Tag Archives: Detroit

Rouge Forum Update: An Injury to One is an Injury to All: Detroit and Much More!

http://www.richgibson.com/blog/

Dear Friends,

Check the link above but note that Detroit may be the next centerpiece for education struggles soon. The Detroit Federation of Teachers bosses signed a tentative agreement (TA) with the Broad Foundation’s Detroit Financial Manager, Bob Bobb who now runs the system, that offers DPS $500 a month from each teacher’s check, or $10,000 a year, to be paid back as a no-interest loan when the teacher quits the system.

With about 7000 school workers in DPS (not all classroom teachers), paying the dun for 2 1/2 years of the 3 year contract, that’s a $105 million no-interest loan to a school system that claimed it needed about $40 million in concessions from the school workers. More, DPS claims its on the brink of bankruptcy, which would likely dissolve the debt to educators.

The TA also includes huge give-backs in insurances (eliminating Blue Cross), merit pay, teachers evaluating teachers, and worse.

The contract language is murky on what looks like a union bracero program, selling the labor of members to DPS with a specious promise of repayment on the “loan,” (blackmail for a job). The TA is here: http://mi.aft.org/dft231/ although in the past members have complained about not being told of the full measure of TA’s.

In a meeting of about 2500 of the DFT members at Cobo Hall on Sunday, most rank and filers agreed that 90% plus rose to oppose the TA that was bargained behind their backs, involving the top national leadership of the AFT, like President Randi Weingarten.

No group of organized educators has been on strike in the last decade more than DFT rank and filers who led a huge wildcat strike, against their union, against the law, and against the employer—and they made gains.

But today the DFT is relatively isolated. The union leadership stayed silent in the face of massive corruption and incompetence that infected nearly every aspect of Detroit school life. Citizens turned against the system as a whole.

When Broad’s Bobb arrived, citizens applauded as he rooted out the more obvious small time crooks in the system, but he left aside the contractors who looted the public by stealing millions in no-bid contract during the five year period of the Takeover Board, when the governor wiped out the elected board and replaced them with, mostly, suburban auto execs from the failing Big Three. The Takeover Board left DPS at least $40 million in debt.

Now, there are at least 10 newly built schools that sit empty and stripped of everything of value, schools that were built in the Takeover period–in a system that loses 12,000 students a year.

Bobb “won” a new $500 million bond issue to build more new schools by a 2/3 majority this fall, indicating his newly won clout, and his ability to syphon off more money from a system that claims it will build new schools, but demands blackmail payments from teachers. Bobb has already pulled out millions on no-bid offers to cronies in Broad related companies.

The DFT’s sellout Tentative Agreement will appear in urban bargaining tables everywhere next year, if DPS gets away with this. An injury to one really will go before an injury to all.

Every expression of solidarity in opposition to this TA will matter. More, suburban MEA members need to unite with the DFT rank and file, join with parents and kids to create enough educational civil strife that drives the DFT bosses back to the bargaining table, forces them to report out a TA that makes gains, not concessions.

No union is ideologically or structurally prepared to take on the battles ahead–why we formed the Rouge Forum a decade ago. When they say “Cutback,” We say “Fight Back!”

There is MUCH MORE on the blog linked here.

Good luck to us, every one.

Rouge Forum Update: Great Depression Halloween Special: Boo!

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.

Rouge Forum Update: John Brown Memorial Special

Below are some links and commentary from the latest Rouge Forum Update.

Read the full update here.

October 16/17, is the 150th Anniversary of John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry. Brown knew that the very definition of racism was sharpening (the notion of a separate species) and that slavery sought new territory as well. He knew slavery and exploitation are violent, and profitable, slavery being the cornerstone of industrial capital. And he knew the Masters do not adopt the ethics of the slaves. From his last speech, “Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case), had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.”

Action and Reaction in the Schools

The Second Occupation at UCSC Ends With Police Attack 10/15

October 24 UC Berkeley Meeting Notice

UPTE Calls for General Strike: The following resolution calling for direct actions up to / including ageneral strike of public education workers was passed overwhelmingly earlier today by the statewide convention of University Professional and Technical Workers (UPTE / CWA). UPTE is the union that called a one-day strike on September 24, one of the key events in the September 24 day of action at UC Berkeley. OEA’s Rep Council passed a similar motion on October 6. [UPTE represents 12,000 research, technical and health workers at the University of California.

