Inside The NAACP's Civil War Over Charter Schools | HuffPost

Inside The NAACP's Civil War Over Charter Schools | HuffPost

Inside The NAACP’s Civil War Over Charter Schools

Leaders of the nation’s oldest civil rights group say that members are being paid by right-wing groups to infiltrate the organization and sow chaos.

When three local NAACP branches in California passed April resolutions opposing the national group’s call for a charter school moratorium, school choice advocates greeted the news with glee. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos voiced her support in an interview. The Wall Street Journal published a flattering editorial about the move, describing it as a welcome “revolt.”
But leaders at the California state NAACP say this so-called “revolt” is fake news. They say the main member who pushed these actions ― a woman named Christina Laster ― is being paid by a right-wing group connected to the Koch brothers to infiltrate the organization and sow chaos. They also note that, despite the media attention, these resolutions were dead on arrival at the national organization for failure to follow proper submission protocol or rejection by higher committees.
In July, California leadership asked the national NAACP to initiate an investigation into the three branches ― Southwest Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino ― and their leaders’ motivations.
“It’s definitely a funded and deliberate effort to try and do a hostile takeover,” said Rick Callender, the second vice president for the California Hawaii NAACP.
Laster, on the other hand, denies the accusations and says she has been bullied by organizational leaders for simply expressing her opinion and representing the voice of local members.
“They felt I was creating division to make it seem like we were breaking away as an organization. But it wasn’t that at all,” Laster, education chair of the Southwest Riverside branch, told HuffPost. “It was my desire to bring to the forefront what works and what doesn’t work.”
The NAACP ― the nation’s oldest civil rights organization ― passed a national resolution in October 2016 calling for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools. The resolution came out of the San Jose branch and made its way through multiple CONTINUE READING: Inside The NAACP's Civil War Over Charter Schools | HuffPost