Watch all what you tell them to
Iko iko unday
Cause we ain’t do what you tell us to
Now you can jockomo feena nay
Talking bout hey now
Hey now
Iko iko, iko iko unday
Jockomo feeno ah na nay
Jockomo feena nay
-Iko Iko
Although I’ve been to New Orleans many times, I haven’t been since Katrina.
I can’t imagine.
And now the BP eco-disaster.
And in between, Arne Duncan and Paul Vallas.
Duncan, who claimed Katrina was the best thing that could have happened to the City.
And Vallas, who foreclosed on the New Orleans public school system and sold it off to the highest bidders, dismantling the teachers’ union in the process.
An ironic yet proper setting for the national meeting of the National Education Association.
Who wouldn’t look forward to five days in New Orleans? Maybe not in July when the temperature is in the 90s and the humidity is positively liquified. But still.
There will be time outside the Morial Convention Center to do what you do when you go to New Orleans. Beignets and chicory coffee. Fried chicken at Jacques-Imos in Uptown. Debris and grits at Mothers. Maybe some music at Tipitina’s. Tomorrow night there is a Gulf Coast benefit at Tipitina’s featuring Ivan Neville.
Inside the Convention Center 10,000 NEA members will gather. There will be speeches and debates. Flag waving and silly hats. Beach balls being batted from delegation to delegation. The serious and the goofy.
In the lobby, teachers will gather in groups and share their stories of the tough times back home. The layoffs. The increases in class sizes. School closing and turn-arounds. The impact of their legislatures kow towing to the demands of Race to the Top. And in some cases, the collaboration (in the worst sense of the word) by their own union state leadership with those legislative efforts (see Illinois).
A high point will be the annual award given to the Friend of Education. This year the award will be given to Diane Ravitch. Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, has caused a sensation. It has been a weapon in the hands of those of us who are opponents of the past and current administrations’ efforts to privatize public education and to test whatever isn’t nailed to the floor. And it has been a prickly thorn in the sides of Duncan and Obama in pursuing their education agenda.
“Give ’em hell,” I emailed Diane when I heard she was speaking.
“You bet!” she emailed back.
Fred Klonsky 
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