Colleague Kevin Rennie’s driveby hit on Sharon Palmer on Daily Ructions and on WTIC this morning was certainly fair game — she did accept some kind of award from a Communist group a few years ago and she’s now Gov. Malloy’s Commissioner of Labor.
But Palmer, a labor leader I’ve known and argued with for years, deserves more than this too easy cheap shot.
Yes Palmer is the president of the Connecticut Federation of Teachers. She’s also the union leader who went further out on a limb that any other, looking for compromise during the stand-off over education reform earlier this year. She helped to forge a groundbreaking teachers contract in New Haven, meeting for months to hammer out a deal that makes new demands and brings fresh accountablity. It’s arguably far more of a refom plan than anything 
that came out of the state legislature.
It was Palmer, behind closed doors, who tried to bring Malloy and teachers closer together. She’s open to new ideas while defending her profession. She’s willing to admit teachers and unions must change and evolve. She listens and she’s willing to compromise.
A lot of the time, I don’t agree with Palmer. But she’s honest, open minded and believes in teachers and children. If this is a Communist operative, we could use a lot more of them.
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8 Responses to A Few Words In Defense of Sharon Palmer
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Why is it that the Democratic party has been taken over by the Communists and other extremists. I thought Malloy simply pandered to unions. Now I believe it is more than pandering and is actual left wing ideology. No wonder Connecticut is failing.
We didn’t score any of that ‘Race to the Top’ funding worth up to $300 mil for CT. I have nothing to say good about Sharon Palmer or Andrew Fleischamn or Mary Loftus Levine.
This stall and too-little-too-late game went on under 2 administrations and these people think taxpayers will simply make up a shortfall any time the union feels it might be inconvenienced by federal funding mandates. In Red states they refuse Fed funds over the local control issue. Here we do it to pad the wallets and purses of union thugs.
The permacession continues in CT. Glossy CEO site location magazines still tout CT as a loser move for a CEO going due diligence.
I applaud your (Rick Green’s) note here regarding Sharon Palmer, her past honors, and Kevin Rennie’s stupidity in bringing one up. The Communist Party has honored the work of many in history, including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln (a Republican, far better than Mr. Rennie), W.E.B. Dubois, and others who have contributed to workers’ struggles and American life. Who among us that steps out of line, or onto a picket line, or writes a bold newspaper column, will next be targeted by Republicans like Rennie in desperate attacks on democrats and progressives?
Larry Deutsch, Minority Leader (Working Families Party), Hartford City Council
“Working Families Party”
Well, that certainly explains your defense of the Communist Party, now doesn’t it?
The Communist party is not a group that I would want to honor me and dare say Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln would not appreciate their honors either. Communist ideology is very distant and at opposite poles of the philosophy of our American way of life nor of Lincoln’s and Jefferson’s. Communism looks good on paper, but it is not compatible with human nature as proven by history.
Would bringing up an award accepted in person by a conservative politician from, say, the American Nazi Party also strike Rick Green as a cheap shot?
So Larry, even bringing up the fact that Palmer got an award from the Communist Party is a “desperate attack” done out of “stupidity?”
The fact is that it’s part of Palmer’s record. I’m glad you’re not responsible for deciding for the rest of us what is and is not newsworthy.
It’s still a free country – though the prescriptions of the Communist Party would fix that. And in a free country, people given awards are free to not to accept them. Ms. Parker chose to accept the award; she’ll have to live with the consequences of her decision, and so will the governor who appointed her. Mr. Green may be a bit young to recall Josef Stalin’s man-made famine in Ukraine in the early in 1932-32, during which 4-7 million Ukrainians starved to death — http://donpesci.blogspot.com/2005/01/famine-lies-justice-and-ukraine.html — while the CPUSA was lauding Stalin, who was able though such means of terror, not limited only to Ukraine,to bring all of the Baltic states under his hobnailed boots. People make choices; it is the responsibility of journalists to say what the consequences of those choices are. To the extent Mr. Rennie has done so, he has advanced the public good.