Category Archives: Rouge Forum Update

Dear Friends,

For most of us, school is out for the summer. Oddly enough, the wars continue and the economy is not on vacation. But let us take a breather. Here are the Angry Tired Teachers at the old ballgame.

Good fun, comrades, and study are offered at the San Francisco Freedom School led by Kathy Emery in July and August.

As a summer study interlude, here is a link to David Harvey’s classroom presentations on Karl Marx’s “Capital.” Harvey has taught “Capital” for more than 40 years. The link will hold thirteen two hour classes examining “Capital,” chapter by chapter.

Harvey’s book, “Limits to Capital,” is truly challenging, more that worth the candle. His later, unfortunate, “New Imperialism,” follows the commonplace current liberal call for a new, “New Deal.” That book is reviewed here in JCEPS.

Michael Baker’s path-breaking radio program, Room 101, streams here. Note the recent interviews with test resister Carl Chew and UBC’s Wayne Ross on cutting the schools to war pipeline.

Michael Klare has written for years about the central role of oil in the coming imperial wars. Here he is in Tomgram, reiterating the point that the New York Times only recognized in today’s (Sunday) editorial suggesting that it is rather unseemly for US oil companies to go forward with the seizure of Iraq’s oil assets.

Some of us have yet to receive our hush money from President Bush. But we’re assured it will be here for the hottest months of summer, to keep us shopping while the media ignores the wars (less than 4% of current TV news broadcasting now addresses Iraq or Afghanistan). Perhaps, with just 16 dollars of that hush money, colleagues could offer gift subscriptions to Substance News. Here is a recent Substance article on school resistance and a link for subscribing.

Members of the Rouge Forum from many corners of the earth were up in Vancouver, guests of Wayne Ross and Sandra Mathison at UBC. Here is a link to presentations, complete with powerpoints and photos!

Rouge Forum updates will be sporadic between June and August as we hit the road to promote the resistance–and check out woods to hide in if necessary. We will have updates on the NEA and AFT conventions where leaders hope time will be devoted to anointing new presidents, at $450,000 and $600,000 per year respectively, and the billion dollar election spectacle, while activists will push for serious debate about war, NCLB, and the fight-back against cutbacks.

Up the Rebels!

all the best, r

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Dear Friends,

As school winds down, it appears the resistance heats up. Integrity is coming forward. Can the resistance be sustained, or make sense?

It may be that the collision of NCLB restrictions, the wars, and $130 a barrel is prompting school resistance. In the past few weeks we have seen:

• New York City teacher Douglas Avella’s 160 students turned in blank tests. Avella was sent to the notorious $65 million per year NYC “rubber room,” where disciplined teachers live in limbo but get paid, and then may be fired. One student said, “The school system’s just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams.”
• Twenty-six University of California students were arrested protesting a 10% fee hike (95% in the last six years) in the last month, 16 at a Board of Regents meeting at UCLA.
• A North Carolina teacher refused to force his special ed kids take the exams he knew they were scheduled to fail.
• As we know, Carl Chew of Seattle refused to proctor the exams.
• In San Diego, school workers, like thousands of others, are whipsawed with threats of layoffs. It began with the new superintendent announcing 1200 support personnel layoffs and more than 900 teacher layoffs. Rank and file teachers from Hoover High organized the initial Fightback Demonstration with more than 1000 parents, kids, and educators marching on the school board meeting. Several demonstrations, organized by SDEA and the PTA followed. Only the rank and file led demonstration noted the connection between the economic crises, oil, and the wars. Now, all the support personnel layoffs remain on the table. More than 300 teachers are scheduled to lose jobs. The superintendent found some money. Maybe he can find more. But Las Vegas actively recruited many of the educators wrongly given notices and many of them left.
• In Detroit, the new superintendent of the collapsing system threatened to open Small Schools based on the failed Chicago Model, then virtually disappeared. Community leaders are wondering where the $280, a year boss is.
• In D.C. the AFT Local, WTU, appears to prepare to bargain a contract that dumps seniority. WTU is one of the more notoriously corrupt locals of the American Federation of Teachers. Past leaders are in prison for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars of member money. One top WTU leader sued the others for similar activity in April. The AFT is the more urban and smaller of the two US school worker unions. Other top AFT officials, like Miami’s Pat Tornillo, are also in prison for embezzlement, while the former Broward County, Florida AFT boss is in jail for molesting children. Both served on key AFT boards which helped develop and promote the NCLB. The AFT in New York City, the bellweather local of the union, recently agreed to a merit pay scheme. AFT has overseen the near-complete collapse of urban schooling (Detroit would be a prime example) and done nothing of note but collaborate.
• The coming NEA and AFT conventions in early July should be interesting. Activists will seek to bring forward motions against the NCLB and the wars while the leaders of the big school worker unions will do all they can to focus on nothing but crowning new presidents (NEA with Dennis Van Roekel at $450,000 a year and AFT with Randi Weingarten at $600,000 a year) and the billion dollar election spectacle.

