Revitalizing American Unionism

LeoCasey at aol.com LeoCasey at aol.com
Wed Oct 25 19:17:14 PDT 2000


Doug writes: << You're really pumping out the nonsense in industrial quantities

today, aren't you? What's with these invidious comparisons? If it

isn't airy-fairy intellectuals vs. the real people, it's coddled grad

students vs. inner city Mr Kotter's. I can't help but notice that all

these comparisons end up flattering you, though of course they're

always spun as a defense of the truly oppressed against privileged

whiners.

Good thing we've had a Dem president for the last 8 years, and he was

able to get those inner-city schools fully funded, and do something

about the maldistribution of income in the U.S., that's for sure. >>

Aren't we sour today? Too much tonic with the gin? Not enough sex? Stocks went down?

Sure, Doug, I should talk about all the things which I know by fourth and fifth hand accounts, and ignore all of the things I know from actual experience. Then I would be in the best of company -- yours.

Imagine: I actually was a graduate student and actually taught in an inner city school, so I might have some real experience to draw on when regaled with stories of how the oppressed graduate students manages to organize powerful democratic trade unions while the leisure class of teachers sits on their duff. Obviously such a transparent attempt at self-flattery, and among a veritable legion of the humble. Forgive me list master, for I have sinned.

Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list