“Education is the civil rights issue of our generation,” presidential hopeful Mitt Romney announced in a recent press conference, where he also claimed that our public schools are in a state of “national emergency.” Former Governor and former Bain Capital CEO Romney is now portraying himself as a civil rights hero, fighting against systemic racism and inequality that provides American children a “third world education.” And the cause of this emergency? It’s not the foreclosure crisis, persistent unemployment, nor the 21 percent childhood poverty rate – after all, the multimillionaire, who made $27 million in 2010, is “not very concerned about the very poor,” as they’re already taken care of. Rather, this grave civil rights injustice has been inflicted by excessively powerful “special interests” and “union bosses” that put their needs in front of the poor, minority children. And Romney plans to be the 1 percent’s very own Martin Luther King Jr., a “champion of real education reform in America.”
Welcome to other side of the looking glass, and into the Bizarro world of so-called “education reform” – an upside-down universe in which up is down, left is right and multimillionaire CEOs are civil rights heroes championing social justice, while public school teachers are corrupt fat cats, maintaining a status quo which oppresses students in poverty and racism.
Romney’s speech on education would be hilarious – that is if anyone seemed to get the joke. Indeed, Romney’s topsy-turvy view has become so commonplace in the corporate media – stated by both Republican and Democratic politicians, along with countless pundits and reporters themselves – that it verges on the cliché.
And so, we thought, what better way to capture the Bizarro world of education reform than with a serious work of journalism, disguised as a comic? Our three-part series – published over the next three months – is not intended to be funny, but rather, to pull back the progressive propaganda disguising the neoliberal, corporate nature of education reform. Our goal is to expose the free-market policies that really make up “education reform”; how these policies threaten our public education; who supports these policies; and, ultimately, what we might be able to do about the “Disaster Capitalism Curriculum.”
After reading, we hope that you get the joke.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 98 new monthly donors before midnight tonight.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy