By Raanan Geberer
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Recently, when the people of Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and finally Libya simultaneously revolted against dictatorial rules, no one was more vociferous in his praise of these popular revolutions than President Obama.
After a brief silence of a few days when a successful revolt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak broke out, Obama made statements that there is no doubt that the people demand change, and that we were at a historic moment. He later hailed Mubarak’s decision to resign.
In the case of Libya, perhaps because Libya was never an ally of the United States, Obama was even more forthright. He first made statements demanding that dictator Moamar Khadafi stop the violence against his own people, and soon demanded that Khadafi step down in favor of rumors yet to be determined.
But if you look much closer to home, you’ll see a situation where Obama has suddenly become timid. Starting in Wisconsin and then spreading to Ohio and Indiana, public employees, including teachers, firefighters and others, and their supporters in state legislators are leading huge protests and sit-ins against right-wing Republican governors’ efforts to take away collective bargaining rights from public-employee unions.
Many observers believe that this is just the first salvo in an effort to de-legitimize public-sector unions in general, and possibly, eventually to destroy the union movement in the private sector, or what remains of it, as well.
Since the 1930s, the union movement has been one of the greatest supporters of the Democratic Party. But what does Obama say about the situation in Wisconsin? Almost nothing! The most he’s said is that he’s "troubled” by the fact that the governor of Wisconsin is “making it hard for unions to collectively bargain.” That’s the equivalent of scolding someone for jaywalking across the street.
Contrast this statement with the strong statements on issues of all sorts made by Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson, and we see why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual nowadays.
In the face of a Republican opposition that holds in contempt not only Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal but even many of the Progressive-era reforms of Theodore Roosevelt, the Democratic Party needs stronger leadership, one that doesn’t hesitate to defend its power base.
It’s time to run a primary candidate against Obama, even if that candidate can’t win, just to wake Obama up. We don’t need another Jimmy Carter—we need another William Jennings Bryan.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Academic Freedom for High School Teachers
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
From time to time, a controversy erupts at some major university as the school attempts to discipline something a professor said, whereupon the professor comes back that he’s being denied his “academic freedom.”
The latest example of this took place at Brooklyn College, where a graduate student who was teaching a political science course as an adjunct was removed from teaching because he allegedly didn’t have the proper qualifications. The adjunct came back and charged that he was being removed because of his pro-Palestinian political views, and said his academic freedom was being violated.
Regardless of how someone might feel about particular controversies, the overall concept of academic freedom for college professors is accepted.
But if academic freedom is OK for professors, why not for high school teachers?
I can almost hear the objects to this now: “High school students are still minors!” Technically, they are. But consider this: the age of the average high school student is, say, 16. The age of the average college student (other than adults who are returning to school after many years) is about 20.
Is there that much difference between a person of 16 and one who is 20 years old, particularly in today’s technological climate, where so much information is available to people at an early age?
Think back. When you were 16 or 17 years old, did you think of yourself as a child? You can be sure that the majority, if not all, of today’s 16- and 17-year-olds don’t, either. The law and the school system should recognize that fact.
Another objection that is sure to be heard is that by state law, high school classes have to reflect a certain syllabus. Obviously, students must know the difference between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, between an isosceles and a right triangle, between William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. But why not make the curriculum a little looser, leaving more room for the teachers to express their creativity and impart some of their own special knowledge?
Thinking back to my high school years in the late ’60s and early ’70s, much of what some of my favorite teachers did — express their political opinions, tell humorous anecdotes about their own lives, make occasional risque jokes — would be considered a problem today. Everyone in the school knew who the liberal teachers were, who the conservative teachers were. No one minded. Kids liked teachers who were charismatic and entertaining, whether they agreed with their opinions or not. And these were the very teachers who inspired kids to study and get high grades. Let’s bring those days back again.
From time to time, a controversy erupts at some major university as the school attempts to discipline something a professor said, whereupon the professor comes back that he’s being denied his “academic freedom.”
The latest example of this took place at Brooklyn College, where a graduate student who was teaching a political science course as an adjunct was removed from teaching because he allegedly didn’t have the proper qualifications. The adjunct came back and charged that he was being removed because of his pro-Palestinian political views, and said his academic freedom was being violated.
