Will Compton, Carson Voters Send A Progressive Reformer To Sacramento-- Or Another Transactional Political Entrepreneur?

If you've been following the narrative here at DWT, you're aware that Blue America has endorsed our old friend, Compton School Board president Micah Ali for the open 64th Assembly district that covers Compton, Carson and Willowbrook. [You can contribute to his campaign here on our page for state legislative candidates we think have the potential to become national leaders.] Micah has a tough primary on June 3, less than a month away, and he's up against 3 opponents.

Micah has a coherent vision for his community, one he's been working on for many years. His opponents' visions are all about career opportunities-- for themselves. In 2012, President Obama was reelected with 88.7% of the vote in the 64th and two years earlier, Jerry Brown beat Meg Whitman 81.3-11.9%. The district's demography have changed drastically in recent decades and the population is now 62% Latino. Latinos, however, make up just 40% of the voters. Afican Americans, who are just 26% of the population, are 42.4% of the voters. Clearly, whoever wins on June 3, will be the next assemblyman. Going into the final month, Micah has the most cash on hand.

Perhaps if voters in Beverly Hills, Hollywood and the L.A. Times picked the Assemblyman, the least authentic of the 4 candidates, Prophet Walker, would win. Polls of actual AD-64 residents, like the one up top, however, don't show him as a real contender. This is coming down to a race between Ali and Gipson. So who, exactly is Mike Gipson?

A few days ago Carson's effort stop fracking was dealt a fatal blow by none other than Councilman Mike Gipson-- yes, a "Democrat." Gipson decided it would be better to put campaign contributions for his race for the Assembly before the interests of Carson residents so he refused to support the moratorium on highly suspicious and dangerous oil and gas extraction. Because of Mike Gipson's decision to put Oxy's bottom line ahead of the demands of Carson residents and because he chose to ignore the demands of his own community, over 200 oil and gas wells will be constructed within a rock's through of his own neighbors' homes. That's called a "sell out." And all it took was a few grand-- and, in all likelihood, the promise of more campaign contributions to come. We have plenty of politicians in Sacramento following that path already. Gipson has also gathered a team of homophobic advisors around him who were active in the Proposition 8 battle, including an anti-LGBT consultant and convicted criminal, former Compton Mayor Omar Bradley, who has now openly, brazenly endorsed him!

Gipson isn't stupid; he obviously weighed taking that Oxy campaign contribution against the interests’ of Carson residents and decided that the money from Oxy was much more valuable than the vote from Carson residents. It seems clear that Mike Gipson has decided that his climb up the political ladder is more important than the future of Carson’s families.

Based on just this one action-- but, believe you me, there are many many more instances-- we once again express our strong opinion that Mike Gipson does not deserve to be elected as an assemblyman. Furthermore, if being an assemblyman is that important to him and he no longer cares about Carson, then I think it is time for Mike to resign his position as City Council to make room for someone who will stand for the rights of the people. If he resigned, I would at least respect him more for being honest about it and doing the right thing.

One thing Sacramento does not need is more corrupt, transactional politicians willing to sell out their own constituents for campaign contributions from Big Oil and Gas and other avaricious special interests. Gipson is the worst possible choice for assemblyman.


UPDATE: Fracking Is Dangerous To Your Health

As voters are getting ready to send in their absentee ballots, this is what they're reading in the local paper:

Also occurring during the recent Sterling/Jenkins madness was the passage of state Sen. Holly Mitchell’s fracking moratorium bill (SB 1132) out of the Senate’s Environmental Quality Committee by a 5-2 vote, making it the second committee to approve the bill. It now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

While this was going on in the state Legislature, the Carson City Council was holding a special meeting at which that body was determining whether to end Carson’s moratorium on fracking in the predominately African-American section of that city. Well, the council voted to lift the fracking ban, igniting the extreme anger of the people who counted on their politicians to keep them safe. But you see, Democratic politicians used to do that-- vote for the common good of the people-- but more and more of them (including black ones) are becoming “corporate Democrats” who side with corporations and businesses and special interests that benefit them personally rather than the people. Republicans have always done that.

So, what happened in Carson? Corporate Democrats prevailed and reactivated fracking in the city. Mayor Jim Dear, a lifelong liberal, sided with Oxy Oil, Watson Land and the Carson Chamber of Commerce and voted to end the fracking moratorium. If you ask him about it, I’m sure he would say: “I did it for the jobs blah, blah, blah.”

Mayor Pro Tem Elito Santarina also voted to frack and Councilman and Assembly candidate Mike Gipson abstained on the issue. If he were a Democrat worth his salt, Gipson would not have abstained, because an abstention is the same as a “no” vote when the item under discussion needs “yes” votes to pass. The only members of the five-member city council who stood with the people were council members Lula Davis Holmes and Albert Robles. Like a true Democrat, Mitchell said this after her anti-fracking bill passed out of committee last week: “People must come before profits. My community needs jobs, but those jobs need to be safe for workers and surrounding communities.”

