NY Times Distorts Mexico Teacher Revolt Which is About fighting Neo-Liberalism in the Streets

RANDI'S NIGHTMARE

Omar Torres/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Teachers blocked access to a government building in Mexico City on Thursday. The city’s central square was also occupied.

A radical teachers' group mobilized thousands of members in Mexico City last week, chasing lawmakers from their chambers, occupying the city's historic central square, blocking access to hotels and the international airport, and threatening to bring an already congested city to a halt in the coming days... NY Times

Why hasn't this happened in the USA? Because the bosses of NEA and AFT would oppose every bit of it. They're the misleading Quislings of completely rotten and corrupt organizations, much like all the fake "professional" organizations and the opportunist saps who run them. ... Rich Gibson

The Times report  (see below Gibson's piece) made a radical teacher takeover of Mexico City appear to be a reaction to the removal of the teacher union's corrupt leader -- sort of like calling a MORE rally against the neo-liberal agenda as being about support for the queen of neo-liberals, Randi Weingarten.

Rich Gibson pretty well nails our union leaders as neo-liberal defenders of the status quo - not the old SQ ed deformers refer to, but a deeply supported SQ of increasing wealth misdistribution. Union leaders will over manage us into oblivion. Their reward will be that they will be allowed to be left standing in the shell of what remains of the unions with their role to maintain the fiction that they represent the workers and not their overseers.

And RBE at Perdido Street just nailed Randi's ass to the wall for doing exactly what Gibson accuses her of:

Randi Weingarten Attacks Bill De Blasio Over Pre-K Plan

You see, Randi is bothered by this:  

“When you put out a plan that basically says, ‘We’ll raise money from the rich so that we can actually fund pre-K’ when Albany has already called it dead on arrival’... it sounds non-serious,” said Weingarten

 Oh, that 1 percent is just itching to crawl out from her. We don't really want to ask the poor rich people to pay more for pre-k and it's dead on arrival because the UFT with its so-called political operation is not interested in mundane issues like universal pre-k.

But the increasing radicalized Diane Ravitch jumps into the fray against her old "friend" Randi.

De Blasio on Monday parried the attack in part by unveiling an endorsement from education historian Diane Ravitch, who in a campaign release specifically cheered the idea of gleaning more money to fund pre-K by taxing high earners.

We have a MORE correspondent on the scene in Mexico City and should get some reports - and maybe pics -- soon.

Susan Ohanian sent this comment and links: 

In Mexico, when education reformers tried to declare teachers unfit, politicos got run out of their offices. You can 'read' this the way the New York Times does. Rich Gibson offers an alternative reading.

Here is Gibson's comment

Mexico's School Workers Fight Back

Publication Date: 2013-08-25

  By Rich Gibson  

by Rich Gibson
Why hasn't this happened in the USA?
Because the bosses of NEA and AFT would oppose every bit of it. They're the misleading Quislings of completely rotten and corrupt organizations, much like all the fake "professional" organizations and the opportunist saps who run them. .
Because the teaching force is pacified and for the most part bought off.
Being bought didn't work so well for, say, the UAW rank and file. When the payoff stopped, they were lost--jobs and income, and ideas, gone.
Still, people in pacified areas become instruments of their own oppression, and to a considerable degree, responsible for it.
Mexico's tactics are worth examining, if not the limited analysis they represent.
Barbarism rises, world wide, largely in several forms of fascism: the demagogue Obama to the Catholic invaders under Reagan/Bush to the Syrian/Libyan/Pakistani jihadists, most backed by the USA which so many patriots still love as "theirs" when it is, in fact "Theirs."
Try to catch up and good luck to our side. We won't like, and won't win, WWIII
The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism,Fifth Estate, 1984

And the NY Times piece today while even though presented in a distorted manner, expresses the remarkable takeover of Mexico City - not by drug dealers -- but by teachers.

