Saul Is Crying

In college I read Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. Simply put the powerless can leverage their numbers and their ideas through direct action to create enough pressure to cause those in power to listen and even negotiate with them. The powerless can attain a little power.

Those in power are still the enemy because they think they know better, they don't have to listen to anyone else, they have the power and their self-interest is all that matters. Saul Alinsky must be crying in heaven to see one of his disciples having gone over to the dark side.

Dr. King went to Memphis to help sanitation workers. Arne Duncan goes to Chicago to meet with anti-teacher profiteers. As my daughter used to say, "How that can be?"

In the midst of an economic crisis without debate or amendment 4.5 billion dollars for education and authority for Race to the Top was put into the stimulus bill. Saul would be in awe of the audacity and application of the technique. 50 state legislatures, in control of an $800 billion public service, changed their laws and opened themselves to privatization to chase $4.5 billion or .56 percent which only a handful of them will get. The money itself is the small collective power, but it is not in the hands of powerless people. At best it in the hands of well intentioned but misguided politicians and education reformers, aka the powerful running amok. At worst this money and the reforms that go along with it is in the employ of ruthless politicians and their corporate paymasters, aka the powerful using the system to attain even more power and wealth. The human shields in this drama are the children.