This post has been updated below. Last month, Governor Snyder announced that he was forming a 31-person coalition to present alternatives for education reform in Detroit. The coalition, called the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren, is a made up of representatives from public schools, the school reform community (many who are actively working to undermine traditional public schools), […]

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that our team has great love for public education and public school educators. There are few groups in Michigan who are so unfairly maligned and held responsible for the failings of others – parents, administrators, and lawmakers, for example – than public school teachers. This heartbreaking situation propels me to write about their […]

Fresh out of college, I watched Al Gore and George W. Bush’s face merge together in the Rage Against the Machine video “Testify,” directed by Michael Moore, and thought, “Exactly, man. What’s the difference?” George W. spent the next 8 years showing me exactly what the difference was. He destroyed the fiscal balance of the Clinton era, did everything he […]

When an AirAsia plane disappeared on Sunday, CNN immediately began non-stop coverage reminiscent of the months it spent tracking the hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which has never been located. By Monday, the debris of the AirAsia vessel along with the bodies of those lost were discovered. These two lingering tragedies and the massive media coverage that followed have […]

It’s mid-morning on Monday, December 29, 2014. The air is crisp and clear and the light is shining through a slight morning frost/haze as the sun will surely burn it off and present the day. I’m in Downtown Detroit, just off I-75 on East Larned a block behind Jefferson. It’s 26 degrees and the almost empty field in front of […]

This entrepreneur was able to start her own business thanks to Obamacare. Lisa Kaneff has always considered herself a writer. In fact, that’s how she’s always introduced herself to people. But she wasn’t living that dream to the fullest, until the Affordable Care Act (ACA) made it possible. Before the ACA, Lisa was working in public relations and marketing as […]

For the past four years, Michigan Republicans, taking their cues from the anti-teacher group Mackinac Center, have defunded education, gone after teacher pay and benefits, and done just about everything they could to put public education and public educators out of business. Their model is to make teaching so unattractive that the professionals abandon it as a career, leaving the […]

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was recently on the Washington Watch radio show with conservative bigot Tony Perkins. During the show, Perkins asked her if there was anything about her job as a member of Congress that had surprised her. In the lead up to her answer, she talked about her role on the House Intelligence Committee (I know, I know) […]

The 2016 election will about two things: The Supreme Court and rebuilding the middle class. We can count on the Roberts Court to remind us over and over that they’re willing to do anything possible to reduce women’s rights and increase corporate power, while making it easier to buy an election than to vote in one. So it’s up to […]

“Two North” is a story about one Christmas when my mom was spending time on the psychiatric ward of our town’s hospital after trying to commit suicide to escape a physically-abusive husband. I was thirteen. It was a cataclysmic event in our lives but it brought us together into a two-person tribe like no other event ever has in my […]

A few days ago I posted an article on my Facebook page about a speech Catholic Pope Francis gave, a speech the Washington Post described as “roughly the equivalent of a CEO sending his or her top executives off to Christmas vacation with a cleverly-worded list of everything they do wrong at the company.” The speech makes it clear that […]