Common Dreams:
"Ahead of Chicago Runoff, New Ad Spotlights 'Trail of Destruction' Left by Paul Vallas. ... In each city, he opened charter schools, promoted military schools, and expanded standardized testing and zero-tolerance disciplinary policies. He also ran school districts in Haiti and Chile between 2010 and 2012...
Under Vallas' tenure, Philadelphia underwent what was then the largest privatization of a public school system anywhere in the country. He opened 15 new charter schools over the protests of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, who called for a moratorium on new charters in 2006.
In New Orleans, [reporter Jim Daley] continued, Vallas 'immediately set to work opening more charter schools. ... New Orleans is now the only city in America with a school district that is entirely made up of charters, something Vallas also took credit for."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/paul-vallas-trail-of-descruction
-->To read this story in the New York Times is pretty fascinating. Here, Vallas is described a pioneer who "Who Took on Hard-to-Fix Schools." His reputation according to the NYT is "as the educational emergency responder of the 1990s and 2000s, someone sought out for the most challenging jobs." Strangely, his progressive opponent, Brandon Johnson, is not mentioned on the front page at all. The NYT has always distorted their election coverage to favor neoliberal privatization.
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Common Dreams:
"Environmental attorney Steven Donziger was joined by a number of U.S. Supreme Court observers on Monday in denouncing a decision by seven of the nine justices, who refused to consider Donziger's case regarding the appointment of three special prosecutors after he was charged with criminal contempt of court. ...
Donziger sued Chevron in the 1990s on behalf of a group of Ecaudorian people who argued Chevron had polluted their community, and helped them win $9.5 billion in the class action lawsuit.
"Ahead of Chicago Runoff, New Ad Spotlights 'Trail of Destruction' Left by Paul Vallas. ... In each city, he opened charter schools, promoted military schools, and expanded standardized testing and zero-tolerance disciplinary policies. He also ran school districts in Haiti and Chile between 2010 and 2012...
Under Vallas' tenure, Philadelphia underwent what was then the largest privatization of a public school system anywhere in the country. He opened 15 new charter schools over the protests of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, who called for a moratorium on new charters in 2006.
In New Orleans, [reporter Jim Daley] continued, Vallas 'immediately set to work opening more charter schools. ... New Orleans is now the only city in America with a school district that is entirely made up of charters, something Vallas also took credit for."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/paul-vallas-trail-of-descruction
-->To read this story in the New York Times is pretty fascinating. Here, Vallas is described a pioneer who "Who Took on Hard-to-Fix Schools." His reputation according to the NYT is "as the educational emergency responder of the 1990s and 2000s, someone sought out for the most challenging jobs." Strangely, his progressive opponent, Brandon Johnson, is not mentioned on the front page at all. The NYT has always distorted their election coverage to favor neoliberal privatization.
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Common Dreams:
"Environmental attorney Steven Donziger was joined by a number of U.S. Supreme Court observers on Monday in denouncing a decision by seven of the nine justices, who refused to consider Donziger's case regarding the appointment of three special prosecutors after he was charged with criminal contempt of court. ...
Donziger sued Chevron in the 1990s on behalf of a group of Ecaudorian people who argued Chevron had polluted their community, and helped them win $9.5 billion in the class action lawsuit.
'The three liberal Supreme Court justices decided to let Donziger's absurd contempt conviction stand,' said journalist Alex Shultz of the San Francisco Chronicle. Donziger was jailed for six months—including 136 days under house arrest at the end of his sentence in addition to 800 days under house arrest while he awaited trial—after being charged with contempt of court in 2021 for refusing to turn over his electronic devices to Chevron lawyers in a case filed by the company."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/donziger-supreme-court
-->The NYT didn't cover this story. Maybe because it is so shameful that an environmental lawyer would end up paying such a high price for suing Chevron. Big Oil gets away with poisoning the Ecuadorian people, while the lawyer suing the corporation gets jail time.
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The Guardian UK:
"In a new documentary, film-maker Julia Bacha explores the rise of laws punishing Israel boycotts and the ramifications they might have in the future ... And not just in Arkansas. More than 30 states have passed similar laws to punish boycotts of Israel in support of Palestinian rights, inspired by the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa. There’s even federal legislation in the works that would make it a criminal offense to boycott Israel.
Bacha, who has made a number of documentaries about Palestinian and Israeli life, said she turned her lens on the US to understand the sudden proliferation of laws to protect a single foreign country from a form of political protest with a long tradition in America. Boycotts extend back to the Boston tea party, and were found by the US supreme court to be a protected form of free speech four decades ago. ...
As Bacha shows in the film, laws to protect Israel provided the template for legislation to curb boycotts of companies over the climate crisis, gun control, factory farming and others issues. 'Since the start of this year, there’s been 30 new bills that have been introduced. They are listing all kinds of industries, not just guns and oil, but also causes. There are bills so you can’t boycott a company that doesn’t offer comprehensive reproductive care. You can’t boycott a company based on their equity shortcomings. You can’t boycott a company if you think they’re transphobic,' said Bacha."
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/feb/27/israel-boycotts-us-documentary-julia-bacha
-->The NYT is missing in action on this new film, and about laws against boycotting Israel. You would think that that our foremost newspaper would inform its readers about laws against boycotting. But the NYT is in bed with the Israel Lobby, and its journalism suffers because of it.
