Hillary Clinton

Why is Common Core Still Here?

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oh-dear

Common Core has become a national joke.

 

In fact, the set of academic standards has inspired a new genre of grade school humor – Common Core comedy.

 

For instance:

 

One student turns to another and says, “Common Core is about making us college and career ready.”

 

The other student replies, “It’s working. It’s making me drink more everyday.”

 

Here’s another one:

 

Question: Why can’t mommy help you with your Common Core math homework?

 

Answer: She only has a four-year degree.

 

And finally:

 

Question: How many whiteboards does it take to show you how to screw in a light bulb?

 

Answer: One, but it takes dozens to explain 1+4 in Common Core.

 

Parents nationwide know the pain of Common Core by the looks on their children’s faces.

 

They see bright, curious youngsters go to school and come back hating education and thinking they’re stupid.

 

Parents get the same feeling trying to decipher their children’s homework.

 

Meanwhile the majority of teachers hate the standards – and as they become more familiar with it, that number grows every year.

 

So why do we keep using Common Core? Why haven’t our schools thrown this bad idea on the trash heap of failed education policies?

 

In short – because industry is making a lot of money off it.

 

Common Core was created by private industry.

 

It was not made by the states, nor was it written by the federal government.

 

It was created to sell a new generation of standardized tests and textbooks.

 

It’s raison d’etre is profit not education.

 

School children didn’t need a unified set of academic standards. Big business needed them to sell more books and tests.

 

 

The standards were written by Achieve, Inc., a Washington, D.C., organization formed in 1996 by corporate leaders and six state governors. The endeavor was funded by Bill Gates and other corporate interests. It was reviewed by individuals and organizations also funded by Gates.

 

 

Then the federal government stepped in to strongly encourage states to adopt the standards. Not because anyone actually thought they were necessary. They did it because that was what wealthy donors wanted.

 

Eventually the standards were adopted in 42 states, but not because legislatures voted on them. The standards were quietly approved by state boards of education, unelected state education chiefs and boards of education. Many lawmakers didn’t even know what Common Core was or that their state had implemented it until voters started calling and asking questions.

 

Moreover, at the time of their adoption, the standards weren’t even completed. They were enacted in many cases sight unseen.

 

How did the federal government get state officials to do this? Money and threats.

 

Public schools were strapped because of the great recession. So the Obama administration swooped in to help – on the condition that states enact a series of reforms including Common Core.

 

The Obama administration did not write Common Core, but it did everything it could to make sure states enacted these standards. In the 2009 stimulus package, there was $4.35 billion in discretionary funds given to the U.S. Department of Education to hand out as state grants. But in order to qualify for these grants, states had to adopt the Common Core. With education funding at a premium, bureaucrats were only too willing to bend over backwards to keep their state’s schools running.

 

And when the carrot wasn’t enough, the federal government used the stick.

 

Many states were applying to the federal government for waivers to the disastrous No Child Left Behind legislation. Adopting Common Core and several other corporate education reforms was made a pre-condition. If states didn’t adopt these standards, their schools would be labeled “failing” and lose even more federal funding.

 

Despite all this, the media still often misrepresents the facts.

 

It is an objective fact that the Core was written by private industry. So the media never asks that question. It asks if the Core was “state led.” That way there is room for spin.

 

Who led the effort to enact these standards? Since a handful of governors and other government officials were involved in their creation, media patsies are able to pretend the initiative started with the states. But don’t believe it. It started with private interests – people like David Coleman and Bill Gates – trying to influence government to do what they wanted for their own ends. As President of the College Board, Coleman stood to profit off new books and tests. As co-founder of Microsoft, Gates stood to profit from the new technology needed to run many of these new tests and materials. They led the initiative, not the states.

 

No government official was ever given a mandate by the voters or their empowered representatives to create or enact Common Core. Those that did so acted in their private capacities. Bribing a handful of governors doesn’t make something a state initiative.

 

Just because a government official does something doesn’t make it policy. When Chris Christie orders a footlong hoagie for lunch, it isn’t the start of a government program to feed people at Subway. He’s just ordering lunch.

 

Moreover, when government officials are coerced into adopting a policy because otherwise they won’t be able to fulfill their obligation to voters, that isn’t an endorsement of those policies. You can’t offer a starving child a sandwich on the condition that he shouts a swear word and then pretend it was all his idea. You can’t offer a glass of water to a man dying of thirst on the condition that he shave his head and then pretend that he likes being bald.

 

Common Core was not adopted by states because they liked it. It was adopted to keep schools running.

 

Special interests used the federal government’s power over the states to circumvent the legislative process.

 

The result is a set of poor quality standards that are developmentally inappropriate and don’t help students learn. This should be no surprise since they were written with minimal input from classroom teachers or child psychologists. Instead they were created by standardized test authors. But even if the standards had been good, the process of their adoption was highly undemocratic.

 

Sadly, this is how government works now.

 

Charter schools, Teach for America, standardized testing – Public education has been high jacked by business interests.

 

 

Once upon a time, the goal was to help students learn. Now the main objective is to help big business profit off students.

 

If you can make a buck off something – even if it doesn’t help or actually hurts school kids – do it.

 

 

Nowhere is this clearer than with the Common Core.

 

 

Unfortunately, our 2016 Presidential candidates don’t seem to get it.

 

 

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump seems to understand the problems with Common Core.

 

 

Clinton thinks the only issue is the way the Core was implemented in schools – not federal coercion, not poor quality standards, etc. Schools didn’t implement them too quickly. The standards are badly written, unproven to help and increasingly shown to hurt.

 

 

Trump, on the other hand, thinks it’s all wrong, but he has no idea why or what he can do about it. Like too many Republicans, he acts as if the only problem with the standards is Obama’s participation. He ignores or omits the one-time advocacy of prominent members of his own party for the Core like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, and Mike Huckabee.

 

Neither candidate seems to understand that the new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) bans the federal government from doing anything to promote Common Core, or any other set of education standards. This does not, unfortunately, repeal the standards. It emphasizes the states’ power to choose their own academic standards.

 

Each state legislature can keep, revise, or repeal Common Core. And in some cases, this has already begun. In Oklahoma, for example, Common Core was repealed entirely. In other states, like New Jersey, Common Core has been revised but largely left in place. In other states, the standards remain untouched.

 

Why hasn’t Common Core gone away? State legislatures haven’t acted.

 

No matter who wins the presidential race, whether it’s a candidate in favor or against Common Core, he or she has zero power to do anything about it. Hopefully, no one tries to exceed that authority by coercing states one way or another.

 

Meanwhile, state legislatures need to pay attention to the wishes of voters. If Common Core is repealed – and that’s what the majority of taxpayers want – we can only hope it’s done so in a more democratic fashion than it was approved. We can only hope it isn’t replaced with something worse.

 

Whatever happens it should be to benefit students, not corporations.

 

Or to put it another way:

 

Question: What if Common Core was created just to drive parents crazy?

 

Answer: Somebody must be making a fortune on crazy meds!!

No New Charter Schools – NAACP Draws Line in the Sand

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Line in sand

 

In the education market, charter schools are often sold as a way to help black and brown children.

 

But The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) isn’t buying it.

 

In fact, the organization is calling for a halt on any new charter schools across the nation.

