Dear Friends,
Are you going to the National Council for the Social Studies conference in Houston? If so, please let Adam Renner know (see the announcement below). We will arrange a meeting and social event in Houston. Plus, Rouge Forum Steering Committee member Greg Queen will be getting the academic freedom award! Come to his presentation on Saturday.
Remember the Rouge Forum Conference, the weekend of May 15 at Eastern Michigan University. The call for papers is coming soon.
This week, educators in France led mass demonstrations against the attacks on their jobs. Here is one of many videos. This is what could be done, but it will have to be done by shoving aside the leadership of both school workers’ unions.
A second survey of all the major US unions web sites shows that none of them, but the American Federation of Teachers, has anything at all to say about the massive $700 billion bailout to the banksters. None but the AFT even discusses the growing financial collapse. The AFT supported the bailout.
Job losses in the US for October are projected to be above 200,000, meaning it will be possible that a million people will have lost jobs in 2008. Couple that with the eroding tax base from foreclosures, the existing state budget shortfalls, corporate debacles like the Big Three (maybe Two or One), and it is easy to foresee demands for concessions and cutbacks from education workers; reviving our old chant: When they say cutback, We say Fightback! Part of our task is to make sense of the resistance that invariably will build, connecting reason to power.
In Puerto Rico, school workers voted down a raid by company union organized by the corrupt Andy Stern’s Service Employees International Union by about 18,000 to 15,000 with more than 90 percent of the educators voting. The teachers were banned from voting for the union, FMPR that had led their mass strike earlier in the year. Stern had joined with the governor of Puerto Rico to create yet another dues funnel for SEIU. Stern models SEIU’s structure after General Motors, today an apparently poor choice.
In Mexico, education workers in Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Morelos lead school/community struggles for equality and freedom. Now, they are crossing old borders and joining each others’ struggles, brushing aside the union leaders they know always sell them out.
In China, in 2006, there were ninety thousand demonstrations involving 100 people or more, against the government’s “reforms.”
Italy (from Humanite): “Tens of thousands of university and high school students, primary and university teachers, researchers and parents are now organizing daily demonstrations and sit-ins throughout the country, from Milan to Rome to Naples, to protest against the budget cuts in education programmed for the coming years…..The cuts are part of a vast set of measures aimed at cutting government expenses. The three main trade union confederations have called for a general strike in the public schools on October 30 to denounce the return to a single course of studies in primary school, and a general strike in higher education on November 14. Hot, hot, the Italian Autumn is hot!”
This is the Ed Week Blog on the sideshow debate about education between the two major candidates’ ed advisors.
As a follow up to our recent Steering Committee meeting, we have asked Adam Renner (arenner@bellarmine.edu) to be our Rouge Forum Community Coordinator. He will take on the very ambitious tasks listed below. With Joe Bishop having given us a real chance to move ahead with EMU conference announcements, etc., it seems this structural step forward is timely and appropriate.
Of course, we want your ideas . So, please let Adam and me know what you think.
The RFCC would: coordinate the leaders of the various work groups:
(1) myspace (or is it Facebook now?) page;
(2) annual Rouge Forum conference (this work group leader will change annually based on where the conference is held);
(3) online teacher certification program (Joe C);
(4) curriculum development (Doug S.);
(5) conference committees like NCSS, etc., and
(6) finance (Rich and Wayne?);
And coordinate the work of the regional chapters of the RF (northeast, midwest, south, west)–connecting national to local action, prepping regional chapters for presentations at annual conference, working on grass roots organizing, etc. ; coordinate the production and dissemination of a regular 4 page mailer of RF work, action, theory, curriculum, etc. (This will take some doing and probably $, but a regular hard copy of something coming out of the RF is critical). Seek connections/partnerships with parallel people/organizations. And provide info for the regular RF updates (updates on conference, updates on regional chapter work, updates to myspace, etc.)
The main work of the RFCC, with all of this said, is connecting/coordinating people with info and action–being a little more deliberate about implementing the aims of the RF and helping people find their place in this one organization poised to say and do anything about the current debacles, particularly, and capitalism, generally.
Thanks to Ginger, Perry, Adam and Gina, Cloe, Amber, Donna, Betty, Kathy K., Gil, Dirty Edd, Linda R., Joe B and C, Greg and Katie, Beau, Wayne, Jane P, Bob and Tommie Lee, GF, Andy, Chuck R., Alan, and Weird Eric.
best, r
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