E Wayne Ross – Page 42 – Critical Theories in Education

BC Liberals speaking with forked-tongue, again. This time when it comes to “advocacy”

The Vancouver School Board is not giving in to the demands of the BC Ministry of Education to shut up and make $17 million dollars in budget cuts that will result in closed schools, cancelled programs, and teacher layoffs.

The board says it has balanced its budget, as required by law, but to do so it had to make brutal cuts to education programs because its budget of about $480 million is not sufficient to cover rising costs, including salaries, pensions and MSP payments. It estimates its shortfall is about $17 million. But Wenezenki-Yolland concluded the board has sufficient resources to deliver a quality education program but has wasted money through poor governance, a lack of strategic planning and missed opportunities. She suggested several actions to improve the bottom line — including raising rents, cancelling non-core services such as junior kindergarten and closing schools — but Bacchus said the board was already considering such actions.

One of the primary criticisms levelled at the VSB in the Comptroller General’s report is that trustees spend too much time, energy, and resources on “advocacy,” that is lobbying the government for increased funding that will improve teaching and learning conditions in Vancouver schools. The Comptroller General and Minister of Education want the trustees to make “cost containment” their number one priority.

Fiscal responsibility and advocating for adequate funding is not an “either/or” choice. VSB chair Patti Bacchus and the majority of trustees understand this. But as this piece in the Vancouver Courier makes clear, the ministry wants the trustees to act like bureaucrats and just do what they’re told. For some reason government (and at least a couple of the trustees) think there’s no place for advocacy or “politics” in education. That’s either an extremely naive or disingenuous understanding of what democracy is all about, as Paul Shaker and I point out in our comments to the the Courier.

So, BC Liberals castigate the VSB trustees for doing what many promised in their election campaigns—advocating for the district by resisting chronic underfunding of the education system and downloading of costs. While at the same time BC Liberals spend billions of taxpayer dollars on propaganda about how their neoliberal economic policies (that allow a handful of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit) are good for the rest of us. There’s more than a little irony in the decision by Elections BC that the government’s HST propaganda violates the law.

VSB v. BC Ministry of Education or how neoliberalism operates in your own backyard

“Think globally and act locally” may be trite catchphrase, but thinking globally can give us insight into the current feud between the Vancouver School Board and the Ministry of Education.

Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the VSB criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. [Download the special advisor’s report here.]

What kind of governing principles demand “cost containment” as the prime concern of those charged with meeting the educational needs of our children? It’s called neoliberal globalization. It is the prevailing economic paradigm in today’s world and references something everyone is familiar with—policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit.

The main points of neoliberalism will sound familiar to anyone who has paid attention to provincial government decisions on B.C. Rail or the HST:

Rule of the market, that is, liberating free enterprise from any restrictions imposed by government, no matter the social damage that results;
Cutting public expenditures for social services;
Reduction of government regulation that might diminish profits;
Privatization, selling government-owned enterprises to private investors; and
Concepts of “the public good” or “community” are eliminated, replaced with “individual responsibility.”

The structure of the provincial funding model for education follows from these basic tenets.

The VSB, indeed all school boards and other social services in the province, are now subject to the rule of the market, thus justifying “cost containment” as the first priority of those mandated to deliver education to the public. In this context, education is treated like any other commodity. Free market competition is viewed as the route to assure a quality product. And “efficiency” or “cost containment” is prized.

In B.C., government retains its authority over public education, but no longer undertakes the responsibility of assuring the educational well-being of the public. Instead, this responsibility is devolved to individual school boards.

It is no accident that when the province appointed the special advisor to examine the Vancouver board’s budget processes, it specifically excluded the key issue raised by the trustees and every other school board in the province, the structure of the provincial funding model for education.

School boards are now expected to become part of the market by relegating the educational needs of their communities and making the financial bottom-line the first priority. The recent trend in B.C. educational policy makes this point clear. School districts have been encouraged to create business companies to sell the Dogwood diploma overseas. Lack of provincial funding has forced school and district PACs into extensive funding-raising, accounting for almost 2 per cent of district operating budgets province-wide. International student tuitions are such a major source of income growth for some school districts that government has assigned a deputy minister to coordinate the sale of B.C. education internationally.

