LA's 1% Disrupted Democracy and Dismantled the Public School System
On Sunday, September 20, 2015, the new Eli Broad museum opened in Los Angeles - and nearly a thousand parents, students, and teachers seized the occasion to march against the "philanthrocapitalist's" plan to groom 130,000 public school students in Los Angeles Unified to attend unregulated new charter schools in the district.
Philanthrocapitalism describes a certain kind of "weaponized generosity" where donors offer their self-interested charitable giving to remedy the very lack they create elsewhere. The cultural critic Slavoj Zizek has called this the "chocolate laxative" - the sweet treat that constipates is also the flavor of the cure.
Eli Broad is the city's chief benefactor for numerous charities; his wealth comes from decades of real estate developments in the Midwest, Southern California, and from the insurance industry. He has particular interests in expanding charter schools in Los Angeles and nationwide. He appears to invest a lot in the city of Los Angeles but when you look more closely, his giving defunds the public sector and Broad ends up with the better part of the deal. For example: originally, Broad wanted to lease the expensive downtown Los Angeles parcel the Museum sits on for $1 a year over 99 years. Said one county supervisor, "Instead of a project that generates sales and property taxes, we'll now have an art museum that generates no property or sales taxes and Mr. Broad will get the land for free." It's now leased for $7.7 million a year for 99 years, and the 501c3 Broad Foundation housed inside the museum still doesn't put much by way of revenue back into the city.
A coalition of grassroots groups such as Schools LA Students Deserve, members of United Teachers of LA (UTLA), Vet the Supe, and students and parents spoke to local press about their concerns in a small public park adjoining the new downtown Los Angeles museum.
Alex Caputo-Pearl, head of UTLA, challenged Eli Broad's largesse by pointing out how the wealthy Angeleno publicly backed Proposition 30, a ballot initiative that restored funding to California's schools after the devastation of the Great Recession, but in private donated money to defeat Prop 30 and impose a separate union-busting ballot initiative targeting the state's unions. Broad funded out-of- state groups that then funneled the money to anti-tax and anti-union groups in violation of the state's LA's 1% Disrupted Democracy and Dismantled the Public School System:
