Before I get to the rally, make sure to check out the video I took of Diane Ravitch and Eva Moskowitz at the Economist Forum last week. I got exclusive Ed Notes interviews with both.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oREkNH2_Z8M
Yesterday's rally sponsored by GEM at the opening of "Waiting for Superman" was highly successful.
One of the interesting sidelights:
They met at the fountain at Lincoln Center to rehearse their rap song "Will the Real Reformers Please Stand Up?" and ran into Michael Moore who was there for the NY Film Festival opening. The irony is too delicious since people have been trying to reach Moore to do a documentary on the ed deform scam. Since he wasn't responding, we decided to do our own film. We have some tape of the RRs talking to Moore and his response it is a shame they are scapegoating teachers.
Here is a Fox report where they naturally spent more time talking to pro movie people and ignored all the people wearing Real Reformer capes.
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/education/teachers-protest-waiting-for-superman-20100924
I hear I am quoted in today's NY Post but don't know what I said.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/protesting_teachers_give_it_an_2wHWfAa38YOjPzpdYYotJO
A booker for Fox Friends saw me quoted and invited me on for tomorrow morning to discuss the film but since I didn't see it yet and have a full day and won't be able to catch it today, I may have to decline. We are trying to get one of the people involved in our response to WFS - The Inconvenient Truth About Waiting for Superman - to confirm. Still waiting.
Make sure to go to: www.waitingforsupermantruth.org to view the trailer for the grassroots documentary response to "Waiting for Superman"...
Tomorrow we are editing the footage from our rally and should have some good stuff up by Sunday night.
In the meantime here are some quick pics I took. The people I am working with are so brilliant. Note the tags they were wearing to engage people in conversation.
I'm very encouraged to hear that Moore has taken that position. I wonder if we could persuade him to go more public.
ReplyDeleteNorm,
ReplyDeleteyour quote is great-
Organizers insisted that the United Federation of Teachers was not behind the rally.
"We have not asked them to be involved," said Norm Scott, a former union member and organizer of GEM.
"This is just a misleading movie. In the movie, they admit a small percentage of charters are doing well, and I can show you that the same or a higher percentage
of public schools are doing well with no hedge-fund money and no private support."
Norm,
ReplyDeleteWhat was the turn-out of people seeing this film?
Fantastic. Imagination at work. Just imagine if the UFT used some "imagination." Wait, perhaps they considered doing something substantial, imaginative and daring but were too worried about how the media would portray them. After all our president (last week's DA) said we are above this film. He and the union will not give any energy to this film because it will be silenced during the run-up to the elections. But feel free to write to Oprah. Holy jeez.
ReplyDeleteGreat work!!!
John Powers
Hey Schoolgal - sorry for not getting back to you. Been a busy few days. Hard to say about turnout since the Loews has 13 theaters. We were going to get a crew to go to the 7pm show Friday but Fandango has most shows sold out. yet when I got there only the 7:30 was sold out. Certainly lots of people went. We met NYC teachers coming out of the 4-4:30 shows who were real happy to see us there.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure NYC about Moore. I saw the video of him talking to our people and I think he was trying to be nice - he looked like he was making a hostage tape - though we edited it a bit.
ReplyDelete