Fighting Education Overhaul, Thousands of Teachers Disrupt Mexico City

By Karla Zabudovsky
New York Times
August 25, 2013

By KARLA ZABLUDOVSKY

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s highly anticipated education overhaul program — intended to weed out poorly performing teachers, establish professional hiring standards and weaken the powerful teachers’ union — is buckling under the tried-and-true tactic of huge street protests, throwing the heart of the capital into chaos.

A radical teachers’ group mobilized thousands of members in Mexico City last week, chasing lawmakers from their chambers, occupying the city’s historic central square, blocking access to hotels and the international airport, and threatening to bring an already congested city to a halt in the coming days.

These mobilizations, analysts said, suggest how difficult it may be for President Enrique Peña Nieto to get through this and other changes he has pushed since taking office in December, including an energy and telecommunications overhaul deemed vital to revving up the economy.

Already, lawmakers, who passed the principal outlines of the education program in December and are negotiating additional legislation needed to carry it out, have shelved one of the bill’s most vital provisions, an evaluation requirement aimed at halting the common practice of buying and selling teaching jobs and establishing mechanisms to fire poorly performing instructors.

“What has happened is very grave,” said Sergio Aguayo, a political analyst at the Colegio de México. “A kidnapped city and a dismantled reform.”

Mr. Peña Nieto had focused on the public education system because he and analysts have called it vital to moving more people into the middle class.

Mexico ranks last in standardized test scores among the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Teachers buy, sell or inherit positions as though they were family heirlooms. Removing poorly performing teachers is virtually impossible, even over allegations of sexual or substance abuse.

But this year began with hope that change was coming.

The main political parties agreed to work together to pass the overhaul. In February, the seemingly untouchable leader of the powerful main teachers’ union, Elba Esther Gordillo, was ousted from her post and jailed on suspicion of embezzlement, a rare rebuke to powerful figures here.

But by April, members of a small but militant faction of the union began pushing back with violent protests in Guerrero State, including the shutdown of the highway connecting the tourist hub of Acapulco to Mexico City. Demonstrators then paralyzed parts of Oaxaca and Michoacán States, in the south and west.

Last week, they descended on Mexico City, where they turned the central square into a tent city, forcing the Mexico City Marathon, scheduled for Sunday, to be rerouted. And they blockaded the two buildings belonging to the chambers of Congress, forcing the legislature to meet at a convention center. “The president of the country, the secretary of education, they are not putting up a fight for the reform,” said Edna Jaime, director of México Evalúa, a public policy research group. “They threw it out and left it alone.”

Ms. Jaime said she believed the federal and state governments were afraid of heightening the conflict with a direct confrontation.

On Friday, Mr. Peña Nieto defended the proposal, saying that teachers who objected to the changes misunderstood them.

“The education reform will give them opportunities that they don’t have today,” he said. “The reform benefits Mexico’s teachers because it is designed to give them job stability, clear rules and certainty for ascending within the national education system.”

Much of the rancor from the teachers has focused on evaluations. The new law would make them obligatory every four years. Teachers who failed an evaluation could try again a year later, and again a year after that. After failing three times, tenured teachers would be moved to administrative positions while newer teachers would be fired.

“This evaluation is disguised to start firing our peers,” said Floriberto Alejo, 50, a teacher who came from Oaxaca State on Monday.

Mr. Alejo said the proposed overhaul poses a risk to teachers’ seniority. “The education reform, full of tricks, is on track to privatize education.” He said the change intends to fire many teachers and make it harder for parents to find fully staffed public schools, therefore forcing them to send their children to private ones.

Last week, Congress stripped that requirement from the bill, saying it would be taken up at a later date.

“If this content of the law is eliminated in order to avoid conflict, the reform will be practically inconclusive and have no effect,” said Sergio Cárdenas, an education expert at CIDE, a Mexico City research university.

By Friday, the city ground to a near standstill. Getting around the city, in some places, took two to three times as long as usual.

The country’s main airline, Aeroméxico, waived all change fees for passengers who missed their flights, while television stations showed alternate routes to the airport and other neighborhoods.

“This is the expression of a country that is drowning in violence,” said Mr. Aguayo, the political analyst. “There is no ability to impose democratic rules.”