Go to hell, Mary!
How dare you spam my work email with your propaganda, while I’m working hard to wrap up another great year with my students.

The union has always supported me, but then again, I’m a hard working, competent teacher.
Like any organization, the union is not perfect, but it works hard for its members and fights for quality education. We don’t just stand up for our members, we stand up for kids and quality education. We believe in best practices based on real educational research, not the unproven claims of the Mackinac Center.

Mary, I’d like you to put your rampage and propaganda on pause for a moment and image a world without unions. Go back 100 years. How well off were your ancestors? How well off were most people, when whole towns were owned and operated by the wealthiest people in the community? Unions helped build and are the last front for the middle class. They fight to protect quality education and to allow teachers to support themselves. Without the union, we’d all be worse off- even private sector workers.

We live in a very concerning time, where corporations and individuals are so busy seeking high return, short-term profits, they don’t care about the long-term viability or risks. We’ve seen it all too many times: risky actions that lead companies to massive profits, followed by its collapse. Someone walked off with major returns, but it wasn’t the hard working people of the company who no longer have jobs. Is this how you want the world to function, including education?

Back to unions, if they have failed you, you must be one incompetent moron, with no legal ground to stand on. Watch out for karma. I’d never wish ill on anyone, but once the union is gone, you’re really going to be worried about needing legal representation. But that’s okay, I’m sure you have a backup plan to work for the Mackinac Center after you’re fired, and truly know what it is like to not have representation. You think the union failed you, you failed yourself and the union.

But go right ahead propagandizing for the Mackinac Center. When you lose your teaching job, or can’t afford the slashed, unlivable wages when the union is gone, maybe they can hire you full time to write bills and set up “conferences” for our lawmakers to be wined and dined and go back to Lansing to enact more Mackinac Center laws. They can continue to privatize education, for profit. On that topic, Mary, as a special education teacher, have you looked at the outcomes for the majority of these profit-making charters, particularly online schools? The statistics are not very good, especially for special education students. But, then, I’m sure you’ll find a way to blame unions for that too.

I hope your campaign to destroy the union is unsuccessful. But, if you succeed, don’t be surprised when quality education (and the middle class), disappear. But, hey, as long as those associated with the Mackinac Center have cashed in in the process, I’m sure you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment.

Sincerely,

Rob Ritter
Mathematics teacher
Forensics Co-Director
And Proud Union Member

P.S.: As an independent whose core beliefs have run conservative for most of my life, I used to vote for republicans almost exclusively, and I’m not alone. But, once the idiots running our state starting adopting Mackinac Center policies as laws, attacking unions, defunding our schools, defunding our local governments, and giving out tax breaks to companies with zero accountability, I and many of my formerly Republican neighbors, (some even NRA members), had our eyes opened to the fact that the Republicans in office today don’t really support our conservative values of local government and local control, and they certainly do no support quality education for our children.

The reaction to the Mackinac Center’s new ‘Do as I Say, Not as I Do’ spokesperson continues to grow. MEA members, who pay the freight for members like this, are forwarding to us their detailed, thoughtful but increasing angry letters to Ms. Davenport.

Send your letter to us, and we’ll run it on MEAMatters. Do your best to be civil, but take this chance to tell the world why you won’t freeload. We’ll use your name only if you want.

Known as “frequent flyers,” these people tap their union for everything they can, complain about it (and usually everything else) and then quit paying dues. Many of us hesitate to confront people like this, but here’s your chance to tell everyone what you think.

Send it to MEAMatters@Gmail.com

A Riverview teacher made it well-known that he would not participate in the February Hug Day events. However, a few high school students attempted to embrace him anyway and the popular high school teacher’s job was left hanging in the balance after one of the students alleged he assaulted him.

After criminal charges were dropped two months before, the district board announced that a special meeting would be held for the purpose of “employee discipline/tenure matter.” A crowd of more than 200 avid supporters attended. As reported by a local television station, thunderous applause and cheers broke out when it was announced that he was not being fired after an agreement was reached between the board and the teacher’s MEA-provided attorney.

Yesterday, the Mackinac Center emailed school employees across the state, at their taxpayer paid work email addresses, an email written by Lansing teacher Mary Davenport, urging MEA members to quit their union.

After reading the email from the Mackinac Center’s summer opt out campaign spokesperson Mary Davenport, an MEA member from Rochester writes the following:

Ms. Davenport & the Mackinac Center hiding behind her:

I have REPEATEDLY asked to be taken OFF of this appalling and disingenuous smear campaign. The fact that you continue to harass the hard working teachers of this state—at their place of work—is disgusting to me.

Ms. Davenport—I can’t even imagine doing this to teachers. If you are SO unhappy with your union, perhaps you should stop enjoying all the privileges it has amassed for you over the years—every single word of your fairly negotiated contract.

Every proud union member (and MUCH of the general public) knows this is simply a way to break unions and line the pockets of corporations and Mackinac Center stooges. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

I have already filed a complaint with the IRS last summer, and I will do so again. I am also encouraging every single member of the MEA and AFT to do the same. The harassment and bullying and outright LIES have got to stop.

The first shot in The Mackinac Center’s Please Quit the MEA summer campaign arrived yesterday in many teachers’ taxpayer-funded email accounts. This year’s featured obsessive union-hater is Mary Davenport, a Lansing special education teacher. Mary starts her email with:

I’m disillusioned with my union – the Michigan Education Association. When I needed help, the union wasn’t there.

The MEA’s response was immediate and emphatic:
MEMORANDUM

FROM: Steven B. Cook, MEA President

DATE: June 10, 2015

RE: Mackinac Center Campaign

Beware: The Mackinac Center—a shadowy anti-public educator organization funded by corporate special interests—has begun its summer campaign to separate you from your union and attack your collective bargaining rights. Interestingly, this time they chose to use taxpayer-funded school emails to send their “message.”

