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Thursday, April 5, 2012

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: 44 years after Dr. King's death attacks on unions continue

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: 44 years after Dr. King's death attacks on unions continue:


44 years after Dr. King's death attacks on unions continue

Dr. King in Memphis, 1968
"That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961
Yesterday was the anniversary of the 1968 assassination of  Dr. King, who was killed while defending the rights of black public workers in Memphis, to unionize. How ironic then, 44 years later, to hear school reformer Geoffrey Canada's declaration of war on the teachers union.

Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone and co-star, along with Michelle Rhee, in the anti-teacher, propaganda film, Waiting For Superman, was quoted in Tuesday's New York Times:
Ms. Rhee and Mr. (Joel) Klein have a confrontational history with teachers’ unions. But some