“Therefore be it resolved that we work in concert with other public sector unions, students and community members to organize a unified response that could include a general strike, a walkout from classes and other direct actions.”

Blackwater Ousted at Southwestern College After 2 Year Fightback: “CHULA VISTA, CA (Oct. 16) – Southwestern College District Governing Board approved the cancellation of their agreement with Blackwater-Xe in their October 14, 2009 board meeting. The agreement had students from Southwestern College enrolled in law enforcement training programs using shooting ranges in the Blackwater-Xe Otay Mesa mercenary training facility.”

Gropenfuhrer Signs Ca. Merit Pay Bill

AFT Lines Up For Merit Pay at Obama’s Trough: “Education reformers were pleasantly stunned when the American Federation of Teachers announced today that two of the winners of their new Innovation Fund grants planned to use the money to create teacher-evaluation systems that give weight to students’ standardized test scores.”

D.C. Rhee Fires 400 School Workers, AFT gives a Speech

What of NEA With 3.5 Million Members? NEA Prezzie Dennis Van Roekel addressed the recent AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh where the narcissist Richard Trumka was anointed President of the corrupt Federation. NEA’s bosses have been trying to work a secret merger pact with the AFL-CIO for twenty years. It would add a lot to their salaries, and add another layer of enemies to NEA members. Then Van Roekel traveled on Air Force Two with Arne Duncan, Joe Biden, to Syracuse, to tout education “reform.”
What to do with this “unionism?”

Army Wants to Recruit in Middle School: “Wichita’s program uses a military structure to teach civics lessons…“The Army’s got a lot deeper pockets than education,” he said.”

Rothstein on NCLB Reauthorization: “The Obama administration’s ESEA re-authorization proposal should reject the continued punishment of schools based on flawed standardized tests, and instead focus on the careful and cautious design of new forms of qualitative evaluation.”

Conservative Think Tank, “NCLB has not worked the way it was intended and the nation is worse off because of it.”

NY Times Charts Show Failure of NCLB

Detroit Public Schools Broad Foundation Boss Payouts to Consultants

Rouge Forum Update: Punished by premature rewards?

The full version of the latest Rouge Forum Update is here.

Here are some of the links from the Update:

In the Little Rouge Schoolhouse:

Rampant Fraud in Detroit PS Amazes Boss

Broad Appointee to Spend $40 mil on Detroit Consultants

Ohanian Comments on the DPS Consultant Rip-off

Marc Bousquet Interviews the UCSC Occupiers

NEA to Abandon Seniority Rules on Staffing?

No Volunteer Left in Taylorized School

What Would Alfie Say About the Nobel Award?

War, War, War But What is the Plan? Who is the Enemy? What is Winning? Don’t Dither!

Taliban Raids Pakistan’s HQ

Honduran Coup Continues Crackdown

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Kissinger (Surprise) Calls For More War, Done Better

Danger of Delay in Afghanistan by the CFR and CIA

An Oldie But Goodie From Country Joe in honor of those young people sitting in the mud in Afghanistan, wondering what their ruling class plans for them, what the strategy is, who the enemy will be and what tactics will be used next (and can we trust that our officers care?)

Money, Profits, Losses, Fear, Greed: The Economy

Wall Street Journal on the Weakening Dollar, Down 25% Since 2000

What does a Trillion Dollars Look Like? Wait! What Does 12.9 Trillion Dollars Look Like?

100th Bank Failure of 2009 Coming to Your Hometown? “Mr. Cassidy projects that as many as 1,000 small banks will close over the next few years…Together, the 8,176 smallest banks control just 15 percent of the industry’s $13.3 trillion in assets.”

Welfare, the Real Minimum Wage, Under Attack Again

Goldman/Government Sachs to Reap another $ Billion

More Education and Resistance:

North American Labor History Conference, Detroit, October 24 to 26

Pittsburgh G20 Protests and the Coppers

The NFL, idiot fascism, and the future of America

The latest issue of Rolling Stone (RS 1089) is highly recommended (even if Bono is hamming it up on the cover). Skip the fawning piece on U2’s current US tour (it’s mainly about their mega-stage and luxury airliners) and read the bits by Matt Taibbi.

