Revolution in the Air Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che by Max Elbaum New Edition with a Foreword by Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter

May 20,  4 PM. Time Tested Books. Co sponsored by DSA and the Marxists School

The first in-depth study of the US New Left's long march after 1968 Revolution in the Air is the definitive study of how radicals from the sixties movements embraced twentieth-century Marxism, and what movements of dissent today can learn from the legacies of Lenin, Mao and Che. This new paperback edition, released fifty years after the seminal Protests of 1968, features a foreword by Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter. It is essential reading for those concerned with the radical history of the struggle for racial equality in the US- and how we can learn from that history to achieve a just future.  “If you still believe sixties radicalism was nothing more than youthful middle-class confusion or parochial identity politics, then open these pages and dig.” – Robin D.G. Kelley “The breadth of Elbaum’s knowledge … marks this book as an absolutely first-rate work of political scholarship.” – Village Voice “It should be required reading for those interested in the modern history of social movements and for radicals of my generation who are trying to find out what went wrong.” – Los Angeles Times “Truly a superb work of scholarship that raises all the right questions.” – Radical History Max Elbaum was a member of Students for a Democratic Society and a leader of one of the main new communist movement organizations. His writings have appeared in the Nation, the US Guardian, CrossRoads, and the Encyclopedia of the American Left. He lives in Oakland. Max is availa

Poor People's Campaign Comes to Sacramento

‘Our People Are Being Hurt and We Won’t be Silent Anymore’

---

CaliforniaPoor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival To Kick Off Six Weeks of Non-Violent Direct Action Monday in Sacramento

---

Protests Planned in over 30 State Capitals, Washington, D.C.

---

Movement Demands Sweeping Overhaul of Nation’s Voting Rights Laws, Policies to Address Poverty, Ecological Devastation, War Economy

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA—The CaliforniaPoor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival will kick off a six-week season of nonviolent direct action Monday in Sacramento.  The Campaign is demanding a massive overhaul of the nation’s voting rights laws, new programs to lift up the 140 million Americans living in poverty, immediate attention to ecological devastation and measures to curb militarism and the war economy. 

The Monday rally in California is one of over 30 actions across the country by poor and disenfranchised people, clergy and advocates who will engage in 40 days of nonviolent direct action and voter mobilization, among other activities. As a movement, we aim at transforming the nation’s political, economic and moral structures by building on the work of the original Poor People’s Campaign 50 years ago. 

To emphasize the urgent necessity for action,hundreds of participants are joining ‘Freedom Trains’,in solidarity with their 1968 counter parts. These caravans will be launching from  Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. To Commemorate the daily hardships that Women  endure, these caravans will embark on Mother’s Day, May 13th, to join forces in Sacramento to focus on the first week’s theme: Somebody’s Hurting Our People: Women, Youth, Disabled, Children in Poverty and Right to Education.

English Learners Deserve Support in Sacramento

Update ! The Community Priorities Coalition in Sacramento announces that the Sacramento City Unified School District will have its regular meeting on Thursday, May 17, to consider the district budget for 2018/2019. 

This budget has significant implications for how Local Control Funding monies will be spent. [update: the posted agenda for the meeting does not include a consideration of the budget.  Watch this blog for updates.  The issue remains as defined below.]

SCUSD receives about $367 million each year under LCFF.  Of that money some $6.7 million is generated for English Learners in the schools.  In each of the last 3 years, only a small portion of these funds have been spent on EL learning.  The remainder apparently has been allocated to the district reserve fund.  The district claims it will be spending into a deficit next year.  They hide the money.

Teachers, parents and interested persons are welcome at the Board meeting at the Serna Center starting at 6 pm.  

I will be addressing the board as  Co- Chair of the Education Committee of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens. Here is a draft of what I will say.  You are invited to come and give your view also. 

I speak tonight in support of the alternative budget presented by the Sacramento Community Priorities Coalition. 

