Get Your Ticket to the NYAAF 10th Anniversary Celebration
It’s not too late to buy your tickets to the New York Abortion Access Fund’s 10th Anniversary Celebration. I’m Co-Chairing the event, and would love to see you there.
The Reds in the Bleachers
Bill Mardo, sportswriter for the Daily Worker newspaper, died last week. His NY Times obituary notes his column’s crusading role in pressing for the racial integration of Major League Baseball in the 1940’s. “In the years before the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson as the first black player in modern organized baseball, Mr. Mardo was a leading voice in a campaign by The Daily Worker against racism in the game, a battle it had begun in 1936 when Lester Rodney became its first sports editor. … The Daily Worker asked fans to write to the New York City baseball teams urging them to sign Negro league players at a time when the major leagues had lost much of their talent to military service. A milestone in baseball history and the civil rights movement arrived in October 1945 when Robinson signed a contract with the Dodgers’ organization, having reached an agreement […]
Charter School Board Conundrum
A conundrum that charter schools face when recruiting prestigious one percenty-types (celebrities, politicians, stockbrokers and lawyers) to serve on their governing boards is that, yes, this may open the school up to more charitable giving. But, people with outrageous fortunes sometimes came to them through outrageous means. When a school board member is hoisted on his own petard, to what extent should that reflect on the school? Old-fashioned school district school boards – however incompetent, corrupt or amateurish – have the benefit of being democratically elected by the people, and therefore, NOT OUR SCHOOL’S FAULT when they go to jail for their own idiocy. In the era of charter schools, where governing boards are corporations appointed through insular networks of money and influence, things get tricker. Take the scary situation of Bronx Charter School for the Arts, an otherwise lovely and totally rare arts-centric (in this day of standardized math […]