Regardless of how someone might feel about particular controversies, the overall concept of academic freedom for college professors is accepted.
But if academic freedom is OK for professors, why not for high school teachers?
I can almost hear the objects to this now: “High school students are still minors!” Technically, they are. But consider this: the age of the average high school student is, say, 16. The age of the average college student (other than adults who are returning to school after many years) is about 20.
Is there that much difference between a person of 16 and one who is 20 years old, particularly in today’s technological climate, where so much information is available to people at an early age?
Think back. When you were 16 or 17 years old, did you think of yourself as a child? You can be sure that the majority, if not all, of today’s 16- and 17-year-olds don’t, either. The law and the school system should recognize that fact.
Another objection that is sure to be heard is that by state law, high school classes have to reflect a certain syllabus. Obviously, students must know the difference between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, between an isosceles and a right triangle, between William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. But why not make the curriculum a little looser, leaving more room for the teachers to express their creativity and impart some of their own special knowledge?
Thinking back to my high school years in the late ’60s and early ’70s, much of what some of my favorite teachers did — express their political opinions, tell humorous anecdotes about their own lives, make occasional risque jokes — would be considered a problem today. Everyone in the school knew who the liberal teachers were, who the conservative teachers were. No one minded. Kids liked teachers who were charismatic and entertaining, whether they agreed with their opinions or not. And these were the very teachers who inspired kids to study and get high grades. Let’s bring those days back again.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Let Teachers Have a Say in Hiring Their Principals
Originally Published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, feb. 2011
Every once in awhile, there are reports of principals ruining schools by harassing teachers, trying to fire them on flimsy grounds, looting the budget for their own personal reasons, etc. The teachers, and often the parents, complain about the principals, yet can do nothing.
This calls into question the way we hire principals. As I understand, principal candidates must be certified, then appear before school districts, who then make the choice.
But if the teachers will be the ones who deal with principals on a day-to-day basis, why should they have no voice in the hiring process?
In today’s America, people talk constantly about democracy, but democracy really functions only in a very narrow sphere. In the workplace, whether public or private, things operate in a top-down manner no different than those found in any foreign dictatorship.
Instead of having a few administrators select the principals, why not have the Department of Education, which certifies supervisors, provide a list of qualified candidates to the schools themselves? Then, a committee of teachers would interview the principal candidates and make their selection on real criteria — what it would be like to deal with that principal on a day-to-day basis.
While the teachers’ opinions wouldn’t be the only ones counted, they still would be an important part in the selection process.
Then the students would get a real lesson in democracy, not just from the pages of a book.
Every once in awhile, there are reports of principals ruining schools by harassing teachers, trying to fire them on flimsy grounds, looting the budget for their own personal reasons, etc. The teachers, and often the parents, complain about the principals, yet can do nothing.
This calls into question the way we hire principals. As I understand, principal candidates must be certified, then appear before school districts, who then make the choice.
But if the teachers will be the ones who deal with principals on a day-to-day basis, why should they have no voice in the hiring process?
In today’s America, people talk constantly about democracy, but democracy really functions only in a very narrow sphere. In the workplace, whether public or private, things operate in a top-down manner no different than those found in any foreign dictatorship.
Instead of having a few administrators select the principals, why not have the Department of Education, which certifies supervisors, provide a list of qualified candidates to the schools themselves? Then, a committee of teachers would interview the principal candidates and make their selection on real criteria — what it would be like to deal with that principal on a day-to-day basis.
While the teachers’ opinions wouldn’t be the only ones counted, they still would be an important part in the selection process.
Then the students would get a real lesson in democracy, not just from the pages of a book.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Death of a Magazine
By Raanan Geberer
(originally published in "Mr. Beller's Neighborhood"
For seven years, I worked at Energy Saver’s News, a trade magazine that reported on commercial and industrial energy conservation. Six of those years were at the old Fairchild Publications building on East 12th Street near Fifth Avenue. It was a great neighborhood to work in: We were near both Stromboli Pizza and Ray’s Pizza, Cinema Village, the Jefferson Market Library and the Cedar Tavern. If I was willing to take off a little extra time from lunch, I could even walk to the East Village, to St. Marks Place.
