Category Archives: Rouge Forum Update

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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Dear Friends,

Remember to mark you calendars: the weekend of May 15th, the Rouge Forum Conference at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.

What with wars and economic collapse in the forefront of American minds, it seems the hot education debate is vanished. Perhaps for good reason as the major party candidates agree on the crux of NCLB, merit pay, the expansion of charters, the heroification of Teach For America’s drive-by projects in poor neighborhoods, and they must be clear on what will be the school budget impact of the financial firestorms.

Depending on where you live, PBS and NPR plan discussions between McCain and Obama surrogates, but really, what can be said to demonstrate passionate disagreement? Not much. Here is Fairtest’s examination of the candidates positions.

Having surveyed the web sites of the major unions in the US, only one has anything to say about the bankster bailout—the American Federation of Teachers, in support of it. The rest are pouring millions of dollars into the Obama campaign.

Why would the huge National Education Association and AFT shower Obama with member cash when his fundraising is already over the top, $150 million in September, within a billion dollar electoral spectacle? In the case of NEA, it’s dues income and jobs. The early childhood education centers Obama may set up will be contested terrain for NEA, but rumor has it that Reg Weaver, outgoing NEA president, is lined up for an administration job in that field.

Meanwhile, the tyranny deepens as banksters, AIG bailout recipients, go partridge hunting on taxpayers’ nickels
http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/10/14/2008-10-14_aigs_lords_and_lady_of_the_hunt_may_find.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/opinion/19dowd.html?ei=5070
(Defarge was right).

Those who were born with the least capital will get hurt first and worst in these crises. And the wisdom they display will often be exemplary, a lesson for us all. Right now, people in Morelos Mexico (named for the revolutionary) are battling the police and the military. They are led by teachers and other school workers who are demanding an end to school privatization, a project of the “Alliance for Quality Education,: which also seeks to demolish teacher benefits won over decades. The fight has gone on for more than two months, demonstrating that educators are centripetally positioned to initiate social change. The Morelos fighters were recently joined by comreades from Oaxaca—a learning from all; one lesson being that their top union leadership consistently betrays them. The Morelos educators are good examples of people connecting reason to power, with solidarity. Here is one of many links on Morelos.

Thanks to Gil, Amber, Gina and Adam, Sandy. Bill and Bill, Greg and Katie, Melissa, Nancy, Bonnie, Sarah, Giselle, Eva, Lisa, Liz, Betty, Gloria and the Michigan gang, Kim, Bob, Dirty Edd, Pete, Dave, George and family, Wayne, and Sue. H.

All the best

r

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Dear Friends,

Perhaps the most auspicious event of October: the birth of Hurricane Ian Boyer whose eyes might see into the 22nd century. Congratulations to the entire Boyer family who showed there is no room for the failed system of capital, and Ian, on the same planet.

Here is Karl Marx himself, who, when every capitalist economist has to admit, “everything we knew for certain was wrong,” and when so many capitalist economists are proclaiming, “This is socialism,” when in fact it is national socialism, deserves more than a nod:

From Marx, Kapital vol 3, chapter 30 [the words New York and Federal Reserve added]:

“In a system…where the entire continuity of the…process rests upon credit, a crisis must obviously occur — a tremendous rush for means of payment — when credit suddenly ceases and only cash payments have validity. At first glance, therefore, the whole crisis seems to be merely a credit and money crisis. And in fact it is only a question of the convertibility of bills of exchange into money. But the majority of these bills represent actual sales and purchases, whose extension far beyond the needs of society is, after all, the basis of the whole crisis. At the same time, an enormous quantity of these bills of exchange represents plain swindle, which now reaches the light of day and collapses; furthermore, unsuccessful speculation with the capital of other people; finally, commodity-capital which has depreciated or is completely unsaleable, or returns that can never more be realized again. The entire artificial system of forced expansion of the [ecomony] cannot, of course, be remedied by having some bank, like the [FederalReserve], give to all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its paper and having it buy up all the depreciated commodities at their old nominal values. Incidentally, everything here appears distorted, since in this paper world, the real price and its real basis appear nowhere, but only bullion, metal coin, notes, bills of exchange, securities. Particularly in centers where the entire money business of the country is concentrated, like London [or New York]…the entire process becomes incomprehensible.”