Regardless How Deeply In The Sand Republicans Bury Their Heads, Our Nation's Future Prosperity Is All About Education

Compton Board of Education President Micah Ali

DCCC Chair Steve Israel uses the empty phrase, "problem solvers" to describe the hopeless batch of mystery meat candidates he recruited and is leading down the path to slaughter in November. Most of his recruits are drudges who were recruited because they are drudges. The idea of "problem solvers," however, isn't as stupid as most of the claptrap that comes spilling out of Israel's mouth. This statement by a far smarter Member of Congress is anything but empty rhetoric: "I’m really getting tired of listening to people who don’t know what they’re talking about. One of the dirty little secrets of Congress is that many of us legislate in areas in which we are utterly bereft of knowledge. If ignorance is bliss, then some of our Members must be deliriously happy... [W]e have Members on the Agriculture Committee who couldn’t tell a plow from a harvester. We have Members on the Science Committee who couldn’t tell a proton from a photon. We have Members on the Foreign Affairs Committee who couldn’t locate Indonesia on a globe if their lives were at stake. And we have Members on the Intelligence Committee who are as dumb as… Well, you get the idea. And don’t even ask me about the Ethics Committee." Maybe you can tell from the stylistic flair, but that was the congressman from Central Florida, Alan Grayson. Aren't we all "really getting tired of listening to people who don’t know what they’re talking about," particularly when they're our elected political elites?

We've introduced you to Compton School Board president Micah Ali in the past. He's running against a corrupt Establishment Machine for the 64th district Assembly seat now. A real education reformer who understands the need to get to the economic and social roots that are leaving kids in danger, Ali is leading-- albeit not by much.

Ali starts this race in a strong position. He is tied at 18% with [Mike] Gipson and runs well ahead of [Prophet] Walker (6%) and [Steve] Neal (5%). A majority (54%) are undecided at this point in the race.

While Gipson leads in his home base of Carson by 36%-14%, Ali has the edge over
Gipson everywhere else in the district-- 30%- 11% in Compton, 17%- 10% in Los Angeles, and 16%-8% in the district’s other areas. Should Ali’s advantage hold outside of Carson, it will be difficult for Gipson to beat him in June.

We also found that voters are receptive to messaging focusing on Ali’s successful tenure as school board president. After hearing positive statements from each candidate, Ali jumps into a clear first place. His vote total increases by nine points, to 27%, giving him an eight-point lead over Gipson (19%, an increase of 1%) and larger edges over Walker (11%) and Neal (6%). Importantly, he cuts Gipson’s edge in Carson, while increasing his vote share in every part of the district.

Ali is strongly positioned for the primary election. He is the best-liked of the four candidates and the second best known. He starts out tied for the lead and garners a clear edge after voters learn more about the four candidates. With appropriate resources, Ali should make the general election and go on to win the seat.

Big Oil and fracking may be the dominant issue-- Ali opposing fracking and Gipson a paid-off shill for Big Oil and gas interests-- but what makes Ali one of the most compelling candidates for the state legislature in all of the Los Angeles Basin is his vision for educating young people. California will sink into Texas style ignorance and stagnation if we don't regain our status as a state with a vibrant and powerful education system. That's Ali's world. A report in today's NY Times emphasizes the looming problems America will have in maintaining our standard of living as a nation if we keep ignoring our children's education. The report doesn't show U.S. students anywhere near #1 relative to students in other developed countries.

[S]tudents who took the problem-solving tests in countries including Singapore, South Korea, Japan, several provinces of China, Canada, Australia, Finland and Britain all outperformed American students.

“The good news is that problem solving still remains a relatively strong suit for American students,” said Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national policy and advocacy group focused on improving high schools. “The challenge is that a lot of other nations are now developing this and even moving ahead. So where we used to, in an earlier era, dominate in what we called the deeper learning skills-- creative thinking, critical thinking and the ability to solve problems-- in terms of producing the workers that are increasingly needed in this area, other nations are coming on strong and in some cases surpassing us.”

Above I talked about the danger of California turning into another Texas. I had that fear in my mind because of a story by Melissa Block at NPR last night, As Texas Gets More Diverse, Educators Grab The Bull By The Horns. It's about seven and a half minutes and well worth listening to (at that link). The state of Texas, like CA-64, is a minority-majority area, and has been since 2005, even if most Anglo Texans refuse to accept that reality. Texas' Rick Perry-appointed state demographer, Steve Murdock, is warning that unless the growing Hispanic population are given access to opportunities, Texas overall will become poorer and less competitive. The state will spiral downward. "The reality is that the future of Texas will be tied to its minority populations and how well they do is how well we will do," he says. The key to that future, Murdock says, is better education which leads to higher-paying jobs.

Brian Woods is a school district superintendent in the sprawling, fast-growing San Antonio suburbs. Virtually all the growth in his district is Hispanic.