And now the special advisor’s report recommends that the VSB close schools, cancel programs, fire teachers, and raise rental rates on non-profit organizations that provide services, such as after-school care, which are in short supply.

The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in B.C. reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs.

[For an informative overview of how neoliberal globalization works in schools see: Schuetze, H. G., et al., (2010). Globalization, neoliberalism and schools: The Canadian story. In C. A. Torres, L. Olmos, R. Van Heertum (Eds.), Educating the global citizen: Globalization, education reform, and the politics of equity and inclusion. Oak Park, IL: Bentham eBooks. Ross, E. W., & Gibson, R. (2007). Neoliberalism and education reform. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.]

Rouge Forum Update: D-Day! Will Oceans of Oil Mean Rivers of Blood?

Remember the Rouge Forum Conference–August 2 to August 5!

NEA and AFT Spent Millions on the Demagogue Obama and Electoral Work: Is the Education Bailout Dead? “Janet Bass of the American Federation of Teachers says that despite these obstacles, the unions plan to keep up the pressure for passage. “We will fight for it as long as we can,” she says. “It’s not dead.” She’s right that there’s a chance the proposal could be revived next week, but betting money as Congress prepared to leave town for the Memorial Day weekend was that there just aren’t the votes to move it forward.

Drop-Out States Lead Flight From RaTT Shell Game: “About two dozen states are going back to Washington for another shot at billions in education grants under the Race to the Top program, but at least nine others with more than 7 million children are opting out of trying a second time.
For them, a chance at hundreds of millions of dollars wasn’t enough to overcome the opposition of teachers unions, the wariness of state leaders to pass laws to suit the program and fears of giving up too much local control.”

Masquerading as News, Press Attacks Teacher Benefits: “The days of teachers contributing nothing toward health care, however, may be waning. For the first time, teachers in Utica and Grosse Pointe will make monthly payments toward health care under contracts approved this spring. Livonia’s teachers agreed last year to make monthly health care payments and take furlough days. “If we didn’t accept those concessions, there would’ve been a huge cut in the educational programs for our students,” said Kenewell, head of Utica’s teachers union. “And if we protect programs for the students, we protect jobs. They’ve already cut some programs.”

How To Fix Detroit Schools? Get Rid of 2/3 of the Students: “Robert Bobb, Detroit schools emergency financial manager, said the 76,000 student Detroit district can only support 26,000 students unless it makes deep cuts in operating and long-term costs such as retirement and health care for employees.”

Ken Saltman on the “Portfolio Approach” in Urban Schools: “This perspective considers public schools to be comparable to private enterprise, with competition a key element to success. Just as businesses that cannot turn sufficient profit, schools that cannot produce test scores higher than competitors’ must be “allowed” to “go out of business.” The appeal of the portfolio district strategy is that it appears to offer an approach sufficiently radical to address longstanding and intractable problems in public schools”

Secret Regimented Standards for Imperialist War Education Revealed: “Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lily Eskelsen, the vice president of the National Education Association, were also on hand to endorse the standards, with Ms. Weingarten calling the the AFT an “unabashed supporter.”

Ed Mcelroy, the last AFT President to file a report for an entire year (Weingarten files in Dec 2010) reported an income of $390,426.

Dennis Van Roekel, ($424,091 in 2009) NEA Boss, Backs Common Core Standards

NEA Hack Lily Eskelsen ($365,738 in 2009) on Regimented National Standards: “We believe that this initiative is a critical first step in our nation’s effort to provide every student with a comprehensive, content-rich and complete education. These standards have the potential to support teachers in achieving NEA’s purpose of preparing students preparing students to ‘thrive in a democratic society and a diverse, changing world as knowledgeable, creative and engaged citizens and lifelong learners.’”

Schools as Huge Markets Where Stealing is Commonplace: “According to the grand jury, about 75 percent of the San Diego district schools that were audited misused ASB funds for curricular and administrative purposes and for the benefit of faculty.”

Bloomberg Moves to Block NYC Teachers’ Wages: “This was not an ideal decision and it certainly does not solve all our budget issues,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement, which was released after he notified Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, about his decision. “In our conversation this morning, Michael Mulgrew and I agreed that we would go together to Albany and Washington to press our case to restore more education funding.”

