The Class War Has Begun

The Class War Has Begun

California Progress Report

California Progress Report; Proposition 13 pay off for the Big Boys

AFL-CIO President Trumka Denouces Proposed Cuts to Social Security, Medi...

Medicare, Social Security

The 1 % unmasked, in the Bee

The Bee in its home delivery version has an excellent piece on The 1 % unmasked, and more than 500 critical responders.  I do not know why this article which the web says was published on Saturday appeared on Monday.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/10/28/4014086/who-are-the-regions-top-1-of-earners.html

This is an excellent background piece.  As a democratic socialist, I want to be clear. I do not object to salary inequality in the range of 10 to 1, or even 20 to 1.  Such inequality may reflect background preparation, inherited positions, etc, and may encourage innovation and risk taking.

I do, however, object to differences of 100 to 1, or even 400 to one, such as developed in the 1990’s, and the first decade of  2000.  In particular I object when these financiers added little or nothing to the economy except gambling, and then the crashed the economy costing us all a loss of over $ 13 Trillion. 

They should be arrested and tried for grand larceny.  Bernie Maddoff was a small timer compared to the CEO’s of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AIG, and the others.  See, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. By William Black.

The reason that the super rich are not on trial is that they have bought the government.  This larceny was once illegal, before de regulation.  They have now cost the jobs and the homes of millions.

www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com

Why California students ( and most teachers) do not know Chicano History

Workshop: Teaching Chicano/ Latino History in Grades 8-12.  Curriculum ideas for teaching about César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, Civil Rights Movement, and economic justice.  With Duane Campbell, Director of the Education and Democracy Institute., Sacramento.   Dolores Delgado Campbell.  Professor. American River College. 

Presented  as a part of the  annual conference of The Bilingual Multicultural Education Department (BMED)  Sat . Nov. 5, 2011.  10;35  Am. In the University Union, at  Sacramento State.

 California has the largest population of any state, with more than 6,252,000 students  in school in 2008.   California students make up more than 11 percent of the United States total. California, along with some 16 other states, adopts textbooks for the entire state instead of district by district purchasing.  This makes the California adoption the largest single textbook sale in the nation.

California has failed to revise its k-12 history curriculum since 1987.  Since 2008, the failure was caused by the way the legislature and the governor responded to  the state’s budget crisis.

Ruben Navarrette is a fool

Ruben Navarrette is a fool.  And, he is published in the Sacramento Bee as an informed essayist on the Latino population.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/10/30/4015119/latino-numbers-are-up-why-isnt.html#ixzz1cJJKqYNI

Navarrette is a paranoid fool who spends too much time reading  Tea Party/ Republican talking points developed and funded by the Koch brothers. He is primarily  a source  on the fringe party element of the Tea Party.  Read his other writings on Cesar Chavez and the UFW, you will see his very conservative perspective.

  RE: bilingual education establishment. I guess he hasn't read the paper since 1996. Bilingual Education was eliminated in almost all California schools with Prop. 227. - an anti immigrant proposition much like those of Arizona and Alabama.  In Sacramento City Schools, for example, there are 77 schools.  Five of the schools have a bilingual program for less than 20% of the students in the schools. It usually lasts 2-3 years of schooling at best.  Only one school is fully bilingual, The Language Academy.  The Academy is a charter school.  It uses a dual immersion approach in which students learn both English and Spanish.  Only parents who want to have their children there are enrolled.  The same campus has an English language school.  The hypocrisy of Navarette and his Tea Party allies is revealed by their actions.

Michelle Rhee takes $35,000 from students

Michelle Rhee takes discounted speaking fee of just $35,000 from public university +*

Michelle Rhee doesn't just peddle her brand of education "reform" for political power and media stardom—she does it for cash. Earlier this month, Rhee spoke at Kent State University at Stark, which as you might guess is a public university. Her fee was a mere $35,000,

plus expenses of not more than $5,000 that the school was to provide, including:

— first-class airfare

— a VIP hotel suite

— meals and “all reasonable incidentals”

— town car and driver for ride from Rhee’s home to the airport, airport to the hotel, hotel to the engagement “or any combination thereof”

But it's not like Rhee's greedy or anything—for this relatively small public university, Rhee offered a substantial discount from her usual rate of $50,000 for a speaking engagement. Blogger At the Chalk Face notes that:

Becoming Biliterate- BMED Conference

Becoming BILITERATE AGAINST THE ODDS : A Cause for Celebration:---  Nov. 5, 2011.

