One of the ways the "reformers" have in attaining their goal of destroying public education is to find people willing to go into a major (Democratic) constituency to destroy it from within.

The "reformers" used Cory Booker to infiltrate the African-American community by pushing charter schools and vouchers, and Weingarten is being used by the same people to destroy a major union.

But it reminds me more of what Ed Koch said of Bella Abzug when Koch out-polled Bella in her own Greenwich Village precinct in a mayoral primary a million years ago: "Her neighbors know her best."

The election in the Chicago union shook up AFT leadership. There's a current challenge to NYC leadership. (How is that going?) So Randi is finally seeing the light. Better late than never.

She's done it before, she'll do it again, it was bullshit then and it's bullshit now.

her 'arrest' will never keep her from very renumerative employment or do her any harm at all, and i'll bet she was treated with kid gloves and released as soon as she got to the police station.

it's a show; the natives are getting restless, and a show is needed.

fightin' randi!

She was a plant from day 1.

Came into the union as a lawyer, not a teacher; council for sandra feldman, president of uft, the pointwoman in the division of the teachers' union from nyc's black community over decentralization. she was paid for her troubles with the presidencies of uft and aft; shanker's heir.

after 6 years of working for feldman & uft, randi spent a total of 6 months in the classroom. It's clear that her interest was not in teaching, but in a leadership role - for which, to be credible, she had to log some teaching time. she logged the minimum & took office.

From 1991 until 1994 she taught on per diem basis 122 days over the period at Clara Barton High School in Crown Heights. In fall of 1994 she taught history full-time at the school.[5][7][13][14] By 1995, after six months of full-time teaching, Weingarten was elected Assistant Secretary of the UFT.[15][16] She continued teaching per diem, from 1995 to 1997.[17]

she probably taught maybe a year total. or less.

1995: ass't sec, uft
1997: treasurer, uft
1998, president uft (succeeding her boss feldman)
1997, vp aft (her boss feldman was pres)
2009 pres aft (succeeding the successor to feldman)

she's sold out her membership repeatedly. she sits on the board of gates' inbloom, an organization that plans to construct a national database of student info & sell the data.

she was faculty at the broad superintendent's academy. her charter school venture was funded by broad.

she supported mayoral control in nyc. twice. a key reason that nyc was able to privatize so quickly.

she invited bill gates, #1 privatizer, to keynote the previous aft convention.

when rhee was firing teachers in DC, where was randi? she opted not to mount a defense.

she was *selected* for her position, not elected.

how anyone can believe a word she says at this late date i can't understand.

Her job is to tell her members what they want to hear. And until recently she didn't do that very well.