In our current circumstances, education workers who are the most organized workers in the US, who sit in the centripetal point of social and economic life for most people in this society, schools, who look out at about 50 million students (1/2 of them draft eligible in the next three years), who are among the last working people in the US who have fairly predictable employment (granted, there are thousands of layoffs), health benefits, and wages, who set up the vision of how and why the world works for kids—education workers may well be the next target for elites. Merit pay tied to test scores, more regimented curricula, what will likely be booming class size, more militarization of working class schools will mean not merely reaction, but resistance as school workers like other workers before us will have to fight to live.

At issue will be whether or not the Rouge Forum can take the lead to make sense of why these struggles must occur, whether the resistance can be girded by solidarity or whether we will be unable to convince people of the truth of the old labor saw, “An injury to one goes before an injury to all,” and whether or not we will be able to link the fight in schools to the fight against the system of capital itself.

In a Detroit suburb, Westland, teachers went on strike from Monday to Thursday last week. Teachers rarely want to strike. Nearly all teacher strikes are illegal (though the only illegal strike is a strike that fails). But the Westland teachers struck to save their health benefits and for class size caps (class size in Westland is far over the top). Those two demands tied the teachers, students, and parents together.

When a judge ordered the teachers back to work on Friday, they chose to return–against our advice. But on Friday, the students struck the school system on their own, with parental support—more than 200 students staying out. We can learn from this all these lessons and one more—the great potential of Freedom Schools, built on real issues outside the atmosphere of fear and coercion inside most schools. The student strike continues on Monday.

In the state of Morelos, Mexico, school workers entered there 48th day of a strike against both their employers, demanding that the educators concede all job security, and their union bosses, who demand the teachers cave. The school workers set up their own, separate, organization to lead the strike which is supported by students and most parents. Morelos educators were joined by teachers from Oaxaca who arrived with considerable experience about union leaders’ betrayals from their 2006 massive strikes.

On Saturday, the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice held a teachin with plenary sessions led by Marjorie Cohen, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Mike Davis and others. It brought together high school students fighting JROTC, Vietnam vets, peace activists, teachers, university students, Rouge Forum members, and community leaders. Despite considerable effort, the entire local press blacked out any coverage of the event.

A month ago a serious discussion about the system of capital would have been actively opposed by many of the leaders of the group. But in this meeting, Capitalism was put on trial by nearly everyone (but for four Navy spies who were sent to watch and disrupt). This is one short speech on the Political Economy of Capitalism and the Emergence of Fascism.

Here is Monthly Review’s John Bellamy Foster: Can the Financial Crisis be Reversed?

Thanks to Joe B, Gil G, Bob A, Amber, Tommie, Wayne, Adam and Gina, Greg and Katie and the girls, Bertell, Roxanne D. O., Tina S, Chandra, Sandy and Van, Colleen, Chantelle, Nancy, Beau, Roxie, Candace, and congratulations to the about to be Mom who shall remain anon.

All the best,

r

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Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum Conference, 2009, will be at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti the weekend of May 15. Please begin to plan accordingly, prepare workshops, set up travel, etc. It appears we will have quite a few low cost dorm rooms available. EMU is close to Detroit Metro Airport. Thanks to Joe Bishop for his great work on this conference already.

As we suggested two years ago in considerable specificity, finance capital trumped itself while overproduction and de-industrialization sabotaged the North American work force with plenty of help from liberals, conservatives, union leaders, post-modernists, the profit-media, and many people who, in the last 15 years, refused to use the terms: Capitalism, Imperialism, Crises, Collapse, and Class War–and worse, attacked those who advanced those ideas.

The bi-partisan $700 million robbery last week was a clear instance of, not just class rule, but the domination of capital itself, the giant sucking pump of profits, over whatever anyone thought of as capitalist democracy, which bears as strong a relationship to democracy that the Pope does to “do unto others.” Surely, if reality has any connection to reason, many people can see the government is an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich. Inside, they work out their differences, then let us choose who will oppress us best.

The economic crisis is, in part, summed up in Monthly Review, here and here is a shorter piece from the Globe and Mail: “The end of the American order”
The debilitating credit crisis has knocked the U.S. from its perch as the supreme economic power. The climb back up will be steep.

What is next? Hard to predict as if a dozen cue balls were driven into a hundred racks, the only guarantee that no balls could stop. The crashing will continue. Good bet over time: Steep inflation (war costs plus minted money for bailouts) and a ferocious attack on working people to pay for it. Teachers are likely to be next in line.

But it is not merely an economic crisis. It will result in a terrible extension of tyranny into every aspect of life. It is not a dime that people will fight and die for, but social justice, summed up in the movements of history as: Equality and Freedom! It is the tyranny of daily life that prompts upheavals for social change. Again, here is a classroom exercise on the historical critique of tyranny.