CSU Stanislaus to Pay Twit $75,000 for Babble (no pole dance?): “Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will receive $75,000 to speak at Cal State Stanislaus next month, an event that has become steeped in controversy and brought the small Turlock campus worldwide attention. Much of the scrutiny has centered on the former governor’s speaking fee, which the university has refused to disclose. The fact that Palin has received up to $100,000 for other recent appearances had stoked furious speculation and the kind of cloak-and-dagger intrigue worthy of a novel.”

Walmart Education–Cradle to Grave: “Wal-Mart estimates that about 50 percent of its employees in the United States have a high school diploma or the equivalent but have not earned a college degree. With the average full-time employee being paid $11.75 an hour, it was unclear how many of them will be able to take advantage of the new program. With the work credits and tuition discount, an associate’s degree for a Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club cashier would cost about $11,700 and a bachelor’s degree about $24,000.”

The Secret Whole Language Project in San Ysidro High: “Now high schoolers such as Delgado at the top levels read the Diary of Anne Frank and talk about genocide. The idea was to challenge students sooner with tougher but still accessible readings that also sparked their interest — something that can be vexing with teens whose English is thin. Even finding books that are easy enough for English learners but interesting to teenagers is a challenge.”

Virtual Charter Schools Rule! “Nationally, there are an estimated 200,000 full-time virtual charter school students, said Susan Patrick, chief executive of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning.”

Nice Job, PhD, Now Play Online Poker to Live: “The number of full-time faculty members at universities was around 51% in 2007, down from 78% in 1970, said Jack Schuster, a senior research fellow at Claremont Graduate University. That leaves many doctoral degree candidates stuck with adjunct work, which can pay as little as $2,000 a semester.”

Read the full RF Update here.

Anarchism in the academy

Education Review has just published Cory Maly’s review of Contemporary Anarchist Studies edited by Randall Amster, Abraham DeLeon, Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, and Deric Shannon.

I highly recommend the book and Maly’s review, which frames the book quite well in relation to current issues and debates on education reform. I used parts of Contemporary Anarchist Studies in my curriculum theory seminar this past year and was really pleased by the depth of debate and discussion it stimulated.

Obviously anarchism is gaining some traction among a small, but growing circle of education scholars. As evidenced by this book and several new or recently announced projects including:

Critical Education‘s series on “The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research”, which is edited by Abe DeLeon has published two articles in the past several months, with more in works.

DeLeon is also guest editing a special issue of Educational Studies titled “Anarchism…is a living force with our life…”: Anarchism, Education, and New Possibilities. Download the call for papers here.

And, Robert Haworth (U of Wisconsin, La Crosse) has recently circulated a call for chapter proposals to be included in the book, Anarchist Pedagogies to be published by PM Press

This edited book calls on international scholars (15 single authored or collectively authored chapters) in anarchist studies to critically reflect on historical and contemporary experimentations in anarchist pedagogies. Scholarly efforts will focus on what we have learned from past anarchist experiences and current transformative learning environments — where individuals are engaged in collective, participatory, voluntary and mutual efforts that contest global capitalist structures.

The edited collection responds to the need to reflect on anarchist pedagogies and will highlight three major themes. Authors in the first section will be encouraged to focus on historical discussions surrounding anarchism and education. The authors will give introspective critiques of historical practices, including theories of teaching and learning and alternatives to compulsory public schools. Authors in the second section will construct philosophical and theoretical frameworks evolving from contemporary anarchists, particularly through individuals participating in cooperatives, independent media collectives, infoshops, political zines, open source projects, DIY, direct action networks and other autonomous and cultural spaces.

Rouge Forum Update! Paris Commune! Fightbacks, War, $, Betrayals, and More!

Remember the upcoming Rouge Forum Conference:
Education in the Public Interest
August 2-5, 2010
George Williams College of Aurora University, Williams Bay, WI

Rouge Forum Update! Paris Commune! Fightbacks, War, $, Betrayals, and More!