                  The entire Sacramento community is invited to attend the 18th Annual Multicultural Education Conference at Sacramento State University, Saturday, November 5, 2011 from 8:30 am-1:00 pm in the University Union, Sacramento State.  Admission and parking (in Structure II) is free.

                  The keynote speaker is Dr. María de la Luz Reyes, author of Words Were All We Had: Becoming Biliterate Against the Odds.  At the 9:00 am keynote address Dr. Reyes will explain why growing up bilingual in America should be a cause for celebration.  The success of today’s Latino educational professionals dispels the “at risk” myth regarding native languages, suggesting that knowledge of Spanish supports English literacy while emboldening resistance English-only ideologies.

Mayor Quan: Stop the Police Brutality at OCCUPY OAKLAND

Oakland, California

Oakland Police Violence Raises the Stakes for the OWS Movement | California Progress Report

Oakland Police Violence Raises the Stakes for the OWS Movement | California Progress Report

Oakland Policeman Throws Flash Grenade Into Crowd Trying To Help Injured...

Injured protestor.

Oakland Police attack demonstrators

Last night, Scott Olsen, a Marine who served two tours in Iraq, was struck in the head by a "nonlethal" projectile fired by the Oakland police. The round fractured his skull, leaving him in critical condition.¹ 

Olsen had joined with other members of Occupy Oakland to peacefully protest the group's eviction that morning. When a group gathered to help Olsen after he was hit, a police officer threw a flash bang grenade into the group from a few feet away. 

Deeply disturbing video of the incident was captured by a local news crew and provides the clearest evidence yet of the lengths that authorities will go to to stop Occupy protesters from voicing uncomfortable truths about our economy.

Yesterday's eviction in the predawn hours², and last night's violence against protesters, are only the latest attempts to silence the voices of those who are speaking up for the 99%. But members of Occupy Oakland, who faced the most brutal crackdown yet, refuse to be intimidated. They've called for another peaceful gathering tonight to stand up for their First Amendment rights.³

To help defend their rights, we're scrambling to put together a rapid response ad to run in Oakland urging the mayor and the police to end their brutal tactics and respect the protesters' rights. We want to make sure everyone in Oakland sees the footage of the crackdown for themselves. Every dollar we raise will go to pay for the ad, and if there's anything left over, we'll donate it to a group doing good work helping our veterans as they come home from war.

Click here to chip in.

We're also supporting a petition by a local Oakland group—Causa Justa :: Just Cause—to Oakland's mayor to stop the police repression of Occupy Oakland. 

Click here to sign the petition to Oakland's mayor.

Billionairs school reform: What it means to students and teachers

Billionaires’ School Reform: What It Means for Teachers and Students

Julie Cavanagh

| LABOR NOTES, February 1, 2011]

The public conversation around education “reform” is dominated by a privileged few who seek to change schooling from a public service to a lucrative business. Millionaires and billionaires, such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart, have spent years pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks and political campaigns.

They have captured the media through projects like the movie “Waiting for Superman” and NBC’s “Education Nation.” Their intent is clear: to gain control of public opinion and public policy and open up access to what they refer to as the K-12 “market,” namely, our schools. Sadly, the Obama administration, led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has the same plan.
Two years ago I faced the billionaires’ agenda head on when my Triple A-rated public school was forced to give up part of our building to a privately run education corporation, commonly called a charter school. The charter was founded by the son of billionaire hedge-funder Julian Robertson.

Lack of demand makes recession worse

Businesses are not creating jobs for one simple reason, says Jan Eberly, assistant treasury secretary for economic policy: lack of demand for the products those businesses make or sell.