When ruling class commentators come on “Marketplace” on National Public Radio (bossed by the hustler who ran Radio Free Europe) and announce that nobody trusts the government, everyone is outraged at the Wall Street bailout, and that the politicians are “pygmies,” who cannot get anything right, when the PBS economist Solomon admits, “everything my colleagues and I knew was wrong,” (but cannot bring himself to say, “Marx was right”), and he goes further to say, “this is socialism,” but cannot be clear and say: National Socialism; then we know something profound is afoot.

But there is no Left (yet) over any size that is able to conduct Grand Strategy, Strategy, and Tactics in order to face down the system of capital and its personifications. In education in North America and much of the world, the only Left is the Rouge Forum.

The anti-war left in the US managed to take a movement that quickly put a million people on the streets six years ago, to one that cannot put a hundred thousand people out now–and in the interim taught people nothing important (those responsible? United for Peace and Justice, above all–here is our analysis from a year ago, by Tom Suber: http://richgibson.com/wheremovement.htm ).

The education resistance movement has been largely derailed by those who want to disconnect education from social crisis, or who want to teach their way out of capitalism. This is how we sought to set that right: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~rgibson/TestingSchoolReformDebate.htm

So, we head into what may well be a very dark era. Still, the few cannot rule the many without considerable consent won, admittedly, through fear and bribes, but consent that has to be disconnected from reason. Our project remains: Connect reason to power.

Part of that is recognizing good work. Here is Jeffrey Perry: The biography, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918, by Jeffrey B. Perry, is being published by Columbia University Press and is scheduled to be in bookstores by November/December 2008.

And Monthly Review on the deepening crises in education.

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee is working on several projects: A MySpace Page, a Teacher Certification Program, our conference, and more avenues for publication (remember to subscribe to Substance, the hard copy voice of education resistance in the US). If you want to help, let us know and we will set you up with the work group leaders. Suggestions for projects always welcome.

As things stand today, we have about 4600 people on our email list. All volunteers. Will you share some of the Rouge Forum’s thoughts with friends and ask them to sign on?

For some cheer, here is Professor Louis’ rap on Corporate Power!

Thanks to Joe B, Amber, Adam and Gina, Wayne, Paul and Mary, Joe L, Katie and G, Sue H, Teeyah and Moshe, Bob and Tommie, Joe C, Bill of OP, Donna, Candy, Carol O, Agopian, Dan, Melissa and Josh, Isiah, Jules, Breisach, and Weird Eric.

Down the banks!
Up the Rebels????
All the best

r

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Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee had a refreshing, terrific, meeting in Detroit. The discussion focused, in part, on what to do as the sky falls. The long term answer, I think, is to build a mass base of class conscious people prepared to make sacrifices over time, educated to do grand strategy (equality and freedom on a distant horizon), strategy (who holds power here, and how can, instead, masses of people hold power?) and tactics (what shall we do for, say, twelve months?). You’ll see the specific results of the meeting in the next two weeks. That is the short term answer but perhaps the shorter term answer is to send out a longer Rouge Forum Update. Apologies, but the sky is falling…..

A salute to our old friend Ira Gollobin, author of “Dialectical Materialism,” whose web site is now online: http://gollobin.org/

And here is Chalmers Johnson, in a toned-down piece, arguing that the sky is still falling. In other public appearances and in his book, “Nemesis,” he said that an economic collapse, triggered by military adventures and hubris, would bring fascism, dictatorship, to the USA.

For a voice from the past; Aristotle on how tyrants rule.

“The lopping off of outstanding people and the destruction of the proud, and also the prohibition of common meals and club fellowships and education and all other things of this nature, in fact the close watch upon all things that usually engender…pride and confidence and the prevention of…study circles and other conferences for debate, and the employment of every means that will make people as much as possible unknown to one another (for familiarity increases mutual confidence), and for the people of the city to be always visible as they hang about the palace gates (for thus there would be at least concealment for what they are doing, and they would get into a habit of being humble from always acting in a servile way)…and to try not to be uniformed about any chance utterances or actions of any of the subjects, but to have spies…wherever there was any gathering or conference, ..and to cause quarrels between friend and friend and between the people and the notables, and among the rich. And it is a device of tyranny to make the subjects poor, so that a guard may not be kept, and also that the people being busy with their daily affairs may not have leisure to plot against their ruler. Instances of this are the pyramids in Egypt, and the building of the temple of the Olympian Zeus…(for all these undertakings produce the same effect, constant occupation and poverty among the subject people) and the levying of taxes, as at Syracuse (for in the reign of Dionysius the result of taxation used to be in five years men had contributed the whole of their substance). Also the tyrant is a stirrer-up of war, with the deliberate purpose of keeping the people busy and also of making them constantly in need of a leader.”

