Maurice Cunningham is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, who has a remarkable passion for tracking Dark Money.
In this post, he warns that the Walton Family has funded an AstroTurf group called “the National Parents Union,” which hopes to organize parents to demand privately-managed charter schools and to fight teachers’ unions.
Cunningham is very familiar with the Walton tactics of putting up front groups to pursue their goals. Along with other billionaires, DFER, and the now-defunct Families for Excellent Schools, they funded a referendum in Massachusetts in 2016, aimed at lifting the state cap on charter schools. Cunningham’s blogs, posted at public radio station WGBH’s website, exposed the billionaires behind that effort, and the referendum was overwhelmingly defeated.
The new “NPU” is an outgrowth of the Walton efforts in Massachusetts.
Can this one fool parents into demanding privatization of their public schools? Not likely.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Click to access Walton_AstroTurf_NewOrg.pdf
This is a well organized campaign with a detailed timeline that includes “owned ” (?) and other media, plus ads placed around Presidential debates, plus any number of surrogates who will flood the media with attacks on teachers and other workers in education. The Key message: All professionals in education are too concerned about THEIR needs/wants and not about what parents want for their children.
I would not underestimate the power of the Walton wealth. Every Presidential candidate is targeted, will be asked to sign on (the equivalent of pledge) and their responses will be widely publicized. I’d guess this organization is also looking at Congressional seats, state legislatures, and local school boards…all with some help from other billionaires.
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“All professionals in education are too concerned about THEIR needs/wants and not about what parents want..”
I sense some projection here. The Waltons think everybody is like they are. They would roast their employees and sell them if it would make a dime. There are teachers who think only of themselves. There are some who think only in terms of their subjects. A vast majority try to balance these poles of interest with a rational viewpoint.
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Wow, that is a good blog. Nice work, Mass Politics Profs.
The “Walton Family”…. yeah, every time I hear that phrase “The Walton Family” I think back to the TV show The Waltons. They sure were a slice of good ‘ole America, what with mom, dad and the kids hanging together to survive the Great Depression. As TV goes, it was wholesome . It was nice. And, we goofed on it.
I try to imagine those TV Waltons today. (i.e. the family from the show) What would happen to them if they tried to make it in our world of 2019?
Maybe some of the characters would be better off, they might be happier?
But maybe not. I can imagine John-Boy struggling to earn a living wage down at the local Wal-Mart. Or, the old grandparents, fending for themselves, alone. And what about the epidemic of opioid addiction these days.? Rural Jefferson County, Virginia, the show’s fictional locale, sounds like the sort of place that voted for Trump…and is still being ripped to shreds regardless.
The local school nowadays surely would be unrecognizable compared to what we saw depicted on the Waltons TV show. One look at the “Virginia is for Learners” website makes that clear: “Environmental Literacy” is a phrase that would’ve sounded like a foreign language back in the 1930s. People were just digging out of the Dust Bowl then. And, ELL programs. Special ed. APPR Public charter schools. Lock down drills. Twitter???
One thing I do know is that the “Walton Family” of today (as in the very lucky, filthy rich heirs of Sam Walton) are helping sustain the American nightmare known as life under Donald Trump. It’s a living nightmare that is the antithesis of the best our nation has stood for in the past.
The old, fictional Walton Family of the 1970s-era TV show….well, they actually went extinct about the time our nation voted for Ronald Reagan. By then TV just wasn’t enough. For at about that point, nostalgia for a past that never totally existed became so alluring that our country elected a movie star president to help us pretend. And, we’ve been fooling ourselves as a society ever since. Certainly not all of us but at least enough citizens to enable a demagogue to win the electoral college in 2016.
“Good night, John-Boy”.
.
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Powerful essay. Are we too far down the road to turn back?
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I’m a big believer in what I call the “Wild Card Theory” of history. (I’m sure someone more erudite than I has the actual name for this idea. It’s certainly not novel.) Essentially, something eventually surprises us, throws us for a loop, big time. It could be good (The end of the Cold War)…it could be bad (The rise of Trump as a demagogue.) I think we’re overdue for something else BIG and unexpected to happen…I hope it’s good but….. Yeah, this is similar to Rumsfeld’s known knowns, known unknowns etc comment….. I found a good article about that idea years ago….it’s bouncing around here in the house, God knows where. Have a great week!
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Maybe this will help:
https://study.com/academy/lesson/chaos-theory-definition-history-examples.html
Trump loves chaos. The devil loves chaos. If Trump is the chosen one, he was chosen by the devil to spread chaos.
We know that Jesus did not support chaos, and all of God’s rules in the Bible for how we are supposed to live our lives does not support chaos either.
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The following cannot be repeated enough times …
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
MassParents Union Leader Keri Rodrigues is a Latina & minority impersonator / imposter. ***
… to infinity.
*** SOURCE: A letter from Mona Davids, a REAL minority parent leaders of a REAL grassroots org, in which Ms. Davids denounces the nefarious goals, funding, and overall phoniness of Ms. Rodrigues’ and her astroturf org
The entirety of that letter is posted here by Julian V-H here:
Excerpt:
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X
MONA DAVIDS:
“The president is supposed to be Keri Rodrigues Lorenzo, a White woman from Boston. She is not Latina, although she purposely misleads everyone to think she is. Rodrigues Lorenzo is founder of Mass Parents United, that was created in 2017. She is the former Massachusetts state director for the defunct, AstroTurf, Families for Excellent Schools. The ones responsible for the biggest, most expensive, education reform defeat in history. It was epic. Not only did the parents and people of Massachusetts see through and reject their hypocrisy, but the chicanery, corrupt, unethical and illegal actions of the education reformers resulted in historic huge fines and banishment from Massachusetts.”
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VOTE!
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/09/10/exactly-what-ive-hoped-100-education-leaders-voice-support-sanders-k-12-plan?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
“Exactly What I’ve Hoped For”: 100+ Education Leaders Voice Support for Sanders K-12 Plan
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Bernie has Noam Chomsky on his side. I am surprised his bold education plan is not getting more press. A lot of the media seem to favor Warren over Bernie, but Bernie is the original.
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Is there any way to infect the entire Wal-Mart Walton family with The Black Death, Smallpox, and HIV/AIDS all at the same time – a curse maybe?
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This is funny. The Waltons are throwing their moneyed support behind unions. I can’t wait to see them collecting parent union dues and engaging in collective bargaining for better pay and working conditions. That’s what unions do, right? Can’t wait to see the Waltons fighting to get better pay for parents in the form of universal free child care and healthcare. And since unions help one another, it will be good to see teachers unions and parents unions standing together. That’s what unions do! Ha!
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