Tag Archives: Rouge Forum

Staughton Lynd: “What is to be done?…let’s make every school a freedom school.”

Staughton Lynd, author, attorney, radical historian, and civil rights leader presented one of three keynote addresses at the Rouge Forum’s 2009 Conference at Eastern Michigan University last month.

His speech—which shares its title with Lenin’s famous work on the principles of democratic centralism—draws on his experiences as director of the Mississippi Freedom Schools of the mid-1960s to identify where we can can begin to resist the antidemocratic impulses of greed, individualism, and intolerance in our work as educators.

Lynd’s talk reminds us that people learn by and through experience, not by reading the “right newspapers” or attending lectures. A claim that is somewhat reminiscent of Guy Debord’s assessment of what revolutionary organizations should be about:

“Revolution is not ‘showing’ life to people, but making them live. A revolutionary organization must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.” —Guy Debord [“For a Revolutionary Judgement of Art”]

The bottom line in Lynd’s talk is as simple as it is challenging, let’s make every school a freedom school.

Read Lynd’s talk here and in the upcoming issue of The Rouge Forum News.

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.

Rouge Forum News (Issues 14 & 15): Call for papers.

Rouge Forum News, Issue 14: Call for papers

The Rouge Forum News is an outlet for working papers, critical analysis, and grassroots news. Issue 14 of the RF News will be dedicated to papers delivered at the Rouge Forum Conference at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, MI.

Conference presenters, if you would like your paper to be considered for Issue 14, please send your essay to Adam Renner at arenner@bellarmine.edu by June 15, 2009.

Rouge Forum News, Issue 15: Call for papers

The Rouge Forum News is an outlet for working papers, critical analysis, and grassroots news. Issue 15 will be dedicated to our persistence in providing links between runaway capital, the rabid and rapid standardization of curriculum, the co-optation of our unions, the militarization of our youth, and the creep of irrationalism in our schools.

We are interested in work from academics, parents, teachers, and students: teachers at all levels, students in ANY grade, parents of children of any age.

Something small, something big, something serious. It is the stories we get from people like you that make the RF News what it is. If you have a story to share, but would like to protect your identity, use a pen name. Pen names are ALWAYS welcome!

We NEED Art! Songs! Poems! Editorial cartoons! Links to online videos or other material!

We are looking for narratives, as well as research, and the interplay between research and practice which focuses on the economy, curriculum, unions, etc. If you have a story to tell, some research to share, a book to review, we’d love to see it (and share it).

We publish material from k-12 students, parents, teachers, academics, and community people struggling for equality and democracy in schools—writing (intended to inform/educate, or stories from your classroom, etc.), art, cartoons, photos, poetry. You can submit material for the RF News via email (text attachment, if possible) to Adam Renner at arenner@bellarmine.edu. PLEASE SUBMIT BY AUGUST 15, 2009.

See Issue 13 of the Rouge Forum News. All past issues at available here.

Rouge Forum Update—Bailouts and the “anti-war” movement

Dear Friends,

For those teaching or learning about the current depression, here are some more good sources:

Lewis Corey’s outstanding 1934 book, Decline of American Capitalism, is online free;
How Goldman Sachs was at the Center of the Oil Trading Fiasco that Bankrupted SemGroup;
The auto crisis, likely leading to the bankruptcy of GM (and the end of retiree health benefits, etc.) but this is also an indicator of the power of finance capital over industrial capital and the shift to the corporate state as US society decays;
Stiglitz on State Capitalism as Robbing Workers;
Updated interview with John Bellamy Foster;
Bello’s Primer on the Economic Meltdown;
The Economist on the Huge Fraud Beneath the Fiscal Crisis: Missing the Deeper Fraud; Exploited Labor
Five Million Jobs Lost So Far This Depression

Current Developments:

Centinela CalfiorniaTeachers Wildcat Strike;
Al Sharpton and the Ruling Class;
Labor Bosses Forge Unity Committee: The plum here is the dues from 3.5 million education workers, members of the National Education Association who will quickly learn that they are funding yet another layer of enemies.

Criticism of “Progressive” Warmongers:

The term “progressive” may have no meaning anymore. If it is Move.on, that means slavish support for the demagogue, Obama. If it is United For Peace and Justice, it means the same thing in shifty terms. UFPJ’s recent Wall Street demos, deliberately set up to counter demands from rank and filers to demonstrate on the anniversary of the war, failed completely. This is nothing to gloat about even though we said, years ago, that following UFPJ would do just this. Still, it is tragic.

