Moskowitz Lies and Distortions: Eva's sneaky, misleading argument. Here's what's missing

The Daily News gave Moskowitz propaganda space to argue she can help integrate the schools - really what she is doing is lobbying for more space to push out public schools and take over entire school buildings.

I picked this info up on an email thread - source unknown.

Talking points:

a) the % of students who are special ed; or ELLs or title 1 eligible
b) the enrollment by grade level (which would tell you what's she's counting)
c) to portray the charter schools as saviors and the antidote to racial segregation is disingenuous as charters are notoriously for skimming off the top which is to say cherry picking their kids which is to say reducing diversity.
d) are these aggregated numbers

2014/15 (the last year for which complete data is available on NYS website):

Success Academy, Bed Stuy1: 2.1% white
2015-16
Success Academy, Bed Stuy2: 1% white
Success Academy, Bx1: 1.1% white
SA: Bx1: 1.1%white
SA: Bx2: 1.1% white
SA: Harlem: 1.1% white
SA: Bensonhurst: 53.9% white; 16.7% Black, 19.4% Hispanic
SA: Bergen Beach: 11.5% Hispanic; 85.2% Black, 1.6% white
SA: Rosedale: 82.6% Black, 14.7% Hispanic, 0.5% white
SA: Springfield: 93.5% Black, 3.8% Hispanic. no whites
SA: Washington Heights: 71.6% Hispanic, 11.4% white, 15.3% Black
SA: Cobble Hill: 29.6% white, 33.2% Black, 26.9% Hispanic
SA: Williasburgh: 30.1% Black, 55.2% Hispanic 9.9% white

So....with the exception of Cobble Hill SA is hardly an integrated school. And Cobble Hill's student pop is driven at least in part by the demographics of certain neighborhoods where she had co-located - as a way to set up a base of operations for her future political ventures.

 Read Eva in the DN, Charting a course to integration: Let charter schools help --- if you can stomach it.

 Here is a short selection - as much as I can take before gagging.

It’s time to make integration a priority.
Consider Success’ Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, school. It’s a model of diversity: About a quarter of the students are white, a third are Hispanic, a third are African-American, and more than half are from low-income households, a level of diversity virtually unheard of in surrounding schools. At the Brooklyn School for Global Studies, with which we share a building, 4% of the students are white and 85% are economically disadvantaged; at Public School 29, a school just four blocks west, 74% of the students are white and only 10% are economically disadvantaged.

Success Academy Upper West attracts students who are zoned for some of the city’s most desirable schools, including 73 applications in 2015 from families zoned for PS 199, the vaunted elementary school at the center of that recent integration battle.

Hey Eva - how many of those 73 applications to your school actually took your school over PS 199?

What Chalkbeat Leaves Out in Thomas Fordham Inst. Report on Firing Teachers in NYC

Gates funded indeed - comment from Ed Notes reader on Chalkbeat report.

It takes two years of consecutive “ineffective” ratings to dismiss [a tenured teacher] in New York City, roughly a third of the time it can take in Los Angeles, in some cases. (In response to the report, New York City education officials said teachers can be removed for incompetence, even without two ineffective ratings.)   ... Chalkbeat, 

New York City is among the hardest places to fire a low-performing teacher, report claims, screams the headline from Chalkbeat reporter Alex Zimmerman.

Peter Lamphere, as top level a math teacher as you can find, received 2 U ratings in a row at Bronx HS of Science due to chapter leader activities and was going to be given a 3rd U which would have cost him his job before the UFT helped parachute him out of the school. Now, once he was safe they should have made him the poster boy for why we need tenure and to show that even tenure won't protect you from political vendettas. If Chalkbeat were honest journalists they would have pointed to the issue of the retaliation of the oh too many vicious principals and even site the Lamphere story --- read all about it here -

Peter Lamphere on Rosemarie Jahoda: What Does It Take To Get Promoted to Principal in NYC?

The irony is that Rosemarie Jahoda persecuted the entire math dept - including exhibiting racism against black teachers ---and is now being rewarded with the principalship of top school Townshend Harris. A petition to protest this act is being circulated:

STOP Rosemarie Jahoda from being appointed the PERMANENT principal of Townsend Harris HS

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2016/12/08/new-york-city-is-among-the-hardest-places-to-fire-a-low-performing-teacher-report-claims/

Despite changes in state law and several attempts at overhauling teacher evaluations, New York City remains one of the most difficult places in the country to fire an ineffective teacher. That’s according to a report released Thursday by the conservative-leaning Thomas Fordham Institute, which ranked New York City fourth out of 25 large, geographically diverse school districts in terms of how hard it is to fire low-performing teachers.
The findings offer another piece of evidence that the national effort to remove ineffective teachers through harsher evaluation systems — which have already been significantly rolled back in New York state — has not taken hold locally. 

 Conservative leaning? Do they even try to explain what that means? Why not say a clearly biased report from anti-tenure ed deformers?

And you can read more about what Jahoda and principal Valerie Reidy did at ed notes achives:

Ed Notes Online: Fact finder calls on Bronx Science administrator to ...

Apr 27, 2010 ... The fact finder, Carol Wittenberg, concluded that Ms. Jahoda and UFT Chapter Chair Peter Lamphere should transfer out of the school, that the ...

ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Ed Notes Online: Bronx High School of Science in the News Jan 8, 2009 ... Math teachers in particular blame a new administrator - Assistant Principal Rosemarie Jahoda - for verbal abuse, claiming they are ... ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Ed Notes Online: Bronx High Story at NY Times - Drilling Down ... Sep 18, 2011 ... At that time, 20 of the school's 22 math teachers accused Rosemarie Jahoda, the math assistant principal, of harassing and intimidating new ... ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Grading UFT Leadership on Class Size: When Ed Notes Called for Zero Tolerance on over-sized classes - Oct. 2000

The class size issue has gotten buried in all the ed reformy crap over the past 20 years. Arthur Goldstein, CL of Francis Lewis HS had a recent experience in his school with the UFT class size provisions of the contract and is bringing the issue back on the agenda. I revisit a reso I brought to the DA in Oct. 2000 which passed unanimously. Shows how meaningless it can be to get stuff passed and then ignored. Arthur raised the issue at Monday's Ex bd meeting.

Arthur Goldstein--MORE-- at Dec. 5 UFT Ex Bd meeting:

At this juncture it’s vitally important that we support our members, our students and our community.