With Lula in Jail, the Future of Democracy in Brazil is at Stake | Portside

With Lula in Jail, the Future of Democracy in Brazil is at Stake | Portside

Poor People's Campaign Gears Up for Mother's Day

Poor People’s Campaign Gears Up for Mother’s Day Launch. A major new report makes the case for a 'fusion movement' against systemic racism, poverty and inequality, militarism and the war economy, and ecological devastation.

I am not speaking about the poor. I am not speaking for the poor. I am the poor.” Claudia De la Cruz was speaking at an April 10 press briefing in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.Inspired by a similar 1968 initiative led by Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, the campaign aims to lift up the voices of people like De la Cruz who’ve been most affected by our country’s persistent poverty. A descendant of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, De la Cruz was born in the South Bronx, the poorest Congressional district in the country. Median household income there is about $26,000, compared to $116,000 for the wealthiest district, which straddles Virginia’s northern suburbs. She’s a member of the national steering committee of the Poor People’s Campaign and one of the state organizers for the New York City area. At the briefing, the Poor People’s Campaign and the Institute for Policy Studies co-released a 120-page report on poverty and inequality, systemic racism, ecological devastation, the war economy, and militarism. The Souls of Poor Folk draws on empirical data and interviews with grassroots leaders in each of these inter-related areas to make the case for reviving the 1968 campaign. The report points out, for example, that 140 million Americans today are poor or low-income.

The Outcome in Arizona | Portside

The Outcome in Arizona | Portside

Debate: How Should Unions Deal With Free Riders? | Labor Notes

Debate: How Should Unions Deal With Free Riders? | Labor Notes

Next Steps - Poor People's Campaign

Arizona Joins Red State Revolt: Teachers’ Strike Reaches Day Five

Making People’s History in Arizona: Educators Rise Up – Rethinking Schools

Making People;s History in Arizona: Educators Rise Up ; Rethinking Schools

Bring Back May Day

Most of the world recognizes May 1 — May Day — as International Workers’ Day. Here in one of the few countries that doesn’t, it’s worth pausing to ask how U.S. workers are doing.

At an event last December, Fight for $15 organizer Terrence Wise recalled “going to bed at night, ignoring my own stomach’s rumbling, but having to hear my three little girls’ stomachs rumble. That’s something no parent should have to endure.”

Wise was marking the launch of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

Last month, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Poor People’s Campaign released The Souls of Poor Folk, a report on 50 years of change in the issues that affect working people, and particularly those at the bottom. We looked at systemic racism, poverty, militarism, and ecological devastation.

We found some startling and unhappy results. For the most part, workers like Wise are struggling hard to get by.

With the destruction of industries and the cities that housed them, the nature of our economy has shifted. Although the official unemployment rate is low, employment today often means low-wage work that offers little job security.

Our society’s treatment of workers has changed, too. For example, 28 states have passed so-called “right to work” laws that undermine the ability of workers to organize.

THE SOULS OF POOR FOLK

Auditing America after 1968's Poor People's Campaign 

That’s meant steadily declining union membership, which keeps workers from getting their fair share of the wealth produced by the U.S. economy over the past 50 years. Despite enormous growth in the overall economy, wages for the bottom 80 percent of workers have remained largely stagnant.

Before the Chalk Dust Settles: Building on the 2018 Teachers’ Mobilization

Before the Chalk Dust Settles: Building on the 2018 Teachers’ Mobilization: By bargaining for and with the larger community, teachers are reinventing collective bargaining.

Arizona teacher strike: it not just about a raise. Its about defending public education. - Vox

Arizona teacher strike: its not just about a raise. Its about defending public education. - Vox

Arizona Teachers On Strike

 http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21092/arizona_teachers_strike_ducey_rally_labor?

