Tag Archives: fascism

Join the Campus Antifascist Network

Reblogged from: David Palumbo-Liu

Join the Campus Antifascist Network

Invitation to Endorse and Join the Campus Antifascist Network

The election of Donald Trump has emboldened fascist and white nationalist groups nationwide, on campus and off, and their recent upsurge requires antifascists to take up the call to action once again. Since Trump’s election, fascists, neo-fascists, and their allies have used blatantly Islamophobic, anti-semitic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist messaging and iconography to recruit to their ranks and intimidate students, faculty and staff. As we wrote this letter, hundreds of torch-bearing white supremacists were marching on the campus of University of Virginia chanting “Jews will not replace us” and other vile slurs. An antifascist activist was murdered by these same forces in Charlottesville, raising the stakes of resistance to new heights.

Fascists have used “free speech” as a façade for attacking faculty who have stood in solidarity with students against the threat that these organizations and individuals pose, and as an excuse to march and organize around slogans drawn directly from “blood and soil” rhetoric of Nazi Germany. White supremacists like Richard Spencer have invoked classic tropes of white supremacy to scapegoat and target immigrants, non-whites and the foreign-born. Such organizations and individuals have also engaged in outright physical violence up to and including murder, like those tragic incidents that occurred in Oregon, Virginia, and Maryland.

The so-called ‘alt.right’ and their fellow travelers have also aggressively sought to smear, bully and intimidate faculty, especially faculty of color. Progressive scholars such as Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor, Johnny Williams, Dana Cloud and George Ciccariello-Maher, among others, have each been threatened with violence, or firing, for strong anti-racist social justice commitments.

The time to take action is now. We call on all interested individuals and organizations to support or join the Campus Antifascist Network (CAN). CAN will help you organize a local antifascist chapter on your campus that can help support, educate and defend faculty, students and staff, and share information on fascist organizing in the U.S., planned fascist activities, and organized antifascist responses. CAN has already expressed its solidarity with the Charlottesville protests: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E-JyaGwG4HLgJixeYxflInlw_Z6eLuNH6TfobzM4ZnA/edit?ts=5990393a

CAN has also devised a public, open access Syllabus on Fascism that may be used for any educational purpose:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6FX_x2dbvXqblpZQ3JuUTYxTnM/view?usp=sharing

To become a member of the Campus Antifascist Network, or to endorse, please write to cannetwork.fighttheh8@gmail.com

Rouge Forum Update: Educate Organize Occupy Oct 7th!

Activist Alert on the FBI Raids: The homes of five Twin Cities activists, including three prominent leaders of the Twin Cities antiwar movement, were raided Friday by the FBI in what an agency spokesman described as an “investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism.” The office of an antiwar organization also was reportedly raided.

What to Do if a Cop Knocks (don’t talk, demand a lawyer). Details here:

What is Fascism?

Little Red Schoolhouse

Merit Pay Surge in DC (Rhee or No Rhee): Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced earlier this year that she had lined up $31.5 million in private foundation support to help pay for the performance bonuses and base pay increases. Officials said Friday that they expected to spend $6 million on the bonuses in the first year. By fiscal year 2013, D.C.’s government will shoulder the burden….Then there’s teaching in grades four through eight: Students in those grades take the standardized exams in math and reading, and improved scores can earn teachers as much as $10,000 more.

School systems across the country have adopted performance-based bonuses in the past few years, but Washington’s bonuses are among the biggest. Teachers in Prince George’s County can receive as much as $10,000 in annual performance bonuses. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has encouraged school systems and states to adopt performance pay, and he made them a factor in decisions for Race to the Top, a $4 billion competitive grant program.

Will Reason Alone Overcome Merit Pay? Offering teachers incentives of up to $15,000 to improve student test scores produced no discernible difference in academic performance, according to a study released Tuesday, a result likely to reshape the debate about merit pay programs sprouting in D.C. schools and many others nationwide.

PBS On Merit Pay (and BankofAmericaisYourFriendfriendbankfriend):

The Rich Get Richer: The Cranbrook Kingswood class of 2010 has reported awards totaling nearly $6,800,000 in academic scholarships from colleges and universities – one of the largest amounts in Cranbrook Schools’ history. Based on previous years’ trends, additional scholarships are expected to be reported throughout the month of June. Over the past three years, graduating classes have averaged nearly $6.4 million in scholarships.