For superintendent Woods, that means he needs more resources and staff to meet the needs of disadvantaged students. So he was dismayed three years ago when the Texas legislature slashed $60 million out of his budget. He had to cut almost 1,000 staff positions at time when his student population was ballooning.

"To ignore the changes in our state and to ignore public education and health care as infrastructure projects, is really to set the state up for dismal times in the out years. These are long-term issues. The great 'Texas Miracle,' to borrow a George Bush phrase, cannot last if we don't fund infrastructure," he says.

Californians like to think they'll never sink to the level of Texans. But they're kidding themselves and California's corporate Democrats are just as likely to shortchange education as brain dead Texas racists. If you'd like to contribute to Micah Ali's Assembly campaign, you can do that here.

A Philosophy Of Governance-- Why We Help Our Neighbors… Or Not

Generally speaking, states that elect Democrats to public office spend far more money on public education than states that elect Republicans. The half dozen states that invest the least per student are Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma, Arizona, Mississippi, and Tennessee, essentially one-party states with solid GOP control who take all their orders directly from ALEC. This morning Reid Wilson looked at education spending around the country for Washington Post readers. "There is disagreement," he began, "within education circles over whether spending more money per pupil leads to better results. But there is no disagreement that the amount of money states spend on education has erupted in recent years… Today, the average student costs taxpayers in New York $18,167 a year, while Utah, Idaho and Oklahoma spend less than $8,000 a year on their students." There's "a growing gap between the amount liberal states and conservative states spend on education. Most liberal-leaning states have focused spending on low-income students, the report found, accounting for much of the cost increases."

Among the 10 states that spend the least amount per pupil, students in only one-- Utah-- perform higher than the national average in reading. Five have students who perform significantly worse than the national average in reading in both 4th and 8th grades, and students in three states perform below the national average in math.

Our go-to education policy expert is Compton School Board President Micah Ali, who is worried about the effective day-to-day allocation of resources of a school system struggling with integrating long, medium and short-term goals for lifting a largely economically-stresed population out of danger.

"It's a fact," he told us this evening, "that the United States spends more money on public education than other developed nations. Funding public education is a conundrum for most, as it involves an amalgamation of federal, state and local funds. In a country that believes we are all 'equal under law,' Compton USD students arrive at their very first day of school already behind their peers from Santa Monica or Beverly Hills. Federal funding should help us close that gap. Investing in early childhood education, school-based health centers, and expanded school lunch programs are proven winners that address the societal needs of children in this corner of America's community." He's not far from what billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates have been advocating and effectuating in other parts of the world.

For the most part, the Gates have been on the wrong side of the education debate here in America, funding the worst and most avaricious opponents of public education. They've been a lot better about promoting equality of opportunity outside the U.S., in the Third World. Bill Gates' latest newsletter tackles 3 right-wing myths that poor counties are doomed to stay poor. "The global picture of poverty," he wrote, "has been completely redrawn in my lifetime. Per-person incomes in Turkey and Chile are where the United States level was in 1960. Malaysia is nearly there, as is Gabon. And that no-man’s-land between rich and poor countries has been filled in by China, India, Brazil, and others. Since 1960, China’s real income per person has gone up eightfold. India’s has quadrupled, Brazil’s has almost quintupled, and the small country of Botswana, with shrewd management of its mineral resources, has seen a thirty-fold increase. There is a class of nations in the middle that barely existed 50 years ago, and it includes more than half of the world’s population."

[D]on’t let anyone tell you that Africa is worse off today than it was 50 years ago. Income per person has in fact risen in sub-Saharan Africa over that time, and quite a bit in a few countries. After plummeting during the debt crisis of the 1980s, it has climbed by two thirds since 1998, to nearly $2,200 from just over $1,300. Today, more and more countries are turning toward strong sustained development, and more will follow. Seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies of the past half-decade are in Africa.

Africa has also made big strides in health and education. Since 1960, the life span for women in sub-Saharan Africa has gone up from 41 to 57 years, despite the HIV epidemic. Without HIV it would be 61 years. The percentage of children in school has gone from the low 40s to over 75 percent since 1970. Fewer people are hungry, and more people have good nutrition. If getting enough to eat, going to school, and living longer are measures of a good life, then life is definitely getting better there. These improvements are not the end of the story; they’re the foundation for more progress.

…I am optimistic enough about this that I am willing to make a prediction. By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. (I mean by our current definition of poor.) Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer. Countries will learn from their most productive neighbors and benefit from innovations like new vaccines, better seeds, and the digital revolution. Their labor forces, buoyed by expanded education, will attract new investments.

A few countries will be held back by war, politics (North Korea, barring a big change there), or geography (landlocked nations in central Africa). And inequality will still be a problem: There will be poor people in every region.

But most of them will live in countries that are self-sufficient. Every nation in South America, Asia, and Central America (with the possible exception of Haiti), and most in coastal Africa, will have joined the ranks of today’s middle-income nations. More than 70 percent of countries will have a higher per-person income than China does today. Nearly 90 percent will have a higher income than India does today.