One of the lingering effects of the 2007 housing crash and the ensuing 2008 stock market crash is a lack of spending among those who are holding on to decent jobs, and the obvious lack of available disposible income among those who have found themselves either unemployed or underemployed. Ken Lansing, an economist at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, found in July that since the the recession began in 2007, Americans spent $7,356 less per person (in inflation-adjusted dollars).

Yet right-wing politicans continue to blame the jobs crisis on either existing government regulation of businesses or on proposed regulations in such areas as greenhouse gas emissions. But data presented by Eberly today demonstrates that the assertions of the anti-regulation crowd are patently false.

Teachers Union supports Occupy Wall Street

by Leo Casey

Leo Casey

Over the last few weeks, a small team of New York City building inspectors descended upon UFT headquarters, responding to a mysterious 311 call. Our building has been placed under police surveillance, and at times police have been posted as guards at our doors.
The One Percent appears to be a tad bit irritated by the UFT’s support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. We were one of the unions who took the lead in organizing the October 5^th rally and march which brought out thousands of New York’s working people to express their solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. UFT President Mulgrew has been at Zuccotti Park a number of times, speaking to the assembly, and was joined by AFT President Weingarten on one occasion. Our headquarters are a few blocks away from Zuccotti, and we have provided space for meetings of different groups supporting OWS. We have also given over a major section of our street level space to storage for OWS, for donations of materials and supplies sent to them and for the stowing of personal belongings on the morning when Bloomberg threatened to “cleanse” Zuccotti. This was the space that the building inspectors suddenly needed to inspect.

Oh, and last weekend, we sent forty sandwiches left from our conference for charter school educators over to Zuccotti. I had not thought much of that donation until Fox Business Network senior correspondent Charles Gasparino called the UFT on Monday. It seems that Gasparino had visited Zuccotti over the weekend and decided that it was a haven for communists. And he had witnessed the masses at Zuccotti eating our sandwiches. Why, he demanded to know, was the UFT providing sustenance to violent revolutionaries? Confronted with the results of Gasparino’s crackerjack investigative reporting, I decided that it is time to confess. Yes, I authorized that sandwich smuggling operation.

Liberate Wall Street "At Last"

OWS: Paul Krugman says the movement has changed the conversation

Bill Maher: New Rules - Socialism

Ravtich critiques "Miracle Schools" and politicians

Last June, I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times disputing the idea of "miracle schools." With the assistance of two volunteer researchers, Gary Rubinstein and Noel Hammatt, I learned that several schools touted by various political leaders as miraculous were not. My intention was not to criticize the schools and their staff, but to criticize the politicians who were using the schools to imply that their policies (like firing the staff and closing the school) were working and that it wasn't all that difficult to turn around a school that enrolled large numbers of low-performing students.

The politicians seemed to suggest that their policies (testing and accountability or mass firings) sufficed to produce dramatically higher test scores and graduation rates. The subtext is that poverty and resources are not actually problems for urban schools; if they could just test more often and fire more teachers, the corporate reformers imply, then test scores would soar. This analysis suggests that schools enrolling the neediest students do not need more resources, and it rationalizes the current trend ofdraconian budget cuts for public education—for the arts, pre-kindergarten, libraries, physical education, and other non-tested subjects and services. 

10 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement | Common Dreams

10 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement | Common Dreams

Senate Education Committee Approves NCLB revisions

Education Week

Published Online: October 20, 2011

Senate Education Panel Approves ESEA Overhaul

By Alyson Klein

After a long delay, the Senate education committee approved a bill Thursday night that would rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but the measure is certain to encounter further debate on the Senate floor.

The bill, sponsored by the committee's chairman, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and its ranking Republican, Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, garnered support from all of the committee's Democrats and three Republicans—Sen. Enzi, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, and Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

Sen. Harkin hopes to move the bill to the floor of the Senate before Thanksgiving, and he believes it's "possible" that Congress could approve a rewritten version of the nation's main education law before Christmas—in time to negate the need for the Obama administration’s waiver plan.

The bill would change several aspects of the current ESEA, known, at least for now, as the No Child Left Behind Act.

