Adam Haber is running for the New York State Senate on Long Island. He lives in a district with great public schools and supports them. If you live in his district, get out and help him get elected.
The State Senate is sharply divided and currently controlled by Republicans, who pass pro-charter, pro-voucher, anti-teacher legislation with frequency. The balance of power is tipped to the Republicans by a small number of “independent Democrats” who regularly caucus with the Republicans. One of those “independent Democrats” ironically is an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn who would love to get vouchers or tax credits for religious schools. Governor Cuomo has refused to help his own party gain new members of the State Senate because he is able to use the divided control of the Legislature to rein in the liberal Democrats who control the State Assembly and don’t support the governor’s pro-charter agenda. Cuomo also supports tax credits for religious schools, which wins the loyalty of certain voting blocs (Orthodox Jews and Catholics).
So it is very important for the Senate Republicans to beat back anyone who might threaten their tenuous control, especially a supporter of the public schools attended by 90% of the children in the state.
The Senate Republican Campaign Committee is flush with cash from Wall Street and the usual billionaires who want low taxes and charter schools.
His opponents do not want to take a chance on the possibility that a strong supporter of public schools might disrupt their anti-public school cabal. So what do they do to strike out at Adam Haber? On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews, they release anti-Semitic ads against him.
Is this the Trump Effect, a response to his attack on “political correctness?” PC in Trump’s telling, means not making remarks about other people’s race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, body size, looks, etc. In this Brave New World, bigots are free to express their bigotry.
I learned about this ugly incident from a public school parent in Port Washington on Long Island.
She wrote:
“Adam Haber is a father and school board member in Roslyn, New York. He is running as the Democratic nominee for a seat in the New York State Senate for District #7. During the Yom Kippur holiday period, he was the target of an anti-semitic advertisement on Facebook and Instagram.
“Mr. Haber held a press conference to denounce this anti-semitism
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzinY-kZY7pJdlRKRl9QWFM0RHZQN1pUUl9XTXZ5R3hLdFpv/view
http://www.fios1news.com/longisland/candidate-claims-campaign-ad-anti-semitic%20#.WABG3pMrIST
“The ADL responded to the incident against Mr. Haber and also to others against NYS Attorney General Schneiderman. https://longislandwins.com/uncategorized/adl-decries-anti-semitic-turn-line-ny-politics/
“Sadly, it took Mr. Haber’s opponent three days to even respond on Facebook to residents who demanded that she denounce the ad. When she finally commented, she did nothing to address the hurt and anger felt by Mr. Haber and other residents. (Comments criticizing her conduct were deleted.) She claims she did not know about the ad yet still has done nothing publicly to insist the ad be removed or to hunt down the perpetrators. Her campaign is being funded by the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee which would not deny it sponsored the ad. She has not renounced them or returned their funds. Her most recent campaign filing shows that Ms. Phillips received $400,000 from the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee. Hence, Ms. Phillips actions speak volumes.
“I believe Mr. Haber is being targeted because he is a pro-public education candidate and the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee knows he can’t be bought out by charter school backers. The Real Estate Board of New York is also funding his opponent as well. This was reported by Nick Reisman today, “Filings made public late last week show REBNY is spending in two Long Island districts: the 5th Senate district in Nassau County on behalf of incumbent Carl Marcellino and the 7th Senate district, where Republican Elaine Phillips is defending an open seat being vacated by Jack Martins.”
“A petition has been started calling on the leadership of the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee to apologize. It was written by a young man (educated in our local public schools) who was deeply and rightfully disturbed about this incident.
https://www.change.org/p/john-flanagan-ny-senate-republican-campaign-committee-apologize-for-anti-semitic-attack-ad?recruiter=57724151&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-lg-share_for_starters-reason_msg
“Mr. Haber is the product of public education, he serves on a public school board, he comes from a family of public school educators, he is a friend of the opt-out movement. He is committed to protecting student data privacy and providing quality public education for all children. Please help by encouraging people to sign the petition and if they live in State Senate district #7 to vote for Adam Haber. Here is a link to his campaign website http://www.haber4newyork.com/
“Here is a link to a Facebook page started on behalf of Mr. Haber by Long Island Public Education Advocates https://www.facebook.com/Public-Ed-Advocates-for-Haber-330893030593351/?fref=ts You will see some familiar faces. We are behind Mr. Haber and determined to overcome the dark money and damaging forces which are backing his opponent and seek to destroy public education.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sorry, this was meant for the Georgia post.