It will be a remarkable achievement. When I was born, most countries in the world were poor. In the next two decades, desperately poor countries will become the exception rather than the rule. Billions of people will have been lifted out of extreme poverty. The idea that this will happen within my lifetime is simply amazing to me.

Some people will say that helping almost every country develop to middle-income status will not solve all the world’s problems and will even exacerbate some. It is true that we’ll need to develop cheaper, cleaner sources of energy to keep all this growth from making the climate and environment worse. We will also need to solve the problems that come with affluence, like higher rates of diabetes. However, as more people are educated, they will contribute to solving these problems. Bringing the development agenda near to completion will do more to improve human lives than anything else we do.



I worry about the myth that aid doesn’t work. It gives political leaders an excuse to try to cut back on it-- and that would mean fewer lives are saved, and more time before countries can become self-sufficient.

So I want to take on a few of the criticisms you may have read.3 I should acknowledge up front that no program is perfect, and there are ways that aid can be made more effective. And aid is only one of the tools for fighting poverty and disease: Wealthy countries also need to make policy changes, like opening their markets and cutting agricultural subsidies, and poor countries need to spend more on health and development for their own people.

But broadly speaking, aid is a fantastic investment, and we should be doing more. It saves and improves lives very effectively, laying the groundwork for the kind of long-term economic progress I described in myth #1 (which in turn helps countries stop depending on aid)… The U.S. government spends more than twice as much on farm subsidies as on health aid. It spends more than 60 times as much on the military. The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

One of the most common stories about aid is that some of it gets wasted on corruption. It is true that when health aid is stolen or wasted, it costs lives. We need to root out fraud and squeeze more out of every dollar.

But we should also remember the relative size of the problem. Small-scale corruption, such as a government official who puts in for phony travel expenses, is an inefficiency that amounts to a tax on aid. While we should try to reduce it, there’s no way to eliminate it, any more than we could eliminate waste from every government program-- or from every business, for that matter. Suppose small-scale corruption amounts to a 2 percent tax on the cost of saving a life. We should try to reduce that. But if we can’t, should we stop trying to save lives?

…Second, the “aid breeds dependency” argument misses all the countries that have graduated from being aid recipients, and focuses only on the most difficult remaining cases. Here is a quick list of former major recipients that have grown so much that they receive hardly any aid today: Botswana, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Thailand, Mauritius, Singapore, and Malaysia. South Korea received enormous amounts of aid after the Korean War, and is now a net donor. China is also a net aid donor and funds a lot of science to help developing countries. India receives 0.09 percent of its GDP in aid, down from 1 percent in 1991.

Even in sub-Saharan Africa, the share of the economy that comes from aid is a third lower now than it was 20 years ago, while the total amount of aid to the region has doubled. There are a few countries like Ethiopia that depend on aid, and while we all-- especially Ethiopians themselves-- want to get to a point where that is no longer true, I don’t know of any compelling argument that says Ethiopia would be better off with a lot less aid today.

Critics are right to say there is no definitive proof that aid drives economic growth. But you could say the same thing about almost any other factor in the economy. It is very hard to know exactly which investments will spark economic growth, especially in the near term. However, we do know that aid drives improvements in health, agriculture, and infrastructure that correlate strongly with growth in the long run. Health aid saves lives and allows children to develop mentally and physically, which will pay off within a generation. Studies show that these children become healthier adults who work more productively. If you’re arguing against that kind of aid, you’ve got to argue that saving lives doesn’t matter to economic growth, or that saving lives simply doesn’t matter.

…Going back at least to Thomas Malthus, who published his An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, people have worried about doomsday scenarios in which food supply can’t keep up with population growth. As recently as the Cold War, American foreign policy experts theorized that famine would make poor countries susceptible to Communism. Controlling the population of the poor countries labeled the Third World became an official policy in the so-called First World. In the worst cases, this meant trying to force women not to get pregnant. Gradually, the global family planning community moved away from this single-minded focus on limiting reproduction and started thinking about how to help women seize control of their own lives. This was a welcome change. We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

The fact is that a laissez faire approach to development-- letting children die now so they don’t starve later-- doesn’t actually work, thank goodness. It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in these countries tend to have the most births, too. Scholars debate the precise reasons why, but the correlation between child death and birth rates is strong.

…When children survive in greater numbers, parents decide to have smaller families. Consider Thailand. Around 1960, child mortality started going down. Then, around 1970, after the government invested in a strong family planning program, birth rates started to drop. In the course of just two decades, Thai women went from having an average of six children to an average of two. Today, child mortality in Thailand is almost as low as it is in the United States, and Thai women have an average of 1.6 children.

…Mothers in Mozambique are 80 times more likely to lose a child than mothers in Portugal, the country that ruled Mozambique until 1975. This appalling aggregate statistic represents a grim reality that individual Mozambican women must confront; they can never be confident their children will live. I’ve spoken to mothers who gave birth to many babies and lost most of them. They tell me all their mourning was worth it, so they could end up with the number of surviving children they wanted.

