By Zachary Norris
Here is what the greedy few do. They offer you shiny choices but give you shitty outcomes. When someone comes along and says this whole thing is rigged, they say don’t listen to him or her, they are elite. They think they know better than you. They want to take away your choice. They use divide and conquer.
They do it on healthcare. They say look at all of these healthcare providers. But if you get really sick, none of them will actually provide you with healthcare. Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or whoever comes along and says we want universal healthcare, we want a public option. And they say he or she is elite. She thinks she knows better. He is trying to take away your choice. But choosing among insurance plans that won’t actually care for you is a shiny choice with deadly outcomes.
In many states, they have passed this law called the “right to work.” The greedy few framed it as giving you a choice. They say now you can choose whether or not you want to be in the union. They said those union people are outside agitators. They think they know better. They want to take your choice. But what it has meant is a drop in the number of unions, in safety standards for workers and in pay for all workers in those states. It’s a shiny choice with shitty outcomes.
On education, they claim charters give you a choice and they do but among worse and worse options the more charters grow. Oakland has the highest charter school rate in the state of California. They want to close about a third of the remaining Oakland public schools. In New Orleans, the special interests used a hurricane as an excuse to wipe out public education in one fell swoop. Here they are hoping to do it bit by bit, drip by drip, school by school. But it is still traumatizing for youth who have now been through multiple closures. It is still painful for teachers and parents. That drip by drip is still torturous.
And amidst that pain, a new grouping of parents and teachers combined with teachers and parents from schools long closed are standing up for public education. We are saying no more school closures, take the resources you spend locking up Black and Brown kids and use those resources to not only keep schools open but to fund schools equitably.
And here comes the divide and conquer. These folks are elitist. They are only fighting for their school. They want to take away your choice. No, we are fighting for public education. We are fighting for our Black children, our Brown children, our children with disabilities. We are fighting for all kids including the ones who get pushed out of charter schools or who don’t get in those schools in the first place. We are fighting for a universal standard for all children. Otherwise it is a bottomless pit. Otherwise it’s shiny choices and shitty outcomes.
And I am saying it. This system is rigged. It’s rigged to have you believe the problem is other parents or public school teachers. The greedy few will be laughing all the way to the bank when they own the teachers’ pensions and they own and run the schools and our choices get worse and they have us all like crabs in a barrel or a bucket. When they have us “choosing” between a barrel and a bucket.
But if and when we come together and demand our bottom line, not a bottom line based on greed and campaign contributions, but a bottom line based on a quality education for all children that is culturally aware and attuned to the needs of each child, then we will get it. And until then, like they said in Ferguson “if we don’t get it, shut it down!”
Zachary Norris is Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and one of the founders of Oakland Not For Sale. OaklandNotForSale.com