'Parent Trigger' School Reform Effort in Adelanto Attacked by Charter-Fearing Parents, Teachers, L.A. Times (Deja Vu)

 Mr. Skeels, you have difficulty distinguishing philanthropic from business activity -- you seem to assume that it is all the same, particularly if the same individuals are involved. But this is neither the reality of philanthropic activity, nor would it be legal if it were thus attempted; and it would be naive to believe that these people's tax returns aren't carefully checked (which thus creates a whole industry for tax lawyers and similar types). But I doubt carrying this on will serve much purpose, as your mind is already made up, and so counterarguments and facts will be merely filtered out as cognitive dissonance.

BTW, I'll be at Micheltorena Street ES tonight testifying about the horrors of Prop 39 colocations. Stop by and hear truth spoke to corporate power if you're still feeling like you need to "challenge" an authentic community and parental advocate.

Philanthropists?

Mr. Smith, you clearly either haven't done your homework, or your obsequious admiration of the plutocrat class blinds you to their actions, in favor of what you (wrongly) imagine are their intentions.

Let's take the convicted predatory monopolist you are so fond of stating is supposedly "wiping out malaria in Africa and India." In addition to having been convicted for operating a predatory monopoly (court documents documents show he and his executives using philanthropic phrases like "knife the baby" and "cut off [the] air supply"), one of his other companies, Infoflows, was recently found guilty of fraud. His foundation, which also donates money to fringe right Discovery Institute and the arch-reactionaries at ALEC, is vested heavily (to the tune of 500K shares) in GMO frankenfood behemoth Monsanto, a corporation that is more responsible for widespread suffering and starvation in oppressed world countries than any other that comes to mind.

You are right to say Bill Gates won't increase his already obscene fortunes by privatizing schools in "Compton and Adelanto," but his long term plans for inflicting "distance" and "blended" learning on seventy plus student classes of inner-city students (wealthy white parents would never subject their own children to such nonsense) is heavily dependent on software, networking, and content delivery systems. What line of work was Mr. Gates in again? What profitable enterprises are his associates like the vile Tom Vander Ark promoting right now? Do I need to continue?

I'll give one more quick example, since I written about these malignant misanthropes at length in other venues, which unlike the LA Weakly, are open to ideas that are left of the Cato Institute.

The recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in TARP bailout funds for his preferred shares in AIG (talk about earning money the old fashioned way) is another so-called "philanthropist" that people like yourself deny having any profit motif in the privatization of public education. Aside from his lifelong ideological obsession with lowering his tax burden, and his close association here in Los Angeles with arch-reactionary Phillip Anschutz, Eli Broad is one of many profiteers lining up for one of the more lucrative aspects of the charter-voucher sector -- real estate. Other vultures include Goldman Sachs, Andre Agassi's CACSFF, Charter School Capital, Montgomery Securities and more. Let's remember too, that real estates deals provide the voracious private sector with even more money making opportunities at the public's expense in terms of financing, construction, and so forth. Familiar with Kaufman and Broad Mr. Smith? You know what they do right? Let's just say that the projected profitability of the charter real estate sector makes the concept of selling toxic Credit Default Swaps look positively blasé.

We won't get into Scholastic, Pearson, McGraw Hill, Harcourt, and Kaplan here, but astute readers should realize again that your constant allusions to philanthropy is bluster and cover for the most reprehensible profiteering. Nor will we get into additional charter school backing by the likes of the wealthiest one percent including names like Walton, DeVos, Bradley, Koch, Hastings, Dell, Powell-Jobs, Scaife, Tilson, et al. Many of these are also funding Ben Austin's juicy six-figure salary too.

Crude social analysis indeed.

The difference between us is that I judge these individuals by their actions, which in turn reveal their intentions. You can worship these people all you want Mr. Smith, but I've devoted my life (in actual volunteer hours spent in activism and writing), to fighting back against the very naked and very real class warfare they wage on us (confer Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine," or is that crude analysis as well?). I'll wrap up quoting the celebrated author Jonathan Kozol, who is far more cognizant of the neoliberal privatization project than most:

"The education industry represents, in our opinion, the final frontier of a number of sectors once under public control... represents the largest market opportunity... the K-12 market is the Big Enchilada." — Montgomery Securities prospectus quoted in Jonathan Kozol's "The Big Enchilada."