When children are well-nourished, fully vaccinated, and treated for common illnesses like diarrhea, malaria, and pneumonia, the future gets a lot more predictable. Parents start making decisions based on the reasonable expectation that their children will live.

Death rates are just one of many factors that affect birth rates. For example, women’s empowerment, as measured by age of marriage and level of education, matters a great deal. Girls who marry in their mid-teens tend to start getting pregnant earlier and therefore have more children. They usually drop out of school, which limits their opportunities to learn about their bodies, sex, and reproduction-- and to gain other kinds of knowledge that helps them improve their lives. And it’s typically very difficult for adolescent brides to speak up in their marriages about their desire to plan their families. I just traveled to Ethiopia, where I had a long conversation with young brides, most of whom were married at 11 years old. They all talked about wanting a different future for their children, but the information they had about contraceptives was spotty at best, and they knew that when they were forced to leave school their best pathway to opportunity was closed off.

In fact, when girls delay marriage and stay in school, everything changes. In a recent study of 30 developing countries, women with no schooling had three more children on average than women who attended high school. When women are empowered with knowledge and skills, they start to change their minds about the kind of future they want.

…[T]he virtuous cycle that starts with basic health and empowerment ends not only with a better life for women and their families, but with significant economic growth at the country level. In fact, one reason for the so-called Asian economic miracle of the 1980s was the fact that fertility across Southeast Asia declined so rapidly. Experts call this phenomenon the demographic dividend.8 As fewer children die and fewer are born, the age structure of the population gradually changes.  Eventually, there’s a bulge of people in their prime working years. This means more of the population is in the workforce and generating economic growth. At the same time, since the number of young children is relatively smaller, the government and parents are able to invest more in each child’s education and health care, which can lead to more economic growth over the long term.

These changes don’t just happen by themselves. Governments need to set policies to help countries take advantage of the opportunity created by demographic transitions. With help from donors, they need to invest in health and education, prioritize family planning, and create jobs. But if leaders set the right strategic priorities, the prospect of a virtuous cycle of development that transforms whole societies is very real.

The virtuous cycle is not just development jargon. It’s a phenomenon that millions of poor people understand very well, and it guides their decisions from day to day. I have the privilege of meeting women and men in poor countries who commit the small acts of love and optimism-- like going without so they can pay their children’s school fees-- that propel this cycle forward. The future they hope for and work hard for is the future I believe in.

The Root Of Economic Inequality Goes Right Back To Inequality In Educational Opportunity

One of the brightest hopes for progressive governance in the L.A. area going forward-- not garden variety, corrupt Democratic Party hackish governance but progressive governance-- comes from Micah Ali, president of the Compton Board of Education and a candidate for the 64th Assembly District open seat. I've known Micah for many years and he's been a go-to expert for this blog on reforming California's educational system. This guest post once again deals with an issue he never stops putting in people's faces: the value to society and to the individual of early education programs. After you read it, if you'd like to help Micah beat a sad array of hucksters and machine candidates running against him, you can do that here.

Early Education Narrows The Gap Between The Haves And The Have-Nots
by Micah Ali

Compton, Watts and other South Los Angeles communities are filled with families struggling with the growing income disparity that grips the country.

During the last 30 years the so-called “one percenters” of American income earners have had their incomes rocket upward. For the middle class and those at the bottom, statistics show tiny gains and even backsliding. Since 1988 and through 2012, the median California income rose an embarrassing 7 percent.

Rather than wallow in the inequity of all this, what can we do? As president of the Compton Unified School District, my answer is to empower all kids from the very outset of their young lives. We need universal pre-kindergarten to get kids on par with their peers, rather than have them show up for their first day of school already behind. That’s why I support the expansion of “transitional kindergarten” at the heart of the proposed Kindergarten Readiness Act of 2014 and strongly encourage Gov. Jerry Brown to fund it.

Research has shown investing in universal preschool pays dividends for years to come. Most studies calculate long-term returns of up to $11  in economic benefits for every dollar invested in preschool programs. In Los Angeles County, the early childhood educational space contributes nearly $1.7 billion to the local economy through job creation alone. By educating children at an early age, they will be more likely to stay in school, develop career skills and effectively compete in the global marketplace.

Supporters of strong early education programs include Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman.  “Quality birth-to-five early childhood education for disadvantaged children,” Heckman said recently, “can simultaneously reduce inequality and boost productivity in America. A solid body of research shows the cost-effectiveness of early childhood development in helping to prevent achievement gaps, boost school achievement, promote better health outcomes, improve our workforce, increase productivity and reduce the need for costly social spending.”

When the state asked school districts to introduce at least one transitional kindergarten class last year, Compton Unified School District added the new grade to every elementary school for a total of 32 classes districtwide.

