Elections and Dictatorship
Friends and Constituents,
I interrupt your normally scheduled weekly email with a special announcement. I am having a giant, fun, 40th birthday party and fundraiser on December 20th, and I’d love to see you there!
We will have amazing dance music from Sweet Poison Victim, a comedy set from my hilarious friend and comrade Lucas Waterfill, and more!
Click here to buy a ticket! And email me if you’d like to help make it even more fun and successful.
With that important announcement out of the way - on to the weekly email.
Right now in Indianapolis, we are facing attacks on the people’s ability to select their own leaders - at multiple levels of government.
Watch the seventh Indianapolis This Week video, and then keep reading. Note that as it's over 3 minutes long, YouTube formatted it oddly, so my recommended link is to TikTok this week.
Republicans at the Statehouse are meeting next week to decide whether or not they want to redraw the congressional district maps - a nakedly partisan move that would intentionally disenfranchise voters in order to ensure deeper one-party control of the state. They have selected an outcome they want, and are willing to work backwards from there to achieve it, even if doing so requires rewriting the rules in the middle of the game.
“Democratic” Mayor Joe Hogsett is trying to do the exact same thing about education in Indianapolis.
Far-right Republicans have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes - err, I mean - campaign contributions from big money from out of state, all of which is openly organized around destroying traditional public education and teachers’ unions, in favor of privatized schools (sometimes called charter schools).
Pro-charter groups have similarly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars electing Indianapolis Public Schools board members they believed would be beholden to their far-right ideology. But to those school board commissioners’ credit, they have thus far refused the calls to capitulate to the charter industry.
This spring, the privatizers dropped their pretenses of fairness and parent choice, and revealed very explicitly what their goal was: to kill Indianapolis Public Schools outright. A charter school founder told me to my face that the fix was in, and that IPS was certainly going to be killed. He told me there was nothing that anyone could do about this decision that had already been made behind closed doors.
When elites tell me that the grassroots has already lost, I know that’s a sign that we can still win.
Thanks to a massive unsanctioned strike by rank-and-file teachers, spurred on by DSA’s “Fully Funded, Fully Public” slogan and our petition signed by over 1,700 people, we were able to fight off the immediate threats to IPS and buy some time to keep organizing.
The borrowed time is helping! While we keep organizing and fighting, the district has continued to improve. This year, IPS saw more than double the state average increase in IREAD scores. IPS parents have organized a parent council with hundreds of members. IPS leadership has conducted community conversations to wake more people up to what’s happening in Indianapolis education. Speakers from the NAACP, the Indianapolis Education Alliance, the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, and the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis have all joined some of these conversations to speak in favor of fully funded, fully public education. We are beginning to win the war against privatization.
But now that it’s clear that simply buying elections won’t give them the results they’re looking for, the privatizers are working to ensure that voters lose all choice about how their tax dollars are spent.
Democratic Mayor Joe Hogsett and Democratic Caucus Majority Leader Maggie Lewis are working hand-in-hand with right-wingers to sell off our public assets to enrich their cronies.
Through the sham ILEA organization - created by Republicans at Hogsett and Lewis’s urging - these two are proposing a gigantic power grab that would cede governance, transportation, and facilities management for all Center Township schools to some form of unelected board. This unelected board would then be encouraged to outsource transportation and facilities management, in order to provide well-connected political insiders with government contracts to make them rich.
TogetherEd, a “non-profit” organization deeply linked to the Mind Trust that is publicly positioning itself as a potential transportation authority, is led in part by David Rosenberg, the former Secretary of Commerce and Chief Operating Officer of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation under Governor Holcomb. As a reminder, the IEDC has received intense media scrutiny for the obvious conflicts of interest that helped the “three kings” enrich themselves to the tune of tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers. Nearly every other officer of this organization has deep involvement in the charter school industry.
But it’s not too late to stop this corrupt giveaway!
Central Indiana Democratic Socialists of America has proposed a Fully Funded, Fully Public model that would allow the elected School Board to handle the transportation, facilities, and authorization for all public and charter schools in the district.
Our model would create a single, unified model for education and provide transportation and facilities equally to all schools.
Our model would create a single fair, equitable, and consistent set of standards for all schools.
Our model would unite all local charter schools in having a single, local, democratically-elected authorizer.
Our model would prevent middlemen and go-betweens from siphoning away taxpayer-provided resources and money through outsourced, privatized providers.
And our model would ensure that voters and taxpayers all have a say in the future of education in Indianapolis.
We can protect our resources from the crooks. We can demand a better education for our children. We can defend democracy from dictatorship. But we need your help!
Write your comments to Hogsett and the ILEA here.
Show up to the last few meetings of the ILEA! You can find info about them here.
Forward this email to your friends and family members with kids in Center Township.
And watch this space for more action items coming soon.
In love and solidarity,
Jesse
PS - tomorrow is a full Council meeting, and as usual I will be in the Public Assembly Room early to chat with everyone as part of the People’s Caucus. This month I’ll be asking attendees what THEY think we should do about data centers in Indianapolis. Look for an email tomorrow with links to the annotated agenda!