The Mackinac Center has somehow persuaded its new media darling, Mary Davenport, who works in the Lansing School District, to “speak out” against MEA. The Mackinac Center has coached Ms. Davenport to repeat many of its tired and refuted attacks on MEA, then go on to say that the services MEA provides are not worth the dues and you should consider opting out.

It’s important to have a factual discussion of the many services that MEA has provided to Ms. Davenport. Despite her false claims, our organization has gone above and beyond to help Ms. Davenport. Frankly, we’re proud of the services we’ve provided to Ms. Davenport and every member of our union.

Here’s what we’ve done specifically for Ms. Davenport: 

– Since 2003, MEA has provided legal representation to Ms. Davenport regarding multiple claims in multiple forums.

– MEA has provided her with no fewer than four attorneys to represent her.

– MEA has spent more than $160,000 representing Ms. Davenport in her claims.

– MEA has won approximately $65,000 in cash settlements for Ms. Davenport.

– Local UniServ directors and local association leadership have spent countless hours to address grievances filed on her behalf.

Despite all of the work we’ve done for Ms. Davenport, she has filed multiple duty of fair representation claims against MEA. MEA has spent more than $14,000 defending our union against those claims. All of the claims were dismissed. That’s her right, and it never stopped us from fighting for her, just as we would (and do) for any member.

MEA is committed to serving the teachers, education support professionals and higher education employees who comprise our union—including Ms. Davenport. The facts show that for her and the Mackinac Center to assert otherwise is another, in a long list, of blatant lies.

The fact is, MEA members receive numerous advantages for their careers, for their rights, for their wallets, and for public education. If you ever have any questions about the advantages of MEA membership, please call MEA’s Help Center toll-free at 866-MEA-HELP (866-632-4357) or e-mail help@mea.org

The plan has always been: allege public schools are failing, propose solutions that hurt public schools, criticize their struggles, propose more solutions that hurt them, etc., etc. That way, schools have fewer and fewer resources, so eventually they can be moved to the private sector where they belong, where profits can be had. After 30 years of these ‘reforms,’ Michigan schools were recently predicted to become among the nations lowest performing if current trends hold.

This circle has always included charter schools, vouchers, cyber schools, and always cuts to teacher and every other school employee’s retirement, medical benefits and pay. As well as funding cuts that have resulted in an ever-increasing number of school districts in deficit.

The Mackinac Center has always been front and center in this, proposing any solution so long as it includes weakening pubic schools. Take for example, the problem of funding road repairs. The solution, cut schools.

In a recent Detroit News Op Ed, the Center’s Jarrett Skorup and James Hohman recommended cutting $892 million from schools to fix pot holes. $255 million from public schools and $637 million from universities and colleges. As MEA Capitol Comments points out, this from the same group that poses as a friend when it’s time to urge them to quit their union.

Cutting higher education isn’t a new idea at the Mackinac Center. The Center has been advocating for the privatization of the University of Michigan since its very earliest days.

Especially coming from Skorup, this should be no surprise. Two years ago, in a piece entitled Five Reasons The Government Shouldn’t Subsidize Higher Education, he wrote that funding colleges does “not lead to higher (economic) growth,” it leads to waste, to too many college graduates and too many people going to college: “Just putting someone in college does make force them to learn anything (sic).”

This kind of reasoning is enough to get a person a policy analyst job at the Mackinac Center.

Skorup is also memorable as the staffer who helped launch MEAMatters. On the day MEAMatters first appeared, Skorup tweeted a link to the site that included what he thought was the most significant sentence on MEAMatters, and in the process, unwittingly confirmed the Mackinac Center’s motive in pushing MEA members to quit:

“The fewer members it has, the fewer political dollars it can raise and the fewer bodies it can turn out in an election.”

This has always been about political strength and corporate market share; it’s never been about you.

Michigan became a Right to Work state in 2012. Wisconsin banned teacher bargaining the previous year and just adopted its own Right to Work law. What’s it like to teach in Texas, where collective bargaining has been prohibited by law for many years? It turns out having a union to bargain for you makes a very big difference, including how much you make. Bargaining is outlawed in just 5 states (Texas, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia), but is ‘permissive’ in many more. That means management can bargain if it wants to. Imagine how that turns out. To make that decision easier, most of those states also restrict bargaining in various ways. Some of these states have also imposed Right to Work laws, some haven’t. The result is a complicated and uneven environment in which unions represent their members. But what’s the effect on teacher wages? Higher teacher salaries are much more common in states that don’t suppress union strength. Other factors, no doubt, impact these salaries, cost of living, for one and how long these various laws have been in effect, for another. But the advantage of advocating together for better pay is pretty clear. But after all, that’s just common sense.

Much of what the Mackinac Center does is fortissimo, intentionally very loud. Continually boasting about their fight for liberty and calling each other patriots, or wailing about being victimized by this government or that union.

Or when they want “union members to know their rights”  the cover story for their unprecedented campaign last summer to convince people to quit their unions.

But sometimes they operate much more quietly, like when they tried to scare off MEA members using push polls. Or when they need to do a little marketing research.

A good example of the Center’s below-the-radar actions recently surfaced. It seems they wanted to find out what they should have said during the opt out campaign that would have changed more minds. Or what they said that put people off. As any halfway decent political organization knows, the thing to do in this situation is organize some focus groups.

They collected the names of those who filled out the forms on the various opt out websites the Center created (to help “union members know their rights”), and compared those lists to names of people who actually quit the union.

So if you decided to stay, we’ll give you $50 and a free dinner to tell us why. That way, next time, we won’t make the same mistake.