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Politicizing COVID-19
Educating The Squeaky Wheel
Many parents remain cautious about physically returning to school while groups pushing a forced reopening get an outsized voice in the media.
- Speak Up
Nick Melvoin says that he is a Democrat, but his Astroturf group, Speak Up, advocates for issues that are decidedly not in line with the Democratic party. Through Speak Up, Melvoin promotes the privatization of public education, which was a plank in the last Republican party platform. The group is also strongly anti-union, at least when it comes to teachers’ right to organize. As Trump pushed for a reopening of schools, even as COVID-19 cases surged, Speak Up joined his cause.
Acting as though Speak Up was an actual grass-roots organization and not funded by the Walton family’s fortune, Los Angeles media has promoted the group’s right-wing opinion that teachers were overstating the risk of the pandemic as they…