We also had a pretty colorful crew of creative people at work, almost all of us in our early or mid-thirties. So many of us had played in rock bands that we once, just for the hell of it, had a rock band of our own. One of our statisticians had dropped out of Yale Medical School. At the other end of the spectrum, two of our reporters had previously been a truck driver and a security guard, respectively. One guy, who didn’t work too hard but was always cracking everybody up, later became a well-known TV comedy writer. The magazine’s founding editor, who left a few months after I came, was just beginning to write a series of best-selling novels about his Vietnam War experiences.
The work was pretty dull – “such and such hospital in Tempe, Arizona saved $30,000 a year by installing new Trane chillers” – but we felt good about the fact that we were encouraging people to save energy and help the environment. And during lulls in the work, we had a great time playing word games in the office.
Because there were so many different magazines in the same building with their own staff (including many attractive women), you felt like you were part of the same family – well, sometimes. I remember one of the few times we tried to cooperate with one of the other Fairchild magazines. Our editor, Robbie, went upstairs to the Supermarket Times editor, told her that we had a great story about energy conservation in supermarkets, and asked if she would like to print it, too. She just looked at him and said, “Well, we only print stories about supermarkets!”
The magazine had been founded in the 1970s at the height of the energy crisis, but by the time I came, the energy crisis was over. The first sign of trouble came about four years after I started working there. We always had several reporters in “bureaus” – one person in Washington, D.C.; one in Houston, one in San Francisco, one in Pittsburgh and one in Chicago. One day, after rumors about less and less advertising, the head of our publishing group, whom we rarely saw, gave us an ultimatum: Cut the staff in half! The bureau reporters, except for the one in Washington who followed government legislation, had to go. “I told them not to do any work for these last two weeks,” our editor, Robbie, confided in me.
About a year later, the group publisher retired. Fairchild, which was busy cultivating a high-fashion image with Women’s Wear Daily, W, and Home Furnishings, didn’t know what to do with us and the other technical magazines. So they arranged that we would get transferred to another publishing group within the Capital Cities-ABC group, Milltown Publishing, located in Newton, Mass. Milltown was best known for its automotive publications, and our new publisher, Harry Cuddy, was a hard-drinking, tough-talking, rugby-playing guy whose main claim to fame was having once been a successful used car dealer. They also took us out of the Fairchild Building and gave us a cramped space in an anonymous, soul-less building in the Midtown business district.
The first sign of change came over a minor matter – Harry, who traveled back and forth from New York to Newton, decided that all our folios at the top of the pages would have to be the same color, rather than red for heating and air conditioning, yellow for lighting, blue for oil and gas pricing, and so forth. Then he started having arguments with Bob DiGerolimo, our longtime ad manager, and we heard Harry calling Bob a “fucking moron.” Soon, Harry was out of there. But the most alarming trend was that whenever one of the editorial staff left, he was replaced by a new employee – but in Newton. Harry even talked about “getting a new core group together in Newton.” Larry, our equally tough-talking technology editor, confided in me, “You know, this newspaper does a lot to help the environment, but Milltown couldn’t give a rat’s ass!”
Then, one day, I heard Robbie yelling from Harry’s office, “Do you mean you’re firing me?” Harry brought the Washington, D.C. staffer to Newton to make her the editor. Larry went back to the Midwest, and I was alone in the New York office. It was just a matter of time before they laid me off and shut down the office completely. When Harry came into my room with a personnel official, I knew why. Harry was polite, for a change, and explained that this had nothing to do with my work, which he actually thought was good. Because I had been at Energy Saver’s News for so long, Milltown gave me 18 months severance pay, which was nice. Maybe they should have given me the opportunity to work in Newton, but the whole thing happened so fast, I couldn’t think that quickly. I called Robbie. “Kick Harry for me!” he said.
Milltown had the magazine for two or three years, then sold it to another publishing group, which changed its name and moved it to another part of the country. That magazine was sold twice more after that, moved offices at least one more time, and changed its named yet again.