Last week I learned that Deborah M. Gaines, an arbitrator who gets paid $1600 a day, found it reasonable that Francis Lewis High School teachers with oversized classes be released from one C6 assignment per week. She also found it reasonable that Forest Hills High School teachers be released from on C6 assignment per week per oversized class. Thus, if I have two oversized classes, I’m relieved from one C6 assignment. If a Forest Hills teacher has two oversized classes, she’s relieved from two C6 assignments.

First, it’s ridiculous to think it’s easier to teach two oversized classes at 214% capacity Lewis than at Forest Hills. Second, it’s ridiculous to contend the DOE-sponsored “action plan” of releasing teachers from C6 assignments makes up in any way for oversized classes. Teachers don’t need a period off from tutoring when they have oversized classes. Students in oversized classes don’t need less tutoring either. The DOE, which claims to place “Children first, always,” clearly doesn’t give a golly gosh darn about our working conditions, which are student learning conditions.

More importantly, this remedy tells principals everywhere they can make as many oversized classes as they wish with no consequence. Why should they care if teachers give one fewer day of tutoring when they can create fewer classes with impunity and save thousands of dollars by cramming students in like sardines? Today I went and counted, found 33 oversized classes, filed five grievances and got eight corrected. That is eight more than the arbitrator managed to fix and I’m on day one.

An action plan needs to address and discourage oversized classes. This does neither, and in fact tells principals they can abuse the Contract, us, and our students with impunity. Let's let members know with absolute clarity that we don’t play this game.

I ask that the UFT let both members and the DOE know we absolutely oppose oversized classes and will not tolerate nonsense like this. I ask the United Federation of Teachers to make sure Deborah M. Gaines never get another contract as arbitrator.

Also how many oversized classes are there in the city as we speak, and what’s our plan moving forward?

Schoor—We will get an answer. Grievance department not here.

Janella Hinds—Grievance department is reviewing this situation. We are evaluating this plan for Lewis. 

Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator has been writing about the class size travails at his school, Francis Lewis HS, one of the largest and more overcrowded schools in the city. Here is his most recent report: Class Size in the UFT Contract which details some of the faults in the UFT contract class size provisions.

As a member of various opposition parties in the UFT since 1970, we always had to battle the leadership on the class size issue. At the very least we wanted to see the loopholes closed. But they seemed perfectly happy with the status quo and nothing will change until the contract changes. But the leadership has not fought for contract changes since the late 60s.

In between caucuses when I did Ed Notes as an independent, I made class size a major issue -- which was how I came into contact with Leonie Haimson after a delegate asked me if I was associated with her - and we should all donate to

Class Size Matters - Please give to Class Size Matters.

At the October, 2000 Del Ass - if memory is correct - Hillary appeared to get our support for her run for the Senate - and Randi was in a great mood after Hillary left and the meeting began.

She called on me in the new motion period and as I began to speak she told me to come up to the podium and use her mic --- unprecedented before and since I believe -- I would say that was the height of our relationship -- within months it began to deteriorate as Randi grew more undemocratic and began to push ed deform policies.

With Randi signaling support, Unity people voted to support my reso and it passed unanimously. (Of course they voted as told.) The NY Teacher printed the list around January 2001 and also the next year but that may have been it.

Here is the reso - and I think the NY Teacher should continue to print oversized class lists every year -- Dec/January is not a bad time to do it because all adjustments have been made.

Here is a reprint from my proposal in the October 2000 Ed Notes. The reason I called for the 4th grade reduction was because the city council had passed limits for grades 1-3 and I felt I was being reasonable by pushing for gradualism - at the very least let's do a grade a year - and remember, the city was flush with money at that time. I think Arthur may revisit the reso below with some modifications. Forcing the leadership to be accountable for publishing over class size lists will bring more attention to the issue.

My Oct. 2000 reso calling for the NY Teacher to print a list of every over-class size in the city

Class Size Matters
I know of a class that started the year with 39 children It is time for our union to take a position of Zero Tolerance for such high class sizes. It is just not acceptable for us to allow any teacher to work under such conditions. 

It is clear to anyone who has been a classroom teacher that class size is the single most important working condition. But if low class size is important to teachers, it is even more important to children. Despite its weaknesses, our contract does more to protect children that any educational directive from the board of education (a fact our union should be stressing.) When is the last time a board official said to a teacher: We just can’t allow so many children in a class. I will look for any available personnel currently not in the classroom to relieve that burden? It’s funny how the arrow of accountability only runs in one direction. 

Beyond our contract, early childhood teach- ers are protected by class size caps (passed by the city council) in early grades. These caps end at grade 3. Thus, class size rises dramatically in grade 4 (one of the crucial testing grades.) This causes all sorts of problems. If there are 3 classes in the 3rd grade, they get squeezed into 2. Children who are used to a certain level of attention no longer get it. Because of the testing pressure and the change in class size, many teachers try to avoid teaching 4th grade.
For years we assumed that attempts would be made to extend these caps grade by grade. But momentum seems to have faded. Now would be an appropriate time to renew calls for the extension of capping

Here is a proposal to deal with these issues: Resolved: The union will compile a list from every school and district listing all classes with more than 32 children and the reason why the class size limit is exceeded (space, class size loophole, grievance not properly filed, etc.) A report will be issued and a discussion held at the December Delegate Assembly. The New York Teacher will print the list as a way to focus attention on this issue.

And be it further resolved that the UFT will call on the city council to place caps on the 4th grade. 

Naomi Klein and The Left Took Aim at Globalization and a Warning from Pussy Riot

The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned... Naomi Klein 

When there is no truth, invasions are “liberations” and internment camps are “relocation centers.” But, as Ms. Tolokonnikova [Pussy Riot] said, “There is always a way if you really want to tell the truth.” .... NY Times

I present here a somewhat optimistic (Naomi Klein) and a warning (Pussy Riot) about how Trumpism can morph America into Putinism - it can sneak up on you real fast. I heard on NPR last night that over a period of a few years, people are much more receptive to the removal of democratic protections like free speech and even more accepting of a military dictatorship.Take this bizarre path - Trump becomes so outrageous, Mad Dog Madigan and  Flynn lead a military coup. And America cheers. Hmmm, an idea for a novel - don't steal it in case I decide to write it.

Naomi Klein, http://www.naomiklein.org/main, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein, has been a leading voice in this movement against neo-liberalism since the late 90s.

