I thought about excerpting the stinging barbs from CCCR’s absolute flaying of NEA and AFT, but it’s really worth your time to read the entire 36-page report, then head over to this page for a list of the organization’s commissioners. Not a conservative right-wing bastard in the bunch.

The public perception battle is over, and the teachers’ unions have lost. But will it have any effect on Congress and state legislatures? The NRA, tobacco companies, PETA, the ACLU and Big Oil all have negative public images they can’t shed, yet they are still effective in getting their way. What if NEA and AFT stop caring what other people think?

Gibson covered the 2009 NEA Representative Assembly for Substance News, out of Chicago. Each of his five daily reports is worth reading, but at least dig into the final day summary. Here are a few excerpts:

* “You can tell when NEA officialdom really hates a motion and wants to kill it at birth; they drag out retiring rule-of-capitalist-property-laws bulldog attorney Bob Chanin to quote chapter and verse.”

* ”[Linda Darling-Hammond] noted that California prisons spend more per capita than the schools do. She did not say that the guards are members of the AFL-CIO.”

* “Simply put, EFCA would make it easier to gin people into unions. It’s a one-sided view to see that as good. NEA’s brass is not about to explain that the AFL-CIO and the splinter group, Change to Win, have plenty of reasons why they cannot organize people. They are corrupt to the core, undemocratic, don’t believe that workers and employers have contradictory interests, and when push comes to shove, will use violence against their own members to, ‘protect the contract,’ that is, protect their dues income which can be cut by employers (Henry Ford said, in glee, ‘you mean I am the union’s banker?’) in the event of wildcat strikes. When workers join unions, they add a layer of enemies.”

AFT put the union under a “protective order,” removing from office OFNHP President Kathy Geroux, three other officers, and the entire 16-member executive board.

“OFNHP’s leaders forgot what business they are in,” said AFT-appointed trustee Mark Richard. Richard previously served as an AFT-appointed trustee over the United Teachers of Dade after the Pat Tornillo scandal. ”They were supposed to protect members rights, create democracy in the workplace and the union hall and ensure that contractual language were protected. Instead, they engaged in a campaign of falsehoods, ignored members rights, violated their fiduciary responsibilities and placed their contract with Kaiser at risk.”

AFT asserts it was “approached by several members of the Oregon affiliate, including former elected officers, who presented a petition asking for assistance from the national union.” The current OFNHP leadership team was accused of “using union dues without proper authorization and taking actions in violation of the union’s local and national constitutions to change the bargaining status of OFNHP’s members and possibly switch union affiliations.”

“There was no other avenue left, so we acted,” said AFT spokesman Jamie Horwitz. “This is a rare circumstance triggered by a large number of local members contacting us and saying their local was out of control. The local has every right to leave the AFT, they just have to follow the rules.”

The situation may be exactly as AFT describes, but we should reserve judgment until we hear from the ousted union officers. AFT action’s are eerily similar to those it took in Puerto Rico in 2005, but the FMPR defied the trusteeship and successfully seceded from the national union.

AFT has the responsibility to protect members from the actions of unscrupulous local leaders – something it has had difficulty doing in the past – but no member can be entirely comfortable with the summary removal of their elected officers based on the accusations of a handful of opponents.

There will be more to come.

* Linda Darling-Hammond received her Friend of Education award and gave a very well-received speech. For someone acclaimed as “America’s most influential education policy writer and researcher,” she made an awful lot of claims – particularly about “high-achieving nations” – that were arguable at best and deserve some further investigation. It was the kind of speech that probably would have driven Gerald Bracey into apoplexy.

* NEA promises to post the video of General Counsel Bob Chanin’s farewell speech. I’m looking forward to it, because it began as a fascinating recital of the early history of public school teacher collective bargaining. Chanin was in on it from the very beginning. If he wasn’t the architect, he was certainly the mason, welder and custodian of the teacher union as we know it today.

Whether it was Chanin’s retirement, Van Roekel’s new emphasis, or a spontaneous paradigm shift, this year NEA finally embraced the labor union label it has downplayed for 25 years. Delegate after delegate touted unionism and identified themselves proudly as part of the broader labor movement. Chanin told the crowd that while professional issues were important, “NEA and its affiliates should never lose sight of the fact that they are unions.”

The middle part of the speech was a detailed listing of NEA’s foes over the years, specifically the Landmark Legal Foundation, the National Right to Work Committee, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, along with the Bush Administration labor and education departments and, Chanin asserted, the IRS.

With a line that you may not hear reported from other sources, Chanin asked rhetorically, “Why do those conservative right-wing bastards hate us so much?”

The answer? “It’s the price we pay for success.” Chanin said NEA wasn’t hated in the past because it was powerless and “nobody gave a damn what we did.”

He finished by reminding the delegates that NEA’s power derived not from its noble mission or righteousness of its cause, but because 3.2 million members send hundreds of millions of dollars in dues money to NEA to fight their battles. (Actually, only 2.7 million members send dues money, because most members of New York State United Teachers don’t send NEA jack.)

