EXCLUSIVE: Wisconsin Teachers' Unions Trained by Well-Funded Alinsky Group

EXCLUSIVE: Wisconsin Teachers' Unions Trained by Well-Funded Alinsky Group

Breitbart.com has learned that teachers in Wisconsin have been attending routine training workshops with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a radical organization founded by Saul Alinsky in 1940.

In a video produced by the MacIver Institute, organizers are seen arriving at a March 17 training session with the Wisconsin Education Association Council, Wisconsin’s state teachers union. 

Teachers’ unions led last year’s protests in Wisconsin against collective bargaining reforms, and are now heavily involved in the effort to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker. In addition to Alinskyite groups, the recall effort has attracted the support of radicals such as unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. 

In a little-known speech to Wisconsin teachers last September, Ayers spoke of the need for “a new kind of education for a new kind of citizens that can make a new kind of society” (part 1 is here; part 2 is here).

The training tactics of the IAF were detailed in a 1994 book by Jim Rooney called Organizing the South Bronx, which was praised by Ayers as on the back cover as “an outstanding book.” 

The book details the IAF’s tactics as follows: 

“IAF leaders are brazenly explicit about their appetite for power.” (p. 222)

“There is no nice way to bring about change. All change comes through pressure and threats.” (p. 226)

“Increase militancy by polarizing the situation, by identifying the enemy and by developing the situation in terms of good guys and bad guys.” (p. 89)

“It is absolutely essential to select a ripe target [a person] and build animosity toward him or her.” (p. 228)

While Alinsky only lived until 1972, IAF has continued to function. The organization boasts: “The living reality of the IAF is overwhelmingly present in the 59 IAF affiliates functioning in 21 states, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia.”

In the video from the MacIver Institute, the first person who approaches the camera is Michael Gecan, an IAF trainer who earns an annual salary of $117,500 plus benefits of $29,375 as of 2008, according to public filings.

According to the Open Society Foundations, Gecan currently oversees IAF organizations in New York City, Long Island, New Jersey and in the Cook, Lake, and DuPage counties in Illinois.

The man in the car who adopts a confrontational approach is Ted Kraig, a Uniserve Director for WEAC, whose compensation exceeds $100,000. 

Kraig also accused the MacIver reporter of seeing teachers’ unions as “the wealthy and powerful in this country.” Osmulski could have pointed out that the average Milwaukee public school teacher’s compensation exceeds $100,000. 

According to a job posting by Dane County United, an affiliate with the IAF, a significant goal for the Wisconsin teachers’ unions is the recall of Gov. Walker.

As the Wisconsin recall approaches on June 5, we are likely to see some of Alinsky’s tactics used by the teachers’ unions and other leftwing groups determined to reverse his reforms and the democratic will of the people of Wisconsin.

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