The wishes of a tyrant are directed by three aims, to produce humility, “for a humble-spirited man would not plot against anybody,” to prevent confidence among subjects, “for a tyranny is not destroyed until people come to trust each other,” and the people’s power to resist must be demolished, “so that nobody attempts impossibilities, as nobody tries to put down a tyranny if they do not have power behind them.” (From Aristotle, “Politics”).

The question to any government: Is this for the common good?

The ethics of every movement for change for the common good: Freedom and Equality.

Here are questions that could be used in most schools, designed to highlight the historical critique of tyranny.

And a letter from a friend about the financial crises:

“Just so we are all clear about one thing. The system we live under is called “capitalism.”

The people who benefit under it are the capitalists.

ANY “bailout”, etc., is going to be a bailout of the capitalists.

The aim and purpose of any such program is to help the capitalists.

That’s what capitalism is all about — profiting the capitalists.

Therefore, this or any possible plan will, first and foremost, profit the capitalists.

Will it help the rest of us? The answer is always the same. Some employees of the capitalists will benefit indirectly.

But “benefiting society” is not, and cannot possibly be, the purpose of such a program. Not under capitalism it can’t!

Capitalism needs capitalists. For the last 150 years or so the main capitalists it needs are financial capitalists — financiers.

Financial capitalists control the others, by controlling the supply of capital. Financial capitalists are the most powerful and — as we now see — the most important.

You can’t have finance capitalism without financiers.

So the whole purpose of the government’s actions is to benefit the financial capitalists.
That’s how problems under capitalism are solved. Otherwise, it’s not capitalism.

Some of this will “trickle down” to some of us employees and workers. Of course!
The financial capitalists can’t function by themselves. They need the industrial, commercial, real estate, etc. capitalists, who will borrow from them.

And THOSE capitalists need us, the employees and workers, to actually do the work, and by doing it, create all the value that the rest of the capitalists appropriate, invest, borrow, lend, gain, lose, and spend.

Paul Krugman’s column today in the New York Times points this out too. “Cash for Trash?”

Henry Paulson is a politically-connected investment banker, and this plan is his. (Paulson succeeded New Jersey’s own governor Jon Corzine as head of Goldman Sachs). Naturally enough, his plan hugely profits financial institutions, while not necessarily solving the economic problems of the country. Obviously this is deliberate.
This is, after all, capitalism. The capitalists win, no matter what else. The British Empire crashed and burned in the 20th century, but the Bank of England and other British banks are still among the strongest in the world.

That’s what capitalist politics are all about: profiting the financiers, who control the rest of the economy.

It’s not a “mistake”. It’s not “incompetence.” This is the way capitalism has always worked, since the 1830s at least. It cannot possibly work any other way. To ask capitalism not to work the way it must work is like asking a dog to act like a mouse.
* * * * *
So, let’s complain, for sure. I’m going to write “our” Congressman, and the two senators. But I’m not going to pretend I’m naive. I’m not going to say: “Make the government’s actions benefit ‘the little guy.'” The capitalists — mainly, the financiers — RUN the government. The government always benefits them. It never benefits “the little guy”, except as a by-product (they can’t let us all die out, or there would be no capital, and therefore no capitalists). Slavery wasn’t made for the slaves, but for the slave-owners. Capitalism wasn’t made for the workers, but for the capitalists. But we don’t have to like it. Any more than the slaves liked slavery. And, like the slave system, capitalism isn’t going to last forever. ”

Thanks to Greg and Katie, Adam and Gina, Joe and Joe, Bill Blank, Amber, Colleen, Kelly, Wayne, Ashwani, Ravi, MrJ, Bonnie and Marc, Sherry, Nancy, Grace and Lydia, Spencer and Brady, Kim B, Elaine H, Sally and Sandy, Bonnie Mc, Hope and Art.

All the best, r

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Dear Friends,

A serious crisis visits us. I suggest only the Rouge Forum, small as we are, is positioned in North America to link reason with knowledge and answer the coming crash–with schools and children in the forefront of our minds.

