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Monday, February 13, 2012

Schools Matter: Resistance begins with organizing: Social Justice Schools Conference Report Back

Schools Matter: Resistance begins with organizing: Social Justice Schools Conference Report Back:

Resistance begins with organizing: Social Justice Schools Conference Report Back

"How do we help students and teachers to stop blaming ourselves and each other and start working together to change the system?" — CEJ Student Activist

Labor/civil rights leader and author Bill Fletcher spoke to the attacks on the public sector, the need to project an alternative social vision, and the critical need for an organizing strategy.UCLA's Professor John Rogers discusses the relation of school struggles in contrast to increasing income inequality.We ended the conference with a "make the banks pay" rally in front of the notorious tax deadbeats Chase Bank.
Photos by Robert D. Skeels, see the entire set.

We're beginning to see scattered resistance to the corporate school privatization agenda of the Billionaire Boys Club, ALEC, and Arne Duncan. Across the country we are seeing parents stand with educators against the scourge of standardized tests. Parents Across America is a representative cross-section of many of those on the forefront of these battles. In New York we've seen powerful movements by entire communities and groups like the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM). GEM brought us the watershed The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. Seattle activists have opposed charter schools in the backyard of one of the most infamous charter supporters around. Oregon organizers passed Tax Fairness with their Measures 66 and 67. In Florida authentic parent groups opposed the charter trigger law imported by right-wing astroturf groups. In my neighborhood community members and parents from Micheltorena Street Elementary School and Elysian