"The idea of the parent revolution is to say fuck you." — Ben Austin [1] (Executive Director Parent Revolution)

Renowned journalist and Parents Across America co-founder Caroline Grannan just wrote an inspiring essay entitled: Parent trigger misfires by disrupting and dismantling local schools. In the piece she outlines some of more egregious problems with the so-called Parent Empowerment Act in California [2]. Grannan, an expert on Parent Revolution, points out the organization is "not a parent group but was founded by charter school operators, backed financially by billionaires and corporate interests."

Surprisingly, Parent Revolution’s paid staffer Linda Serrato attempts (unsuccessfully) to argue with Grannan’s article. Her overarching assertion is that her plutocrat funded 501C3 somehow isn't in service of the charter-voucher school industry. The comments were so mendacious and outrageous, that I penned a Daily Censored article entitled:

Catching Parent Revolution's Linda Serrato in a lie

There's more.

We've seen over and over how Ben Austin and the Parent Revolution are guided by the ideas of far-right extremists and organizations like The Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, The Hudson Institute, and the Hoover Institution. We've documented that AEI's Andy Smarick is Ben Austin and Marco Petruzzi's reactionary ideological muse in CCSA and Market Share: Setting the Table for Vouchers, and by Austin's own admission on his blog post entitled On Moulding Consensus. I've also documented other instances too numerous to list here.

However, the foppish millionaire from Benedict Canyon and his Parent Revolution has taken their teabbaging friendly privatization message to a whole new level! This coming Monday, March 21, 2001 the plutocrat funded Parent Revolution is hosting an event next week with the vile extreme right wing reactionaries of The Heartland Institute.

For those of you that don't know, The Heartland Institute is essentially the John Birch Society with a budget.

The event will feature the following right wing reactionaries:

• Ben Austin Executive Director of the Parent Revolution
• Bruno Behrend Director of the Heartland Center for School Choice
• Ben Boychuk managing editor of Heartland Center for School Choice School Reform News
• Larry Sand president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network

Word is that David Duke, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck aren't able to attend, but know their "ideas" will be represented amply.

For details on the event, there's a page on some school privatization site.

Here's how Parent Revolution's Ben Austin's rhetoric stacks up with the fringe right:

"[O]ther education providers to COMPETE with public schools for the opportunity to educate children." — The Heartland Institute (Bigoted Reactionary Right Wing "Think Tank")

"There's nothing the matter with teachers that a little less unionization and more COMPETITION couldn't cure." — Ann Coulter (racist reactionary right wing pundit)

"It would force the district to learn how to run great schools by forcing them to COMPETE." — Ben Austin (Executive Director LAPU/PR)

Can't tell the difference? Neither can I.

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NOTES
[1] http://blogs.uscannenberg.org/neontommy/2010/03/trigger-law-gives-parent-revol.html this one sided pro-privatization article quotes Austin as saying "The idea of the parent revolution is to say fuck you." While we already knew that was how Austin felt about our communities, poor people, and people of color, to hear it coming from the wealthy white charter profiteer's mouth was quite startling. (I first published this footnote in Ben Austin's Biography)
[2] Parent Empowerment Act is often refered to by its co-author as the Parent Trigger — since the wealthy Ben Austin, who lives in an affluent area that is "87.5% white and the median household income is $169,282," is blissfully unaware of how culturally loaded, and frankly racist, the word trigger is to use in conjunction with low income areas like Compton). This isn't the first time Austin has proven himself a bigot.