I looked at it recently on the Web – there’s no trace of the old Energy Saver’s News. Even the type of news they cover is different. If I called them and told them about all the fun we had in Greenwich Village, they would probably be at a loss for words.
(originally published in "Mr. Beller's Neighborhood"
For seven years, I worked at Energy Saver’s News, a trade magazine that reported on commercial and industrial energy conservation. Six of those years were at the old Fairchild Publications building on East 12th Street near Fifth Avenue. It was a great neighborhood to work in: We were near both Stromboli Pizza and Ray’s Pizza, Cinema Village, the Jefferson Market Library and the Cedar Tavern. If I was willing to take off a little extra time from lunch, I could even walk to the East Village, to St. Marks Place.
We also had a pretty colorful crew of creative people at work, almost all of us in our early or mid-thirties. So many of us had played in rock bands that we once, just for the hell of it, had a rock band of our own. One of our statisticians had dropped out of Yale Medical School. At the other end of the spectrum, two of our reporters had previously been a truck driver and a security guard, respectively. One guy, who didn’t work too hard but was always cracking everybody up, later became a well-known TV comedy writer. The magazine’s founding editor, who left a few months after I came, was just beginning to write a series of best-selling novels about his Vietnam War experiences.
The work was pretty dull – “such and such hospital in Tempe, Arizona saved $30,000 a year by installing new Trane chillers” – but we felt good about the fact that we were encouraging people to save energy and help the environment. And during lulls in the work, we had a great time playing word games in the office.
Because there were so many different magazines in the same building with their own staff (including many attractive women), you felt like you were part of the same family – well, sometimes. I remember one of the few times we tried to cooperate with one of the other Fairchild magazines. Our editor, Robbie, went upstairs to the Supermarket Times editor, told her that we had a great story about energy conservation in supermarkets, and asked if she would like to print it, too. She just looked at him and said, “Well, we only print stories about supermarkets!”
The magazine had been founded in the 1970s at the height of the energy crisis, but by the time I came, the energy crisis was over. The first sign of trouble came about four years after I started working there. We always had several reporters in “bureaus” – one person in Washington, D.C.; one in Houston, one in San Francisco, one in Pittsburgh and one in Chicago. One day, after rumors about less and less advertising, the head of our publishing group, whom we rarely saw, gave us an ultimatum: Cut the staff in half! The bureau reporters, except for the one in Washington who followed government legislation, had to go. “I told them not to do any work for these last two weeks,” our editor, Robbie, confided in me.
About a year later, the group publisher retired. Fairchild, which was busy cultivating a high-fashion image with Women’s Wear Daily, W, and Home Furnishings, didn’t know what to do with us and the other technical magazines. So they arranged that we would get transferred to another publishing group within the Capital Cities-ABC group, Milltown Publishing, located in Newton, Mass. Milltown was best known for its automotive publications, and our new publisher, Harry Cuddy, was a hard-drinking, tough-talking, rugby-playing guy whose main claim to fame was having once been a successful used car dealer. They also took us out of the Fairchild Building and gave us a cramped space in an anonymous, soul-less building in the Midtown business district.
The first sign of change came over a minor matter – Harry, who traveled back and forth from New York to Newton, decided that all our folios at the top of the pages would have to be the same color, rather than red for heating and air conditioning, yellow for lighting, blue for oil and gas pricing, and so forth. Then he started having arguments with Bob DiGerolimo, our longtime ad manager, and we heard Harry calling Bob a “fucking moron.” Soon, Harry was out of there. But the most alarming trend was that whenever one of the editorial staff left, he was replaced by a new employee – but in Newton. Harry even talked about “getting a new core group together in Newton.” Larry, our equally tough-talking technology editor, confided in me, “You know, this newspaper does a lot to help the environment, but Milltown couldn’t give a rat’s ass!”
Then, one day, I heard Robbie yelling from Harry’s office, “Do you mean you’re firing me?” Harry brought the Washington, D.C. staffer to Newton to make her the editor. Larry went back to the Midwest, and I was alone in the New York office. It was just a matter of time before they laid me off and shut down the office completely. When Harry came into my room with a personnel official, I knew why. Harry was polite, for a change, and explained that this had nothing to do with my work, which he actually thought was good. Because I had been at Energy Saver’s News for so long, Milltown gave me 18 months severance pay, which was nice. Maybe they should have given me the opportunity to work in Newton, but the whole thing happened so fast, I couldn’t think that quickly. I called Robbie. “Kick Harry for me!” he said.