Assembly and Senate Democrats are allied in their support of the Kindergarten Readiness Act of 2014, which would expand existing transitional kindergarten programs to all 4-year-olds. But Gov. Brown unwisely left out resources for this critical investment in his proposed budget.

Universal preschool is a program that I fully support and an issue that I am passionate about not just for Compton, but for all communities in California. The lack of access to affordable preschool programs disproportionately impacts residents in low-income neighborhoods. I believe the key to moving California’s recovery forward as one united economy-- not the tale of two disparate economic recoveries-- is to invest in early childhood education. We need to ensure that all parents and students have access to a quality education. Education is the important bridge we have to cross the growing income gap.

Micah Ali: "How Can Children Learn If Their Parents Are Unemployed?"

Micah Ali talks with a father at drop-off time outside McKinley Elementary's preschool classroom

Micah Ali is an old friend of mine who I met through People For the American Way's Young Elected Officials Network. Blue America has endorsed him in an election next year for a seat in the California state Assembly. But right now he's still the head of the Compton School Board. This week Deepa Fernandes of KPCC hailed him as Compton's foot soldier for universal pre-K.

Born and raised in Compton, Ali has spent six years on the school board-- a job that pays $0-- because he says he wants to improve his neighborhood. His paying job is as the Associate Director of the Los Angeles County Education Foundation-- though Ali said he’s often mixing the two roles.

When Ali first ran for the school board, his slogan was: “Educate Don’t Incarcerate.”

“At that time, in 2007, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was arresting almost 600 or so folk under the age of 18 in Compton,” he said.

“These are kids,” he argued, “that should be in school, not in jail.”

But perhaps his biggest push since he’s been on the board has been a focus on preschoolers.

When the state asked school districts to introduce at least one Transitional Kindergarten class last year, Compton, under Ali's leadership, added the new grade to every elementary school-- for a total of 32 classes district-wide.

Preschool, he said, will “not only bolster the community with an educated workforce, but also bolster California.”

He sees quality education for 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds as a key part of the solution to many of the city’s bigger problems: crippling unemployment and high poverty. Compton’s unemployment rate last year pushed 16 percent. Its poverty rate of almost 30% is one of the highest in the nation.

The statistics roll off his tongue.

“The early childhood educational space contributes some $1.7 billion to the local economy in LA County. How? Job creation,” he said in an interview. “But also when you look at a school district, if we start at an early age educating children they’ll be … far more agile and be truly competitive in a global market.”

In 2012, the rest of school board selected him to be the body’s president-- and kept him in the job when decision-time came back around this year.

When Newark Mayor Cory Booker came to the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles in September to talk about the importance of preschool, Ali was there, dressed in a dapper suit, hobnobbing with early education heavy hitters.

He wanted people to know that Compton has a “firm commitment” to early childhood education.

“We talked about foster youth, individuals who are English language learners, as well as individuals who are just simply disadvantaged by the mere vicissitudes of life,” he said.

He brought an on-the-ground perspective from Compton.

During his visit to McKinley, he connected with parents, from the young couple who arrived in a pick-up truck blaring Alicia Keys, to the recently arrived African immigrant grandfather, to the non-english speaking mothers.

This is not the Compton Ali grew up in, but Ali said he's happy about demographic changes in Compton-- 77 percent of the district’s students are now Latino. He’s learning Spanish to be able to communicate with their parents.

During his recent visit to McKinley, he was surprisingly effective in communicating with one parent, despite the language gap.

After the school visit, Ali headed off to the headquarters of the United Association Local Union 250, which represents plumbers and other blue-collar workers. He was meeting Joe Macias, who runs the union’s apprentice program.

They bump into each other in the parking lot, and they go right to work.

His pitch: the apprenticeship program could really help some of the parents he’d met that morning.

“While their children are in …preschool,” he told Macais, “the parents could possibly receive either job training or be part of the apprenticeship program.”

For Ali, this is all part of helping kids get an education. How can children learn if their parents are unemployed or don’t have a stable home environment?

Doesn't Compton Have Enough Problems Without Criminals Infiltrating The Political System?

Right-wing political hit man-for-hire, Basil Kimbrew

I was saddened this week when a friend of mine, a smart and idealistic young guy who has been working on the ground for candidates, told me he's getting out of the field. "The consultants," he told me in disgust, "run the whole show and its all about lining their own pockets." In the past we talked about the consultants have taken over the DCCC and run the committee not to elect candidates but to enrich themselves. It's exactly as bad-- and dysfunctional-- on the other side of the aisle. Consultants are, more or less, a special class of criminal. And it has infected politics locally as well. This week, here in California, one convicted felon/consultant, Basil Kimbrew, working for Mike Gipson, a candidate for Assembly for Compton, went beyond the loose standards of his profession in trying to undermine Gipson's progressive candidate, Micah Ali, in the race.