At issue is whether or not there can be sense made out of all of this—and sense then connected to organization. Only the Rouge Forum in the US has connected the wars, the NCLB, racist high-stakes exams, and the militarization of schools. We did that even before the NCLB existed, warning middle school teachers in 1997, “you are teaching the combatants in the next oil war.” Here is a recent piece, one of many http://www.richgibson.com/schoolresistance.htm

Our Rouge Forum Louisville conference adjourned with many, many suggestions for what to do: test boycotts, driving recruiters off campus, rejecting union concessions and building a spirited Fightback movement uniting school workers, parents and students, and organizing teach-ins for the fall as well as our own conference in 2009.

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee will take the lead in that. Meanwhile, could you spread the word of the Rouge Forum? Tell friends and colleagues that there is an organization fighting back, leading, and making the kind of sense that makes real solidarity possible. We don’t live off foundation grants whose owners typically run the organizations they fund. We have no dues. Money comes strictly from volunteers. We seek to build a mass base of people who can forge the resistance against an opposition that is well organized and ruthless while, at the same time we build a caring community where people can demonstrate their own creativity and expertise. Ask others to join us!

The Rouge Forum No Blood for Oil (with those good-for-the-rest-of-your-life anti-war posters cheap!) is updated.

All the best, r

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Dear Friends,

Can you teach about Marx? If not, why not?

Karl Marx: (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883)

Here are some images of Marx.

Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach can be found here.

Marx still stands far above his inheritors, all of them. And, per Lenin, one cannot fully understand Marx without understanding Hegel, especially the “Science of Logic,” but the entire body of work. Lukacs’, “The Young Hegel,” is a good pathway back to Hegel himself.

Here is Lenin writing on Hegel’s Science of Logic, a vast improvement over Lenin’s earlier Materialism and Empiro Criticism.

And, given the current election spectacle, we might remember what Marx and Engels wrote on the question of capitalist democracy, “The state is nothing but an instrument of oppression of one class by another–no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.”

The crux of Marxism, if there can be such a thing, is revolution, the negation of the negation: abolishing, retaining, moving to a higher level. Things change.

The question of class consciousness remains largely unresolved. Here is Bertell Ollman addressing the problem of why it is so many people are so easily turned into instruments of their own oppression, while others do resist

A podcast of Michael Baker’s radio interview with Seattle test resister Carl Chew can be found here: http://www.kzum.org/. You can also read a full interview with Chew by subscribing to Substance News.

We note, without envy, that Randi Weingarten, soon to be president of the American Federation of Teachers, will hold two jobs inside the AFT, and make about $600,000 a year, representing people being laid off in droves, people who often live in house trailers. NEA”s Reg Weaver, soon to be replaced by Dennis Van Roekel, makes about $450,000 a year and can live on his expense account.

School workers hold terrific potential power. In late April, 200,000 educators in the UK shut down the nation’s school system in protest against the government’s wage cutting plans. They were joined by 100,000 other workers striking in solidarity. More than a million people missed school.

