John Hyland, retired LaGuardia Community College, former PSC Treasurer

Thank you for inviting me. It’s been very helpful to me to go back over this story. Stories get lost in the fog of our memory. This is my version of the story, but there’s been input from a lot of folks. My goal is to share information and ideas about the New Caucus experience in a way that will contribute to discussion and understanding and action that will make it better. There’s no claim here that this history and these reflections are definitive or exhaustive. What follows is an account put together through the lens of my experience, memory, and conversations and reflections over the years. The fifteen-minute time frame also makes one abbreviate, and I’m leaving out more than I’m including. It’s a useful practice to pause periodically, and review and assess what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and to learn from our activities. First I will tell my version of the story. Secondly, I planned to present several circles of the context surrounding the events, but Cecelia pretty much did that so I think I’ll skip that. Third, I’ll make some brief comments about the challenges that we face and the spirit in which we may address them.

There’s a whole series of events that Cecelia laid out that led up to this, but in 1990 Governor Mario Cuomo proposed budget cuts to CUNY and tuition increases for CUNY students. Students at LaGuardia occupied the main building in protest, shutting down operations. Students at several other colleges did likewise. The occupation lasted several days. Faculty, staff, and administration milled around outside on the sidewalk. A couple of us pulled together an ad hoc meeting of the faculty and staff – not the administration – across the street at the cafeteria. The PSC chapter was not visible in this struggle, and the central office was silent. When the protest was over several of us discussed the need for a different union presence in action and decided to run a slate against the incumbents in the Spring election. Mike Frank played a very important role in this, and many others. I’m going to name a few people at risk, because there’s too many others I’m not going to mention. So I apologize in advance, but there were specific individuals who did specific things. We called ourselves the New Directions Caucus, formed a representative slate, and wrote and distributed leaflets. We were sort of Neanderthals in the communications field. And the leaflets mainly posed questions: “Do you know who your chapter chair is? Do you know where he is? What was the last chapter meeting?” We won the election. It was a surprise for many people at LaGuardia and at other campuses. There had not been a challenge to the incumbent Unity Caucus for many years.

I was chapter chair and began to experience the inner workings of the union. Mike was a delegate to the Delegate Assembly. We quickly experienced what we knew intellectually. You can’t have a democratic and powerful union on one campus. We reached out to friends and colleagues at other campuses. There already was insurgent activity at City College; Bill Crain had run and lost that particular time. At Brooklyn College, Steve London and others. And there was fertile ground at BMCC: Bill, Jim, and Anne, and many others. So there was this general dissatisfaction. We knew something was not right; we were getting killed. In the 90’s, there were two five-year contracts and there were five years of zeroes. So our pitch went something like this: We’re dissatisfied, there’s a lot of grumbling, complaining in the hallways, in the offices, in the cafeteria – no action. Wouldn’t it be good if we had space for activists to get together? If we had printing facilities, telephones, supporting staff, a budget, affiliations with other organizations? Everybody would go, Yeah, that’s a good idea! We said, well, it’s there, it’s ours, it’s the %^@&^*&*(%* union, and it’s just sitting there! Why don’t we take it over and run it in a way that would advance our agenda, public higher education, the students, and the labor movement. So we kept on building, and there was a response; there were people who were ready. We won chapter victories at Brooklyn, BMCC, City, Hunter, Baruch. In 1995, we held a founding meeting at BMCC with about 100 representatives from across CUNY. We had a printed brochure, which we should really resurrect and circulate, with the New Caucus – we at LaGuardia had changed from New Directions. Gradually more chapters contained New Caucus members.

As I remember there was a lot of self-organization. That is, it wasn’t a central core that went around and did everything. There were a lot of things already going on. The adjuncts were a very key part of the whole new caucus development and were part of the whole thing the whole way through. We met frequently on Saturdays, like this – this is very reminiscent, nostalgic – with attendance of 40-70 people. We sponsored conferences open to all faculty and staff on important topics. There was one at Brooklyn College on part-time faculty, one at Hunter School of Social Work which I forget the topic. Part-time faculty was a significant body. Anne Friedman and Lorraine Cohen organized a conference at BMCC on community college issues. So there was a lot of ground-up stuff; people started to do things together publicly, inviting the whole CUNY population to these meetings. Cecelia brought her UFS experience and networks in, as Chapter chair at Baruch. Those networks were very important; she had contacts all over the university and was very well respected, so her presence meant something.