Teachers' Strike in Arizona/Colorado 2

TEACHERS WALK OUT IN ARIZONA, COLORADO: "Thousands of teachers in Arizona and Colorado walked out of their classrooms on Thursday to demand more funding for public schools, the latest surge of a teacher protest movement that has already swept through three states and is spreading quickly to others," Simon Romero and Julie Turkewitz report in the New York Times. 

"Widespread teacher protests have in recent months upended daily routines in the conservative-leaning states West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky," the Times reports. "But the sight of public workers protesting en masse in the Arizona capital, one of the largest Republican strongholds in the country, and demanding tax increases for more school funding, spoke to the enduring strength of the movement and signaled shifts in political winds ahead of this year's midterm elections."

"Educators in both states want more classroom resources and have received offers either for increased school funding or pay, but they say the money isn't guaranteed and the efforts don't go far enough," Melissa Daniels and Anita Snow write in the Associated Press. "Most of Arizona's public schools will be closed the rest of the week, and about half of all Colorado students will see their schools shuttered over the two days as teachers take up the Arizona movement's #RedforEd mantle." More from the Times here and the AP here.

See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/opinion/teachers-arizona-walkout.html

Colorado, Bilingual Education, and Civil Rights

Colorado, Bilingual Education, and Civil Rights



Note: Austerity proposals create the same problems in California,

Teacher Strike in Arizona and Colorado

This year, fights at state capitols across the country are looking different than ever before. Educators are tired of the budget cuts to schools, tired of low pay, and tired of being ignored or disparaged. And they are willing, like never before, to act collectively to fight for their kids, their schools, themselves and their communities. 

From West Virginia to Oklahoma, Kentucky, and, this week, Arizona and Colorado, educators are walking out of their classrooms to protest low pay, austerity budgets, and the threat of privatization and closing schools. 

And they have the support of parents, students and their communities. A new poll says that 78 percent of Americans support increasing teacher pay and more than 50 percent would support raising their own taxes to pay for it.  

Today, teachers in Puerto Rico will rally at the Capitol and create a human shield around it to show they will protect public education. Demonstrate your support by joining their shield virtually in solidarity on Facebook and Twitter. 

The usual Republican playbook isn’t working anymore. Economist Paul Krugman gave a great analysis this week of why. He said that tax cuts sharply reduce revenue, wreaking havoc on state finances, which forces states to cut spending. And since education is central to state and local budgets, that puts educators in the crosshairs. 

No Muslim Ban

The Muslim ban is a symptom of a much deeper rot in American ideals, and we must take on hate to address the violence ripping our communities apart. #NoMuslimBanEver http://saalt.org/report-communities-on-fire-confronting-hate-violence-and-xenophobic-political-rhetoric/

TRAVEL BAN AT SCOTUS: The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments at 10 a.m. today in a case over the legality of President Donald Trump's travel ban. In October the administration rolled out the third iteration of the policy, placing a variety of restrictions on travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, as well as North Korea and Venezuela. Chad was dropped from the list earlier this month after administration officials said it had met security benchmarks. 

Republican Candidate for CA Governor Makes Sanctuary Legislation His Key

John Cox is a businessman and a Republican with a shot, after the June primary, of being one of the two candidates on the November ballot for governor. California Today has been doing occasional question-and-answer sessions with candidates for office.

This interview, with Mr. Cox, was edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: How does a Republican win an election in a state like this?

A: The biggest issue is the sanctuary state. The politicians seem to be favoring criminals over law-abiding citizens. The politicians are ignoring the rule of law in favor of political expediency. The other big issue is the tax burden — the gas tax in particular. They enacted this tax increase using a lot of political games to get it accomplished.

Q: Does the Republican Party need to expand its appeal to become more competitive here?

A: I’m a Jack Kemp Republican. I think that’s the kind of Republican we all have to be. Jack would always speak positively about things. I want people to get away from harsh language.

Having said that, it is absolutely objectionable for people like Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown to say they are not going to adhere to the federal law on immigration. Jerry Brown should not be acting like George Wallace in front of the schoolhouse in Alabama. From California Online. of the NYT.