 

Delegates from across the country passed a resolution at the NAACP’s national convention in Cincinnati last week calling for a moratorium on new charters schools. Approval of the new resolution will not be official until the national board meeting later this year.

 

This resolution isn’t a change in policy. But it strengthens the organization’s stance from 2010 and 2014 against charters.

 

Specifically, the resolution states:

 

“…the NAACP opposes the privatization of public schools and/or public subsidizing or funding of for-profit or charter schools…”

 

“…the NAACP calls for full funding and support of high quality free public education for all children…”

 

 

The resolution goes on to oppose tax breaks to support charter schools and calls for new legislation to increase charter school transparency. Moreover, charters should not be allowed to kick students out for disciplinary reasons.

 

This goes against the well-funded narrative of charter schools as vehicles to ensure civil rights.

 

The pro-charter story has been told by deep pocketed investors such as the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family Foundation. But the idea that a separate parallel school system would somehow benefit black and brown children goes against history and common sense.

 

The Supreme Court, after all, ruled separate but equal to be Unconstitutional in Brown vs. Board of Education. Yet somehow these wealthy “philanthropists” know better.

 

People of color know that when your children are separated from the white and rich kids, they often don’t get the same resources, funding and proper education. You want your children to be integrated not segregated. You want them to be where the rich white kids are. That way it’s harder for them to be excluded from the excellent education being provided to their lighter skinned and more economically advantaged peers.

 

Julian Vasquez Heilig, education chair of the California and Hawaiian NAACP chapter which proposed the new resolution, says its ironic charter schools are marketed as school choice.

 

The endgame, says Heilig, is to replace the current public schools with privatized charter schools. This is exactly what’s been proposed in the US territory of Puerto Rico.

 

It’s not about giving parents more choices. It’s about eliminating one option and replacing it with another. It’s about reducing the cost to educate poor and minority children while also reducing the quality of services provided. Meanwhile, public tax dollars earmarked to help students learn become profit for wealthy corporations running charter schools.

 

As the Presidential election heats up, it will be interesting to see how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump address the issue. Already school choice policies have been wholeheartedly embraced by the Republican nominee. Not only does he favor charter schools, he also supports school vouchers and other schemes to privatize public tax money. This shouldn’t be a surprise since he ran his own private education scam – Trump University.

 

Clinton, on the other hand, has been more measured in her support, even criticizing some aspects of charter schools. However, her campaign has issued statements saying she supports only “high quality charter schools” – whatever those are.

 

Moreover, just this week at the Democratic National Convention, Clinton staffers met with hedge fund mangers from Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).

 

According to Molly Knefel who covered the meeting for Truthout, the mood was not positive toward ending corporate education reform strategies.

 

She reported that moderator Jonathan Alter worried about the argument becoming based on social justice.

 

“If it becomes a social justice movement, doesn’t that in some ways let, for lack of a better word or expression, Diane Ravitch’s argument win?” asked Alter. “Which is, ‘don’t blame any of us, don’t focus on schools; if we don’t solve poverty, nothing is going to get better.’ Isn’t there a danger of falling away from the focus on at least some responsibility on schools?”

 

Apparently Alter is falling back on the old chestnut that under-funded schools should be blamed and shut down if they can’t help the neediest children to the same degree as well-resourced schools. And any attempt to focus on underlying inequalities would somehow give teachers a free pass? I suppose Alter believes a fire company that can’t afford a fire truck should be just as effective as one with three new ones.

 

Meanwhile, longtime corporate education reformer Peter Cunningham was asked specifically if school integration was important. He responded tellingly:

 

“Maybe the fight’s not worth it. It’s a good thing; we all think integration is good. But it’s been a long fight, we’ve had middling success. At the same time, we have lots and lots of schools filled with kids of one race, one background, that are doing great. It’s a good question.”

 

The number of segregated schools where students “are doing great” is certainly in question. Perhaps he’s referring to well-resourced all-white private schools for the children of the rich and powerful. Or maybe he means the all-black charter schools where administrators handpick the best and brightest students and refuse to educate those most in need.

 

One hopes Clinton will continue to fight alongside the NAACP and other civil rights organizations like Journey for Justice and the Rev. William Barber’s Moral Mondays to defend public schools against the failed education policies of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

 

Two weeks ago DFER President Shavar Jeffries criticized the finalized Democratic education platform for turning against corporate education reform. This transformation away from school privatization and standardized testing was the result of education activists Chuck Pascal of Pittsburgh, Troy LaRaviere of Chicago and Christine Kramar of Nevada who worked hard to ensure the platform – though non-binding – would at least set forth a positive vision of what our public schools should look like.

 

 

Make no mistake, the tide is turning. It is becoming increasingly difficult for charter supporters to claim their products boost minority children’s civil rights.

 

Too many people have seen how they actually violate them.

The Agony of Being a First Time Undecided Voter

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Is there anyone else out there like me?

 

I’ve never been an undecided voter before. I’ve always known early which candidate I’m supporting and why.

 

But this election has my head spinning. One minute I’m ready to vote for Hillary Clinton to stop Donald Trump. The next I can’t live with myself if I do that and am willing to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein even though she has very little chance of winning.

 

And so on back-and-forth, hour-to-hour. The only thing I’m certain of is that I will never EVER vote for Trump.

 

Is there anyone else out there like me?

 

This seems to be the new reality.

 

I’d rather have Hillary as President than Trump, but I’d rather have another option than either one.

 

It’s agonizing. I can’t sleep. I toss and turn.

 

I hop into bed thinking I’ll just vote Hillary and then wake up passed midnight feeling disgusted with myself. I say I’ll vote Stein and go back to bed only to wake up an hour later with grave doubts about letting Trump win and how he’ll destroy the fabric of the country.

 

Those of you who have made up your minds, be thankful. You have a certainty many of us do not share.

 

Almost half of registered Democrats voted for Bernie Sanders in the Primary. You need us. And now that Hillary Clinton is the nominee, we have to decide – What do we do now?

 

These seems to be our options:

 

1) Vote Donald Trump. Let the nation burn. Let him deport 11 million people and build a wall to keep others out. Embolden all our hidden racists, xenophobes, sexists, homophobes and narcissists. Watch the economy take a nosedive just like many of his businesses did into chapter 11. Watch the Russians laugh it up as the US enters a period of isolationism and cedes power to strongmen across the globe.

 

No. That’s just not acceptable to me.

 

2) Vote Hillary Clinton. Defeat Trump but champion all of the neoliberal policies you fought against in the primary. Vote for a supporter of the prison industrial complex. Vote for a war hawk. Vote for someone who may do some good but will almost certainly support the TPP, someone who will continue to giveaway our national wealth to big business while doing very little to help the middle class. Watch as our schools are privatized, de-unionized and closed.

 

That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

 

3) Vote Jill Stein. Support a candidate who embodies all the progressive values you fought for during the primary. Vote for action against climate change. Vote to forgive all student debt. Vote to destroy corporate education reform. Vote against unnecessary wars of choice. But have very little chance of any of these policies actually being enacted. And increase the chances of a Trump Presidency. After all, she probably won’t even be on the ballot in some states! How can you win if you aren’t an actual choice!?

 

That’s hard to accept, too.