Ken Goodman writes on the corrupt Reading First Phonics Education project, now clearly failed, at SusanOhanian.org.

We are still in the process of notifying nominees for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee, and awaiting word from others. That should be finalized by next week. We will also offer an analysis of why it is the anti-war, immigration rights, and anti-high-stakes testing movements are losing ground, despite a rise of apparent resistance.

Thanks to Melissa, Ido, Amber, Wayne, Sean, Tommie, Bob, Karen. Betty, Ann, Della, Candace, Erin, Beau, Sherry, Susan, Ken, Gerry, Georgia, Terry Ray, Elvira, Tony, Sandy, Sally, Adam, and Gina. Break up the Padres (sic)!

all the best

r

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Dear Friends,

It is May Day, the international workers holiday. Since the massive 2006 immigrant rights marches, what amounted to the biggest general strike in the last seventy years, May Day is finally restored to the US, where it began. For far too many years, it was replaced by Law Day (imposed in the fifties), a day when people were supposed to celebrate the tyranny of property laws.

Now around the US students, kids, workers, educators, community people, and organizers will hit the streets and rally again. School workers can support the kids who are likely to take the lead in walking out of school, joining the many scheduled marches in the struggle for equality and social justice. And we can join them.

This describes the San Diego action and this outlines actions around the country.

The Rouge Forum has celebrated Mayday for the last eleven years. Here is our traditional flyer.

And an update for our current context can be found here.

And a link to the music and lyrics of the “The Internationale”.

best
r
Life travels upward in spirals.
Those who take pains to search the shadows
of the past below us, then, can better judge the
tiny arc up which they climb,
more surely guess the dim
curves of the future above them.

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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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Dear Friends,

There are actions running up to Mayday in communities all over the US and around the world, many of them in response to cutbacks in education, health care, and jobs demanded by ruling elites. When they say “Cutback,” or “Get Back,” we should say, “Fightback.”

Here is the call for Mayday actions from the Rouge Forum http://www.richgibson.com/rouge_forum/CutbackFightbackFlyer.pdf

and an original Mayday flyer (takes a minute to come up as it has graphics)
http://www.richgibson.com/rouge_forum/mayday.pdf

and the traditional Rouge Forum Mayday flyer http://www.richgibson.com/mayday.htm

and a Mayday song, en espanol http://calacapress.com/gigantedespierto/mp3/PrimeroDeMayo.mp3

Mayday is an international workers’ holiday. Rouge Forum members have celebrated Mayday for eleven years with parties, demonstrations, book talks, film (like “This Land is Mine,” or “Salt of the Earth,”) and discussion groups. However, until the massive general strike initiated by immigrant workers in 2006, most people in the US thought that Mayday, was “Law Day,” a day set aside to celebrate obedience and loyalty to laws designed to protect property, not people, promoting the ethics of slaves. http://www.abanet.org/publiced/lawday/2008/home.shtml

In the face of real promises for perpetual war from all the actors in the hothouse for witless patriotism that is US capitalist democracy we should do all we can to shut down schools, the military, and workplaces on Mayday, marching in the streets against the empires’ wars, against the nationalism that makes them possible, and against further cuts into the lives of poor and working people—and against the failed system of capital itself—toward a world where people can live more or less equitably, creatively, in freedom and community. Surely we can see the choice is equality or barbarism. Where we can, we should conduct freedom schools about the history of Mayday and why it is we must fight again.

Here is Chalmers Johnson writing in Le Monde on Why the US is Really Broke
but oil profits and CEO pay are higher than ever. The degree of the cuts, or the gains made by working people, will depend on the level of resistance, and its wisdom, that we are able to mount. The coffers are not empty.

Nominations for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee close at midnight Monday. So far we have 25 people nominated though we need to confirm their desire to serve. The SC will guide the Rouge Forum between yearly conferences with online and phone discussions and meet once a year, in the fall. Nominate yourself or someone else.

