Truest statement of the week II

Sen. Cory Booker is a mercenary in that war. He entered politics as an advocate of public funding for private schools, two of which he operated in Newark, New Jersey. While a first-term city councilman, Booker became deeply entangled with the most right-wing corporate sugar daddies (and mommas) of the private school vouchers “movement” -- actually, a billionaires club encompassing many of the main funders of the Hard Right in the U.S. (See “Fruit of the Poisoned Tree,” The Black Commentator, April 5, 2002.) Booker’s rise to national prominence has been funded and promoted by these same right-wing networks, to whom he remains loyal. From 2004 to 2008, Booker sat with Betsy DeVos on the board of the Alliance for School Choice, a pro-charter and school vouchers outfit founded by John Walton, one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune. Hakeem Jeffries, a Black congressman from Brooklyn, is a protégé of Booker and fellow supporter of tax credits for private schools. In the wake of Obama’s eight-year crusade on behalf of charters, much of the Congressional Black Caucus is now amenable to various privatization schemes.
In their zeal to confront and delegitimize Donald Trump, the Democrats primp and posture as if in genuine opposition to President Cheeto’s governance-by-billionaires. But, charter school privatization, like U.S. wars, is a project of both wings of the ruling class duopoly. When you scorn DeVos, you must also curse Obama, and reject Booker -- or you are no better than Trump.


-- Glen Ford, "DeVos, Obama, Booker, Trump – All Enemies of Public Education" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).