How NOT to Win Friends and Influence People
In the latest example of shooting yourself in the public relations foot, we hear from Hardy L. Brown, publisher of Black Voice News, a weekly newspaper in Riverside, California. Mr. Brown recounts how the California Teachers Association approaches community outreach:
For the past couple of years, California Black Media, a coalition of 22 African American newspapers across the state founded by myself and co-publisher Cheryl Brown, has sponsored a summit in Sacramento on various issues that impact the Black community. We invite experts on various topics to be a part of the panels so we can become better informed to educate our readers. This year the topics were “Crisis In Our Schools” and “Contracting With Our Small Businesses.”
Invitations were sent to select organizations to request that a high ranking policy maker represent that organization on the education panel and the CTA did not respond in a timely manner so we moved ahead. Working on a tight deadline to print the program and alert our readers of the event, we completed the process without CTA. CTA then contacted us and wanted to get on the panel and we said no. Our decision was no because it was too late.
This response sparked a threat from them as they reminded us about their advertising with Black Voice News in the past.
This incident happened at a time when I was reminiscing about my fiftieth year anniversary of graduating from segregated Jones High School in North Carolina. It was fifty years ago that I graduated from Jones High School in North Carolina with fond memories of my all Black teaching staff.
They, along with the community, had taught us that teachers were on par with preachers, doctors and lawyers. Fifty years later, I still believe that, but organizations that represent teachers have lost their way from the children they teach and have focused more time and money on bullying people who don’t agree with them.
…The CTA staff had researched their files and found out they had placed advertising with us as if that transaction bought our loyalty. Little did I know, this is why they purchased the space. I thought they had a message they wanted to share with the Black community. Now I have discovered their real motive. I have also found that to be true because they withdrew their funding from a branch of the NAACP in Los Angeles when the branch didn’t support their agenda.
Well I have news for CTA, and that is, my father taught me to be ready to move off of the sharecropping farm because when you disagree with the master, or he gets a burr in his pants, you might have to part company.
And then there was Sacramento Bee associate editor Ginger Rutland, who received a call from a CTA phone-banker:
Then, without giving me a chance to respond, she immediately launched into her scripted spiel – essentially a long denunciation of the California Legislature in general and Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg, specifically, for cutting support to California schools.
…When the CTA’s breathless paid caller finished her script, she asked me if I would like her to transfer me to Sen. Darrell Steinberg’s office so I could tell him myself how outraged I was. I told her that I’d rather be transferred to CTA union bosses. I wanted to tell them how outraged I was that the union was throwing younger teachers under the bus so that senior teachers wouldn’t have to raise their co-pay for a doctors office visit from measly $1 to $15, which is more in line with what most of the rest of the world pays.
…When I called Steinberg’s office the next day I learned that they had gotten between 600 and 700 calls from people who were transferred to their office in the same way that I was about to be. Some clearly bought the CTA’s line and blamed Steinberg for education cuts. Many others were confused and wanted to know why Steinberg’s office was calling them. And a substantial number were senior citizens who didn’t want to be bothered.
Rank and file teachers, I have a question for you: Is this really how you want your dues spent?
