“Children are 100 percent of our future”…Thom Hartmann talks to Lily Esklsen at the Netroots Nation Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I’m at the convention. I spoke at an open discussion on doing the right thing for our students. The audience included passionate activists in health care, justice, the environment, education, retirement protection, unions, you name it.
There was palpable frustration with President Obama. There were lots of questions for me regarding Education Secretary Arnie Duncan and his policies to continue the inappropriate use of testing and pushing competitive grants with winners and losers instead the rights for all students to needed services regardless of whether or not your district had a good grant writer. We have a lot of fights with Secretary Duncan.
I was asked about the coming election next fall. I was asked why educators should support President Obama’s re-election given our fights with Secretary Duncan.
I answered with the hard truth: Our choice will be between President Obama and our worst nightmare.
Why am I so sure that the Republican Convention will produce a candidate who is our worst nightmare? I answered with the experience I’ve seen this year. Billionaires like the Koch Brothers and their cronies have influenced governor and legislative races across the country.
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Join us (from your nearest connected device) to watch Lily on the panel at which will spotlight the push to commercialize and privatize public education. How can progressives successfully challenge the powerful forces behind misguided school reform efforts? How can activists use the blogosphere to move public education policies toward a more progressive agenda?
Lily sat down with Markos Moulistas founder of and had a frank, open and compelling conversation about the , politics, organizing and how activists and educators can make a difference in their communities and in the nation.
The Dream Act would allow with good character to obtain conditional permanent resident status after high school graduation, and then apply for citizenship if they successfully graduate from college or join the military.
Brought here as children, the United States is the only country they call home. Even though they have the same dreams as other American children, and have excelled in school, they live in the shadows of society, unable to work and put their years of schooling to use.
Here are some of the video highlights and