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“U.S. Education Secretary John King on Wednesday weighed in on a swirling schools controversy, criticizing what he called “arbitrary caps” on the growth of high-quality charter schools, publicly funded but, in many cases, privately operated K-12 schools in 42 states and the District of Columbia.
Appearing at the National Press Club, King said the USA is “fortunate, I think, as a country, to have some high-performing charters that are doing a great job providing great opportunities to students — charters that are helping students not only perform at higher levels academically, but go on to college at much higher rates” than students at similar neighborhood public schools. “That’s good. We should have more schools like that, and I think any arbitrary cap on that growth of high-performing charters is a mistake.”
Obama Administration continues their 8 year practice of advocating exclusively for charter schools and completely ignoring the existence of public schools.
King’s statement is nonsense. He has it backward. Obama and DC REQUIRED states to arbitrarily lift caps on charter schools regardless of quality in order to receive federal money. They made no distinctions on ‘quality’ or which states- they cheerled every single charter school expansion in all 50 states.
They just handed 71 million dollars to expand the worst charter sector in the country in Ohio. They weren’t even aware that Ohio’s charter sector is a disaster.
This isn’t about “quality”. It’s about an ideological preference for privatized schools and outright hostility to existing public schools and it permeates DC.
None of these people ever talk about improving public schools. It is all charters all the time in the echo chamber. They couldn’t be bothered to act as advocates for public schools when state after state gutted funding during Obama’s terms. Not a peep out of any of them. But, threaten charter schools and the whole gang rises up in anger!
Ridiculous that they’re all public employees. Public employees who oppose public schools. They should find work in the private sector.
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And this relates to Diane’s topic how?
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The silver lining of the Trump candidacy and campaign is that although it dangerously provides agency for fringe rightwing apocalypto groups seeking legitmacy (yes, I know, it’s frightening), it’s also allowing fellow travelers and sympathizers to publicly display their true colors thinking that if a potential head-of-state can do it with relative impunity, once he gets in, it’ll legitimize their public bigotry and prejudice as well. When this is over, and Hilary wins, I wonder what will be in store for the future of Trump’s supporters who won’t shake the stigma of supporting such a colossal bigot.
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Trump supporters won’t feel stigmatized, although prominent Republicans who supported him should feel ashamed as they try to take the party away from bigots and gun nuts and neo-Nazis. His supporters will be like the Confederates who never stopped believing in their cause. Righteous. Angry. And he continues to stoke their rage by warning about a “rigged” election. He thinks if she wins, it must be rigged. He can’t be a loser. Right?
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And in 2020, Republican candidates will be actively courting them.
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From our reluctant Nobel Laureate
We have a long history of demagoguery.Sad this was written 50 +years ago
________ “politician preaches to the poor white man,
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game”.
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Joel,
Help us out on the author/songwriter!
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Duane Swacker
Bob Dylan “Ballard of Medgar Evers”.
The blank was “the Southern”, no longer if it ever was, confined to the south. Race has been used to divide the working class for well over a century. Trump has revealed on so many levels the festering sores of the American reality.
Our friend from Norway touts the advanced social state of Western Europe. I wonder if part of that has to do with homogeneity in these states not giving the Oligarchs the weapon of racial division.
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@ Duane…
Z-Man…Bob Dylan
As one “ripens”, the second thing to go is the memory.
I can’t remember the first…
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Echo chamber news roundup!
http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2016/10/am-news-king-slams-charter-caps-sf-high-school-shaken-by-shooting.html#.WAjcL9ArLnA
Every single piece is either about charter schools or about the horror that is public schools. Suicide! No civics education! Police abuse! Lousy teachers!
Public schools are horrific hell-holes and charter schools are all wonderful. Over and over and over, in every outlet and out of the mouths of every ed reform “leader” including all of DC.
It’s an echo chamber and public schools and public school kids have the misfortune to be coming up in a time when their schools have been determined to be unfashionable by the powers that be. They can’t get a break in this environment. They will lose and lose and lose as long as ed reformers remain in power at the federal and state level.
