UFT TO ENDORSE ERIC ADAMS FOR MAYOR

We learned tonight that the UFT is planning to endorse Eric Adams for mayor. The Executive Board will vote on rubber stamp the endorsement Monday evening. That's right, we are now going to back the same Eric Adams that the UFT warned not to rank among our top five candidates before the Democratic primary in June. This is what President Michael Mulgrew declared as part of a statement before the June Democratic primary:

 “Both Andrew Yang and Eric Adams are supported by hedge fund billionaires and people who don’t care about equity and who don’t have the best interests of New York City’s children at heart,” Mulgrew said in a statement.

In the spring, President Mulgrew told us in great detail how dangerous Andrew Yang and Adams were. This is from my notes on Mulgrew's report at the May Town Hall.

During Bloomberg years, constant attacks on our Union. Closing schools and pushing students with greater needs kids into schools they wanted to close. That was some of the nastiest fights we have ever had. The accountability system was designed to say someone is a loser. If a teacher takes a child who was 3 grades behind and moved him up a level, that is a phenomenal success but schools that had kids at grade level were looking better. Rubber rooms, assaults against us. Person who ran Bloomberg's things was Andrew Tusk. He is running Andrew Yang's campaign. The group that he worked with was Students First. That is a pro-charter school organization. Students First is running independent expenditures for Eric Adams. They are probably working together (Yang and Adams and Students First). Not trying to promote conspiracy theories but this is a fact. We closed and opened in September after having a greater loss than any other system. We figured everything out with safety, livelihood and profession. Now we have another challenge. Students First want us to go away. They will go to large lengths to make us go away. 

But now, apparently, Adams has done a 180-degree turnaround. He is now a man of the people who gets his money from small donors, cares about equity, loves public schools, loathes charter schools, denounces Students First, and has the best interests of New York City's children at heart. Yeah, right.

No UFT, Adams hasn't changed. You want evidence: Who is Adams leaning on for advice and money? Michael Bloomberg.*

This is from a September 27, 2021 NY Times piece:

In the lead-up to and aftermath of the New York City mayoral primary, Eric Adams and his team sought guidance from current and past city leaders — first, to help craft his successful bid for the Democratic nomination, and then to prepare for a likely transition to the mayoralty.

But Mr. Adams has recently come to lean on one person in particular: Michael R. Bloomberg.

In mid-September, Mr. Bloomberg released a video endorsement of Mr. Adams for mayor. The next day, at a business conference featuring various of Mr. Bloomberg’s fellow billionaires, Mr. Adams declared, “New York will no longer be anti-business.”

Two days later, Mr. Bloomberg hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams on the roof of the East 78th Street headquarters of Bloomberg Philanthropies, featuring dozens of guests, several of them financial sector executives.

There is a real alternative to backing Adams.

The best action here for the UFT would be to stay neutral in the mayor's race and put all of our money and energy into ending mayoral control which sunsets next June at the state level and has to be renewed by the State Legislature and Governor Kathy Hochul. We should be preparing our members for a necessary fight that we can win in Albany to take away the mayor's power over the schools. Instead, we are going to be backing the corporate-charter friendly Adams. The UFT will endorse just about anyone with a (D) after their name, even if they were working with Students First to make us "go away" as Mulgrew stated. Why is this man still representing misrpresenting us?

*The NY Times article was not in the original posting.