By Kyle Olson
EAGnews.org

DETROIT – “By Any Means Necessary” is a race-focused group that embraces militant behavior as a legitimate means to an end.

In Michigan, the group interrupted and literally overtook a legislative hearing on voter ID laws.  A few years ago, members flipped over tables and created near riot-like conditions in a Michigan Board of Canvassers hearing regarding an anti-affirmative action ballot proposal.

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One might expect this group of hotheads to be rejected by responsible people of all political stripes. But that’s clearly not the case.

BAMN members can be found at every union and leftist love-in, like the 2010 “One Nation” event in Washington, DC – the predecessor to Occupy Wall Street.

The radical group has been openly embraced by both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, which have each given the group a caucus.

In These Times, a leftist website, writes that BAMN and Occupy Detroit recently teamed up to defend failing schools in the city by camping out and refusing to leave.  Arrests left BAMN undeterred, and its members were quite happy to “defend failing schools” instead of working to make them better.

The goal, of course, was to preserve union teaching jobs, not improve academics for underserve students.

Just how influential is BAMN? The Detroit school board is currently working with the group to subvert the state-appointed emergency manager’s authority to reform the district. That says as much about the mindset of the school board as it does about the relevance of BAMN.

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By flirting with such radical elements, the unions and school boards will be pushed further to the left and will be even more reticent to reforms and change. That doesn’t bode well for students trapped in failing schools.