No more Stand for Children Massachusetts

If you use the search bar on this blog and type in "Stand for Children," you'll get entries going back to the very beginning of the blog. Back in 2008, in the push to get the City of Worcester to fund 2% over foundation, it was Stand for Children, an actual local advocacy group at the time, that helped parents organize.
And then big money got involved. At the state level, that looked like this. At the local level, I still have vivid memories in 2009 of the meeting at which we were told that we'd no longer be setting our own priorities--we'd be told what they were--and the meeting at which we were then told what they were.
And that led directly to my being told what I could and couldn't say in my testimony at the State House.
While Stand was involved in Question 2, it wasn't the biggest group involved; you can read more from Professor Cunningham here. And Peter Piazza wrote his dissertation in part on them. They've had several rounds of reorganization and reforming, but there are plenty of other astroturf groups out there now.
Thus today's announcement that they will no longer be in Massachusetts.
It really feels like the ending of an era in a way.