Labor vs. Labor: WFP's Endorsement of Gov. Cuomo stinks

Cuomo at pro-charter rally in Albany, joins with charter hustlers & hedge-funders in attack on Mayor de Blasio.

“It’s very simple at these political conventions: you either win or you lose. Uh, and I won...” -- Gov. Cuomo

The ability of the system to buy-off some union leaders is nothing new. It's been going on since unions were invented. But it's still stunning to watch the process unfold as it has this past week in New York and Chicago. 

N.Y. union leaders, including the UFT's, threatened to blow up the Working Families Party unless the group endorsed Gov. Cuomo for re-election. WFP delegates took the warning seriously and  endorsed Republicrat Cuomo over progressive challenger Zephy Teachout, 59%-41% at Sunday's WFP convention. They did so at the risk of doing irreparable damage to the movement that had won impressive victories in N.Y.C. and Newark mayoral races in the past year and an important school board victory in Connecticut. While it's electoral strategies may not be applicable everywhere, WFP is seen by progressives nationally as a model for united, independent alliance of community groups, led by organized labor (an oxymoron?).

Cuomo didn't even attend the meeting for fear of being booed off the stage. He didn't have to. He had already cut his deal with his labor lieutenants by promising to do nothing more, as Diane Ravitch put it, than to act like a Democrat. And it only took a few hours before he was even hedging on that promise.

In a post-convention statement, Teachout said:

“This week a number of leaders in the Working Families Party struck a deal with Governor Cuomo,” she said in a Sunday evening release. “I do not support the deal because I believe that New Yorkers deserve much, much more. Because Governor Cuomo’s record shows that he is untrustworthy. And because I believe that in democracy you should never let a primary—or power—go uncontested.”

Brother Fred

In Chicago, it was a similar story with S.E.I.U. Local #73 leaders dropping $25,000 of their members' hard-earned money into the already bloated campaign war chest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Readers might remember how Local 73 leadership tried to undercut the CTU by signing a contract a month before the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012 and having their members cross CTU picket lines.

Two days later, Rahm showed his gratitude by dropping the pension bomb on their members.

Rahm busts a move. Pushes elected school board off the ballot

Rahm and "Slow Eddie" Burke

Some Thanksgiving thoughts...

I just learned that a group of domesticated turkeys is called a rafter.

Thanks this morning, go out to the handful of stand-up aldermen (those very words have a strange sound leaving my vocal cords) who make up the Progressive Caucus. It must be hard to soar like eagles when you're surrounded by turkeys, meaning the rafter of lickspittles who make up the City Council.

Rahm and his boys pulled another fast one in the Council the other day when he got Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), chairman of the Transportation Committee, to introduce an innocuous resolution placing a non-binding taxi-cab fare hike referendum on the March 18th ballot. Then Ald. Balcer (11th) and "Slow Eddie" Burke (14th) introduced two more resolutions related to gun control.

But what people didn't see was that this filling up of the dance card for March 18th means that there's no room left on the ballot for a referendum on an elected school board.

Rahm and Burke must be high5-ing each other over their shenanigans. But there's more than one way to skin this turkey.

THE PROGRESSIVE WAVE

Speaking of that, I'm giving a drumstick salute to the emergence of a new political movement that has the potential to shake up national and especially urban politics to its foundation. The Nation calls it, "the Progressive Wave", a national trend that has produced powerful grass roots victories, not the least of which was the election of Bill de Blasio in New York. The N.Y. City Council will have also have twenty-one new members, many of them elected with backing from the Working Families Party.

WFP executive director Dan Cantor said, in reference to de Blasio’s presence at the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests, “We are living in the world Occupy made. We are the beneficiaries of what they did in terms of making this [about] inequality, which is from our point of view the core issue of our time.” What OWS did, yes—along with the organizing and electoral infrastructure patiently built by labor and community groups.

Next stop -- Chicago, I hope.