The former sports editor for The Moscow Times (Russia not Idaho) gives us a gonzo take on the opening of the NFL season, which includes a report on the new Dallas Cowboys stadium that merits quoting because it is the best paragraph to appear in on a “sports page” in the 21st Century:

Dallas’ opening home game against the Giants, in which their hideously commercialized mall palace known as the new Cowboys Stadium was unveiled to the world, was a genuinely terrifying broadcast event of a kind not seen since the premiere of Triumph of the Will. This was like a debutante ball for America’s new idiot fascism. Still, there was something weirdly compelling about seeing 100,000 Texans cheering historical footnote George W. Bush as they christened what promises to be about 490 years of municipal sales-tax payments, all so that Jerry Jones can see a 160-foot wide image of his own surgery-tightened face on the world’s biggest HDTV. At the home opener, ticket-holders got to see Tony Romo throw three interceptions against the backdrop of multiple corporate billboards lining the field. Then there was the specter of 100,000 people watching a giant taxpayer-funded TV while sitting at the live event. If this is the future, could America be any more fucked?

Taibbi’s writing sits well along side Guy Debord and Raul Vaneigem.

Taibbi also adds this tidbit on the Detroit Lions, biggest losers in the NFL:

If Lions rookie QB Matt Stafford busts, the city of Detroit will collapse under the Earth’s crust, forever, to be spoken of in the future as a mythical lost place, like an Atlantis full of shuttered Ford plants.

The birthplace of the Rouge Forum deserves better but my advice to Bill Blank and the gang is to get outta there.

Detroit, America’s Most Epic Urban Failure

[Above image: “Detroit Industry” – Detroit Institute of Arts ( Diego Rivera ) – View 1, from DetroitDerek’s Flickr photostream.]

Over the past decade or so, I’ve visited Detroit many times, so as I read Mark Binelli’s profile of this dying city in the most recent Rolling Stone (#1073) there was a lot of resonance with my Motown experiences.

The article, of course, focuses on the auto industry, the government bailouts and Binelli uses a visit to the Detroit Auto Show to explore the decline of the industry and the city. But the most compelling part of the article describes a tour of the deindustrial wastelands of downtown Detroit that Binelli takes with Detroitblogger John to see abandoned factories, houses, and office buildings; grassy fields, which used to be crowded working and middle class residential neighborhoods and are now homes to coyotes and other wild life.

Check out photos at DetroitBlog.org or KenTakesPictures “Detroit” Flickr photoset or Derek Farr’s “Detroit Ruins” Flickr photoset to get an idea of what Detroit looks like these days. (KenTakesPictures describes the areas around the old GM factories as resembling scenes from 28 Days Later and Mogadishu)

You can also explore disappeared Detroit here and here.

Binelli vaguely hints at but doesn’t explore Detroit’s spirit of resistance, which is too bad because the history of the city is in many ways a history of resistance. There’s no doubt that Detroit is ground zero of the urban crisis in the US, but it is also home to many people who have and continue to work against racism, labor exploitation, and other inequalities.

Detroit’s also the birthplace of The Rouge Forum, which drew inspiration for it’s name from Detroit’s River Rouge and the River Rouge auto factory, which at one time was the largest factory in the world.

“The Rouge is both nature and work. The Rouge has never quit; it moves with the resilience of the necessity for labor to rise out of nature itself. The river and the plant followed the path of industrial life throughout the world. The technological advances created at the Rouge, in some ways, led to better lives. In other ways, technology was used to forge the privilege of the few, at the expense of most–and the ecosystems, which brought it to life, The Rouge is a good place to consider a conversation, education, and social action.”

Join us at the Rouge Forum annual conference this May, we’ll be meeting at Eastern Michigan University in Yspilanti, close enough for a quick trip to Detroit.

[Rich Gibson has a good collection links that explore the urban, and particularly the educational, crises in Detroit at his web site.]