Milltown had the magazine for two or three years, then sold it to another publishing group, which changed its name and moved it to another part of the country. That magazine was sold twice more after that, moved offices at least one more time, and changed its named yet again.
I looked at it recently on the Web – there’s no trace of the old Energy Saver’s News. Even the type of news they cover is different. If I called them and told them about all the fun we had in Greenwich Village, they would probably be at a loss for words.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Why So Many Young People Hate Israel, and How To Fix This Situation
By Raanan Geberer
In a recent, excellent article in Dissent, Mitchell Cohen distinguishes that “the Left that Learns” from the past and “the Left that doesn’t learn.” Specifically, he’s talking about Israel, and distinguishes between those who are critical of Israel but seek to be fair and those for whom anti-Zionist rhetoric strays uncomfortably close to anti-Semitism. Before we go any further, I will say that I, as a member of J Street and a longtime reader of Tikkun, consider myself a member of the former camp.
Cohen says those who “don’t learn” – from historical incidents such as the Russian “Doctors’ Plot,” where anti-Zionism was used as a stand-in for anti-Semitism – subscribe to certain beliefs, attitude and behaviors, such as:
1) Zionism is an alien implant into the Middle East, created by imperialism. The age-old Jewish religious attachment to the Land of Israel is either ignored or ridiculed.
2) The very existence of Israel is un-democratic and discriminatory.
3) Israel’s misdeeds should be criticized ad infinitum, but other injustices, such as Darfur, can be summed up in one perfunctory sentences.
4) Any problem between the Arabs and Israel can be blamed on Israel exclusively. Even the existence of Hamas can be blamed on Israel.
As good as the article is, however, there are several points I believe it overlooks. For example, let’s take a look at some of the most prominent groups that I would consider hardline anti-Israel: the International Solidarity Movement, Jews Against the Occupation and International ANSWER. A great part of the membership of these organizations, if not the majority, consists of college students and other “twenty-somethings” and “thirty-somethings.”
And when these young people read about Israel on web sites or in newspapers, or see newscasts from Israel on TV, what do they see?
I’ll tell you what they DON’T see. They don’t see hordes of refugees trying to escape the British blockade because they have such a strong desire to live in a land of their own. They don’t see immigrants from almost every nation in Europe and Asia streaming into Haifa harbor and Israeli officials trying heroically to unite these diverse people into one nation. They don’t see muscular, suntanned kibbutzniks redeeming swamps and growing crops in places where nothing has grown for thousands of years.
They don’t see upbeat young people hitchhiking all over the country. They don’t see an army so egalitarian that the private sits down at lunch with the general. They don’t see plucky scientists thinking up plans to irrigate the desert and create homes for thousands of more people. And they don’t see novelists, poets and playwrights creating a new literature in a language that had been proclaimed dead for thousands of years.
No, those are the images of Israel that our parents, our grandparents knew. They were already dated when I came of age in the ‘70s, and they are totally remote to these young people now.
When these young people turn on the TV or the computer and see images of Israel, they see images of arrogant soldiers harassing civilians at checkpoints, bombing and strafing entire communities, demolishing houses, blockading cities into poverty, breaking up peaceful demonstrations, and firing tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds. They see Palestinian prisoners have been in prison for months without having been charged. And these are the ONLY images they see.
While it’s true that these young people lack a historical perspective, fewer and fewer young people in general have such a perspective. The numbers of history or political science majors is way, way down from what it was 20 or 30 years ago. Survey after survey, news article after news article, show that an alarming percentage of young Americans lack a basic knowledge of American history. And if this is how they react to American history, the chances are that they know even less about Middle Eastern history. No, all they have to go by are those images they see on TV or on the web.