Only the Rouge Forum predicted this smash-up of war and the economy and only the Rouge Forum fashioned answers. http://www.richgibson.com/roleofschools.pdf

That is because, in part, we understand that political economy is not about the “market,” “profit and loss,” or even “capital,” but it is the study of social relations people create in our struggle with nature in order to deal with the necessities of life: (1) work and production, (2) reproduction–love and aesthetics, (3) rational knowledge, (4) and freedom.

That’s a sum of what class struggle is about. Now, with the fickle system of capital leaving its personifications in the US (the bailouts have mostly been directed at salvaging foreign investors, especially China, to keep them holding dollars, which will not last), and with inter-imperialist rivalry intensifying (Georgia invades S. Ossetia and the US military is paralyzed), especially over regional control of oil; we can easily foresee an intensifying attack of the rich on the poor everywhere. That will play out in schools in North American, the central organizing point of most people’s lives.

Only Cassandra, with a crystal ball, can look into the specifics of the future but history helps with some quick terms: inflation which robs the poor, bank closures called “holidays” , massive unemployment, possible currency devaluations, payment in script, more evictions, government used as a weapon of the rich–and schools used as missions for capital, teachers its missionaries, urging upon kids the witless nationalism that gets the poor to fight and die for the rich in their birthplaces.

It is in this context that we need to analyze the election. This election should not only be studied as how to choose who will best oppress the majority of the people from the executive committee of the rich, which is the government. It should be studied, more importantly, as how a spectacle of capitalism, the election inside the capitalist “democracy”, has speeded the emergence of fascism, that is,
*the corporate state, the rule of the rich (bailouts, oil wars),
*the suspension of civil liberties,
*the attacks on whatever press there is,
*the rise of racism and segregation (in every way, but especially the immigration policies),
*the promotion of the fear of sexuality as a question of pleasure (key to creating the inner slave),
*the governmental/corporate attacks on working peoples’ wages and benefits (tax bailouts to merit pay),
*intensification of imperialist war (sharpening the war in Afghanistan sharpens war on Pakistan which sharpens war on Russia, etc, and the US is NOT going to leave Iraq’s oil),
*the promotion of nationalism (all class unity) by, especially, the union bosses),
*trivializing what is supposed to be the popular will to vile gossip, thus building cynicism—especially the idea that we cannot grasp and change the world,
*increased mysticism (is it better to vote for a real religious fanatic or people who fake being religious fanatics?) and,
*incessant attacks on radicals (Bill Ayers is not a radical; he is a liberal now, once he was a liberal with a bomb, but people see him as the epitome of a radical and he IS connected to Obama).

That is a litany of the acceleration of fascism. The unions, all of them, and all existing education reform groups–other than the Rouge Forum– believe in the all-class-unity, nationalism, that lies at the core of fascism and no union or education reform group other than the Rouge Forum has ever initiated and sustained a struggle that united people across lines of job, community, age, race, disability, and sex. We have connected our research, reason, to power.

What to do? Build direct action resistance in the military and the military feeding machines–schools.

But if this US population, which has shopped it through two decades of warfare (Clinton dropped more bombs on Iraq than Bush2 did); if these people can no longer shop, and there is no organized left, a real left that grasps the nature of class war, then we lambs among wolves had better watch out.

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee is meeting in Detroit on September 27. Your analysis, ideas for action, will be noted and appreciated, and you are welcome to come join us. The Vietnamese resistance started with a dozen people.

Congratulations to Greg Queen of the RF steering committe for winning the NCSS academic freedom award for defending his right to teach critically.

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Dear Friends,

Restored to life!

Welcome back to school and the Rouge Forum. Our web page is fully updated.

Our Steering Committee will meet in Detroit on the weekend of September 27, setting our agenda for the coming year. If you would like to attend or add agenda items, please let me know.

Rouge Forum members will help lead teach-ins about schools and the war around the US this fall. Information is on our web site.

Some items of interest from the summer:

Let us remember that both Obama and McCain insist they support merit pay as does Democrat George Miller and Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

In fact, the Democratic delegation at their recent Denver convention routinely showed contempt for leaders of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, together representing the largest bloc on the convention floor, NEA alone with 210 delegates. The unions both endorsed Obama nevertheless and will pour millions of dollars into the current election spectacle, and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours. NEA, in addition, proudly claims a million Republican members, of 3.2 million nationwide.

Why would NEA and AFT executives endorse politicians who attempt to enforce merit pay, a vital choke point for those who seek to sort children, educators, and knowledge itself, by class and race? The usual official argument is, “lesser of two evils.” The reality is that presidents of both NEA and AFT earn well over $450,000 a year. That alone means they do not live like school workers, do not shop where we shop, do not work where we work, do not witness our struggles and, since they have lived like this for more than a decade, their viewpoint is from the other side.

