OCCUPY PUBLIC EDUCATION- Leaflet/Reso for DA

GEM is urging delegates at the Delegate Assembly today to meet in front of 52 Broadway after the meeting is adjourned and walk the few blocks as a group to show support for Occupy Wall Street.

Here is the resolution:

LET'S MARCH TOGETHER TO SUPPORT OWS- MEET OUTSIDE AT ADJOURNMENT

Whereas the UFT helped organize and participated in the Labor and Community March in Support of Occupy Wall Street on Oct 5^th,

Be it Resolved that at adjournment of this assembly, delegates meet in front of the building and march together to Zuccotti Park to show our continuing support and solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.

Here is the leaflet and text if you wish to share:

The 1% SAY: PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING

The 99% SAY: OCCUPY EVERYTHING

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the “kvetchocracy.”) The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy? The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation’s economic elite have done for us. And that’s why they’re protesting. --Paul Krugman, Oct. 17, NY Times

The public schools of this nation have already been occupied by the same forces OWS are protesting - the Billionaire's Boys Club -  Gates, Broad, the Walton Foundation have bought public education policy to push their agenda of ed deform. Corporate greed and manipulation have force-fed their failed policies on the public ed system throughout the nation. Not only have they occupied the schools publicly but they have occupied the minds and souls of educators with their distorted market-based view of education.

If you are a teacher or other education worker in an urban setting, you see the impact every single day. 

·       Closing down public schools and replacing them with non-unionized charter schools

·       Using high stakes standardize tests turning children into data points, data that has been manipulated for political purposes.

·       Ignoring most of what educators really do.

·       Replacing experienced educators with a transient teaching corps that will never stay long enough to receive a pension as they destabilize and deskill the teaching profession, turning us and our students into corporate widgets.

·       They make us eat the gruel of high stakes tests and data manipulation leading to forced closure of schools, charter co-locations. And a government whether led by Republicans or Democrats that sign on to The Plan to undermine and privatize public education.

·       The corporate masters have bought off both political parties, especially in ed. Can we have   leaders much worse than Obama/Duncan?

·       They attack teachers unions basic hard won collective bargaining rights and tenure. They want to turn every state into Mississippi.

·       They have broken what little was working in the political process.

All we have left is that: We are the 99%.

The 1% says: Deregulate the public school system

The 99% says: Take our schools back

It is time for the real reformers to reoccupy our public education systems.

Occupy Everything

Grassroots Education Movement - gemnyc.org, gemnyc@gmail.com 

Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on the right for important bits.