Elected to the Compton School Board in the 1990s, Kimbrew was convicted on falsifying his residency for the election, a felony. He started a political consulting firm in 2002 and soon was sentenced to two years in prison for stealing money from the Compton School district. (He had been well-connected enough to get the sentence suspended in favor of a strict 5-year probation that included a complete ban from political consulting or political campaign activities-- which he immediately violated by consulting for candidates in the 2006 election cycle, including his defense attorney Anthony Willoughby’s failed Assembly race. The DA asked, and the judge agreed, to have Kimbrew serve his two-year sentence. After he served his time in prison, he returned to political consulting and went to work on Prop 8, the anti-gay equality amendment to the Constitution. He sells his services to conservative groups needing someone who can help trick traditionally Democratic voters into supporting their right-wing agendas. He's a perfect fit for Gipson.

The attack Gipson paid him to make on Ali is typical of Kimbrew's kind of sleazy politics-- just more so. This week, respected journalist Betty Pleasant, blew Kimbrew's cover and exposed him too the community.

That ex-convict Basil Kimbrew, who was arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned for engaging in political hanky-panky in Compton several years ago, is at it again some more!! Through his “California Friends of the African American Caucus” website, he twice blasted this week some scurrilous accusations and innuendoes against a Compton official, who, in my opinion was simply doing his job, and tied him to a popular Los Angeles woman with impeccable credentials and character to some kind of evil deed. And for what reason? Politics. I am so angry about this that I’m finding it difficult to write about it without using the full range of my expression-- a range that includes words that would not be permitted in a family publication.

This is the thing: Basil has twice accused Micah Ali, president of the Compton Unified School District Board of Trustees, of funding his prospective campaign for the state Assembly by awarding a “lucrative” contract to the St. John Wellness Center for it to establish a clinic on the campus of Dominguez High School. Basil comes to this conclusion because Ali is employed by the Los Angeles County Education Federation (LACEF) that has some kind oversight of the St. John Wellness project, which has established many on-campus clinics for children at plenty of Southland schools.

Basil’s email blast implies that Ali was in cahoots with stellar attorney Cynthia McClain-Hill, who is noted for her altruism and community service, because she serves on the LACEF Board of Directors. In Basil’s mind, since Ali works for the LACEF and McClain-Hill serves on the LACEF board, ergo, together they hatched a devious plot to obtain a political campaign contribution by awarding a Compton school district no-bid, $1-a-year contract to establish a St. John’s clinic on one of their high school campuses. Is that insane, or what?

Of course, Ali denies this, and I believe him because this convoluted scenario makes no sense; and while I don’t know Ali, I do know McClain-Hill very well and she would not engage in such a needless quid-pro-quo. After all, she’s in a position to provide the clinic without getting Ali any money whatsoever. And besides, where is Basil’s proof? He’s simply making a series of wild, unsubstantiated accusations for which he ought to be sued. So why is he doing it? From what I gather, Basil is fronting for two infamous empty suits: Carson City Councilman Mike Gipson and Compton Assemblyman Isadore Hall who are positioning themselves for an upcoming political race in which they’d rather Ali not enter. Yep, Basil is up to his old tricks. Ignore him.

A couple years ago we covered Ali's successful school board race and emphasized that "sleazy charter operators hope to funnel tax dollars into corporate profits-- and high management fees and salaries-- by de-unioninzing the education system. Foward-thinking progressives like Micah are at the forefront of putting the interests of students first and foremost while protecting the hard-won gains of his community's teachers." With Rove-like tactics, Gipson and Kimbrew, are trying to turn Ali's strongest assets into a negative. Blue America has endorsed Micah Ali for this seat and if you'd like to help make the Assembly a little more independent and a little less corrupt, you can contribute to his campaign here.

Micah Ali Takes Compton School District Problems To Education Secretary Arne Duncan

Last we checked in with our pal Micah Ali, the most progressive member of the Compton school board, he was advocating for a different kind of charter schools-- ones that put students first, not profits first.

Micah's 33 and was elected to the School Board in 2007 and he's on his way to DC right now, to meet with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to share his experiences working on public policy supporting English language development strategies-- remember Compton is now a Hispanic majority city-- and the Breakfast in The Classroom program, so important for inner city students when you remember that breakfast sharpens memory and cognitive skills.

Micah is meeting with Duncan and other Department of Education officials as part of a convening of the Young Elected Official Network under the auspices of People for the American Way. Their annual meeting will be addressed by three of the most outstanding Members of Congress concerned with public education, Donna Edwards (D-MD), Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Jared Polis (D-CO). He's looking forward to it and he told us, "As a public education innovator, I, too, must commit myself to being a lifelong learner. The profundity of ideas generated and viable solutions learned from others attending the convening will undergird my constant fight for lower class sizes, parent engagement and vocational technical education for students, who prefer to pursue trades."

Meanwhile, back in Compton Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Anthony Mohr has just thrown out the corporate-inspired parent petition to force a charter conversion at McKinley Elementary. The paperwork wasn't put together properly.

