E Wayne Ross

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/

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

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