AFL-CIO – E Wayne Ross

The Rouge Forum blog, complete with notices of great recent publications about schools and society is here.

And here are two samples:

Kim Scipes: The AFL-CIO’s Secret War Against Developing Countries–Solidarity or Sabotage [pdf] (20% discount!)

Don Perl: Book Chapter – ”Heeding Humble Voices” [pdf]

This is also the first call for nominations for election to the Rouge Forum Steering Committee, 2010. Please send nominations to Community Coordinator Adam Renner. Nominations close September 10.

Little Red Schoolhouse:

Richard Brosio at the Rouge Forum Conference 2010: “Marxist Thought: Still Primus Inter Pares For Understanding And Opposing The Capitalist System” [pdf]

Dems Push Through Bribe to Teachers (and cops) to Continue the RaTT: House Democrats today pushed through a $26 billion jobs bill to protect 300,000 teachers and other nonfederal government workers from election-year layoffs. (Don’t ask about the food stamp cuts…)

Ok. About the Food Stamps: Though many in the education community are celebrating last week’s Senate vote for the so-called Edujobs bill, I can’t find any joy in it. In fact, I am shaken and ashamed because, to pay for it, the Senate snatched $11.9 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Alpert on What the Rich Do When They Lose a School Board Vote–Try to Abolish the Board: “These guys are trying to water down the school board because they didn’t like the way the election turned out,” said John de Beck, a longtime board member. “Himelstein is like the hired gun for the rich. He has no qualifications and he has no training in how to run a school.”

A Note from the Local Valedictorian:

School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker.

Below are some some links from the most recent RF Update, read the full update here.

The core issue of our time: The real promise of perpetual war and rising inequality met by the potential of a mass class conscious movement for equality and justice.

Smile of the Week:
Student asks his principal, “Where is my teacher?”.
“Citywide layoffs”, replies the principal.
“My text books?” asks the student.
“State austerity plan”, says the principal.
“Student loan?” continues the student.
“Federal budget cuts”, says the principal.
Finally, exasperated, student asks, “But how am I going to get an education?”.
To which the equally exasperated principal replies, “This is your education”.

The Education Agenda is a War Agenda and the War Agenda is an Education Agenda Featurette:

Duncan Flunked Chicago School Closing Project: “This report reveals that eight in 10 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students displaced by school closings transferred to schools ranking in the bottom half of system schools on standardized tests. However, because most displaced students transferred from one low-performing school to another, the move did not, on average, significantly affect student achievement.”

Hey Kids, Photograph that Recruiter

DFT Praises Extension Of Broad’s Bobb Contract

Detroit: An Individual and Collective Wrong–Award Winning Counselor Mr Z has to Go

NEA Loses NCLB Suit; How Many Hundreds of Thousands of Your Dues $s did NEA Waste?
“Depending on whom you ask, the No Left Child Behind Act might be described in many ways: bold, ground-breaking, noble, naïve, oppressive, all of the above and more,” Judge Sutton wrote. ” But one thing it is not is ambiguous, at least when it comes to the central tradeoff presented to the states: accepting flexibility to spend significant federal funds in return for (largely) unforgiving responsibility to make progress in using them.” NEA will do anything, like courts and ballots, to avoid educator/student alliances to control work places and communities, as those actions would make NEA as irrelevant as it already is.

NEA Bosses Escalated Their Once-Secret Effort to Boost Their Salaries and Merge With the Worst Union in the USA, the AFT and AFL-CIO, When NEA Prez Dennis Van Roekel Directed Key Committees to Revisit the Issue. This is what one researcher rightfully concluded about what would happen some time ago:

And this is what happened last time NEA tried the merger scheme

DPS Lost Millions on Corrupt Land Deals

$30+ Million Detroit Public School Fraud and Growing Every Day

Smashing Protest at Southwestern College, San Diego

Public Universities Gut Student Life, Charge More: “The stimulus isn’t a bridge; it’s a short pier…This fall, flagships still had to cut costs and raise tuition, most by 6.5 percent or more. And virtually all of the nation’s top public universities are likely to push through large increases in coming years.”..“The students are at a point of rebellion, because they’re paying more and getting less,” Flagships are attracting more wealthy and better-prepared students. At U.C.L.A., class size has increased by 20 percent over three years ..Today, UM is largely protected from Michigan’s plummeting economy. Only 7 percent of its budget is provided by the state.

Tag Archives: AFL-CIO

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