Rouge Forum Dispatch: Still Givin’ ‘Em What Fer!
May 12th, 2019 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
Here’s What 5 Teachers in Different States Are Fighting for a Year After Walkouts and Protests
It has been a year since teachers began walking out en masse to protest the state of public education in the U.S. But in many of the states that saw significant activism from teachers in the past year, educators say they’re still fighting for the same changes.
A statewide strike in West Virginia in early 2018 helped to inspire similar action in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona and Colorado, where teachers called for pay raises, smaller class sizes and more classroom funding. The movement has continued this year with one-day rallies in North and South Carolina last week and with strikes in several major cities, including Los Angeles, Oakland and Denver.
In spite of the gains made in several states and school districts during the past year, many teachers say they’re still fighting for more significant progress on the same issues.
“People treat West Virginia teachers—it’s really weird—almost like rock stars,” says Jenny Craig, a special education teacher at Wheeling Middle School in Wheeling, W.V., who has been a leader of teacher activism in the state. time.com/5583760/what-teachers-want-national-teacher-day/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social-share-article&utm_content=20190507&fbclid=IwAR2NnOBk8JCFkZmlicC9Hn3cyKR0yus55JMY-O1DlyunJJwORfBc8BxkOAA
Thousands of Oregon teachers push for more school funding at rallies around the state
Thousands of teachers from across the state rallied Wednesday to push for more school funding.
Leaving their classrooms and students for the day in a move the union – the Oregon Education Association – says is part of a push for changes to K through 12 funding from the state.
Many teachers have expressed this is not a fight for better paychecks. Instead, the union says they are fighting to decrease class sizes and improve financial support for services and programs.
UNION CITY – New Haven Teachers Association (NHTA) announced they will go on strike May 20. NHTA President Joe Ku’e Angeles said enough is enough – teachers are fed up with their school district’s refusal to invest in educators and to provide the resources students need to succeed.
“We are putting New Haven Unified School District (NHUSD) managers and school board members on notice. While we all remain hopeful to reach a fair, student-centered settlement that appropriately compensates teachers, we’re prepared for the worse. And we know it’s going to take a real change in direction by management and our school board to help make an agreement happen,” he said.
“NHUSD managers have a prioritization problem – they need to make students and teachers a priority,” Angeles added. “Managers’ priority is to budget without consulting the teaching professionals in the classrooms. What they deem as essential is not necessarily the priority of the people who are in the classrooms every day working with students.”
NHTA Bargaining Chair W. Pace Lash noted NHUSD has $26 million in unrestricted reserves and can afford the teachers’ proposal. Other issues include the March terminations of 25 teachers and district plans to increase class size.
Angeles is a student services counselor and Lash is a math/statistics teacher at Logan High School.
The fact-finding report issued Monday noted NHUSD spends more than any other district in Alameda County, except Oakland, on administrator salaries. The NHUSD school board spending on management salaries, as a percentage of the budget, has increased (from 5.5% to 7.65%) while the spending on teacher salaries fell (from 54.50% to 44.17%). In an “apples to apples” comparison, New Haven compensation is near the bottom when it comes to salary and health benefits. NHUSD spends zero on health care for teachers.
With the release of the report, NHTA educators now have the legal right to strike… newhaventa.org/news-and-events/posts/2019/may/nhta-sets-may-20-strike-date/?fbclid=IwAR3PaJXUjRT2iIy7AnR6hjJLRFUpEb3mVIUZ9TMizTN6GFhGcnPla3HAm_I
Massachusetts NEA Delegates to Propose National Teacher Strike in Support of Green New Deal
At their annual meeting last week, delegates of the Massachusetts Teachers Association approved a resolution to call for a national teacher strike in support of the Green New Deal, a wide-ranging environmental initiative championed by left-wing factions of the Democratic Party.
The resolution will be presented by Massachusetts delegates to the National Education Association Representative Assembly in July for debate and possible action.
In the past, NEA delegates have resisted national actions in support of any cause, often for budgetary reasons. This one would be particularly problematic because teacher strikes are illegal in many states, and passing an agenda item in favor of one would make breaking some state laws an official NEA policy.
I’m neither an attorney nor an expert on environmental policy, but under normal circumstances this would be a non-starter for NEA delegates. But are these normal circumstances? www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2019/05/07/massachusetts-nea-delegates-to-propose-national-teacher-strike-in-support-of-green-new-deal/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Intercepts+%28Intercepts%29
Teachers announce second strike at Sacramento City Unified School District
The Sacramento City Teachers Association, embroiled in a labor dispute with the financially troubled Sacramento City Unified School District, announced Tuesday that it will hold its second one-day strike on May 22.
The teachers union made the announcement at a press conference at its Sacramento headquarters, joined by leaders from the California Teachers Association, Oakland Education Association, United Teachers of Los Angeles, Sacramento Central Labor Council, Service Employees International Union Local 1000, California Nurses Association and others.
SCTA President David Fisher on Tuesday declared the union’s first strike successful. He said the April 11 walkout, protesting alleged unfair labor practices, was kept to one day to minimize impact on students but pressured the district to “finally acknowledged that all solutions need to be on the table, including reducing the superintendent’s salary and chopping from the top.” www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article229811384.html?fbclid=IwAR0gvDOcPMb7qIGXgjCxLZqwJoEvy6eTuuWowZLsgoP_qU8-gkjPZZWFpvU#storylink=cpy
America forgot the Chinese workers who built the railroad
Historian Gordon Chang’s new book attempts to correct that erasure.
At a 1969 celebration of the Transcontinental Railroad, 2,000 miles of track that linked the Central Pacific Railroad to the Eastern rail network, Transportation Secretary John Volpe crowed: “Who else but Americans could drill tunnels in mountains 30 feet deep in snow?” Volpe was apparently unaware that the Chinese workers who actually did the drilling were barred from obtaining U.S. citizenship.