Why Teachers Are Adopting a More Militant Politics | The New Republic

Why Teachers Are Adopting a More Militant Politics | The New Republic

Tax cuts for the rich, or essential public services for all?

by Randi Weingarten 

President, American Federation of Teachers 

What do basketball legend Charles Barkley and the late Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. have in common? An understanding that taxes fund things that we need and value.

Holmes told a law clerk who complained about paying taxes, “I like to pay taxes. It’s what we pay for a civilized society.” More than a century later, Barkley came to a similar conclusion. He used to say he did not like paying taxes, until he got a call from basketball icon Bill Russell. Russell pointed out that money from taxes paid for the public schools Barkley attended growing up, and for police officers and firefighters in his community. Russell said, “Now that you got money, you don’t want to help other people out, but when you were poor other people took care of you.” Barkley replied, “You will never hear me complain about my taxes again.”

Weingarten with AFT members in Oklahoma marching to the state Capitol April 2. Photo by Adam Derstine.

But many people do complain about paying their share for essential public services. Some wealthy Americans calculated that they could pay more in campaign contributions in order to pay less in taxes. The Republican-controlled Congress responded with a tax overhaul last December that lavishes the wealthiest 1 percent with 83 percent of the cuts. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last week reported that the plan will increase the deficit to nearly $1 trillion in fiscal 2019, and that, by 2028, the national debt could equal nearly the entire value of all the finished goods and services produced in the country.

Republicans claimed that these massive tax cuts would pay for themselves and benefit all Americans. But retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan immediately backtracked on that pledge. Ryan said Congress would now “tackle the debt and the deficit” the tax cuts create, providing the GOP an excuse to make deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and other programs the neediest Americans depend on.

Americans are not fooled. A recent AFT- Democracy Corps poll found that most respondents have not personally benefited from the tax plan and are unhappy their wages are not keeping up with rising costs. They are angry the GOP plans to pay for tax cuts they don’t benefit from by shredding the social safety net. And they feel strongly the funds being redistributed to the rich should have been invested in public schools, healthcare or infrastructure.

Such investments are vital. Twenty- nine states still spend less on public education than they did before the Great Recession. And many states have seen devastating consequences after sharply cutting taxes. Kansas enacted an extreme form of trickle-down economics, on the premise that it would usher in an economic boom. Instead, state revenue plummeted, the deficit exploded and officials slashed spending on everything from road repair to Medicaid and public education. Kansans across party lines railed against the decimation of public goods and services, prompting the Legislature to pass a $1.2 billion tax increase last year, but the state is still struggling to fund essential public services.

Officials’ choices to cut taxes for the wealthy rather than invest in essential services lie at the heart of the teacher walkouts now gripping the country. In Oklahoma, income tax cuts and tax breaks for the oil and gas industry deprive the state of $1.5 billion a year. West Virginia lawmakers have cut taxes by more than $4 billion in the last decade.

These irresponsible tax cuts have made it impossible to, in Justice Holmes’ words, “pay for a civilized society.” In Oklahoma, textbooks are held together with duct tape, and, while a student was excited to be issued a textbook once used by country singer Blake Shelton, her mother was horrified to realize Shelton had used it nearly 40 years ago. Teacher pay in West Virginia and Oklahoma ranks 48th and 49th lowest, respectively, in the nation.

One of the starkest current examples of disinvestment is in Puerto Rico, where the governor is proposing to close 450 public schools in less than one year. In the wake of the devastation caused by recent hurricanes, this will further tear at the fabric of community life and promote the continuing exodus from the island.

Teachers, students and parents are standing up to prevent this catastrophe.

Meanwhile, it’s testing season in America’s schools. And while many so-called education reformers fixate on algorithms, outputs and accountability, the teachers waging these walkouts offer a reminder that, before anything else, we have to take care of the basics—investing in and supporting our students, their educators and their schools.