 

4) Don’t Vote for President. Vote for progressives on down ticket races but leave the presidential race blank or maybe even write in Bernie’s name. Send a message that you won’t accept the two-party system. But again increase the chances of President Trump and really who is going to be paying attention to this highly symbolic gesture? What will it get you really?

 

No. Not acceptable.

 

These seem to be most of the options. I’m certainly not going to vote Libertarian or for one of the other third party candidates.

 

So which is the best option?

 

Damned if I know.

 

I go back and forth between Hill and Jill.

 

My biggest problem with Dr. Stein is that there just doesn’t seem to be a clear path to victory. No one other than George Washington has ever won a third party bid for President. Even Ralph Nader who got millions of votes ended up not winning a single district or a single electoral vote.

 

I’m also disturbed by talk among Green Party members, even Stein herself, saying it doesn’t matter if they win. They just want to have a good showing. They just want to increase the power of the Green Party for the next election cycle and show the establishment that they aren’t to be taken lightly.

 

I’m all for that, but a Trump Presidency is too high a price to pay for it.

 

If Jill Stein could provide a clear and believable path to victory, I would vote for her in a second. I would campaign. I would do everything I could to help her win. But as it stands this isn’t even a Hail Mary. It’s not like throwing the ball from one end of the field to the other hoping for a touchdown. It’s like throwing the ball from the parking lot, from the highway, from a neighboring state!

 

However, voting for Clinton is repugnant.

 

She represents everything I want to change about American politics. She is the establishment, the status quo.

 

The best argument in her favor is that she’s not Donald Trump. Voting for her lets us survive as a nation for four more years. Things will be bad but manageable.

 

As a public school teacher, under Clinton I can expect more support for charter schools, more standardized tests, more corporate school reform. But under Trump it will probably be worse. He is the founder of Trump University, after all. He doesn’t just support school privatization. He actually started a privatized school – if you can call it that. And he doesn’t want just charter schools – he wants vouchers.

 

Pragmatically, I’d rather have Clinton. But morally it feels like a betrayal of all my ideals.

 

And that doesn’t even take into account how terrible the Democratic National Commission conducted the primary.

 

The recent leak of private emails from the DNC paints a picture of favoritism. The party unequivocally worked with the media against Sanders. (And, no, it doesn’t matter so much who leaked these emails and why, if they’re authentic.)

 

Add to that the widespread allegations of voter suppression in the primary match-up between Clinton and Sanders. In districts that leaned Bernie, voters had to face long lines. Voters registrations were mysteriously changed or they were purged from the rolls so they couldn’t vote for him. Bernie rallies were held in over-packed stadiums while Hillary’s were in much smaller venues – yet the results in these areas somehow favored Clinton. Exit polls consistently showed Bernie winning but the actual votes somehow went to Hillary. Meanwhile the media falsely painted the picture of Clinton inevitability even calling the election for her before all the votes were in.

 

It is hard to prove that all this subterfuge was enough to sway the election against Bernie. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. However, it is naive to think it didn’t help Hillary to some extent. Maybe quite a lot.

 

And after all that, I’m supposed to vote for her!? How? The party didn’t support my right to vote unless it was for the establishment choice. But now I’m supposed to actively help these same people gain more power!?

 

Please excuse me if I find that difficult.

 

So there we are. I just can’t decide. And I would venture to guess there are many more out there just like me.

 

To those who have decided one way or another, I’d like to offer some advice when dealing with the rest of us:

 

1) Don’t call us names. I’ve been called delusional, privileged, sexist, stupid, ridiculous, etc. And may I say that it doesn’t help convince any of us to be ridiculed? In fact, it actually turns us further away from your point of view. And it shows you to be somewhat hysterical. The right choice is by no means obvious.

 

2)Lay off the scare tactics. If you want to convince someone not to vote for Trump, by all means talk about how terrible he would be as President. If you want to convince someone to vote for Hillary, the horror stories won’t cut it. We need more than that. I’m sure Hillary Clinton has positives. Lead with those. Give us good reasons to vote for her and not just against her opponent.

 

3) If you want us to vote Green, tell us how Stein can win. We don’t want purely symbolic victories. We need to defeat Trump. Don’t regale us with how screwed up the system is. We already know that. Tell us how voting Green will help reverse it.

 

Have patience with us. Being undecided is not a comfortable position to be in.

 

We’re all in this together. We all want the same things. It’s just we don’t all agree how to achieve them.

The DNC is Giving Trump the Greatest Gift of All – a Weak Opponent

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Donald-Trump-Hillary-Clinton

The latest polls have Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton by 15 points.

No, not a Fox News poll.

This is from Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight numbers wizard who correctly called both the 2008 and 2012 elections. He says if the race were held today, Trump would win the swing states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire, thereby assuring an easy victory.

Some will say this is just an inevitable boost in the numbers coming as it does right after the Republican National Convention. But need I remind you that the convention was chaos? The speaking roster was dominated by Trump’s family and a never-ending cavalcade of D-list celebrities. It reads more like the cast of the next Celebrity Apprentice than the best and brightest of one of our nation’s two major political parties.

And don’t forget Trump’s own acceptance speech. They’re coming to get you and only I can save you! Trump 2016!

THAT’S what you’re saying gave the Republican nominee a boost!? It should have hurt not helped him!

But let’s put that aside for a moment. Clinton has never polled well against Trump.

Occasionally she has topped him in polls in the past, but rarely more than the margin of error! Usually Trump comes out on top.

No. Hillary Clinton is a terrible challenger in this match-up.

Why?

There is one common factor during this election season that goes beyond political affiliation. People want change.

It’s one of the reasons Barack Obama won. He was seen as the change candidate. Heck! It was his campaign slogan! Hope and Change!

Unfortunately, he didn’t really deliver. Instead of a revolution, he gave us fiddling around the margins. Whatever the reasons for that – Republican obstructionism, his own centrism – it only frustrated the electorate further.

The economy stinks. There are endless wars. Yet the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. People are so starving for change today they are even willing to vote for fascism to get it. Because that’s what Trump offers. It’s change alright. Not good change. Not positive change. But at least things will be different under President Trump. The status quo will alter. America will be “great again” just as Germany became great again in the 1930s by doing a lot of the same xenophobic, racist, sexist and homophobic things Trump champions.

You can see a similar thirst for revolution with the Democrats. We, too, have a change candidate but it’s not Hillary Clinton. It’s Bernie Sanders.

He offered voters a return to the New Deal of FDR. He offered the kind of Democratic Socialism that saved our country from the Great Depression, gave us the strength to win WWII and became the greatest super power the world has ever known.

How does this poll against Trump? It’s devastating. Bernie beats Trump in almost every poll. He always has.

Why does Bernie do so well while Hillary doesn’t? Clinton is not seen as a change agent. She is the status quo. She is politics as usual. She is at best like Obama – fiddling at the margins. At worst she’s a neoliberal hawk that will make things worse – though probably not as bad as Trump.

So what can we do? Democratic Primary voters chose her over Bernie.

Or did they?

The recent leak of private emails from the DNC paints a picture of favoritism. The party unequivocally worked with the media against Sanders. (And, no, it doesn’t matter so much who leaked these emails and why, if they’re authentic.)

