I mention this only because it is a milestone. Today I am 80. I can’t believe it. That is so old. I mean really old. I don’t feel 80. I am full of piss and vinegar and spoiling for a fight. I’m angry that the country I love is rolling backward to before the New Deal. I’m angry that people who don’t love America are dissing our allies and showering kisses on tyrants. I want to kick some serious A—.

The year I was born was a bad year. 1938. A very bad year. Chamberlain went to Berlin and returned with a piece of paper promising “peace in our time.” 1938 was also the year of the Evian Conference, where 32 nations, including the U.S., met to consider “the Jewish Problem.” The delegates agreed that no one wanted to accept Jewish refugees. Sorry, no room for them. Germany was amazed that no one wanted “the Jews,” and they would have to devise their own solution. They did.

The next seven years were hell for the world. Many of my European relatives disappeared into Hitler’s camps and ovens. Somehow, the world came through. Many millions of people died before this scourge was eliminated.

I hope and pray we will come through this horrible era as well. A fascist in the White House, eager to define people and castigate them for their religion and ethnicity. A man so heartless that he would order border guards to rip children, babies, from their mothers’ arms, then lose them. This can’t continue. It is up to us to save our country.

Don’t send me birthday greetings. Send some money to the Network for Public Education. Anthony Cody and I co-founded it in 2013. We created it to fight the billionaires. They have the money. We have the millions of parents and teachers and graduates of America’s public schools on our side. Believe it or not, we have them on the run. We blog, and no one pays us. They have to pay out millions of dollars to set up bought-and-paid-for-blogs like The 74 and Education Post. We do it for nothing. No one pays me or Mercedes Schneider or Peter Greene or Tom Ultican or Gary Rubinstein or or Julian Vasquez Heilig or Jesse Hagopian or Nancy Bailey or Paul Thomas or dozens of other people who post about kids and teachers and schools and the corporate raiders.

If you want to, say Happy Birthday with a check to:

The Network for Public Education

PO BOX 150266

Kew Gardens, NY 11415-0266

Or make a donation online here.

We are a lean, mean organization with a staff of 1.5 people. We make as much noise as possible.

If you have a million, we won’t refuse it. If you have $5, that’s welcome too.

Plan to join us in Indianapolis October 20-21. We can celebrate the collapse of corporate reform together.

I’m angry about the fools in Washington, but right now I’m very happy because I know that DeVos and her wrecking crew will be footnotes in the history books. They will be forgotten, except as the bad people who fought democracy and lost. If they are remembered at all, it will be with contempt.

Courage, my friends, do the right thing, do what is best for children, do what matters most for real education, and you can look at yourself in the mirror every day and find the strength to keep fighting for what is right.

I’m staying around to cheer you on.