30 January 2009
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We are a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are concerned with questions like: How can we teach against racism, nationalism and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society? How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals AND teach? Whose interests do schools serve in a society that is ever more unequal? We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring those into practice.
2 comments:
update from Rich, 3-16-09
Students protest LAUSD teacher layoffs [UPDATED]
It is not unusual for students to take the lead in militancy, nor for LA kids to take the lead among kids. What is up? A full scale assault of the rich on the poor.
Note The One's trial balloon of taxing health benefits, making one section of the working class pay for the bad health care of a more impoverished section. Tie that to the expansion of war, tax hikes, massive layoffs, the bankster bailouts (9.7 trillion and counting, most of it secret), and more regimentation from Arne Duncan. Who saw this coming?
The core issue of our time is rising inequality met by the possibility of mass class conscious resistance. Schools, the centripetal organizing point of much of N. American life, a key in this battle.
In this era, closed schools, closed during civil strife, are often better than open schools where the lies of NCLB, in form and essence, dominate most days. But closed schools are not enough. We need to look forward toward setting up freedom schools where kids, on the march, on boycotts, etc., can go and learn things that cannot, or the most part, be taught in schools: love as both a matter of pleasure and reproduction, the fact that nearly all of history is the history of class struggle, that the battle for rational knowledge is a matter of life and death (people make gods, gods do not make people) and the fight for freedom and equality stretches back through the ages.
Down the banks and
Up the Rebels!
best r
11:32 AM | March 16, 2009
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/03/student-protest.html
A large group of students from Roybal High School and Miguel Contreras Learning Complex in downtown Los Angeles have walked out of class to protest teacher cuts, authorities said today.
At 10:35 a.m., about 200 students walked about a mile toward the Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters at 3rd Street and Beaudry Avenue, LAPD Officer Rosario Herrera said.
The students, some of whom carried yellow and white balloons, circled the block around the building and headed back to school, district spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said. They were accompanied by adults, but it was unclear whether those adults were teachers, she said. Herrera said the students were acting peacefully.
[UPDATE] During the march and protest rally, school district teachers and police officers accompanied the students to make sure the protest didn't turn violent. LAUSD Supt. Ramon C. Cortines also attended the march. "Our first concern is the safety of kids. We are doing the best we can in light of the budget cutbacks," Cortines told KTLA-TV.
Near the end of the rally, two teenage boys got into a fistfight and were quickly removed from the scene by police.
The Los Angeles Unified School District -- the second-largest in the nation -- is sending more than 8,800 pink slips to teachers and other employees as it faces a $718-million budget shortfall.
March 18, 2009 10:08 AM
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