Teaching about Critical Race Theory

 

Why CRT Belongs in the Classroom, and How To Do It Right Stacie Brensilver Berman, Robert Cohen, and Ryan Mills  January 22, 2023 History News Network If classroom realities matter at all to governors and state legislators who have imposed CRT bans on schools, they would be embarrassed at having barred students from the kind of thought provoking teaching we witnessed in this project. Go to the History News Network link to read the report.

MLK: Saving the Soul of America

 MLK: Saving the Soul of America

JANUARY 16, 2023 BY MAURICE ISSERMAN

 

 

 

On Martin Luther King Day, leftists remember that his heart was with democratic socialists, mainstream writers talk about his dream and today’s realities, and rightwingers contort themselves to claim something of his legacy. Even if you;re a person who knows nothing about King, you’ve probably heard about his “I have a dream” speech and may even have read it or listened to it in school. Chances are that you’re less familiar with another speech, the one that, as Maurice Isserman asserts, “changed the conversation,” about the war in Vietnam and in doing so helped change the mind of an entire country. Delivered from the pulpit at the Riverside Church in Manhattan a year before he was assassinated, this sermon helped turn the tide of public opinion. As we honor King’s life, let’s remember the power of moral witness. Below is Isserman’s column from the Democratic Left series on events that changed our national conversation.–Eds.

Fifty years ago, on April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered an impassioned speech at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. In eloquence and power, it matched the one he gave at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Unlike that earlier (and better remembered) effort, his topic was not civil rights but the war in Vietnam, an ever-escalating conflict that had killed nearly 20,000 American servicemen since 1963, along with hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, North and South, military and civilian.

https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/mlk-saving-the-soul-of-america/

 

With video. 

We thank Democratic Left for this post and link.

About Maurice Isserman

Maurice Isserman, a founding member of DSA, a member of North Star, and is the author of The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington, and the foreword to the 50th Anniversary edition of The Other America.

 

Martin. Luther King Jr. Remembrance

 

 

Martin Luther King : Remembrance 

By Jamelle Bouie NYT Opinion Columnist

The way most Americans talk about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., more than 50 years after his assassination, you might think that he gave exactly one speech — on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington — and spoke exclusively about racial harmony and his oft-mentioned dream of integration.

But King, of course, is a more complicated figure than his sanctified image would suggest, and his body of work — his writings, speeches and interviews — is deeper and more wide-ranging than most Americans might appreciate. With our annual celebration of King’s life on the immediate horizon, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at one of his lesser-known, although by no means obscure, speeches, one in which he discusses the struggle for global peace.

Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world.

“We must either learn to live together as brothers,” he says, “or we are all going to perish together as fools.”

This sets up the main message of the sermon, which is that all life is interrelated and interconnected. “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny,” King says. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.”

This isn’t an idle call for personal decency; it is a reminder that in pursuit of justice, how we relate to each other in our means will affect our eventual ends.

“We will never have peace in this world,” says King, “until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.”

Nonetheless, King concludes his sermon by reaffirming the dream of his 1963 speech, that “every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality,” that “the empty stomachs of Mississippi will be filled,” that “men will beat their swords into plowshares” and “justice will roll down like water.”

I think that this is among King’s most powerful sermons, both rhetorically and in the radical humanity of its message. And although he is speaking to questions of war and peace that may not be as acute to Americans in 2023 as they were to Americans in 1967, I think the larger message of obligation and interconnectedness is as relevant today as ever.

Our problems are global problems: a rising tide of chauvinism and authoritarianism; corruption that touches and distorts representative institutions around the world; and, of course, climate change. King’s observation that for any of us to do anything we must rely on the work and labor of someone halfway around the world — “You go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American” — is truer now than it was then, and demands that we recognize the fact, not for self-flagellation but for solidarity.

To connect to laborers around the world, to see that their struggles relate to ours and ours relate to theirs, is to begin to forge the “network of mutuality” that we will need to tackle our global problems as well as to confront the obstacles to our collective liberation from domination and hierarchy.

Most Americans do not think of Martin Luther King Jr. as a democratic theorist, but he is exactly that. And here, in this sermon, he makes clear that what a peaceful and equal society demands — that is, what a truly democratic society demands — is our mutual recognition of each other, here and everywhere.

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/opinion/martin-luther-king-jr-speech.html?

