redqueeninla ~ a musings locality

I’m resisting the attack on our public school system.  And we need to defend it now, right now, or else it will be gone.

¿¿When Are You Gonna Do It ??

Now. THE MOMENT IS NOW, THIS SATURDAY.  Really:

Now is the time for you to stand up, march and be counted.  Now is when the big push is going down to privatize that Jewel in the Crown of Public Education:  LAUSD.

I know, you and everyone else loves to hate on LAUSD.  It’s the second-largest school district in the country, the largest one run by a publicly-elected school board.  But it’s not a hell-hole of incompetence.  Really.  My children graduated from there and they’re not incompetents and neither are their teachers.  Really. The school sites are not a viper’s den of scary gangsters.  Really. (It’s actually downtown, in the District’s central headquarters (“Beaudry”) that the true financial criminals are stored. Really.)

Because “Education Reform” is just one instance of Privatizing All Our Public Works, Everything.  And that’s what’s on the table, right now, coming to a head in this fair city of ours. 

I know what I’m resisting: the flow of money, ever-increasing in the going, into just a tiny few number of private pocketsies.  We the millions are just standing around while it makes this giant sucking sound from out of our wallets and into their precious few accounts:  Eli Broad’s, Alice Walton’s, Reed Hasting’s, Austin Beutner’s, etc….  You know, the same old.

Right Now, all the stars carefully positioned over such a long time are coming into alignment – for them. They’ve got a school board stacked with Privatizers, and it’s under threat from long-time progressive activist Jackie Goldberg running for the seat vacated by CCSA’s last anointed lackey, the felon from LAUSD BD5 (Vote Jackie, LAUSD5 on March 5, 2019!).

They’ve got a superintendent from their stable of Ideological Privateers, the venture capitalist Austin Beutner of Blackstone Group/Russian-privatization/Oaktree Capital/Evercore/Villaraigosa-Riordan-Broad/LAPD fame. He’s all poised and scripted-up for disparaging his own team of personnel, school teachers and their support staff.

And they’ve got one of America’s largest remaining unions with its back up against that proverbial negotiating wall, penned in on one side by public opinion, and on the other by institutional Corporatists from Beaudry of the elected, appointed and hired variety.

If not collusion it is at least long-term strategic planning that is focusing on the Here And Right Now to bust up a giant collective labor partnership.  Which is just a fancy way of saying:  to bust up your expectation to a functional, respectable middle-class life with a viable, professional’s salary to show for it. 

It’s all being accomplished under the cynical fig leaf of “Kids’ First” and disingenuous labor negotiations.  Yet it’s little more than a ploy to bust up our public school system and the workers who staff it, in favor of a private system that enables private profiteering. Oldest story in the book, spooled out long, played out hard.

This Is Your Last Stand. There’s nothing that’s going to change between now and when the negotiations end and strike is the only, last out. Nothing except Saturday’s march where you can turn out and Show The Privateers You’re Watching.

Let them know you see them, care about the destruction they’re plotting – for you, for our children, for our society.  Now’s the time, before the gates are down and the missiles are launched, to turn this back around and get a fair contract for our children’s teachers and the future of the public school system.  Now’s when you need to stand tall and puff yourself out; get visible, get counted, Be Present.

March on Saturday and stare down the ones who would dismantle our public schools.  They need to see that you are watching them and understand what is at stake.  This isn’t about the specifics of our teachers, or even about our children’s personal education.  It’s about democracy and the right of one and all to access a way beyond the circumstances of their birth.  Education is the avenue to control your personal destiny and our society’s possibilities.  It’s time to stand up and defend all this. 

Our kids need to be in classrooms of manageable size, instructed by a professionally treated, supported, trained and paid, teacher. Get yourself downtown on Saturday, December 15, 2019, and March For Public Education.