If Israel negotiates honestly with the Palestinians as an equal rather than from a position of arrogance, puts through a meaningful settlement freeze and stands up to the right-wing settlers, if its soldiers are taught to be courteous when dealing with Palestinian civilians, if Israel stops violating international law when dealing with the Palestinians in the territories, if Israel minimizes the number of checkpoints and lifts the Gaza blockade, if Israel accepts the international consensus of a “two-state solution” using land for peace, then the “hate-Israel” chorus coming from college campuses will be diminished to one or two notes.
This, I guarantee you. There will always be some people who insist that Israel has no right to exist, but if Israel learns to respect human rights and the international consensus, those people will be as irrelevant as the Flat Earth Society.
In a recent, excellent article in Dissent, Mitchell Cohen distinguishes that “the Left that Learns” from the past and “the Left that doesn’t learn.” Specifically, he’s talking about Israel, and distinguishes between those who are critical of Israel but seek to be fair and those for whom anti-Zionist rhetoric strays uncomfortably close to anti-Semitism. Before we go any further, I will say that I, as a member of J Street and a longtime reader of Tikkun, consider myself a member of the former camp.
Cohen says those who “don’t learn” – from historical incidents such as the Russian “Doctors’ Plot,” where anti-Zionism was used as a stand-in for anti-Semitism – subscribe to certain beliefs, attitude and behaviors, such as:
1) Zionism is an alien implant into the Middle East, created by imperialism. The age-old Jewish religious attachment to the Land of Israel is either ignored or ridiculed.
2) The very existence of Israel is un-democratic and discriminatory.
3) Israel’s misdeeds should be criticized ad infinitum, but other injustices, such as Darfur, can be summed up in one perfunctory sentences.
4) Any problem between the Arabs and Israel can be blamed on Israel exclusively. Even the existence of Hamas can be blamed on Israel.
As good as the article is, however, there are several points I believe it overlooks. For example, let’s take a look at some of the most prominent groups that I would consider hardline anti-Israel: the International Solidarity Movement, Jews Against the Occupation and International ANSWER. A great part of the membership of these organizations, if not the majority, consists of college students and other “twenty-somethings” and “thirty-somethings.”
And when these young people read about Israel on web sites or in newspapers, or see newscasts from Israel on TV, what do they see?
I’ll tell you what they DON’T see. They don’t see hordes of refugees trying to escape the British blockade because they have such a strong desire to live in a land of their own. They don’t see immigrants from almost every nation in Europe and Asia streaming into Haifa harbor and Israeli officials trying heroically to unite these diverse people into one nation. They don’t see muscular, suntanned kibbutzniks redeeming swamps and growing crops in places where nothing has grown for thousands of years.
They don’t see upbeat young people hitchhiking all over the country. They don’t see an army so egalitarian that the private sits down at lunch with the general. They don’t see plucky scientists thinking up plans to irrigate the desert and create homes for thousands of more people. And they don’t see novelists, poets and playwrights creating a new literature in a language that had been proclaimed dead for thousands of years.
No, those are the images of Israel that our parents, our grandparents knew. They were already dated when I came of age in the ‘70s, and they are totally remote to these young people now.
When these young people turn on the TV or the computer and see images of Israel, they see images of arrogant soldiers harassing civilians at checkpoints, bombing and strafing entire communities, demolishing houses, blockading cities into poverty, breaking up peaceful demonstrations, and firing tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds. They see Palestinian prisoners have been in prison for months without having been charged. And these are the ONLY images they see.
While it’s true that these young people lack a historical perspective, fewer and fewer young people in general have such a perspective. The numbers of history or political science majors is way, way down from what it was 20 or 30 years ago. Survey after survey, news article after news article, show that an alarming percentage of young Americans lack a basic knowledge of American history. And if this is how they react to American history, the chances are that they know even less about Middle Eastern history. No, all they have to go by are those images they see on TV or on the web.
If Israel negotiates honestly with the Palestinians as an equal rather than from a position of arrogance, puts through a meaningful settlement freeze and stands up to the right-wing settlers, if its soldiers are taught to be courteous when dealing with Palestinian civilians, if Israel stops violating international law when dealing with the Palestinians in the territories, if Israel minimizes the number of checkpoints and lifts the Gaza blockade, if Israel accepts the international consensus of a “two-state solution” using land for peace, then the “hate-Israel” chorus coming from college campuses will be diminished to one or two notes.
