------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Nov. 28, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
MASSACHUSETTS "ENGLISH ONLY" REFERENDUM: SLICK RIGHT-WING CAMPAIGN DEFEATS BILINGUAL EDUCATION By Bryan G. Pfeifer Amherst, Mass. "English Only" is now the law in Massachusetts. After a slick, well-publicized, xenophobic campaign, Silicon Valley multi-millionaire Ron Unz and his organization, English for the Children, managed to get 68 percent of the vote to abolish bilingual education. Flush with victories in California in 1998 and Arizona in 2000, Unz managed to get Question 2, known as the "Unz Initiative," on the Massachusetts ballot and Amendment 31 on the ballot in Colorado for the Nov. 5 election. In Colorado, however, "English only" was voted down. A virtual replica of California's Proposition 227, the provisions in Question 2 will replace the state's existing bilingual education law in September 2003 with a one-year English "immersion" program, thereby wiping out successful bilingual education in Massachusetts' public schools. Furthermore, the measure contains a provision that those educators who continue teaching students in their native language can be held liable. Anyone sued under the provision must pay damages out of their own funds that cannot be covered by insurance or a union. Teachers could be fired and banned from teaching for five years for "defying" the measure. A counter campaign, led by scores of Massachusetts unions, civil rights organizations, students, parents and anti- racist community organizations, among others, fought to the end for Question 2's defeat. Their arguments are many, but all agree that English "immersion" initiatives have been a complete failure in California and elsewhere and that the majority of "English only" supporters like Unz have never been in an educator's seat. Because of this, many bilingual supporters suspect Unz is just a Trojan horse for more conservative forces. They are correct. Unz--like Ward Connerly, Linda Chavez and David Horowitz--is an anointed spokesperson of the far right- wing neo-conservative movement disseminating its policies worldwide. UNZ AND THE RIGHT-WING Who is Ronald Unz? According to a May 8, 1994, Los Angeles Times profile published a month before Unz opposed incumbent Pete Wilson in the 1994 Republican primary for governor of California, Unz was a top student who received a Ph.D. from Harvard and moved on to a Wall Street firm. He left there to start his own business writing computer code for major corporations. He eventually made enough money to start giving donations to conservative foundations like the Manhattan Institute. By the late 1980s Unz had made enough connections and money to be courted by the neo-conservative movement, eventually being named to the Board of Directors at the misnamed Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO). The CEO is directed by Linda Chavez, a former Reagan/Bush Sr. appointee for various posts, an author, a syndicated columnist and political analyst for Fox News. Chavez's most recent book is "An unlikely conservative, the transformation of an ex liberal: Or how I became the most hated Hispanic in America." According to its website, the CEO's mission is to "counter the divisive impact of race-conscious public policies," focusing on "three areas in particular: racial preferences, immigration and assimilation and multicultural education." Mediatransparency.org, a watchdog website that tracks right- wing funding, documents that the CEO received 39 grants totaling over $2.4 million in the period 1988 to 2000 from right-wing foundations including those of Lynde and Harry Bradley, Earhart, John M. Olin and Sarah Scaife. In 1997 the CEO received $15,000 from the Earhart Foundation for its publication, "The New Paternalism: How Uncle Sam Replaces Mr. Right in Women's Lives." The CEO has also published a Parents Guide to Bilingual Education that educates parents to "learn how to remove their children from harmful [bilingual education] programs." Unz's own organization, One Nation/One California Research and Education fund, which runs the "English for Children" program that conducted the California Prop 227 campaign, received six grants from 1998 to 2000 totaling $330,000 from the Carthage, Sarah Scaife and Bradley foundations. English for the Children is also conducting the Massachusetts Question 2 campaign--it has contributed $123,000 towards this effort. By far the majority of contributions for CEO and One Nation have come from the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Wisconsin, which has over $800 million in assets. This premier, most influential right-wing foundation in the U.S. gives away over $30 million annually to conservative individuals and organizations as well as cultural, educational and faith-based entities. Bradley is perhaps best known for giving over $1 million to Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein to write the racist book, "The Bell Curve," which tried to show that African Americans and other people of color are genetically inferior to whites. Bradley has also given millions to David Horowitz' Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Ward Connerly's American Civil Rights Institute, the Institute for Justice--a legal firm responsible for helping abolish affirmative action in various states and universities, the National Association of Scholars and the Hudson Institute, which created the initial plans to abolish the federal entitlement program Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Journalist Phil Wilayto, who has written extensively on Bradley and the neo-conservative movement, says that to further its objectives, "Bradley supports the organizations and individuals that promote the abolishment of affirmative action, deregulation of business, the rollback of virtually all social welfare programs, school vouchers, and the privatization of government services." "The overall objective of the Bradley Foundation, however," adds Wilayto, "is to return the U.S.--and the world--to the days before governments began to regulate big business, before corporations were forced to make concessions to an organized labor force. In other words, laissez-faire capitalism: capitalism with the gloves off." SCHOOL UNDER-FUNDING GETS FORGOTTEN In using willing shock troopers like Unz, the neo- conservative movement hopes to follow previously "successful" conservative blueprints like school vouchers and workfare to pit white workers against workers of oppressed nationalities. By focusing on Latino people in the "English Only" campaigns, the neo-conservatives even hope to divide the African American community and other nationally oppressed peoples from their allies. Furthermore, by abolishing bilingual education, the neo-conservative movement hopes to erase the culture that leads to national identity, because this in turn leads to political struggle and unity against a common oppressor. The racist and privatization schemes manufactured and propagated by the neo-conservative movement divert the debate from where it needs to be: the under-funding of public education from the federal level on down, which has resulted in a growing chasm in educational opportunities. In light of severe budget cuts in this state and across the nation that are gutting social service spending, and an impending U.S. war on Iraq that will cost from $50 billion to $200 billion, the neo-conservatives' motives become clear. Although Question 2 won in Massachusetts, Colorado voters weren't, for the most part, diverted into Unz's and the neo- conservative movement's racist, fear-mongering campaign. Taking this lead, the working class and oppressed can defeat other "Unz Initiatives" being cooked up for other states by focusing on the real issues and struggling for solutions to the economic, social and political crisis bearing down on millions. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. 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