We note with considerable sadness the death of Ira Gollobin, author of “Dialectical Materialism,” one of the best texts on why things are as they are, and what to do. Ira was an inspiration to many of us, always ready to add his considerable wisdom and good humor. Ira was a lead attorney in the battle against HUAC years ago. We hope to join others in seeing that his book is re-published and gets the attention it deserves.

In addition, Abe Osheroff died last week. Abe was a lifelong radical and veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade whose stance was nicely summed up in his New York Times obit, “If you need a victory, you aren’t a fighter,” he said in 2000, “you’re an opportunist.”

As an indicator of the current state of the US trade unions, we condemn the leadership of the Service Employees International Union who used violence this weekend to attack leaders of the California Nurses Association at the Labor Notes Conference in Michigan. SEIU President Andy Stern’s SEIU’s fascist thugs assaulted CNA’s leaders who are, now, among the last unionists in the US who understand that workers and employers have contradictory interests.

Thanks to Erin, Amber, Alan, Wayne, Adam, Sherry, Joe, Doug, Candace, Barb G, Kimmie, Victoria, Matt, Marty, Greg, Katie, Bill (congrats, dad, again), Patrick, Billy, Tom, Bob, TC and Kathryn, Kelly, Chalmers, Larry, MrJ the teacher, Marty, and Glenn. But what has come of the Tigers?

all the best,

r

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Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum web page is only partially updated with material from our recent Rouge Forum conference in Louisville because we are in the midst of a three week long fight with our service provider. Those who are looking for papers, videos, powerpoints, and other material from the conference–well, we believe they will be up in one week. Here is what we have so far, with apologies to others:
http://www.richgibson.com/rouge_forum/reformorrevollution.htm

We have 19 people already nominated for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee. We will close nominations one week from today, at midnight. The Steering Committee will guide Rouge Forum actions between conferences and will meet once a year, probably in the fall. Other meetings will be online or on conference calls. Nominate yourself or someone else! Email rgibson@pipeline.com

About 250 people attended the Chavez Conference in Fresno, California, hearing presentations from education resisters from all over the US. Susan Harman, of Calcare, made the case for test boycotts. We’re hoping to see districts, large and small, walking away from test frenzy–and taking up Freedom Schooling where kids learn things that matter. 96 California districts are already sanctioned under NCLB. People in those districts have nothing whatsoever to lose.

What are school superintendents doing about the sanctions? In one district, the superintendent announced he would “shuffle the cards,” that is, he is going to transfer every middle and high school teacher and most elementary teachers. Those who are waiting for another shoe to drop, as with a substantive plan for curriculum and instruction or a remedy for class size, will have a long wait. The shuffle is his entire plan.

The test boycotts could merge with, or build, the Mayday marches planned for this year. School workers, parents, kids, marching together on Mayday to protest the wars, the attacks on education and health care, xenophobia, and booming racist inequality, will learn far more by voting with their feet, in the streets, than in school on that historical day.

Here is the decade-old, and timeless, Rouge Forum May Day Flyer.

Nearly 130 people signed on to our Rouge Forum updates in the last month bringing our list to 4640, a new high. Welcome to all our new friends.

*a piece from CounterPunch of the Schools-to-War Collision

*An informative, free, video on the build-up for the Iraq invasion

*And a classic short piece, a cannot miss, demonstrating the old slogan, “Don’t mourn, Organize!”

And to close, a piece of “The People, Yes” by Carl Sandburg:

“Get off this estate.”
“What for?”
“Because it’s mine.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From my father.”
“Where did he get it?”
“From his father.”
“And where did he get it?”
“He fought for it.”
“Well, I’ll fight you for it.”
— Carl Sandburg

Thanks to Adam, Gina, Amber, Wayne, Joe, Roger, Bill B (for the reminder on the poem) Elaine, George, Susan O and H, Paul and Mary, BigM, Tommie, Bob, Marie, Sharon, Sean, Molly, P, Dan H and Jennifer, Christine, Christina, TC, Erin, and Sneaky Pete.