We all benefit from safe communities, great public schools and a civilized society. And we all have a responsibility to contribute our fair share to make that possible.

Download the Column (472.9 KB)

Ethnic Studies to be Required in California ?

Two years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 2016, which is set to create the first statewide model curriculum on ethnic studies by 2019. No other state had ever approved such a bill to help standardize the courses that arose 50 years ago out of the Third World Liberation Front strikes at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley in 1968. 

This year, Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, himself a former ethnic studies high school teacher, is championing a bill to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement in all California public high schools.

Medina has introduced AB 2772, which would require public high schools and charter schools to offer a course in ethnic studies beginning in the 2021–22 school year. It also would add a course in ethnic studies to high school graduation requirements in social studies commencing with the 2023–24 school year. Last month, the Assembly Education Committee gave the bill its first approval with a bipartisan 5-1 vote. It now must get out of the Appropriations Committee.

Texas education board approves course formerly known as Mexican-American studies

    By Aliyya Swaby, The Texas Tribune
    April 11, 2018
 
* Update, April 13: On Friday, the State Board of Education gave its final approval to development of the Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent course.

Texas advocates for Mexican-American studies classes won a bitter victory Wednesday, gaining approval to move forward with the class they wanted but losing the course title.

The State Board of Education had been debating more than four years over how and whether to offer teachers materials and guidance to teach Mexican-American studies. In a preliminary vote, the board voted nearly unanimously to create curriculum standards for the elective class. But now it will be called “Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent.”  

A final vote on the issue is scheduled for Friday.

The class will be based on an innovative course Houston ISD got state approval to offer in 2015. Texas Education Agency staff will make any needed changes to that set of curriculum standards and then bring it back for the first of two public hearings and votes in June.

Syria War Dead

In seven years, the casualties of Syria’s civil war have grown from the first handful of protesters shot by government forces to hundreds of thousands of dead.

But as the war has dragged on, growing more diffuse and complex, many international monitoring groups have essentially stopped counting.

Even the United Nations, which released regular reports on the death toll during the first years of the war, gave its last estimate in 2016 — when it relied on 2014 data, in part — and said that it was virtually impossible to verify how many had died.

At that time, a United Nations official said 400,000 people had been killed.

But so many of the biggest moments of the war have happened since then. In the past two years, the government of President Bashar al-Assad, with Russia’s help, laid siege to residential areas of Aleppo, once the country’s second-largest city, and several other areas controlled by opposition groups, leveling entire neighborhoods. Last weekend, dozens of people died in asuspected chemical attackon a Damascus suburb, prompting the United States, Britain and France to launch retaliatory strikes against Syrian targets early Saturday.

In addition, American-led forces have bombed the Islamic State in large patches of eastern Syria, in strikes believed to have left thousands dead. And dozens of armed groups, including fighters backed by Iran, have continued to clash, creating a humanitarian catastrophe that the world is struggling to measure.

Historically, these numbers matter, experts say, because they can have a direct impact on policy, accountability and a global sense of urgency. The legacy of the Holocaust has become inextricably linked with the figure of six million Jews killed in Europe. The staggering death toll of the Rwandan genocide — one million Tutsis killed in 100 days — is seared into the framework of that nation’s reconciliation process.

Without a clear tally of the deaths, advocates worry that the conflict will simply grind on indefinitely, without a concerted international effort to end it.

“We know from conflicts around the world that we can’t have any sustainable peace if we don’t have accountability,” said Anna Nolan, director of The Syria Campaign, a human rights advocacy group. “The most critical thing to understand in that situation is who is being killed and who is doing that killing, and without that information we can’t expect the people involved in resolving this conflict to come to the right decisions.”

Photo

A Syrian man evacuated an infant from the rebel-held town of Hamouria after heavy bombardment in February. As the seven-year Syria war drags on, growing more diffuse and complex, many international monitoring groups have stopped counting casualties.