 

 building on the democratic socialists tradition, 

 

California Budget Priorities

The California Budget & Policy Center, a nonpartisan, research and analysis nonprofit, released the following statement by Executive Director Chris Hoene following the release of Governor Newsom’s proposed 2023-24 state budget:

“In the good times and the bad, what Californians need to thrive doesn’t change. Stable income, affordable housing, and reliable child care. Families, children, and individuals need access to quality education, well-paying jobs, comprehensive health care, and a strong social safety net to fall back on when times get tough. 

“While state revenues are down for the coming budget year, state leaders must remain committed to existing programs, and our state’s recent progress on essential services — like Medi-Cal expansion and affordable housing investments — must remain undeterred. Policymakers must also explore pathways to build upon these essential services and better meet the needs of millions of California families. 

“As Californians continue to experience the rising costs of basic needs like food and housing, and Congress eliminates critical programs like emergency food assistance, our state’s leaders should invest in essential services to meet the needs of our communities. This is especially important for Black, Latinx, and other Californians of color, and Californians with low incomes who repeatedly bear the brunt of economic downturns, rising cost of living, and austerity policies.

“State leaders have the tools and resources, such as using a portion of reserves and diverting spending that supports the wealthy and corporations, to expand health care, affordable housing, child care, nutrition assistance, and educational opportunities for Californians.

“The Legislature and administration should reevaluate costly tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, like the governor’s proposed extension of the film tax credit, and instead, protect core services and make strategic investments in economic support to ensure Californians with low incomes are able to secure the resources they need to thrive.

“Budgets are about values, and the 2023-24 budget proposal begs the question: Are policymakers willing to use all available tools and improve the state’s tax system to invest in the millions of Californians left out of our state’s great wealth?”

 

DeSantis Takes Over a College : Attacks Public Education

 

Michelle Goldberg

DeSantis Allies Plot the Hostile Takeover of a Liberal College

Jan. 9, 2023

New College of Florida has a reputation for being the most progressive public college in the state. X González ­ a survivor of the Parkland school shooting who, as Emma González, became a prominent gun control activist ­ recently wrote of their alma mater, “In the queer space of New College, changing your pronouns, name or presentation is a nonevent.” In The Princeton Review’s ranking of the best public colleges and universities for “making an impact” ­ measured by things like student engagement, community service and sustainability efforts ­ New College comes in third.

Naturally, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida wants to demolish it, at least as it currently exists. On Friday, he announced six new appointments to New College’s 13-member board of trustees, including Chris Rufo, who orchestrated the right’s attack on critical race theory, and Matthew Spalding, a professor and dean at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan with close ties to Donald Trump. (A seventh member will soon be appointed by Florida’s Board of Governors, which is full of DeSantis allies.)

The new majority’s plan, Rufo told me just after his appointment was announced, is to transform New College into a public version of Hillsdale. “We want to provide an alternative for conservative families in the state of Florida to say there is a public university that reflects your values,” he said.

The fight over the future of New College is about more than just the fate of this small school in Sarasota. For DeSantis, it’s part of a broader quest to crush any hint of progressivism in public education, a quest he’d likely take national if he ever became president. For Rufo, a reconstructed New College would serve as a model for conservatives to copy all over the country. “If we can take this high-risk, high-reward gambit and turn it into a victory, we’re going to see conservative state legislators starting to reconquer public institutions all over the United States,” he said. Should he prevail, it will set the stage for an even broader assault on the academic freedom of every instructor whose worldview is at odds with the Republican Party.

Rufo often talks about the “long march through the institutions,” a phrase coined by the German socialist Rudi Dutschke in 1967 but frequently attributed to the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. Thwarted in their hope of imminent revolution, the new left of Dutschke’s generation sought instead to bore into political and cultural institutions, working within the system to change the basic assumptions of Western society. Rufo’s trying, he said, to “steal the strategies and the principles of the Gramscian left, and then to organize a kind of counterrevolutionary response to the long march through the institutions.”

This grandiose project has several parts. Rufo has been unparalleled in fanning public education culture wars, whipping up anger first against critical race theory and then against teaching on L.G.B.T.Q. issues. This year, he is turning his attention to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and, with his colleagues at the Manhattan Institute, will soon unveil model legislation to abolish such programs at state schools. In New College, he sees a chance to create a new type of educational institution to replace those he’s trying to destroy. When we spoke, he compared his plans to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.