All the best, r

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Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum Conference 2008 was one of our best ever. Thanks especially to Adam and Gina for all their hard work to make the conference possible. Below is a preliminary evaluation from some of the conference planners.

Here is a link to papers and power-points that were presented (if you have yours and want it up, please send it to me).
http://www.richgibson.com/rouge_forum/2008/documents.htm

In early April, we will have videos of presentations up on the Rouge Forum site.

One of the recommendations that came out of our conference was to establish a Rouge Forum Steering Committee. If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else to the steering committee, please email: rougeforum@pipeline.com

And you can find conference photographs here. http://www.ewayneross.net/Rouge_Forum_Conference_2008/Photos.html

This coming weekend quite a few friends from the Rouge Forum will be at the Chavez Conference in Fresno, discussing what to do about the coming schools-to-war collision.

Here is a related piece: http://www.richgibson.com/schoolresistance.htm

If, like many of us, you were disappointed by the turnout at the anti-war demonstrations this past week, perhaps you could share your thoughts on the Rouge Forum discussion list. To join the list, please email rougeforum@pipeline.com

Of the groups that organized the rallies and marches, the largest was probably UFPJ which, somehow, managed to cut the size of the demonstrations to about 20% of what they were five years ago. But size alone is not everything, as we know. At issue as well is what it is people learned about why things are as they are and what to do.

Here is a criticism one Rouge Forum member wrote after attending UFPJ planning meetings and participating in online discussions. See “Where is the Movement?”

Substance News, the hard copy voice of the test resistance, is just sixteen bucks a year. Subscribe here
http://www.substancenews.com/content/view/20/43/

Thanks to Adam, Gina, all the Loisville gang who put together a phantasmagoric conference, MP, Pirate Jenny, Amber, Candace, Ellen, Jane S., Sally S and Sandy H, Milton, Wayne, Jerry, Sid, Alan S, Bill J, the Marshman, Tommy and Bob, Kelly, Donna, Bill F, Greg, Beau, Jill N, Bob K, and ZG.

all the best, r

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Dear Friends,

Just a brief announcement, a reminder of the Rouge Forum Conference in Louisville coming up on March 14 to 16. Here is the conference schedule.

This will be the biggest Rouge Forum conference yet. It’s our eleventh year as the only education based organization in North America that has had the limited courage and common sense to link the regimentation of schooling and high-stakes exams (NCLB) to the system of capital, its promises for perpetual wars and meaningless jobs, its incessant drive for profits, and resistance through reasoned analysis, action for school and social change. We bring a wide variety of views together bound by a tradition of friendship. Plus we are fun. Come join us.

Here is conference organizer Adam Renner’s piece directed to the conference theme: Reform or Revolution? and an upcoming Counterpunch article, The Schools to War Collision; Whither the Resistance?

Joe Lucido’s piece, Democracy is not a Spectator Sport, was published in the Fresno Bee, demonstrating that there are still some openings in the corporate press for reasoned resistance work in education. It’s worth the candle.

Wherever you are from March 15 to 22, we hope you will march, protest, raise hell, and take direct action against the fifth year of the invasion of Iraq. We note that March 16th is the 40th anniversary of the war crimes committed by US troops at My Lai. Four decades of slaughter, and more. Enough.

Those in the Fresno area are welcome to join us at the Fresno conference at the end of March, and please sign on to the Calcare web site.

Thanks especially to conference organizers Adam and Gina, Sean, Connie Lane, Doug, Wayne, Barb V, Bonnie M, Kathy K, Sue H, Greg, Bill, Tom, Bob, Susan, Sherry, Candy, Denise, Tony H and Kino, Charlie, Kritz, Gary F., Chris C, Lisa, and Jill.

All the best, r

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Friends,
Wanted to send you one last email regarding the forthcoming 2008 Rouge Forum Conference.

