A flurry of activity among education reformers across the country exposes a growing bifurcation within its ranks, uncovered by recent challenges to teacher tenure in New York. Former CNN anchor Campbell Brown’s Partnership for Educational Justice, which recently recruited renowned attorneys David Boies and Laurence Tribe, seeks to reform teacher tenure laws, mirroring activities that led to California’s controversial Vergara ruling. But earlier this month, the New York City Parents Union filed suit separately alleging that Brown’s group failed to include scores of minority parents in their complaint. This troubling yet pervasive tableau has bedeviled modern reform movements since their inception: Leadership has remained predominantly white, even though the target populations are overwhelmingly black and Latino. And these battles are contributing to a growing disjunction in education policy and among stakeholders within communities and across cities. Continue reading The growing disjunction in education policy→
On a subfreezing morning in January 2003, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) walked to the pulpit of Trinity Baptist Church’s Martin Luther King Day celebration in the Bronx to make a startlingly rousing speech to their predominantly African-American congregation. Typically, such speeches are principally aspirational — they acknowledge that society has largely rebuked racial discrimination’s ugly past but urge steadfastness in tackling challenges that lay ahead. But it was Clinton’s stirring repudiation of Trent Lott, then the Republican Senate Majority Leader from Mississippi who a month earlier praised Strom Thurman’s 1948 pro-segregation presidential campaign, that enthused the audience. Her remarks suggested changes in leadership alone will not eradicate racism and discrimination but the rigidity of the pathways to political and economic enfranchisement must acquiesce to the strength inherent in this country’s diversity. Continue reading Hillary Clinton’s commitment to civil rights→
This election season has seen an unusually open battle regarding political strategy among New York unionists and progressives. At stake is a crucial issue: how to balance the demands of building a movement that can fundamentally change a political and economic system that fails to serve most Americans against the existing political arrangements that benefit particular groups of workers. This was the key issue at the Working Families Party convention last May.
In 2010, the WFP backed Cuomo even as he attacked public sector unions and ran as a pro-business centrist. Once in office, he forced state workers to accept repugnant give-back contracts under the threat of mass layoffs, fought to lower taxes at the expense of services, and blocked various progressive initiatives.
Earlier this year, Gallup reported that a record number of Americans identify as Independents. Forty-two percent of the country shed traditional political party labels: Republican Party identification fell to 25% while 31% identified with Democrats – down from 36% in 2008 when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled for the nomination. Attempts to recalibrate each national party’s internal political compass before 2016 will likely prove more vexing for Republicans, but recent activity among major Democratic figures signals a far more aggressive push for realignment than previously thought. A high-profile campaign 10 years ago and recent developments among education policy-leaders may foreshadow a dramatic shift in the Party’s forthcoming platform.
Howard Dean’s rapid ascension among Democratic presidential contenders in 2004 was fueled in part by an strong anti-war stance, a unabashed liberal ideology during the neo-conservative Bush-Cheney years, and a pre-Facebook internet strategy that was groundbreaking for its fundraising and community-building activities. Dean famously lost in Iowa and New Hampshire as voters chose John Kerry, who was presumed to be a better general election candidate. While Dean’s loss was not wholly unwelcomed by certain corners of the Democratic Party, his most ardent supporters were without a champion until early 2007, when President Obama kicked off his seemingly quixotic campaign for the White House. Continue reading Politics, Progressivism and the Future of the Democratic Party→
A conversation about workers, communities and social justice
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