Education ‘Reform’ Loses The Netroots
 |
The “snake line,” Barber explained, marked a line in mountainous territory above which dangerous reptiles cannot live and where the “cold-blooded” can’t survive. |
Every year Netroots Nation is arguably the most important annual event in the progressive community and a telling barometer of what is on the minds of, as Howard Dean put it, “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”
Last week’s meeting was no exception.
Mainstream coverage of that event has been focused exclusively on the reception Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren got, and it was ecstatic for sure. The “clarity” of her message, as Esquire’s Charles Pierce put it, that the economic trajectory of most Americans “is rigged” – and not in our favor – rang true with the attendees and they shouted their approvals. When she urged the crowd, “We can whimper. We can whine. Or we can fight back,” it was clear those in attendance preferred door number three.
But despite the enthusiasm for Warren’s message, the inevitability of a Hillary Clinton presidential nomination permeated the air. As my friend and colleague Richard Eskow wrote, “A more appropriate slogan for the event, at least for some attendees, might have been ‘I’m resigned to Hillary.’”
While acknowledging that Warren’s presence “had an extraordinary impact on the convention,” Eskow pointed to “other opportunities” where progressives are finding political space and exploiting it for real, positive change.
“These seem like promising alternative channels for progressive energy,” he stated. For those whose white-hot enthusiasm for presidential politics may be dampened by the inevitability of a Hillary candidacy, there may be no more promising alternative channel than the raging fight for public education.
The education-related conversations at the meeting were numerous and animated – from demands for early childhood education, to anger at President Obama’s K-12 policies, to outcries against the exorbitant costs of higher education and ballooning college debt levels.
This hasn’t always been the case at Netroots Nation.
We’ve Come A Long Way
The first Netroots Nation I attended, Pittsburgh in 2009, was mostly a celebration of the Obama victory the previous year. But as events rolled out the rest of that year and into 2010, it became painfully obvious that the new White House would maintain – actually even increase – a disastrous policy agenda carried over from the George W. Bush administration for the nation’s public schools. Public schools activists looked to Netroots Nation as a venue where progressives could push back.
We had our work cut out for us.
As I wrote on the blog site OpenLeft back in 2010, the Netroots Nation event seemed “generally in denial about issues of race and class that are at the heart of” problems in public schools. Instead, all the conversation was about “reform.” And teachers’ unions fought for attention on Education ‘Reform’ Loses The Netroots: