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[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]
At the annual assembly of the National Education Association (NEA) in Philadelphia last weekend, President Becky Pringle addressed representatives of the three-million-member labor union with a bombastic speech that sparked social media comparisons to Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
In her heavily political speech, Pringle raised such progressive issues as LGBTQ rights, unrestricted abortion, equity and inclusion. She shouted about the union having “worked hard to rid ourselves of a tyrannical, deceitful, and corrupt [Trump] White House,” about resisting any “scheme” such as school vouchers to “drain resources from our beloved public schools,” about fighting nonexistent “book banning” in Florida, and about “transforming” the American educational system “into something it was never designed to be—a racially and socially just and equitable system that prepares every student, EVERY student, EVERY STUDENT, EVERY ONE!” [Italics added]
Declaring forcefully that “We WILL organize for power!” she referenced the legacies of other left-wing activists such as Cesar Chavez and Harvey Milk, then closed in a crescendo of screeching about the NEA being
the ones who help shape the heart of this nation’s hope and dreams! We are the ones who hold steadfast to the belief in the plausibility of the possible! We are the heirs of all who did this work before us! We must keep going! NEA delegates, we can do this work! We must do this work!
“Keep going, NEA, to preserve our democracy! We must win all the things,” Pringle continued to yell as she whacked the podium and waved her hands aloft. “Our students are depending on us to win all the things,” she continued, while chanting ecstatically, “All the things! All the things! All the things!”
“We are the NEA!” she shrieked repeatedly.
Pringle’s completely uncorked dramatics prompted widespread online mockery and comparisons to an episode of NBC’s hit comedy The Office in which intense nerd Dwight Schrute delivered an equally histrionic speech at a sales convention, reportedly modeled in the style of Mussolini.
“These power-hungry control freaks think they own your kids. They’re in a cult that worships government and detests parents,” school choice activist Corey DeAngelis told Fox News. “It’s time to defund teachers unions and allow the money to follow the child. Becky Pringle pulled a Dwight Schrute. She is off-the-rails and desperate to maintain control over the minds of other people’s children.”
This isn’t the first time the Schrute/Mussolini comparison to Pringle has been floated. After last year’s NEA gathering, a National Review headline about that Pringle address read, “Teachers’ Union President Goes Full Dwight Schrute in Unhinged Speech.” “Pringle believes she’s a revolutionary,” wrote the magazine, which also posted a tweet from educator Paul Rossi observing, “The closing of Becky Pringle’s latest speech to the NEA was a Hitlerian performance. This is not a casual comparison.”
The closing of Becky Pringle’s latest speech to the NEA was a Hitlerian performance. This is not a casual comparison. https://t.co/TuDs8EXW8V pic.twitter.com/B0Ow7uBqZA
— Paul Rossi (@pauldrossi) July 14, 2023
Nicki Neily, founder and president of the Parents Defending Education nonprofit, noted on X that Pringle ranted this year for nearly a half hour without mentioning the learning loss suffered by students impacted by the pandemic lockdowns supported by the NEA totalitarians. Indeed, there was nary a moment of the speech devoted to anything of substance for the children – only soaring promises of “excellence” and “brilliance.” The rest was devoted to calls for transformative activism and total victory.
That’s because the union’s mission is not education or children. As with all leftist entities and agendas, the issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution, as a radical from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) once wrote. And the Frankfurt School-influenced, Saul-Alinsky-idolizing, Critical Race Theory-promoting NEA, whose agenda checks off every left-wing box you can name, long ago established itself as one of the most powerful political organizations in America.
The Freedom Center’s Discover the Networks (DTN) site, the online encyclopedia of the Left, describes Pringle’s obsession with prioritizing social justice activism over education:
At the NEA’s annual conference in July 2019, Pringle launched a bid to become President of the 3 million-member union. Among the many topics discussed at the conference were: the “need [to hire] more teachers of color”; the importance of supporting the “MeToo movement”; the phenomenon of so-called “white fragility”; and the “defense of a person’s right to control their own body, especially for women, youth, and sexually marginalized people” — i.e., unfettered rights to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand at any stage of pregnancy, and to transgender surgeries or medical interventions at any age.
What do such agenda items as the MeToo movement, dealing with white fragility, and promoting abortion-on-demand have to do with educating our children? Nothing, unless you see educators, classrooms, and children as tools for advancing that agenda.