Worse still is the fact that of the ten executive officers of NEA (including the top executive, John Wilson), only two are from states that have collective bargaining in the law, meaning eight never could have bargained a contract, and the two remaining never bargained a contract anyway, and none of them has ever directly managed a strike—the most important weapon educators have. The memory of how to resist, from officialdom, is nearly gone.

Both NEA and AFT actively supported the development of NCLB, working in tandem with the US Chambers of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the Broad Foundation and others. Executives of both unions, from time to time, hint about problems with NCLB, its high stakes exams and regulated curricula, but the union bosses actually attack those who try to do something about NCLB—like Susan Ohanian—and they never opposed the military invasion of schooling that is an important part of the law.

UTLA, the largest school worker union in California, still insists it will back merit pay on “a cold day in hell,” according to a past president. But the coming trends, and the war-based budget collapse, show that educators have a fight ahead—for pay, benefits, and the freedom to teach well and the very lives of kids who, this year, arrive homeless, foreclosed. Bankers, though, get bipartisan bailouts.

San Diego’s Education Association fought massive layoffs for 9 months. Still 194 teachers are laid off and the superintendent, Terry Grier, continues to insist on injecting merit pay into contract negotiations.

Denver teachers in the American Federation of Teachers will likely ratify a contract that extends their existing merit pay program.

In collapsing Detroit, dozens of schools will be closed and hundreds of school workers laid off. The district’s new superintendent, Connie Calloway who previously administered a district smaller than 5,000 kids, just discovered a $408 million dollar deficit.

Calloway also discovered thousands of textbooks sitting unopened in a warehouse, new from last year, full of mold, never delivered. The Detroit Federation of Teachers President, Virginia Cantrell, suspended the Executive Vice President, Greg Johnson, for insisting that educators need, “books, supplies, lower class size,” at a union rally where Cantrell gave the podium to superintendent Calloway to make a pitch for concessions.

Washington DC teachers, though divided, will likely endorse a merit pay program introduced by Teach for America grad, Michell Rhee, a favorite of NPR and PBS. The VP of the DC local is currently suing the president.

We should remember this quote about NPR from William Blum, author of Killing Hope:

“The president of NPR, incidentally, is a gentleman named Kevin Klose. Previously he helped coordinate all US-funded international broadcasting: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Central Europe and the Soviet Union), Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio/TV Marti (Cuba), Worldnet Television (Africa and elsewhere); all created specifically to disseminate world news to a target audience through the prism of US foreign policy beliefs and goals. He also served as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Would it be unfair to say that Americans then became his newest target audience? All unconscious of course; that’s what makes the mass media so effective; they really believe in their own objectivity. Not to mention the conscious propaganda.”

Note, though, that the former DC teachers union president and other officers are in prison for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dues dollars.

New York City teachers endorsed an expanded merit pay system over the summer.

Miami Dade teachers went back to work with a contract but the district refused to pay the negotiated raise. The union, whose past president of twenty plus years, Pat Tornillo, was convicted and jailed for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dues dollars, urged the teachers to sign a petition, and work.

The Chicago Teachers Union, AFT, continues to sport a merit pay project initiated by a federal grant in 2006. CTU’s President also suspended it’s Vice President for dissent.

Six years ago, the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers resoundingly defeated a move to continue a merit pay system in their schools that had, in their experience, failed. AFT presses on with one sellout after the next. Later, AFT leaders in Cincinnati wheedled a contract that has teachers evaluating teachers for merit pay, a high point of educators becoming instruments of their own oppression.

Clearly, the urban American Federation of Teachers leads the charge toward merit pay, as they have led nearly every retreat of the labor movement since Al Shanker declared in 1975 that he stood for the unity of union bosses, superintendents, business, and government, “in the national interest.” Shanker began concession bargaining, never learning that making concessions is like giving blood to sharks—they only want more.

AFTs’ betrayals of its own members are, as we see in San Diego, going to appear on NEA bargaining tables everywhere. Given NEA’s history, and their adoption of Shanker’s collaborative outlook, it is quite possible that absent rank and file action, merit pay based on test scores will appear in NEA contracts nationwide. Then, educator pay and benefits will reflect the income of the parents of the kids in the classroom. This will materially divide the work force even more, weakening solidarity, making it easier still to manipulate education in the interest of war and inequality.