Add to that the widespread allegations of voter suppression in the primary match-up between Clinton and Sanders. In districts that leaned Bernie, voters had to face long lines. Voters registrations were mysteriously changed or they were purged from the rolls so they couldn’t vote for him. Bernie rallies were held in over-packed stadiums while Hillary’s were in much smaller venues – yet the results in these areas somehow favored Clinton. Exit polls consistently showed Bernie winning but the actual votes somehow went to Hillary. Meanwhile the media falsely painted the picture of Clinton inevitability even calling the election for her before all the votes were in.

It is hard to prove that all this subterfuge was enough to sway the election against Bernie. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. However, it is naive to think it didn’t help Hillary to some extent. Maybe quite a lot.

So what we have is a presumptive nominee who can claim no legitimacy. Sure Bernie has done the classy thing and endorsed her. But it’s easy to see why his supporters have a hard time accepting that Clinton will do even a fraction of the things Bernie would as president.

So we’re left with a very weak Democratic nominee against Trump.

And this is not voters fault. This is not because Bernie supporters are just stubborn or should just get over it.

In our capitalist system, presidential candidates are products. We are the consumers. And the Democrats have floated an inferior product. It’s not enough that Trump is worse. Because there are other choices.

No one wants to take third party candidates seriously. We ignore the Green Party and the Libertarians because we say these interlopers can’t win. And there are plenty of good reasons why that may be so. However, the existence of these other options in light of a weak challenger on both the Democratic and Republican side all but guarantee each will get significant support.

It doesn’t matter if Jill Stein and Gary Johnson have little chance of winning. They will serve as spoilers for the major parties. Who will take the most?

Well, hard-core conservatives can find much to like in Hillary Clinton. Many of them are lining up to join her ranks. However, Bernie supporters find little to recommend them on Trump’s side. He is the antipathy of everything Bernie stands for. However, Jill Stein is very inviting. If anything, she’s more progressive than he is.

As such, look for the third party option to hurt Democrats more than Republicans. In fact, had Sanders been the nominee, the Democrats could have looked forward to many independents joining the ranks. They overwhelmingly favor Sanders but not Clinton. And there are more independents than either Republicans or Democrats.

So here we are.

There is next to no chance at this point that the Democrats won’t nominate Clinton. She will almost definitely be the standard barer against Trump.

And it leaves him with a huge advantage.

If he wins, it won’t be the fault of disaffected Bernie voters. It will be because of the cynical hubris of Democratic Party leaders.

The seeds of the Trump Reich have been sown right here.

Disenfranchised Berners Need to Push for Election Reform NOW!

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So we lost the Democratic primary.

Bernie Sanders is out and Hillary Clinton is in. She will almost definitely face Donald Trump in the general election for President.

If you’re like me, you’re still in shock.

She drew crowds of hundreds. He drew crowd of tens of thousands.

Exit polls consistently showed him winning, but when the votes were counted, he ended up losing.

There have been consistent reports of rampant tampering with voter registration resulting in hundreds of thousands of voters being removed from the rolls; party affiliations being changed without voter consent so they cannot cast a ballot; polling places being reduced significantly so voters have to wait for hours resulting in voters leaving before casting a ballot. And that’s not even counting the mainstream media’s portrayal of Clinton as inevitable by conflating superdelegate votes (which at this point are only non-binding polls of how these party insiders MIGHT vote in July) with actual votes that are already tallied and unchangable.

Really it shouldn’t be so shocking.

Our democracy has been a smoking shell of itself for a long time now.

In 2008 when Barack Obama beat John McCain, we saw some of these same shenanigans. We had language barriers, invented rules, long lines sometimes hours long, and, in some cases, voting machines that changed people’s votes.

By the end of election night, hours after victory was declared, Obama said to supporters in Chicago, “I want to thank every American who participated in this election. Whether you voted for the first time or waited in line for a very long time.” As the crowd roared, Obama declared: “By the way, we have to fix that.”

And now eight years later, we’ve done absolutely nothing to “fix that.”

If anything, the situation is much worse. While Obama voters met hardships, just as Al Gore supporters did in 2000, those were extra-party elections. They were examples of Republicans disenfranchising Democrats. But now we have something new – Democrats suppressing other Democrats!

From the beginning Sanders has said that his campaign was not about himself, it was about starting a real progressive movement. “Not me, us,” the slogan goes.

Now is the time to start cashing in on that idealism.

While Hillary supporters call for unity, we, Berners, must push the terms.

I don’t know if there is truly anything Clinton can do to get my vote short of stepping down. Like many Berners, the very idea of supporting someone so opposed to my views is repugnant. But if Clinton is going to have any shot, she and her supporters need to agree to finally fulfill Obama’s promise.

Let’s fix that. Let’s fix our broken and moldering election system.

It’s not like it’s any big secret how to do so.

Robert Steele, Jim Turner, Ralph Nader, Christina Tobin, Howard Zinn and a host of others have had available a series of common sense reforms for almost two decades. It’s time we push the Democrats to get behind them:

1) Open Ballot Access. Historically, third party candidates have had a harder time getting on the ballot than Democrats and Republicans. Even the popular Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein isn’t on the ballot in every state.

Open ballot access means that no matter what party a candidate represents, he/she has to do the same things to get on the ballot. No more can we accept only Democrats and Republicans to be on the ballot in every state. Ballot access requirements should be the same for every candidate, irrespective of party affiliation. This should also apply to initiatives and referenda, as well as primary and general elections.

2) Holiday Voting. Voter turnout in the land of the free is a disgrace. Much of that has to do with the fact that people are working too hard and too long to easily get to the polls. Election Day should be a national holiday. This way every voter should be able to vote easily and won’t have to worry about missing work and/or transportation issues. In addition, Early Voting should be universally available. No long lines. Vote at your leisure and even spend some time getting involved in the political process.

3) Paper Trail. ALL ballots must either be on paper or otherwise subject to physical re-count. It is too easy for votes to be miscalculated without any reliable recourse for reasonable challenges and/or recounts if there is no paper trail. Too many voting machines in use do not meet this standard. If voting machines are used, each vote must produce a physical paper footprint subject to recount. If there is any attempt at voter suppression, it should be easily provable and remedied.

4) Honest Open Debates. Americans demand choice in almost everything in their lives except politics. Go to the grocery store and there are 20 different kinds of frosted flakes, but go to the polls and you only have the choice of Dems or Repubs. Another way to end the current monopoly of the major parties is to mandate debates include all political parties – even third, fourth, and fifth parties.

5) Tightly-Drawn Districts. We must end the corrupt practice of gerrymandering, replacing it with compact computer drawn districts determined by independent non-partisan commissions. And we should expressly prohibited any voting district to be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party.

6) Full Public Funding of Diverse Candidates. Get the money out of politics. Eliminate all corporate financing of campaigns, and all political action committees. No more PACS, Super PACS, Citizens United, all of it! Instead all state and national campaigns should only be publicly funded.

