramid that’s made of thousands of local AFT union branches in community-based public school districts and state branches.
Lloyd, the UFT in New York City is the largest union local in the country, and is the tail that wags the AFT dog. Chicago is the exception that proves the rule.
Rest assured that Randi still has huge influence, if not direct control, on the UFT, especially given that her replacement, Michael Mulgrew, can’t even be bothered to attend Executive Board meetings, or interact with members.
Randi, whatever hew shortcomings, seems to enjoy the give-and-take with teachers, and will engage with those who are critical of her. Mulgrew, on the other hand, hides from the membership, and is a real nullity.
Finally, Unity Caucus and the Progressive Caucus (Unity’s counterpart in the AFT) are the last of the great political machines, and it’s virtually impossible to vote them out, not least because, unlike almost all other unions, its retirees can vote in officer elections, which skews the vote between retirees, who are catered to by the leadership, and the demoralized rank and file members working in the schools.
I just attempted to find out if there are results for elections inside the AFT to see how many votes were cast for Randi — I didn’t have much luck finding that data. Do you know if it exists out there in the virtual world?
Does AFT even make the results of its national union elections public?
Sigh. Steve Bannon. Randi Wiengarten. They’re not two peas in the same pod, but they’ve both made deals with the devil.
What’s clear, from both Bannon’s and Weingarten’s “deals,” is that American public education need not immerse itself in “college and careers” and STEM and more technology, but refocus on what matters most, democratic citizenship.
. . . but refocus on what matters most, democratic citizenship.”
At the same time fulfilling the mandate as set out in many state constitutions: “The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”
Any educational practice that is shown to hinder, block and/or otherwise cause an individual to not be able to indulge in any of aspect of his/her rights as stated has to be considered as harmful and unjust not only to the individual but also to society and therefore must rightly be condemned as educational malpractice and ought to be immediately discontinued. Trampled rights are rights that are non-existent and the educational malpractice that tramples any right is unjust and as noted in Alabama’s constitution “is usurpation and oppression” and as Missouri’s declares “. . . when government does not confer this security, it fails in its chief design.”
I contend that many of today’s federal and state mandates and even long standing educational practices are, indeed, malpractices that trample the rights of the most innocent in society, the children, the students of all ages attending public schools, in essence “it [public education] fails in its chief design.” Should the government through the public schools be sorting, separating, ranking, and/or grading students through logically bankrupt invalid practices discriminating against some while rewarding others? I contend it should not! Where is the justice in discriminatory practices? By evaluating those malpractices against the aforementioned purpose we will be able to ascertain whether or not they are just.
I’ve been a critic and opponent of Randi’s actions for almost twenty years, and know from bitter experience how she’s not to be trusted.
That said, I don’t automatically begrudge her meeting with Bannon, along the lines of “Know Your Enemy.”
While I know it’s a preposterous stretch, what if the AFT was led by a labor leader like Harry Bridges (west coast longshoremen) or Walter Reuther (UAW), who despite their shortcomings were militant and aggressive fighters for the working class? Would people have criticized their decision to meet with and size up a “formidable adversary” (Randi at least got that one right)? Would people still be so upset?
Randi has sold teachers out down the line, but she’s a very smart lady, and I don’t think she was taken in by Bannon’s talk about “crony capitalism,” which is nothing more than a hypocritical, intended-to-be-discarded veneer of socialism in his version of National Socialism.
This meeting was kept secret from the membership since last April because it had nothing to do with defending public education and everything to do with feelers to the Trump administration, and its most fascistic face at that.
Tom Watson is an excellent example of how liberalism can, under the influence of huge social forces, become racist, xenophobic and extremely right wing. In these dangerous times, we have Weingarten focused on the suppression of teachers’ struggles at home, collaborating with the CIA abroad–as she did in Kiev in 2014–and now meeting with the Trump administration in secret
It is highly appropriate to note that one of the central motivating factors for Weingarten was securing the White House’s support for boosting the business interests of the AFT bureaucracy. Weingarten, who nets an annual salary of $497,300, has sought to shore up the income of union executives through joint schemes with Microsoft mogul Bill Gates. She hopes Trump’s infrastructure proposal will provide investment opportunities for the business executives who run the AFT.
The “AFT has sizable pension investments wrapped up in private equity, and the White House was hoping to leverage private equity to help fund the infrastructure package” said the original article on this meeting in The Intercept. Indeed, Weingarten was ranked first on Institutional Investor magazine’s 40 most “influential players in US pensions” in 2013, according to Axios, which wrote that the AFT was considering investing some of the $73 billion in private equity it controlled into Trump-backed infrastructure projects.
The motives behind the motives.
NH,
I don’t know anything about this meeting except what I have read. It is important to note that Randi and the AFT have pulled pension funds out of hedge funds that support school privatization. She has also supported the protest group The HedgeClippers.
As bad as hedge funds are, they are basically just vehicles for financial speculation.
Private equity, on the other hand is far more destructive of working people’s living standards and the economy as a whole, and remains untouched in our pension funds.
I’m planning on retiring soon, and it sickens me that my generous pension is partially dependent on screwing over other workers.
Ok, however… what is the hedge fund industry really all about? Protesting hedge funds–while being identified as a major mover and shaker in the industry and controlling $73 billion in assets–is phony and hypocritical. What Weingarten is looking for is a political cover.
The hedge funds are directed not just against teachers but towards the privatization of all things “public” and the stripping of assets from industry. The unions’ focus on their business interests is a total conflict of interest with teachers whose fate is tied not just with public education but with all workers and democratic rights in general.
NH,
I assume the union leaders are doing their best to protect the pension funds of their members and get the best returns.
Hedge-Fund Love Affair Is Ending for U.S. Pensions, Endowments.
“About five years ago, Kentucky started investing some of its public-employee pension money with hedge funds. Sure, fees were high but the funds came with the lure of high returns and could serve as a buffer if the market tanked.
“By early November, Kentucky officials had had enough. They voted to start yanking $800 million from hedge funds including Pine River Capital Management and Knighthead Capital Management.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-15/hedge-fund-love-affair-is-ending-for-u-s-pensions-endowments
Unfortunately, “As CalPERS exits hedge funds, CalSTRS adds more”
“The CalSTRS decision last fall to increase hedge fund investments caught the eye of Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who is in a long-running battle with hedge fund managers, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.”
https://calpensions.com/2016/07/18/as-calpers-exits-hedge-funds-calstrs-adds-more/
Lloyd,
Your comment reminds me that some years back, when the Edison Project was in deep financial trouble, Jeb Bush used the pension funds of Florida teachers to bail out the anti-union Edison.
More than one California governor borrowed money (hundreds of millions of dollars) from the California State Teacher Retirement System (CALSTRS) and agreed when they borrowed that money they would pay it back when California was in better financial shape. Both times, when the money was there to pay it back. those governors broke their promise and refused to pay, and CALSTRS took those governors to court and won forcing the state to pay the money back they borrowed from California’s teachers.
Randi, just try to professionalize teaching. You act like a trade union and not the professionals you like to tout yourselves to be. If you’re given broken families, you have to work with that reality as professionals and produce the necessary positive results. You should be more than being about wages & security for your members. Once you elevate the stature of teaching, society will reward your members. Produce results first and stop worrying about political correctness and identity politics. If the families of students aren’t doing their part in educating their children, you should not hesitate to point the finger where it belongs. Focusing on getting more money is not the solution to dealing with the complex problems of educating a very diverse population in the context of the left’s destruction of the moral fabric of the society-the family & religion.