New York Times 

Brown Agrees to Send National Guard to the Border

 Brown Agrees to Send National Guard to the Border: California Gov. Jerry Brown has agreed to President Donald Trump's request to put additional  National Guard troops on the border wi...

A California Public School that Betsy DeVos Wouldnt Recognize | Capital & Main

A California Public School that Betsy DeVos Wouldnt Recognize | Capital & Main

How Schools Deal With Immigrants

State Superintendent Torlakson Applauds New Guidelines for Undocumented Students and Families

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today applauded new guidelines to protect the rights of undocumented students and their families at California’s more than 10,000 public schools.

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra developed the Promoting a Safe and Secure Learning Environment for All: Guidance and Model Policies to Assist California K–12 Schools in Responding to Immigration Issues guide  (PDF), to help schools develop policies to safeguard the privacy and personal information of students.

“This guide gives students, parents, educators, and the public, valuable information about the laws and the limits of immigration enforcement,” said Torlakson. “It’s a big step forward in support of all of our efforts to make sure students and their parents, regardless of citizenship status, feel safe and welcome at public schools.”

Unstable Trump Creates Another "Crisis" on the Bor...

antiracismdsa: Unstable Trump Creates Another "Crisis" on the Bor...: By Duane Campbell President Donald Trump announced on April 3, 2018 that he'll deploy troops to the U.S.-Mexico border pending c...

Oklahoma Teachers Strike Against Austerity

Oklahoma teachers proudly marked themselves absent from school since Monday, and they had an excellent excuse: They made themselves present in politics instead, with a historic march on the Capitol in hopes of finally capturing the legislature’s undivided attention

Lawmakers thought they could eke through another austerity budget with the last-minute addition of a $6,100 wage hike. But an estimated 30,000 educators stopped work starting Monday to force some 200 schools to shutter, in order to send the message to elected representatives that their gesture is insufficient. The planned raise paled against teachers’ demands for a fully funded school budget, as part of a $3.3 billion package to restore massive cutbacks across state agencies, as well as the basic dignity of a living wage for all state workers.

Following a decade of bruising austerity, the numbers still don't add up for Oklahoma schools. They lead the nation in annual budget cuts, and rank 45th in funding equity levels and 46th in academic performance, according to recent national rankings. With pay scales for teachers statewide frozen since the recession, salaries have declined in real terms to rank near dead last in the country.

The Teachers' Strikes are a Sea Change

Kentucky Teachers,  March 8,2018

Harold Meyerson,

Around seven years ago, I had a standard wisecrack to explain the standing of workers in the world’s two dominant economies: “China has strikes but no unions; America has unions but no strikes.”

Seven years later, it’s clear we’re becoming more like China every day.

The remarkable upsurge of teachers in Republic-run, largely non-union states that has swept through West Virginia and is now sweeping through Oklahoma and Kentucky, and is poised to descend on Arizona, has returned the mass strike to the United States after decades of relegation to the history books. In each of these states, the teachers unions have something between limited and no legal rights to bargain collectively, and, correspondingly, represent just a hard core of members whose commitment to their union is more a matter of belief than of anticipated reward. And yet, able to mobilize even in non-union terrains through the use of social media, and outraged at their states’ continued opposition to funding public education, the teachers have leapt beyond law and formal organization to press their case.

Union leaders and members have played a key role in these actions, which have ballooned into statewide strikes. But so have rank-and-file teachers who haven’t been members, some of whom established the Facebook pages that they and their co-workers have used to develop their demands, organize their actions, and mobilize their peers. The fact that West Virginia’s teachers refused to go back to work after a preliminary deal was struck, persuading their leaders and colleagues to stay out until the deal was sealed, and then won their demands has clearly prompted their fellow teachers in other states to turn their righteous indignation at their state government’s decade-long starvation of public education into solidaristic militancy.