7) No Legislation Without Consultation. The most frustrating things for voters is when politicians pass legislation without reading it first. The next most frustrating thing is that this legislation isn’t easily available or accessible to their constituents. We can eliminate special interest dominance of the legislative process, by ending the practice of passing legislation such as the Patriot Act without its actually being read. Moreover, end all earmarks. All legislation without exception should be published on line with an easy to understand one-page summary, one week prior to its coming to a vote, to include explicit geospatial pointers for all “earmarks” each of which must be publicly announced and offered for amendment to the voters in the relevant district at least one week prior to the passage of national, state, or county legislation affecting them. Similarly, no public privileges should be granted to any corporation or other entity without full public consultation and public polling or balloting.

8) End the Electoral College, Superdelegates and every representative voting system where possible. When you go to vote for something that should be it. You’re not voting for someone else to vote for you. You’re voting for that candidate outright. Yes, our system of Republican government essentially involves people voting for us. But we don’t need to add extra levels of distance between us and our representatives. Eliminate the middleman. Eliminate the possibility of further disenfranchisement.

There are certainly other reforms we can add to this list. I do not mean it to be exhaustive. But I do think it represents a good start.

And we mustn’t wait. We need to push for it NOW!

Millions of people have just had their votes stolen from them. Clinton and the Democrats are calling out for unity.

Okay. If you want even the possibility of it, prove you’re on our side. Work with us to ensure that people like you can never again gain power in the manner that you just did.

If you want my vote, respect it.

Otherwise, I’ll just give it to someone else.

Dr. Stein, are you with me?

Hillary Clinton is Not as Bad as Donald Trump – She’s Worse

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On the face of it, the title of this article is pure bull crap.

What do you mean Hillary Clinton is worse than Donald Trump!?

She’s not a reality TV star pretending to be Presidential.

She’s not a bigot, a demagogue and a fascist.

She’s not the top choice of racists and white supremacists everywhere.

And you’re right. She’s none of those things.

If I’m being honest, there are plenty of things Clinton has over Trump.

First of all, she’s immensely more qualified to be President. She has decades of experience in public service. Trump has none.

Moreover, she has been instrumental in pushing forward progressive policies. She championed healthcare reform when it was unpopular to do so. Without her work, it is doubtful we’d have the little reforms we have today. Trump, on the other hand, hasn’t lifted a finger to help the American people accomplish anything – unless you count ogling half naked women on the Miss Universe pageant or getting excited over which D-list celebrity he was going to “fire” on The Apprentice.

However, there is an area where both candidates have significant overlap.

If you remove the names and the personalities, if you ignore political affiliation and past history, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton begin to look very similar.

Who does Trump represent? The 1%.

Who does Clinton represent? The 1%.

It’s really that clear.

In fact, in 2008 Trump famously donated to Clinton’s Presidential campaign. He is exactly the kind of person who wants someone like Clinton in the Oval Office. She would look out for his interests.

Her campaign is financed by Wall Street. Trump IS Wall Street. She was paid exorbitant fees to give private speeches to bankers and stock brokers. One would not be shocked to find Trump in the audience.

Yes, there are differences. One can’t imagine Clinton talking about women with as much arrogant deprecation as Trump. One can’t imagine her suggesting we deport millions of people, that we put all Muslim’s under surveillance, or that many Latinos are murderers and rapists.

But that is exactly what makes her worse. Trump looks like a little dictator (which he is.) Clinton does not.

She appears to be the middle ground. She appears to be the sane candidate – and in some ways she is. But in many of the most important ways that count for Americans living from paycheck-to-paycheck, she isn’t a compromise at all. She’s nearly the same thing.

Imagine two shelves holding poison in a child’s playroom. On one is a purple bottle sporting a skull and crossbones under the word “Poison.” On the other is a bright pink bottle with a smiley face under the word “Candy.” Which is worse?

You know what you’re getting with Trump. Clinton pretends to be something else.

In my opinion, this is why we desperately need Bernie Sanders in the race. He is an actual option between the corporatist campaigns of Trump and Clinton. He actually gives voters a choice.

In his decades in the House and Senate, Sanders worked tirelessly for the 99%. He voted against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. He was an open critic of Alan Greenspan insisting the Federal Reserve Chairman was only represented “large and wealthy corporations.” He passed more amendments than any other congressperson getting through amazing amounts of legislation. He worked to overhaul the Veterans Administration and audit the Federal Reserve System.

And we’ve seen how energetically the Democratic establishment is fighting to keep Sanders off the ballot. During the primaries, they’ve tried every dirty trick in the book to suppress votes from their own party to ensure Clinton is the only choice in the general election.

It’s unprecedented. Voters like me who might have supported Clinton had she won the primaries fairly have been completely turned off by the Democrats. How can we support a candidate that we’re told we must vote for? Shouldn’t the Democrats be courting our votes, not forcing them?

This just goes to show the need for a third party. The Democrats have been largely overtaken by neoliberals – what we used to call Republicans. Likewise, the GOP has been overtaken by the worst extremists possible – fascist populists of which Trump is a clear representative.

Who is left for progressive voters? Can we really support a neoliberal like Clinton?

No. The only way for progressives to win is to keep Sanders in the race through the general election. Virtually every poll says he would trounce Trump. Many – but not all – polls likewise say Clinton would beat the Republican front runner, but is that even a contest? If both candidates represent the same constituency, it’s not really a choice.

Few things would be worse than a Trump presidency. He would immediately go after our brown-skinned brothers and sisters. He would make things much more difficult for our sisters, mothers and daughters. And he would crash the economy and engage us in disastrous wars of choice across the globe.

A Clinton presidency on the other hand would not be so obviously apocalyptic. She would continue and worsen neoliberal policies strangling our public institutions. She would continue to privatize our schools and enrich the testing and charter industries. She would continue to lock away the poor and minorities while enriching the private prison industry. She would bolster weak environmental regulations while opening back doors for oil and gas companies to rape our planet. And as the majority of people drown in debt, she would wag her finger and blame the poor for their circumstances without offering a lick of help.

In short, Trump would be a mega-nuclear explosion. Clinton would be nuclear radiation – a silent killer. That’s worse. One kills all at once. The other does so slowly by degrees.

This is not a choice any American should be forced to make.

Fight to keep Sanders in the race.

Five Ways Hillary Clinton is Running a Dirty, Underhanded, & Disingenuous Campaign

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Dirty politics is nothing new.

Negative campaign adds, spreading false rumors, jamming the other party’s telephones, sabotaging opponents, stealing an opponent’s debate playbook, staging fake riots even sabotaging peace talks to help an incumbent.

Historically, we’ve seen all this and more during presidential campaigns from politicians on both sides of the aisle.

But even with that said, the Hillary Clinton campaign is finding new and more unsavory ways to wage political warfare against her challenger Bernie Sanders.

The race for the 2016 Democratic nomination has been marked by some of the most underhanded and repulsive moves we’ve seen in years.

When the dust clears, Democrats will be asked to support the winner, but given the scorched Earth policy of Clinton, it may be very difficult to put the base back together if she eventually comes out on top.

Here are five ways the Clinton campaign has sunk to new lows in its race against Sanders:

1) Voter Suppression in New York

In numerous general elections across the nation, Republicans have gleefully passed voter ID laws they admit were designed to keep down Democratic votes.

However, in this year’s primary election, we may be seeing Democrats working to stop other Democrats from voting.