A 2007 study by a University of Florida Economics professor, David Figlio, now seeks attention as academic proof that teacher merit pay improves student test scores, a fetish among politicians, NPR, Ed Week, and many people in the public. What goes unnoticed by many educators is that about 16 percent of US schools are already working with merit pay.

With Governor Swarzenegger declaring a $4.8 billion dollar budget deficit and the budget long overdue, given our current social context of an international war of the rich on the poor, inter-imperialist warfare (costing the US taxpayers $3 Trillion), the collapsing banks (Bear Stearns bailed out), the mortgage crisis (Fannie and Freddie Mac bailed out to the cost of untold trillions)—i.e., the use of government to privatize profits and socialize loss, using the state as an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich—school workers (parents and kids) can expect fights ahead on many fronts.

At issue is whether or not we wisely hunt down the root source of our problems, from inflation to layoffs to health care and pay cuts, to merit pay to pension cuts and rising class size, and the systematic attacks on our kids through regimented curricula promoting little more than technical expertise and witless nationalism, high-stakes racist exams, and the militarization of working class schools: will we see these problems have common beginnings and fight together, parents, students and kids; or will we allow ourselves to be picked off one by one—as is happening with thousands of wrongly foreclosed families right now?

What is the source of our problems? The system of capital, its wars, and the class war we find ourselves in today. Should we miss that reality, or believe we can vote ourselves out of it when both the Democrats and Republicans have conducted open, bipartisan war on the schools through the NCLB–as well as promising endless war on the world–if we fail to see that nobody is going to save us but us, we are in for dark days in education, and the very struggle for reason.

We have mounted a resistance based on direct action and an ethic of equality that says, “you are what you do,” for more than a decade through Substance News, The Rouge Forum ( www.rougeforum.org ), Susan Ohanian’s web site, and Calcare on the Resist list. Please spread the word.

There is always hope in kids.

All the best for a good school year.

r
ps: Here is an early look at a piece in the October Substance

Take a look at the newly designed Substance web site at
www.substancenews.net and please, please subscribe to the hard copy version or send a donation to the only print source of education activism in the US.

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Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum No Blood Oil web page is updated. As of this writing, the wars have cost $541 billion.

Of particular interest is Joe Lucido’s idea of visiting Teacher Stores, now, where teachers are stocking up, meeting them with petitions to urge opt outs from the NCLB-driven high stakes exams. Here is a link to one of many petitions.

Chicago students are being urged to conduct a school boycott on the opening day of school, time to be spent applying to schools in the well funded suburbs. Perhaps this action will set the stage for a year of resistance, something well beyond what the organizers now foresee.

In Detroit, the FBI is investigating DPS finances while chaplains invade the schools seeking to pray their way out of one of the most profound social and economic crises in the US (see the comments on the articles as well as those on Susan Ohanian’s web site.

In Kansas City, educators are already picketing for a contract
.
This is Stephen Krashen on Reading First: Hooked on Phailure .

Here is Chalmers Johnson on the emergence of fascism, militarism, mercenaries, and the promise of endless war. Besides Johnson’s Nemesis Trilogy, people might want to review his early, 1960’s book, Revolutionary Change and, for an update on the many uprisings in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Central Asia, see Rashid, Descent Into Chaos.

And Ravi Kuman reviewing, in brief, the state response to uprisings in India.

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee will meet in Detroit, the weekend of September 27. Suggestions for our work can be sent to rumbagarden@ameritech.net

And don’t forget the spectacular Last Chance to Eat Before School Starts And the Sky Falls PotLuck Dinner in Southern California, at our house, on August 9. Be there or be square, and RSVP!

Thanks to Wayne, Kevin, Amber, Susan, Sally, Steve, Ash, Ravi, Dave and Dave, Perry, Shelly, Paul (especially for the correction) Candace, Bob and Tommie (don’t forget to send that stuff), Connie and Doug, John and Mary, Paul and Mary, Sandy and Van, Victoria, Eva, Chris, Toby, and Sharon.

If you’re on Facebook, join the Rouge Forum group.
All the best,

r

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The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil web page is updated. There you can find key articles, dating back to 1999, on education, war, the economy, and whatever there is of the left.

Of special interest is this note from a Rouge Forum organizer who attended the recent Brecht Forum on the state of the antiwar movement. Here is a short excerpt: “now I can understand how they have taken a movement with millions in the streets at one time to a “movement” today that can’t muster even a few thousand people…”

Substance News covered the NEA and AFT conventions this year. While both unions’ leaders sought to restrict press passes for Substance journalists, no other resource can come close to the coverage Substance gave to the most unionized sector of the US, education workers.