The Compton Unified School District, which governs McKinley, argued that dating each signature was crucial in determining whether a signer's child was enrolled at the school and had legal rights over the child at the time, the AP reported.

Mohr said in his tentative ruling Friday that he understood the “pain, frustration and perhaps education disadvantages” his 14-page decision might cause but added that he needed to follow the law.

Mohr agreed to hear more arguments June 7.

Sleazy charter operators hope to funnel tax dollars into corporate profits-- and high management fees and salaries-- by de-unioninzing the education system. Foward-thinking progressives like Micah are at the forefront of putting the interests of students first and foremost while protecting the hard-won gains of his community's teachers.

To Turn Schools Into Profitable Warehouses, Corporations First Need To Destroy Teachers Unions

I think it's been pretty well established by now that right-wing education "reformer" Michelle Rhee is just a discredited huckster for the corporate push to take over and profitize the school system, she's just the latest tool that corporate America has loosed on the public school system (not unlike, in her own way, Scott Walker, Rick Scott, John Kasich, Rick Snyder, Jan Brewer, etc). Corporate behemoths will never be able to take over the public education system without first destroying the teachers' unions. And that has long been one of the primary goals of the for-profit-charter-school movement.

Micah Ali is a friend of mine and a member of the Compton School Board, a progressive and a tireless fighter for the ordinary working families in some of L.A.'s most economically and socially challenged neighborhoods. Unions don't have a better friend in local government than Micah. So a few weeks ago I was shocked when we had dinner and he told me he was pushing a plan for charter schools. This was from the guy who almost single-handedly prevented the McKinley Elementary School takeover by a for-profit predator. He's got a new plan, though, what he calls a "dependent charter," one that is independent of the school board but not independent of responsibility and accountability. Micah penned an OpEd for the Los Angeles Wave this week explaining his proposal.

Thomas Jefferson said it best when he proclaimed, “Every generation needs a revolution.” But today, we often make the mistake of declaring a revolution against each other based on our own selfish agendas. We must stop wasting time casting blame and attacking one another, and instead start focusing on finding real solutions that work for our schools.

When less than 50 percent of Compton students are not graduating, it is time to take a brave stand. What we need now, more than ever, is to come together for the sake of our children. I am calling to action every stakeholder in the Compton Unified School District to join me in igniting a revolution to ensure that every child has access to a high-quality education in a safe learning environment that meets individual student needs.

We must become open to new educational methods while holding on to what already works. What we do know is that Compton has satisfactory performing elementary schools, although we must increase academic performance levels for our K-5 grade students. Where we are falling short is our middle and high schools, which have some of the lowest academic performance scores in California.

Compton has been a longtime supporter of traditional education. And while that has adequately served our elementary schools, it clearly is not working for our middle and high schools. We need to begin searching for innovative solutions that have proven to work for other school districts. The solutions that I champion are threatening to some because I’m fighting against a system that seeks to hold onto traditional educational methods that have not worked for our schools for decades.

It is time for the Compton Unified School District to study the feasibility of a dependent charter school. It is well documented that dependent charter schools-- charters overseen by a school district-- design programs that suit the individual learning needs of the students, with the ease of certain regulations, allowing teachers and administrators to develop often more effective learning strategies. A dependent charter school can also receive federal funding and other grants that meet the financial needs of a top performing school.

To create a level playing field for our schools to compete on a national scale, we must appeal to our federal and state governments to provide more desperately needed funding to Compton schools. Academic performances in Compton schools began declining in 1978 after Proposition 13 forced California cities to redistribute their taxes, significantly cutting funding from our public schools. Our community must launch a district-wide movement to demand that our federal and state leaders put more local tax monies back into our public schools.

We all know that children are our future. That means we must prepare a generation of college and career-ready students. One way our district can make this happen is by working closely with local trade unions to provide apprenticeship training to our middle and high school students, giving them valuable skills for future job placement.

Another way we can ensure their future is by creating a village setting for our students, parents and teachers. To do this, we must establish small learning communities that will provide immediate intervention for the specific challenges affecting each neighborhood school. But to make this village a reality, our parents must become more active in their children’s education and get involved in parent organizations, like the PTA. Studies have shown that parent engagement is the number one indicator of student success.

When our schools improve, our community improves. How can we tackle other social issues ailing our community-- from the economy, to crime, to housing-- if we lack a skilled workforce to address these problems? It all starts with education.

Like many, I am outraged by the state of Compton’s school performance levels. I challenge the community to redirect that energy by making a positive difference. We are all in a position to do something to improve our schools. I will continue leveraging my position as a board member of the Compton Unified School District Board of Trustees by introducing and supporting measures that result in better educational outcomes for our students. I ask that we join together in making it our collective revolution to fight for the future of our children.

Micah's a cerebral kind of guy; for an action guy he lives a surprisingly big part of his life in the world of ideas and innovations. He points out this his district has always been "a longtime supporter of traditional education... We need to begin searching for innovative solutions that have proven to work in other school districts."