WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Juanita Irizarry, director of Friends of the Park on Hitting Left. Listen to podcast n iTunes. 

Donna Brazile

“I want to talk about the arrogance and isolation of the Clinton campaign and the cult of Robby Mook, who felt fresh but turned up stale, in a campaign haunted by ghosts and lacking in enthusiasm, focus, and heart....Three titanic egos – Barack, Hillary, and Debbie – had stripped the party to a shell for their own purposes.” -- Hacks

Mark H. Haefele, Chief Investment Officer at UBS

“Investors have never felt less secure, even though we are eight years into a bull market." -- New York Times 

Bernie Sanders

 I can’t tell any one person what to do, but I will say this: despair is not an option. Now more than ever, we need you to fight back. -- Boston Review

Mehdi Hasan

We bomb them, they bomb us. They bomb us, we bomb them. Will it ever end? -- The Intercept 

Donald Trump

 According to the Japan Times, diplomatic sources confirm that with a Monday meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe looming, our very lucid leader has set low expectations with complaints that “he could not understand why a country of samurai warriors did not shoot down the missiles.” -- Gizmodo

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

“It is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation.” -- LA Times 

Bernie Sanders

"It wasn't that Donald Trump won the election, it was that the Democratic Party lost the election" -- CNN

Editorial

No one wants a return to Ohio's Wild West days when failing charter schools were propped up by taxpayer dollars. That was a scandal that should never be repeated. -- Cleveland.com

Betsy DeVos

Even if you didn’t use a ridesharing service, I’m sure most of you at least have the app on your phone. Just as the traditional taxi system revolted against ridesharing, so too does the education establishment feel threatened by the rise of school choice. -- WSJ

Missouri League of Women Voters

There is an unfounded belief that charter schools are superior to traditional public schools and therefore provide parents with an advantageous choice. Studies of charter school academic achievement do not demonstrate that they are better than traditional public schools. Parents expect superior outcomes when placing their children in charter schools. Unfortunately, such is often not the case, and all too often charter school outcomes are actually inferior to those of traditional public schools. -- No to charter expansion 

War mongering from former DNC Chair, Donna Brazile

“I’ve never agreed with Dick Cheney in my entire life, but when he said this was an act of war, I have to agree with the former vice president. It was an act of war..If this is the modern warfare that we have to all participate in, we all better get ready for it.” -- The Hill

A ray of hope

Donna Brazile

“The very premise of ‘market-driven education reform’ rests on the fallacy that the public school system is in crisis, and that the only solution is to let the market pick winners and losers.” -- Donna Brazile

Wow! What an amazing couple of weeks.

It started with the NEA, the nation's largest union, condemning current testing lunacy and calling for Arne Duncan to resign. The AFT delegates (when allowed to speak) essentially followed suit, except for leaders Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew's desperate efforts to hang onto a failed Common Core and to pull Duncan's chestnuts out of the fire (with delegates' wimpy call for his remediation rather than firing). UFT President Mulgrew even threatened to punch in the face anyone who tried to "take away my Common Core.”

Alex Caputo-Pearl

But the very fact that a real debate broke out at an AFT convention and that rank-and-file voices were heard (especially from Chicago) offers a ray of hope that union democracy will somehow triumph. I was especially impressed with the speech by new L.A. teachers union head Alex Caputo-Pearl, who aligned himself and his union with CTU President Karen Lewis in calling for “social movement unionism,” which he said is “explicit about fighting for racial and social justice." L.A. could well become the scene of the next great teachers' strike.

All this culminated in the formation of  new opposition group within the Democratic Party, led by Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Donna Brazile, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland called Democrats for Public Education. This new formation is aimed at countering the influence of corporate reform, anti-union and pro-privatization groups like DFER, within the Democratic Party. It's about time. The announcement prompted DFER leader Joe Williams' ugly response to Donna Brazile: "Welcome to the jungle, baby.”  

Who's laughing now? Not Rahm. 

MORE GOOD NEWS... And of course, then there's this.

Karen Lewis’ potential bid for Chicago Mayor has moved beyond just a thought — it’s  an “organic,” growing movement, the fiery Chicago Teachers Union president said. Lewis revealed on Monday she already has an unofficial exploratory committee in the works, a chairperson has been named and her camp is working to have a representative in each of the city’s 77 neighborhoods.