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Wall Street wants your schools. We’re fighting back


Campaign for a Fair Settlement
a project of Action for the Common Good

Join the Tele-Town Hall
On Wed Oct 16th at 8pm EDT/5pm PDT interact in a discussion about communities around the country undoing corporate public school “reform”

Dear Carmen —

Wall Street bankers are stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from our kids every year. [1]

That’s not a misprint. As part of all the financial shenanigans they engaged in that broke our economy, they managed to entrap school districts around the country in “interest rate swaps” that were sold as ways to guarantee steady income for the critical job of educating our kids. Instead they turned out to be massive drains on school budgets, for example, costing Philadelphia $331 million [2] and Chicago $150 million (and another $36 million every year). [3]

In turn, that financial pressure on school districts (exacerbated by the drop in tax revenues from the Great Recession) has opened up opportunities for Wall Street banker-funded corporate takeovers of our public schools. For-profit charter schools, often online-only, have cropped up nationally, siphoning off critical public school investments, short changing our children’s future to line the pockets of private, usually out-of-state, corporations dedicated primarily to the bottom line.

Parents and teachers around the country have been desperately fighting back against this tidal wave of Wall Street-backed education “reform”. They know we need investment in our public schools so that every child has a quality teacher and access to a well-rounded education that includes history, music, arts, PE and vocational training, NOT investment in Wall Street corporations whose motivations have little to do with kids and everything to do with manipulating state regulation to protect their interests.

A key figure in this fight is prominent public school advocate, Diane Ravitch, whose new book, Reign of Error: the Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, shows how people are fighting back and winning. YOU CAN HEAR AND INTERACT WITH HER LIVE in a forum sponsored by the Our Schools network on Wednesday Oct 16th at 8pm EDT/5pm PDT. RSVP here.

Actor Matt Damon, the son of a public school teacher, says,

“[Diane is] America’s foremost historian in the areas of education policy, she’s a champion of public education, she’s a courageous speaker and she’s a truth-teller.”

She’s keenly aware of the impact that Wall Street’s stolen money and increased investments in for-profit education are having on our schools.

“We cannot have great, education by having one set of publicly funded schools (charters and vouchers) that pick and choose their students, kicking out the losers, excluding students with disabilities and English learners, and operating free of state laws, and a second publicly funded system, required to take all students, including those rejected or ejected by the other system. Great school systems aim for equity, as the Finnish scholar Pasi Sahlberg says, and get excellence.” [4]

Join a discussion with Diane Ravitch on Wednesday October 16th at 8pm EDT/5pm PDT and hear how communities around the country are undoing corporate “reform” and creating equity and justice in their public schools.

It’s time we started getting those hundreds of millions back.


In Solidarity,

Brian Kettenring, Executive Director, Action for the Common Good

[1] “Riding the Gravy Train: How Wall Street is Bankrupting Our Public Transit Agencies by Profiteering off of Toxic Swap Deals”, ReFund Transit Coalition, June 2012, page 4.
[2] “Too Big to Trust? Banks, Schools, and the Ongoing Problem of Interest Rate Swaps”, Sharon Ward, PA Budget and Policy Center, January 2012, page 1.
[3] http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/19251143-452/amisha-patel-banks-soak-cps-as-schools-close.html
[4] http://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/10/today-the-blog-has-had-7-million-page-views/

http://www.campaignforfairsettlement.org/

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Eye on the Amazon: Belo Sun No!


Amazon Watch
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Belo Sun No!
Stop further tragedy on the Xingu River

Belo Sun No!This week Amazon Watch joined a global coalition of organizations to launch a campaign in defense of indigenous and traditional communities threatened by the Canadian mining company Belo Sun. The Toronto-based company plans to build Brazil’s largest gold mine on the banks of the Amazon’s Xingu River in the very area that is most impacted by the disastrous Belo Monte dam. Together with our partners in Brazil, Canada, the United States, and Europe, we are standing against Belo Sun’s outrageous scheme to reap massive profits from the social and environmental havoc being caused by Belo Monte.

Aiming to extract tons of gold from the Xingu’s “Big Bend” region, Belo Sun is swooping in like a scavenger, promising to heap further tragedy on local communities and a declining ecosystem.

Read the rest and watch the video on Eye on the Amazon »

DONATE

We need your support!

For over fifteen years, Amazon Watch has been an effective force in supporting indigenous environmental movements on the front lines of halting destructive development.