By 1997, we had a decent base and we ran a full slate in the CUNY-wide election. We lost. We had a decent showing but we lost. Getting over our disappointment, we continued to meet frequently and build at the chapter level. And I think that was a constant of the New Caucus. Chapter, campus-based, grassroots organizing. In the workplace. How are we going to control our lives if we can’t control the work that determines so many things in our lives? We began to work with Ray Rogers and Tim Lowry at Corporate Campaign on campaign literature and logistics. We raised funds, mainly by house parties. Barbara organized a fundraiser at the Public Theater with Tony Kushner’s help. By 2000, I would say most of the campuses had New Caucus chapter leadership. We hired a strong, experienced union organizer, Zelda Marks, to coordinate the campaign and keep us on task. And she was very good and very important. Because you know as academics, we can be like cats.

We debated internally – this was not just a love fest. We had disagreements, we had different tendencies that we debated internally. As the thing picked up speed we met weekly. We put together a full slate. We prepared for leading the union by holding six educational sessions, one on the history of the labor movement with Josh Freeman, one on the politics of the labor movement with Stanley Aronowitz, labor law with Arthur Schwartz, a lawyer who was working with us at that point, we had a session with other insurgent caucuses – Tim Schermerhorn from New Directions of the Transit Workers Union came. So we tried to educate ourselves and prepare ourselves for actually running this thing.

I remember the day when we counted the ballots. And we won! We had agreed to gather at a bar not far from the American Arbitration Association. I remember leaving and it was clear we won. I remember going over to the bar, and people start to drift in. So people come up to me and say, you know, “How’d we do?” And I’d say, “We won.” “We won? We won!?” To me that was very instructive about the mentality we had, we had lost so many times! Really it was an energizing time; we were energized by that. Running at high speed and high energy. And we learned and we grew in the struggle. We learned a lot from each other. We built not only working relationships but friendships that still last.

Then there was the transition from opposition caucus to leadership caucus. That’s a different ballgame. It was tricky. It’s really a topic for another whole event. A challenge for the Caucus was to sustain itself. And the fact that we still exist is very positive, even with our weaknesses. That we’re here today, almost twenty years after winning that election, says something. And it’s important and it needs to be thought about. Most of the activists from the New Caucus became officers and leaders within the union. And their Caucus work shifted into Union work, which was necessary and important, but it also had effects on the Caucus. The New Caucus developed a structure of its own: a Governing Board and Coordinators. There were some meetings in the early years with programs, speakers, discussions. But gradually the Caucus became a union election operation, helping with chapter slates and campaigns, and every three years making a push for the university-wide election. The Unity Caucus, our opposition, largely dissolved. Some of their members were true-blue trade unionists and joined us, and we welcomed them. A remnant connected to the Kingsborough outfit put together a slate and ran against us I think twice. They lost. And I would say they disappeared as a caucus.

I just want to mention in terms of some of the surrounding factors. We always have to take into account the relations between capital and labor. Fighting CUNY is a class struggle fight. And if we don’t recognize that, I think we weaken ourselves. We weaken our connections with other parts of the working class, and it’s a lack when we don’t stay with that and deepen the connections. So I mean there were big things going on in the world, and the world has changed pretty dramatically since that time. So let me try to wrap up. One key thing was the composition of the New Caucus was largely people who were formed in the struggles of the 1960s: the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power struggles, SNCC, SDS, the Women’s Movement was powerful, the Anti-War Movement, the Anti-Poverty programs, community organizations. So we had a bunch of people who had been around the block, who were familiar with this stuff. There was a confluence of the conditions we faced, and we had people who were ready, and they were willing to fight. I often say with the labor movement: too much of the labor leadership doesn’t have the stomach for a fight. That’s what this is folks. It’s not a party, it’s not a debating society, it’s not rationalizing things – we have a better argument than you – it’s a fight, and the opposition has enormous resources. It’s a hard fight.

So as we go forward we will win more advances, as we have throughout this whole period, and we will have setbacks, as we have had. Two resources that I have found helpful and I’d recommend to other groups doing this kind of thing were the Labor Notes materials. One, they put out a book Democracy is Power. That was helpful for us in the transition. Second is a book of Robert Michels’, Political Parties, a study of the German Social Democratic party in the early 1900’s. He lays out his thesis of what happens to organizations. I think it’s useful; it’s not dogma, but it’s a set of useful observations and reflections from that particular period. So I think we can revitalize the New Caucus with a program of self-education and discussion. If we operate out of a sense of mutual responsibility: this is our organization, if it flies it’s because we will make it work by our activity and respect. I think that’s one thing that has run through our experience. We don’t agree with each other all of the time, but we try to stay with each other and respect the commitment that people have made to this, and the intelligence, and the experience people bring, and we try not to dismiss people because we disagree. And the third component, internal and external solidarity: we stick together or we go down. So I thank you for this opportunity to reflect, and let’s go!