Many people have written to me to complain about an article that appeared Wednesday on the front page of the New York Times, saying it was pro-charter propaganda. The article claims that black and brown parents are offended that the Democratic candidates (with the exception of Cory Booker, now polling at 1 percent) have turned their backs on charter schools.
This is not true. Black parents in Little Rock, Arkansas are fighting at this very moment to stop the Walton-controlled state government from controlling their district and resegregating it with charter schools. Jitu Brown and his allies fought to keep Rahm Emanuel from closing Walter H. Dyett High School, the last open-enrollment public high school on the South Side of Chicago; they launched a thirty-four-day hunger strike, and Rahm backed down. Jitu Brown's Journey for Justice Alliance has organized black parents in twenty-five cities to fight to improve their neighborhood public schools rather than let them be taken over by corporate charter chains.
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