DTN also reports on Pringle’s committed support for the Marxist revolutionaries of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement:
Pringle in early 2020 promoted the NEA’s national Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, whose highly racialized perspectives were incorporated into innumerable classroom lessons across the United States during the week of February 3-7. “We as educators need to deepen the dialogue and support our students to dismantle institutional racism,” she said. “When we fight for education justice, all students win.”
No they don’t. When the pursuit of education justice, whatever that means, takes precedence over actual education, all students lose. But hey, the union wins and the revolution is furthered, and that enables Pringle and the NEA to amass more power with which to seize “all the things.”
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
Interesting top photo there. …
Is she praising Jesus, or having an orgasm? ~
Or simply hysterical?
The whole damn thing is hysterical ~
And sad. NEA is akin to a terroist organization. It should be banned and dingle Pringle jailed.
And it collects millions from teachers and administrators which are then funneled right back to the Democrats which is why it is politically oriented.
Demonstrating her deep throat skills?
I bet it gave you a tingle.
Nah, tingles are only for the news presenters.
Good one Deb. Upvoted.
How awful. A disgusting POS.
Some obese individuals needs to lay off the Fentanyl.
This is what illegal drugs do to your brain.
Projectile Vomit!
The NEA is reason Parents should be allowed to Home School their kids without the Leftists Brainwashing them Hogg and Thunberg are examples of the Brainwashing
Don’t compare Pringle to Mussolini. That’s an insult to a man wjo was born into a cold-and-hungry poor family and harshly punished in a Catholic school. And thst’s just his boyhood. Do a little research on his life before he came to power
Oh brother, and the Victimhood Olympics are on.
Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington had harsh childhoods but somehow, they avoided bringing disaster to their people and country.
I couldn’t agree more
Mussolini was a bully. I never said he was a victim. He was a thug, but he did have courage. Pringle seems to have none
Well, I am impressed by how he ended. That has meaning for a society. And may be what we lack today. I am noting more themes about that sort of thing on social media. So, it’s on many people’s mind. Sometimes you have to display gross disrespect to stop tyranny.
Yes – but the ready ad hominem response would be that Americans like Booker T. Washington were just “Oreos” – black on the outside and white on the inside. And in the land of the intellectually lazy and ill-educated Ad Hominem ‘arguments rule!
I can’t tell if this is joking or serious.
Have you researched Pringle’s back story? How do you know she wasn’t a man born into a cold and poor family?
I thought that was her MickyDs order
I believe Kami (pronounced Commie) Harris may have found a running mate.
Lord, say it ain’t so!
Pringle’s obviously a very disturbed individual. I watched that performance on a different site. I couldn’t watch it again.
Parents, get your kids out of these NEA-run schools. You can bet the teachers are no better. If your state has school choice take advantage of that.
Me too. “Unhinged rant” doesn’t do it justice.
With creatures like Pringle in charge of much of America’s education, is it any wonder we have one of the lowest educational levels in the world, much lower than even the overwhelming majority of Third World/developing countries? And she’s stupid on top of being a “woke,” anti-white, racist fanatic.
If she wants “all the things” I suggest that gorilla starts with a banana.
Thus does bring to mind that old Captain Beefheart song: “Abba Zaba”
Yes, further evidence that teacher’s unions have little if anything to do with educating kids.
“Becky Pringle”? Seriously?
A supremely hilarious 1950s, “Father Knows Best”, housewife name, even for a white girl, but for a down with the system sistah in 2024? LOL!
(Makes me think of the name Annie Sprinkle)
Still a bum, a communist, then a Ifascist. His NEA disciples combine the worst of both.
In my earlier life I belonged to two labor unions and later dealt with construction unions as management but I was never confronted with any LGBTQ rights, unrestricted abortion, BLM, equity and inclusion. What did those things have to do with collective bargaining (a union’s primary function)?
You answered your own question. It’s about the COLLECTIVE and its agenda. I was a union member for a couple years (DC subway, hi-rises, bridges) and while the workers did the job at hand the prevailing attitude I encountered was ” F the man for all you can get”. By contrast the NEA is in a better position to fundamentally change the direction of education in an attempt to “own it” whereas construction workers can not change the structural components of any given project to gain more power.
After AOC’s losing it in the Bronx over Bowman’s non reelection, another hysterical woman’s antics. Another one who drank the kool-aid.
