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"The underlying conservative foundation of the charter school movement today has resulted in a variety of deep tensions linked to questions of racism and education, particularly with respect to the education of working-class students of color."

Yesterday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel carries a feature on the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.The Bradleys were the main source of support for Gov. Walker's assault on Wisconsin's teachers and public employee unions. Indiana's T-Party Gov. Mitch Daniels sat on Bradley's board of directors. His teacher-bashing, anti-union school "reform" initiative was recently embraced by Ed Sec. Arne Duncan.  They also provided support for the Milwaukee school voucher program and its main proponent in the African-American community, Howard Fuller and his Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) . They funded Charles Murray, author of racist book, "The Bell Curve," which argues that intelligence is predicated on race, and Dinesh D'Souza, author of "The End of Racism," which attempts to absolve Whites from discrimination against Blacks during slavery, claiming that Blacks were too uncivilized to be a part of society anyway.

"Wayne Au, editor of Rethinking Schools and co-editor of Pencils Down: Rethinking High-Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools, writes of the book, Badass Teachers Unite: "In this powerful collection of essays, education activist and historian Mark Naison offers teachers, parents, students and anyone else concerned with the health of public schools in this country some invaluable tools in the fight against corporate education 'reform.' Badass Teachers Unite is a clarion call for all of us to reclaim public education in the name of social justice.""

"Last September's Chicago teachers strike, organized-and won-by an unapologetically democratic, community-centered union, gave hope to laborites across the country that there could be a functional American labor movement. Now, a caucus of unionists seeks to remake New York's United Federation of Teachers, the city's local of the American Federation of Teachers, in the CTU's mold. The Movement of Rank-and-File Educators (MORE) was founded last spring as an alliance of teacher caucuses and activist groups. The caucus stands unconditionally opposed to school closings, retributive punishment of students, and the "junk science" of evaluating teachers based on student tests. "Teachers need to play the role in laying a platform for parents and students," says Marissa Torres, MORE's candidate for assistant treasurer in next month's elections. Torres calls for the UFT, like the Chicago Teachers Union, to foreground explicit anti-racism and collective struggle."

America's public schools and prisons are stark images of the fact of racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequity in our society-inequity that is both perpetuated by and necessary for the ruling elite to maintain their artificial status as that elite. The research, coming from the U.S. Department of Education, and the media coverage are not evidence we are confronting that reality or that we will address it any time soon. The research and the media coverage are proof we'll spend energy on the research and the coverage in order to mask the racism lingering corrosively in our free state while continuing to blame the students who fail for their failure and the prisoners for their transgressions.

Part 1 of our documentary, A TALE OF TWO SCHOOLS: Race and Education on Long Island, was produced for ERASE Racism by award-winning filmmaker David Van Taylor, Vice President of Lumiere Productions. It follows three high school senior boys: one African American student from a black district and an interracial pair of friends from a diverse, majority-white district. The film shows, in vivid human terms, how context determines educational experiences and outcomes-irrespective of the student's motivation and aptitude.

"Death by a Thousand Cuts: Racism, School Closures, and Public School Sabotage, a stunning report released this week by Journey for Justice (J4J), cuts through the ideological babble on school "reform" and lets us listen as "voices from America's affected communities of color"-parents, students, and community leaders-tell us how school closures and privatization are affecting them, their neighborhoods, and their children."

"To building a lasting peace between teachers unions and communities of color, we can't forget their most painful battle of all."

"Overcoming years of tensions and divisions, parents and teachers are linking arms to save public schools."