ICS phonebanking for Luis Sanchez? Conflict of interest much?

"We have our cake, and are eating it too." — Eli Broad (Predatory Pseudo-Philanthropist and Corporate Charter School Backer)


Bad enough that Luis Sanchez is reactionary Philip Anschutz's corporate candidate of choice. Even worse that Sanchez is putting his business connections and cronies ahead of the Echo Parque community's desire to make CRES #14 a public school, which is a natural considering that he hangs out in Beverly Hills tossing back cocktails with the affluent charter-voucher school jet set.

Indeed, just when you think Luis Sanchez couldn't be more unscrupulous and scandalous, he surprises with ever more deplorable acts of ignominy.

I got word over the weekend from several East Side parents that Inner City Struggle — or is that "S" for Sellout? — (ICS) was providing material and physical support for Sanchez's get out the vote efforts. The clincher was an email from an activist and LAUSD parent who wrote the following:

I thought you might find it interesting that the offices of ICS are being used to phone bank for Luis Sanchez's campaign. I know, for a fact, that last Tuesday there was phone banking which led to ICS shutting down their office at 5pm rather than 7pm.

Today I called ICS to see if they would confirm or deny their phonebanking efforts. They didn't answer, but I did leave a message in hopes they would call back. I also used their website contact us feature to try and get them to contact me. I suppose I wouldn't want to answer questions about serious conflicts of interest and misuse of 501C3 status either.

Not that this is the first time that Brenes, Sanchez, and Co. have used their 501C3 for nefarious, and probably illegal activities given the laws that are supposed to govern so-called nonprofit organizations. I recently documented ICS conspiring with Green Dot and several other charter-voucher PSC backers to try and split Garfield and its overflow school (Torres) between ICS and corporate charters during round one of the PSC school giveaways.

Getting this yet another example of Sanchez's corruption out the night before the election won't do much good considering the corporate candidate's coffers are teeming to the tune of six figures. It's also of little consequence given that the current board has blinders towards conflict of interest. Remember Cortines' Scholastic entanglement where the corporate congenial Mónica Garcia pooh-poohed what had to be one of the worst conflict of interest instances in recent memory.

We can't look to the philandering Mayor to provide Sanchez moral guidance either. Not only did Villaraigosa tour with charter crony (and at the time, city employee) Ben Austin promoting school privatization in closed town halls, Mayor Failure allegedly was the reason Parent Revolution's Austin's City Ethics Case # 2010-36 was conveniently dropped when Austin, Romero, and Schwartzenneger were forging the corporate charter trigger legislation (Orwellianly named Parent Empowerment).

However, this further documents Luis Sanchez's unbridled malfeasance, and we can point to it in the future when questions of his dubious character arise. Like the depraved Gates Foundation employee Yolie Flores-Aguilar, who Sanchez will likely be replacing, we can be sure that he'll be "Putting Charters First."