Thursday Union Meeting! Friday Court! Saturday Meeting! TIP $250 challenge rolls forward!
This is a huge week in the fight to save DPS and the DFT.
Friday, 11: am. Rob Bobb, the Financial Manager and bag-man for Eli Broad (the billionaire philanthro-capitalist bent on privatizing schools) and allm his plans for school privatization and school closures in Detroit, will be cross-examined by our attorneys on June 11th, 2010. You will not want to miss this if you are in Detroit or cover it if you are not! The court trial starts at 11 am in room 1421 of the Coleman A. Young Building in Detroit, Michigan.
Previous court hearings in the lawsuit against Bobb have proved riveting. Financial Manager Robert Bobb, Mayor of Detroit Bing, and Governor of Michigan Granholm and their political and business allies are clearly trying to destroy public education in Detroit. They will now be sworn in on the witness stand for the court and the court opf public opinion. Their insidious lies regarding closing the ”achievement gap” and bolstering child learning will be on display for what it is — child pillory and the destruction of public schools in favor of both charter schools and new gentrication plans for the city of Detroit. Now, with public housing being privatized the issue of schools is tied to the new urban s’removal’ plans that are no doubt in the making within the corridors of power.
The local and national media blackout has kept much of the truth from getting out and it has failed to even give a fair hearing to the issues that sparked the lawusit and now fuel it. This is no surprise; the socket-puppet press, which is little more than a corporate bulletin for major Wall Street interests, refuses to cover issues of education either in Detroit or elsewhere. I would ask when the last time anyone reading corporate press or watching corporate news has seen the neo-liberal fixer, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, on national or local media debating his Race to the Top proposals for the destruction of child hood and teaching. The functional illiteracy promoted by the corporate press is overwhelming, while issue facing education, health and welfare are covered as if they were commercials, if at all.
But representatives of international media have made it clear that they consider what happens to DPS as the front line in determining the future of public education in the entire United States. Sure they do and they should, for the sit-in at Governor Granhom’s office last month along with the myriad student walk-outs, the fight against school closures, the battle to assure Walmart did not get internships in three Detroit high schools, the bus caravans organized that took student organizers to Washington, DC and Florida and the organizational power of ‘By Any Means Necessary’ (www.bamn.com) along with the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), has shown that Detroit is at the epicenter of launching a new civil rights movment devoted to equity, the end of racism, integration, opposition to privatization, and a vision for children wedded to critical thinking, authentic testing and humanity in learning.
Although the pitiful coverage by corporate forces is non-existent, their vigilance in watching events in Detroit is nevertheless proceeding. The ruling class that is attempting to take over Detroit Schools at the behest of their masters, the Wall Street banks and billionaire philanthropists intent on privatizing the ewnterprise of learning and replacing it with ‘earning’, have much to gain and much to lose!
June 11th, Thursday, 4:15 pm. DFT General Membership Meeting will take place. There, more information there about the lawsuit, and what to expect at Friday’s hearing.
The DFT meeting needs to issue a statement to the people of Detroit that they should oppose all efforts by Dave Bing to take control of the schools.
Bobb, Bing and friends have been planning for months to carry out a mayoral takeover of the school and permanently abolish the elected school board in order to continue their privatization and charter plans. They need only a few hundred signatures to get the measure on the ballot. Then the plan is to unleash a massive media propaganda blitz funded by millions raised from charter school management companies and other corporate moneybags. This is keeping with one of the four assurances demanded by Arne Duncan, that the ‘public marketplace’ be open to corporate entry by charter schools (see my article on Duncan and the Four assurances at www.dailycensored.com).
Readers might know that this move towards a ’unitary executive’ or mayoral control has now gained a foothold in eight cities in eight states. This movement is important for the elites bent on privatizing education under mayoral control, for it allows them to escape the permanent and watchful eye of public scrutiny. Mayoral control allows power and decision making to reside in the ‘mayor’s office’ and thus the sticky wicket of meddlesome democracy and debate can be shorn. No public disclosure, no transparency, no public meeting requirements — no democratic participation by students, parents and teachers will be elicited nor given creedence. With mayoral control the school board becomes an icon of days past as the corporatization of education, by the ‘secret parliament’ of the mayor and his henchmen, all courtesans to Wall Street and Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top proceeds unabated.
Disrgraced and ‘no confident’ DFT union leader, Keith Johnson, has put forth to the rank and file of the union his position that the DFT should be neutral on how people vote on this matter. But this is exactly what Bobb and Bing want — inactivity! Detroit teachers need to tell the people of Detroit the truth about what the privatization of our schools is doing, not sit in the dugout and wait for corrupt ‘union leaders’ like Johnson to call them with a decision by cell-phone. Detroit schools and their teachers have a responsibility to the voters – and to their students and themsleves. Johnson has shown his proclivity to work hand in hand with Robert Bobb for dealing the teacher union a death blow for mayoral control to actually take hold. Keith Johnson has been the subject of much heated debate and demands for his firing (se my article on Detroit at www.dailycensored.com) have resulted in a major progressive shift in the DFT. He is now intent on delivering the union to the entrpenneurial class intent on destroying them and their gains.
Recent Days
The recent days have seen a continued war against public education and teachers in Detroit and throughout Michigan. This includes a 3 % pay cut for all Michigan teachers as part of the new state retirement law, and plans for a state constitutional amendment that all teachers and state employees take an additional 5 % pay cut. And this is just the beginning as cuts begin to take hold, teachers fired, arts, music and extra-curricular activites decimated and 41 schools scheduled to close.
As Steve Conn, noted, himself and his wife, Heather, unwavering union activists in DFT remarked: “If we don’t fight, there is no limit to what they will take from us, no end to the destruction they will sow. But whenever Detroit teachers have fought, we have moved mountains — inspiring teachers and supporters of public education everywhere. ”
Yes, indeed, and they have also shown more tacit districts and cities the way forward in struggle, how to mobilize parents, teachers, students, community workers, and how to confront power with truth even at the expense of going to jail .
Saturday 4:30 pm. Defend Public Education / Save Our Students will meet at our usual location, 19484 James Couzens, Lodge Service Drive north of Seven Mile.
Finally, the legal challenge to the Teachers Investment Program) TIP / $250 extortion has been given the green light for a full hearing before the Wage and Hours Division of the Michigan Department of Energy and Labor. DFT members who have participated in the challenge should be receiving written notice of the hearing’s date, time, and place soon.
For readers not familiar with TIP, it was part of a contract entered into by DFT at the urging of both Keith Johnson, Mayor Bing and Robert Bobb. Basically a sell out of teachers, it required the economic budget crisis and devastation of urban life in Detroit be paid for by teachers donating $500 per month of their salary in a partnership with the corrupt Robert Bobb and his plans for destroying public education and teachers, to assure the district was solvent.
The move was directly out of an IMF playbook and is now the subject of legal challenges.
We as progressives need to lift this story to a level of national news and demand that the so-called ‘liberal media’ cover what is transpiring in Detroit. For Detroit truly is the canary in the coal mine and its struggles will inform both our prsent and future.
You can read all my coverage of Detroit schools and a full analysis of Robert Bobb and his connections to Wall Street and the billionaire boyz club by going to Author’s Posts at the Home page of www.dailycensored.com and clicking on my name, Danny Weil. There you will find some of the best coverage of Detroit’s educational woes.
For more information on Detroit Public Schools and DFT and the extraordinary progress and struggle they are winning and waging in Detroit, please call Steve Conn at the number below
Steve Conn
313.645.9340
