The Walton Family’s fantasy of what a union should look like, the National Parents Union, is having its Virtual Convening on May 15, so what better time could there be to look back at a year plus of peeling the onion off of this fake progressive group? By popular demand, Your National Parents Union Reader!…
Author: Maurice Cunningham
Professor Cunningham Ph.D., J.D., is author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization. He retired in 2021 as associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston but he continues his research into dark money in politics. His two reports on the dark money threat to public education are available on the Network for Public Education website: Merchants of Deception: Parent Props and their Funders, and “A Citizen’s Guide to the School Privatization Movement” (forthcoming). His work has been distributed through the Independent Media Institute and has appeared in The Bucks County Beacon (PA), Shepherd Express (WI), Alternet, Tampa Bay Times, The Daily Progress (VA), Idaho Education News, New Hampshire Bulletin, The Detroit Free Press, and The Portland Press-Herald (ME), and at Diane Ravitch’s Blog, dianeravitch.net.. His work on dark money in Massachusetts has earned him the 2017 Distinguished Public Service Award from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees and the 2018 MTA President’s Award from the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Education historian Diane Ravitch has named Professor Cunningham to her "Honor Roll" on her education blog. He can be reached at maurice.cunningham153@gmail.com.
Publications that focus upon Massachusetts Politics include two co-written chapters in the edited volume The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism: Reputation Meets Reality. He has also written “Defeating ‘Death with Dignity’: Morality and Message in a Massachusetts Referendum” in American Catholic Studies (2014); “Massachusetts Politics 2012” in New England Journal of Political Science (2012); “A Christian Coalition for Catholics?: The Massachusetts Model,” Review of Religious Research (2009); and “Massachusetts Republicans: the 2004 Challenge to Democratic Legislative Hegemony,” in New England Journal of Political Science (2008).
Your Massachusetts Parents United Reader
This happened April 29. Boston Globe Education published a piece quoting Keri Rodrigues, president of the Walton backed AstroTurf front Massachusetts Parents United. A friend messaged me asking of the Globe “How are they so bad at this?” And my response was the Globe isn’t bad at this: it’s intentional. But just in case the…
Why Don’t the Waltons Like Massachusetts Charter School Students?
Don’t ask me, I don’t know why the Walton family doesn’t like Massachusetts charter school students. Sometimes we hear “we measure what we care about” and the money trail shows that what the Waltons care about is not kids but their political fronts like Massachusetts Parents United. The Waltons pour money into political operations to…
Koch Connections and Sham Grassroots of Parents Defending Education
Parents Defending Education is corporate school privatizers going hard right to attack school boards, superintendents, principals, and teachers. It’s a dirty game and it’s about as grassroots as say, a Koch political operation. Mercedes Schneider has figured out the grassroots angle in Parents Defending Education: Prefab “Grassroots”—PDE needs local connections to claim standing in law…
Radical Right Ramps Up War on School Boards, Superintendents, Principals, and Teachers
The following post first appeared on Diane Ravitch’s Blog, link here. A new professedly “grassroots” group called Parents Defending Education has joined the right wing assault on public education. It combines white supremacy with a vicious plan to launch personal attacks on elected officials, administrators, and teachers. Just another day in corporate education reform. This…
How Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance and Paul Craney Screwed Ryan Fattman
Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance’s Paul Craney wrote what may seem to be a defense of Senator Ryan Fattman from an Office of Campaign and Political Finance investigation. It’s more a guilt letter because, you see, it is Mass Fiscal itself that has screwed Senator Fattman. Mr. Craney’s piece in Commonwealth Magazine is titled Fattman Case Deserves…
Forget Stop the Wait RI, It’s I Told You So RI!
Back on March 9 I posted Rhode Island: Dark Money Backs “Parents Group” for More Charter Schools about a new operation called Stop the Wait RI. Maybe I should incorporate as I Told You So RI. That’s because the new Stop the Wait Group RI has taken a familiar path for dark money operations. Recall…
The Marketing of National Parents Union
National Parents Union isn’t national, isn’t about parents, and isn’t a union—so what is it? It’s a corporate-type marketing front, and a successful one at that. Let’s take a look at the backgrounds of the leadership touted on NPU’s website from about January 2020 through sometime late in August when co-founder Alma Marquez vanished amidst…
Mass Fiscal’s Fraudulent Voter Fraud Forum
On Tuesday dark money front Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance will get back into the voter suppression business by hosting a forum featuring Hans von Spakovsky. Could this be the same Hans von Spakovsky found by a federal district court to be not at all credible as an “expert” on voter fraud? Why yes, it is that…
Massachusetts Parents United, National Parents Union, and the Christian Right
Two of the important props of the far right in America are Christian conservatives and economic royalists like the Waltons and Charles Koch. Those ties are becoming evident in school privatization including in financial support the Massachusetts Parents United has offered to a Christian right group and in National Parents Union’s funding from a Koch-Walton…