Less than 10,000 people demonstrated, down from the one million who hit the streets six years ago. But numbers are not everything. UFPJ trumped that by teaching people nothing at all important about why things are as they are, what to do in order to develop grand strategy (peace, justice, equality, freedom, etc.) or strategy (how to understand specific local circumstances and to seek out choke points where people can use powerful direct action moves) and tactics (particular actions that link these three elements).

Why would that be? Because UFPJ is run by remnants of the Communist Party USA, people who have never sought to build a mass class conscious movement and who have always fought those who try. The current Rouge Forum News has a very fine article by Tom Suber about the wreckage that UFPJ leadership is creating.

Let us be clear. The core issue of our time is accelerating color coded inequality met by the potential of organized mass class conscious resistance. Neither the CP nor UFPJ want any part of that.
Here is a sampling of UFPJ’s failures:

The task at hand is ours. The $10.9 trillion dollars the corporate state just printed for the banks and insurance companies is going to come from the lives and labor of someone. Either it will come from the ruin of hundreds of thousand of poor and working people, or, if we fight back, it can come from the rich. Let them suffer and pay, as they should. The degree of the pain will be determined by the levels of our real resistance in schools, in communities, at work places, and in the military. When they say Cut Back; We should say Fight Back.

This is a critique from Antiwar.com: Progressive Warmongers.

We note with sadness the death of a friend, Janet Jagan.

Thanks to Joe and Charles B., Steve and all the sharp eyes who caught the misspelled word in the last update (argh), Adam, Gina, Greg and Katie, Wayne, Sandra, Colin, Josh and M, Suber (s), the Sally’s, Penny and Rick, Doug and Connie, Betty, Joe C, Susan O and H, Ginny H, Jim S, Ricky C., Chris, Carol Panetta, Sharon A, David, Donnie A, the Breedloves, and the entire RF Steering Committee and folks working on the upcoming conference. http://www.rougeforumconference.org/

All the best and good luck to us, every one.

Rouge Forum News (Issue 13, Spring 2009)

Don’t forget about the upcoming Rouge Forum Conference in Ypsilanti, Michigan, May 15 to 17 this year. The program is clearly our best yet with Staughton Lynd as keynoter. Please spread the word.

In the mean time check out the Spring 2009 issue of the Rouge Forum News, edited by Adam Renner.

The RF News is the only clear expression of education radicalism in the US.

Contents

From the editor, Adam Renner
What is the Rouge Forum?
Why do you call it the Rouge Forum?
Blame the Schools, Kevin Vinson and E. Wayne Ross
The Obamagogue and Capital vs. the People, Rich Gibson
Whither the Anti-War Movement?, Tom Suber
UAW in a Route: Secrecy and the Sellout, Bob Apter
Math, Democracy and the Arts, Mindy R. Carter and Mary Ann Chacko
The Illusion of Education, Adam Renner
On Optimism, Cynicism, and Realism, Alan Spector
Why we need to blame ourselves [poem], Michael Simpson
Who will fill the cups? [poem], David Centorbi
Upcoming Events – RF conference, RF blog, RF News #14 and #15 call for papers

Download PDF version of The Rouge Forum News (#13)

Rouge Forum Conference 2009—Education, Empire, Economy & Ethics at a Crossroads (conference schedule)

The schedule for the Rouge Forum Conference 2009—Education, Empire, Economy & Ethics at a Crossroads—is now online. Check out the great speakers, sessions and events for the meeting at Eastern Michigan University, May 15-17.

Check out all the details for the conference at RougeForumConference.org

Rouge Forum Update

Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum Conference, May 15-17, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, is lining up to be a terrific event. Come meet friends, hear keynoters like Staughton Lynd and get ready for a falling sky. The RF conference link is here.

Please help spread the word about the conference. It looks like our best yet. The lineup of presentations is terrific. You will have a hard time picking which ones you want to attend. The conference will set the north star for education resistance for yet another year. This is our eleventh conference. Time flies.

The Seattle special ed teachers who were suspended for refusing to give their students high-stakes exams that would invariably fail them are back in the classroom and working with a lawyer on their appeal. A note of encouragement would be more than appropriate—solidarity with the notion that an injury to one just goes before an injury to all.
Lenora Stahl.

It was a loud and busy week in education. The One, who we dubbed The Obamagogue, in somewhat good humor, came out in favor of merit pay and a series of regressive educational measures (more regimented curricula, more sophisticated testing) summed up here.

The bosses of the National Education Association (paid upwards of $450,000 a year aside from expense accounts) joined their favorite bedfellows, the US Chambers of Commerce and the National Association of manufactures, to promote, among other things, a national curriculum.

The group hug of business profiteers, labor bosses, and government hacks went on to support what many people feel is the utterly out of date, pre-sky-falling, litany of what’s been called the Tough-Tough Project.