Her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, went viral beyond just the left. The day after the Trump win she wrote in The Guardian: It Was the Democrats' Embrace of Neoliberalism That Won it For Trump  - November 9th, 2016.

They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?

Donald Trump speaks directly to that pain. The Brexit campaign spoke to that pain. So do all of the rising far-right parties in Europe. They answer it with nostalgic nationalism and anger at remote economic bureaucracies – whether Washington, the North American free trade agreement the World Trade Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women. Elite neoliberalism has nothing to offer that pain, because neoliberalism unleashed the Davos class. People such as Hillary and Bill Clinton are the toast of the Davos party. In truth, they threw the party.

Trump’s message was: “All is hell.” Clinton answered: “All is well.” But it’s not well – far from it.

Nancy Pelosi feels all is OK and hasn't learned as per the NY Post- I don’t think Democrats want a new direction

Nancy Pelosi just gave Republicans another reason for celebration.
The newly elected House minority leader insisted Sunday that Dems aren’t looking for a “new direction” even after the bruising Election Day defeats and a GOP monopoly in Washington.
A defiant — and possibly delusional — Pelosi stood firm about her party’s future when pressed on what she’ll do differently to deal with Democratic discontent.
“I don’t think people want a new direction,” Pelosi told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families.”

Pelosi may have doomed the Democratic Party to extinction. I don't see them ever regaining power on almost any level other than the coasts.

She feels the only solution can come from the left, though I have little faith in the much divided left - whatever that is - we really need to define the various tendencies on the left -- and I consider myself as part of the left- at this point I line up with Bernie Sanders' social democrats - regulated capitalism - which obviously is not the Marxists who often mock the social democrats (Bolsheviks vs Menshiviks?)

Klein offers some choices between wresting the Dem Party away from the neo-liberals or going in a new direction.

People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together. Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people’s agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.
Bernie Sanders’ amazing campaign went a long way towards building this sort of coalition, and demonstrated that the appetite for democratic socialism is out there. But early on, there was a failure in the campaign to connect with older black and Latino voters who are the demographic most abused by our current economic model. That failure prevented the campaign from reaching its full potential. Those mistakes can be corrected and a bold, transformative coalition is there to be built on.

That is the task ahead. The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned. From Elizabeth Warren to Nina Turner, to the Occupy alumni who took the Bernie campaign supernova, there is a stronger field of coalition-inspiring progressive leaders out there than at any point in my lifetime. We are “leaderful”, as many in the Movement for Black Lives say.

I really don't have much hope that we can accomplish this and see another few election cycles and the possible loss of all rights to resist - see Putin's Russia as a blueprint for our future - and read this NY Times piece on Pussy Riot and Putin to see how institutions can be taken apart piece by piece and in just a few years you get arrested for publishing critical articles or demonstrating.
A Warning for Americans From a Member of Pussy Riot.

“It is a common phrase right now that ‘America has institutions,’” Ms. Tolokonnikova said. “It does. But a president has power to change institutions and a president moreover has power to change public perception of what is normal, which could lead to changing institutions.” As if to make her point, later that day the informal Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski declared that The New York Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, “should be in jail.” In October, The Times published an article about leaked pages from Mr. Trump’s 1995 state tax returns.

The last video they released, in late October, was called “Make America Great Again.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-bKFo30o2o) It showed fictional Trump agents in red armbands raping and torturing in a campaign against Muslims, Mexicans, women who have abortions, gays and lesbians.



Despite my pessimism, the battle will still go on.

Klein and others on the left were taking on this issue from the earliest days. Here is her No Logo movie, which is worth an investment in time even it you just flip through it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AUkksHVnN8

UFT Exec Board: Hottest Debates in the UFT; MORE members meet With Leroy Barr today on abusive principals

NYC Educator report: Patsy Cline Sings Crazy. UFT Practices It.
I give credit to LeRoy Barr and Howie Schoor for enabling an honest discussion on this issue. The last time I was able to participate in an honest discussion with union leadership was never (and if you're reading this, Unity, that cuts to the core of our problem)....

Arthur Goldstein savages the Unity leadership in his latest post, though recognizing the value of the debate. Arthur and the other MORE EB members are the major reason I'm getting ready to head over to tonight's UFT Exec Bd meeting. I swore I would not attend these meetings where 7 opposition people talk to a crowd of Unity people. But I've been pleasantly surprised by the kinds of open discussions, as Arthur pointed out above, haven't been taking place anywhere else in the union. I wrote about the Ex Bd meeting and the adult ed chapter report from Schirtzer yesterday -- Mike Schirtzer UFT Exec Bd Report: Adult-Education Chapter Stands Up and Fight Back

Opposition members can ask as many questions as they want, speak often and not face calling of the questions to shut off debate - unlike the DA where Unity "call the question" clones shut things down regularly. While Arthur mocks Mulgrew for not attending EB meetings or at most make a token appearance, I think not having him there is a good thing. He can be an oppressive force - with oafish comments.

Howie Schoor, whom I've known for almost 40 years - he repped my on my only 3rd step grievance in 1979 - I lost - is an amiable host.

MORE and New Action come loaded with questions and since the first meeting of the year where we raised a reso on abusive principals, there has been some back and forth with Leroy Barr. Mike Schirtzer has organized a pre-Ed Bd meeting today at 5PM with Barr on the abusive principal issue, which will be attended by people who have been experiencing conflicts at their schools. Our minimal goal is to have the UFT bring up specific principals at consultation meetings with the Farina people. That is a first step. I believe there was a meeting on Friday and we hope to get a report on the adult ed situation I reported on yesterday.

On the debate that took place last week over whether to use Trump's name in a reso - Unity says that will offend Trump supporters in the union -- I thought the long debate was one of the best I heard -- I won't mock the leadership for what is essentially irrational - as Arthur pointed out last week -- that they offended people by their very support for Hillary and spent a year trashing Trump. So to leave out his name now looks ridiculous. But I get that they are getting a little desperate with Friedrichs redux - with the future outlook not looking good for the union. They know that significant portions of UFT members won't pay dues - unless they feel they are getting something for it.

I do believe that on some level the leadership has been trying to be more responsive to people under attack -- I am getting some good reports from some people saying they feel more supported. Also some people who were asking me for assistance have gone quiet - I'm assuming the union is working with them.

Well, gotta go into Brooklyn and grab the subway - look for Arthur's report tonight or tomorrow.