Little Red Schoolhouse

White House Appears to Dump Teacher Bailout: “A $23 billion payout to save thousands of educators’ jobs faltered Thursday — perhaps for good — to election-year jitters among moderate Democrats over deficit spending and only lukewarm support from the White House.”

Adjuncts! File For UCB Now! “The New Faculty Majority, a national adjunct advocacy group, plans to formally announce on Monday a campaign to push more out-of-work adjuncts to file for unemployment insurance between academic terms and during summer breaks.”

Life is Good in Kalamazoo: “Jeremiah is a kindergartener in Kalamazoo Public Schools, which is working to create a college-going culture for its students starting as early as preschool. Sparking the district’s effort was the Kalamazoo Promise, a program launched in 2006 by anonymous donors that pays college tuition for high school graduates in the district.”

Schools as Huge Markets: “Detroit Public Schools on Thursday announced the kickoff of work under the $500.5-million bond that voters approved in November.”

So Long Adjunct! CSU System Down 10% Profs: “California State University lost 10% of its teaching force in the last year, a result of crippling budget cuts that reduced job opportunities on many campuses…”

The CSU System’s Programs: Home to Fear, Secrecy, Racism, Ignorance and Opportunism: The California State University sought dismissal Monday of a lawsuit seeking documents related to a campus fundraising appearance by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, arguing that it has already released more than 3,000 records about the controversial event. The request was in response to a lawsuit filed last month against Cal State Stanislaus and its private foundation by the nonprofit government watchdog group Californians Aware. The lawsuit alleges that campus officials who are state employees are violating the California Public Records Act by withholding documents related to Palin’s June 25 appearance at the university’s 50th anniversary gala. The group and other open-government advocates have been seeking details of Palin’s contract, including her speaking fee.

Underground History of the USA [pdf] by Jim Obrien and Nick Thorkelson (good stuff for teachers):

Read the full RF Update here.

Rouge Forum Update: People vs Union Bosses plus Dunkirk and Matewan! And wait! There’s More!

The Little Red Schoolhouse Front:

Company Town: by Carl Sandburg

You live in a company house
You go to a company school
You work for this company
According to the company’s rules
You all drink company water
And all use company lights
The company preacher teaches us
What the company thinks is right….

Half of Detroit Kids Poisoned by Lead–Not Good For High-Stakes Tests: “the higher the lead level, the worse a student’s scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program exam, or MEAP. Overall, 58% of roughly 39,000 DPS students tested — 22,755 children — had a history of lead poisoning, according to the study.Perhaps more startling: Of the 39,199 students tested as young children, only 23 had no lead in their bodies.”

Students as Money–Michigan Districts Pay Bribe for Best School Status: “he districts did not make the cut because of test scores or graduation rates but instead because they paid a marketing firm $25,000.”

Too Many Teachers; Not Enough Wars, Too Many Kiddies: “Michigan State University has pushed its 500 graduating teachers to look out of state. As local jobs have dried up, it started an internship program in Chicago, which is a four-hour drive from the East Lansing, Mich., campus. Professors now go with students to the annual campus job fair to make sure they do not hover around the Michigan tables, but walk over to, say, North Carolina, Virginia or Texas.”

The Ongoing Failure of Racist Capitalist Schooling in Detroit: “Detroit Public Schools fourth- and eighth-graders performed worst in the nation on a national reading test whose results were released this morning. Like math scores unveiled in December from the National Assessment of Education Progress, Detroit children’s reading scores are the worst in the 40-year history of the test.

Detroit Mayor Can’t Halt Barbarism: “Detroit Mayor Dave Bing acknowledged that police and city officials don’t know how to stop the crime wave.”

Who is Lying in this PBS Newshour Broadcast On Detroit Schools? Everybody. As Usual.

Bribe? What Bribe? Payoffs to Bobb Ok in Michigan Court: “Wayne Circuit Court Judge Susan Borman indicated today Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb is entitled to receive part of his pay from private foundations. The issue — challenged by the district’s school board, a civil rights group and a coalition of teachers who oppose charter schools — was whether Bobb was in conflict of interest for accepting $89,000 of his salary from a foundation that supports private and charter schools. Bobb receives $280,000 in salary and $145,000 in supplemental income from foundations for fixing the school district’s finances.”

