antiracismdsa: Violence Against Donald Trump Will Help Him to Win...

antiracismdsa: Violence Against Donald Trump Will Help Him to Win...: by Duane Campbell Although well meaning, the violent protests against Trump this weekend  for his racism will help him to get elected. ...

Stop with the Clinton campaign message that Bernie should end our campaign

Nation of Change 

I would like my friends who are campaigning for Hillary to stop telling us all that Bernie should withdraw from the race.  Your whining  serves no useful purpose.

Bernie’s campaign is about building a left opposition in the U.S. Great progress has been made in this effort.  Some 40% of Democrats now consider themselves socialist, some mean social democrats.

We still have much to do, particularly the election in California.  We are building an opposition movement.  I read the generational divide.   You haven’t convinced the millennial generation that he should drop out.  You don’t seem to get it.  Your advice has not been taken, so you give more advice.

And your campaign message that Bernie is getting too divisive is hollow.  You are obviously only listening to the Clinton campaign.  If you follow both campaigns, or progressive media, you will find that the Clinton campaign has been at least as divisive and taunting.

We need to build an opposition movement to defeat Trump.

Continuing the Bernie campaign contributes to our effort to defeat Trump.  Continuing the Bernie campaign is a statement that we support democracy, we want democracy to work.

As Bernie has said,  “The answer is, we are in this race until the last vote is cast,” Mr. Sanders said. “The people of California have a right to determine who they want to see as president of the United States and what kind of agenda they want the Democratic Party to have.

Hillary has problems.  The problems  are not created by Bernie.  Her support for Wall Street, her support for the coup in Honduras, among others,  are of her making.  Yes, they will cost her votes.  It is her history, her actions that are costing the votes- not the Bernie campaign.  See Robert Borosage’s piece on Hillary and campaign money. https://ourfuture.org/20160425/clintons-defense-of-big-money-wont-cut-it
 Those millions of us who have worked on the campaign will get together June 17- 19 in Chicago in a National People's Summit.  We will make our own decisions. thank you. 

We Need an Electoral Strategy Now

Why Progressives Need a National Electoral Strategy - and Fast

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/why-progressives-need-national-electoral-strategy-and-fast

Bill Fletcher 

Every electoral cycle gives me the sense of "Groundhog Day" within progressive circles. It feels as if the same discussion take places over and again. No matter what has transpired in the intervening years; no matter what mass struggles; no matter what theoretical insights; progressives find themselves debating the relative importance of electoral politics and the pros and cons of specific candidates. These debates frequently become nothing short of slugfests as charges are thrown around of reformism, sell-outs and purism. And then, during the next cycle, we are back at it.

 

What has struck me in the current cycle are two related but distinct problems. First, progressives have no national electoral strategy to speak of. Second, elections cannot be viewed simply or even mainly within the context of the pros and cons of specific candidates. In fact, with regard to the latter, there are much bigger matters at stake that are frequently obscured by the candidates themselves.

 

Let's begin in reverse order. In a recent exchange on Facebook I had with a friend, he raised the point that Hillary Clinton holds some positions to the right of Donald Trump. His, apparent, point was that in a final election, should it come down to Clinton vs. Trump, it would actually not make much of a difference who won. Someone I do not know responded to my friend by pointing out that Hitler was to the "left" of certain candidates as well and that the issue of intolerance needed to be the point of focus.

Thousands of California's Register - in error- to ...

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: Thousands of California's Register - in error- to ...: A survey of 500 members of the American Independent Party found nearly 3 of 4 people did not realize they had enrolled in a political part...

Teachers Win Ruling on Vergara Lawsuit

Educators Applaud Appellate Ruling in Meritless Vergara Lawsuit

Stinging Reversal of Lower Court Decision Vindicates Due Process, Benefits of Challenged Laws to Students, School Districts

Contacts: For CTA, Frank Wells at 562-708-5425; For CFT, Fred Glass at 510-579-3343

LOS ANGELES – In a sweeping victory for students and educators, the California Court of Appeal today reversed a lower court decision in the deeply flawed Vergara v. California lawsuit. The unanimous appellate opinion is a stinging rebuke to Judge Rolf M. Treu’s poorly-reasoned ruling, and to the allegations made and millions of dollars spent by wealthy anti-union “education reformers” to bypass voters, parents, and the legislature with harmful education policy changes. The reversal affirms the arguments of educators, civil rights groups, legal scholars and education policy experts that the state statutes affirming educator rights do not harm students.