Here is his report of last week's meeting and some other commentary on the use of the Trump name in the reso.

• UFT Executive Board November 28th--We Can't Risk Offending People by Mentioning Trump

• UFT Leadership--Wake Up or Give Up

• Fun Fact--UFT Team High School Has No Input from UFT High School Teachers

   

Mike Schirtzer UFT Exec Bd Report: Adult-Education Chapter Stands Up and Fight Back

There is positive energy coming from MORE holding these EB seats - people feel they can come to these meetings and raise issues with the leadership with the sense that MORE has their backs. Read Mike Schirtzer's report on the Adult Ed chapter complaint. First let me make the point that the UFT District Rep was present at the meeting where the verbal attack by Supt Mills took place on the teacher and remained silent. A more aggressive UFT is needed to put a stop to this type of aggression by DOE people.

Teachers on the consultation committee and the UFT district representative of the Office of Adult and Continuing Education (OACE) were verbally attacked by Superintendent of OACE, Rose Marie Mills. At these meetings where the divisions' teachers and principals from across NYC come together, Ms. Mills is exclusively in charge and has historically not even allowed the principals of respective districts to speak. At the last meeting the Superintendent yelled, screamed, stood up and accused UFT members of being "crazy" because they had asked to halt constant interruptions of administrators entering class-rooms to request data. Ms. Mills treated them in a threatening and aggressive manner through-out the meeting. It was extremely unprofessional. Consultation meetings, as President Mulgrew has often reminded us, are our agendas and our meetings. This was clearly not the case.

The educators that were attacked responded by signing a joint letter to the UFT executive board with a full report of the incident, they reached out to MORE to work with them in presenting to the board, came to our pre-meeting to share their letter with demands, and presented the attack to the entire UFT Executive Board. They stood up for themselves by coordinating a response and demanding the UFT leadership tale action. They will not allow this bully administrator to get away with this.

They asked that the UFT take immediate action and inform chancellor Farina they insist on her presence at the next meeting. UFT Secretary Howard Schoor responded that they will bring this up with at their consultation with the Deputy Chancellors this week and seek recourse....

....Mike Schirtzer, UFT Ex Bd member, MORE/UFT Caucus

The Adult ed chapter of the UFT has been savaged over the years going back to when we formed ICE in 2003 and David Greene, my old high school pal, told us stories of what they were doing. Some members have started coming to MORE for assistance and when they came with this issue, they were invited to attend the pre-Ex bd meeting that begins at 5PM on the day of the EB meetings. I arrived in the middle and was sort of surprised to see them so ready to stand up publicly since there has been so much fear in the chapter -- Ed Notes receives regular communications from people in the chapter. My sense is that there is positive energy coming from MORE holding these seats - people feel they can come to these meetings and raise issues with the leadership with the sense that MORE has their backs.

If you asked me a year ago whether much would come of MORE winning the high school Ex Bd seats I would have yawned -- poor people, wasting their time talking to a roomful of Unity - some of whom, slugs. But so far this time I am fairly impressed by the role our great MORE team of Ex Bd members have been playing and the Unity response. They ask for info and reports and they get them. They can ask as many questions as they want and get a fairly respectful audience. They raise resos and we see some serious discussion.

There is a somewhat different atmosphere at the EB than in the past -- maybe not as much hostility or mockery towards the opposition. This is not the old New Action with older or about to be retired people other than Jonathan Halabi -- now he is one of the oldest opposition members of the board. The EB is more diverse - color and gender - than in the past -- and blunts some of the more aggressive social justice race issues when brought up by white people in the opposition -- the optics of lecturing people of color on race doesn't play. (I went up and shook Leroy Barr's hand the other day for his wonderful speech on the complexities of race at the AFT convention - which was about as social justicy as things could get - and maybe indicative of the problems facing the Democratic Party -- economic issues were not

And best of all Arthur Goldstein does meticulous minutes published on NYC Educator - see the latest here - UFT Executive Board November 28th--We Can't Risk Offending People by Mentioning Trump and a follow-up. Arthur's voice and stature as one of the most read blogs keeps them somewhat accountable.

Tomorrow - Monday - is another EB meeting at 6PM and even though shlepping from Rockaway is not appetizing - and neither is the food -- I may go - partly because I felt the debate over the use of the Trump name - as Arthur reported -- was fabulous and I felt the kind of discussions that should be taking place all the time -- and I also think the Trump victory has made both the leadership and the opposition see things in more common ways -- that the very union is threatened. I will try to do a follow up piece on this before I leave tomorrow for the EB meeting.

Now I have to get over to my acting class at the RTC where I will not be doing Shakespeare.

Norm in the Wave: School Scope: Vouchers are Coming, Vouchers are Coming!!! and Writing WS in Rockaway

Published Dec. 2, 2016 in The Wave

School Scope: Vouchers are Coming, Vouchers are Coming!!!

By Norm Scott

“The first American schools in the thirteen original colonies opened in the 17th century. Boston Latin School was founded in 1635 and is both the first public school and oldest existing school in the United States. The first tax-supported public school was opened in Dedham, Massachusetts, in 1644.”…. Wikipedia

With the coming Trump administration threatening to create a voucher system, we face an upcoming elimination of almost 400 years of public education. It won’t happen immediately but over time we will see a withering away of the entire fabric of free public education in this nation, and along with it I believe a similar withering away of 225 years of democracy. A viable public school system is part of the foundation of American democracy where a national identity can be forged. Break public ed and you break the ties that can bind Americans together.

Is it even worth talking about public education in the Trump Era, which the president elect has termed a “monopoly”, after appointing billionaire Betsy DeVos, the queen of vouchers, as education secretary? And thus we face the possible demise of an institution that has been the backbone of democracy in this nation since almost its founding.

The Jewish Forward posted a story titled, “Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education? That’s a Tragedy for All American Jews.”  It is worth quoting a section from the article, which can be read in full at http://forward.com/opinion/355478/betsy-devos-as-secretary-of-education-thats-a-tragedy-for-all-american-jews/

“For generations of American Jews, public education has been the gateway to American life. It was certainly true for my parents, the children of immigrants; public school taught them not just facts and figures, but alao how to be American — and how to be proud of being American. Which is why the nomination of Betsy DeVos as secretary of Education, while not surprising, is so deeply sad. DeVos is not merely a conservative and a Republican Party activist; she is one of the country’s most powerful advocates for ending public education entirely and replacing it with religious schools, for-profit charter schools and home schooling. Her foundation is widely credited as the primary engine behind the so-called “school choice” movement, which has led to the establishment of voucher programs in 13 states since 2000. Moreover, DeVos’s billionaire family, the members of which made their money in the Amway pyramid scheme, is one of the top five funders of the Christian right, having given hundreds of millions of dollars to the likes of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation and dozens of Christian schools across the country. DeVos isn’t just the fox in charge of the henhouse — she’s the shochet, the slaughterer.”

