{"id":59805,"date":"2025-07-12T14:42:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T14:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/59805\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T14:42:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T14:42:23","slug":"uft-backing-zohran-mamdani-for-nyc-mayor-has-members-crying-foul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/59805\/","title":{"rendered":"UFT backing Zohran Mamdani for NYC mayor has members crying foul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Furious city teachers are threatening to pull their cash from the United Federation of Teachers\u2019<\/a> political activities fund after union leaders blindsided them and endorsed socialist Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n

UFT President Mike Mulgrew and his top allies infuriated rank-and-file members Tuesday by pushing through a resolution to back Mamdani for mayor \u2014 approved by 63% of more than 1,000 delegates \u2014 with the vast majority of teachers on summer recess and caught off guard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A day after the endorsement, 90 educators vented their anger during a Zoom meeting held by the United Jewish Teachers and NYC Public Schools Alliance, groups battling antisemitism in city schools.<\/p>\n

Mulgrew dismissed other candidates for mayor during a delegate meeting Tuesday at which the UFT endorsed Zohran Mamdani. Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cMamdani\u2019s record includes deeply troubling associations with antisemitic and anti-American views,\u201d said Karen Feldman, a middle-school teacher and co-founder of NYCPS Alliance. \u201cThis goes beyond politics \u2014 it\u2019s about the safety of Jewish staff, the increasing ideological tensions in schools, and the breakdown of faith in a union meant to support, not divide.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ramming through the Mamdani endorsement, Mulgrew never gave other candidates a real chance, sources at the meeting said.<\/p>\n

He dismissed incumbent Mayor Adams and ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, both Democrats running as independents, as \u201cbeholden to very rich powerful people,\u201d and ripped Republican Curtis Sliwa for proposing to extend the school year.<\/p>\n

UFT members can donate as much as they want to union\u2019s political action arm, the Committee on Political Education or COPE, but the more than 100,000 who contribute <\/a>typically give $5 per biweekly paycheck.<\/a><\/p>\n

Some union delegates and school chapter leaders told The Post they\u2019re getting peppered with questions from co-workers on how to drop payments to the COPE, and whether it\u2019s worth pulling $1,700 a year in union dues, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should I pay dues to a union endorsing a guy who is a socialist and whose beliefs I vehemently\u00a0 oppose?\u201d said a Bronx-based school chapter leader and delegate.<\/p>\n

Teacher Karen Feldman said Mamdani\u2019s views have \u201cdeeply troubling associations with antisemitic and anti-American views.\u201d Gregory P. Mango<\/p>\n

The Jewish teacher group\u2019s Power Point presentation at the Zoom meeting cited Mamdani\u2019s \u201canti-Zionist stance\u201d <\/a>and criticisms of Israel, which they said could influence curriculum choices and classroom discussions, \u201cpotentially leading to a one-sided or politicized view of complex global conflicts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The slides also warned of Mamdani\u2019s interest in making\u00a0ex-\u201cSquad\u201d Rep. Jamaal Bowman, <\/a>a fellow socialist and former Bronx middle school principal, the city\u2019s next schools chancellor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cStop all COPE payments today!\u201d the group urged, spelling out how to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe urge all members to pull out of COPE to send a clear message to UFT leadership that our hard-earned money will not be used to support divisive candidates,\u201d said Moshe Spern, president of United Jewish Teachers, a group of more than 250 educators.<\/p>\n

The group leaders said they didn\u2019t recommend members leave the union \u201cright now,\u201d but Spern predicted an exodus in coming weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get why so many are pulling their COPE contributions,\u201d said teacher Daniel Alicea, a member of a rival UFT caucus <\/a>that tried to boot Mulgrew from his $321,482-a-year post <\/a>in the union\u2019s May election.<\/p>\n

At a meeting, teachers angry at the UFT\u2019s endorsement of Mamdani were urged to stope their donations to the union\u2019s political arm. Obtained by the New York Post<\/p>\n

\u201cPolitical contributions are protected free speech, so you are free to express it with your wallet. So many see that their union is acting as an entrenched political patronage partisan machine that doesn\u2019t bother to give members a voice in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UFT \u2014 with nearly 200,000 members, including retirees \u2014 reports collecting \u201ddues and agency fees\u201d totaling nearly $174.5 million for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2023, according to its most recent federal financial filings. It spent $4.5 million on \u201cpolitical activities and lobbying\u201d and another $4.3 million on \u201ccontributions, gifts and grants.\u201d<\/p>\n

The union\u2019s decision to back Mamdani comes after it declined to endorse a mayoral candidate in the June 24 Democratic primary, saying members were torn among Mamdani, Cuomo and former Comptroller Scott Stringer.<\/p>\n

The UFT would not address the potential loss of COPE payments or member dues, and brushed off criticism that Mulgrew had orchestrated and railroaded the vote for Mamdani. <\/p>\n

\u201cEndorsements are the result of a lengthy union review process with the final decision being made by the union\u2019s Delegate Assembly, which is made up of UFT members elected from every New York City public school,\u201d spokesperson Alison Gendar said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Furious city teachers are threatening to pull their cash from the United Federation of Teachers\u2019 political activities fund…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,5297,5289,5248,43433,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5341,43434,43435,38597,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-59805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-andrew-cuomo","10":"tag-eric-adams","11":"tag-metro","12":"tag-michael-mulgrew","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-nyc-mayoral-election-2025","20":"tag-political-action-committees","21":"tag-union-dues","22":"tag-united-federation-of-teachers","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-united-states-of-america","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-us-news","29":"tag-usa","30":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114840793507790726","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}