What is really, really outrageous to me — as a thirty year...forty years in this community, of advocacy — is that there has been a systematic exclusion of the leadership of this community. — Frances Lucerna (El Puente Leaders for Peace and Justice)
The illustrious Real Reform Studios bring us this brilliant short documentary showing the community of Los Sures' principled resistance against the vile privatizers running the lucrative Harlem Success Academy.
Pay close attention to hedge fund backed Moskowitz's advertising budget. That huge amount alone would provide arts programs or English Language Learner classes for many students. Also, see Karen Sprowel's testimony about how her special needs child was mistreated by the Stein and Moskowitz money making machine.
Please support the Grassroots Education Movement and Real Reform Studios. The work they do on behalf of social justice and public schools is invaluable. If you haven't seen (or even if you have) The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, arrange a house party showing now!
Colocation is a crime, let charters locate on someone else's dime!
"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Speaking truth to Eva Moskowitz and Gideon Stein's wealth and power
Labels:
Colocation,
GEM,
HSA,
neoliberalism,
privatization,
Prop 39,
rdsathene
Robert D. Skeels is a social liberation writer, attorney, public education advocate, immigrant rights activist, and law professor. He lives, works, writes, and organizes in Los Angeles with his wife and cats. Robert holds a BA in Classical Civilization from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), a JD from Peoples College of Law (PCL), and passed the California Bar Exam on his first attempt. A US Navy Veteran, he is a proud member of Veterans for Peace. A student of Liberation Theology and Paulo Freire's work, Robert volunteers for community and 12 step groups. Robert's articles and essays appear in publications including Jacobin, Truthout, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Schools Matter, Daily Censored, Regeneración, K12NN, LA Progressive, and The Los Angeles Daily News. In 2013 Robert ran for the LAUSD School Board against a billionaire funded corporate reform candidate, finishing second in a field of five, with over 5,200 votes.
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Thanks for posting.Actually, the narrator is not Brian Jones but someone who also was the behind the scenes narrator of TITBWFS in addition to editing that movie and this one. He also wrote this script. He currently works in a co-located school with Success and sees how they treat children every day, enough motivation to make 20 films like these.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting my video report on Los Sures. I agree that Brian is illustrious, but he did not make this video. My name is Darren Marelli and I made it. I've made a number of videos for GEM, including working on "the Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman".
ReplyDeleteThanks for the update, I changed the prose to reflect that information. One day all of these corporate reformers like Stein and Moskovitz will be frog marched to the dock at the Hague for the crimes against the poor that they commit.
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