![]() “Mckesson received nearly $130,000 in online donations and secured his status as one of the country’s most closely watched political outsiders.” The confab drew 15,000 corps members, alumni and supporters to Washington for three days of seminars on lofty issues like, “Allies, Co-Conspirators and Coalition Building: Showing Up for Justice Across Lines of Power.” But one of the biggest draws was the discussion on “The New Civil Rights Agenda and Education,” co-headlined by DeRay Mckesson, the TFA alum and 30-year-old Black Lives Matter activist who received a $10,000 award from TFA last year. Teach for America’s peculiar brand of social justice was on bold display at its 25th Anniversary Summit the weekend of February 5. TFA's funders, including the Waltons, Bill and Melinda Gates and top Fortune 500 corporations, all have plenty to gain from the commodification of public goods and the destruction of public service unions, and its 11,000 corps members provide a valuable service to that end. TFA is also a media juggernaut in its own right, known for deploying a sophisticated public relations arsenal to advance an agenda focused on crushing teachers’ unions and privatizing public school systems. Education policy experts today consider the nonprofit founded by Wendy Kopp in 1990 to be at the vanguard of the school privatization movement. The reality behind TFA’s sunny exterior is somewhat more sinister. TFA funders have plenty to gain from the commodification of public goods and the destruction of public service unions.”įor those who’ve never paid much attention, Teach For America sounds like a benevolent and benign idea: recruit bright college grads, give them some teacher-training and place them in some of the nation’s neediest schools for a two-year commitment to teach kids. This article previously appeared in Alternet. "Cultivating relationships with tech giants has become a ‘major tactic’ of Campaign Zero." Why DeRay Mckesson's Baltimore Campaign Looks Like It Comes Right Out of Teach for America's Playbook by Drew Franklin And that’s when the imagination begins," he said.Twitterist and Campaign Zero honcho DeRay McKesson’s mayoral campaign platform for the Baltimore public schools “seems modeled in part on corporate education reforms under big-city mayors like Rahm Emanuel and Michael Bloomberg." Teach for America alums like McKesson typically oppose community-based school reforms, and favor "partnerships" with big business. But when the bad things end, we still have to build something good. "So often we think of resistance as only tearing the bad things. He also spoke about the importance of imagination and creativity in protesting, particularly when it comes to imagining what different societal structures can look like. "People would have ignored the death of Michael Brown as if it was a blip on the radar." "Some I had been writing in my head since the moment I stood in the streets," he told AM to DM. ![]() Mckesson's book focuses on the lessons he learned from protesting. "It got cold really quick and I needed something to wear that I would never have to pack. ![]() Originally he wore the vest for purely practical reasons: It was chilly marching in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, in late 2014. I have been in so many places that I could forget about what happened, and I never want to forget how fragile freedom is and was in those moments," Mckesson said. "I've had this vest on when I was tear-gassed, when I was dragged out of the police department by my ankles, when I was shot at with bullets," Mckesson said.Īs well as the protests in Ferguson, Mckesson protested in Charleston, South Carolina, after a white nationalist murdered nine black people in a church, and he was arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in protests about the death of Alton Sterling, who was killed by police.
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