Which Side Are You On?
Friends and constituents,
What a week it’s been. I was on the news often. But the biggest stories this week did not concern me or the Caucus drama.
The biggest stories this week had to do with the all-out war against public education we see occurring in Indiana.
Reid Litwack, the megadonor who has spent the better part of a decade funding anti-public education candidates, penned an op-ed this week saying the quiet part out loud: he wants Indianapolis Public Schools to die.
Litwack, like Michael Bloomberg and Jim Walton (of Wal-Mart fame), gives tremendous amounts of money to RISE INDY, a wolf-in-sheep’s clothing outfit that pretends to be aligned with Democrats while working hand-in-hand with the organizations that funded Braun, HB1136 author Jake Teshka, and others. The veil has fallen. The same slimy profit-seekers that are preying on our children in the Republican Supermajority are writing education policy for Democrats in Indianapolis as well. They have donated tens of thousands to the local Marion County Democratic Party. They have donated thousands to many Marion County Democrats at the Statehouse.
And now they think they’ve bought enough of our politicians that they can sink the knife into the heart of public education.
Their strategy is to scare the public into submission with HB1136, and then use other educational reform bills to defund IPS and kill it all the same.
But the people of Indiana are waking up and fighting back.
Over a hundred parents met for the first time to form an IPS Parents’ Council earlier this month.
30 people joined a DSA-led event on Monday at Spades Park Library to get organized and continue building our coalition.
And last night I was honored to join representatives of the Indianapolis Education Association and Indiana State Teachers Association. The teachers are fired-up, passionate, and ready to fight to defend the children they serve.
We are asking Democrats: Which side are you on?
Will you continue taking money from sleazy profiteers to stay quiet while our schools are destroyed?
Or will you join us in loudly and proudly fighting alongside unions and the community to save our public education system?
The “reforms” being debated in the Statehouse come straight out of Project 2025, and the people of Indiana expect - and demand - that the opposition party actually put up some opposition.
Public education supporters did not choose to go to war; over and over again, IPS has compromised to try to stave off the attacks. But over and over again, the Reid Litwacks and Brandon Browns of the world have exploited these compromises in order to continue chipping away at public education.
As Litwack himself puts it, we are now at a critical juncture. War is here, whether we want it or not. Our elected officials can join the community in fighting back with all our strength, or our public education system will die.
The lines are drawn. The battle is coming. You should be looking each and every civic leader in the eye and asking them: Which side are you on?
“They say in Marion County,
No one can just hang back;
You’ll either fight for public ed
Or simp for Reid Litwack.”
In love and solidarity,
Jesse