Philanthropists indeed.

 It's best that this rhetoric and the crude social analysis it is based on have ended up on the ash heap of history, which is where this dialogue is going. Philanthropists as an exploiting class, trying to get rich by wiping out malaria in Africa and India, or by scooping up all the cash lying around in Compton and Adelanto . . . how is that a way to wage class warfare?

I don't follow what you are saying. Nevertheless, I accepted your "challenge," and your choice not to follow through is yours and yours alone.

I regard you as an enemy to the working class as you defend the exploiting class and their vile tactics of class warfare at every opportunity.

What Austin and his crew of neoliberal privatizers do at the behest of their reactionary and deep pocketed funders is beyond reprehensible, and nothing I could ever say about them will ever mitigate the damage they cause everywhere they go.

 Since I have heard that you were both Kissy Kissbear and rdsathene on this page, and therefore were having a pretend dialogue with yourself while personally attacking me from two sides, I've lost interest. Of course, if I have been misinformed, I might change my mind. I don't regard you as a personal enemy; I don't have any. But I think the tactics being employed here are inimical to the truth.

I work in Koreatown, there's a little place on Wilshire across from the UCLA Community School called Cafe Mermaid. If you wanted to do a lunchtime sit-down for coffee, I can squeeze in 30-40 minutes. If you wanted to do early evening on a Wednesday or Friday, I could to that too. It grieves me that you don't understand Freire since "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"  was the most transformative book I've ever read. Furthermore dialogical methodology is not simply dialog, and certainly not dialog with oppressors. Again, I don't think much come out of us meeting other than further enmity, perhaps you're just curious to know what an educated working class individual looks like. You can reach me rdsathene@robertdskeelsforschoolboard.org to arrange a date/time.

 My current schedule is more favorable to weekdays, since I have rather to much free time on them, while weekends are typically packed. I have read "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" cover to cover, although I can't claim to have benefited much thereby; I have never read a complete work of Milton Friedman, although I am familiar with his ideas. Freire stresses dialogue as central to his pedagogical method. What do you have to lose?

All one has to do is click said avatar for my full name, biography, and city of residence--just to clear that innuendo up. I suppose we could do a face to face one day, although I am unclear as to what end that will serve. After all, I am a student of Freire, while you are seemingly a student of Freidman. I fight for social justice and speak truth to power (what you term as mudslinging), while your pubic interactions with Ms. Grannan and myself have always seen you in defense of power and the exploiting class. While I doubt much could come from such a meeting, are weekdays or weekends more favorable to you?

 I tried to learn something about you, Kissy, but all I can tell from your Facebook page is that you're a cat, and I'm not in the habit of responding to animals.

Don't waste your time on Smith, he's hopelessly inured with being obsequious to deep pocketed charter operators in the hopes that he too will strike it rich on the charter-voucher plunder parade. His defense of Austin is as feeble as his prose, as all of us in Los Angeles can attest. Those who have watched Austin et al from back when he was first (reluctantly on his part) hired as a consultant to the Green Dot behemoth (back when Parent Revolution was the Los Angeles Parents Union with Ryan Smith at the helm and, like you say, Steve Barr as Chair) know exactly who and what Parent Revolution are and who they serve. From someone with a front row perspective on Parent Revolution, I can say that all of @CarolineSF assertions are one hundred percent true. Ben Austin is utterly devoid of principle, as are his funders, and his defenders.

 My criticism here focuses on how yours is all second-hand information and interpretation, yet you continually testify to the incompetence and evil of all sorts of people who are both better informed than you and more objective. You do it again in this reply -- you merely assume that Ben "made up" the story, without any evidence to back up your charge. That's libellous, and libelling people in the various public fora of the Internet is your most prominent occupation at this point, Caroline.