A new book from Stanford University historian Gordon Chang confronts this amnesia. Ghosts of Gold Mountain seeks to give long-overdue acknowledgement to the 20,000 Chinese laborers who built the railroad’s Western section. Thousands died crossing the Sierra Nevada, and the railroad companies paid the Chinese workers far less than their white counterparts. Released days before the 150th anniversary of the railroad’s completion, May 10, 1869, the book is the most comprehensive account to date of the lives of the Chinese workers who built the railroad. www.hcn.org/articles/interview-america-forgot-the-chinese-workers-who-built-the-railroad?fbclid=IwAR363oyw-HSKakXe-7l5vyRFwNh0S_jR3SPSxEWDBTcIruuqCsFvx0wqgXs
The Little Red Schoolhouse
‘Threatening the Future’: The High Stakes of Deepening Capitalist School Segregation
The 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education approaches on May 17, but fights over school segregation, rather than decreasing, are becoming more common. Cities like New York and San Francisco are debating how to assign students to schools in ways that foster classroom diversity, and school secession movements — in which parents seek to form their own, majority-white districts — are accelerating.
A new report from U.C.L.A. and Penn State outlines the changes in school segregation since the landmark Supreme Court ruling named after Oliver Brown, a black father who sued to enroll his daughter, Linda, in an all-white elementary school blocks from their home in Topeka, Kan.
The court’s unanimous 1954 ruling declared separate educational facilities “inherently unequal.” But the case is one of several major civil rights rulings, alongside those on voting rights and housing discrimination, that have been substantially weakened by more recent decisions.
Today, the decreasing white share of the public school population across the country may lead some to believe that schools are becoming more integrated. But the reverse is true, according to the report. The percentage of intensely segregated schools, defined as those where less than 10 percent of the student body is white, tripled between 1988 and 2016, from 6 to 18 percent.
In “a heightened period of racial conflict in our public life,” the report warns, deepening school segregation by race and class “are very high stakes trends threatening the future.”
Liberal States Suffer Some of the Most Severe Segregation
White students now account for less than half of the nation’s public school students, and Latinos are the most deeply segregated racial group in schools, according to the researchers.
While segregation was once most severe in the former states of the Confederacy, in 2016 it was in four liberal states — New York, California, Maryland and Illinois — that black children were most likely to attend intensely segregated schools. Latinos were most likely to attend intensely segregated schools in California, New York, Texas and New Jersey. www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/us/threatening-the-future-the-high-stakes-of-deepening-school-segregation.html?te=1&nl=evening-briefing&emc=edit_ne_20190510&fbclid=IwAR3d7nuw6nWohpb5XC5ejmXzmMOS0tIEdLWSHF85AwLEbNwOZjR3PFYvteU
I am the Michigan teacher removed from teaching African-American history
In the past two weeks, Birmingham Public Schools has been embroiled in controversy around the teaching of African-American history and the district’s approach to race relations instruction. Bridge Magazine printed two articles about the removal of a white teacher who was teaching African-American history at Groves High School. New Superintendent Mark Dziatczak sent a message to 8,000 members of the community and staff, criticizing the course syllabus and substantially agreeing with the Bridge opinion piece.
I am that teacher.
I was offered this opportunity to write a response in Bridge. What is at stake here is the trend in education to stifle teachers’ ability to instruct in areas laden with controversy. Districts will do anything to avoid negative publicity, including throwing their own teachers under the bus.
“What is at stake here is the trend in education to stifle teachers’ ability to instruct in areas laden with controversy. Districts will do anything to avoid negative publicity, including throwing their own teachers under the bus.”
At a heated school board meeting on Feb. 26, the Birmingham African-American Family Network (BAAFN) listed seven demands that included that the parents be allowed to rewrite the course curriculum, and that a black teacher be found to teach the course. The result of this controversy is that Birmingham Public Schools is targeted for mishandling race-based issues.
As a result, many of the district’s 600-plus teachers feel unsupported by the district, and feel like they could be targeted next if parents complain about instruction.
The African-American history course that I created was criticized in an opinion column by Bridge reporter Chastity Pratt Dawsey, who has two children in the class. Pratt Dawsey portrayed the course syllabus as problematic, noting in particular the presence of fictional movies, including the much acclaimed, seminal film, “Boyz in the Hood.” www.bridgemi.com/guest-commentary/i-am-michigan-teacher-removed-teaching-african-american-history
4 smiling teachers posed with a noose. Now they’re on leave, along with the principal
Four teachers and a principal have been placed on leave after a photo of the educators posing with what appears to be a noose circulated on email and social media.
The circumstances around the origin of the noose at Summerwind Elementary School in Palmdale and the response afterward are under investigation.
The photo shows four teachers smiling and holding a noose and was shared online without caption or context. Some parents who learned about the image said it was taken and distributed by the school’s principal, longtime educator Linda Brandts.
The Palmdale School District, which is investigating the incident, was not immediately available for comment but issued a statement: www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-noose-photo-principal-teachers-palmdale-20190510-story.html
The Decline of Historical Thinking
For the past decade, on American campuses, history has been declining more rapidly than any other major, even as more and more students attend college.
Students who owe lunch money to get cold sandwiches
A Rhode Island school district will begin serving cold sandwiches instead of hot lunches to students whose families owe lunch money.
Warwick Public Schools says it is owed more than $40,000 from outstanding lunch payments and cannot afford to absorb the costs.
The new policy begins next Monday.
A local restaurant owner wrote on Facebook that the district twice turned down a $4,000 donation for the lunch debt.
The district responded in a statement saying it must treat all students equally and cannot single out which debts to reduce.
The district recommended the donor take applications and decide who receives the money.
Critics say such lunch debt policies shame children for something outside of their control.