Consider this: Sanders has won seven of the last nine Democratic primaries. The two won by Clinton were marked by massive “voter irregularities.” And in the overwhelming majority of cases, these problems affected Bernie supporters and not Hillary devotees.

In New York this week, 126,000 people were mysteriously dropped from the voter roles in Brooklyn, where Bernie was born and raised. They were registered in October, but on election day they were gone.

Another 60,000 Brooklyn Democrats had their registrations mysteriously changed to Republican so they couldn’t cast a ballot for their native son. What’s more, these changes were made after the April 1 deadline for voters to make these modifications, themselves. Someone else had to alter registrations in secret without voters’ knowledge.

This fraud wasn’t limited to one Sanders stronghold. According to various reports, approximately 30% or more of the Democrats throughout the Empire State who went to vote found their registrations had been changed, making those Democrats (invariably Sanders supporters) ineligible to vote. Had these people been counted, the state would probably have gone Bernie.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer – both Hillary supporters – have each called for an investigation. But the results won’t come until after the election. By then, there will be nothing we can do about it.

Is this just a coincidence? Given the stakes at hand, could someone have specifically targeted these people?

Yes. Someone could. Read on.

2) The DNC is Taking Sides

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is supposed to be working to help both Clinton and Sanders coordinate their campaigns. The party is supposed to be impartial. It is not supposed to favor either candidate, but it clearly does.

It is staffed by Clinton supporters like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the party’s national chair and a former Clinton campaign manager. Moreover, the company hired by the DNC to collect campaign information for both parties, NPG Van, has its own ties to Clinton.

This is significant because NPG Van was shown in at least one instance to having exposed privileged campaign information to both sides.

Facts about who supports each candidate and where they live is kept in a database run by NGP Van. The data helps each side figure out phone banking schedules, where to effectively campaign, etc. So when the company experienced a brief “glitch,” it exposed all this information to both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns.

A Sanders staffer was fired for looking at Clinton’s data to determine the scope of the leak. However, the DNC and the Clinton campaign spun this so it looked like the Sanders campaign was stealing the information when the staffer knew perfectly well everything he was doing would be traceable back to him. The DNC even cut off the Sanders campaign from accessing its own files until Bernie took the party to court.

Let’s say the situation had been reversed. Let’s say Clinton staffers had accessed Sanders information about who supports him and where they live. What would they have done with the data? Who knows? But it would have given them the exact information necessary to pull off the voter suppression we saw in New York – which communities need to have “voter irregularities,” and which voters to disenfranchise in order to ensure a Clinton victory.

But if Clinton activists had accessed Sanders information, the DNC would have gone public about it just as the party did about the Sanders staffer, right?

Would they? Would a party that has shown such favor to one candidate, staffed in large part by supporters of that candidate, would it be entirely transparent and forthcoming about improprieties from that campaign? Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact that SOMEONE clearly had access to Sanders information and used it against his campaign in New York leaves us with many unanswered questions.

3) Voter Suppression in Arizona

Voters in Democratic districts of Arizona went to the polls to exercise their civic duty only to find lines literally miles long and wait times of several hours.

The most populous county in the state, Maricopa County, reduced polling locations from 200 during the last election to just 60 this year. That amounts to over 20,000 voters for every location.

The reason given was financial. The Republican administration was trying to save money.

But in retrospect two other explanations seem worthy of consideration. First, this may have been a dry run for the general election. The GOP may have been trying to gauge how well it was suppressing the vote in the highest democratic districts.

Or this may have been an attempt to hurt one specific candidate – Sanders – and help another – Clinton. Once again these “voter irregularities” disproportionately affected Sanders supporters more than Clinton advocates.

Hispanics and Latinos in the state leaned Sanders. They make up more than 40% of the population of Phoenix (30% state wide). Yet in these densely populated neighborhoods, there were few to no polling places open. Faced with such difficulties, many working class people didn’t have the time to wait up to 5 hours to cast a ballot – they had to get to work.

Why would Republicans help Clinton? In polls she is weaker against every GOP presidential candidate than Sanders. Moreover, even if she wins, she is much farther right than Bernie.

Add to that suspicious actions by the media. At roughly 8:30 pm, a little over an hour after polls closed, with less than one percent of precincts reporting, the Associated Press declared Hillary Clinton the winner.

In Democratic primaries delegates are awarded proportionally. It’s not winner take all. Delegates are awarded by the percent of the vote each candidate receives. If the race is really close delegates are split.

Prematurely declaring Hillary the winner while hundreds are still waiting to vote discourages Sanders supporters from staying in line and, thus, can reduce the number of delegates he receives.

The media is clearly biased in favor of Clinton, and she enjoys a cozy relationship with pundits and talking heads everywhere.

4) Hiring Social Media Trolls

On the Internet, Clinton supporters have been silencing dissent and lowering the conversation. A Super PAC headed by a longtime Clinton operative is actually spending $1 million to hire online trolls to go after Sanders’ supporters on social media.

Correct The Record (CTR) is operated by Clinton friend and new owner of Blue Nation Review David Brock. CTR just launched an initiative called “Barrier Breakers 2016” for the purpose of debating Sanders supporters on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and other social media platforms.

The “Barrier Breakers” also are tasked with publicly thanking Clinton’s superdelegates and fans for supporting her campaign. These paid trolls are professional communicators, coming from public relations and media backgrounds.

I may have come afoul of the group, myself. Until recently, I had been a member in good standing of the closed Facebook group Democrats Only. It was a place for fellow progressives to basically talk trash on conservatives and champion Democratic initiatives. However, in recent weeks it has become something else entirely. Posts started to appear that were nothing more than Clinton campaign press releases. For every pro-Bernie post, there were 99 pro-Clinton ones. Posts would appear calling Bernie and his supporters “assholes.” That’s how a site for Democrats talks about fellow Dems!?

And when I politely brought up these disparities, I was kicked out of the group!

This is not about convincing fellow progressives why Hillary is the best choice. It’s about silencing dissent and creating a false sense of Clinton’s inevitability.

5) Misappropriating Sexism

Clinton is clearly the most successful woman candidate in American history to date. She came close to getting the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 against Barack Obama. She has been a Senator and Secretary of State. If she is actually elected president, she will forever shatter the glass ceiling of the highest office in the land for women.

But that doesn’t mean that every criticism she receives is by definition sexist. Calling for her to release her paid speeches to Wall Street is not anti-woman. Demanding an accounting of her hawkish pro-war policies is not being a male chauvinist. Questioning her commitment to the black community given her support for the privatized prison industry is not a faux pas.

However, this is how the campaign, supporters and even the candidate, herself, talks. They call any male who oppose them a Bernie Bro – a loaded, nudge, nudge, wink, wink term implying that any male opposition to Clinton cannot be based on reason and logic but only on sexism.

On the one hand, this is politics as usual. The Clinton campaign is using the same coded language Hillary has always been so adept at – she knew the term “super predator” was a racist dog whistle.

On the other, this misappropriation hurts women everywhere. It devalues the concept of sexism. It cheapens it.

If simple opposition to a female candidate is sexism, then when real sexism rears its ugly head, we’ll be less apt to take it as seriously as we should. The fact that women make only 79 cents an hour for every dollar earned by men is sexism. The fact that women’s healthcare is under attack and so much harder to access than men’s is sexism. The fact that toy companies limit or refuse to market female characters that aren’t overtly “girly” is sexism.