The Left is, increasingly, losing it.
They are unhinged, plain and simple.
Thank you, Thomas Jefferson, for public schools.
I guess Jefferson, like G.W. Bush, thought we need to reduce freedom to grow freedom.
Americans must decide if they want education or indoctrination. The NEA is officially a loony bin. This manic meltdown exposes the dysfunctional state of education in America.
The best thing about this incident is full frontal exposure of the low priority of actually educating our children. This psycho has just made the best case for supporting private schools more than any other debate or public discourse I have ever observed.
Thanks NEA for exposing your real motivation for destroying public education in America.
I might add, in light of this maniacal tirade, it’s time for local school boards to recognize the enemy within and take back control of the curriculum and environment to which they are subjecting their children. Unfortunately, the number of parents and school board members who witnessed this meltdown is probably less than the number concerned with who is taking over the schools.
I think it was on Pastor James White’s channel that I saw this last night. What an absolute lunatic. How does a person like this get put in a job that has anything to do with children?! What fair minded, rational person would see this video and think, “She seems psychologically stable. I know! We’ll put her in charge of the education of children!” Who would think that?
We need to pass a law outlawing all government employee unions. Government employee unions are a faction that enjoys unmerited advantages over every other faction in society. Their only interest in increasing the monopoly they already enjoy, and taking over the government. Government employees have no interest in hard bargaining with such unions. It’s always “someone else’s money,” and there are no market pressures to actually produce any benefit to anyone. What’s worse is that such unions have been taken over by “social justice warriors.” But they actually have no interest in “social justice,” only their own power and money.
I’m not sure but I don’t think there is a law mandating school districts have to hire union teachers. It seems to me it’s a local issue and, unfortunately, the school districts have little choice.
This comment is 100% accurate. If memory serves it was JFK whose administration proposed, supported and passed legislation allowing government employees to unionize. For the reason(s) you cite there needs to be two parties to a negotiation. In the case of government unions there is no counter party with which to negotiate.
Our children are just a stepping stone on the road to political power for these people. They don’t care their students are illiterate or can’t determine what 20% of a cost is. They don’t care if their colleagues silence children’s speech or tear them away from their families. What they care about is what all progressive radicals care about – indoctrination of soldiers to fight for their version of utopian power.
Seig heil Fuerher Becky.
Pringles is demonstrating how to down an entire can of Pringles® in one gulp!
That loudmouth shrew receives about $450K yearly in salary and benefits. Check out the NEA website for ALL the overpaid, and unnecessary department “officers”. Puke !
We need a serious push for my answer to Citizens United: any organization which is not explicitly formed for the purpose of lobbying and influencing elections on behalf of defined political goals and moreover has no other function must have any expenditures on lobbying, political advertising, contributions to political parties or candidates or to organizations covered by the exclusion just stated approved in detail (amounts and specific purposes) by a majority vote of the equitable ownership if it is a joint-stock corporation, or by a majority of the membership otherwise (including labor unions).
It is obnoxious for union bosses to spend the rank-and-file’s dues on their own political priorities if they are not shared by the rank-and-file. It is obnoxious for top managers and boards of directors to spend the shareholders’ money on their own political priorities if they are not shared by the shareholders for whom, in theory, they work.
The rabid rant recently regurgitated by the NEA’s president is a stark reminder of the academic malpractice and cultural brainwashing students have suffered in our failing government schools since the late 1960s. Its members long ago abandoned the traditional role of purveyors of knowledge and wisdom which had made teachers worth their weight in gold to parents everywhere. This new breed of educators proved to be sorry substitutes for such precious human resources. They foolishly permitted leftist ideologues to infest the teaching profession and fundamentally transform them from guardians of Western values into destructive agents of Marxist indoctrination. Their captive victims’ atrophied critical thinking skills rendered them particularly vulnerable to the left’s perennial utopian promises. Healing this pathology will not be easy. It can be achieved, however, by nuking (metaphorically speaking) its spawning grounds in colleges of education nationwide and replacing them with apprenticeship programs using the few “gold standard” teachers remaining in our dysfunctional education system as mentors to the next generation’s aspiring pedagogues. God willing, if we the people of the United States succeed in this worthy endeavor, our descendants will thank us for preserving the blessings of liberty which preceding generations inherited from their freedom-loving ancestors (ref. www.newguardsforliberty.com).