Friday, February 15, 2008

Disaster Capitalism

In the 19 months following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ public schools had been replaced with privately run charter schools paid for with public vouchers. The union contracts of teachers were canceled. In her book entitled, Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein details the “orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events,” thus her term “disaster capitalism.” She sees a pattern in how the Bush administration used 9/11 as an excuse to bomb Iraq. She might have added the attempt to create an impression of a crisis of the Social Security system to replace it with a private alternative, and the weak economy to promote extension of tax cuts for the rich. These people can no longer be called “conservatives,” they are radicals.

2 comments:

Tracy said...

(1) Hopefully the current administration is sufficiently weakened that it manages no further of these _solutions_. (2) It is a hopeful sign that the three major presidential candidates are all considerably to the left of the current administration. (3) It would be interesting to know if the author documented any effect on students test scores. Or was she only concerned about the effect on the unionized teachers?

Tracy said...

(1) Hopefully the current administration is sufficiently weakened that it manages no further of these _solutions_. (2) It is a hopeful sign that the three major presidential candidates are all considerably to the left of the current administration. (3) It would be interesting to know if the author documented any effect on students test scores. Or was she only concerned about the effect on the unionized teachers?