Pending legislation would change state law making free hot lunches available for all students regardless of income. pix11.com/2019/05/07/students-who-owe-lunch-money-to-get-cold-sandwiches/?fbclid=IwAR0rKWLUsHZJWx3MjPZ9N-YyXnQMcolYOhFnwUurKLl8only0yYDG1IMP5w
Betsy DeVos: It’s not about me, it’s about students (+$)
While the media may focus on U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, she told the nation’s education reporters Monday that the focus should be on students and families.
“As much as many in the media use my name as clickbait or try to make it all about me, it’s not,” she said. “Education is not about Betsy DeVos nor any other individual.”
Defining herself as a conservative with a distrust of government, DeVos used her appearance at the Education Writers Association annual conference to promote her Education Freedom Scholarships and to continue her call for a redefinition of public schooling.
“It should surprise no one that I am a commonsense conservative with a healthy distrust of centralized government,” she said. “Instead, I trust the American people to live their own lives and to decide their own destinies. That’s a freedom philosophy.”
For DeVos, a wealthy former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman whose Cabinet term has been marked with controversy, that means giving students and families the choice to move between schools. She says this will force traditional public schools to innovate and get better. www.freep.com/story/news/education/2019/05/06/betsy-devos-education-secretary-schools/1118730001/
San Diego Unified settles with former investigator years after student sexual assault cases
The former investigator claimed the district tried covering up the incidents and his report on how a principal handled them.
The San Diego Unified School District has settled with a former in-house investigator who claimed he was fired for trying to report that a principal allegedly mishandled cases of student sexual assault.
The district agreed to pay $375,000 to the former district investigator, Michael Gurrieri. That amount includes about $145,000 in payments to lawyers, according to a copy of the agreement signed last month and provided to the Union-Tribune last week.
The district continues to deny that any of its employees unlawfully retaliated against Gurrieri. In the agreement, the district said it settled the case to avoid paying more money to continue defending itself. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2019-05-09/san-diego-unified-settles-with-former-investigator-for-375-000-years-after-student-sexual-assault-cases
A California teacher on medical leave for breast cancer has to pay for her substitute
A San Francisco teacher who is on medical leave has to worry about more than just battling breast cancer.
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
The U.S.-China trade war just got a lot worse. And there’s no quick fix for relations (trade wars become real wars)
Senior U.S. and Chinese trade officials met over two days in Washington, but talks broke off Friday without signs that they were any closer to resolving their differences. President Trump tweeted that the discussions were “candid and constructive” and that his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping “remains a very strong one.”
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He told Chinese journalists before leaving Washington Friday that the two sides would meet again in Beijing for another round of talks, but there was no word on when it would take place.
Trump said Friday that he was in no hurry for a deal. “There is absolutely no need to rush,” he wrote in a Twitter message in which he praised the tariffs he’s already slapped on Chinese goods and touting how much more he can impose.
Even if the two sides can break through the stalemate and strike a deal on trade, the larger message of the week is that U.S.-China relations have changed fundamentally, and there is likely to be no going back.
Although their business relations are deeply entwined, the White House and China view themselves as aggressive rivals jostling for global influence and geopolitical power. www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-trade-war-tariff-hike-20190510-story.html
Trade war: US-China trade battle in charts (BBC)
www.bbc.com/news/business-48196495
John Bolton on the Warpath
Can Trump’s national-security adviser sell the isolationist President on military force?
Earlier this year, as Donald Trump prepared to meet the North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un, in Vietnam, he took a moment in the State of the Union address to congratulate himself on a diplomatic masterstroke: “If I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea, with potentially millions of people killed.” For John Bolton, the national-security adviser, the summit represented a conundrum. Two months before he entered the White House, in April, 2018, he had called for preëmptive war with North Korea. During the past two decades, Bolton has established himself as the Republican Party’s most militant foreign-policy thinker—an advocate of aggressive force who ridicules anyone who disagrees. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, he argued that Kim’s regime would soon be able to strike the United States with nuclear weapons, and that we should attack before it was too late. “The threat is imminent,” he wrote. “It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current ‘necessity’ posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first.”
Trump—erratic, impulsive, and largely ignorant of foreign affairs—has promised since the start of his Presidency to scale back America’s foreign commitments and to cut its expenses. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/john-bolton-on-the-warpath
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B-52 bombers are off to rebuff Iran after threats to US troops; DoD won’t say what those were
The Pentagon is deploying a B-52 bomber task force alongside the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the U.S. Central Command area of operations amid threats of “heightened Iranian readiness to conduct offensive operations,” according to defense officials.
While the carrier strike group was already planning to visit the region, Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan ordered the vessels to go earlier than scheduled, canceling a port visit to Croatia, and expediting transit to the region, the Pentagon said in a series of responses Tuesday to provide more insight into a decision announced this weekend.
While the U.S. Air Force is also deploying B-52 bombers to the region, CENTCOM declined to say which squadrons are being tapped.
Officials did not provide a specific timeline for either deployment, nor would they say where specifically the aircraft and ships would operate, though carrier strike groups have sailed through the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf on similar missions.
The exact nature of the threat that was received was also not provided by the Pentagon. The mission comes as Iran is expected to announce plans to withdraw from parts of the 2015 nuclear deal this week, one year after the U.S. abandoned the agreement. www.militarytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/05/07/b-52-bombers-are-off-to-rebuff-iran-after-threats-made-against-us-troops-but-dod-wont-say-what-those-were/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm3JA9GOYf0
Two U.S. warships sail in disputed South China Sea
The U.S. military said two of its warships sailed near islands claimed by China in the South China Sea on Monday, a move that angered Beijing at a time of tense ties between the world’s two biggest economies.
The busy waterway is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions and Taiwan.