Duncan Lies About Texas Textbook Standards Adopted May 21: “”Whatever Texas decides, I do not think there will be large ripple effects around the country,” Duncan said to CNN. “Textbook companies today have a real ability to customize textbooks.”

We Say Fightback! Front:

Puerto Rico Universities Occupied, Struck, and Shut for A Month+: “The students here have hunkered down, bringing the academic calendar to a halt. They are a month into a strike that has crippled an 11-campus system with more than 62,000 students, intent on persuading the administration to revoke austerity measures that they believe will unfairly hamper low-income students. Only one campus, for medical sciences, is operational.”

BBC on the Brit Teachers’ Test Boycott (watch the short video): “Tens of thousands of children in England are missing their Sats tests as head teachers in hundreds of schools stage a boycott. About 600,000 10 and 11-year-olds were due to take the national schools tests from Monday. But heads and deputies from two big teaching unions voted for a boycott…”

Bangkok is Burning–Tweetphotos (Rick Parkany photo)

IVAW Confronts Recruiters–War is not a Game!

Rouge Forum Update: Special Cultural Revo Edition!

Chant from UC Occupation: Capitalism? No Thanks. We’ll Burn Your Banks!

On The Little Red Schoolhouse Front:

The Rouge Forum News Spring 2010 Edition is here [pdf]

For Back Issues, Here

School Unions Race to Feed on the RaTT:

Florida Education Association Buys RaTT (FEA bosses cut a devil’s deal with Gov. Crist)

Michigan EA Buys the RaTT: “ The Michigan Education Association today issued a letter of support to the state’s second Race to the Top application, signing on to a plan that has the potential to improve the quality of education for every student in Michigan.”

Michigan AFT, Overseeing the Organized Ruin of Detroit, Follows MEA to Ratt Shell Game:
“The Michigan Education Association and American Federation of Teachers-Michigan today issued letters of support for Michigan’s application for $400 million in the second round of a nationwide contest for federal Race to the Top school funds.”

New York State AFT Cuddles the RaTT: “The unions — the New York State United Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s union — did not gain any clear benefit from the deal, other than shielding themselves from criticism that they were hurting the state’s chances in Race to the Top. And union leaders who backed the plan could face significant backlash from members, particularly at a time when many districts are planning for layoffs.”

Tiny Colorado AFT Sucks Up to the RaTT: “Wednesday said AFT threw its support behind Colorado’s legislation after the bill’s sponsors agreed to introduce amendments that “included the voice of teachers.”

NEA Persists in Touting Arne Duncan: NEA bosses reject the reason most people join unions: the contradictory interests of workers and bosses. NEA president Dennis Van Roekel is well paid for his toadying to Duncan and Obama, at about $450,000 a year. NEAs’ rep assembly should be very interesting this year as more and more rank and file members begin to catch on to what’s up and what to do about it. Even AFT, perhaps the most tyrannical union in the US, can expect some serious dissent at its convention in Seattle, even though it appears every proposal from the rank and file that suggests the slightest forms of direct action resistance has been cut off at state conferences.

NEA Today Procures For Arne Duncan and the “Obama Effect”

NEA Boss Dennis Van Roekel ($425,000 a year) Brags He Gets to Actually Meet with Duncan!:

It is Soo Hard to Keep Track of the Servants: EduNazi Alan Bersin Now Obamagogue Border Czar Hires “Illegals”?: “Mr. Bersin did not timely and completely prepare and maintain Forms I-9 for any of the ten household employees he employed, as required by law,”

California Colleges Develop Plan to Choke Free Speech on Campus: “The Peralta Community College district is considering guidelines to limit where and how groups can speak on campus, prompting outrage from employees and students who say the proposed rules would restrict free speech.”

Desperate Mich Colleges Seek Military $ in San Diego: “Representatives from universities in Michigan are in San Diego this week to recruit military veterans. The new G.I. Bill has made veterans an emerging market for academic recruiters, and San Diego has one of the highest populations of active duty military and veterans in the nation.”

The Rouge Forum News #16: Working Papers, Critical Analysis, and Grassroots News

The Rouge Forum News
Working Papers, Critical Analysis, and Grassroots News
Issue #16
Spring 2010

Download the Rouge Forum News #16 here [pdf].

