Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
August 8, 2013
|
Like this article?
Join our email list:
Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.
The following is a video and transcript that originally appeard on The Real News Network.
JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.
We continue our series looking into ALEC, the American legislative exchange Council, as they celebrate their 40th anniversary in Chicago. Six people were arrested Monday when protesters descended upon the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago to push back against the impending visit of ALEC.
Now joining us to talk more about the protest and the history of ALEC and its influence on public education around the country are two guests. We are joined by Julie Mead. She’s a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She researches, teaches, and writes about topics related to legal aspects of education. Her research centers on legal issues related to special education and raised by forms of school choice.
We’re also joined by Brendan Fisher. He is general counsel with the Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECExposed.org and PRWatch.org. He has worked extensively on the ALEC Exposed project.
Thank you both for joining us.
BRENDAN FISHER, GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY: Thanks for having me.
NOOR: So, Brendan, let’s start with you. Give us the latest on the protest happening right now in Chicago.
FISHER: Sure. So today is the first day of the ALEC meeting in Chicago at the Palmer House, which is one of the nicest hotels in town in the [lu] just a few blocks from the lake. Yesterday, six people were arrested. There were smaller protests today, but I think there’s a much larger rally planned for tomorrow, with a number of environmental and civil rights and labor groups coming together and bringing in their voices against ALEC and the really broad agenda that it has implemented in the states to lower wage and create fewer environmental regulations and worse educational outcomes for the 99 percent.
NOOR: And the significance as far as the protesters are concerned that ALEC is having this meeting in Chicago, what can you tell us about what’s been happening in Chicago’s public education system over the last, you know, even 15, 20 years?
FISHER: Sure. Sure. Well, so Chicago has definitely been bearing the brunt of the education privatization movement. I mean, it does show to a certain extent how bipartisan the education privatization push has become. But it really–when you tie it back to where the source of a lot of this legislation, in many cases it’s very far-right groups that are trying to push an ideological and profit-driven agenda. So if you look at ALEC, K12 Inc. is one of the top sponsors of this year’s meeting. K12 Inc. is the nation’s largest provider of online for-profit schools. And as one of the top sponsors of the ALEC meeting, it’s allying itself with the tobacco industry and with the oil industry and with the pharmaceutical industry, all of which are not something you would normally associate with good educational outcomes, not the sort of thing that you would typically expect of a school that is looking out primarily for kids. This year you saw the Illinois Policy Institute, which is the state policy network think tank in Illinois, teaming up with K12 to push virtual charters in the state to try and get virtual charters established in 18 school districts across the state of Illinois. They were unsuccessful in that effort, but it did show how these different nodes in what you might call the right-wing infrastructure are working together to try and push an ideological and profit-driven agenda in many states, including Illinois, which has been typically regarded as a blue state.
Republished from: AlterNet