President Donald Trump dramatically increased pressure on China to reach a trade deal by threatening to hike U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods this week and soon target hundreds of billions more.
The U.S. guided-missile destroyers Preble and Chung Hoon traveled within 12 nautical miles of Gaven and Johnson Reefs in the Spratly Islands, a U.S. military spokesman told Reuters.
Commander Clay Doss, a spokesman for the Seventh Fleet, said the “innocent passage” aimed “to challenge excessive maritime claims and preserve access to the waterways as governed by international law”. www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-military/two-u-s-warships-sail-in-disputed-south-china-sea-idUSKCN1SC085?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB%2005.07.19&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Military%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief
Below, the Brits retreat from Kabul: one lived
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Brutal truths about our failure in Afghanistan are being drowned out by fake news
It has become a journalistic game of sorts: Keeping a running tally of President Trump’s half-truths, untruths and outright lies. That game is not without entertainment value. Yet arguably at least as interesting and perhaps more instructive are the genuine truths that go essentially unnoticed, not only in the media, but also among elected officials and the general public.
A case in point: For years the Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a watchdog known by its initials — SIGAR — has sought to inform Congress and the American people about the nation’s progress (or lack thereof) in the Afghanistan war. Those efforts, in my estimation, qualify as heroic. They have also been largely ignored.
SIGAR’s 43rd quarterly report, published Tuesday, offers a veritable trove of facts, an example of what can easily be mined even in an era of fake news. Among its notable findings:
According to the most recent estimates, the Afghan government “controlled or influenced” no more than two-thirds of the total population. No available metric suggests that Afghan forces are winning the war, even with the support of some 14,000 U.S. troops and several thousand private contractors. www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-bacevich-afghanistan-war-congress-20190503-story.html
Here’s how many Afghan troops are still AWOL in America — and why
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Some Afghan pilots, like those pictured here in Kabul, Afghanistan, attend portions of training in the United States. Afghan students sometimes go AWOL in the U.S., however, complicating training programs. (Rahmat Gul/AP)
Out of more than 200 Afghan military trainees who were absent without leave in the United States as of February, only a dozen remain at large, immigration officials told Military Times.
The issue came under public scrutiny last week after it was announced that the Pentagon ended a training program for Afghan pilots in Fort Worth, Texas, because more than 40 percent went AWOL.
Although some worry that the missing Afghans are a national security risk, the trainees tend to go AWOL on years that coincide with much higher levels of violence on the battlefield back home, according to a U.S. government watchdog report from 2017.
Afghan troops have also received asylum in the U.S. when their lives are directly threatened by insurgents. The reasons most often cited for going AWOL, according to the watchdog report, were safety concerns and a perceived lack of job security in Afghanistan following training.
“As of Feb. 21, 2019, 228 international military students from Afghanistan have been identified as AWOL,” Carissa Cutrell, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman, said. “These are across the U.S.” www.militarytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/05/10/heres-how-many-afghan-troops-are-still-awol-in-america-and-why/
1 Marine dead, 6 injured after light armored vehicle rollover during training at Camp Pendleton
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One Marine was killed and six others were injured in a light armored vehicle rollover at Camp Pendleton, California, on Thursday morning, according to Marine Corps officials.
Marines with 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, were involved in the incident, which occurred at approximately 9 a.m. during training exercises.
Six other Marines were evacuated to a local hospital to be treated for injuries. None of those six were seriously injured, according to the Marine Corps.
No other details have been released at this time. Officials are investigating the incident. www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/05/10/1-marine-dead-6-injured-after-light-armored-vehicle-rollover-during-training-at-camp-pendleton/
One hundred fifty-three thousand US troops have died since WWII in America’s Undeclared Wars
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
The Fiends and the Folk Heroes of Grifter Season
This year, the last week in May marked the beginning of grifter season: the wind changed, the pressure dropped, and the scent of scamming was suddenly everywhere in the air. Anna Delvey, the young woman with messy hair and a vague European accent who allegedly convinced the superficial people and institutions of New York City night life that she was a millionaire heiress, was back in the public eye, thanks to an instant-classic New York feature by Jessica Pressler.
(Delvey is currently on Rikers Island, awaiting trial on charges of grand larceny and attempted grand larceny.) Elizabeth Holmes returned, too, in the pages of John Carreyrou’s new book, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” which tells the story of Theranos, Holmes’s biotech company, which boasted of a miraculous blood-test technology that lived only in its founder’s imagination. (The company raised nearly a billion dollars from venture capitalists and private investors before Holmes was accused of fraud; she recently reached a settlement with the S.E.C., which required her to pay a fine and relinquish control of the company, among other penalties.) Elsewhere, Thomas J. Mace-Archer-Mills, Esq., a frequent media commentator on the British monarchy, was revealed to be some guy from Albany named Tommy Muscatello, who had learned his British accent in a high-school production of “Oliver.” www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-fiends-and-the-folk-heroes-of-grifter-season?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_social-type=owned&utm_brand=tny&mbid=social_facebook&fbclid=IwAR0_xShv-5-KCgVQNXFat_xuEyzLoNgpdp982jx8IgZJQaCExAkuX-yEVOE
Now Fiat-Chrysler wants $280M in taxpayer money for its Detroit plant
A few weeks ago, we reported that Fiat-Chrysler is requesting $160 million in public assistance for its proposed new plant on Detroit’s east side.
It turns out that figure is much higher. At a Friday press conference, city officials announced additional public funds for the project, pushing the total to about $280 million.
That includes the $160 million state incentive package; around $63 million from the city in land acquisition and tax abatements; and $57 million in state support for land acquisition.
The funds will go to help Fiat-Chrysler pay for what it says is a $2.5 billion project — $1.6 billion for a new plant and $900 million to modernize its existing Jefferson North plant.
