International Student Movement

August 2013 - Chicago:
Protests against Privatization of Schools

Since Monday, August 5th, hundreds of people turned up at Palmer House in Chicago to protest against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which held its annual meeting there between August 7th and 9th.

ALEC might sound to some like a governmental institution, but it is actually more like a lobbying organisation.

Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations.
source: alecexposed.org

Among others ALEC propagates various policies aimed at an increased commercialization of education. It also regularly generates rankings of school performances. As many of you probably know rankings are popular instruments to encourage a competition for resources among educational institutions.
According to The Guardian "139 Alec bills [were] introduced and 31 enacted this year. The legislation focused on redirecting taxpayer money from public schools to for-profit private schools.".

This video gives a pretty good overview of the current state of the ongoing struggle against the increasing privatization of schools in Chicago:

The focus of ALEC's annual meeting was not only on education. Also the drafting of new bills with its Environmental Agriculture Task Force on behalf of its members were discussed.

During the rally on August 8th police rushed into the crowd and arrested a few people while throwing them to the ground for no apparent reason:

Also at protest actions during the previous days many protesters were arrested.

Last but not least it is vital to point out that the root of the problem is not ALEC or "corporate greed" (as proclaimed by some of the protesters), but the capitalist system, which inevitably is based on competition and the drive to generate profits. The circumstance that capital gets organized in institutions like ALEC is a logical consequence of the predominant economic system.
Also in other parts of the world similar institutions already exist or take shape. In Germany for example there is the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE), which presents itself as a non-partisan body of experts made up of the Bertelmann Foundation (Bertelsmann being a mass media corporation) as well as the German Rectors' Conference. One of the favorite activities of the CHE is - just like ALEC - to annually publish rankings of faculties and universities and from time to time propagate the re-introduction of tuition fees. Not surprisingly institutions like the CHE and ALEC also have a significant impact on how the purposes of an "education" system are perceived.

for more info: heavy.com / thenation.com / chicagoist.com / voices.suntimes.com / huffingtonpost.com