On the whole, NEA and AFT bosses got what they wanted from the conventions. They deflected nearly everything into the electoral arena, dodged around on Iraq and other wars, and ducked on the crux of NCLB while they criticized NCLB….and they all got raises to boot.

However, there was a little surprise about one thing from each convention. From NEA, it was a surprise that Dennis Van Roekel remained a nonentity. Many people expected DVR, who is not utterly inept like past NEA boss Reg Weaver, to be far more assertive and, to some degree, militant. They felt he had been biding his time inside the bowels of NEA and that the “Real” DVR was far to the left of the one that had slogged along being number two and three for all those years. It is pretty clear that AFT’s Randi Weingarten will, if DVR does not change fast, eclipse the NEA (again) in the national spotlight, and that DVR will not be the stealth militant so many people hoped he would be. NEA is, by the way, about three times the size of the AFT and is the largest union in the USA.

From the AFT, it was a bit of a surprise that outgoing president McElroy called for abolition of NCLB. The Rouge Forum, Substance, and others created the pressure for that. Of course, he is lying. AFT is doing merit pay, stealing money from members wherever they can. Local leaders are attacking one another out of sheer opportunism. AFT continues to work with the reactionaries in the Business Roundtable, and the National Endowment for Democracy, and is going to go right along with the Obamagogue project to continue the regimentation of schooling through high stakes exams and to offer national service as a middle class offset to the draft.

Here is Street in Z on the demagogue, Obamagogue And more to come from his hometown, Chicago, in Substance.

On a cheerier note:

An invitation to all to an August potluck in lovely San Diego:

Who: Anyone interested in getting together
Where: Rich and Amber’s house in San Diego
When: Saturday, August 9, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Why: Socializing and fun
How: Call us at 619-287-2322 or email rgibson@pipeline.com for directions and then bring yourself and something to share

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee will meet on September 27 in Detroit to plan our coming year. Suggestions and comments always welcome.

And we will host a social gathering at AERA in San Diego in 2009. Be there or be square.

All the best

r

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Dear Friends,

Welcome to the new folks, from all over the world, on our Rouge Forum list. For newcomers, the Rouge Forum home page is at
www.rougeforum.org</a . There you will find current updates on education, the wars, and those good-for-the-rest-of-our-lives Rouge Forum posters on sale at cost.

Substance News won a small victory after the paper of the education resistance was denied a press pass for the American Federation of Teachers convention coming up soon. After Rouge Forum members and Substance readers let the AFT leadership know that Substance is indeed a “legitimate” news source, the AFT leaders changed course. Here is one sentence from their recent response: “”By the way, could you please let your subscribers know that you will be covering the convention so that they’ll stop e-mailing and calling?”

Substance is carrying live online updates from the National Education Association Representative Assembly right now at
http://www.substancenews.net/ and will have even broader coverage of the AFT conference soon. A subscription to the hard copy of Substance is just $16, a good way to spend a small portion of the hush money Bush is sending to people in the US.

Here is a short, 4 minute piece from George Carlin on Who Owns Education, and US?

Bill Moyers’ Journal on Post Civil War Slavery (Moyers and his guest seem to have forgotten that W.E.B. Dubois broke the ground on this)

Ten years ago, Osama bin Laden demanded that oil should be priced at $144 a barrel. Now it is. Where is Osama? For those who want to follow events in Central Asia, see the bourgeoisie nationalist Ahmed Rashid, “Descent into Chaos.” While his standpoint makes him as unable to see a way out as Bush, his presentation is detailed and worth the candle.

An overview of world military spending is here.

My own checking suggests that the US military is the most excessive user of oil and gas in the world, using about 160 million gallons of gas a month, and that sets aside oil used for other military purposes: tires, plastics in weaponry, etc. While the subprime crisis, a result of the mastery of the US economy by finance capital, surely is related to the acceleration of oil costs, as speculators shifted away from the US dollar, the massive US military increase in using oil products has to be considered—in the context that oil moves the military of every nation in the world and no nation is prepared to convert to anything else. Oil and empire are intertwined. Thus, oil and war.

Nations that promise perpetual war on the world will make peculiar demands on their schools.

Rouge Forum updates will be sporadic through the summer. Next, among other highlights, a review of the Obamagogue/McWarcriminal dogfight and the nature of capitalist democracy—and education.

For those in Southern California, we will host a Rouge Forum potluck in early August, heading back to school.

All the best,

r

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