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Friday, May 17, 2013

UPDATE: Thousands of Philly students marching down Broad Street now + If tweeting is an art, Weingarten is no Picasso. She’s barely a George W. | Fred Klonsky

If tweeting is an art, Weingarten is no Picasso. She’s barely a George W. | Fred Klonsky:


Thousands of Philly students marching down Broad Street now.

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Thousands of Philadelphia public school students are marching down Broad Street as I am writing this.
“We are willing to break the stereotypes and expectations of urban youth, and are taking this opportunity to tell the world that urban school districts deserve funding, and it is your responsibility under the Commonwealth Charter to provide us with more than a ‘bare bones education.’”
Read the back story in The Nation.



If tweeting is an art, Weingarten is no Picasso. She’s barely a George W.

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“Tweeting is an art.” Randi is to Twitter as George W is to painting. 
The trouble all began when American Federation of Teachers President issued a statement in support of the We Are One/Cullerton bill. The bill, SB2404 is Senate President Cullerton’s attempt to circumvent the pension protection provision of the Illinois Constitution.
NEA President Dennis Van Roekel also issued a statement in support of it.
All this is not surprising. Both the Illinois affiliates of the NEA and the AFT are part of the We Are One coalition.
Van Roekel’s statement was boiler plate. All about collaboration and working together to solve problems.
Weingarten was no better.
But she didn’t stop there.
She started tweeting about it. And making stuff up.
About how retirees weren’t covered by the bill.
About how it represented shared sacrifice.
How it was fair.
And was brother Mike called her on it.
And we pointed out the falsehoods.
She backed down and admitted she was wrong.