Blogger RiShawn Biddle has made a startling discovery: the American Federation of Teachers has given money to progressive groups! Biddle is anti-union and strongly pro-privatization.
Another shocker: Randi Weingarten is paid almost as much as NYC charter leader Eva Moskowitz! Randi is president of a union with more than one million members. Eva oversees a small charter chain with fewer than 10,000 pupils (errata: scholars).
Biddle lists the organizations that have received AFT money. Included among them are:
Center for Popular Democracy, on whose board Weingarten sits, picked up $60,000 from AFT while its action fund received another $100,000; the group has done more than its duty for the union (and its goal of opposing school choice) by teaming up with In The Public Interest to publish a series of reports demanding “accountability” for public charter schools. In The Public Interest, by the way, picked up $50,000 from AFT for doing the union’s bidding. AFT gave $25,000 to Netroots Nation, another longstanding beneficiary of its largesse. It gave $27,000 to The Nation, which has become a prime venue for pieces that favor the AFT’s views on systemic reform; and handed $10,000 to Dissent, the progressive magazine that occasionally makes The Nation seem downright conservative.
Another key group AFT is funding is the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, which has been worked actively on pay equity and other issues. This includes its Early Care and Education project, which has issued a steady stream of reports calling for preschool teachers to be better-paid; this dovetails nicely with AFT’s twin goals of regaining dominance in education policy and becoming the dominant union in the early childhood education space. The union gave $47,500 to IWPR in 2014-2015. AFT also poured $60,000 into Jobs with Justice and its education fund; gave $20,000 to Policy Matters Ohio; and handed out $50,000 to Public Policy and Education Fund of New York. United Students Against Sweatshops, which has actively opposed reform outfits such as Students For Education Reform and Teach for America on behalf of AFT, picked up $50,000 from the union last year. Americans United for Change picked up $90,000 from AFT in 2014-2015.
AFT also gave $250,000 to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which reports on the state of working Americans and on the importance of reducing poverty. Shocking!
If you scan the schedule, you will see that Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union was bought and paid for by the AFT for $7,664.
I can’t wait for RiShawn to do a report on the Walton Family Foundation, which spent $202 million to shape education policy and launch more privatized schools. I didn’t sum the total of all AFT contributions to civil rights groups, publications, and other progressive causes, but it seems to be far less than Walton’s $202 million.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great! AFT supports some fantastic civil rights groups! Fantastic!
As a working teacher (who supports many of those groups and all of them philosophically), I am unimpressed. A union of teachers supports some solid civil rights groups…..well they should! So now that everyone is happy about that:
Wengarten remains one of working teachers main adversaries. From her support of common core, to her embarrassingly premature support of Clinton, to today’s “hopeful” statement about Cuomo’s CC commission, every call and statement and position she makes and takes are at best meaningless to working teachers or outright oppositional to our best interests.
I’m glad the AFT gives to some truly great groups.
Weingarten is still our biggest problem. No amount of giving can change that.
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Did you know why RiShawn Biddle is no longer a journalist, and is instead getting paid by billionaires to run his anti-union, school privatization site? (To give the impression that blacks support corporate reform, there are countless sell-outs like Biddle, Derrell Bradford, Geoffrey Canada, Dr. Steve Perry, Kevin Johnson… the list goes on.)
He was fired by the INDIANAPOLIS STAR for racism, specifically using a racist slur, “zip coon”, in describing a fellow Africian-American he was criticizing, and “ministrel show” in describing the actions of certain. African-American politicians in Indianpolis.
http://mije.org/richardprince/indy-paper-ousts-black-editorial-writer
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INDY STAR: “Recently comments on this blog were posted by a Star staff member (Rishawn Biddle) , which included offensive, insensitive and wholly inappropriate words in reference to Indianapolis/Marion County City-County Council President Monroe Gray. Those comments have been removed. These comments absolutely did not meet the Standards of The Star. I apologize to Council President Gray, and to all communities who with good reason were highly offended by the remarks.
“Effective immediately, editorial writer RiShawn Biddle is no longer employed by The Indianapolis Star.”
“Riddle’s blog entry was titled, ‘The Indianapolis Black Democrat minstrel show.’ (Biddle’s article) was originally called ‘Coons for Power,’ judging from the Web address for the blog entry, which uses those words, and according to the Indianapolis blogosphere.
“One blogger wrote that the piece originally compared the council president to ‘Zip Coon,’ a derogatory, racial slur on black men dating to the days of slavery.”
