On Saturday, August 29, parents, teachers and education advocates launched the Coalition for Public Education at a convention held at the headquarters of DC-37 (AFSCME). Organizers vowed to strengthen the fight against mayoral control and have announced rallies in four boroughs for the first day of school.
Frances Villar participated in the conference’s opening panel of elected officials and electoral candidates. Frances expressed her opposition to mayoral control and explained her own experience as a student organizer at CUNY. While offering her own perspective on how to reform the education system, Frances further explained, “I would dismantle this whole system entirely; I would flip it upside down and make sure the needs of the poor and working people are first, and that includes the children of our communities.”
Other speakers at the opening panel included City Council members Tony Avella (who is also running for mayor in the Democratic primary) and Charles Barron. Below we have excerpted some of Mr. Barron’s comments, in which he expressed support for Frances’s campaign:
“On a micro-level, we can still win this in November. Just fire Bloomberg in November. Hire my sister here. Fire Bloomberg and hire Frances.
“And I firmly believe sister Esmeralda has the right idea. We need to break this education system down into five borough boards: decentralize it…
“We should become ungovernable. In September, if you don’t like it, become ungovernable. Tell Mayor Bloomberg, ‘you cannot govern us.’ And I’m not just talking, because some times if you can’t do it this way, with conventions and all the conventional ways. Assert — if millions of us said “No, you cannot govern our children, you cannot govern us. We are going to resist.” And I’m not talking the Black Panthers, now I’m talking about Mahatma Ghandi. He was a nice guy. He said, ‘I am going to become ungovernable.’ Non-cooperation. We are too quiet in this town. We are too peaceful in this town. We let them get away with too much. We have the real power, we need to stand and say to the Mayor, ‘We will shut the school system down!’ Become ungovernable — that is the option.”
We Need Your Help
The Frances Villar for Mayor campaign has tremendous potential to bring together poor and working people across the city to challenge the billionaires and to put our needs first on the agenda. In the middle of the most severe economic crisis this country has seen in decades, capitalism has failed—we need socialism!
But it won’t happen without your help.
Click this link to make an urgently needed donation to the Frances Villar for Mayor.
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