Dear friends,
Our Rouge Forum “Their Wars Left Behind” Conference, this coming weekend, March 1 to 4, may be the first of its kind in North America. We will unite students, K-12 educators, cultural activists, poets, playwrights, labor activists, in an action-oriented discussion about what to do in schools inside a nation promising perpetual war on the world. The Rouge Forum is the only education-based group in the US that has had the limited courage it takes to make the obvious connections of: Endless War=Rising Inequality=The Regimentation of Schools=Racist High-stakes Standardized Tests.
Check the schedule linked here and come on down to Detroit to participate in understanding, and changing, the world. What you do counts, more than ever before. No one will be turned away for fees.
We will have to leave it to Patrick Shannon, historian of progressive education in the US, as to whether or not our claim of “first time ever,” is true, but it is clear the stakes could not be higher, higher even than a SAT score. What we are addressing now, in every classroom and in every community, is a matter of life and death. Social studies, for example, is no longer about citizenship. It is about killing people.
Among our presenters are Susan Ohanian, author of Why is Corporate America Bashing Our Schools? and long-time Detroit radio host, Peter Werbe, who will take up the question of the eradication of history in schools, something that would underpin Chalmers Johnson’s claim that, “Americans can no longer connect cause and effect so they wonder, ‘Why do they hate us?'”
So, while this conference will extend the Rouge Forum traditions of friendship, inclusion, and good cheer, it also takes place during yet another pivotal moment in world history: the very real possibility of a US attack on Iran which could easily be the next step toward World War III.
Such an attack will mean harsh repression in the US in order to contain the campuses as well as the poor and working people who will be asked to pay the price of the empire’s wars for oil and social control. Predictably, a key element of both a US assault on Iran, and repression at home, will be racism. One of our tasks will be to put the battle for internationalism, against racism, in the forefront of educational action.
We will show, and discuss, the film, “Sir No Sir,” about the GI led anti-war movement during the wars on Vietnam, and “Grain of Sand,” about the educator led uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico. Our entire agenda is right to the point at hand.
As always, the participants will set the agenda and tone of this Rouge Forum. However, it is clear we need to take up organizational questions (like having a more easily understood leadership group so anyone could look and see where they might display their creativity best), and communications questions (like shall we continue to publish the Rouge Forum News online as well as focus on Substance News’ vital contributions in hard copy?), or matters of outreach (like what shall our role be in professional groups?) and strategic questions (like the one we have taken up for years: how to build a caring community within the RF while, at the same time, we face a ruthless and highly organized opposition?), and perhaps the key question: what do we want people to know, and how do we think they might best learn it?
That implies the big question to each of us: What shall we do? How can we, for example, link direct action vs high-stakes testing with the wars—and freedom schooling?
This weekend in Detroit each of us will have a chance to make a real difference. Please join us, spread the word, and bring friends.
Follow