Asking Clinton to explain her record is not.

When this election cycle began, I considered myself a strong Democrat.

No matter who won the primaries – Clinton or Sanders – I was pretty certain I’d support that candidate in the 2016 general election for President.

Now I’m not so sure.

Scaremongers say it may come down to deciding between Clinton or Trump. That’s not much of a choice: one candidate is a member of the 1% and the other is bought and paid for by the 1%.

What’s the difference?

If the Clinton campaign continues to disenfranchise voters, receive an unfair advantage from party leaders, silence dissent and misappropriate sexism, I may end up casting a write-in for Sanders or voting for the Green candidate Dr. Jill Stein.

Either way, I won’t be bullied into giving my vote to a candidate that’s done nothing to deserve it and has worked to make sure people like me often don’t get the chance to vote at all.

My Students Are Scared of Donald Trump

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“Are they gonna’ make us all leave?”

 

That was the question one of my 8th grade students asked today.

 

He sits in the front row – quiet, reserved, eyes usually pointed sullenly at his desk.

 

He doesn’t ask questions. Not publicly.

 

If he has something to say, he’ll ask me before or after class.

 

But there he was with his hand in the air and his eyes firmly fixed on mine.

 

“Tyree, are you afraid someone’s going to make you leave your country?”

 

He nodded and I saw several other black faces nodding throughout the room.

 

“Are you afraid someone’s going to send you… where… to Africa?”

 

“Yeah,” Tyree said for the group.

 

I teach Language Arts at an under-resourced school in Western Pennsylvania. I’m white and most of my students are black. Almost all of them are from poor families. Very few are Hispanic or Muslim.

 

We had been discussing the Holocaust in preparation to read “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

 

I often try to make connections with current events during this time, but today I didn’t have to do any connecting. My students did it for me.

 

“I don’t like Donald Trump,” Jacklyn said. “He’s racist.”

 

And Tyree spoke again – impatiently, nervously – “Who are you voting for, Mr. Singer?”

 

I paused. “I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to say,” I responded, “but I will say this…”

 

And I looked all of them in the face.

 

“Not. Donald. Trump.”

 

You could feel the sigh go through them like a physical thing.

 

They are actually scared. And something like it happened in every class today.

 

I mentioned Adolph Hitler and they came back with Donald Trump.

 

History had come alive. It was a boogeyman haunting the shadows. And the only thing that dispels shadows is light.

 

I had to reassure them. It wasn’t in my lesson plan. I had done no prior research for it, but this was the direction they were pulling me. I had had no intention of talking about Donald Trump, but we needed to go there.

 

We had a discussion comparing and contrasting the two men. They both wrote books, but “Mein Kampf” is very different than “The Art of the Deal.” Both were captivating speakers who promote violence, but Trump speaks at a third grade level. Both said hateful things against minorities, but only Hitler advocated eradicating people from the face of the Earth. Both proposed minorities be monitored by the government but Hitler focused mostly on Jews while Trump focuses mostly on Muslims.

 

The conversation went on.

 

In over a decade in the classroom, I’ve never had students so upset about politics. Sure they get angry when unarmed people of color are shot by the police. Sure they feel the pull of Baltimore and Ferguson. But never have they cared about who’s running for President. They won’t be able to vote, themselves, for five or more years.

 

But they wanted to talk public affairs. What was I to do? The purpose of history is to learn from it. We look to the past so we won’t repeat it. Yet that was a lesson I didn’t need to teach. They already knew it. That’s why they were bringing this up.

 

We talked political parties. We discussed how the Nazis were a political organization like the Democrats and the Republicans are today. We talked about how Hitler had been a house painter and Donald Trump was a reality TV star who inherited most of his money.

 

And we talked about racism.

 

Why people hate others. The definition of prejudice – how racism is one kind of prejudice but there are many others – hating people because of religion, because they’re disabled, because of their sexuality.

 

Jermaine said he was uncomfortable going to the bathroom in public in case someone gay walked in.

 

I asked if he thought a gay man would try to make a move on him while he was on the toilet. I asked if he’d ever make a move on someone while that person was on the toilet.

 

The class laughed.

 

Someone mentioned Chicago and how protesters had forced Trump to cancel his rally. Yes. An 8th grade student knew about that.

 

And then someone mentioned Bernie Sanders. Yes. They brought him up, too.

 

Some of my kids liked him because they said he wasn’t racist. Others thought he would legalize marijuana.

 

So I asked if anyone knew about the other candidates. And that’s where their news-savvy faded. Someone said something strange about Hillary Clinton that they heard she was against soil. I still don’t know what he meant.

 

Another child said he heard Tom Cruise was running. “TED Cruz,” I corrected. None had heard of John Kasich.

 

I explained how a primary election works. We talked about how Hitler was elected. We talked about the Reichstag vs. Congress.

 

“Didn’t we have concentration camps here in America?” someone asked. So we talked about Japanese internment camps and compared those to what you’d find in Europe.

 

At some point I lost track of all we talked about. But when the bell rang, the tension was gone.

 

They got up calmly and went to the door. Many of them made a point to cheerfully say goodbye or dap me up on their way. You always know middle school students love you when they do that.

 

Jason stopped by my desk on the way out and said, “My dad’s going to vote for Donald Trump.” He was blushing.

 

“He may have good reasons,” I said. “Maybe you should ask him about it.” He smiled and walked out.

 

Only one student was left.

 

“You, okay, Tyree?” I asked.

 

He was grinning. “You’d be a good history teacher, Mr. Singer,” he said.

 

I shook my head. “And you’re a good history student.”

 

I clapped him on the back, before writing him a pass to his next class.

 

 

My plans sat murdered on my desk.

 

But I had taught a much better lesson.

 

Nothing happens without cause.

 

We can understand it if we try.

 

Understanding is the key to prevention.

 

And we’re in this together.

 

NOTE: All student names have been changed to protect their anonymity.

.

 

Why is It So Hard to Vote in America? Voter Suppression is Desperation Politics

stevenmsinger Arizona, Bernie Sanders, Civil Rights, Credibility, Data, Democrat, Election, Hillary Clinton, Media, Pennsylvania, Politics, Prejudice, President, protest, Republican, Technology, Voter ID, voter suppression, voting , , , , , , , , ,

 

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No one should have to stand in line an entire work day to vote.

 

But that’s what happened to people in yesterday’s Arizona primary election.

 

Lines stretched literally for miles. People actually ordered pizza to be delivered to them IN LINE!

 

Citizens were already getting in line when polls opened at 6 am, and hundreds were still in line when polls closed at 7 pm. The last ballot wasn’t cast until midnight – a new record for the Grand Canyon State!

 

What the fuck!

 

The most populous county in the state, Maricopa County, reduced polling locations from 200 during the last election to just 60 this year. That amounts to over 20,000 voters for every location.

 

The reason? They were trying to save money.

 

Let that sink in. When you run government like a business, services suffer. It means fewer resources for your schools. More lead in your water. And long as fuck lines to vote.

 

Oh. And if your skin happens to be black or brown, you get it even worse.

 

Hispanics and Latinos make up more than 40% of the population of Phoenix (30% state wide). Yet in these densely populated neighborhoods, there were few to no polling places open. I can’t imagine why!

