Rouge Forum Update

Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum No Blood for Oil web page is only partially updated as we have had continuing problems with our server. However, all the papers and videos we have from the Rouge Forum 2008 conference in Louisville are on-line now at
http://www.richgibson.com/rouge_forum/reformorrevolution.htm and http://www.rougeforumconference.org

27 people have been nominated for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee. We are in the process of asking each person about their desire to serve. Nominations are closed for this year.

Carl Chew, a Seattle 6th grade teacher, refused to administer the state test saying, “I have let my administration know that I will no longer give the WASL to my students. I have done this because of the personal moral and ethical conviction that the WASL is harmful to students, teachers, schools, and families…”

For this courageous act, Mr Chew was suspended for two weeks without pay. We salute Carl Chew and hope he is joined by dozens, hundreds, of other school workers taking action on behalf of our students and their own integrity. We want to try to be sure Carl loses not a dime of his pay and that he hears a loud chorus of support and solidarity. You can email a note of support to ctchew@earthlink.net

People planning similar actions should read this piece on Insubordination from the Calcare web site: http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.calcare.org%2Fresources%2FInsubordination.pdf&images=yes

One San Diego county educator took pictures and videos of a demonstration last week, and there are more to come, another mass rally on Tuesday at the school board offices and the Mayday walkouts. It appears there is at least a simmering, if not rising tide, of resistance to the demands for cutbacks that now come from all angles.

Here are her comments and the video/photos:…“some pics and a very short video clip from this morning’s march. The march was organized by teachers at Hoover High School protesting the teacher layoffs. The union supported the march, but was too busy to organize one themselves so the teachers just went ahead and did it. My estimate is that about 800 people were there.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25821635@N04/sets/72157604628132757/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4077811264784298929&hl=en

The Washington Post demonstrates the cost of war degrading school lunches
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/13/AR2008041302733.html

Boston Legal weighs in with a nice rant about the cost of the wars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR5eGJ8c8Eg

Michael Klare takes up the New Oil Order http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174919/michael_klare_oil_rules_

In Monthly Review, John Bellamy Foster outlines the domination of finance capital over the last three decades, leaving the psychological and pedagogical impact for others http://www.monthlyreview.org/

One thesis that propels the Rouge Forum is that schools are now the centripetal organizing point of North American life, a shift from the days of industrial workplaces. School workers are next in the line of a series of attacks on working people in the US that began with the most vulnerable first, the mental health systems, then on to the welfare system, the prisons, the industrial working class, and now educators who are among the last people in the US with fairly predictable wages and health benefits. The assault on schooling is doubled as it is an attack on reason, knowledge, itself.

There is considerable debate in the school reform’resistance movement. Here is a representation
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~rgibson/TestingSchoolReformDebate.htm

Our resistance to this result of a real promise of perpetual war tests itself on Mayday when we seek not only to show others our strength and solidarity, but to learn just how far we have come, what it is that people are learning, and how we can determine next steps. We hope the demonstrations are massive, not passive and mourning, but active and hopeful, and that plenty of Rouge Forum literature reaches some of the thousands of people on the move. Here is the recent Rouge Forum flyer.
http://www.richgibson.com/rouge_forum/CutbackFightbackFlyer.pdf

Up the rebels on Mayday!

Thanks to Steve, Sean, Amber, Colleen, Susan (both), Cory, Ben, Alex, Deidre, Jill, Sandy, Harv, Gil G, Joe B and C, Kwame, Wayne, Kev, Steve, Perry, Michelle G, Nicky, Candace, Adam, Nancy P and M, Alan S (write the book), Erin, Beau, LAM, Dennis, Ricky, and Steve R.

all the best r
http://www.rougeforum.org/

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