We are pleased to have over 150 people registered so far, who will join us at various times throughout the weekend of the conference. There is, however, still plenty of room for others, so please feel free to continue spreading the word.

As you know, we’ll be kicking things off Thursday night at the Blue Mountain Coffeehouse (400 East Main St., across from the Louisville Bats Stadium).

Friday morning, beginning at 7:30, we would invite you to be our guests at Breadworks and Heine Bros. Coffee, located in the Douglass Loop at 2200 Bardstown Rd., just two blocks from campus (at the conference website: www.rougeforumconference.org, the homepage has a link to an interactive map of Louisville by clicking on the text, “Louisville, KY” in the description of the conference).

The conference will begin at 8:30 in Frazier Hall in the Brown Activities Center (a map of Bellarmine can be found on the conference webpage.)

Back to back paper sessions will begin promptly at 9:00. We have now posted abstracts for most papers under “Paper session details” at the conference website. I think you will agree that the papers/performances over the course of these two days should prompt some insightful and critical discussion.

Our lunch time will feature Dr. Milton Brown as our speaker. Lunch has been relocated to the Deli at the Douglass Loop, just two blocks from campus. Carpooling will be made available, particularly for our out of town guests.

After lunch, we will have one more paper presentation session before we conclude the afternoon with a panel discussion on revolutionary, radical, (and other?) pedagogies, featuring Dr. Nancy Patterson, Mr. Greg Queen, and Dr. Joe Cronin.

In your conference packets we will make several recommendations for you on dinner locations that will be but minutes from Bellarmine’s campus.

The evening will conclude with a panel discussion on the potential connection between schools and the military, under the title “No child left Unrecruited?” The panel will be moderated by Dr. E. Wayne Ross and will feature Dr. Faith Agostinone Wilson and Dr. Rich Gibson.

On Friday, we would also invite you to visit the Thomas Merton Center, which houses the largest collection of Thomas Merton archives, located in Bellarmine’s library, as well as the opening of Bryan Reinholdt’s (BU grad and RF member) art show in Wyatt Hall.

Saturday’s events will take us to U of L’s campus. (We also have a map of this campus on the conference website.)

The morning will begin at 8:30 with a welcome in the Red Barn, and sessions will start promptly at 9:00.

These first two paper sessions on Saturday morning will also be paralleled by the possibility of professional development for teachers. We have two sessions to choose from: Critical Literacy and Green Education.

At lunch, provided by Tess Krebs in the Red Barn, we will be engaged by a special session of the Saturday Academy. Dr. Blaine Hudson will moderate a discussion about the recent Supreme Court decision which overturned Jefferson County’s student assignment plan. The discussion will feature Ms. Deborah Stallworth, Mr. DeWayne Westmoreland, Mr. John Heyburn, and Dr. Tracy K’Meyer.

After lunch we will have one final session of fine papers before we conclude with two addresses one from Dr. Rich Gibson, the other, our keynote, from Dr. E. Wayne Ross, who will address our conference theme: Education: Reform or Revolution?

Again, for dinner, we will provide a list of local restaurants. And, the evening will conclude with an opportunity to take in some spoken word and music, featuring Louisville’s own Harry Pickens (soulful jazz pianist) and The Uprising (Americana style music inspired by resistance).

On Sunday, we will conclude our conference with one final gathering at 10:00 at the Kentucky Alliance against Racist and Political Oppression HQ, The Braden Center, 3208 W. Broadway.

With over 60 presenters and 30 papers,

3 panel sessions,

3 main addresses,

2 professional developments,

2 cultural events,

and an opportunity to explore two of Louisville’s universities, its locally owned restaurants, and social justice organizations, we hope you find this year’s conference a place to affirm your work, stretch your thinking, and engage in a unique community-building experience.

I want to again thank my partner, Gina Stiens, and friends/colleagues, Mary Goral, Sonya Burton, David Owen, Rich Gibson, and Wayne Ross for their tireless efforts in pulling this conference together.

See you in a week! In solidarity. adam

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