Rouge Forum Update: All Rise March 4th! Happy Birthday Manifesto!
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
February 21, 1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto. In a letter dated London, 12 and 13 June 1883, Friedrich Engels enclosed a present for Eduard Bernstein. It is a handwritten page of the Communist Manifesto from 1848. “Enclosed is a part of the original draft of the concluding chapter from the Communist Manifesto that you may have as a souvenir. The first two lines were dictated and written by Mrs. Marx.” This only remaining page of the Communist Manifesto are part of the Marx-Engels papers.
They Say Get Back! We Say Fight Back!
Educate! Occupy! Walkout! March 4th to Transform Public Education ! Defend Education from the Ruling Classes!
On the Little Rouge School Front:
Most Calif. Schools Bow out of $700M RATT: Less than half of California school districts and only about a quarter of teacher unions have promised to make key education reforms required for the state to win $700 million in competitive federal grants, officials said Wednesday.
www.fresnobee.com/state/story/1825347.html
Son of NCLB to Rise and Spread the Bad Seed? “Senior House Republicans and Democrats plan to announce Thursday that they will team up to rewrite the No Child Left Behind education law, a rare show of bipartisanship in the polarized Congress.”
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021705195.html
NYTimes on the (RightWing) Politics of Curriculum and Textbooks: “Public education has always been a battleground between cultural forces; one reason that Texas’ school-board members find themselves at the very center of the battlefield is, not surprisingly, money. The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually — which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State. California is the largest textbook market, but besides being bankrupt, it tends to be so specific about what kinds of information its students should learn that few other states follow its lead. Texas, on the other hand, was one of the first states to adopt statewide curriculum guideline” www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?em
NYTimes–Public Says College-as-Business Sucks: “Most Americans believe that colleges today operate like businesses, concerned more with their bottom line than with the educational experience of students, according to a new study. And the proportion of people who hold that view has increased to 60 percent, from 52 percent in 2007….nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said that colleges should use federal stimulus money to hold down tuition, even if it means less money for operations and programs.”
Houston (with San Diego’s Terry Grier at the top) Imposes Firing-for-Test-Score Project:
“At a contentious meeting pitting parents against teachers, the Houston school board gave final approval on Thursday to a policy allowing the firing of instructors whose students fall short on standardized tests. Dozens of parents spoke in favor of the decision, while more than 750 teachers packed the school district’s headquarters to protest the policy, considered among the most aggressive efforts in the nation to improve teacher quality.
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6863554.html
Dual Tyranny In Detroit: Administrative and Union–Detroit Federation of Teachers Uses Cops Vs Members: The DFT leadership had police greeting members coming to the February 11 meeting where rank and file dissidents hoped to present, again, a petition to remove DFT president Keith Johnson who, in December, foisted the worst teacher contract in US history on Detroit School workers. Police removed several members from the meeting in handcuffs. Below are quotes from the DFT web page (mi.aft.org/dft231/) demonstrating how the AFT around the country is more and more turning to force in order to whip educators into line. Force alone will never win. Meanwhile, DFT members watch as $250 vanishes from each paycheck, their insurance co-pays go from $5 to $40. In some schools, the testing schedule of preparation and bubbling-in will take up 49 of the next 100 school days. An injury to one just goes before an injury to all. Union bosses are the nearest and most vulnerable of workers’ enemies-harsh measures. Video (3) www.youtube.com/user/DFTmembers
NPR coverage:”…I don’t have any more doubts that that was a corrupt and false vote.” www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1611414/Top.Stories/DFT.Meeting.Breaks.Down.Amid.Accusations.of.Vote-Rigging
Detroit Metro-Times: “ Johnson has called Detroit police, though no arrests have been made, and the union’s privately contracted security staff has escorted his opponents from the meeting. At the January meeting, a teacher who left the meeting asked the security guard, “Why did you threaten Heather Miller that you would fuck her up?” The guard replied, “I’ll say whatever the fuck I want.” www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=14810
Got a Nominee for the “Defense of (whatever is left of) Academic Freedom Award?
www.socialstudies.org/awards/academicfreedom
Ya’ Cannot Make This Stuff Up: Philly Embeds Cameras to Spy on Students at Home: “ A suburban Philadelphia school district used the webcams in school-issued laptops to spy on students at home, potentially catching them and their families in compromising situations, a family claims in a federal lawsuit.” http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9160
Racism Doing Just Fine at UCSD Where Student Racists are Protected By Racist Administrators:
“The university at first said the party was off-campus and therefore would not present any problems with a student Code of Conduct.”
