Dear Friends,
The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil web page is updated at www.rougeforum.org
Please take note of the call for papers for the upcoming Rouge Forum Conference in Louisville, March 14-16, 2008. The theme for the 2008 Rouge Forum Conference is: “Education: Reform or Revolution?” and will be hosted by Bellarmine University. The Call for Proposals and Registration information can be found at: http://www.rougeforumconference.org/
The Rouge Forum will be hosting a booth, a party, and several sessions at the upcoming National Council for the Social Studies Conference in San Diego, at the end of November. Here are three presentations that might interest you.
*FRIDAY (8:30 – 10AM) International Assembly: Is It Possible or Desirable to Teach for Democracy Today?
*FRIDAY (5 – 6 PM) World History SD Convention Center 30B
Overcoming High-Stakes Tests: Keeping Our Ideals and Still Teaching
*SATURDAY (2:45-3:45) Experienced k12 Teachers at SD Convention Center 30D
How We Keep Our Ideals and Teach:Progressive Teachers in the Classroom
The party is Saturday night. Please rsvp if you wish to attend.
It is still nearly impossible to get comprehensive news on the student/worker struggles in France. Students now fight to occupy university buildings throughout the country and transportation workers remain out, though it appears their union is urging people back to work. The possibility for a general strike in France is quite real, a strike initiated by students. Their chances for victory, if they continue to fight for the combined demands of no privatization of education, for pension benefits for workers, health care, the right to strike, and the rights of immigrants, seem good. Perhaps the French break the bonds of their own postmodernism: religion in disguise.
By contrast, in the US, 81% of the UAW-Ford membership voted to build their own scaffolds in the form of massive wage cuts, the nearly certain destruction of their own health benefits, and a two-tier wage system, impoverishing their own children. The leadership of the AFT adopted a merit pay plan in their key local in New York. NEA still insists it will fight merit pay, but not NCLB nor its curricula regimentation nor high stakes exams. But stage hands and Hollywood writers are out on strike–a bizarre statement about the impact of de-industrialization and the lack of left leadership in the US which has misled the antiwar movement into a series of cul-de-sacs, each one denying the central roles of class struggle and class consciousness.
Direct action can answer some of this. There are answers in struggle. With CalCare and others, the Rouge Forum is backing the call for boycotts of high-stakes exams. We are also planning for massive demonstrations against the empires’ expanding wars on March 20, the anniversary of the invasion.
On this war, and the ones to come, Michael Klare writes on the centrality of oil: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18742.htm
This is the anniversary of the death of the great poet and songwriter of the Industrial Workers of the World, Joe Hill, murdered by the authorities in Utah after a Kangaroo trial in 1915. Hill’s last word to his firing squad: Fire. Here is his hopeful take on the future, from his song The Preacher and the Slave.
Workingmen of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom will fight
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry;
Chop some wood, ’twill do you good
Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye
Thanks to Bill T, Bob A, Amber, Wayne, Beau, Bill, George (subscribe to Substance) Schmidt, Susan, Sharon A., Sally, Sandy, Colleen, Jim Wolin, Alexander, Victoria, Ileana, Marc, Bonnie, Christopher, William, Erin, and Tommie.
all the best, r
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