Black Agenda Report is a fierce critic of the privatization and dismantling of public education. Some of their rage must be due to the fact that the privatizers claim they are doing it to “save” minority children.

In this post BAR rages against Trach for America as a union-busting organization.

Bruce Dixon of BAR writes:

“Back in the days of organizing meat packing, steel and auto workers, employers couldn’t use tax-exempt donations to transport, pay and train their scabs, and they had to wait for strikes to deploy them. That was before Teach For America….

“What’s the Difference Between Teach For America, and a Scab Temp Agency?….

“If you’re a public school parent or student, there’s none. If you’re an educator or other school employee or a friend or relative of any school employee, there’s none. If you live in a community where the local public school is one of the last hopeful possibilities that might bind a neighborhood together, there’s none.

“If you’re a school CEO or administrator trying to hollow out your public schools to justify their closing and privatzation, or a mayor trying to justify those campaign contributions, there’s no difference at all, either. If you’re a hedge fund investor, like the charter school sugar daddies who contribute billions to Barack Obama and a host of black and white politicians in state and local government across the country; there’s still no difference.

“You have to be a taxpayer — and let’s understand that corporate elites and the wealthy have largely shed the burden of taxation onto the backs of the middle class and the poor in this the era of neoliberalism, to begin to see a little difference…. The Grapes of Wrath era scabs were generally not trained, transported or paid with tax-exempt foundation money.”

The article includes this rap from the HBO series “Treme”:

Davis M., rhyming to a musical collaborator:

Four years at Radcliffe, that’s all you know,

a desire to do good and a 4.0.

You’re here to save us from our plight, you got the answer cause you’re rich and white

on a two year sojourn you’re here to stay, Teach For America all the way

got no idea just what you’re facin’, no clue just who you’re displacin’

old lady taught fathers, old lady taught sons, old lady bought books for the little ones

old lady put in thirty years, sweat and toil, time and tears

was that really your sad intention, to help the state of Louisiana deny her pension?

Collaborator:

Hold it, hold it….

First of all the state of Louisiana fired the teachers, not Teach for America

Davis M.:

A scab is a scab is a scab…