Here is another tactic in the war against public education. This petition/survey deception technique was piloted here in the paradise district in the early actions to privatize Phila. parks, and impose a police state under private control. Public education defenders need to read this.
"...The parents told me that a Los Angeles-based group calling itself Parent Revolution organized a local campaign to harass and trick them into signing petitions that they thought were meant for simple school improvements. In fact those petitions turned out to be part of a sophisticated campaign to convert their children’s public school into a privately-run charter...
...For parents who insisted on giving the petition a closer read, Parent Revolution used a crude bait-and-switch technique..."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16300-pulling-the-trigger
When such techniques are discovered, the groups engaging these tactics are 100% discredited. This is where the gentry in this neighborhood failed in their duties as citizens. There was never a single petition/survey put out by the early UCD/FOCP/SHCA that was useable in any way. At this point, one would simply throw out the surveys and recognize that no support had been given for a policy agenda. But what we refused to consider in the early days was that this part of the propaganda campaign was clearly attempting to deceive "survey respondents" in order to build a false pseudo-research conclusion supporting the UCD/FOCP agenda!
When it was clear that these organizations were attempting various deceptions to build a propaganda campaign, the organizations and their leaders should have been loudly and completely rejected by members of the community! The combination of our greed and fear of power caused us to helplessly go along with the neoliberal agenda for this neighborhood. We gave up our rights as local citizens, and gave our neighborhood and parks over to the control and agenda of Penn/Wall St/K St.
Once we give up the foundations of any structure(transparency and inclusion of all), it crumbles very quickly and cannot then be easily saved.
I wish local folks would ask themselves: How do I like neoliberal capitalism? How will my children and grandchildren like corporate totalitarianism?
Advertising on "public property" passed city council, 15-0. Clark park is already a commercial venue, not a park. It will soon look like Citizens Bank Park, or the TD Garden in Boston. The sign advertising the FOCP beer garden has the Bank of America corporate logo. I assume they will control the new outdoor corporate venues once called public parkland. Goldman Sachs has the streets of Chicago.
