Emily Deruy at The Atlantic writes—How Black Lives Matter Activists Plan to Fix Schools:
As my colleague Vann Newkirk has noted, the Movement for Black Lives Matter coalition recently published a platform outlining a range of specific policies it would like to see take shape at the local, state, and federal levels. The education proposals are rooted in the K-12 space, activists who helped draft them told me, because the U.S. public-school system is so broken that college is never an option for many young people of color. And while many universities are privately controlled, the group sees an opportunity to return control of K-12 public schools to the students, parents, and communities they serve.
Public schools, even in the nation’s most affluent cities, remain highly segregated, with black children disproportionately likely to attend schools with fewer resources and concentrated poverty. There are more school security officers than counselors in four of the 10 biggest school districts in the country. And whereas spending on corrections increased by 324 percent between 1979 and 2013, that on education rose just 107 percent during the same time.
The coalition’s proposals are wide-ranging and, depending on who is talking, either aspirational or entirely unrealistic. They range from calling for a constitutional amendment for “fully funded” education (activists say federal funding is inadequate and not distributed equally) and a moratorium on charter schools to the removal of police from schools and the closure of all juvenile detention centers.
Mostly, said Jonathan Stith, the national coordinator for the Washington-based Alliance for Educational Justice and one of the lead authors, the propositions are an attempt to crystallize what the movement supports and to provide activists with a platform from which to move forward. “It’s always been clear what we’re against, but [articulating] what we’re for, what we want to see, was a real labor,” Stith, 41, said. The document is also an effort to connect education priorities to health care, the economy, criminal justice, and a range of other public-policy areas, and to, as Stith put it, force progress “in concert.” [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—Lind at TPM Cafe: Dems Must Abandon Social Liberalism:
The grown-ups over at TPM Cafe are taking Democrats to woodshed for supporting silly notions like equal rights for gays, abortion rights for women, affirmative action, etc. In other words, Dems must become moderate Republicans if we want to win elections in America.
The United States has a right-of-center majority with respect to social issues and a a left-of-center majority with respect to economic issues. The stability of this popular consensus recently has been illustrated by the nearly simultaneous popular rejection of gay marriage and Social Security privatization. Social liberals are too far to the left of most Americans on social issues; economic conservatives are too far to the right of most Americans on economic issues.
This combination of moderate social conservatism with moderate economic liberalism explains the success of the New Deal Democrats and the failure of the party that succeeded them, the Civil Rights Democrats."
Lind doesn't mention the Iraq War, but presumably "grown-up" Democrats would stay the course and provide de facto support for the president.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin has more amazing polling numbers, Gop defections, and concerns about Trump cannibalism. Armando chimed in on Melania’s immigration status, The Donald’s fake-lanthropy & those tax returns. Oh, and George Zimmerman got punched.
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