The company also claims it will create around 4,950 jobs, though the first jobs go to existing union members. In addition, Fiat-Chrysler says it will need to hire around 1,085 temp workers. www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/05/06/now-chrysler-wants-280m-in-taxpayer-money-for-its-detroit-plant?fbclid=IwAR0zbNm2k17qezHLQsrivjk1nOVx0JwvPXATGC12e_unX4KtAI4FDoG8uYA
Deutsche Bank Is The ‘Rosetta Stone’ To Unlock Trump Finances, Journalist Says
The German bank was Trump’s partner on countless investments at a time when most of Wall Street shied away. As a result, NY Times editor David Enrich says, it has a trove of information about Trump.
Donald Trump was poison, basically, in the banking community. And he was poison because he had this annoying tendency of, one time after another, defaulting on the loans that a number of banks provided him. And banks understandably do not like when borrowers default. And it costs them and their clients hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars over a period of a number of years. And so by the late 1990s, Donald Trump’s only source of borrowing really was from his father Fred.
And he needed to re-establish access to the mainstream financial system. And how could he do that? He had really worn out his welcome over Wall Street. And he went looking for some other banks that might be willing to do business with him. And it just so happened that there was a new arrival on Wall Street. And it was Deutsche Bank, which is a big German lender, which at the time was 128 years old. And it was embarking on this mission to really increase the amount of business it did in the United States and to make itself a household name in America. And one way to do that was to try to line up some marquee clients – people with big names, splashy personalities and – to get some buzz going.
And they also just needed to win customers. They needed to find customers who were not already receiving banking services from all of their better-established competitors. And so they were willing to take risks that certain other banks – that most other banks, in fact, were generally not willing to take. And Donald Trump fit that bill. www.npr.org/2019/05/09/721723204/deutsche-bank-is-the-rosetta-stone-to-unlock-trump-finances-journalist-says?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR135gTOJ_D_SnfZrFA29nQXGYjuvyJyI7Xp_4CAnLluptvXVfNC_7rrLJs
Ilitches back out of $1.5M deal to buy homeless shelter building in Detroit’s Midtown
The owners of Little Caesars pizza chain have backed out of its promise to buy a Midtown building that houses a homeless crisis center, forcing the nonprofit to change plans on how it will build a larger facility on the east side, according to two sources familiar with the deal.
It’s the latest change in development plans by the Ilitch organization for the area near Little Caesars Arena, the sports/entertainment facility that’s home ice to the Ilitch-owned Detroit Red Wings. The IIitch group has drawn recent media and neighborhood criticism for its delays on various residential and commercial projects around the arena.
The latest change involves a homeless crisis center called the Neighborhood Service Organization‘s Tumaini Center on Third Street, near the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It’s one of the last down-and-out streets in the Midtown/Cass Corridor neighborhood. For decades, the street has been the gathering point for scores of people who congregated around the center and the surrounding empty lots. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2019/05/08/ilitch-tumaini-center-homeless-shelter-detroit-midtown/1118462001/
‘I’m 57. How employable am I going to be?’ Nearly 1,400 autoworkers are about to lose their jobs in Belvidere.
When the final whistle blows this weekend for workers on the third shift at the Belvidere Assembly Plant near Rockford, the nearly 1,400 members of “C Crew” will punch out for the last time, downsized out of a job because of slowing demand for the plant’s only product — the Jeep Cherokee.
It is a straightforward business decision for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which is scaling back to a traditional two-shift schedule at the plant amid softening sales and a glut of competitors.
But for residents of Belvidere, a small river city situated amid sprawling cornfields about 75 miles northwest of Chicago, Monday will be anything but business as usual.
“I’m scared,” said Mike Dovey, 57, of Poplar Grove, whose two years at the plant end Saturday. “There’s a lot of uncertainty. You don’t have a job, you’ve still got to pay all your bills.” www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-layoffs-chrysler-plant-belvidere-20190429-story.html
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason
What Would A Real Discussion on Reparations Look Like? Have We Ever Had One?
What would a serious discussion on reparations look like? Will anybody ever come up with a realistic roadmap to get there, or is reparations talk just that –- all talk? Is reparations an answer to class politics, or is it the politics of a particular class? And what if we fought for millions of new green jobs, rolling back the prison state, guaranteed annual income, decent housing and free education but didn’t call it “reparations”?
Just what would a constructive and useful discussion of reparations for the descendants of Africans enslaved in the US look like. Certainly it would bear no resemblance to the nonsense emanating from Ta Nehesi Coates and others around the current presidential campaign.
The fundamental justice of the reparations proposition seems indisputable. Grevious harm was done to millions in the course of slavery, Jim Crow, the urban ghettoes and the current neoliberal prison state. In slavery alone, the vast sums of capital generated by stolen labor on stolen land were essential to the building of 19th and 20th century US capitalism and US rise to global economic prominence. Surely the victimized and exploited deserve to be made whole.
Bringing reparations for tens of millions from idea to reality however would mean reallocation of resources on a vast scale. Broadly defining politics as the methods and institutions human beings devise to conduct our collective affairs, making reparations actually happen is a huge political project requiring the support of significant constituencies other than African Americans.
But as Adolph Reed pointed out back in 2002, the advocates of reparations, some of whom claim to be part of a “reparations movement” seemingly cannot be bothered with the task of coming up with even the sketchiest plans, roadmaps, or strategies to actually win the reparations they say they want and that we all need. And let’s be clear, lawsuits are not a roadmap to winning the broad support necessary to carrying out the heavy political lifting of reparations. So reparations then, seems to be a cause you can “join” with nothing more than an empty declaration, and once you join the exclusive club all you get is the privilege of denouncing those who have not embraced reparations for not being as unapologetically black as you are.
