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Dying Communities

Rudy Acuna LA Progressive
California State University Northridge Professor Rudy Acuna relates current campus privatization plans to past and on-going struggles to build and learn from "community" with a challenge to all who resist capital and work for alternatives to institutionalized racism, genocide, Manifest Destiny, urban renewal and privatization.

Tidbits - November 27, 2014

Portside
Reader Comments - Darren Wilson Acquittal - Reader Responses; Black Friday Protests; Election Lessons for the Left; Immigration Reform; Ursula K. Le Guin, Pension Reform(?); Water Grab; Facebook Drivers Vote Union; Berlin Wall's Fall - Reflections from the GDR; Israel Lobby and Ukrainian Fascists; Mexico - 43 students murdered; Israel, Palestine and Rasmeah Odeh; The Selfless Gene; Announcement - New Politics Forum on the Environmental Crisis - New York - Dec. 9

The Value of Water

Ellen Dannin Truthout
The Value of Water Coalition was formed by large, well-resourced water and wastewater organizations to change the way we think about water. The rest of us need to know that we may not like the way they think of us and our rights to water.

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Building Not Rebulding Public Education

Lois Weiner Jacobin
Adapted from a longer piece in the current issue of New Politics (see link below). Fighting corporate education reform is less about restoring the old system to its former glory than building a just one for the first time.

Water Wars and Creeping Privatization

Ellen Dannin, Truthout News Analysis Truthout
First they privatized the toll roads, then the highways, then the prisons, then public transportation, then parking garages and street parking meters. Now the water...Now Detroit. he newly enacted Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act holds promise for life in a world shaped by climate change. However, privatization proponents are working hard to privatize ownership and control our water infrastructure.

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Schooled

Dale Russakoff The New Yorker
Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education.

Despite Community Pleas, Three Chicago Schools Slated for Privatization

Kari Lydersen In These Times
Today’s hostile takeover of three of our neighborhood school communities by the mayor’s handpicked Board of Education makes it quite clear that there is a war on older, African-American teachers and administrators, as well as the school communities in which they serve. … CTU president Karen Lewis

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Separate and Unequal: The Charter School Pedestal The Public Can’t Reach

Trymaine Lee MSNBC
Critics say that charter schools—publicly funded but run by private organizations—are being used as a means to privatize public education at the expense of the vast majority of students. They say the charter movement is a Trojan-horse riding under the guise of school choice, used as an instrument to break teachers unions.

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Some N.O. Charters Begin Exploring Teachers Unions

Andrew Vanacore The Times-Picayune/The Advocate
For New Orleans, the debate over charter schools and teachers unions has always been an either-or proposition. The Orleans Parish School Board voided the city’s union contract after Hurricane Katrina, and charter schools began taking over rapidly thereafter. Now, New Orleans is beginning to find out if this hard divide between charters and unions is really necessary, or if the two can somehow learn to coexist.
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