Why is New York teachers' pension fund helping Penny Pritzker, who contributes to Illinois union busting
Why is the NY teachers’ pension fund enriching anti-public schools Penny Pritzker? Some are already boycotting Hyatt Hotels. You know that I think we should all be boycotting Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and other billionaire supporters of privatizing public schools.
But the problem is that most of the anti-public school crowd is made up of investment bankers, hedge funders and others whose jobs I can’t even begin to describe, much less figure out how to include in the boycott.
UNTIL TODAY…
.....when I read that one of my favorite non-favorites, Penny Pritzker, has started up a new private equity firm which has just received a $50 million commitment from the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System.
What?????? And some of that is MY MOM’s money.
As teacher-blogger Fred Klonsky pointed out last fall, Penny is a prominent member of Chicago’s Civic Committee, which wants to get rid of teacher pensions. She is also an owner of Hyatt Hotels, which refuses to grant its workers decent salaries or benefits. After Klonsky protested, the Illinois Education Association moved its March conference from the Hyatt O’Hare to the Rosemont Convention Center, but he reports that the IEA’s local delegation to the National Education Association’s annual meeting, to be held here in July, is set to stay at the Hyatt in downtown Chicago.
Penny is also a major contributor to teacher-bashing Stand for Children and the school-closing, teacher-and-staff-firing Renaissance Schools Fund.
Wish I had won the lottery so I could refuse to let them manage my money.
But all you teachers out there, why not demand a thorough review of where your pension funds are being invested, and make sure it’s not enriching your enemies?
Oh, and in case you didn’t already hate Penny? The Tribune reports that her private equity firm will focus on buying distressed property (i.e. foreclosures). Perfect. She wants your job AND your home.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 17th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
By: day to day sub
penny p and hyatt hotels
American is being polarized where the rich get richer and the poor become poorer. There will be no middle class by 2020 if all the rich get their way. Their idea is to privitaze all government institutions, especially schools, get public money, have no unions and gecome richer from the excess funds created making them richer.
Without Unions, there will be few middle classs people left and our country will be divided by the $$$$ signs.