If I lived within this echo chamber I’d pull my kid out of public school too. Luckily, I sometimes enter an actual public school instead of listening to these “experts”
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What’s going on Chiara? Again you seem to deflect the conversation away from Diane’s prime topic of anti-Semitism? Why?
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“Public investment in K-12 schools — crucial for communities to thrive and the U.S. economy to offer broad opportunity — has declined dramatically in a number of states over the last decade. PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN K-12 SCHOOLS HAS DECLINED DRAMATICALLY IN A NUMBER OF STATES OVER THE LAST DECADE.Worse, most of the deepest-cutting states have also cut income tax rates, weakening their main revenue source for supporting schools. ”
Thousands of paid public education advocates and orgs, and public schools get hurt every year.
Are they just lousy advocates or is this not about ‘public schools”? Has to be one or the other. You’d think they could spare one or two from the charter school cheerleading team to advocate on behalf of the unfashionable public sector schools.
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Chiara…although you are a vast source of good info on charters and education policy (and actually today you were called “brilliant”), I am disturbed that you are focused away from Diane’s topic of anti Semitic behavior which is growing exponentially in the US with the Trump stamp of approval, and also all over Europe where Jews are leaving particularly France and Holland due to death threats and aggressive anti Jewish activities by bigots.
How come? How about using your wonderful research ability to produce some support for Diane’s perspective, and that of many of us nationwide, who are horrified at this blatant surge of anti Semitism (helped along now by Bannon and Trump?
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Ellen,
Who is Bannon?
TIA,
Duane
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Duane…Steve Bannon is the head of Breitbart News, and is now running the Trump campaign. Trump hired him because Bannon is a misogynist and a virulent anti Semite, among other disgusting stuff. Google him and read his history. Pundits claim this is why Trump has gone completely bonkers.
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I am a longtime admirer of your writing. (I am a freelance writer, mostly on religion, occasionally higher ed.) I really appreciate your support for Adam Haber, who just happens to be my brother.
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Really, you played the anti-Semite card… Considering only 2-5% of the “so called Jews” in the world are actually Semites, you really dipped to the bottom of the Khazarian barrel this time. Are you controlled opposition, Diane?
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What? Anti-Semitism no longer refers to Jews? That’s a new one to me. And all these years I thought I was a Semite. So when the neighborhood bully called me a “kike” when I was a little girl, what was his slur?
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Wow. This is new for one of the trolls. Antisemitism refers to ALL Jews. And did you notice that I used Antisemitism as one word? That’s what a lot of organizations are going to–using the word Antisemitism without the hyphen. That’s because Antisemitism is not referring to some Semitic “race.” It’s referring to Anti-Jewish sentiments and actions.
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Trump has made it de riguer for those like you kwin123 to be openly, blatantly, and aggressively anti Jewish. How about identifying yourself and saying these ((( ))) alt right things?
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Yes, exactly, Ellen. They may as well be wearing brown shirts and sporting swastikas.
I really hate invoking Godwin’s Law, because I think that it is often over-used, but I do believe that it is perfectly apporpriate in this case.
Sadly. 😦
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Are you an actual antisemite, kwin123?
Sure seems like it.
Are you controlled by the pro-Trump, pro-alt-right, pro-bigots?
Let’s be frank here. You believe that Diane is “controlled” by the opposition?
Well, we think that you are being controlled by, even paid by, the antisemitic, racist, anti-immigrant, pro-Trump bigots.
Say hi to your Storm Front-like paymasters.
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The ignorance these attackers displayed in using an image that personified the persecution of those of the Jewish faith in Russia is more than disturbing. It is even more disturbing that the Republican candidate did not immediately move to have the ad removed and to publicly apologize for the actions of her supporters. I hope this ad leads to an overwhelming victory for Haber.
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This is from the New Yorker online today….
News Desk
Twitter’s Anti-Semitism Problem
By Ryan Lizza
, October 19, 2016
•
Despite the fact that Twitter’s terms of service prevent any use of the platform for “hateful conduct,” the social-media company is notoriously slow to respond to complaints.
Despite the fact that Twitter’s terms of service prevent any use of the platform for “hateful conduct,” the social-media company is notoriously slow to respond to complaints.