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Yeah! This is exactly one of the things I’d hope a labor union would be doing with its resources. With Citizens United, there are fewer and fewer arenas where labor and other groups of regular people have any political capital left. I’m not a member, I’m just a mom fighting for our public schools. But on behalf of regular people who benefit from the progress labor unions make for the whole middle class, I thank the AFT and Randi Weingarten.
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What about Biddle? Who pays him? Shouldn’t we get that out on table or do we accept his double standard? He loves to blog about unions funding x, y and z but not a peep about dark money from hedge funds, reformer donations to Democrats, the think tank/policy shop network that pays bloggers on the down to shill for charters and union busting under the well worn myth that taking over schools is the civil rights issue of our time.
Biddle is particularly deceitful in his blog commenting. I have screenshots proving he deleted civil criticisms of his arguments, all the while pretending he is open for public input in the comments.
Finally, what is wrong with AFT funding progressive groups? Progressive groups are fighting for ending corporate privatization, AstroTurf, pay-for-play and overtesting.
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The ed reform obsession with labor unions is weird. I had 4 kids thru public schools over 20 years. I have never once heard a parent ranting about labor unions in a school meeting or even mention labor unions in conversation about the school(s) and as far as I know all the teachers were members of labor unions.
All they talk about re: public schools is testing and labor unions. Oh, and pensions. How we have to get rid of pensions. I thought this was all about the kids?
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Testing, charter schools and labor unions. Maybe they could switch it up a bit and at least feign some interest in what public school kids are doing in school outside of “testing season”.
I don’t think my 7th grader is that interested in his math teacher’s employment contract, nor am I, quite frankly.
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“fewer than 10,000 pupils (errata: scholars).” very nice…
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I would prefer if my union dues were used to protect my rights as a teacher. I support the unrelated causes of my choice. May I request a refund?
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There was an opt out provision on our union local membership form so that none of a teacher’s dues could be used for political action if they so chose. Is that not standard?
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Actually Abigail, you can if you can show membership dues and not voluntary donations to pacs were used for political purposes.
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It’s almost amusing how the powerful are complaining about the union dropping a few thousand here and a few thousand there on progressive causes, while meanwhile Gates, Walton, Broad, etc. drop millions to leave swaths of destruction in their wake.
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RiShawn must not be very proud of his work because it’s pretty hard to find a bio of him on his own site. All I found is that he’s a former Indy Star writer, which I guess is all he really needs to say.
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Dienne, since you asked: Biddle was fired by the Induanapolis Star for using a racial epithet. He has rebranded himself as a black conservative. http://m.indianapolisrecorder.com/mobile/opinion/article_408a73ce-f758-59c7-a00a-4f4c8d70dc84.html
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Oh my, that says a LOT!
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Everything has its good and bad sides. I’m just thankful that I don’t have to pay union dues in order to keep my job. If unions had to fight for members and thus dues, they would be much more focused on issues directly related to schools.
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Try being in a right to work state, the unions also have a hard time representing and negotiating for you. The districts are always trying to decertify the associations (not really unions and having no power to strike). Fear not, when they are gone, the district will tell you what your work conditions will be. Poverty and tax policy do relate to schools rather directly by the way. As for being in one to keep your job, I do not believe that is required anywhere.
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” As for being in one to keep your job, I do not believe that is required anywhere.”
I don’t think you have to join a union although you may be required to pay your fair share. If your job is covered by a union, the union has to negotiate a contract for you whether you belong or not. The union is therefore able to collect the cost of their service for you. My governor would very much like to end that practice. He is about as rabidly anti-union as an individual can get. As for me, I prefer to live in a state with a union history. While their influence is way down, I think people are beginning to remember the positive effects of union action. I grew up on stories of union corruption, so I know all the anti-union talking points. As far as I am concerned, the potential for positive results far outweighs the chances of negative outcomes when unions are a vital part of the economy. However, just as we have gotten complacent in assuming that we would always have a democracy that truly served the people, unions are subject to the lure of power and money as well. We need to be more aware of what it means to be citizens and what it takes to have effective union representation.
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I can’t read the phrase “progressive groups” today without wondering if that means the phony progressives who’ve dominated the Democratic party since the 90s or the genuine progressives that the fake progressives call liberals and think are “f*cking retarded,” as Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel described us when he was Obama’s White House Chief of Staff.