Word is that many Jews in the orthodox community voted for Trump in higher numbers than secular Jews. So for them this may not a tragedy, since orthodox Jews who don’t send their kids to public schools can use public money for religious schools, as of course can Catholics and Muslims. With the attacks on Muslims can you see some religions being “unflavored”?

Every religious organization and every wood-be religious group, even bogus ones, will try to get in on the gravy train. Charters are in heaven over the chance to take over public school functions and property. Every school can will its own curriculum, thus fragmenting the American experience into smithereens.

Rockaway writing workshops

Switching gears, I’ve been in a writing group for about 10 years. Writing groups offer a very supportive environment to have your work critiqued and due to my colleagues I’ve begun doing something I never thought I would do – writing a novel, one of the hardest things I’ve tried to do.

Now Rockaway has its own writing workshop. If you’ve been hankering to write the great American novel or your memoir, or some poetry, Claire Van Winkle, one of our local hot yoga instructors at Hot Yoga Rockaway Beach on 116^th St., also teaches composition, creative writing, and literature at CUNY and SUNY colleges and she has been offering 6-week writing workshops in Rockaway.  The next session will be offered on Wednesdays, beginning January 4. Email Claire at info@rockawaywritersworkshop for details.

Claire created a 10% discount code for WAVE readers who would like to try the 6-Class Card (listed under “Packages”). Enter code EDNOTES10 on the checkout page at http://www.rockawaywritersworkshop.org

Coming soon from Claire, writing therapy workshops

Turning the Page: Making Sense of the Stories We Tell Ourselves, a community group designed to help individuals use writing to work through problems like depression, loss, trauma, and major life changes based on a program she developed  that applies writing workshop pedagogy and clinical psychology approaches (such as cognitive-behavioral theory) to group therapy. She’s run weekly sessions at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. While the program was created for a clinical setting, Claire hopes to bring her experience to the Rockaway/Broad Channel/Howard Beach area, helping those whose  silent struggles might be alleviated through guided expression.

Claire’s bio and CV are available at  http://www.rockawaywritersworkshop.org/about-the-teacher/

Norm blogs at ednotesonline.org

 

Matt Taibbi Interviews Bernie Sanders: Where We Go From Here - Rolling Stone

One thing is clear - Bernie Sanders is not a socialist-communist but a Roosevelt New Deal Democrat - with a left twist. The New Deal  basically ran from 1933-1968 - when it started to become undone by the Vietnam War - yet even Nixon was on the whole in line with it --- in many ways we can say the Democrats began to unravel it with Jimmy Carter, Regan went after the fundamentals of the ND -- government is the problem and so are taxes -- Clinton and Obama especially didn't defend ND ideals - which also included support for labor unions -- in fact the Dems abandoned unions in so many ways -- especially with the ed deform attack on teachers - and now we face the possible final ending of the ND over the next 4-8 years (does anyone think there is a Democrat out there who can win in 2020?). This may be the first time the Republicans have had absolute control of every branch of government since just before the great depression, which is where unfettered capitalism will lead us. Here are some excerpts from the Taibbi piece.

Sanders believes it is a mistake to dismiss the Trump movement as a monolithic expression of racism and xenophobia. Trump's populist appeals, sincere or not, carried the day, and Democrats need to answer them....
those same voters just lost any sympathy many Democrats might have had by electing the race-baiting lunatic Trump. Exactly how much courting of such a population is permissible? Is trying to recapture voters who've made a racist choice in itself racist?
... Matt Taibbi interview with Sanders in Rolling Stone

Do not believe that the vast majority of the people who voted for Trump are racist, sexist or homophobes. I don't believe that. Some are. I don't believe they all are. They have turned to Trump out of desperation and pain because the Democratic Party has not even acknowledged their reality, let alone addressed it.
Our future is not raising money from wealthy people, but mobilizing millions of working people and young people and people of color...

How to deal with Trump voters was a theme in our discussions at the almost 4 hour ICE meeting on Friday. Bernie always seems to have his finger on the right button. This question also came up at the UFT Ex Bd meeting last Monday, which I will write more about later today.

Taibbi opens with this intro:

It feels like a bomb went off in Washington. In less than a year, the leaders of both major parties have been crushed, fundamentally reshaping a political culture that for generations had seemed unalterable. The new order has belligerent outsider Donald Trump heading to the White House, ostensibly backed in Congress by a tamed and repentant majority of establishment Republicans. Hillary Clinton's devastating loss, meanwhile, has left the minority Democrats in disarray. A pitched battle for the soul of the opposition party has already been enjoined behind the scenes.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won overwhelming youth support and 13 million votes during primary season, now sits on one side of that battle, in a position of enormous influence. The party has named him "outreach chair," and Minnesota congressman and Sanders political ally Keith Ellison is the favorite to be named head of the Democratic National Committee. This is a huge change from earlier this year, when the Sanders campaign was completely on the outs with the DNC, but many see Sanders' brand of politics as the Democrats' best shot at returning to prominence.

Sanders' rise is a remarkable story, obscured by the catastrophe of Trump's win. When I first visited with Sanders for Rolling Stone, 11 years ago, for a tour of the ins and outs of congressional procedure, he was a little-known Independent in the House from a tiny agrarian state, an eccentric toiler pushing arcane and unsexy amendments through Congress, usually on behalf of the working poor: expanded access to heating oil in the winter, more regional community health centers, prohibitions against regressive "cash-balance pension plans," etc.

His colleagues gently described Sanders as a hardworking quack, the root of his quackery apparently being that he was too earnest and never off-message, even in private. He had fans among Republicans (some called him an "honest liberal") and many detractors among Democrats, who often grew weary of his lectures about the perils of over-reliance on donations from big business and Wall Street.

In other words, Sanders was a political loner, making his recent journey to the top of the Democratic Party even more remarkable. He has been put in this position not by internal patronage but by voters who are using him to demand that Democrats change their priorities.