This, I guarantee you. There will always be some people who insist that Israel has no right to exist, but if Israel learns to respect human rights and the international consensus, those people will be as irrelevant as the Flat Earth Society.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Hostility to Public Employees: Based on Jealousy
By Raanan Geberer
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN — In times of austerity, officials — especially Republicans — seem to target public employees, especially state and municipal workers. They propose layoffs and hiring freezes without regard for what those workers and their families might think.
They express outrage over these workers’ “huge” raises, seemingly automatic promotions and “Cadillac” health plans. Their attitude is summed up by a remark I once heard a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor say at a press conference: “When we were in office, such and such number of jobs were created — and by jobs, I mean productive jobs, private-sector jobs.”
This attitude has filtered down to the people at large. Friends of public employees often ask them, in jest, whether they really work. City and state workers are thought to be immune to being fired, especially if they’ve been there for awhile.
When real abuses exist, such as a few years ago, when it was brought to people’s attention that subway conductors on “layup” for two or three hours between trains were still paid for those hours, critics jump all over them. They find in these incidents an excuse to criticize all public employees — and especially public employee unions — by default.
I’ve had two stints as a public employee, one as an assistant manager in the Section 8 housing program for several years and one as a census interviewer for about a month, and from my standpoint, public employees are very productive. Without the census, federal resources wouldn’t get to the right people. Without the Section 8 housing program, many people couldn’t afford their apartments. And by the way, there were several people at Section 8 who were fired due to poor performance, disproving an old canard. Furthermore, let’s look at some other public employees. Without bridge and tunnel employees, it wouldn’t be safe to cross over the George Washington Bridge or go through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Without police officers, no place would be safe. Without Health Department inspections, thousands of people would die from eating tainted food. And without police officers, no one would be safe, although most of those who slam civil servants make an exception for police officers, firefighters and sanitation people.
Much of the anger at public employees focuses on teachers, who supposedly aren’t getting the “results,” making A students out of D students, as if such a thing could be accomplished overnight. There are some people such as myself, who could read, write and do simple math by age 5 or 6 (I learned to read by asking my mother what was written on the sides of the freight cars that we saw going by at a nearby railroad yard). But for the great majority of people, their first exposure to the three Rs came in the classroom.
Perhaps what really ticks people off about civil servants is JEALOUSY! Deep down inside, most people would like to have the regularly scheduled raises, number of days off, health coverage, pensions, etc., that city and state workers have. At one time, most employees of big companies such as GM, GE and IBM had very similar benefits, but then the corporations began chipping away at them. Rather than attacking public employees, I think, politicians should try to create a climate where ALL workers — public and private — will have the security that public workers now enjoy.
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN — In times of austerity, officials — especially Republicans — seem to target public employees, especially state and municipal workers. They propose layoffs and hiring freezes without regard for what those workers and their families might think.
They express outrage over these workers’ “huge” raises, seemingly automatic promotions and “Cadillac” health plans. Their attitude is summed up by a remark I once heard a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor say at a press conference: “When we were in office, such and such number of jobs were created — and by jobs, I mean productive jobs, private-sector jobs.”
This attitude has filtered down to the people at large. Friends of public employees often ask them, in jest, whether they really work. City and state workers are thought to be immune to being fired, especially if they’ve been there for awhile.
When real abuses exist, such as a few years ago, when it was brought to people’s attention that subway conductors on “layup” for two or three hours between trains were still paid for those hours, critics jump all over them. They find in these incidents an excuse to criticize all public employees — and especially public employee unions — by default.
I’ve had two stints as a public employee, one as an assistant manager in the Section 8 housing program for several years and one as a census interviewer for about a month, and from my standpoint, public employees are very productive. Without the census, federal resources wouldn’t get to the right people. Without the Section 8 housing program, many people couldn’t afford their apartments. And by the way, there were several people at Section 8 who were fired due to poor performance, disproving an old canard. Furthermore, let’s look at some other public employees. Without bridge and tunnel employees, it wouldn’t be safe to cross over the George Washington Bridge or go through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Without police officers, no place would be safe. Without Health Department inspections, thousands of people would die from eating tainted food. And without police officers, no one would be safe, although most of those who slam civil servants make an exception for police officers, firefighters and sanitation people.