It would scrap the accountability system at the heart of the nearly 10-year-old NCLB Act—adequate yearly progress, or AYP. Instead, it would place the federal focus on the lowest-performing schools, including high schools with high-drop rates. The measure would call on states to craft college-and-career standards, and it would streamline the Department of Education by consolidating 82 programs into around 40.

Put teachers back to work

In May, on the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week in Broward County, Fla., Cherine Akbari was honored “with a fancy embroidered jacket and handed a pink slip.”

Today, the out-of-work history teacher was in Washington, D.C., along with hundreds of teachers, firefighters, police officers and supporters at an indoor Senate rally for the just-introduced Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act (S. 1723). The bill provides funds to local governments to put back to work or keep on the job some 400,000 teachers and first responders. Said Akbari, an AFT member:

I have my own worries, but I am more worried about my students….We need to ensure students have better opportunities to learn and receive the attention they deserve. Instead of being in front of a classroom today, I am here to urge Congress to pass this bill.

Click here to send a message to your senators urging them to support the bill.

Republican talking points - John Stewart

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Mainstream Crisis- Bank Fraud, Political Fraud

October 17, 2011

Labor Joins Occupy Wall Street, The times they are a changing

by Harold Meyerson

On Wednesday afternoon, within a few minutes of one another, many of America's leading unions -- the Service Employees, the Teamsters, the American Federation of Teachers -- not to mention labor's omnibus federation, the AFL-CIO -- all released endorsements of Occupy Wall Street and its ongoing demonstrations in New York's (and the world's) financial center. Nothing surprising here -- other individual unions and numerous local unions had already released statements of support for OSW, and the AFL-CIO itself has held several demonstrations on Wall Street since the financial collapse of 2008.

But for geezers like me, who came out of the student left of the '60s that found itself in various pitched battles with organized labor, the difference between then and now couldn't be greater. To review the bidding for a moment, the AFL-CIO under the leadership of George Meany (and later, Lane Kirkland), while an indispensable champion of most domestic progressive legislation, was an ardent supporter of Cold War policies in general and the Vietnam War in particular. Despite some faltering efforts in the early and mid-'60s to keep the Old and New Lefts from splitting, that's exactly what they did. And it wasn't just the radicals of the New Left who viewed labor with disdain and contempt; it was also the New Politics liberals who rallied around the anti-war presidential candidacies of Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972. (The '70s sitcom "All in the Family" rather faithfully captured the upper-middle class liberals' disdain for white male blue-collar workers, and that disdain certainly extended to their unions.)

That disdain was fully reciprocated. Famously, union hard-hats beat up antiwar protestors on Wall Street at one 1970 demonstration. George Meany memorably termed McGovern delegates at the 1972 Democratic National Convention "a bunch of jacks who dressed like jills and had the odor of johns about them." For years, the AFL-CIO relentlessly opposed the rise within Democratic Party circles of dovish foreign-policy groups, feminists, and other forces that had emerged from the '60s Left. The AFL-CIO's political director in the '70s, Al Barkan, delivered stump speeches demonstrating how labor could carry the Democrats to victory without any help from these troublemakers. He was, of course, proved dead wrong.

That said, there were unions that opposed the war and reached out to the student organizers.

The Banker - Occupy Wall Street

What this video calls a Robin Hood tax is what we argue for as a Financial Transaction tax.
One British pound is $1.57 dollars.   This small tax could pay for much of the damage done by the economic crisis.

Draft NCLB Drops AYP

Goodbye and Good Riddance to AYP The Senate ESEA bill completely overhauls NCLB's accountability system, scrapping annual student performance targets in reading and math and eliminating the 2013–14 100 percent proficiency deadline. Instead, states would have to ensure all students make continuous improvement in academic achievement; it would be up to the states to define continuous improvement. Although the bill maintains NCLB's annual testing regimen in reading and math and public reporting of disaggregated student achievement data, it allows states to build their own accountability systems, which can include measures of student growth. In the vast majority of cases, states would be able to decide whether and how to intervene in schools, but the bill stipulates specific turnaround strategies for the lowest-performing 5 percent of elementary and middle schools and the lowest 5 percent of high schools, also known as "persistently low-performing schools" based on graduation rates and state reading and math test scores.