Yesterday morning, Jonathan Weisman, an editor at the Times, woke up and looked at Twitter, where he had a public message from a stranger. “Hostile foreign power?” it said. “Jews.”
The sender’s Twitter profile said, “The (((Chosen))) should not be so foolish to believe the current state of affairs shall last forever…Open Borders For Israel. TRUMP 2016~Alt-Right.”
Weisman was not surprised by the message. He has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the ten journalists receiving the most anti-Semitic harassment on Twitter, according to a report published today by the Anti-Defamation League. “I basically wake up to this every morning,” Weisman told me. “You actually do become inured to it. But it’s omnipresent.”
The A.D.L. report documents the frightening rise of anti-Semitic tweets targeting journalists, especially those who write anything critical about Donald Trump. From August, 2015, to July, 2016, the A.D.L. found 2.6 million tweets that included anti-Semitic language, with a spike in anti-Semitism this year, as news coverage of the Presidential campaign increased. Researchers looked more closely at attacks on the Twitter accounts of some fifty thousand journalists and found almost twenty thousand anti-Semitic tweets directed at them, with almost seventy per cent of the invective coming from sixteen hundred accounts. “These aggressors are disproportionately likely to self-identify as Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, or part of the ‘alt-right,’ a loosely connected group of extremists, some of whom are white supremacists,” the A.D.L. reported. “The words that appear most frequently in the 1,600 Twitter attackers’ bios are ‘Trump,’ ‘nationalist,’ ‘conservative,’ and ‘white.’ ”
Many of the anti-Semitic tweets include images of the journalists they are directed at, Photoshopped to show them inside gas chambers or among the corpses of Holocaust victims. Tweets about putting Jewish journalists and their family members in ovens or having them made into lampshades are not uncommon.
On Sunday evening, Hadas Gold, a media reporter at Politico who was born in Israel, received a private message on Twitter that included an image of her with a bullet hole in her forehead and a yellow Star of David on her shirt. “Don’t mess with our boy Trump or you will be first in line for the camp,” the message said.
Gold, whose grandmother fled Poland shortly before the Jews in the family’s neighborhood were deported to concentration camps, told me that she received far worse images via e-mail in the next few days. In her case, Twitter acted quickly, suspending the accounts of the sender and others who used the image within half an hour.
But Twitter’s speedy response was atypical. Despite the fact that the social-media company’s terms of service prevent any use of the platform for “hateful conduct,” Twitter is notoriously slow to respond to complaints, especially when they do not involve high-profile users.
Only a fifth of the anti-Semitic accounts studied by the A.D.L. were suspended. “It is notable that they did suspend twenty-one per cent of the accounts,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the A.D.L.’s C.E.O., told me. “But there are seventy-nine per cent that they didn’t. It validates what I have heard from journalist after journalist, and others who have found themselves victimized: oftentimes the companies, and in particular Twitter, have not done enough.”
Oren Segal, one of the A.D.L. report’s authors, noted that Twitter, unlike other social-media platforms, doesn’t actively monitor its own service for language that clearly violates its policies. “Twitter very much feels its users are responsible for flagging material,” he said. “Twitter’s approach of relying on its users is one of the more controversial parts of their terms of service and dealing with this.”
Twitter’s decision not to aggressively police its content has had a cost. The company’s reputation as the platform with the most laissez-faire attitude toward hate speech reportedly contributed to Disney’s recent decision not to buy the company. “Words have consequences,” Greenblatt noted. “They have not just moral consequences but economic consequences if they’re not dealt with.”
A spokesperson for Twitter, who refused to be named, said in a statement, “Hateful conduct has no place on Twitter and we address this issue every day with government, our partners in civil society and our peers in the technology sector.”
That’s not the way it looks to some of the journalists who receive the most venom on the platform. Jeffrey Goldberg, the new editor of the Atlantic, is on the list of journalists who are most attacked on the service. “I can’t say that I’m not pleased,” he joked. “I mean, I finally made a top-ten list.” But he has stopped using the service as much as he once did, partly because of the unrelenting attacks.
