NEA Convention 2010: It’s All Over But the Shouting
The 2010 National Education Association Representative Assembly adjourned this evening at 7:24. I’ll have a lot of material for you in the days and weeks to come, but for now just a few notes to mention.
This afternoon the delegates ripped through the last dozen or so new business items with little or no debate. After a second failed attempt this morning to get NBI 87 – the NEA Is Out to Lunch rally – moved up in the queue, delegate Roberto Chavez of California actually introduced it at 5:14 p.m. Instead of withdrawing it as moot, Chavez instead delivered a vague and rambling speech without referencing the subject of the NBI. The delegates then closed debate and defeated the measure.
The debate over NBI 91, which called for a $3.5 million media campaign against “anti-teacher union documentaries ‘Teached,’ ‘The Cartel,’ ‘The Lottery’ and ‘Waiting for Superman,’” turned farcical rather quickly. Delegate Dan Moran of California began by reading Roger Ebert’s positive review of the latter film, which probably wasn’t the best way to stir people against it.
He went on at length about how these documentaries distort the truth – an argument I didn’t hear at the 2004 NEA convention when the union hosted a special screening of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.
The debate got extra entertaining when a delegate from New Jersey offered an amendment directing NEA to film its own $25 million documentary about the evils of charter schools. The delegates quickly defeated both the amendment and the original motion.
However, NBIs 93 and 99 both passed without debate – the former calling on NEA to “expose and educate the media and the public about allegedly grassroots pro-charter ‘parent groups’” and the latter directing NEA and its affiliates to counter the “misleading impressions” created by charter school lotteries.
NEA announced it has raised $1,552,685 in PAC money so far this year. This is down from last year. It’s an unusual drop since last year was an off-year and this year is a general election year. One lucky Rhode Island delegate won $15,000 in a PAC raffle – this year there was no Saturn to give away a car.