Biddle’s life work is all about creating and marketing propaganda. See his LinkedIn page here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishawnbiddle (I fear for Native Americans with him in their camp.) Accolades aside, I don’t think Biddle is very good at his “communications” game. The laurels come from the corporate education “reformers” that he shills for, like the Black Alliance for Educational Options, long ago established by Howard Fuller and funded by the right wing Bradley foundation in Milwaukee (same folks who bankrolled Corey Booker’s political career as an infiltrator in the Democratic party), which was for the very purpose of breaking the connection that black Americans have had to liberals in the Democratic party and getting them to support the Republican agenda for vouchers/charters/privatization.
In fact, years ago, before I read what Diane wrote after her change of heart, I stumbled upon Biddle’s blog and I can credit his repeated skewing of issues, sins of omission and pretzel logic as being huge red flags for me and key factors that promoted my effort to put in a lot of legwork to try and figure out the whole corporate education “reform” debacle. Ultimately, armed with info from a variety of sources, I felt like I was putting it all together, which led me to Diane on Twitter (before she started this blog) and my hunches were verified numerous times.
As an example of the tells in Biddle’s writing, in the above linked blog post, he described all the money Randi gave to the Clintons and claimed Randi is trying to gain Hillary Clinton’s support. While that is clearly true, he referred to Obama and his administration as “centrist” but made no mention of the critical fact that it was actually Bill Clinton who turned Democrats very far away from the party’s liberal union base, and “centrist” was Bill’s description of his “New Democrats” in the 90s. Many old time party members today see Clinton and those he inspired for what they really are, not “centrists” but hard core right wing promoters of free-market neoliberal economic policies that came straight from Milton Friedman and the GOP, which benefit corporate honchos over the working class and unions, as evident in their actions, despite their false promises and claims to the contrary. These are very significant matters that have been omitted and should have been addressed, but describing them would not serve the agenda of Biddle and his wealthy sponsors.
Similarly, telling the truth about the plight of preschool teachers, who have long filled the ranks of the working poor and who are involved in the Fight for $15 per hour across the country today, many of whom are teachers of color, would also not serve Biddle’s corporate education “reform” agenda. As someone who has become homeless due to a very long career as a non-unionized, low paid Early Childhood Education (ECE) teacher, with no benefits nor pension, which resulted in receiving Social Security (SS) pay in my “golden years” that is also low and unlivable, I can tell you that many of my struggling ECE colleagues would very much welcome unionization. Who in their right mind would not prefer to become a member of the middle class over a lifetime of struggling to survive as the working poor –and then discovering that you have to continue to work until the day you die, despite your declining health, as many of us must do to supplement our meager SS checks, instead of being able to some day retire.
ECE teachers would NOT be “forcibly” unionized. That’s the mantra of conservatives who push dogma vilifying unions in order to promote “Right to Work” laws, which is a service to greedy corporate benefactors. They and those who do their bidding have been busy eliminating the middle class that unions created and since they are comfortable themselves, they are content to replace it with a 21st century version of feudalism, and an army of charter school trained obedient peons, because they have no concern for peasants. But they will try to give it all a positive spin.
How very unfortunate it is when the union leaders themselves try to play both sides of the fence and few high profile people have the integrity to call them out on it, whether they are liberal or conservative.
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If the AFT and NEA supported progressive causes they would be supporting Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton…
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wgersen,
YES, true. Agree.
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Yes, and they also would not have taken money from Bill Gates for so many years. Both teacher’s unions received 9 grants each since Obama was elected and got many millions of dollars from him: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/k=aft
Grants from venture philanthropists like Gates come with BIG time strings attached. In this case, the unions were to promote Gates’ unpiloted education plan, which is a crappy, developmentally inappropriate standardized education for other people’s children across America. It was created primarily by reps from testing companies that profit from high-stakes testing and much of it is scripted, computerized and to be provided by minimally trained, inexperienced non-union TFA types in privatized schools, to the benefit of tech companies and other non-educator entrepreneurs.
Unlike the National Nurses Union, which endorsed Sanders and has so much less at stake than teachers, the top brass in the teacher’s unions continue to demonstrate their ongoing support for the union-busting, teacher bashing, neoliberal, pro-privatization faction dominating the Democratic party, which began under Bill Clinton and is contrary to the best interests of the rank and file the unions are supposed to be representing. To think that Hillary would be any different from Bill and his complicit cronies, who implement plans and policies that are supported by many Republicans, ALEC and big business, is truly outrageous, as well as a betrayal and outright affront to workers in the trenches.
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If my union, NEA, endorses Hillary, I’ll resign.
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