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Friday, March 24, 2017

If it’s Friday, it’s Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. | Fred Klonsky

If it’s Friday, it’s Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. | Fred Klonsky:

If it’s Friday, it’s Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers.

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diane-ravitchKevin-Coval


This morning’s guests on our radio show/podcast, Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers are noted education historian and corporate education reform critic, Diane Ravitch, and poet founder of Louder than a Bomb, Kevin Coval.
Diane will be talking with my bro in a recorded conversation they had last week.
It was Ravitch’s awakening to the hoax and dangers of standardized testing that helped spark a national movement. Her standing as a respected academic provided ammunition to those of us in schools and communities, parents and teachers, who continue the fight against vouchers and charters and the threats to public education represented by the DeVos Department of Education and Trump.
I remember back in 2010 when Ravitch first published The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. Our local union purchased a copy for each of our board of education members.
Singer, songwriter and activist Linda Boyle came by the studio a few weeks ago to record some of her songs. We will be sharing that with you over the next four shows, starting today.
Kevin Coval will be in the studio with us at Co-Prosperity Sphere live and in person in the beautiful downtown Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago.
Chicago Teachers Union President (a guest on our show a few weeks ago) calls Kevin’s latest collection of poems, A People’s History of Chicago, “a vibrant, dynamic collection of vignettes (that) exposes the naked truth of our fair city.”
A people’s artist, Kevin Coval is not only a poet. He is an activist, organizer and inspiration to young folks and many of us older ones too.
As we have said many times, our radio show/podcast is like a teacher’s lesson plan.
My brother and I have an idea of what today’s show is about. But it can take its own direction.
And we let it.
Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers can be heard at http://www.lumpenradio, 105.5 FM and streaming live all around the world at 11AM.
A few hours later it can be heard on MixCloud.
And you can download and subscribe to the podcast version of our show at Liberated Syndication and iTunes.
I have been told that if enough people click “loved” (it comes up if you click the little blue circle in the upper right), iTunes features the podcast.
I’m pleased that in the few weeks since we have turned Hitting Left into a podcast over 600 people have downloaded it and subscribed.