At his Washington office a week after the election, I sat down with Sanders and his wife, Jane, just after the release of his new book, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In. When he offered to get me a copy, I told him I'd already read the e-book, at which he frowned. "Does that have the pictures?" he asked. He was relieved when I told him it did, including black-and-whites from his youth in Brooklyn.

Sanders' experiences growing up in the hardscrabble Flatbush neighborhood still seem central to the way he looks at the world. All the adults in his neighborhood voted Democratic. The loss of the support of those kinds of people still eats at Sanders, like a childhood wrong not yet corrected. Thus the opportunity he has now to push the Democrats back in that direction is something he doesn't take lightly. He's spent his whole life getting to this point.
The senator and his staffers were obviously sorting through a variety of emotions, and it was hard not to wonder what might have been. But Sanders admonished himself once or twice not to look back. "It's not worth speculating about," he said.

Instead, Sanders laid out the dilemma facing the Democratic Party. The Democrats must find their way back to a connection with ordinary people, and this will require a complete change in the way they do business. He's convinced that the huge expenditure of time and mental effort the Democrats put in to raise more than $1 billion for the Clinton campaign in the past year ended up having enormous invisible costs. "Our future is not raising money from wealthy people, but mobilizing millions of working people and young people and people of color," he says.

Read the full interview:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/bernie-sanders-where-we-go-from-here-w452786

Buying the So-called Ed Press: Bill and Melinda Drop a Half Million on Chalkbeat

Purpose: to inform low-income parents and parents of color in Newark, Detroit, and New York about K-12 education

Amount: $525,042

Sure -- to really "inform" low-income parents of color or to propagandize for ed deform policies of Bill Gates?

I remember back when I used to go to Gotham/Chalkbeat events when we raised questions about their donors the response was that Randi also gives them money and even that I had given them $50. Trying to equivocate what Randi and I might give with Gates alone makes the reporting more than suspect.

I think it important to understand and analyze what biased coverage is and Chalkbeat must be looked at as much as what they don't cover as what they do and how they do or don't do it. We know Gates is against opt out so watch CB coverage of that issue - it will be subtle how they lean in to Gates' issues. And you will never see a word of criticism about all the Gates failures in ed policy. We know Gates is not pro-Trump so we might see a more aggressive crit of Betsy DeVos than we saw about Duncan and King -- even though when you shake those trees a lot of the same crap comes out of the leaves.

Gates Foundation: How We Work

Grant

Chalkbeat, Inc.

---

Date: October 2016
Purpose: to inform low-income parents and parents of color in Newark, Detroit, and New York about K-12 education
Amount: $525,042
Term: 18
Topic: Global Policy & Advocacy
Program: United States
Grantee Location: New York, New York
Grantee Website: http://www.chalkbeat.org
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2016/10/OPP1159098

Ed Deform is the NAFTA Equivalent: The Neo-Liberal Assault on Blue Collar Workers and Unions Includes Teachers

I'm writing this as a topic for discussion at tomorrow's ICE meeting. Does the analogy of NAFTA and ed deform as the same type of neo-liberal attack hold water in terms of the loss of blue collar and public school jobs as a way to lower labor costs and funnel the profits into private hands?

As we read analysis after analysis of the Democratic Party's abandonment of the working class as the reason for the Trump victory. But how many of these analysts on the left and left center delve into the Democratic Party's abandonment of public school teachers and their unions, despite the slavish worship of UFT/AFT/NEA leaders  for their almost meaningless little stool at the table?

Commentators talk about blue collar workers but neglect that the major assault has been launched by both parties on teachers and public schools. That giant sucking sound of job loss Ross Pirot warned about NAFTA in the early 90s is being echoed in the public schools by the charters and the upcoming vouchers. But no one is paying much attention to the analogy.

To me there is a similarity between a corporation going to Mexico and New Orleans and Detroit going charter - the very same idea is operating -- the same type of shift to paying lower wages. While some people are fooled by the social justice rhetoric of charters, their mostly positive response to the Trump destruction of public ed shows what they are really about. And note that some big corp just paid around $125 million for 5 charter schools in Florida.

There's charter gold in them that hills

The gold rush is on.


As long as the Democratic Party that shilled for ed deform and charters have ed deform people like Hakim Jeffries and Corey Booker and Cuomo, teachers who are being chopped will not be won over. I know my readers can't stomach what I am about to say but De Blasio was the only one who had the guts to take on Eva and he was slaughtered and backed off -- and even though so many schools are in awful shape and teachers are pissed - just see what options you have next year in the election when the choice will be DeB or an Eva Moskowitz clone -- and I bet some of the angry people who are pissed at DeB and Farina will put their head in the noose and vote for the Eva Clone because to them deB is too liberal. Good luck with that.

Trump-supporting or Jill Stein voting teachers in the UFT were so pissed at our union leaders they will never vote Democratic Party until the Republican Party screws things up so badly they have no other choice -- like imagine if non-Hillary voters find themselves with a vastly reduced pension and without a job as a giant sucking sound that makes NAFTA look like pablum decimates their jobs.

I don't see a lot of ways around this other than to think of a Bernie like party --- it would be left of any Dems and for the right wingers in the UFT out of the question but by then there may no longer be much of a UFT.

Jacobin: Hillary Clinton won rich suburbs in record numbers. But her campaign failed to mobilize workers of all races

the lesson of the 2016 election is not that that the Democrats should “appeal” to the “white working class.” It is that left-wing politics will never get anywhere if we cannot harness the passionate self-interest of the entire working class.... Jacobin

There's the left and then there is the Democratic Party.

In pursuit of professional-class Republicans, the Clinton campaign made a conscious decision to elevate questions of tone, temperament, and decorum at the expense of bread-and-butter issues like health care or the minimum wage. This wasn’t just a tactical move away from some culturally distinct group of “white working-class” voters. It was a strategic retreat from the working class as a whole.

 Is there hope for the Democratic Party - or the left? The actions of the left throughout history vis a vis bourgeois parties like the Dems is worth studying (see Germany, early 30s). Would a Bernie Social Democratic Party actually work? I would bet the far so-called left would savage it too because it is not pure enough. Now this article does come from the left -- Jacobin - which if you feel generous, toss them a few bucks to continue their work. (Celebrate the new issue of Jacobin, “The Party We Need,” with a discounted subscription.)