JOIN US IN PROTECTING THE AMAZON RAINFOREST TODAY »
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Some news we can use from latimes.com


Crowd voices anger over Vernon battery recycler
By Jessica Garrison
At a meeting called by lawmakers, the crowd calls for officials to shut down Exide Technologies over dangerously high emissions of lead and arsenic.
*********
By Ashley Powers and Melanie Mason
His veto comes after a heated opposition campaign led by the Catholic Church. Groups representing victims condemn the decision.
**********
Last year’s confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson, or ‘God‘ particle, leads to the Nobel for Belgium’s Francois Englert and Britain’s Peter Higgs, who theorized it nearly 50 years ago.
**********
Gov. Brown signs a law sought by the NFL to close the door on out-of-state athletes’ workers’ comp filings.
**********
Activists argue that people eligible to vote will opt out under the newly announced two-tiered system, which creates a class of voters who get only federal ballots.
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

War on Women, Shutdown Edition


How the GOP Shutdown is Hurting Women

As we discussed yesterday, the GOP shutdown is causing pain from coast to coast. Today ThinkProgress took a closer look how the shutdown is hurting women:

1. Federal Workers’ Pay

Women make up an estimated 43 percent of the federal workplace — but they’re disproportionately represented in the types of clerical jobs that are likely to get furloughed. Women who work for the federal government still tend to be overrepresented in administrative, human resource, and assistant-level jobs, and compared to men, they’re more likely to be bringing home smaller paychecks in the first place. There have been concerns that the workers who are currently furloughed may not receive back pay.

2. Nutrition For Low-Income Mothers And Infants

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) hasn’t gotten any federal money since the government shut down October 1. Nearly 9 million low-income mothers and their children around the country rely on the program to afford food and formula. At first, all states except for North Carolina were providing benefits, and the state has since reversed course and will join the rest. But that will only last so long. Some states may only be able to cover the benefits for a few weeks or so. If the government remains shut into November, as Republicans are now proposing, some states may halt benefits to some of their neediest residents.

3. Rape Kits

If the government shutdown stretches on into November, it could eventually halt rape kits in Washington, DC. It’s just one of the many ways that the shutdown disproportionately impacts the nation’s capital, whose budget is under federal control. The two groups responsible for rape kits in DC anticipate running out of local and federal funds after this month. Rape kit processing is already notoriously sluggish across the country, an issue that can make navigating the court system even more difficult for victims of sexual assault — particularly since forensic evidence of rape quickly degrades.

4. College Sexual Assault Investigations

The federal investigations into U.S. colleges’ notoriously problematic sexual assault policies have been put on hold during the shutdown. When students or staff allege that their university is breaking federal law by under-reporting rapes or dissuading victims from coming forward, the case is handled by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. But those cases aren’t considered to be essential during the shutdown, so they’re all on hold until the government re-opens. That means federal officials aren’t in contact with the college students who filed formal complaints, and can’t conduct follow-up visits for the universities whose cases have recently been settled.

5. Domestic Violence Programs

Programs that offer shelter and support services to victims of domestic violence aren’t able to draw down any of their federal funding so long as the government remains closed. While some have other sources of funding to fall back on, others, particularly small, rural programs, could quickly face the possibility of shutting down their operations. Some are considering layoffs. Most have already faced severely reduced government funding, with 80 percent reporting a drop last year. Programs had already warned that the budget cuts from sequestration could lead to more homicides of women who are denied services.

6. Child Care And Head Start

Working moms are going to be put in a bind the longer the shutdown lasts. Twenty-three Head Start programs across the country were expecting federal money in October, and without it some have faced the need to close classrooms. More than 7,000 children in six states lost access, but since then wealthy philanthropists have offered the national organization enough money to keep it open for now. But the longer the shutdown lasts, more programs will face the same challenge. When a classroom shuts down, not only does a child lose access to preschool, but some parents are forced to quit their jobs because they have no where to leave their kids. The same problem will face working mothers if child care subsidies dry up during the shutdown. All federal money has been cut off since last Tuesday, and while states should have prior year funding to fall back on to cover the costs in the meantime, those funds may have been depleted by sequestration, a drop in welfare funding, and the ending of stimulus money.

BOTTOM LINE: Enough is enough. The longer the GOP keeps the government closed, the more Americans, including women, and our economy will suffer. It’s time for Speaker Boehner to allow a vote on a clean funding bill to end this shutdown crisis and re-open the entire government.

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