Dear Friends,
The Rouge Forum No Blood for Oil web page is updated.
We focus, this week, on the mass actions, walkouts, strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, set for Mayday, the international workers’ holiday.
Our old colleague and friend, Jim Lafferty of the LA Lawyers’ Guild, has been busy defending those students who participated in the most recent mass school walkouts and boycotts.
But it has been the mass direct action of millions of people, marching collectively in the streets, that has demonstrated, if nothing else, the incredible potential power of working people whose interests know no borders. Despite the many clear weaknesses (nationalism in particular)of the immigration rights movement, the possibilities that rise from people taking charge of their own lives, in concert with others, reach far beyond the soldiering that makes up much of daily work and school life.
While leaders of the Catholic Church and labor bosses, like Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union, attack the coming mass demonstrations and walkouts, it remains that the Mayday actions will happen without their approval—because they had little or nothing to do with organizing them in the first place. The mass actions could easily take on a life of their own, organizing from the ground up.
March on Mayday!
WHO WE ARE:
The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are concerned about questions like these: How can we teach against racism, national chauvinism and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society? How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals and still teach–or learn? Whose interests shall school serve in a society that is ever more unequal? We are both research and action oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what that is. We seek to build a caring inclusive community which understands that an injury to one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless.
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To the Rouge Educators: In your quest for a Democratic society in an authoritarian world I submit to you that the place to start is with your students. There is probably no greater disparity of power than in our public schools. Why don’t you put an end to such coercive practices as detention and in school suspension? Until teachers get their own house in order they will have little credibility on global issues such as racism and diversity.