Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

A little background first: Every year that I can remember, a group of pro-life conservative NEA delegates, with the assistance of less ideologically minded delegates who think the union’s positions on social issues are a detriment to recruiting, introduce the same motion in different forms. They want NEA to state categorically that it has no position on abortion and family planning.

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.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 19:21 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.