New Issue of Workplace on Academic Labor Around the World: “Global Perspectives on k12 Unions”:

Plus an Important Review by Steve Strauss: “Dave Hill’s foreword sets the tone, and there is no let-up in the chapters that follow. He initiates the book’s relentless attack on neoliberal education policy. One cannot be any blunter than to charge the criminal with mass murder. “Neoliberal globalizing capital condemns millions … to death” (xv), writes Hill. For the masses still alive, the outlook remains grim since neoliberalism “can cope with, co-exist with, extreme poverty and the existence of billions of humans at the margins of existence” (xv). Neoliberalism, as Hill notes, is “unfettered capitalism.”

Read the full RF Update here.

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.

Rouge Forum Update: Come to Ypsi!

Dear Friends,

Less than one week to the Rouge Forum Conference in Ypsilanti, Michigan at Eastern Michigan University. Keynote speakers include Staughton Lynd, author, radical historian, civil rights leader; Greg Queen, winner of the National Council for the Social Studies “academic freedom award,” and Rebecca Martusewicz, eco-justice educator and activist.

Education News

Students at Los Angeles’ Crenshaw High walked out of school last week in protest of budget cuts

People are being positioned so that the fight-back is almost inevitable. The question is: Will it make any sense and win?

Call it paranoid but it is not entirely coincidental that the L.A. Times is running a series of articles on “bad teachers” and UTLA (which may well be true) just days before the planned UTLA walkout on May 15. The walkout, unfortunately, is scheduled for that date in order to not disrupt district testing, but it is one of the first direct-action responses to come from any large NEA or AFT local. The walkout came to being after considerable rank and file struggle inside the union, demanding collective action.

The L.A. Times does not have much to say about the reasons for rising inequality and the real promise of perpetual war, that is, capital’s relentless quest for profits. Nor does it deal with the daily lives of children in Compton and when it does mention them, it does so in terms of being under privileged, not super-exploited.

But, come to think of it, UTLA doesn’t speak in those terms either.

Its parent body, CTA, is working with the Gropenfuhrer to pass the anti-working class tax hikes, trying to panic voters into taxing themselves rather than the rich. A recent CTA news spends most of its glossy pages telling teachers how to adjust to the financial crises, rather than how to fight back, dealing with the consequences of the crises rather than to address the causes at the root.

There are alternatives, such as the Rouge Forum.

Here is The New Yorker‘s abstract of an article touting the partnership of the American Federation of Teachers and Steve Barr, of Green Dot charter fame; and a response from Susan Ohanian.

But the fact is that the education agenda is a war agenda, and vice versa.

Industry, Finance, War, and Pedagogy

Chrysler Gets Judge to Allow The Bankrupt Company to Borrow $4.5 Billion from USA! Huh?

Don’t forget those Good For the Rest of Your Life Rouge Forum Posters.

Chalmers Johnson on the Signs of Decay

The banks behind the meltdown (Center For Public Integrity)

One-half million people are now fleeing the Swat Valley in Pakistan. Whether the guerrillas will stand and fight or melt away is yet to be seen.

In April and May, 1975, US forces fled Vietnam, the world’s most powerful empire forced out by peasant nationalists who fought imperialism for decades, making huge sacrifices. The US defeat was caused, mainly, by Vietnamese military and political operations, but also by the actions of soldiers in the US military and civilians in the anti-war movement. Here is a clip from the film, Sir No Sir, as a reminder that people can resist, under harsh conditions, and win.

May 9 is Victory Day (May 8 in the US—Victory in Europe Day) seemingly forgotten in America now. But the sacrifices of the people of the world in defeating fascism should be remembered.

Thanks to Joe B and the entire Ypsi gang for pulling together a great conference and to Adam and Gina Renner for taking the lead in developing the most recent edition of the Rouge Forum News: It is the only clear expression of education radicalism in the US.

Thanks too to Susan H and O, Amber, Diego, Ernesto, Lucy W and S, Jesus, Joseph, Amilia, Candace, Bob and Tommie, Wayne and Perry, Steve, Big Al, Nancy, Lisa, Marisol, Ricio, Chantelle, The Wailers, Harv, Ned, Ray, Earl, Sandy and Van, Mickey, Jim, Phillip and his entire gang, Selene and Frank, Carolina, Maria, Bruno, Daniel, Natalia, Nereyda, Edgar, Edwardo, and Gil

All the best and good luck to us every one.