Whatever you think of Chanin, he is to be applauded for his clarity in an age where obfuscation is the norm in politics. We shall not see his like again.

* NEA raised $1,625,289 in PAC money.

* In accordance with the request contained in NBI 58, Van Roekel will write a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan asking him to “clarify his remarks about testing and teacher effectiveness made to the Representative Assembly on July 2, 2009.”

* The delegates defeated NBI 66, which would have required NEA to publicize the salaries and benefits of NEA’s executive officers. In introducing the item, the delegate from California said she had asked her local and state affiliates, and even NEA, to provide the information, but had received no response. Clearly there is yet one more poor soul who needs to visit http://www.eiaonline.com.

* I have been reliably informed by sources in three separate NEA state delegations that Greg Johnson of Oklahoma used the evil specter of yours truly in an effort to drum up votes for his runoff election to the NEA Executive Committee. Since he won the seat, I can only assume that using my name in vain was helpful to his effort. I feel his victory is at least a little bit mine as well, so I will feel free to poke fun at him in the future, whenever I want to.

* Thanks for your kind attention and patience. I’m heading home for a decent meal. EIA audiences are the best audiences in the world!

The delegates voted not to consider NBI 27, a motion designed to promote bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and to “urge Congress and the President to stop the attacks on Pakistan.”

They approved NBI 31, support for labor and human rights in Iran.

They spent a lot of time trying to figure out what NBI 40 was about, before referring it to the NEA Executive Committee for proper burial.

NEA President Van Roekel ruled NBI 43 – bus driver jeet kune do – out of order because it was submitted past the deadline.

Finally, the delegates spent ages on NBI 50, which was amended to read: “NEA will communicate to, if not coordinate with Teach for America (TFA) to raise the commitment of incoming TFA corps members by requiring completion of a certified teacher preparation program and three years of classroom service, while continuing to advocate for the staffing of our neediest schools with fully certified, experienced, and caring teachers.”

Much of the debate was spent explaining to the delegates exactly what TFA was, what it had to do with them, if it was a private entity, and who was NEA to tell them how to run their business. The NBI came from…. Oakland!

After playing with it for a while, like a cat with a dead mouse, the delegates voted it down, to the relief of whichever NEA staffer was going to have to call Wendy Kopp and tell her about it.

ESEA Advisory Committee

Van Roekel got pretty worked up after the committee delivered its report, but Ed Week’s Stephen Sawchuk already blogged about it, so let me just send you over there.

Legislative Program Amendments

The legislative program lists NEA’s positions and priorities for lobbying Congress and the executive branch. There were 26 proposed amendments, none of which interested me in the least. I was glad there were so many, though, because for the first time since last Tuesday I was able to go have a lunch fit for a human being and get back without missing anything important.

Election

Greg Johnson of Oklahoma was victorious in the runoff for the final open seat on the NEA Executive Committee. You can watch his campaign video here, which I’m confident will soon be picked up by Hulu.

National Teacher of the Year

Anthony Mullen had several surefire crowd-pleasing lines, including “Teachers did not leave their classrooms and abandon children when the best deal in town was to work in the financial services sector. We did not join the legions of people who became wealthy by sitting in front of a computer selling stocks or managing hedge funds.”

Mullen used to be a New York City police officer, which was great for his teaching and his students, but not so great for his speech. He delivered it as though he were reading us our Miranda rights, and most took advantage of their right to remain silent.

There’s still a lot to do tomorrow: the rest of the 87 NBIs (41 from California), the Friend of Education Award to Linda Darling-Hammond, the tribute to retiring NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin, presiding over his last RA, the resolutions debates and votes, the budget vote, and a host of clean-up items. Business has been moving along at a pretty good clip, albeit with several jarring detours, so there’s still a chance we could adjourn tomorrow before dark.

Each year it is introduced. Each year it is shot down. Some years the debates got pretty ugly, but that has died down recently. I think, and have always thought, it was a lot of time, effort and agony to little purpose. This year, however, the effort did accomplish something, though it had nothing to do with abortion, family planning or any other social issue.

Every other time the issue was introduced, it was placed for debate on the open floor of the RA (if it was considered at all) where, after all was said and done, a voice vote and perhaps a standing vote were taken. In order to vote, each delegate had to openly state his or her position in front of peers – sometimes hostile peers.

This year the motion was introduced as a bylaw amendment, which means it was debated in open forum, but the vote was by secret written ballot. During the debate, NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin explained clearly and directly the ramifications of a yes vote – that NEA would be forced to remain silent not only upon a hypothetical challenge to Roe v. Wade, but on issues like contraception and services to teen mothers.

When the vote was announced today, it was pretty startling. The amendment was defeated, of course, but it received 39.4% of the delegate vote. I can say categorically that in open forum I have never seen support for this measure approach anywhere near that number. In fact, I would have been surprised if the result had been more than 25% in favor. Yet there it was.

I suspect this will be the high-water mark for this particular measure, since the result was just close enough to catch the attention of the supporters of the current language. But I think it shows the influence of that thin, opague curtain that surrounds the voting booth.