I will be posting short videos as they are processed. About half the students were kept out of school on Friday.
https://youtu.be/kGqiQgvwnY8
Zakiyah Ansari of Alliance for Quality Education makes a strong statement of support, as does Cordell Cleare.
I've
seen Zakiyah at so many events over many years. She was one of the
leaders of the takeover of a PEP meeting in August 2010 - forcing them
to cancel the meeting. It was the first day Julie Cavanagh and I began
shooting (https://theinconvenienttruthbehindwaitingforsuperman.com/watch-the-film/) and we caught some great footage that evening. She has been a consistently strong voice for justice.
We
met Cordell Cleare in the summer of 2009 when we (GEM) went up to
Harlem to take a stand against Eva Moskowitz. Cordell was State Senator
Bill Perkins' Chief of Staff and she offered us space in Bill's office
to hold meetings. In the spring of 2010 Bill Perkins held 10 hours of
hearings on charter schools, which inflamed the charter industry and led
them to running Basil Smikle against Bill Perkins (Political Strategist Basil Smikle Will Challenge Harlem State Sen. Bill ...)
in
the fall of 2010 - Bill smashed him. Smikle is the NY State Director of
the Democratic Party - just goes to show how much in bed the Dems are
with the charter industry.
Excuse the poor sound. It was raining and I had to cover the camera.
2 comments:
I remember watching Smikle on NY 1. He was a democratic consultant. Then Smikle joined Bloomberg for the mayor who wouldn't leave re-election bid. (Thanks UFT for not endorsing anyone.) Anyway, I always thought that Smikle's run for office was sort of a consolation prize. I know, Smikle was paid, and Bloomberg won- but any Dem who works to support a non-Dem is going to have a hard time getting a new job on the Dem side. To be fair, others did it too, but except for Howard Wolfson (remember him from "Hillary for President Part 1" ?) not too many end up for the better.
Our UFT is always absent. What a bunch of crooks!
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