What the Teacher Strikes Mean

What the Teacher Strikes Mean

Rainy Days for the CSU

Demonstration : Fund the CSU - April 4

State Spending Per Student at CSU and UC Remains Well Below Pre-Recession Levels, Despite Recent Increases - California Budget & Policy Center

Its Oklahomas' Teachers Turn to Strike | Portside

Its Oklahomas' Teachers  Turn to Strike | Portside

Cesar Chavez Dolores Huerta, the UFW, and Strategic Racism.

Cesar Chavez  & Duane Campbell, 1972

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.  You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read.  You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.  Cesar Chávez.  November 9, 1984.

by Duane Campbell

On March 31, 2018,  Eleven  states  and numerous cities will hold holidays celebrating  labor and Latino Leader Cesar Chavez. Conferences, marches and celebrations will occur in numerous cities this weekend and particularly in rural farm areas  of the nation.  A recent film Cesar Chavez: An American Hero, starring Michael Peña  as Cesar Chavez and Rosario Dawson  as Dolores Huerta presents important parts of this story.

Meanwhile,  in March of 2015  hundreds of farmworkers have walked off their jobs in Baja California, Mexico, from the agricultural fields just a few miles from the U.S. border , fields developed to provide a harvest to the U.S. markets.  Farm labor strikes and violence against strikers remains a volatile issue.  Farm workers deserve dignity, respect, and fair wages.  Achieving these goals will require a union.

The  current UFW leadership, as well as former UFW leaders  and former DSA Honorary Chairs  Eliseo Medina and Dolores Huerta  are recognized leaders in the ongoing efforts to achieve comprehensive immigration reform in the nation.

 On immigration, UFW President Arturo Rodriquez says, “We urge Republicans to abandon their political games that hurt millions of hard-working, taxpaying immigrants and their families, and help us finish the job by passing legislation such as the comprehensive reform bill that was approved by the Senate on a bipartisan vote in June 2013,” Rodriguez said.  Similar compromise proposals, negotiated by the UFW and the nation's major agricultural employer associations, have passed the U.S. Senate multiple times over the last decade. The same proposal has won majority support in the House of Representatives, even though House GOP leaders have refused to permit a vote on the measure. “The UFW will not rest until the President's deferred relief is enacted and a permanent immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants, is signed into law.”  www.UFW.org

What Chavez, Huerta  did  accomplish along with Philip Vera Cruz ,  Marshall Ganz, LeRoy Chatfield, Gil Padilla, Eliseo Medina and  hundreds of others was to   organize in California the first successful farm worker union against overwhelming odds.

Dolores

Live Boldly.  on KVIE,  March 27.  9 PM. and other public television stations. 

by Duane Campbell

There is an important new film out – Dolores, the story of former DSA Honorary Chair Dolores Huerta and her fight for justice. (All DSA honorary chairs were eliminated by the 2017 DSA convention.) She is the woman holding the Huelga sign on the DSA landing page. If you want to be inspired by her struggle for social justice, go see the film. 

Although at times ignored by the Anglo media, and at other times castigated as a red and an “outside agitator,” Huerta tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Cesar Chavez, becoming one of the most important feminists of the twentieth century. If you don’t know her story, you should ask yourself why.  She continues the fight on many fronts to this day, at age 87. With unprecedented access to Dolores, the film reveals important parts of the struggle for dignity and justice for farmworkers, as well as the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s life to social change. 

March for Our Lives

This weekend, students will join together at March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., and in sibling marches across the country. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to Congress and state legislatures to demand measures that will protect them at their schools and in their communities.

California and Teacher Preparation

One certain way to ruin one’s reputation is to take on an impossible task, and then fail at it. The essential qualification of any contractor is the ability to tell what is possible and what is not. Say, if you want to have a floor made of thin glass, your contractor should tell you, no, sorry, you cannot do that.