NCLB reauthorization being drafted

Contact your Senator today! This one will count the most of any for a long time, because:

The draft ESEA reauth bill introduced by Harkin & Enzi will impose tens of  millions more student tests to judge teachers and principals. Their bill maintains all NCLB testing; defines “achievement” and “growth” as test scores; uses scores as the near-sole basis for many educational decisions; imposes Race to the Top’s rigid “improvement” structure on low-scoring schools. 

Senate HELP committee starts work on it Weds. For talking points, contacting Senators, seehttp://www.fairtest.org/national/get_involved. Do it now! 

Dr. Cornel West Occupies @ Supreme Court Oct 16 2011

USW: Occupy Pittsburgh!

My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Hit Bankers Where It Hurts | Common Dreams

My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Hit Bankers Where It Hurts | Common Dreams
By Matt Taibbi,

The Guys in the 1% Brought This On | Common Dreams

The Guys in the 1% Brought This On | Common Dreams

Barbara Ehrenreich

Defying Skeptics, Occupy Wall Street is Winning Over Mainstream | California Progress Report

Defying Skeptics, Occupy Wall Street is Winning Over Mainstream | California Progress Report

Tell Congress to Speak Up For Kids, Support the American Jobs Act

Why #OccupyWallStreet? Four Reasons from DC Douglas

Wolff, The Best Classroom Ever- Wall Street

Obama Admin Waives some provisions of NCLB

President Obama Waives Key NCLB Provisions

At a White House event in which he declared that because "Congress hasn't been able to do it. So I will," President Obama announced the long-awaited details of his administration's plan to waive certain provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in exchange for specific reform commitments from states. There are 10 NCLB provisions(DOC) U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will consider waiving, among them the 2013–14 100 percent proficiency deadline, the sanctions for low-performing schools, the 20 percent set-aside for school choice and tutoring, and highly qualified teacher improvement plans.
As expected, states must submit an application for the waivers (note: they must request all 10 whether they will use them all or not) outlining how they will

• establish higher standards,
• differentiate accountability (by implementing student growth models and prioritizing the lowest-performing schools for improvement),
• promote teacher effectiveness, and
• reduce paperwork burdens.

Labor joins Occupy Wall Street; Democrats don't

by Randy Shaw;

As the grassroots campaign against Wall Street grows, Democratic politicians are moving in the opposite direction. President Obama has secured the House Republican support necessary to pass three trade bills strongly opposed by organized labor and most Democrats. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who like Obama was elected with huge labor funding and ground support, took a particularly hard public line against the state’s second largest public employee union for voting down a concessionary contract; Cuomo seeks to avoid charges that he is “too beholden” to labor unions. And then we have California’s Governor Jerry Brown. After being hailed at a recent labor event as the virtual second coming of Joe Hill, Brown vetoed a bill to facilitate the unionization of low-paid childcare workers. He also vetoed a measure that would have given San Franciscans the right to fund public services by voting to raise their own taxes. With “allies” like these, no wonder labor unions decline while Wall Street’s power grows.Amidst growing protests against Wall Street, leading Democrats remain more concerned with being viewed as “standing up to labor” rather than as boosting labor’s clout.

First, President Obama is aggressively promoting three trade bills (South Korea, Colombia and Panama) long opposed by most of organized labor. Obama is showing his corporate backers that he is willing to stand by them against labor unions, further exposing labor’s inability to hold the President they helped elect accountable.Second, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has promised mass public worker layoffs after the Public Employee Federation rejected a concessionary contract whose savings were assumed as part of Cuomo’s state budget deal. Cuomo could have acknowledged that in tough economic times it is understandable why a majority of workers voted down the contract, and then given labor a face-saving way to reach what the workers could claim was a new deal. Instead, Cuomo made it clear that he would not go back to the bargaining table but would soon commence layoffs of 3500 state workers.You don’t see Cuomo, Obama or many Democrats taking that same hard line with Wall Street and corporate America. But many Democrats seem to relish showing voters they can act against the unions whose money and ground troops helped elect them; it earns them both media praise and campaign money from wealthy donors.Jerry Brown and Labor

I recently attended a fundraiser for the UC Berkeley Labor Center where California Governor Jerry Brown was described as the virtual second coming of Joe Hill by California Federation of Labor head Art Pulaski. The crowd of union members, staff and supporters clearly loved Brown, who gave a very progressive speech touting solar power, the importance of union jobs, and labor’s key role in rebuilding the California economy.