Later this month, Rufo said, he’ll travel to New College with a “landing team” of board members, lawyers, consultants and political allies. “We’re going to be conducting a top-down restructuring,” he said, with plans to “design a new core curriculum from scratch” and “encode it in a new academic master plan.” Given that Hillsdale, the template for this reimagined New College, worked closely with the Trump administration to create a “patriotic education” curriculum, this master plan will likely be heavy on American triumphalism. Rufo hopes to move fast, saying that the school’s academic departments “are going to look very different in the next 120 days.”

The values of the people who are already at New College are of little concern to Rufo, who, like several other new trustees, doesn’t live in Florida. Speaking of current New College students who chose it precisely for its progressive culture, Rufo said: “We’re happy to work with them to make New College a great place to continue their education. Or we’d be happy to work with them to help them find something that suits them better.”

Of course, as both leftist revolutionaries and colonialists have learned over the years, replacing one culture with another can be harder than anticipated. New College students may not go quietly. Steve Shipman, a professor of physical chemistry and president of the faculty union, points out that tenured professors are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, which makes it hard to fire them unless there’s cause. People like Rufo “are making statements to make impact,” Shipman said. “And I really don’t know how viable some of those statements are on the ground.”

We’ll soon find out. “We anticipate that this is going to be a process that involves conflict,” said Rufo. 

The Crisis in Brazil

 

For Lula, Fighting Against Fascism and for Economic Justice Is Nothing New Omar Ocampo  January 9, 2023 Inequality.org Having fought for labor rights under a dictatorship, the Brazilian president once again faces a violent far-right movement bent on blocking his pro-worker, pro-democracy agenda.

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Far-right election deniers cut short the celebration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s remarkable political comeback with violent attacks in the country’s capital yesterday. Echoing the assault on the U.S. Capitol two years ago, supporters of defeated ex-President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the Brazilian Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace. While security forces have now regained control, Brazil’s insurrectionists rattled the foundation of the world’s fifth-largest democracy. Coming just a week after Lula’s inauguration, these attacks make chillingly clear the enormous hurdles he’ll need to overcome to achieve the pro-democracy, pro-worker agenda he’s been pursuing for nearly half a century. A former metalworker, Lula rose up the ranks of the labor movement and helped launch the Workers’ Party in 1980 as an opposition force against the country’s military dictatorship. During his first two terms as Brazil’s president, which ran from 2003 to 2010, he had enormous success in reducing the economic gaps that had widened under military rule. In this, his third term, Lula intends once again to prioritize the poor and the working-class. Just hours after his inauguration on January 1, he signed a provisional measure expanding the flagship anti-poverty program he introduced in his previous stint in office. Between 2003 and 2011, the Bolsa Família – roughly translated as the Family Grant – distributed monthly benefits that lifted 25 million people out of poverty. This program, combined with a minimum wage increase, expanded public investment in health care and education and other progressive reforms, reduced the country’s income inequality for the first time in four decades. Bolsonaro replaced the Bolsa Família a little over a year ago with a much less effective program – called Auxílio Brasil (Brazil Aid) – that was purely a Trojan horse intended to reduce social spending by eliminating access to other welfare programs. Thanks to Lula’s immediate action, the government will deliver 600 Brazilian reais a month – approximately $112 US dollars – to 21 million families. In another immediate action, Lula reversed Bolsonaro’s plans to sell off eight state-run institutions, including the Petrobras oil company and the public postal service. In scrapping his predecessor’s privatization plans, he aims to ensure these entities serve the public good rather than lining the pockets of corporate executives. LEARN MORE Colombia's wealth tax Lula has not yet submitted legislative proposals to Congress, but the Workers’ Party published a 90-point manifesto this past summer that gives us a glimpse of their other core priorities. Near the top is a commitment to revoking a federal spending cap to allow increased investments in fighting poverty and strengthening infrastructure. Lula has also vowed to strengthen trade unions and repeal a 2017 labor reform that exacerbated the growth in precarious work while failing to boost job creation. Lula has also appointed a special secretary for tax reform to develop a proposal for a more efficient and equitable tax code. Brazil’s current system is notoriously complex and regressive as it places a heavier tax burden on the middle-class than those who sit at the top of the income distribution. Hopefully, Brazil will follow Colombia’s recent move and adopt a wealth tax as a central pillar of a more equitable tax code. An upcoming report co-authored by the Institute for Policy Studies estimates that a progressive tax on the assets of the richest 0.03 percent of Brazilians would generate $26.8 billion USD in 2023. Before the attacks of January 8, the headlines about Lula’s challenges were focused on financial market jitters and worn-out conservative critiques related to his public expenditure plans. The Financial Times editorial board, for example, urged him to pursue “better, not bigger” government if he wants a strong and stable economy. Similar “fiscal responsibility” arguments thrown at Lula in his previous terms proved spectacularly wrong. But such arguments are usually driven less by sound economic analysis than by the interests of the rich and powerful. With the headlines now fixated on the insurrectionist mob, Bolsonaro is reportedly in Florida. No doubt he was glued to the TV yesterday, watching the violence he had sparked by relentlessly questioning his country’s electoral process — just as Trump did two years ago. What will happen now to Lula’s presidential dreams? At 77 years old, he is a man who lived through Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship and was even jailed in the 1970s for leading labor strikes. And so Lula knows better than most how to fight for the interconnected goals of democracy and economic justice. “Join us in a great collective effort against inequality,” he told the massive crowd on inauguration day, before asking everyone to help ensure that “the hope of today ferments the bread that is to be shared among all, and that we are always ready to react in peace and order to any attacks from extremists who want to sabotage and destroy our democracy.” Little did Lula know how soon those attacks would come. Omar Ocampo is a researcher for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies. Inequality.org is your portal into the world of inequality  — and ongoing efforts to leave our planet a more equal place