Read this little segment and tell me if there is hope for the Dems with rotten shits like Cuomo et al in it?

.....their attitude toward working-class Americans tends to take two forms. On the one hand, a growing contempt for the (white) workers who have slowly drifted away from the Democratic Party; on the other, an essentially philanthropic if not paternalistic concern for “the most vulnerable” (nonwhite) workers who ostensibly remain within the Democratic camp.  This has given us an elite liberal discourse that grows eloquent about questions of “privilege” and “empathy,” but cannot seem to imagine a politics of power and solidarity. It has given us a liberalism that adores means-testing and looks askance at universal goods — not because universal goods are too expensive, but because they might benefit someone who isn’t deservingly deprived.

Ouch! Did this writer attend a MORE meeting? Friday's ICE meeting may go on until all the rice pudding is gone. There is so much freakn' meat in this article I'm not even interested in rice pudding.

In the Midwestern swing states, Clinton hemorrhaged white “blue-collar Democrats” without winning nearly enough “moderate Republicans” to compensate. Nevertheless, the election results show that the Democrats’ conscious effort to woo the rich wasn’t entirely for naught. Clinton ran nine points ahead of Obama’s 2012 tally among voters earning more than $100,000. Further up the income ladder, among voters making more than $250,000 annually, she bested Obama’s margin by a full eleven points.... these affluent and expensively credentialed suburbs also delivered Clinton huge margins during the Democratic primary.

.......Bernie Sanders’s style of class politics — and his program of mild social-democratic redistribution — did not gain much favor in New Canaan, Connecticut (where he won 27 percent of the vote) or Northfield, Illinois (39 percent). For some suburban Democrats, Sanders’s throttling in these plush districts virtually disqualified him from office: “A guy who got 36 percent of the Democrats in Fairfax County,” an ebullient Michael Tomasky wrote after the Virginia primary, “isn’t going to be president.”

......Clinton was their candidate. By holding off Sanders’s populist challenge — and declining to concede fundamental ground on economic issues — the former secretary of state proved she could be trusted to protect the vital interests of voters in Newton, Eden Prairie, and Falls Church. They, more than any other group in America, were enthusiastically #WithHer.
......Matt Karp in Jacobin

Oy, my head hurts. The hits from Fiorillo keep comin' - hey Mike - give an old retired guy a break. I just want to play with my marbles.

First you hear the working class voted for Trump. Then you hear Hillary's average income voter was lower then Trump's. We know that the black community did vote for Clinton but we also know that  enough of a chunk weren't motivated enough to come out.
How about this one?

In New York City, whose voting regulations are controlled exclusively by Democrats, turnout in predominantly black neighborhoods also sagged from 2012. While Clinton’s vote jumped by more than 14 percent in the Upper East Side, it sank by 8 percent in East Flatbush.

Double Ouch! Can we say Hillary may have lost because not enough black voters came out for her?

And higher numbers of union workers and even Latino/a voters came out for Trump than expected. We also know that a hell of a lot of Obama voters voted for Trump or 3rd party or didn't vote at all. Around 80,000 voters in Michigan left the presidency blank or wrote in a name.

Let's not forget that Obama and Hillary fiddled while Scott Walker destroyed teachers in Wisconsin. Both the Obama and Bill Clinton admins in essence of absentia piled on the Regan assault on unions.  With weakened or non existent unions the workers had no organizing force behind them - except Trump? You see, the republican 40 year strategy of destroying unions as a way to undermine the Democrats worked - with the help of the Democrats - they are their own Trojan Horse.

A few more nuggets before reading the entire thing:

Exit polls report that Trump did even better with Latino voters than Mitt Romney in 2012. While some experts have disputed those findings, county-level results suggest that at the very least, the Clinton campaign did not generate anything like the wave of Latino voters that Democrats were expecting.

A choice between the Democrats and a party that flirts with the Ku Klux Klan is no choice at all. But African Americans can still opt to stay home — and this year, it appears many people did just that.
Republican efforts at voter suppression, including new restrictive laws in key states, likely blocked some African Americans from casting a ballot. But in many locations, the drop in Democratic turnout seems too large to be the product of ID laws and voter purges alone.

In Detroit, which is 82 percent African American, no major voting restrictions have been instituted since 2012. Yet Clinton tallied forty-seven thousand fewer votes than Obama, a decline of more than 16 percent. In St Louis’s northwestern wards, where African Americans comprise over 85 percent of the population, the Democratic vote fell by between 25 and 30 percent from 2012.

Enough to tempt you junkies to jump into this pool?

This article breaks down the vote in

Fairfax County, USA

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/clinton-election-polls-white-workers-firewall/

The Guardian -- How the Democrats could win again, if they wanted -- Thomas Frank

If the unreconstructed Democratic party is to be saved, I suspect, what will save it is what always saves it: the colossal incompetence of the Republicans. This, too, we can already see coming down the rails. Donald Trump is getting the wrecking crew back together, and before too long, I suspect, he will have the country pining for Hillary Clinton.... Thomas Frank, The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/29/how-the-democrats-could-win-again-if-they-wanted?CMP=share_btn_tw

Below is Frank's entire piece, which was another interesting gem sent along by Fiorillo. I have a follow up post with my own commentary -- and looking forward to Friday's ICE meeting where we can get some rational discussion.

A good time to give some bucks to The Guardian for this type of commentary.

Become a Supporter

How the Democrats could win again, if they wanted

Thomas Frank

What makes 2016 a disaster for Democrats is not merely the party’s epic wipeout in Washington and the state capitals, but that the contest was fought out on a terrain that should have been favorable to them. This was an election about social class –about class-based grievances – and yet the Party of the People blew it. How that happened is the question of the year, just as it has been the question of other disastrous election years before. And just like before, I suspect the Democrats will find all manner of convenient reasons to take no corrective action.

But first let us focus on the good news. Donald Trump has smashed the consensus factions of both parties. Along the way, he has destroyed the core doctrine of Clintonism: that all elections are decided by money and that therefore Democrats must match Republican fundraising dollar for dollar. This is the doctrine on which progressive hopes have been sacrificed for decades, and now it is dead. Clinton outspent Trump two-to-one and it still wasn’t enough.