But as Adolph Reed pointed out back in 2002, the advocates of reparations, some of whom claim to be part of a “reparations movement” seemingly cannot be bothered with the task of coming up with even the sketchiest plans, roadmaps, or strategies to actually win the reparations they say they want and that we all need. And let’s be clear, lawsuits are not a roadmap to winning the broad support necessary to carrying out the heavy political lifting of reparations. So reparations then, seems to be a cause you can “join” with nothing more than an empty declaration, and once you join the exclusive club all you get is the privilege of denouncing those who have not embraced reparations for not being as unapologetically black as you are.
In a January 2016 interview on Doug Henwood’s KPFA show posted elsewhere in this week’s issue of Black Agenda Report, Behind The News Adolph Reed extends the interrogation of reparations and the class politics of reparations.
He explains that Coates and others eschew class analysis while holding that race, that white supremacy and systemic racial injustice explain the past and present, and that ultimately only reparations can cure these. Reed holds that reparations is not an answer to the politics of class, it IS the political preference of a very specific class –- the black misleadership class which has always positioned itself as brokers and spokespeople for the rest of us, and the administrators of any and all race based patronage, spoils, affirmative action, minority set-asides ad the like.
For the vast majority of African Americans, free college education, millions of new jobs, a living wage, universal health care (instead of Obamacare’s universal private insurance) and rolling back the prison state ar great things and absolutely welcome whether or not they are labeled “reparations.”
Reed also questions the frequently heard reparations argument that since slavery, Jim Crow and the rest were racially specific that they can only be dealt with by racially specific remedies. www.blackagendareport.com/real-talk-on-reparations
Chelsea Manning Is Freed From Jail, Faces New Subpoena In WikiLeaks Case
Chelsea Manning has been freed from jail, more than a month after she was taken into custody for refusing to testify before a grand jury in a case involving WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Manning was released Thursday afternoon, after the grand jury’s term expired — but the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia already has subpoenaed her to appear before a new grand jury panel, according to a tweet from Manning’s account.
Manning, a former military intelligence analyst, has acknowledged leaking hundreds of thousands of military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, from battlefield reports to U.S. embassy cables. Those revelations sparked court martial proceedings against her and, more recently, culminated in criminal charges against Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ controversial founder.
Manning is due to return to federal court on May 16. Despite an offer of immunity, she has refused to answer questions about WikiLeaks, saying she already has shared what she knows.
The U.S. case against Assange gained new momentum just days after Manning was taken into custody in early April, as Assange was ejected from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and arrested. Within hours, the U.S. unsealed an indictment against him. www.npr.org/2019/05/10/722059301/chelsea-manning-is-freed-from-jail-faces-new-subpoena-in-wikileaks-case
White Supremacists Chant ‘Six Million More’ After Crashing Holocaust Remembrance Day Event In Arkansas
A white supremacist group interrupted a Holocaust Remembrance Day event in Russellville, Arkansas, over the weekend, leading anti-Semitic chants and disrupting the ceremony which featured a World War II veteran.
ShieldWall Network coordinator Billy Roper told 5NewsOnline.com that the interruption was a protest against organizations and students who had themselves spoken out against the formation of a scholarship of an instructor at Arkansas Tech University.
The proposed scholarship set to be named for Dr. Michael Link, a professor who worked at ATU for over 50 years, is a controversial one, reported KARK. Link, according to community members, regularly taught as fact that the Holocaust never happened.
Protests by students, faculty, and community members alike have taken place at ATU over the course of the past week against the scholarship. Roper, while interrupting the Holocaust Remembrance Day event, cited one faculty member in particular, Dr. Sarah Stein, as well as the Anti-Defamation League, as trying to “intimidate” the university into ending the scholarship.
“The rally that we held was a protest against the ADL and Dr. Sarah Stein’s attempts to intimidate and blackmail Arkansas Tech University into removing Dr. Michael Link’s name from the scholarship he endowed,” Roper said.
His comments to the media were tame in comparison to what he wrote online in a blog post on his personal website, which included many disturbing anti-Semitic tropes. www.reallyamerican.com/white-supremacists-chant-six-million-more-after-crashing-holocaust-remembrance-day-event-in-arkansas-405?fbclid=IwAR3h88whL8F7iaz97TL0fvaS4RvFNuqUVVQvldR_4Z8xZsy6GMyGQSKG3sE
Trump Pardons Michael Behenna, Former Soldier Convicted Of Killing Iraqi Prisoner
President Trump has granted a full pardon to former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, who was convicted by a military court in 2009 for killing an Iraqi prisoner suspected of being part of al-Qaida. Behenna was initially sentenced to 25 years; he was released on parole in 2014.
Behenna, 35, was found guilty of unpremeditated murder in a combat zone for shooting Ali Mansur Mohamed in 2008. He said he acted in self-defense, and as the White House announced his pardon, it also said a U.S. Army appellate court had “noted concern about how the trial court had handled Mr. Behenna’s claim of self-defense.”
Mansur was killed during questioning about a roadside explosion that had killed members of a platoon under Behenna’s command. In military court and in an interview last year, Behenna acknowledged that he had decided to question Mansur on his own, weeks after the Iraqi was initially released because of a lack of direct evidence that could tie him to the explosion.
Mansur was naked when he was shot; Behenna said the prisoner had tried to take his weapon. In his legal appeal, he also said that during the trial, prosecutors had withheld evidence from his defense attorneys. www.npr.org/2019/05/07/720967513/trump-pardons-former-soldier-convicted-of-killing-iraqi-prisoner
Welcome to the webpage of the #NewFascismSyllabus, a crowd-sourced collection of writings on the history of fascist, populist, and authoritarian movements and governments during the 20th and 21st centuries. It is intended to serve as a popular entryway into the scholarly literature for those seeking deeper insights into how past societies gravitated towards and experienced varieties of right-wing authoritarianism. The goal is to provide comparative perspectives on how everyday people, as well as cultural authorities and civil institutions, coped with and in some cases resisted these changes. Rather than equating the history of fascism, populism, and authoritarianism across time, space, and place, the project’s primary objective is to showcase movements and popular struggles from a variety of contexts, and to highlight scholarly insights into current socio-political trends.