“This is a great day for educators and, more importantly, for students,” said California Teachers Association President Eric C. Heins. “Today’s ruling reversing Treu’s decision overwhelmingly underscores that the laws under attack have been good for public education and for kids, and that the plaintiffs failed to establish any violation of a student’s constitutional rights. Stripping teachers of their ability to stand up for their students and robbing school districts of the tools they need to make sound employment decisions was a wrong-headed scheme developed by people with no education expertise and the appellate court justices saw that.”

In their 36-page decision, Justices Roger Boren, Judith Ashmann-Gerst and Brian Hoffstadt outline the numerous ways in which the plaintiffs’ arguments were wrong and Judge Treu’s decision declaring the statutes unconstitutional could not be affirmed. “We reverse the trial court’s decision. Plaintiffs failed to establish that the challenged statutes violate equal protection, primarily because they did not show that the statutes inevitably cause a certain group of students to receive an education inferior to the education received by other students. …the statutes do not address the assignment of teachers; instead, administrators—not the statutes—ultimately determine where teachers within a district are assigned to teach. Critically, plaintiffs failed to show that the statutes themselves make any certain group of students more likely to be taught by ineffective teachers than any other group of students. With no proper showing of a constitutional violation, the court is without power to strike down the challenged statutes. The court’s job is merely to determine whether the statutes are constitutional, not if they are “a good idea.”…The judgment is reversed. The matter is remanded to the trial court with directions to enter judgment in favor of defendants on all causes of action.”

The Common Core

The Rotten Core

By SETH SANDRONSKY

Spring is time for high-stakes tests under the Common Core State Standards for public K-12 school students in the United States. This leaves teachers with scant time to impart critical thinking to students, a harm to democracy, or rule of the people.
We can thank a “teach to the test” approach to learning and teaching for this attack on democracy. The assault has a history.
On that note, teachers played no part in establishing the CCSS. These circumstances speaks volumes about democracy and public K-12 school education.
The origin of the CCSS points to the Council of Chief State Officers (CCSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA). These entities hold the copyright for the CCSS, and are subject to zero public accountability.
“The national command center of this corporate-based education reform movement is located in the quasi-governmental agencies of the CCSO and the NGA,” according to an editorial in the March edition of Monthly Review, “both consisting of governmental officials but functioning outside political jurisdictions as private, non-governmental organizations.”

Bill Black: Hillary and Bill and Paul Krugman Race to the Right to Stop the Bern | naked capitalism

Bill Black: Hillary and Bill and Paul Krugman Race to the Right to Stop the Bern | naked capitalism

Hillary: "Name one time I changed due to Wall Street money." Elizabeth W...

Why The Panama Papers Scandal Is About Cheating School Children

Why The Panama Papers Scandal Is About Cheating School Children

Historic Minimum Wage Increase in California

Steven Mikalan

(updated) March 31.

California is on track to become the first state to officially raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour. On March 31, California’s official celebration of labor leader Cesar Chavez, Democratic legislators  agreed to raise the wage from its current $10 hourly mark to $10.50 beginning January 1, 2017, followed by continuous upticks that will result in the wage leveling off at $15 an hour by 2022. (Businesses employing fewer than 26 workers would get an extra year to institute the increases.) The Governor has said he will sign the bill on Monday. 

After that the minimum can rise – but not fall – according to inflation. The agreement includes a provision giving workers three days of paid sick leave annually; it also permits California governors to freeze the wage in times of extreme economic downturn.

The movement toward a $15 wage has not followed a straight line, with individual city electorates or governments passing ordinances raising local wages higher than the state minimum (which cities will still be allowed to do under the proposed law), but making little headway outside of California’s liberal coastal belt. The issue has recently been complicated by the emergence of two competing union-sponsored measures that have sought placement on this November’s state ballot.