Neither were any of the other patented maneuvers of Clintonism. With Hillary carrying their banner, the Democrats triangulated themselves in every way imaginable. They partied with the Wall Street guys during the convention in Philadelphia, they got cozy with the national security set, they reached out to disaffected Republicans, they reminisced about the days of the balanced federal budget, they even encouraged Democratic delegates to take Ubers back and forth from the convention to show how strongly Democrats approved of what Silicon Valley was doing to America. And still they lost.

This is important because winning is supposed to be the raison d’etre of centrism. Over the years, the centrists have betrayed the Democratic party’s liberal base in all sorts of ways – deregulating banks, securing free trade deals, signing off on Wall Street bailouts and the Iraq war. Those who bridled at all this were instructed to sit down and shut up because the Clintons and their triangulating ilk were the practical ones who would bring us victory.

Except that they don’t. This year the Republicans chose an honest-to-god scary candidate, a man who really ought to have been kept out of the White House, and the party’s centrists choked. Instead of winning, the pragmatists delivered Democrats to the worst situation they’ve been in for many decades, with control of no branch of the federal government and only a handful of state legislatures. Over the years, and at the behest of this faction, Democrats gave up what they stood for piece by piece and what they have to show for it now is nothing.

Another shibboleth that went down with the Hillary Titanic is the myth of the moderate swing voter, the sensible suburbanite who stands somewhere between the two parties and whose views determine all elections. These swing voters are usually supposed to be liberal on social issues and conservative on economic ones, and their existence gives a kind of pseudoscientific imprimatur to Democratic centrism.

The TPP wasn't killed by Donald Trump – our protests worked

Evan Greer, Tom Morello and Evangeline Lilly

Read more

For years people have pointed out that this tidy geometry doesn’t really make sense, and today it is undeniable: the real swing voters are the working people who over the years have switched their loyalty from the Democrats to Trump’s Republicans. Their views are pretty much the reverse of the standard model. On certain matters they are open to conservative blandishments; on economic issues, however, they are pretty far to the left. They don’t admire free trade or balanced budgets or entitlement reform – the signature issues of centrism – they hate those things. And if Democrats want to reach them, they will have to turn away from the so-called center and back to the economic left.

There are some indications that Democrats have finally understood this. Elizabeth Warren’s star is on the rise. Bernie Sanders is touring the country and reminding people that class politics are back whether we like it or not. Keith Ellison is running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

But the media and political establishments, I suspect, will have none of it. They may hate Donald Trump, but they hate economic populism much more. If history is a guide, they will embrace any sophistry to ensure that the Democrats do not take the steps required to broaden their appeal to working-class voters. They will remind everyone that Clinton didn’t really lose. Alternately, they will blame Sanders for her loss. They will decide that working-class people cannot be reasoned with and so it is pointless to try. They will declare – are already declaring – that any Democratic effort to win over working-class voters is a capitulation to racism. Better to lose future elections than to compete for the votes of those who spurned their beloved Clinton.

Trump changed everything. Now everything counts

Barbara Kingsolver

Read more 

I suspect this will happen because this has been happening for decades; because Democrats always find a reason to put off doing what they need to do to win back the white working class. The example that springs immediately to mind is the election of 2004, when the Bush-Rove team used a variety of ingenious culture-war offensives to beat a different centrist Democrat. For several months after that debacle, Democrats contorted themselves in self-examination. They wondered about what had happened with the white working class, how they had managed to lose so many of those voters, and so on. It was especially memorable for me because my book about blue-collar conservatism in Kansas was often part of the conversation.
But before very long, the self-examination ceased. Democrats were reassured by their friends in political science that they really had no problem with the working class and that they needn’t be concerned. With a few statistical sleights of hand and enormous heaps of professional contempt for the laity, academics helped to shut down that debate.

And here we are again. Today Democrats are wondering what went wrong, but before too many fundraising dinners have been digested they will have concluded they don’t need to worry, that demographics will bail them out sooner or later, and that the right and noble course of action is to proceed as before.

This will happen because what leading liberals cannot understand – what they are psychologically blocked from understanding – is that the problem isn’t really the white working class. The problem is them.

Let me explain what I mean by reminding you what this form of liberalism looks like. Somewhere in a sunny corner of the country, either right now or very shortly, a group of tech tycoons or well-meaning private equity investors will meet to discuss what went wrong in this election cycle. They will consider many things: the sexism and racism of Trump voters, the fundamental foreignness of the flyover, the problems one encounters when dealing with evangelicals. They will celebrate some activist they learned about from NPR, they will enjoy some certified artisanal cuisine, they will hand out prizes to the same people that got prizes at the last event they attended, and they will go back to their comfortable rooms at the resort and sleep ever so soundly.

These people think they know what liberalism includes and what it doesn’t include. And in the latter category fall the concerns that made up the heart and soul of liberal politics a few decades ago: labor and work and exploitation and economic equality.

To dedicate your life to concerns like these today is to sign up for obscurity and frustration. It’s to enter a world without foundation grants, without appearances on MSNBC, and without much job security. Nothing about this sphere of liberal activism is fashionable or attractive. Books on its subjects go unreviewed and unread. Strikes drag on for weeks before they are noticed by the national media. Labor organizers are some of the hardest-working but least-thanked people I know. Labor reporters are just about extinct. Promises to labor unions are voided almost as soon as they leave a politician’s lips.

If rich liberals had listened to such people, Donald Trump might not have been able to lure away so many millions of working-class voters. Maybe they will change their ways now? Perhaps the well-meaning folks at those Florida resorts will finally close ranks with working people and their representatives?

Put the question slightly differently: will the Washington Post or the New York Times take the sad fate of Democratic centrism as a signal to bring a whole new vision to their op-ed pages? Will NPR finally say to its cast of well-graduated tastemakers: you missed it just one time too many? Will the thinktanks and pressure groups of Washington finally be told by their donors: we’re shifting your grant money to people who care about deindustrialization?

I doubt it. Liberalism today is an expression of an enlightened professional class, and their core economic interests simply do not align with those of working people. One thing we know about professionalism is that it exists to shield insiders from public accountability. If coming up with a solution to what ails liberalism means listening to people who aren’t part of the existing nonprofit/journalistic in-group, then there will be no solution. Liberals would rather lose than do that.

If the unreconstructed Democratic party is to be saved, I suspect, what will save it is what always saves it: the colossal incompetence of the Republicans. This, too, we can already see coming down the rails. Donald Trump is getting the wrecking crew back together, and before too long, I suspect, he will have the country pining for Hillary Clinton.