“It gets wearying, after a while, to open Twitter and have a hundred different messages from people who want to see my family gassed,” Goldberg said. “It makes me depressed about humanity, and I don’t want to start my day that way. After a while, my experience became something like, ‘Thank you Gestapobro88 for your suggestion that my family should be shoved into the ovens, but I’ve already gotten that message from many of your compatriots this morning.’ ”
Goldberg noted that anti-Semitism isn’t the only form of hate speech on Twitter. The platform is becoming “a cesspool for anti-Semites, homophobes, and racists,” he said. Jake Tapper, the chief Washington correspondent for CNN, who is also on the A.D.L.’s list, said, “It’s probably what it’s like to be a woman or person of color on social media on any given day.”
Ben Shapiro, a conservative writer and vehement opponent of Trump, is the victim of more anti-Semitic harassment than any other journalist on Twitter, according to the A.D.L. report. Shapiro told me that the vitriol has not affected his use of the service. “Jew-haters can go screw themselves,” he said. He doesn’t want Twitter to kick hateful users offline. “Twitter’s a private company,” he said. “I’m not in favor of bans. I’m in favor of exposing this garbage to the light of day.”
Other journalists who have dealt with the incessant hostility are caught between wanting to expose it and not wanting to give more attention to a very small percentage of Twitter’s three hundred million users.
Weisman once spent a couple of days retweeting the worst anti-Semites who attacked him, but he was conflicted about whether it was the best approach. “That was like kicking the hornet’s nest,” he said. “That brought this whole phenomenon in high public relief. But it also gave them what they wanted. It’s a bit of an ethical quandary.”
Gold never actually posted the threatening image sent to her on Twitter. (She posted it to a smaller group of friends and family on Facebook, and one of her Facebook friends posted it to Twitter.) She was reluctant even to discuss the episode publicly because she felt it gave a noxious and abusive user too much attention. “It’s not like this is the first time we’ve had to deal with this,” she said, of Jews and anti-Semitism. She was even able to joke about it: “All of our holidays are, ‘They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.’ ”
Twitter’s future may depend on whether it can prevent the platform from being defined by its most hateful users. The company’s response to the A.D.L. report was not encouraging. On one hand, a spokesman insisted that Twitter has a new “policy and products” to address online threats, “to be shared in the coming weeks.” But, speaking of the A.D.L. data, the company also said, “We don’t believe these numbers are accurate.”
Asked about Twitter’s challenge to its methodology, Greenblatt said, “Prior to releasing our report, we opened the door to Twitter to respond to our findings. We never heard back from them.”
Ryan Lizza is the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, and also an on-air contributor for CNN.
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Trump’s wife Melania also not only made anti Semitic statements about the New Yorker reporter who did a report on her some weeks ago, but she gave full voice to encouraging his supporters to essentially threaten the reporter who she, and they, thoroughly vilified for being Jewish.
This is what our country will be under a Trump presidency.
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We have discussed Cornell West in the past. Years ago he warned Blacks and Jews to end the racial divide developing between two traditionally oppressed minorities. Cautioning Blacks that racial envy does not serve anybody and cautioning Jews that they forget how quickly antisemitism has reignited in Western societies at their own peril. It is a shame that it has played such a role in this entire!!! election cycle.
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Republican anti-Semitism has escalated since Donald Trump began his campaign, but it’s always lurked just below the surface. I’ve already reported on some of this noisome background from Trump and the Trumpsters at substancenews.net. As we noticed during the second debate, Trump kept repeating the words “Sidney Blumenthal” because they were his old school Queens code words for YOU KNOW WHO…
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I just deleted two anti-Semitic comments that thankfully were in moderation.
Trump has unleashed haters to go public. Why hide your racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism? Trump says that is political correctness.
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Kurt Eichenwald has written stories for Newsweek exposing Trump’s empire and his conflicts of interest. His Twitter feed has been deluged with anti-Semitic comments even though he is not Jewish.
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Diane, thank goodness that you moderate your blog.
What I really wonder about is how his daughter and her husband feel about the whole antiSemitic stuff that has been unleashed, emanating from a lot of self-admitted Trump supporters.
Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner is Jewish, Ivanka and Jared got married in a Jewish ceremony, she converted to Judaism, and has said that they are observant Jews. How she and her husband reconcile this with the antiSemite, pro-Trump supporters, I have no idea. One could say that, well, Trump himself has never said anything antiSemitic, but on the other hand, I have not heard him totally repudiate all of this, either.
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