 

And to top it all off, this “oversight” was used for political gain.

 

At roughly 8:30 pm, a little over an hour after polls closed, with less than one percent of precincts reporting, the Associated Press declared Hillary Clinton the winner of the Arizona primary.

 

In Democratic primaries delegates are awarded proportionally. It’s not winner take all. Delegates are awarded by the percent of the vote each candidate receives. If the race is really close delegates are split.

 

Prematurely declaring Hillary the winner while hundreds are still waiting to vote discourages Bernie Sanders supporters from staying in line and, thus, can reduce the number of delegates he receives.

 

These are not the actions of a robust Democracy. These are the actions of a de facto oligarchy trying desperately to crush any last remnants of majority rule.

 

In an age when you can buy anything you want on-line, why do we have to wait on line to vote? If the Internet is safe enough for global commerce and government, why is it too risky for casting a ballot?

 

It isn’t. The only reason this hasn’t happening is because it would dramatically increase voter turnout. It makes things too easy. While pundits decry “slacktivists” on Facebook and massive political participation on Twitter, they actively discourage bringing Democracy to those same forums.

 

It’s the same reason why election day isn’t a holiday. If people didn’t have to sneak voting in before or after work or during their lunch break, too many of us would be heard.

 

During every election cycle, there is an outcry against shady practices like what happened in Arizona, but we never do anything about them after the election cycle. We look at our antiquated primary and caucus system (especially on the Democratic side) and wonder how a modern country can actually function this way. We shake our heads at the Electoral College and maybe make some noise about changing it until the next President is sworn in. Then we all go silent.

 

Meanwhile, voter suppression efforts gain ground every year – even when the White House isn’t changing hands.

 

Despite low turnout and nearly non-existent cases of voter fraud, state legislatures are making it increasingly more difficult to vote.

 

A total of 36 states now have draconian Voter ID laws on the books – 33 of them are being enforced this cycle. During the 2015 legislative session, at least 113 bills that would restrict access to registration and voting were introduced or carried over in 33 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

 

I know. I was part of the successful effort that defeated one of the most severe Voter ID laws in the country in my home state of Pennsylvania. State Rep. Mike Turzai proudly bragged in 2012 that our law would give the state to a Republican president. After protests and petitions from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and everywhere in between, the state Supreme Court struck it down.

 

Meanwhile, other states are trying to enact the same kinds of laws that were ruled unconstitutional in the Keystone State. Wisconsin’s Voter ID law is almost identical to the defunct Pennsylvania legislation. Instead of being defeated, Republican lawmakers are trying to restrict the kinds of permissible identification and prohibit country and town governments from issuing any IDs to residents for free.

 

And last year, a year after enacting a voter ID law, Alabama shuttered 31 driver’s license offices — most of them in rural, impoverished, majority-black counties. Civil rights groups have filed suit, arguing that the change disproportionately affects racial minorities.

 

All across the country, early voting hours are being cut. Same day registration is being discontinued. Mountains of paperwork are being required to ensure proof of citizenship. And mysteriously people who have had no problems voting for decades are finding themselves given provisional ballots because of bookkeeping errors.

 

This has to stop.

 

Either we live in a country governed by majority rule or not.

 

Corporations and billionaires set national policy. If we want any chance in taking back our country, we must continue to have the right to vote.

 

Voting should be protected. It should be free and easy. It should be every citizens right.

 

Fight for it, America. Fight like your life depends on it.

 

Your freedoms certainly do.

The One Reason Bernie Sanders is the Best Mainstream Candidate for Parents and Teachers

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It really all comes down to this.

You can talk all day about delegates and superdelegates.

You can talk about polls and electability.

You can talk about political experience, likeability, and authenticity. You can talk about political dynasties, union endorsements and campaign ads. You can talk about how many people show up at who’s rallies and who did what during the Civil Rights movement.

But when push comes to shove, there is one undeniable reason Bernie Sanders is the best mainstream 2016 Presidential candidate: He is running against privatization.

That’s it. Sold.

Everything else is nice. It adds to the appeal, but that one essential reason is enough to tip the scales – knock them over, really – to Bernie’s favor.

America’s parents and teachers are fighting a battle for our children’s schools. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle stand against us. They are giving away the store. They are selling our system of public education – once the envy of the world – to for-profit corporations piece-by-piece.

They are stealing our schools out from under us, giving them to unscrupulous charter school operators who are stripping away services for our children so that they can pad their own bottom line.

And only Bernie truly stands against them.

It’s not about who said what. It doesn’t matter if he slipped up and said something ignorant about “public charter schools.” It doesn’t matter if Hillary Clinton, too, has occasionally criticized charters.

What matters is that standing against privatization is the backbone of the Sanders campaign. It is the bedrock which supports all of his other platforms. It is the foundation of his entire career in politics.

Might he screw it up once in office? Sure. He’s only human. But the odds are in our favor that he’ll actually improve things.

Hillary Clinton is an intelligent, capable politician. She is not the evil witch that the Right paints her to be. However, her campaign is largely supported by the same people who are privatizing our schools. They aren’t giving her all that money for her to act against their interests.

Might she make some compromises that forestall the worst effects of privatization? Sure. But odds are against us that she’ll be much help. The best scenario we can expect from another Clinton administration is a continuation of the status quo – a status quo that has dramatically increased school privatization.

There are worse things, but can’t we do better than vote for 4-8 more years of slow educational death?

If privatization is the first front of the war against public schools, standardization is the second. Schools are being forced to march in lockstep with Common Core Standards while giving a barrage of high stakes tests.

Both Sanders and Clinton have spotty records here. Sanders voted against the terrible No Child Left Behind legislation that spawned the beast, while Clinton helped nurture it. However, just this year Sanders joined Congressional Democrats trying to continue the era of test and punish through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) – some of which failed and some of which became part of the final law.

But it doesn’t really matter.

Standardization is the claw of the beast. Privatization is the beast, itself.

High stakes testing is the justification for privatization. Low test scores at under-resourced schools are the excuse for turning them into charters. If Sanders stops the move to charterize, he removes the reason to standardize. A dead lion will not use its claws.

Moreover, he’s had some genuinely good ideas about how best to improve our schools. It was Sanders who inserted into the ESSA a provision allowing some states to develop alternatives to standardized testing.

While most Democrats champion increasing funding to the neediest districts, they blame their inability to do so on the Republicans. Meanwhile, Sanders has proposed rewriting the way schools are funded in the first place. He is the only mainstream candidate with a plan to ensure every school in America receives equitable funding. His solution: federalize pubic school budgets similar to the Scandinavian model that has been proven effective. Is it a risk? Sure. Might it not work? Sure. But at least Bernie has new ideas that could potentially do more than just put Band-Aids on decades of wrongheaded school policies.

This is radically more than just fighting privatization – it is turning it around in its tracks. Only Bernie is actually suggesting a robust, equitable education for all children from preschool through college.

THAT’S why I support Bernie Sanders. THAT’S why I can’t wait to cast my vote in the Pennsylvania primary. THAT’S why so many teachers, parents and concerned citizens are feeling the Bern.

Come join the Revolution already in progress.

It is our fight to win or lose.