Penn Raine: Who is Jennifer Pritzker…and why should we care?

Between 2000 and 2019 it is estimated that 500,000 Americans died from overdosing on OxyContin, the Perdue Pharma opioid pain medication, developed initially for severe pain but later widely prescribed. Subsequent Federal investigations revealed that Perdue had not held clinical trials to support its claim that the drug was likely not to be addictive and that its contact in the FDA had a cosy relationship with the company for whom he later went to work for a trebled salary soon after he had ushered OxyContin over the line.

For chilling infotainment on the topic Netflix’s Painkiller provides sufficient details of the nasty tale while the Hulu mini-series Dopesick, Gibney’s HBO doco The Crime of the Century, and Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe shine more light on Purdue’s business, that while currently bankrupt, has rebranded itself as Knoa while it awaits an appeal.

Serious journos and investigators alike however ask themselves why at least one of the Sackler family, reputed itself to be worth US11 billion, is not in jail.

And what does this have to do with Jennifer Pritzker?

It’s odd that that the Pritzker name has to my knowledge yet to be mentioned by NZ legacy media since its investigation makes compelling reading. Jennifer, formerly James Nicholas Pritzker, is described by some as ‘American investor and philanthropist’, by others as a pusher for synthetic sex identities (SSI). Pritzker who transitioned in 2013, burly and blokeish in frock and makeup for publicity pics, is also known as the only trans billionaire currently out of the expensively-appointed closet.

Pritzker married for a second time, Erin Solaro, in 2020.

Like the Sackler family whose business it was to make billions from investing in opioid addiction, the Pritzker business, its genesis in the Hyatt hotel chain, now focuses on the techno-medico industry, specifically to make money from promoting and normalising SSI, its medications and trans-surgeries.  At the lowest end of genderintervention experts estimate that the annual cost of puberty blockers at US $20,000

To bolster the normalisation of non-binary human sexual function the family has made notable donations to such organisations as teaching hospitals, law and medical schools, human rights, and minority organisations. Such bodies include The Chicago School of Medicine, The University of California’s Ronald Reagan Medical centre, the UCLA School of Law, the medical schools at the universities of Michigan and Arkansas, the US psychiatric community and many bodies set up to affirm gender dysmorphia. This summary is but a very abbreviated list of Pritzker donation influence which is enormously aided by the positions other family member hold such as the Governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker (also co-chairman of the Hilary Clinton presidential campaign ) and Penny Pritzker, former US Secretary of Commerce.

The family’s reach is far. Think of what was once said of the Jesuits that they had more fingers than there were pies. (Nor should we forget other billionaire players in this kitchen, Jon Stryker and George Soros who themselves both significantly fund transactivism.)

If you looked at media coverage of Kelly Jay Keen’s aborted public speaking last year in Auckland, you may have been tempted to think that it simply reported a robust day out for the blue-haired activist classes protesting perfectly fairly against an enemy of kindness and progress. You may have thought that transgender activism was a minority grassroots movement that would calm down, burn out or otherwise disappear seamlessly into the remote and unnoticed reaches of our society, given time.

Think again.

NZ’s Ministry of Education web site provides little real detail about its ‘Relationships and Sexuality Education’ but the innocuous headings for primary school ‘learners’ include ‘different kinds of families’, ‘different kinds of relationships’ and  ‘cultural approaches to gender and sexuality’ which appear to give broad licence to gender-diverse activist educators. The Ministry document has been careful to say that each school must consult with its community ‘at least once every two years’ on its health curriculum and that parents can withdraw children from any section of the curriculum if they advise this ‘in writing’.

The devil is, of course, in the detail. Whether our friends knew that their child in junior primary on Auckland’s North Shore would be invited to say in a questionnaire whether she felt comfortable being a girl is just such a detail.

One of the pies that the Pritzker family has got its digits into is early childhood education. For the last 12 years it has been working with the Bridgespan Group which has a social justice focus and who consult for non-profits and philanthropists, offering it US$25 million to focus on early childhood development. It would be surprising given the family’s preferred support for synthetic sex identity projects that this would be used for enhanced literacy achievement.

And I have to wonder if the NZ Council of Midwives in its contortions to avoid using the offensive terms ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ and referring instead to ‘cervix havers’ have not snacked on a slice of the Pritzker pie.

Indeed, can Foodstuffs and the owner of New World Supermarket Otaki explain how an elderly woman wearing a t-shirt saying ‘A man is not a woman even if you squint’ justifies being trespassed for two years?

The popular view and one loudly promoted by our own weirdly captured media is that trans people are amongst the most oppressed and downtrodden in the world and for that should enjoy a special victim category despite their cause being funded by the world’s most notable billionaires. If we consider the disgraceful level of profits inhaled by trans-pharma, is it once again just a case of follow the money?

And caveat emptor?

Penn Raine is an educator and writer who lives in NZ and France.