Schools Matter: Eli Broad funded United Way Greater Los Angeles now also serving CCSA's political arm

Schools Matter: Eli Broad funded United Way Greater Los Angeles now also serving CCSA's political arm:

Eli Broad funded United Way Greater Los Angeles now also serving CCSA's political arm

"By what logic does United Way engage in an activity that is shunned by all the other charities?" — Professor Ralph E. Shaffer

United Way Greater Los Angeles (UWGLA)'s role as a tax deductible lobbying and public relations firm for plutocrats like Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Carrie Walton Penner, and Casey Wasserman is expanding. They are now apparently functioning as adjunct to the deep pocketed California Charter School Association (CCSA). To wit, compare this email from the "non-partisan charity" UWGLA to that of the CCSA trade association's 501c4 wing, CCSA Advocates:

Notice any similarities?

In a discussion with several other social justice activists, we were trying to decide why UWGLA's well paid political consultants didn't have the good sense to at least change the precise order of the candidates that they and their fellow special interest group, the CCSA, feature on their propaganda pieces. UWGLA could argue, unconvincingly, that they put the names in the same order as candidates received votes in the primary election. However, it's far more likely that they used CCSA's billionaire backed candidates' existing information and then tacked on the other candidate information on as a grudging afterthought.

The first clue that UWGLA has absolutely no respect for the candidates outside of the CCSA privatization pushers like Galatzan and Rodriguez? They misspelled the Honorable Bennett Kayser's name as "BENNET KAYSER" in every occurrence of both the image and text of the communication they sent out. This is the seated school board member, and UWGLA has a mind-blowing multi-million dollar budget, but they get everything else correct except the school board member's name? Moreover, notice how all of the head shots are proportional, but they use the old political trick of making one candidate look abnormal by using a disproportional photo crop. A nasty little Fox News style play probably drawn up by CCSA's arch-reactionary political director Carlos Marquez.

We frequently look to UWGLA's plutocrat funding sources and the neoliberal pay-to-advocate paradigm that UWGLA and other members of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) operate under. Nothing is more telling of UWGLA's complete allegiance to the neoliberal corporate education reform agenda than this 2013 photo of privatizer Monica Garcia, the disgraced John Deasy, millionaire Casey Wasserman, billionaire Eli Broad, and UWGLA's Elise Buik. What we typically don't look at is the staff members UWGLA employs to promulgate their donors' agenda.

UWGLA's current Education Program Officer is Elmer G. Roldan. Prior to his UWGLA stint, Roldan worked for the Camino Nuevo Corporate Charter Chain—known for its unelected board of bankers, finance capitalists, and hedge Schools Matter: Eli Broad funded United Way Greater Los Angeles now also serving CCSA's political arm: