Newton public education is the target of a coordinated right-wing extremist assault. The latest is a frivolous attack on Newton Teachers Association but that follows attacks on diversity programs and racist attacks on two superintendents. Wake up, folks.
I wrote about Christian Nationalists Attack on Newton Teachers Association just the other day. That post featured a Wisconsin attorney with deep Christian right ties (former aide to anti-union former WI governor Scott Walker, etc., etc.) filing suit on behalf of several Newton parents over the NTA’s recent strike. That filing went nowhere but the Newton Beacon reported Judge calls lawsuit ‘moot,’ so parents file new one. The only Boston area media to pick up on this has been Universal Hub, which also supplied useful context on the local right-wing attorney supporting the litigation, Ilya Feoktistov of Boston. His website is bonkers, but I recommend it anyway as it is the only website I’ve ever seen in crayon.
Parents Defending Education (PDE), designated an extremist group by Southern Poverty Law Center, was behind a different attack on Newton public schools which the Boston Globe captured in this headline: Newton school principals receive racist messages over student discussions of Rittenhouse and Arbery cases. Two Black principals received racist messages after a story in Breitbart News, a far-right propaganda site that regurgitated a report from Parents Defending Education.
On October 4, 2022, PDE filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights over its production of a theater production featuring the stories of Black and Latino students. On March 27, 2023 WBUR’s Max Larkin reported that PDE had filed another complaint against Newton objecting to a student mentoring program. Eizabeth Simpson, a sixth-grade teacher and yes, vice-president of NTA, told WBUR that PDE’s harassment was creating a “culture of fear” among teachers.
PDE was ginned up by right wing activists in 2021 and relies on the money network of billionaire Charles Koch. In 2022 it took in $505,000 from the virulently anti-union Bradley Impact Fund. PDE’s president, Nicki Neily, is a long time Koch operative. PDE also has strong ties to Leonard Leo, the conservative Catholic who has his dark money fingers in numerous extremist pies and who chose the judges appointed by Donald Trump.
Don’t look at the Christian nationalist attack against Newton Teachers Association differently than you do the racist attacks on school principals or frivolous complaints to undermine efforts to uphold the dignity of Newton students. Even failed attempts create fear and disruption and that is a short-term goal of the far-right organized attack on public education. Right-wing propagandist Chris Rufo laid out the plan: “to get universal school choice you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”
School choice means “free-market private schools, church schools and home schools as the normative American practice.”
This lawsuit is nothing but a cheap probe to exploit divisions. The contract is settled. Support the teachers. Support the principals especially the Black principals singled out by PDE. Support the paraprofessionals. Support the custodians. Support the school board. Support public education.
Money never sleeps. Follow the money.
Maurice T. Cunningham, PhD., J.D., is author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization and a retired professor of political science at University of Massachusetts at Boston.