Author Archives: wrenchinthegears

The video below is public testimony I gave to the Jobs and Education Subcommittee of Philadelphia City Council’s Special Committee on Poverty Reduction and Prevention on Thursday December 5, 2019 at Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School in North Philadelphia. It is my belief that this committee was created to jump start pay for […]

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to return to the Seattle area, visit with fellow education activists, and present at the Kent Regional Library. I was last in Seattle in the spring of 2017 when I gave a talk on Future-Ready Schools at the Lake City Library. If you missed that one, you can […]

Philadelphia City Council created a “Special Committee on Poverty Reduction and Prevention” on March 28, 2019 (resolution here), and with it the machine of human capital impact investing in our city of deep, deep poverty roared to life. The purported goal of the committee is to create an action plan to lift 100,000 Philadelphians out of […]

On November 6, 2019, former San Francisco District Attorney, California Attorney General, Senator, and presidential candidate Kamala Harris introduced the Family Friendly Schools Act. If passed, the bill would create a five-year grant program to restructure 500 elementary schools to “better align” schedules to the work day. The legislation authorizes $1,300,000,000 per year from 2020 […]

I am writing this letter to the teachers of Chicago as you continue your strike. I realize you probably won’t have time to read this until after your contract is resolved, but I felt it was important to put my thoughts down now while they are fresh in my mind. I know you care deeply […]

The Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign hosts a monthly breakfast to discuss radical social work and issues relating to the non-profit industrial complex. Follow us on Facebook here. I was invited to participate this month and wanted to post my presentation on pay for success and the opioid crisis, so the information could be shared […]

I remember it well, a casual conversation with a neighbor on the sidewalk. It was a brief exchange, the kind that should’ve been quickly forgotten. At the time I knew nothing of Marc Tucker’s “Dear Hillary Letter” or the National Center on Education and the Economy. I hadn’t yet started mapping IBM and Digital On-Ramps, […]

I’ve embarked on some intense Internet peregrinations lately, and work has been super busy. But it keeps me grounded in the real, physical world for which I am eternally grateful. It is captivating, full of generous people and natural wonders. It’s worth fighting to protect, which is why I continue to wander and try to […]

I’m writing the day after the climate strike. With so many people taking to the streets, it made me wonder how much people actually know about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)? Why is that important? Well, there are powerful interests seeking to misdirect people who want to do the right thing. If […]

Above taken from The Red Nation’s Principles of Unity, ratified August 2018. I write this at the beginning of the Global Climate Strike in the hopes of raising questions, provoking conversation, and perhaps bringing some clarity to a fight that has life or death consequences for untold millions of people as well as our non-human kin. […]