It is clear that schools are the targets of rightwing attack. The events at the New Berlin, WI school board last night were positively shameful. These were thoughtfully chronicled by Blue Cheddar blog and picked up by Laura Clawson's currently rec'd post on Kos. Teabaggers, fueled by the acid hate of local rightwing radio (a monsterological triad of Charlie Sykes, Vicki McKenna and some other jerk none listens to) laughed and taunted teachers who were basically getting their asses handed to them by oedipal fetishists, drunk on their newly stomped crisis wine. I have never witnessed such mean spirited nastiness in a public meeting.
In a post I diaried yesterday, State Representative Mark Pocan details his experience as a Progressive in attendance at ALEC's annual convention in New Orleans. When asked about new legislation in line for WI, he specifically mentioned that they had a whole slew of "education reform" measures waiting to flow from the fount of fundamentalism. These attacks on public education, teachers and their unions are going to get more widespread, and a lot worse. In New Berlin, the Board is taking away access to fridges and microwaves, and instigating a dress code: trivial humiliations compared to the extra uncompensated hours and diminishment of sick leave. Salmonella, a ban on all popcorn, and skirts below the knee are a necessity in the Brave New World of Education Reform. Teaching is becoming the new itinerant labor.
Protests at Messmer Academy in Milwaukee last Friday were followed by very unsympathetic coverage from the press. There was no mention of how privatization and budget cuts will affect our public schools, only vitriol at the Union Thugs' general contempt for the visible success of Messmer, one of the original "school choice" sites developed under (then) Governor Thommy Thompson, with ensuing oodles of money - parochial, public and private - funneled in. But the point wasn't (and isn't) about this fine school. It is about the dismantling of public education - an enterprise that cannot cherry pick the brightest students from any given neighborhood in order to claim great benefits of revolutionary pedagogy. The rupture point is a vision of public education itself. A vision that America is founded upon, and that is being dismantled before our surprised eyes.
I end this post with a plea. The power plays in politics, right now, are nested in the hyperlocal. We have to get motivated and do what the Teabaggers figured out two years ago. We need training programs for Progressives to run for office. We need to get active and take back the bureaus and boroughs. From precinct captain to school board to alderman to mayor to municipality. We need to get off our butts and take office.
We need to, as Thom Hartmann says below, "Get to work right now!"
(Yes, this is seven minutes long, but well worth the view if you haven't already seen it).
I end with this question: Why isn't there more emphasis on Kos to these kinds of hyperlocal strategies? Will you share your knowledge with us? Who knows how to get elected as precinct captain? How do we do it? Who has run for school board? Any suggestions?
Why aren't we putting our vast collective intelligence to getting these very real and significant things conceptualized, supported, and funded? In short, we need a massive literacy campaign: for ourselves!