Read the introduction to the new issue of the RF News by editor Adam Renner below.

FROM THE EDITOR: M4, a Thousand More

The only real option open to humanity under these circumstances,
we are convinced,
is to scrap the present failed system and to put a new,
more rational, egalitarian one its place—
one aimed not at the endless pursuit of monetary wealth,
but at the satisfaction of genuine human needs.
(John Bellamy Foster and Hannah Holleman, The Monthly Review, May, 2010)

The Rouge Forum Conference is coming: August 2-5 at George Williams College in Williams Bay, WI. The theme of this year’s conference is “Education in the Public Interest.” Connecting to Foster and Holleman above, we see the road to a more “rational, egalitarian” system traveling straight through and emanating out from schools.

But, not our current schools, of course. We seek a transformation of status quo schooling. We choose to join those who are already struggling to bring a different form to bear.

Much of Issue 16 of the Rouge Forum News takes us back to the basics, again. We think about where the Rouge Forum came from, why it was named as it was, and where we’re going from here. This year’s conference will focus quite a bit on that road ahead. It’s not too late to join us: www.rougeforumconference.org.

August seems a long way off, though. I write on a dreary Saturday morning in May, laptop illuminated by a small desk lamp. Not much light penetrates the front picture window of our 110 year old shotgun house in the Highlands neighborhood of Louisville, KY. The dogs’—Mango and Kingston—snoring interrupts what is otherwise a fairly quiet morning save for a light drizzle saturating the green fullness of our magnolia tree.

It’s May 1, May Day, a day to remember workers worldwide—the struggle to uphold the dignity of workers. It’s also the first Saturday in May, so it is also the (136th) running of the Kentucky Derby, taking place just a few miles from where I type. One event is a showcase in excess; the other is a reverent remembrance of international solidarity.

The paradox is symbolic of much of what we glean from our world today, teetering on the edge of forever. If we care to notice, the evidence of dehumanization is overwhelming. Let me point to one issue: race, in particular, before ticking off a couple other examples. Then, let’s get a sense of the resistance that is building, both here and abroad. The assault on our humanity is reaching a crescendo; perhaps a dissonant resistance is rising to challenge it.

Like most of you I note the coalescing forces of the new Jim Crow (which like the previous form of Jim Crow and slavery before it is a similar sort of economic, intellectual, psychological, and/or physical enslavement: “by what new name shall we call this old institution…”), tea party activism (where any sort of rational critique that may be present is overridden by a formidable racist segment), and the new racist immigration legislation in Arizona.

The prison industrial complex, ICE raids, the re-segregation of our schools (the return of Apartheid schooling), racist/classist high stakes testing, the Race to the Trough federal sell-out of public education, as well as veiled (and sometimes not-so-veiled) threats to government officials of color are part and parcel of the strategy to promote inequality by keeping us separated, alienated from one another through artificial forms of difference.

This is an old story. Divide and rule.

We see such divide and rule tactics as well regarding (so-called) health care reform and (supposed) Wall Street reform. We bicker about relatively minor details while we are getting creamed by the owners of the means of production. They have convinced us that in some tepidly reformed version, the current systems of sick care and banking can somehow benefit us. These are capital’s systems; therefore, by their nature, they are not set up to benefit us.

Reform, no; stiff regulation, maybe (but probably not); revolution, yes: something more rational, egalitarian, democratic.

The struggle is, of course, never one-sided. Resistance happens. And, at times, wins, if temporarily. These moments of creation provide us sustenance for the journey, hope for the long haul. They will reveal a turning point if our analysis remains sharp.

Resistance is building and spilling out into the streets of the US, Thailand, and Greece. A fight for self-determination and protection of their lands is raging in the countrysides of India and Nepal between the Maoists and their supposed ‘democratic’ governments.

California and Florida are fighting back. Check out analysis here of the March Forth movement: The lessons of March 4: A Marxist Analysis, Crisis and Consciousness; Reflections and Lessons from March 4, A Rouge Forum Broadside, and M4: A thousand more. Oakland teachers went on strike on April 29. And, the Capistrano Unified teachers went on strike. As well, the Fund Education Now network of parents have won, at least temporarily, in their battle against Senate Bill 6 in Florida.

