This is from Monty Neill, Executive Director of FairTest:

Mourn for the dead, fight like hell for the living (Mother Jones). Or is it, those whom tee gods would destroy, they first make mad. The latter might be true, but the first is all we can do.

On education in MA, our strategic path forward may not be so complex (not easy, just not so complex).

Nationally on the much wider range of ‘issues’ there are deep complexities that have I think led to the Democrat’s loss – specifically, the neoliberalism that grabbed the party perhaps as far back as Carter and certainly under Bill Clinton, then continued under Obama (who also aimed to promote more social democratic approaches such as on health care, but the two cannot really be reconciled).

Hillary was, I think, trying to get out from under it, at least partially (as with Obama), but could not (thus, as pundit land put it, was not seen as a change person). Compound that anger against neoliberalism with white racism and plus misogyny, it is a potent brew. Neoliberalism has in many ways has most hurt people of color, but they face R’s open racism; related was media’s apparent unwillingness to talk about racism – only ‘southern strategy; and media kept failing to qualify its term ‘working class’ with the modifier ‘white’ since by any meaningful definition of working class, it is composed disproportionately of blacks and Latinos.) It mixes also potently with cultural conservatism that for example led white evangelicals to massively support Trump.
Sanders offered something of a route forward for the Dems, but it is far from clear the Dems will break with neoliberalism – now a huge part of their base are folks who have relatively benefited from neoliberalism (those with college degrees, as media discussed incessantly last night, tho they used terms like ‘technology’ so they could avoid ‘neoliberalism’). That sector and it would seem large sectors of the ruling class/elite that brought us neoliberalism backed Hillary if only out of fear of the unknown that is Trump (see stock market sharp declines last night, internationally). Again, the Republicans were able to mix their strange alliances better than were the Dems.

Very weird political knots to even untangle clearly, never mind figure out how to address strategically.

BTW, I don’t mean to suggest our strategic thinking should be limited to terrain of major political parties.

Back to education:
Ed week just had a piece wondering what Trump will do – a useful reminder of the little he has said. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/11/donald_trump_wins_presidency_uncertainty_education_issues.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=campaignk-12

Monty Neill, Ed.D.; Executive Director, FairTest; P.O. Box 300204, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130; 617-477-9792; http://www.fairtest.org; Donate to FairTest: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/fairtest