Enough is enough! What Can Education Workers, Students & Parents Do To Defend Public Education?Public Education, Privatization and strenghten the role of the NEA/CTA and AFT/CFT
Please tell all those you know in the Bay Area of California and beyond about the meeting that we must have on privatization, financialization, and corporatization of education.
We need to build statewide and nationwide movements to confront these well-heeled reactionaries that seek not to reform education, they seek to turn it over to privatizers and thus this is a coup d’etat, the real hidden curriculum.
In order to do this they must have a coup d’etat. Get rid of workers, faculty. unions and department chairs at the community college level, and increase administration while shredding all shared governance. They must put into place, with their fancy Chancellors and six figured silk bakced thugs or those with power suits, the infrastructure on which they can build the new culture of education and the new privatization of the educational means of production.
At the K-12 level it is mayoral control and the end of any school boards or democratic input.
At the community college level, this means getting rid of shared governance and more: memory, memory of those who have worked for community colleges for years.
As my articles illustrate, the Lumina Foundation, an undemocratic ALEC type front group, is at the helm of all that is hitting community colleges in CA with smash and grab of the public commons. Gates is as well, of course.
This is all planned, just like the Michele Rhee report cards — they all report to the same bosses, the capitalist class that seeks to turn public education into the next Wall Street bubble and profit-extraction site. Billionaires and millionaires fund their front groups and they use minority faces and women to make the ‘hard sell’. Take a look at Cory Booker in NJ for proof, or Villaraigosa in LA. There are so many more willing to sell out to the new Orwellian structure being architected for us.
It is time to coulple our struggles — K-12 and community colleges and universities and students, teachers, classified staff, tenured professors and part time faculty and parents to say NO to the plutocrats that parade around as philanthropic benefactors when in fact they are power hungry, hierarchical non-democratic thinking and acting billionaires whose money has been accumulated off the backs of workers or by controlling copyright laws.
Obama is supporting all of this, of course, under the auspices of ‘reform’ when in fact it is insidious austerity cleverly concealed and capitalized on by the Sultans of Crisis - Gates, Lumina, Hewlett Foundation, the Teagel Foundation and too many more to name.
All over the country this is going on for the assault is perfectly timed for austerity.
Please, come to the following meeting on January 19th and discuss what we can do to develop clear strategies for overcoming the theft of the public commons and provide for our families.
Public Education, Privatization and The NEA/CTA and AFT/CFT
What Can Education Workers, Students & Parents Do To Defend Public Education?
Saturday January 19, 2013 2:00 PM
518 Valencia St./16th St.
San Francisco, CA
Sponsored by United Public Workers For Action UPWA
Initial Speakers:
Lenni Isenberg, UTLA teacher fighting Against LAUSD Rubber Rooms and Privatization
Jack Garson, Retired Oakland Education Association Teacher And Activist In Public Education Movement
Danny Weil, Former Teacher and Journalist of Truthout and Daily Censored on Privatization of Education
Madeline Mueller, Professor City College Of San Francisco
MLK Middle School UESF/SEIU 1021 Teachers and Staff
Over the last thirty years there has been a coordinated effort by rightwing ideologues and billionaires such as the Walmart family (Walton Foundation), Eli Broad (Broad Foundation) Bill Gates (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) Donald Fisher (Gap Foundation), Pearson Inc. to privatize the trillion dollar public education system in the US through charters, common core testing, merit pay and legislation like “No Child Left Behind” and “Race To The Top”. This in fact is a criminal enterprise with these privatizers placing corporate shills on school boards and other government agencies who are voting for public money to go to charters and other private financial interests that they have investments in.
This forum will address how this attack is taking place and how the NEA and AFT which represented nearly two million teachers have done to respond to these attacks.
The NEA and AFT have taken millions of dollars from these same foundations and have accepted the principle of charter schools being introduced into public education.
Has there been a national campaign against privatization and why not?
Has there been an effort to challenge the financial conflicts of interests by privatizers in Boards of Education and other governmental entities?
Have rank and file teachers been provided with a political education and facts and information on how their school/college superintendents, chancellors, regents and managers have implemented privatization tactics including online education and their financial conflicts of interest?
What can education workers, students and the public including public workers do to defend public education and all public services including fighting the re-segregation of education in the United States.
Sponsored by United Public Workers For Action UPWA
(415)867-0628
-labor donated-