Student Debt

Bernie Sanders, 

Today in America, we have an entire generation of people burdened with nearly $1.8 trillion of student debt that leaves them less likely to own a home, start a family or a business, and with lower wages and more debt than generations before them.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of working-class high school students no longer see college as an option because of their fear of leaving school with obscene amounts of debt.

That is a tragedy not only for those young people, but it is a tragedy for our nation. And it is not what America is supposed to be about. 

Our mission must be to give them hope. 

Because a well-educated population is not only good for the individual student, but for our entire economy. And if every parent, teacher, and student in this country understands that if they study hard and do well in school, they will be able to go to college, that will have a radical impact on the future of our country. 

The good news is that President Biden’s announcement last year to substantially reduce the outrageous levels of student debt was an important step forward in providing real, meaningful help to a large number of working-class families in this country.

The bad news is that the future of the student debt forgiveness program will be in the hands of an increasingly reactionary and out-of-touch Supreme Court. 

Now, I would love to tell you that the Supreme Court is an impartial judicial institution whose decisions are above politics. That was perhaps once true, but it is certainly not the case any more.

January 6, 2021. A Reporters View

 

The House report describes both a catastrophe and a way forward. For the first time in the history of the United States, Congress referred a former President to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.

Photograph by Balazs Gardi for The New Yorker,

The New Yorker is publishing the full report of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack, in partnership with Celadon Books. The edition contains a foreword by the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, which you’ll find below, and an epilogue by Representative Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee. Order the full report. In the weeks while the House select committee to investigate the insurrection at the Capitol was finishing its report, Donald Trump, the focus of its inquiry, betrayed no sense of alarm or self-awareness. At his country-club exile in Palm Beach, Trump ignored the failures of his favored candidates in the midterm elections and announced that he was running again for President. He dined cheerfully and unapologetically with a spiralling Kanye West and a young neo-fascist named Nick Fuentes. He mocked the government’s insistence that he turn over all the classified documents that he’d hoarded as personal property. Finally, he declared that he had a “major announcement,” only to unveil the latest in a lifetime of grifts. In the old days, it was Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Ice. This time, he was hawking “limited edition” digital trading cards at ninety-nine dollars apiece, illustrated portraits of himself as an astronaut, a sheriff, a superhero. The pitch began with the usual hokum: “Hello everyone, this is Donald Trump, hopefully your favorite President of all time, better than Lincoln, better than Washington.” In his career as a New York real-estate shyster and tabloid denizen, then as the forty-fifth President of the United States, Trump has been the most transparent of public figures. He does little to conceal his most distinctive characteristics: his racism, misogyny, dishonesty, narcissism, incompetence, cruelty, instability, and corruption. And yet what has kept Trump afloat for so long, what has helped him evade ruin and prosecution, is perhaps his most salient quality: he is shameless. That is the never-apologize-never-explain core of him. Trump is hardly the first dishonest President, the first incurious President, the first liar. But he is the most shameless. His contrition is impossible to conceive. He is insensible to disgrace. On December 19, 2022, the committee spelled out a devastating set of accusations against Trump: obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the nation; conspiracy to make false statements; and, most grave of all, inciting, assisting, aiding, or comforting an insurrection. For the first time in the history of the United States, Congress referred a former President to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. The criminal referrals have no formal authority, though they could play some role in pushing Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, to issue indictments. The report certainly adds immeasurably to the wealth of evidence describing Trump’s actions and intentions. One telling example: The committee learned that Hope Hicks, the epitome of a loyal adviser, told Trump more than once in the days leading up to the protest to urge the demonstrators to keep things peaceful. “I suggested it several times Monday and Tuesday and he refused,” she wrote in a text to another adviser. When Hicks questioned Trump’s behavior concerning the insurrection and the consequences for his legacy, he made his priorities clear: “Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose. So, that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.” Order the full report as a paperback, e-book, or audiobook. Trump has been similarly dismissive of the committee’s work, going on the radio to tell Dan Bongino, the host of “The Dan Bongino Show,” that he had been the victim of a “kangaroo court.” On Truth Social, his social-media platform, he appealed to the loyalty of his supporters: “Republicans and Patriots all over the land must stand strong and united against the Thugs and Scoundrels of the Unselect Committee…. These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, the people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Watch the video. https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/a-reporters-footage-from-inside-the-capitol-siege

