Mother Crusader (aka parent activist Darcie Cimarusti) noticed a photograph of Betsy DeVos on her Twitter account that seemed wrong. She was sitting and chatting with a student, and both of them had a box of water in front of them.
Darcie began digging, digging, digging. She finally hit pay dirt. The boxed water was branded. It was a company that is part of the DeVos portfolio. Betsy DeVos, billionaire heiress, was using her Twitter account for product placement!
Read the account of how she researched the boxes of water prominently displayed in front of DeVos and the student.
We know that Donald Trump believes that he is not bound by any ethics laws and can engage in conflicts of interest without any legal problems. But, Darcie wonders, can the Secretary of Education shill for her products too?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No doubt we’ll soon be seeing lots of Amway products used in schools. I’m sure it’ll just be a coincidence though.
DeVos is awful.
Did anyone really expect different?
Duncan was awful.
King remains awful.
Anybody HRC would have put up for the position would have been awful.
Even Bernie would have probably put someone up for the position that had at least a stink of reform on them.
In the pantheon of awful and tragic and frightening that Trump’s cabinet is turning out to be, DeVos fits in nicely. Her positions on education would also fit nicely with any democrat’s cabinet as well.
Lets not start seeing DeVos as somehow an order of magnitude worse than Duncan or King. She’s not. Perhaps just a bit more forthright in her positions, maybe without some of the dreadful wedding of social justice lingo and Ed reform.
This is an important moment for our side. We must work to be as honest and frank with ourselves as possible. And that means acknowledging that DeVos simply means a continuation of the EXISTENTIAL threat we have been facing for the past 8 years. Opt out wont cure DeVos, just like it didnt cure Duncan or King. The only option we ever really had is pure and absolute union-based resistance. Only option.
Will we have any unions left after Trump and his mafia of deplorables go into high gear? He will be sure to appoint an anti union justice to the SCOTUS. The NJEA is still a strong force in NJ though Christie worked hard to delegitimize it.
it depends if teachers’ unions are willing to go through the slog (violence, death) that miners did in the early 1900’s.
NYSTeacher, would you please tell us what labor action would look like for teacher unions? As you say, most of us have never witnessed such a thing.
I’ve seen it with AFL-CIO. Even my dad’s crew defended themselves against union-busting thugs sent to beat them up. The workers stood as a group, slapping pipe wrenches against their thighs until the goons left.
A little humor: presumably DeVos won’t rough us up and staplers aren’t much help in a fight anyway.
Seriously, what do you advise?
rbeckley58,
So yeah, this is the big question: what does strong collective teacher action look like?
Well, it looks like we still occupy the physical space of public education. Teachers are the thing that, if we don’t show up, the entire institution falls apart. Admin can not show up for weeks and nobody would know or care. However, our presence is required for any school to work.
That’s a place to begin thinking about the leverage we have.
However, before that, I would argue that our first job is to introduce and sustain a strong counter narrative. Part of our problem over the last many years has been that our leadership sat at tables and negotiated with these deplorable ideas, which meant that we could not put forward oppositional, intense, loud counter narratives. Because of our leadership we “owned” a piece of so many of the big reform ideas, like common core. Saying no to everything they say and put forward, all of the time, creates a space for real and meaningful counter narratives. So much of our leadership was and remains not bright enough to get that. We need a culture of absolute constant resistance. No all the time. Period.
And don’t say that that is impossible. It’s been done quite a lot…
You know, precisely how republicans handled Obama.
Resistance creates openings for real counter narratives. Counter narratives create openings for strong, escalating opposition and action.
The reformers are working double time to replace teachers with technology. Computers never form a union.
Computers and automation don’t need health care, don’t get pregnant, don’t take sick days, don’t need unemployment, don’t need bathroom breaks; after the initial cost of buying them, they work for free like the best slaves ever.
Eventually, AI robots will be maintaining dumb robots and those few tech jobs will go the way of the dinosaur too.
But once most if not all of the jobs are automated and gone, there will be no consumers and no need for people except the 0.01 percent. Then the 0.1 percent can get rid of the other 99.9 percent. Without money, they’ll take our homes away form us and make us all homeless and we’ll starve on the streets when the markets go out of business and there is no food unless we grow it ourselves but how can we grow food if the 0.1 percent owns the seeds and won’t let us have land we have no money to buy?
The domino theory in play for real this time.
Correction:
“. . . the EXISTENTIAL threat we have been facing for the past 16 years.”
Another “Great” addition to the White House Shopping Network.
So how do public school teachers collectively make De Vos’ time in office as limited as possible?
It’s not a new idea: basic union/labor organizing and action.
But most teacher union leadership is not versed in labor history or action, and/or they are outright dumb and incompetent, and membership…..well, we are a couple generations deep into teachers who are serial baby producers and under-read in any real subjects like history, the arts, philosophy, economics, sociology, literature etc. Teacher union membership is addled by intellectual inertia, bumbling middle-brow conservatism (a huge amount of teachers in my district are married to police officers….no disrespect, but you know, not a bastion of big labor ideas), and baby culture. Not the rank and file for hardcore labor resistance.
I basically have no (0) hope.
Remember the Bloomberg, Cathy Black kerfuffle? There was a lot of blow back and she had to step down. From the hufffingtonpost 2011: The “real news,” however, had been buzzed about since mid-afternoon when it was announced that Chancellor Joel Klein, architect of the “Bloomberg Educational Miracle,” had abruptly resigned from his post and that Mayor Bloomberg had “appointed” Cathie Black, the well-known publishing power and head of the Hearst Publishing empire to Klein’s position. That Ms. Black has as much of a background in education as I do in managing a soccer team in East Anglia seemed to have bothered His Honor not a whit. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-shatzky/educating-for-democracy-m_2_b_781345.html
Quote – “Embattled Schools Chancellor Cathie Black abruptly stepped down Thursday after three rocky months as head of the nation’s largest school system, a job she got despite having no experience as an educator.”