“http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/feb/19/tv-show-incenses-black-students-ucsd/
UCSD Lap Dog Calls Campus With 2% Black Students “Diverse.” : “UC San Diego is a jewel in your back yard and we are eager to have a university community that truly represents the demographics of our region and state.
www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/feb/20/offensive-mockery-publicly-condemned/
Resistance News: All Out on March 4th!
March 20th is the Anniversary of the US Invasion of Iraq.
Then comes Mayday! www.richgibson.com/mayday.htm
Washington Teachers Suspended, Again, For Refusing to Proctor Bogus Test: “We did our own research and found that parents do have a right to refuse state assessments. Since the parents had expressed their opinions to us, we thought this was all that was needed. So we didn’t give the test.”
On the Perpetual Wars and Booming Inequality Front:
368 Days Since the Stimulus. Are You Stimmed Yet?
Ravi Kumar Investigates Elections in India and the Left Response: “ The point that is important here is not the way election results have shown how identity politics is weakening but that even if the identity politics had triumphed in electoral results, it would have been nothing more than the victory of the neoliberal consensus. Identity politics that bases itself on the rhetoric of social justice has failed to represent its own constituency or, in fact, it cannot represent that constituency because of its inherent political understanding that rejects class and does not see the dialectic of the capitalism and repressions of Dalits etc. Results of such an understanding have been obvious — capital escapes our attention as the perpetrator, and the enemy is constructed through the obvious and apparent “other,” which is no doubt the perpetrator but which needs to be seen as an embodiment of its social identity as well as the economic location. Because the current forms and stage of identity politics is not based on such an analysis and is more cultural and social (as autonomous categories) the ultimate resort will be to side with capital, rather than work towards its abolition. And that is very well happening.”
newpolitics.mayfirst.org/fromthearchives?nid=216
You Go Ahead, Troops, I’ll be Along Soon: “The base commander was on leave, his deputy was deployed elsewhere and the response to the ambush by the officers who manned the tactical operations center in their absence was “inadequate and ineffective, contributing directly to the loss of life,” the report said.Two majors, the senior officers there, “were not continually present” in the operations center. They left a captain who’d been on the overnight shift in charge of the center for more than four hours after the fighting began.
www.mcclatchydc.com/336/story/85883.html
Hey! The Afghans Don’t Seem to Want to Fight Afghans! “..the day when the Afghan Army will be well led and able to perform complex operations independently, rather than merely assist American missions, remains far off.” www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/world/asia/21afghan.html?hp
Boot Camp Marines Do Not Shout “Be Nice! Be Nice! Be Nice!” They Shout, “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Brits Had the Same Problem in 1777: “Karzai, addressing parliament as it opened its winter session, held up a picture of an 8-year-old girl he said was the only surviving member of a family of 12 killed when NATO rockets hit a home on the second day of the offensive.”
www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-afghan-offensive21-2010feb21,0,1506286.story
Puppet Elections In Iraq on the Ropes: “The Sunni political party whose two most prominent leaders were disqualified from next month’s parliamentary elections in Iraq because of supposed ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party called Saturday for a boycott of the vote, raising fears of worsening sectarian tensions in an already volatile campaign.”
www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html?hp
The Core Issue of Our Time is the Real Promise of Perpetual War and Booming Inequality Met by the Potential of Mass Class Conscious Resistance: “The 400 wealthiest Americans have seen their annual incomes skyrocket over the last two decades while their tax rates have decreased dramatically, according to newly released data from the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, between 1992 to 2007, the annual incomes of this tiny club of über-rich increased seven-fold to a whopping $345 million on average, while their effective tax rate dropped by more than one-third from a 1995 peak of nearly 30%, the data shows.”
www.dailyfinance.com/story/super-rich-made-344-million-each-in-2007-as-their-tax-rates-plu/19362705/
Brother Can You Spare A Job? “Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.”
Classic Lit of the Week :
“So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age – the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night – are not solved; as long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.”Victor Hugo, preface to Les Misérables (Hauteville House, 1862)
Song of the Week: Mike Stout Sings Hard Times are Fighting Times:
Thanks to John P, Kim B, Kelly, Jen, Peter, Steve, Mr J, James S, Joel S, Mr K, Jtop, Shelly, Ken and Barb, Amber, Tom and Bob, James, Dr Bob, Cole, Kelly, Sherry, Marisol, Arturo, Alejandro, Ravi, Glenn, Dave, Bonnie Mc, Nancy S, Mary Lou, Wayne, Adam and Gina, and Doug.
Good luck to us, every one.
r