The New Fascism Syallbus is broken up into two sections: The first section, “Interrogating the Past,” features a syllabus containing films, memoirs, books and articles on many varieties of right-wing authoritarianism, a collection of links to digitized primary source collections on fascism, populism, and authoritarianism, and a growing collection of syllabi from educators who are utilizing the New Fascism Syllabus’ secondary and primary materials in their courses. The second section, “Interrogating the Present,” features a collection of recent articles by historians and other publicly-engaged intellectuals on the resurgence of fascism, populism, and authoritarianism both in the United States and around the world.
The syllabus is being curated by Jennifer Evans (Carleton University) and Elizabeth Heineman (University of Iowa), with the research, editorial, and technical assistance of Meghan Lundrigan (Carleton University) and Brian J Griffith (University of California, Santa Barbara). www.thehistoryinquestion.com/
Fascism is on the minds of book buyers — and publishers are taking notice
Remember “The End of History?” Elizabeth Drummond, who spent the 1990s studying at Georgetown University, recalls Francis Fukuyama’s groundbreaking essay well, which announced “an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.” The Soviet Union had just collapsed in a peaceful devolution, Germany was reunified as Champagne popped alongside the crumbling Berlin Wall and democracy seemed to be inevitably settling across the globe like a gentle rain. Politicians in the U.S. talked about a smooth and comfortable “third way” between Left and Right.
“There was a lot of optimism,” Drummond remembered. The topic of her studies — European Fascism of the 1920s and 1930s — seemed distant in both time and place. www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-fascism-studies-college-books-20190503-story.html
A Synopsis of Fascism And Social Revolution By R. Palme Dutt (published 1936)
by Rich Gibson
Introduction
Fascism is an inevitable result of capitalism and its decay if the social revolution is delayed.
Chapter 1
Fascism is the logical result of the fact that the form of private ownership of the means of production can progress no further and must create violent crises, stagnation, and decay. Only the social organization of production can sanely organize production, and this can only come through social revolution.
The world available for capitalist exploitation now contracts. Fascism is a further stage of capital in crisis. A massive world army of unemployed people grows, and as this world crisis grows, so does the need of bosses to lower the costs of production. There are but two alternatives, social revolution or destruction. The class struggle now intensifies. .
Chapter 2
After WWI there was a brief period of capitalist stabilization based on (a) the defeat of the world revo (b) the use of social democracy and concessions to workers and © the strength of American capitalism, not hurt by the war and not yet wholly fouled by decay. This was a hollow form of stabilization which could not ·last.
But social democracy masked the class struggle and disorganized workers so they were not ready for the crisis ahead. richgibson.com/synopsisfascim.htm
Benito Mussolini’s great-grandson enters Italian politics with far-right party
The great-grandson of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini has entered the political arena — and wants to be known for more than just his infamous last name.
Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini – whose name also references one of ancient Rome’s most famous leaders – is running as a candidate for the far-right Brothers of Italy in the upcoming European Union elections.
The former submariner in the Italian navy would be the third descendant of the Italian dictator to hold public office.
“I share their ideas about retaking sovereignty, protecting our country and the family,” Mussolini told The Times of London on his party. “Why spend [$113] on a migrant then peanuts on pensioners?” www.foxnews.com/world/benito-mussolinis-great-grandson-enters-politics-with-far-right-party
Solidarity for Never
Sellout Manda Praises Stalinite Slovo, His Boss
South Africa is the world’s most unequal country. 25 years of freedom have failed to bridge the divide
More than two decades have passed since South Africa overhauled a racist regime designed to keep the country’s black population under the thumb of an elite white minority.
Spy versus Spy
Ex-Air Force intelligence analyst charged with leaks to reporter
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A former government intelligence analyst has been charged with leaking classified documents about military campaigns against terrorist group al-Qaida to a reporter.
Daniel Everette Hale, 31, of Nashville, Tennessee, was arrested Thursday morning and will make an initial appearance at the federal courthouse there, authorities said. An indictment in Alexandria, Virginia, charges him under the Espionage Act with counts including obtaining and disclosing national defense information, as well as theft of government property.
According to the indictment, Hale worked as an intelligence analyst for the Air Force and later as a contractor assigned to the government’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
The indictment says Hale began communications with a reporter in 2013 while at the Air Force and continued communications after going to NGA.
According to the indictment, Hale provided 11 Top Secret or Secret documents to the reporter and his online news outlet. Those documents were later published either in whole or in part. www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/05/09/ex-air-force-intelligence-analyst-charged-with-leaks-to-reporter/
A Reimagined Spy Museum in Washington Doesn’t Flinch From the Darker Side
Built for $162 million, the museum features flashy interactive exhibits but also grapples with intelligence failures, out-of-control surveillance and torture.
The intelligence craft in American history and culture is a decidedly mixed bag. It has served up intrigue, genius and heroism, clever undercover operations and brain-boggling gadgetry, making it a linchpin of popular entertainment. Yet the spy trade also has a darker strain: Prone to epic failures and frequently in ethical trouble, the agencies have been embroiled in recent years in scandals involving brutal torture and secret surveillance.
Think Bond and Bourne vs. waterboarding and warrantless eavesdropping.
The challenge taken on by the new, vastly expanded International Spy Museum, opening May 12 in a striking glass-and-steel building not far from the National Mall, was to capture all of these disparate threads. The curators had to appeal to rambunctious 8-year-olds along with somber retirees, tourists whose notion of intelligence comes from “The Spy Who Loved Me” and (given its location) hypercritical visitors from the ranks of the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and all the secret crannies of the security state. www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/arts/design/spy-museum-washington-review.html
The Spy Museum Is Now Hiring!