Then Tim Geithner and Arne Duncan went on the road to promote The One’s projects. Here is a report on The Obamagogue’s Liars and Our Future.

Let us be clear. The education budget is a war budget. The core issue of our times is booming color-coded inequality challenged by the potential of rising mass class conscious resistance, in schools and out.

There is continuing debate about the Employee Free Choice Act, now pending before congress and drawing about $200 million in lobbying money—both sides, labor and management combined–in a struggle that may not be exactly about the best interests of workers or the nation, though all the big players say otherwise. Here is a link to the discussion in the Historians Against the War.

There are many demonstrations coming this week around the US and the world. This week marks the sixth year of the US invasion of Iraq, a failed adventure propelled by hubris, oil, regional control, and deception–a mix that could spell tyranny. All who can should be on the march, not only to raise a peace sign, a fist, or a finger, against this travesty, but to test our own strength and resolve.

Remember to spread the word about the conference in Ypsi!.

Want to explain Madoff and a Ponzi scheme to your kids? $9.7 trillion to the banksters and still counting.

Here are some good Great Depression Songs to get us through the week.

Good luck to us every one.

Thanks to Joe B and C, Greg and K, The Bill’s, Bob A and D, Erica, Donna, Shelly, Ann Arbor Ann, Candace, Niki N, Sharon A, Amber, Wayne, Perry, Kev, Curry, M…Y…,Hanna and Cal, Kelly, Elaine, Dominique, Luis, Tanya, Summer, Paul and Mary, Alex and Jeff, Gil G, Kirk, Jimmy B and G, Kathy Young, and Z’s.

All the best,

Rouge Forum Update

Dear Friends,

There is still time to submit a proposal for the Rouge Forum Conference. Come enjoy the company of sane people.

Is it trite to say that the class war that we noticed, among a very few others, years ago, rages now, in schools and out? Surely, elites know it, even if too many on our side don’t.

Bloomberg News group seems to be the only section of the corporate press truly interested in tracking where the $9.7 billion(+) bailout went. They filed suit and came up nearly blank. Secrecy, as we know, is a cornerstone of tyranny.

Here we see Oregon schools gutted by the collapsing economy (better termed as Their Economy)

California is, right now, issuing thousands of layoff notices to school workers.

People will fight back. There is always resistance. Here are two Seattle teachers who retained their integrity by supporting their kids right to opt out of exams that were completely inappropriate for them. The teachers were suspended. You can email your thought to the Seattle Superintendent at andy.dorn@k12.wa.us

After months of secrecy, NEA’s bosses finally advised some members that they have been working behind the scenes, again, to merge NEA’s 3.5 million members with the AFL-CIO and the splinter group, Change to Win. On the face of it, solidarity might be appealing. But neither the AFL-CIO nor the CTW has ever practiced solidarity unionism. To the contrary, the labor bureaucrats have systematically disorganized workers’s job actions, as with the Detroit Teachers Wildcat, and they have used violence against labor reformers, as with the SEIU attack on Labor Notes in 2008. All NEA would get would be a more undemocratic structure, a la the AFT.

Meanwhile, NEA mis-leaders joined AFT, the Business Roundtable, and other employer groups to promote national teaching standards. Why national standards? It is not possible to split foreign policy and domestic policy. The education budget is a war budget. The crux of the US education project is to produce students so witless, docile, loyal, yet useful, they will support the poor of their home nation going off to fight and die for the rich. Bill Blum noticed this recently when he reminded us of this quote from the song about racism from the Broadway classic show, “South Pacific” “You’ve got to be taught” …

You’ve got to be taught
from year to year.
It’s got to be drummed
in your dear little ear.
You’ve got to be taught
before it’s too late.
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8.
To hate all the people
your relatives hate.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

From the NEA press release:

NEA partners to develop standards for measuring 21st century skills.Education collaborative strives to ensure global competitiveness for students:

WASHINGTON – February 23, 2009 – NEA is pleased to announce its partnership with the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Governors Association, Achieve, Inc., the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Hunt Institute, the National Association of State Boards of Education, and the Business Roundtable, in a new state-led initiative to improve the access of every student to a complete, high-quality education that provides the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in the 21st century. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is working to produce a common core of voluntary state standards across grades. The K-12 standards would cover English/language arts, math, and eventually science. The initiative plans to be an inclusive and transparent process that will include input from education, civil rights and business leaders among others. “NEA welcomes the opportunity to participate in this effort to provide manageable, high-quality standards for adoption by states to guide efforts to improve education,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “We are pleased that the voices of classroom educators will now be a part of this process…

When the bosses say Cut Back. We must say Fight Back. No Concessions. No Layoffs. No wage or benefits cuts. Cap class size at 20 for everyone. Hire more people to combat unemployment. Go get us the Schools Tarp. Or we will shut your schools down and open freedom schools, teaching things that matter: Class struggle, love, sensuality and reproduction, rational knowledge in an atmosphere that promotes critique and freedom. All of that is illegal in California right now.