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Schools-Chief-Cathie-Black-Steps-Down-119401804.html
Maybe if there is enough noise and protest against DeVos, she might step down?
Totally said the same thing Joe…I give DeVos 6 months; when she realizes can not use federal tax money to build monopoly she’ll either quit or be ousted. The Sec. of Ed. position should come with a revolving door.
Wait until DT’s children launch the Golden Trumpet k-12 Corporate Charter Chain in strip malls or vacant gas stations across America.
Imagine the ads running 24/7 on Trump TV: “Learn from the lovable genius who used his business (and groping) skills to be elected president of the United States.”
Corporate ads will run every five minutes on Trump TV, and they will be cheaper than running ads on traditional TV, because Trump plans to cut out the middle man, the expense corporate lobbyist and lying, biased, corrupt traditional media.
Instead, Ivanka will negotiate great ad prices directly with corporations for her father, the president, who controls the justice department, the FBI, the IRS, the U.S. military, and has his finger on the nuclear button to threaten any country that doesn’t do what one of Trump’s corporate customers wants, like Big Oil.
Mother Crusader’s persistence on finding a plausible reason for the water-in-a-box advertorial with Betsy DeVos is exactly what we need more of.
Thanks so much for posting this article. Great research by Mother Crusader into the tentacles of DeVos.
Boxed water? Oh right, the water out of the tap is tainted and polluted with lead and other toxins.
Public service for public service’s sake is so passé.
boxed water = filtered water from Grand Rapids, MI
and pricey. It breaks down to roughly $3 for 8 ounces
Nice racket where the water in the tap is no good.
In other words, let them eat cake and let them drink DeVos boxed water. If they can’t afford it, then tough luck. You should have worked harder or gotten a better education…..welcome to DeVos world, same as Ayn Rand world.
Whoops, Ayn Rand was an atheist and felt that it was contrary to and an impediment to capitalism. DeVos is very religious and sees no problem with vouchers for religious schools.
Ayn Rand was an atheist and felt that RELIGION was contrary to and an impediment to capitalism.
Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? Rand was a selfish bitch.
Not all teachers want or like teacher’s unions. Believe it or not. Personally, I would rather that my professional work be overseen by a group of professional peers like other professions. In my experience, union officials do not have the students in mind, nor do they value excellence in teaching. Union officials have appeared contenscious in meetings and often low performers are kept on and juggled around the schools rather than letting them go due to the amount of paperwork required to terminate them. I dislike that my union dues are taken and always used to fund the Democratic Party, never have I seen my union support any other candidate. Doesn’t that seem odd? In 20 years there was never one good Republican? So much for critical thinking…there is a biased notion that only Democrats support education. I think it is time to end the rhetoric. Perhaps that’s what everyone is upset about…I’d rather deal in truths. I’m an educator…I beieve in excellence in teaching. For 20 years, I’m still being told to advocate for my position…really?! Sounds to me like if after 20 years we still need to advocate, something’s wrong. Too much $$ is tied up in our unions and the result (for me personally) has not been worth the cost. I say we need a new way to professionalize ourselves – like a state teaching board…Just my opinion.
Winelori
I hope you live in a RTW state. All those great things are happening, right?
I don’t agree with any of your allegations about teachers’ democratic labor unions. That wasn’t my experience for 30 years where I taught in California (1975 – 2005). Where did you teach, Russia, China, Syria, North Korea, or a state in the U.S. dominated and controlled by the GOP?
First, the REA/CTA/NEA that I belonged to was not in charge of the teaching side of teaching, professional development etc. That was the democratically elected school board, in the school district where I taught, and by the district administrators those democratically elected officials hired.
The democratic teachers’ union I paid dues to, that helped support the local, state and national union, that basically watched over teachers’ rights so we were not abused and used by hired, autocratic administrators.
The union had nothing to do with the direct professional development of any teachers. If legislation was being considered in Sacramento by elected state representatives that a clear majority of teachers felt was wrong and would make their teaching job more difficult, the union might step in and lobby to change the language of that legislation or to defeat it.
I’m sure that every time that happened, and a teachers’ union was successful, someone like Donald Trump would get angry and resent it and want to find ways to get rid of the teachers’ unions, so there was no resistance to any of their autocratic and often flawed ideas.
In most cases at the local and state level, the elected union presidents would not act without advice and/or consensus from the democratically elected representative councils made up of mostly working classroom teachers that discussed the issue and then voted to act or not. I actually sat on the local elected rep council and took part in those discussions and votes that were used to guide the local elected union president and also influence decisions at the state level of the union.
The democratic teachers’ unions work to protect teacher pay, health, work conditions in some cases, and retirement benefits in addition to making sure we weren’t forced to work longer hours than our contract dictated if we went to them for support and legal help. If we didn’t mind working those longer hours outside of what the democratically negotiated contract called for, then the teachers’ union did not intervene.
It is the democratically elected legislature and/or governor in each state that decides what professional, qualifications and training a teacher should have. The only instance where a democratically organized teachers’ union would become involved is if the majority of the membership thought that legislation or decisions from the state or local level were wrong. But that did not mean the teachers’ unions would be successful in stopping or altering bad legislation.
What happens when the teachers have no voice through their democratclly organized and elected leadership at the labor union level? What happens when only the Donald Trumps of the world, all arguably power hungry, greedy, lying, manipulating psychos, decide what is right or wrong and no one is there to resit them; to stop them?