Los Angeles Magazine Gives Union President the Profile She s Earned Intercepts
Something s spreading through newsrooms and it s not the coronavirus.
Soon after Emma Green of The Atlantic challenged the well-worn talking points of NEA President Becky Pringle, we get Jason McGahan of Los Angeles Magazine going several steps further in an exclusive interview with United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz. The piece is titled, Cecily Myart-Cruz s Hostile Takeover of L.A. s Public Schools.
Here are a few of the more pungent quotes from Myart-Cruz:
- There is no such thing as learning loss. Our kids didn t lose anything. It s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.
- It is not radical to ask for ethnic studies. It is not radical to ask for childcare. It s not radical to ask for police-free schools so that students don t feel criminalized. That is not radical; that s just fact.
- Education is political. People don t want to say that, but it is.
- Reopening schools without&a broader improvement of schools will be unsafe and will only deepen&racial and class inequalities.
- You can recall the Governor. You can recall the school board. But how are you going to recall me?
McGahan closes with a quote from an old friend of Myart-Cruz: Cecily wishes the world could be more like a classroom where she could get people to break down the boundaries between them and make them into a community. With her in charge.
But perhaps the key sentence in the entire article is when McGahan notes that despite the union s stated focus on the welfare of low-income and Black and brown kids, Keeping L.A. s schools closed isn t doing those communities any favors.