Lesson Learned

Are libertarian activists Charles and David Koch--best known for their efforts to convince gullible people that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax--also trying to "resegregate" American public schools?

At first glance, the billionaire libertarian Koch brothers and the Wake County, North Carolina, school board couldn't be more disparate. Charles and David Koch, the brains behind the massive Koch Industries conglomerate and the funders of so many right-wing political causes, are national figures, credited with (or accused of, depending on your political persuasion) launching the tea party movement and waging war on the Obama administration and its agenda. The Wake County public school board is, well, just that.

In reality, there are deep connections between the Kochs and Wake County, and it's all about the money. The latest installment in the left-leaning Brave New Foundation's "Koch Brothers Exposed" video series reveals how a Koch-founded and funded outfit, Americans for Prosperity, fueled a campaign to "resegregate" the schools of Wake County, a prosperous area in central North Carolina that's home to the cities of Raleigh and Cary, among others.

The story starts back in 2009, when elections were held for four of Wake County's nine school board seats—enough seats to dictate the public school district's agenda if all four board members wanted the same reforms. That's where Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group, came into play. AFP swooped in to fund and organize on behalf of four candidates who sought to kill the district's policy of busing to ensure diverse, desegregated public schools. The AFP-backed candidates ran against what they called "forced busing"—a phrase, the film points out, that dates back to George Wallace in the 1970s—and instead stressed that schools should educate only those who lived in the surrounding neighborhood.

Local reporters, some of whom are interviewed in the film, connected the push to eliminate busing with the philosophies of AFP and its funders. "They're definitely pushing an agenda to resegregate these schools, but there's also a real push toward privatization," Sue Sturgis of the Institute for Southern Studies says in the film.

This is a situation with no easy answers...

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Opponents, like the filmmaker and activist Robert Greenwald, say at the heart of the battle is a larger fight over publicly-funded education and the Koch brothers commitment to funding activism, which falls in line with their libertarian agenda.

"I don't want to be a panic or hysteric, but if you can have the Koch brother billionaires, multibillionaires, buying a school board election, where does it stop?" said Greenwald, who this morning released"Koch Brothers Exposed: Why do the Koch Brothers Want to End Public Education?", a short film on the Koch Brothers' role in the Wake County election.

“This money is buying ideology and that has a consequence," he said. "It's such a tough situation because here are local people with a school system that is working, that people are enjoying, that has created a good education, created diversity [and] created success."

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The Washington Post covered this story earlier in the year.



This story is fascinating. Having grown up in the Boston area, I'm well aware that programs intended to foster diversity in education don't always work the way they're supposed to, to say the least. However, I'm highly skeptical of virtually anything the Koch Brothers are associated with these days. Maybe the truth lies somewhere between both sides of this contentious issue.