This resistance has been nearly completely non-violent. In southeastern Asia, though, the struggle is decidedly bloody. Fighting what amounts to a resource war, Maoists in India and Nepal have had to choose between death and death. And, it seems they have chosen the more moral death of resistance. While violence is nothing to be celebrated, how shall people respond to structural violence extended through all sorts of ideological apparatuses and to a well-armed state hell bent on land seizures and extracting valuable bauxite from the hills of India?

I would highly encourage our readers to take in Arundhati Roy’s latest text, Fieldnotes on Democracy: Listening to grasshoppers, as well as her recent expose’ of her time in the Maoist camps of India: Walking with Comrades. Regarding Nepal, check out May First: High noon in Nepal and Nepal report: Revolutionary students shut down 8000 private schools indefinitely.

These may be important topics to discuss at the upcoming Rouge Forum conference.

In the meantime, in this issue of the RF News, we’ve captured two excellent creative selections to kick things off. Joe Cronin offers an epic poem, Gebeorscipes, and Nancye McCrary talks to us about her recent travels to Istanbul, Turkey. Rich Gibson follows these with further critical examination of the March 4th movement. Jean Gregorek, former Associate Professor of Literature at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH, offers an acute analysis of the closing of Antioch College in 2008. I conclude the essays in this 16th issue with the keynote address I gave at Defiance College in Defiance, OH on April 7, 2010: To distill a different democracy. Along with concluding announcements about future issues of the RF News, an editorial from Mia Sosa-Provencio closes this issue.

In Calling All Rebels, Chris Hedges observes,

Those in power have disarmed the liberal class. They do not argue that the current system is just or good, because they cannot, but they have convinced liberals that there is no alternative. But we are not slaves. We have a choice. We can refuse to be either a victim or an executioner. We have the moral capacity to say no, to refuse to cooperate. Any boycott or demonstration, any occupation or sit-in, any strike, any act of obstruction or sabotage, any refusal to pay taxes, any fast, any popular movement and any act of civil disobedience ignites the soul of the rebel and exposes the dead hand of authority. . . .The capacity to exercise moral autonomy, the capacity to refuse to cooperate, offers us the only route left to personal freedom and a life with meaning. Rebellion is its own justification.

In light of this the Rouge Forum continues to deepen its analysis and seeks to hold animated discussions across a broad spectrum in order to decipher what to do next. What shall ignite our soul?

In the 19th century, the central organizing point of society was the farm. In the mid-20th century, the hope of the proletariat rested in the trade unions. Today, as Gibson and the Rouge Forum have suggested, the central organizing point of our de-industrialized, globalized society (and, thus, the centripetal point for spiraling out resistance) is the school.

School workers, students, and parents hold a great deal of power if we focus on schools as our central organizing point. We can (and already are in some sectors–look at California and the March 4 events) build(ing) a multi-racial, multi-class, multi-national coalition of school workers. And, this resistance can work at multiple levels—more reformist agendas of enacting legislation to favor all children, taking charge of curriculum, revamping current teacher education, as well as more revolutionary/rebellious agendas, which include occupations to reclaim our public spaces like schools, building a parallel freedom school structure (akin to 1964 Mississippi), creating our own teacher preparation model, etc.

None of these agendas are unproblematic. Work will jerk forward unevenly. We will begin and need to begin again. We will need to embolden future generations to continue the work, as we will likely not summit the mountain. But, at some point, some future generation of rebels will. And, they will because our shoulders were there to hoist them just like we have been hoisted.

The way forward must be premised in community and a commitment to a sort of reconnection that the last 30 years (at least) have militated against. We need reasoned discussions informed by a multiplicity of voices who have a deep understanding of history (or who are at least committed to continually seeking out such a deeper understanding). Disagreement can be a hallmark of this newly distilled democracy, provided our solidaristic passion for a more equitable distribution of resources and condition is foundational. Personally, I could be comforted by an unknown process as long as our directional compass points toward a more material justice for all that lives and breathes.

March 4, a thousand more.

Adam Renner, Louisville, KY