Much of the anger at public employees focuses on teachers, who supposedly aren’t getting the “results,” making A students out of D students, as if such a thing could be accomplished overnight. There are some people such as myself, who could read, write and do simple math by age 5 or 6 (I learned to read by asking my mother what was written on the sides of the freight cars that we saw going by at a nearby railroad yard). But for the great majority of people, their first exposure to the three Rs came in the classroom.
Perhaps what really ticks people off about civil servants is JEALOUSY! Deep down inside, most people would like to have the regularly scheduled raises, number of days off, health coverage, pensions, etc., that city and state workers have. At one time, most employees of big companies such as GM, GE and IBM had very similar benefits, but then the corporations began chipping away at them. Rather than attacking public employees, I think, politicians should try to create a climate where ALL workers — public and private — will have the security that public workers now enjoy.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Night Pharmacies: Are We Going Back to the Bad Old Days?
By Raanan Geberer
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN – Last weekend, on the way back home from somewhere at night, I decided to drop a prescription off at my local chain drugstore (which shall go nameless). I had done so a hundred times—since they opened, the pharmacy department itself has been open all night.
This time, however, when I entered the store, I saw a locked gate at the pharmacy department. And when I asked the clerk behind the counter, he directed me to a sign saying, “As of August 6, the pharmacy will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays; on weekends it will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.”
This may not be a big deal for the average person, but it presents a problem for someone who takes five or six prescription medications regularly. Thank God my asthma hasn’t been serious for the last 12 years, but what if it was and getting the prescription quickly was the only alternative to going to the emergency room? Or what if I had just gotten out of the hospital and needed to fill a prescription right away?
I was in both of these situations in the early 1990s when I lived in the Kings Highway area and my asthma was still serious. In the case when I was let out of the emergency room and desperately needed to get a prescription filled to make sure I didn’t have another attack, I had to spend a lot of money on a cab to the nearest all-night pharmacy, in Kings Plaza.
At the time, I remember, there were one or two others well-known all-night drugstores. I remember the Neergard Pharmacy in Park Slope and a well-known one on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (where a physician friend of mine sent me, with a prescription, when I had an attack in Manhattan). There weren’t very many others.
I understand how large drug chains might want to cut back in this economy. I also know that they are leaving some outlets open with all-night pharmacy sections. But these may not be enough.
No one wants to go back to the days when every person with a serious illness had to memorize the names and locations of those few pharmacies where one can go to in the middle of the night in case of an emergency.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN – Last weekend, on the way back home from somewhere at night, I decided to drop a prescription off at my local chain drugstore (which shall go nameless). I had done so a hundred times—since they opened, the pharmacy department itself has been open all night.
This time, however, when I entered the store, I saw a locked gate at the pharmacy department. And when I asked the clerk behind the counter, he directed me to a sign saying, “As of August 6, the pharmacy will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays; on weekends it will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.”
This may not be a big deal for the average person, but it presents a problem for someone who takes five or six prescription medications regularly. Thank God my asthma hasn’t been serious for the last 12 years, but what if it was and getting the prescription quickly was the only alternative to going to the emergency room? Or what if I had just gotten out of the hospital and needed to fill a prescription right away?
I was in both of these situations in the early 1990s when I lived in the Kings Highway area and my asthma was still serious. In the case when I was let out of the emergency room and desperately needed to get a prescription filled to make sure I didn’t have another attack, I had to spend a lot of money on a cab to the nearest all-night pharmacy, in Kings Plaza.
At the time, I remember, there were one or two others well-known all-night drugstores. I remember the Neergard Pharmacy in Park Slope and a well-known one on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (where a physician friend of mine sent me, with a prescription, when I had an attack in Manhattan). There weren’t very many others.
I understand how large drug chains might want to cut back in this economy. I also know that they are leaving some outlets open with all-night pharmacy sections. But these may not be enough.
No one wants to go back to the days when every person with a serious illness had to memorize the names and locations of those few pharmacies where one can go to in the middle of the night in case of an emergency.
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