I was next to Brown when he was asked to sign a bill on his desk facilitating the unionization of childcare workers. Brown had not committed to sign the bill, but one would think that raising the incomes of the primarily female childcare labor force would be a good strategy for getting people out of poverty.

But Brown was apparently swayed by the increased state costs caused by paying workers fair wages, vetoing the bill this week. He wrote in his veto message, “Today California, like the nation itself, is facing huge budget challenges. Given that reality, I am reluctant to embark on a program of this magnitude and potential cost.”

The childcare bill affects 40,000 workers, and was vetoed by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger three times. Like the UFW card-check bill Brown vetoed earlier this year, it is the type of measure that Democrats thought a Democratic Governor would sign.

In addition to ensuring continued poverty wages for childcare workers who work out of their home, Brown also vetoed a bill by Senator Mark Leno that would have allowed San Francisco voters to approve higher vehicular license fees to fund vital public services. Brown’s message stated, “Before we embark on a piecemeal approach for one city, we should try to fashion a broader revenue solution to our state's fiscal crisis.”

But as Leno noted, the San Francisco measure would have no impact on the state budget. And there is no current plan to raise the vehicular license fee as part of a proposed state revenue measure in November 2012.

Brown ran for Governor in 2010 pledging to ensure that voters would have to approve all tax hikes. Yet when Leno tried to give San Francisco voters the opportunity to vote for a tax increase that would annually bring the city $75 million, Brown vetoed it. No wonder Leno described the veto as “nonsensical.”

Not everyone was upset with Brown’s vetoes.

The childcare veto was publicly praised by Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway and by Randy Thomasson, president of the conservative SaveCalifornia.com. Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, seemed quite happy with Brown’s denying San Franciscans the right to vote to raise their vehicle fees.

As I wrote about Occupy Wall Street, many young people are bypassing electoral politicsbecause Democrats fail to address social and economic injustice. Obama is clearly the worst offender, but when Democratic Governors in strongly Democratic states also seek to score points with union opponents at the expense of organized labor’s growth, it simply paves the way for a dispirited Democratic electoral base in 2012.

Randy Shaw is author of The Activist’s Handbook and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.
and more.

This week already is shaping up to be huge, with actions everywhere demanding good jobs for working families, paid for with fair taxes for millionaires and Wall Street.

Occupy Wall Street protests, which really took off over the weekend, will continue in cities from coast to coast. 

And the AFL-CIO America Wants to Work national week of action starts today. This is a not-to-be-missed moment to get out and attend an event in your community. 

We're sponsoring a wide variety of activities, from vigils to teach-ins on college campuses, demonstrations outside job-outsourcing corporations and press events. In many places, we'll join the Occupy Wall Street protests that have sprung up and are growing, from Hawaii to Washington, D.C. 

Working people will come together in hundreds of events through Oct. 16 to demand action from Congress to promote a real jobs creation agenda and real shared sacrifice from Wall Street and the rich. Find an event near you: [ http://go.aflcio.org/awtw ].

And college students across the country will gather on Wednesday, Oct. 12, for a live national teach-in with events on campuses from 7–8:30 p.m. EDT. Find a teach-in location near you here: [ http://local.we-r-1.org/teach ]. Or, watch it live Wednesday night at:http://go.aflcio.org/teachin.

From Protest to Disruption: Frances Fox Piven on Occupy Wall Street

From Protest to Disruption: Frances Fox Piven on Occupy Wall Street

Take Back The American Dream: Day One

American Dream Conference. Oct.5, 2011. Washington. D.C.

