Dear Friends,
The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil web page, used as a reference by teachers all over the world, is updated.
We’re supporting the call for mass direct actions in opposition to the imperial wars on the third Friday of each month as well as organizing teach-ins around the US. Please urge colleagues to join us!
Summer is gone. School is back. The wars expand. Inequality and segregation boom, underpinning the regimentation of what kids know, and how they come to know it, in schools; setting youth up for a future of meaningless jobs or the military, fighting the enemies of their real enemies, here at home. So, the Rouge Forum ratchets up the work.
Part of that project is the organizing tour Susan Harman, Bob Apter, and I will take around California, mainly to listen to educators, parents, and kids about what they see in school, seeking to better analyze concrete problems that connect to the social realities that surround all of schooling. We leave on September 8th, returning when we think we are done, or done in. If you would be willing to meet, please let me know.
The start of school in harsh times means we need to ask, once again, “why am I here, whose interests am I serving, why have school, or, How Do I Keep My Ideals and Still Teach?” Here’s a question and answer piece that may be challenging.
With the NCLB trailing only the empire’s wars on the Congressional agenda, we note that the leadership of NEA is supporting the NCLB by staying on the sidelines, while AFT’s top executives are lobbying hard for its re-adoption, with a few minor modifications. Quislings (mis-leaders) in our midst are part of our focus in this Update.
AFT and NEA executives are not going to fight the NCLB for us, nor will they act to end the wars, because their high salaries (nearing $500,000 at NEA) are drawn from the imperial trough. Their allies are not the rank and file of the unions, but the bosses at the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the others who joined NEA and AFT in writing the NCLB at the outset. That is one big reason we formed the Rouge Forum and said: Justice Demands Organization.
Here, for example, is the Chicago AFT’s boss, Ms Stewart, trying to fight her members who sought to vote NO on a tentative five year contract for the city’s teachers and again here
and yet again here.
If you go to Google Video and search for Chicago Teachers Union, there will probably be more videos up tomorrow. In addition, Substance News, based in Chicago, has instant coverage of this attack on whatever there is left of union democracy.
Proof of the Rouge Forum thesis that educators are uniquely positioned to fight for equality, democracy, and freedom, is the exemplary action of Tijuana teachers last week, fighting for pensions, but also on the side of their kids. They shut down the US border at San Ysidro with a mass demonstration. Here is one video of many.
We can learn to search out our own choke points of power in our own cities, learn how to do power analysis that give greater meaning to our actions. In San Diego, we have been working on that.
In San Diego, the superintendent of schools took a week and devoted it to a Support the Troops Surge in which teachers were directed to have even elementary kids fill out cards (carrying ads of war profiteers like Xerox) to mail to troops. Teachers were directed to lead demonstrations and ice cream socials in support of militarism, etc. Thousands of cards found their way to Rouge Forum members, but next time we will expand our activities. If you’re in an area where similar things are planned, please contact me and we can work on flyers, etc.
Jonathan Kozol was once seen as a resister. Now he’s asking school workers to be subversive. What that is, is not entirely clear, But we need to get beyond Kozol and seek a real plan of action in schools and communities. To that end, Indymedia recently published an analysis of Kozol’s work.
Remember, the Rouge Forum will have a considerable presence at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference in San Diego, November 28 to December 2nd. Of special interest is a Border Tour of San Diego. We will have limited seating for this tour, so please sign on early. It will be a good time to learn about the social relations that set up life in So-Cal, and to get together with like-minded people before the convention begins. This tour is going to be terrific.
And save the date for the Rouge Forum Conference in Louisville, March 14 to March 16, 2008.
Here is a link to our flyer on the REAL Labor Day
Wayne and I have a new book, Neoliberalism and Education Reform, just out from Hampton Press.
Check the Rouge Forum Art by Colin Ross.
Thanks to Gil, Amber, Erin, Beau, Ssg. Lloyd, Sean, Wayne, Bill and Marty, Greg and Katie, Ann W., Sally, Perry, Steve, Dave, Marc, Curry, Sandy, Suber, Bob, Melissa and Josh (how is the baby?), Justin, Richie G., Boots, Judy D, David, Sharon A, Lucille K and Lucy W., Alcorn, and Llona.
All the best in the new school year,
r
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