Meanwhile, AFL-CIO leaders cavort and bicker at the pricey Miami Fountainbleau Hotel

David Berliner has a new piece out, Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success,
demonstrating once again Jean Anyon’s thesis: Doing school reform without social and economic reform is like washing the air on one side of a screen door. It won’t work.

For those who enjoy irony, here is General Motors, long the siren of Buy American, demanding a bailout, from Europe.

What happened to the capitalist economy anyway? Here are two quick insights, this one from old Marx himself: For Marx, there was never any doubt about the root cause of capitalist economic crises:

The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit.

Here is an extension from John B. Foster, author of the recently released, Great Financial Crisis, responding to an inquiry:

No I am not equating stagnation, stagflation, and overproduction. though they overlap. Stagnation, i.e. slow growth, rising unemployment/underemployment, high excess capacity, etc. reemerged in the 1970s. Initially, there was a period of stagflation (stagnation plus inflation). The inflationary part was brought under control but not the underlying stagnation, which continued. Under monopoly capital (or monopoly-finance capital) actual overproduction is not the dominant tendency since the demand shortfalls show up in overcapacity rather than overproduction. Corporations cut back on output pretty quickly and lower their capacity utilization (fully competitive capitalism didn’t work this way). You could say, though, that it is a case of implicit overproduction, so there is no real contradiction. Of course a build up of productive capacity, which is increasingly underutilized, fits just as well with Marx’s statement, ‘the real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself,’ which you quote.

All of which adds up to why you should book now to join us at the Rouge Forum Conference, May 15 to 17 in Ypsilanti! Keynotes: Staughton Lynd, Greg Queen, Rebecca Martusewicz .

All the best, r

Thanks to Gil, Bob, Susan and Susan, George and fam, Paul and Mary, Cindy, Amber, Della, Evan and Ethel, Tony H, Suber, Beau, Kelly, Jan, Dionne, Sandy and Sally, Shea, Holly, Peter M, Tom H, Cassie, Jean and Ken and fam, Jim the 3rd, Travis, Dan H, Gina, Sharon Ag, Carol Panetta, and Bobby.

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.]

Rouge Forum Update: Staughton Lynd confirmed as Rouge Forum Conference keynoter

Dear Friends,

Great news! Staughton Lynd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staughton_Lynd) has agreed to be a keynote speaker at the Rouge Forum Conference in Ypsilanti, Michigan, May 15 to 17:
Next week, more good news on the keynote topic.

Kathy Emery, expert on the Freedom Schools and, with Susan Ohanian, author of Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?, will be presenting in Los Angeles at the UTLA Human Rights Conference, 3303 Wilshire Blvd, March 27 and 28.

You can find a review at Book TV on CSPAN of Jeff Perry’s new book Hubert Harrison, The Voice of Harlem Radicalism.

Ravi Kumar has a fine interview with Peter Mclaren linked to Radical Notes online.

Resistance to inequality and injustice grows each week. From February 18th to 20th, NYU students occupied a building. They were removed and subsequently expelled. Each struggle brings its own lesson on how to better prepare. Details are here.

There is a lengthy struggle, a strike and civil uprising on Martinique.

A bus strike may lead to a general strike in Ireland.

Two big Marches in March. Most of the anti-war movement will be on the streets on March 21 to condemn the invasion of Iraq (next week a report on the decisions made by the Historians Against the War regarding Afghanistan and other imperial adventures). And there is a call nationwide to March Forth on March 4th, against the homophobia inherent in the vote on California’s Prop 8.

Tougher News: George Soros agrees the sky is falling.

While the auto bailout/UAW sellout amounts to what looks to be the coming end of auto-worker health benefits.

Joel Kovel was fired at Bard. You can review the background and offer help here.

Thanks to Bonnie M, Paul, Joe B and C, Adam, Amber, Candace, Sally, Julie, Jill, Sandy, Laurel, EWR, Ravi, Don A, Ginger H, Kim B, Perry and Steve, Shelly, Kelly, Gina, Ludden, Carlson, Riley, Tommie, Bob, Dave and Sharon, Elaine H, Penny Brown, Sue, Greg and Katie, Bill B, Kevin, Paul and Mary.

All the best,
r