More Underbelly from the Ed Privatizer Movement

Curioser and curioser. A link from one of my crack researchers READ IT HERE has shed some interesting light on the recent warm, fuzzy Privatizer's Ball held at the Regal Theatre last week.  (did you know the right wing looney, homophobe Financer of Walden Media, Philip Anschutz, is also a major share holder in Regal? go figger...) Well it turns out Hannya and Friends were but the first stop on a nationwide tour of yet another fakeass grass roots group called Parent Revolution. According to Hannya Boulous the audience was Waaaaay into the screening of "Won't Flush Down."  "Activists supportive of the parent trigger called the Buffalo screening a success. "I heard a lot of clapping in the crowds, and people were crying and laughing especially at the end," said Hannya Boulos, executive director of Buffalo ReformED, which is organizing to pass a parent trigger law in New York." If anyone wonders why there was clapping maybe it's because you had to email Hannya at BuffaloReformEd to get your name on their list for free admission to the movie. I did but I never got a confirmation so I can't say for sure if I was welcome or not. I have my own suspicions about why anyone might have been crying in the audience - the lost hour and a half they will never get back ?

In typical privatizer fashion they stuffed the house with a nodding claque of bobbleheads then rolled out a party line "panel" to self congratulate, repeat privatizer talking points and by all means avoid like the plague any meaningful discussion that could contradict any of the happy horseshite the privatizers were spreading around to their congregation of the converted. You really have to admire their passive aggressive rhetoric too. After screening a film that portrays teacher's unions as uncaring, self interested and completely out of touch with the lives of the kids they are supposed to be teaching then propping up corporate privatization as the magic bullet to all that ails public education they roll out their talking head April Popescu, regional advocacy director for Parent Revolution who states with no hint of irony: "Our goal is to inspire. Our goal is not to spark a debate or create an issue or a fight."  No April dear of course not. Just like the movie weasel who says we can stop all the finger pointing after he ran out of digits to point at teachers and unions. It reminds me of an interaction I had once with Katie Campos on Facebook a few summers ago when I challenged her on the nasty anti teacher union commercials ReformEd was running on the radio. Her response to me was Why don't you join us? My response was why would I want to join a bunch of people who attack my union on the radio ? ...crickets... Yeah, nice try I guess. Another "friend of reform" used the same line on me in the comments of the Buffalo News once when I asked her where she got off pontificating about the situation in Buffalo high schools when it was obvious she hadn't set foot in one any time recently. She countered that her group had one member in one of the high schools for 2 days a week I think. And when I pointed out that my colleagues go in there every day and some stay well past quitting time on a daily basis all she could think of was to use the "why don't you join us?" bit. As if going to work in a career as a Buffalo teacher has no import or merit of its own but if I were to hitch my wagon to her stumbling bumbling band of reformers somehow my life and career would be magically infused with both gravitas and meaning. GMAFB.

So true to their nature the privatizers play their little games with the community trying so desperately to dupe parents and others into swallowing their trigger law nonsense. They claim they are not about blaming and finger pointing as soon as they finish blaming teachers and finger pointing at our unions. They enjoy a seemingly endless cash flow from their wealthy benefactors yet they love to play the Uriah Heep character with their  insufferable Umble act. Hard to be humble when you show up to the party with no teaching experience, no education background, no training in instruction, administration or even counseling yet you somehow have all the answers that people who have been working with kids for decades don't have. How many unsuspecting people were gulled into signing onto the privatizer's bandwagon at the Regal? Probably not many. But you can't say they don't try.