Moving beyond 'blame the teacher'

Moving beyond 'blame the teacher'

Declaration of the Assembly, Occupation of New York City

Students from DSA at the Occupy Wall Street protests

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the 
reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

• They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
• They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
• They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
• They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
• They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
• They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
• They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
• They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

Bernie Sanders on Occupy Wall Street

Parent Trigger efforts

DOES SIGNING A PETITION GIVE PARENTS A VOICE?
By David Bacon
Rethinking Schools, Fall 2011
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/26_01/26_01_bacon.shtml

        Parent trigger laws, according to their proponents, give parents power. Gregory McGinity, managing director of policy for the Broad Education Foundation, calls them "a way for parents' voices to be heard."
   Sounds good. But is the parent trigger concept a way to put parents in charge of their kids' education, or is it part of a political agenda that will rob parents of even more control?   While hardly anyone argues that parents don't want, and don't deserve, a voice in their children's schools, many educators, and even parents themselves, doubt that parent trigger laws increase their involvement.
  Many teachers believe parent trigger laws are a way for charter schools to gain a bigger share of the education system.  For McGinity, that's not a bad idea.  The Broad Foundation promotes the proliferation of charter schools, which he says simply offer parents "a different way for a school to operate."   Teachers, however, are alarmed.  They see the expansion of a privatized education system, and view parent trigger laws as a means for rushing the process forward.
   Their concerns illustrate the big stakes behind passing and implementing these laws.  Several very conservative players in national education reform have made parent trigger proposals a key part of their agenda.  As they're introduced in state after state, California's experience is being watched closely.
    California's parent trigger law, SBX5 4, called the Parent Empowerment Act, was introduced by former State Senator Gloria Romero, and passed in an extraordinary session of the legislature.  California was rushing to qualify its application for Federal Race to the Top funds, and proponents said the law would help its chances.  In the end, the state did not qualify, but the law stayed on the books.  The California version of parent trigger says that if the parents of 51% of a public school's students sign a petition (the "trigger"), they can decide to fire the principal, or bring in an entirely new staff, or close the school, or have it taken over by a charter school operator.

Krashen: School Success despite poverty

by Stephen Krashen

 

How do we explain the fact that many people did well in school even though they experienced poverty growing up?

 

Note that it is not poverty per se but the conditions resulting from poverty that count: In our post (Krashen and Ohanian, Council Chronicles 2) and elsewhere, we mentioned poor nutrition, poor heatlh care, and lack of access to books.

 

From what I have seen and read, individuals who succeeded despite growing up in poverty are rare. When it happens, they had reasonably good food and health care, despite poverty, and somehow managed to have access to reading material and developed a reading habit, thanks to a local library and/or someone who helped them get access to books.

 

An interesting case:

 

In his autobiography, Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, credits reading for his own school success, despite growing up in poverty: "I loved reading, and my mother, who read voraciously too, allowed me to have her novels after she finished them. My strong reading background allowed me to have an easier time of it in most of my classes" (Canada, 2010, p. 89).

 

Ironically, Canada promotes longer school days, increased accountability, and "data to drive instruction" for children of poverty (New York Post, October 13, 2010), despite the lack of data supporting these approaches and the overwhelming data supporting wide reading.

Trumka, labor unions, support Wall Street protests

Declaring that “Wall Street’s out of control,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has embraced street protests such as the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations—and others like them that are planned for cities across the country. As reported by John Nichols in the Nation.
Asked about the ongoing mass protest in New York’s financial district, which has begun to gain support from major unions, Trumka said Friday morning: “I think it’s a tactic and a valid tactic to call attention to a problem. Wall Street is out of control. We have three imbalances in this country—the imbalance between imports and exports, the imbalance between employer power and working power, and the imbalance between the real economy and the financial economy. We need to bring back balance to the financial economy, and calling attention to it and peacefully protesting is a very legitimate way of doing it.”
Hailing the power of street protests to shift the dialogue, Trumka said, “I think being in the streets and calling attention to issues is sometimes the only recourse you have because, God only knows, you can go to the Hill, and you can talk to a lot of people and see nothing ever happen…”