The State Legislature is asking us, the teacher preparation industry to solve the problem of teacher shortage. Our culture is that of public service, and that is true for both state-supported and private institutions. Of course, we say, “Yes, we will do our best!” The Legislature hears something slightly different, “Yes we can do it!” The difference between what we say and what they hear is tremendous, but as it is often the case, it goes unnoticed. Then we fail at what they think they heard, year after year. They get frustrated and look elsewhere, trying to deregulate teacher preparation so that almost anyone can do it, school districts, private schools, county offices, and very soon - Starbucks shops. It still does not work, for poorly selected and ill-prepared teachers stay on the job for shorter and shorter gigs. The vicious cycle is the consequence of unclear, unarticulated response on our side and wishful thinking on their side.

Of course, the State wants to solve the problem without raising teacher salaries, and without investing a dime in teacher retention. Who wouldn’t want that? The State is willing to invest some in teacher recruitment, mistakenly believing that recruitment is the main source of the problem. However, retention is far more important, and it boils down to salaries and working conditions. 

Florida Teachers on Edge as New Law Threatens Their Unions | Portside

Florida Teachers on Edge as New Law Threatens Their Unions | Portside

The Majority Report

Read the report. 

Public Schools as Center of Rebellion

Jeff Bryant

Why Public Schools Have Become the Epicenter of Rebellion

The revolution may not be televised, but it is happening in public schools. This is evident in the growth of student and teacher actions across the country, from walkouts to strikes. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention. Public school communities – students, teachers, parents, and citizens – have seen their institutions targeted with deeper budget cuts, greater inequities in the system, harsher penalties for “underperforming” on arbitrary standards, and deadlier gun violence. Is it any wonder that these constituents are now standing up to say they’ve had enough?

---

Trump's Border Wall is Stupid and Dangerous

antiracismdsa: Trump's Border Wall is Stupid and Dangerous: The  W all (or  F ence) Yes, the U.S. can build a wall or fencing on the U.S. side of the border, except for that portion of the b...

Kevin de Leon + Jeff Sessions

Hunting Russian trolls, a field guide

How do you identify a Russian troll? It is simple, really. Scott Shane caught one by just noticing that the activist’s English was a little odd. It is a form of simple linguistic analysis, and it works. You may not know, but linguistic analysis was critical in catching the Unabomber. But you don’t have to be a linguist to catch a troll, because they are not as smart as Ted Kaczynski.

No matter how proficient one gets with a second language, the first language always “seeps in.” Unless you were lucky to grow up fully bilingual, the native language’s syntax and idioms will inevitably show up in your second language writing. The troll factory in Saint Petersburg is a massive operation, and they simply cannot afford to hire truly fluent people, or even reasonably smart people. Shane also shows that Americans who bought into Russian trolling efforts are, well, less than brilliant. So the troll infection is a case of the dumb leading the dumber.

Here is a few tips on how to spot a native Russian speaker who is trying to pass for an American:

1. Because our language does not have articles, their use does not come naturally to us. My friend once told me, “You do not even hear articles.” That is true, Russian speakers tend to filter them out as noise, and that is why we are slow to learn article usage as adults. Besides, English has a whole class of article use that is purely conventional, especially in geographic names (The Hague, but simply Paris, for example). There is a whole slew of exceptions (you go to school, but go to the hospital) that simply needs to be memorized. Either missing or overused articles will point to the Russian origin of the author.
2. The written form of Russian tends to have longer, more convoluted sentence structure, with dependent clauses placed at strange places. Russians are more likely to use awkward passive constructions. They may be grammatically correct, but not common. A Russian sentence has a free word order, and we tend to recreate this kind of variety of sentence structure in English. It often looks unnecessary complex. 
3. Watch for weird idioms. If they do not quite make sense, they have probably been borrowed from another language. 

Gov. Jerry Brown: Sessions 'sowing discord' instead of proposing immigra...

Putting Trump On Notice About DACA: Fix What You Broke.

There are echoes of the Fugitive Slave Act in today's immigration debate

There are echoes of the Fugitive Slave Act in today's immigration debate