Progressive Media Advocates
David Love: But the larger picture here is that corporate education reform is big business. And the rightwing, plutocratic agenda – of school privatization, government austerity measures and deunionization – clashes with the needs of poor, working class, and disproportionately black and brown public school students.
Shamus Cooke: Public sector unions must mobilize their members and the community they serve to fight back. They have no other choice if they are to remain powerful or even relevant.
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer: As long as the N.E.A. as well as organized labor in general remain tied to the corporate-dominated Democratic Party, public education will deteriorate, critical thinking will be undermined, wages will remain low, and the working class will continue to suffer a decline.
Craig Williams: As progressives, we should also argue that educators need more funding just to deal with the increased poverty created in large part by the private sector.
Lenny Isenberg: LAUSD may target you for removal, because you either refuse to go along with the longstanding and highly profitable financial scam they have been running for generations now called public education, aka minority daycare.
Leonard Isenberg: Ex-LA Mayor Richard Riordan, who is now chairman of the board of cash-strapped ICEF Public Schools, is now in the process of trying to get his board to vote control of the charter’s 15 schools over to Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, another large, local charter-school group.
Leonard Isenberg: What motivates me is something rather positive and comes from the fact that I am a product of what was best at LAUSD from 1952 until 1964, where I got an excellent education.
Leonard Isenberg: The preconceived “dominant narrative” that mainstream media is programmed to spew out all over this country that vilifies and lays all blame for bad public education on teachers is allowed to trump reality of corruption and fraud from LAUSD.
Leonard isenberg: By what standard do people who continually fail to fix public education remain the leaders of public education reform
Leonard Isenberg: At the root of public education’s generational failure to educate Latino and Black students in this country is the unrelenting not so subliminal message that these young people are inferior and cannot learn.
Leonard Isenberg: With a present ratio of four public relations people to every reporter in the U.S., I don’t think I will hold my breath for Connie Llanos of the Daily News to contact me any time soon about a real piece of old fashion investigative journalism
Shamus Cooke: This two-party big lie is not an accident, but an expression of a deeper held belief: that the U.S. government must be directed to meet the needs of the super wealthy who own U.S. corporations.
Diane Lefer: I get it now: When public education works, it’s transformative of the individual and of society. Maybe that’s why it’s under attack.
Cynthia Liu: Last week more than 58,000 Californians and 49 state grassroots groups (representing 5 million members statewide) sent letters letting their legislators know that they are ready to vote to save our kids and save our schools.
Anthony Samad: We either invest in ourselves now, or pay later as a less competitive society. We need to fix ourselves before we nix ourselves.
Leonard Isenberg: The hard reality is that once the neurobiology and sociology human development milestones are allowed to pass without even attempting to fulfill them, permanent damage is done,
Stephen Box: The City of Los Angeles is experiencing a Crisis of Leadership, one where the people of Los Angeles are being asked to pay more for less and the people who deliver the city services are being treated as if they are expendable. They’re not.
Randy Shaw: Unfortunately, the media’s excessive and irrational devotion to school chiefs as saviors for the nation’s schools ignores the reality that no school chief, can overcome inadequate school funding by running schools like corporate turnaround specialists, and fetishizing their importance distracts from schools’ real needs. Education seems to be the only field where rising to the top requires no experience. Careers spent in the profit-driven corporate world are now identified as the best backgrounds for public school leadership.
Tracy Emblem: The lesson from Tuesday is simple. Democrats must be unified and elect real progressive democratic leaders that stand up for the people on the nation’s issues.
Dick and Sharon of LA Progressive will be in studio on the KPFK Election Day Special with host John Cromshow along with activists Arlene Inouye and Rosemary Lee. Tuesday at 7:00 am Nov 2nd at 90.7 on your FM dial.
Shamus Cooke: If the teachers’ unions combined with other public sector unions, parent associations, and the community at large to demand fully funded public education by taxing the rich, the billionaires would find themselves without allies. Their money might then be put towards something useful.
Nina Zippay and Fernando J. Orozco: The parents in this complex and diverse system are firm believers in LAUSD’s mission: “to create critical thinkers prepared to participate in a diverse and complex society.” And it can’t get any more complex than LAUSD.
Carl Bloice: Why is it that the richest, most powerful nation on the planet, one that produces more and more billionaires each year and can spend one million dollars each on the soldiers it sends off to war, can’t afford to educate its kids? It remains a mystery to me that an administration that can spend millions of dollars to bribe states into facilitating its quite controversial school “reform” programs can’t come up with the resources to stave off the pending mass layoffs of teachers.
Articles by Carl Bloice, Randy Shaw. Ivan Eland, Shamus Cooke, Carl Bloice, Ivan Eland, Rev. Irene Monroe, Robert Reich, Randy Shaw, Tracy Emblem, Michael Sigman:, Georgianne Nienaber, Tom Hayden, Sharon Kyle, Joseph Palermo, Berry Craig
Shamus Cooke: The anti-teacher hysteria looks diverse on the surface, but underneath, this public controversy seeks to dislodge teachers unions: the right-wing trashes teachers’ unions outright, while the “liberal” media takes a more subtle, sophisticated approach, blaming the state of public education on “bad teachers” who must be fired and replaced.
Robert Reich: Any day now, the Obama administration will announce $4.35 billion in extra federal funds for under-performing public schools. That’s fine, but relative to the financial squeeze all the nation’s public schools now face it’s a cruel joke.
Shamus Cooke: The first battle tactic against public education was to starve it. Politicians have consistently lowered taxes on corporations and the rich for the past three decades, thereby lowering state revenues that have created the budget crises in nearly every state. Consequently, public education is in a state of shell shock.
Carl Bloice: Why can a naton and a government that can raise $1 million each to send young men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan not find the resources to adequately educate young people here at home?
by David L. Brewer III and Scott Folsom – A week ago Friday and again last Monday the Governor called for a state budget to be out of the legislature and on his desk by Christmas; Christmas was last Thursday. It is now almost New Years and no budget.
Randy Shaw: Obama could regain young people’s support by lowering student loan rates, enacting immigration reform and rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, but time—and his political capital—is running out.
Steve Hochstadt: The women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s finally made an issue of fathering. If women were going to get out of the house and into the workplace, men had to change their roles, too.
The Frying Pan: A successful mayor and council cannot be satisfied with merely coping as issues arise, but must be able to anticipate and define the city´s needs for the next four years. As our newly elected leaders prepare for their roles, we´ve asked writers to share their thoughts about what lies ahead for Los Angeles.
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
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