The Spy Museum is now hiring for a variety of positions. Check out our careers page for the list of open opportunities and how to apply. www.spymuseum.org/
The Magical Mystery Tour
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbgm2J9v0l4
‘Release Yourself’: Woman Claiming Abuse by San Diego Priest Urges Others to File Reports
A San Diego woman who says she was abused by a clergy member as a girl is urging other local sexual abuse victims to file reports with the state so religious leaders may be held accountable.
Cynthia Ann Doe is speaking out for the first time about what she says Monsignor Gregory Sheridan did to her when she was five years old and a parishoner at St. Jude’s Shrine of the West in the 60s.
Sheridan was named last November by the Catholic Diocese of San Diego among a list of more than 50 abusive priests in San Diego and San Bernardino of whom the diocese said it had received a credible allegation involving sexual abuse of a minor.
During a press conference outside the church’s doors, Doe did not publicly detail the priest’s acts but urged other victims to come forward so that Sheridan and the Diocese of San Diego could be investigated by the California Attorney General’s office. www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Release-Yourself-Woman-Claiming-Abuse-by-San-Diego-Priest-Urges-Others-to-File-Report-509762631.html
Ex-priest who got teen pregnant can keep job as middle school teacher
A veteran New Jersey teacher who once had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl and got her pregnant — all while he was a Catholic priest — can keep his middle-school job, an arbitrator ruled.
Former Rev. Joseph DeShan, 59, began teaching in the Cinnaminson school district in 1996 — six years after he impregnated the teen, who worked in his parish rectory in Bridgeport, Conn., the state ruling said.
Cinnaminson school officials didn’t learn of the illicit relationship until 2002, when it surfaced in the press.
DeShan, who had left the priesthood years prior, was suspended for three weeks but eventually returned to the classroom.
Then last year, district officials alleged that DeShan made a 12-year-old student uncomfortable while commenting on her “pretty green eyes,” according to the ruling.
“Look at me,” DeShan allegedly told the girl. “Let me see your pretty green eyes. You don’t see them too much anymore.” nypost.com/2019/05/03/ex-priest-who-got-teen-pregnant-can-keep-job-as-middle-school-teacher/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter&__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR1Zt5Z9aeo3cXvXnGr5uOl57JcGc6t_ZeCUea1cOTg6WPzhrhEp_teLFcw
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
above by Huck
A Radical Reunion: Harvard’s Student Strikers, 50 Years Later
We are older, grayer, and for the most part, more rotund—but our commitments to left politics haven’t changed.
I almost didn’t attend the reunion celebrating the 50th anniversary of the student strike at Harvard University in 1969. I was put off by the organizers’ listserv, with its endless political exhortations and relating of strike minutiae. How is it that so many people remember so much about events that took place half a century ago? Is there such a thing as memory envy? In the end, I went because it was probably my last chance to see many people with whom I shared a formative political event: getting arrested for participating in the takeover of University Hall to protest Harvard’s role in promoting the war in Vietnam.
Spoiler: We didn’t stop the war. The Vietnamese themselves did that—though the anti-war movement may have weakened President Richard Nixon’s resolve. We did get the ROTC kicked off campus, helped establish what would become one of the preeminent African and African-American–studies departments in the country, and got Harvard to build working-class housing. www.thenation.com/article/harvard-strike-sds-vietnam/
Rich Kids and Failed Red Diaper Babies Equaled Weatherman (add cops)
Reminder: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
It couldn’t have been easy for Bill Ayers to keep quiet while the McCain campaign tarred him as the Obama’s best friend, the terrorist. Unfortunately, the silence was too good to last. On Saturday’s New York Times op-ed page, he announced that “it’s finally time to tell my true story.” Like his memoir, Fugitive Days , “The Real Bill Ayers” is a sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left.
“I never killed or injured anyone, “Ayers writes. “In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village.” Right. Those people belonged to Weatherman, as did Ayers himself and Bernardine Dohrn, now his wife. Weatherman, Weather Underground, completely different! And never mind either that that “accidental explosion” was caused by the making of a nail bomb intended for a dance at Fort Dix. www.thenation.com/article/bill-ayers-whitewashes-history-again/
So Long
Eric Hobsbawm, the Counterfeit Communist Who Explained History
Hobsbawm, perhaps the world’s most renowned historian, saw his political hopes crumble. He used that defeat to tell the story of our age.
…Hobsbawm joined the Communist Party in 1936 and stayed in it for about fifty years. Not only did the cause to which he had devoted his life expire in infamy but the rubbish that it had promised to sweep from the stage—ethnic and national chauvinism—would, in time, make a new bid for legitimacy. As early as 1990, Hobsbawm foresaw how the disintegration of the Soviet Union would accelerate forces that “have been kept frozen for up to 70 years.” He came to see the consequences of that disintegration less as the disappointment of his hopes than as a coda to “the most murderous century” in history, which saw, in Europe, a revival of torture, the deliberate slaughter of millions, the collapse of state structures, and the erosion of norms of social solidarity.
“Losers,” Hobsbawm once said, “make the best historians.” Yet, if it was Hobsbawm’s destiny to enjoy intellectual success while suffering political failure, the experience may have been more generative than he realized. It gave him his abiding historical theme: the struggle of political men and women to get on top of their world, and the economic forces that bested them. www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/eric-hobsbawm-the-communist-who-explained-history?utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_brand=tny&utm_source=facebook&mbid=social_facebook&fbclid=IwAR02hI2CcpMg-e3xaQQQP2YGUaPylzvRC49xIKHAyrIffSiqo9qVHjlWcFQ