Rent Control: Los Angeles

From the end of year letter of Peter Dreier

   Among my activities in 2022, I'm particularly proud of the ballot measure campaign I worked on called United to House LA. In November, 58% of LA voters voted "yes" on the measure. It will tax all property sales over $5 million, including office buildings, apartment complexes, and single-family homes and condos. This accounts for less than 4% of all property sales (and only 2% of home sales), but it will generate close to $1 billion a year to address the city's housing and homelessness crisis. The money will be used to build affordable low-income housing, provide rent relief to tenants threatened with eviction, provide lawyers to tenants facing eviction as part of the right-to-counsel, and 2% ($18-20 million a year) for tenant organizing.  I co-authored a report that explained why the measure was needed and would be effective.
             Two years ago, when we started this campaign, most political experts would have considered it an impossible task , but we forged an unprecedented coalition that included tenant groups, community organization groups, the building trades unions, the service sector unions, homeless service provides, nonprofit developers of affordable housing, faith groups, and even the United Way. The LA Times endorsed the campaign and the measure, which was extremely helpful. We were significantly outspent by the real estate industry but we won anyway.
        The campaign got some media attention but, understandably, it was overshadowed by many important races for mayor, city council, and other offices. The most important was Karen Bass's victory to be LA's next mayor. Karen was a longtime community organizer before she became a state legislator and Congresswoman. In 2008, I wrote a profile of Karen for The Nation as an example of the growing number of organizers running for public office.  This year I interviewed Karen again for an article  for The Nation about the mayoral race, published a few weeks before Election Day. 
          Her opponent for mayor, billionaire developer Rick Caruso, spent an unprecedented $100+ million in the campaign, outspending Karen by more than 11 to 1. Despite that, Karen won with 55% of the vote. In addition, progressives won races for several City Council races and city controller. The election results in LA were part of a wider trend of progressives winning local races and ballot measures across the country, including a remarkable victory for rent control in Pasadena, where I live.  
       In January 2022, Dan Flaming and I released a report for the Economic Roundtable about the working and living conditions of grocery workers called "Hungry at the Table."  It based on a survey of over 10,000 workers for Kroger (the nation's largest grocery chain) and done in cooperation with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. Among other findings, we discovered that 3/4 of the workers were food insecure, 2/3 couldn't make ends meet and 14% had been homeless. The report got a lot of media attention in the NY Times, LA Times, Seattle Times, Denver Post, UPI, and dozens of other news outlets. It played a role in the great contract that the Colorado workers and UFCW, negotiated with the company after a 10-day strike, as well as better contracts for UFCW workers in California and Washington state. Kroger is a microcosm of corporate America - with its rising profits, skyrocketing pay for top executives, declining wages for most employees, and heavy reliance on part-time workers. The result is widening inequality and a declining standard of living for most Americans.  I wrote an article for American Prospect summarizing the report's key findings and wider implications.

  

        In addition to working on local campaigns, teaching and coordinating Oxy's Campaign Semester program, and writing (I’ve posted some of my articles below), I spent considerable time in 2022 promoting my two new books, published in April,  through talks at bookstores, colleges, on-line webinars, and the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I hope you'll consider reading one or both books and giving them as gifts.  (YOU MAY HAVE TO RIGHT-CLICK TO SEE THE BOOK COVERS]