On the 8th Anniversary of the US Assault on Afghanistan--from Rich

Dear Friends,

Today is the 8th Anniversary of the US assault on Afghanistan, a full invasion, war, in response to a crime.

In my section A section of the New York Times (CA) , there is no mention of that.

Since then, $12.9 trillion was given to the banks. The wars will cost around $3 trillion if they project into next year, as they will.

The government became a full blown corporate state, an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich. Schools merged with the effort, becoming full-blown missions for capitalism. Those educators who collaborated became, knowingly or not, its missionaries.

The American public, having agreed to shop during Bush's wars, can no longer shop. The US economy, 2/3 rooted in consumerism, cannot consume, nor produce, and the banks will not loan to the unemployed.
Spectacles continue, more and faster. Baseball! Football! Porn!!

The demagogue, Obama and his friend, Arne Duncan, now throw the Bush agenda for education into hyperspeed: Regimented curricula promoting witless nationalism, anti working class high stakes exams, militarization, layoffs and cutbacks, some privatization, and, with perfect logic, merit pay.

The union leadership of every major union cooperated at every turn, played a significant role in electing Obama, in harmony with their Quisling roles of the past. They are the nearest and most vulnerable of workers' enemies. Harsh measures for them.

Professional organizations accepted the division of academic labor they represent; remained largely impotent. Historians talked to historians, wrote a few petitions, rarely crossed the hall to deal with the sociologists. Some took up petitions, begging.

The rich grew much richer as barbarism rose. The poor became much poorer. Segmented by race, class, gender, split against each other by reactionary unions, now we see impoverished people battling for scraps.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091007/METRO01/910070396/Chaos-at-Cobo--Detroiters-turn-out-for-federal-help

The education agenda is a war agenda. The core issue of our time is the reality of the promise of endless war and booming inequality met by the potential of mass, activist, class conscious resistance, connecting reason to real power.

http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/article/view/47

The youth at the occupation of UCSC point the way. Having a good school within this capitalist society is like having a reading room in a prison. Not acceptable.

The choice is clear enough. Community and resistance---or Imperial Barbarism.

Up the rebels!

Good luck to us, every one.

r

No Sense of Irony...

Okay, usually I am willing to go to the other side, as a way to get at the kind of thinking used on the right, but I've reached my limit. Granted, I understand that the whole "tea bagger" thing is an astro-turf project funded by the health care industrial complex, in particular Dick Armey, but the limits of logic have been so far exceeded that something has to be done. But where in the heck to start? We aren't dealing with rational thought, so hang on for the ride.
Case in point- this article: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/09/16/tea-party-protesters-protest-dc-metro-service/

Apparently republican Texas Rep. Kevin Brady is upset that the public transit system in D.C. wasn't ready for the influx (no, not one million but more like 70,000 if one doesn't count the faked Promise Keeper crowd photo from the 1990s) of protesters hitting the city to...protest government spending on public services. He went on to complain that seniors (who likely receive Medicare) attending the protest were forced to take cabs since there was no room for them on the trains. Now I'm confused. Isn't privatization and the "toll" system of paying for services the major policy dream of republicans and the Ayn Rand crowd? Why are they unhappy? This is their social vision come to pass. If I were a p.r. person for the libertarian party, I would whip up some t-shirts with the slogan "Walk Proudly- Renounce Socialism on Wheels."

Speaking of irony, a group of conservatives is concerned that only 25% of Oklahoma high schoolers correctly identified George Washington as the first U.S. president (http://www.news9.com/global/story.asp?s=11141949). I'm not a fan of these sudden polls that throw out rapid fire questions to then show dismal results as proof that schools are teaching frivolous things. It's so Reader's Digest. But here we have a situation where conservatives are concerned about ignorance, yet these are the same folks who think the earth is roughly 4,000-6,000 years old! I could also be jumping to conclusions. Maybe part of the 75% named Jesus as the first U.S. president (since he is top choice as favorite philosopher). Then the conservatives shouldn't worry so much.

What is next, a debate about whether the sun revolves around the earth and vice versa? One thing I have learned is to never, I repeat never, make a statement about how things are bad, but thank goodness no one has (fill in the blank) yet. Yes, there is an anti-Copernican website out there, so my worst fears have been realized: http://www.fixedearth.com/ It's just good to know that there are people on this planet taking Glenn Beck's advice and "question boldly" (except the official story of 9/11), since that is evidence of our "freedom." Of course Beck forgot the rest of Jefferson's quote, which is to question boldly the existence of God. But that's just being picky.

All I can say is that the postmodernists must be happy by now to see their vision, like the tea-baggers, come to pass.

Rouge Forum Broadside: Yes, We Told Them So: War, School, and The Demagogue

The following is an RF Broadside, created by Rich Gibson. I have inserted a few [bracketed] additions to extend an already-compelling analysis. We encourage your feedback and additions.

It is probably not all that helpful to announce that we told you so, but....Yes, we told many people so.

The core issue of our time is the rapid rise of color-coded inequality and the emergence of world war met by the potential of a mass, class-conscious resistance.

These are not "public" schools we see. They are capitalist schools in a society where capitalism trumped whatever vestiges of democracy existed a decade ago. They are segregated schools [as the last domino was felled by the Supreme Court in July, 2007]. That's not merely the result of bad people doing bad things, exploiting others (though they surely are bad people) but also the consequence of a social system dependant on exploitation---meaning inequality.

The education agenda is a war agenda. It is a capitalism in crisis agenda, a Regimented National Curriculum agenda, mostly to promote nationalism.

Such a curriculum necessarily sets up anti-working class and racist high-stakes tests. Both teacher unions, the NEA and AFT, helped design both the national curriculum and the high-stakes exams. They are in no position to stop the next step. The professional organization, from NCTE to AHA to NCSS and all in between, proved more than impotent; they too collaborated. Those tests necessarily and logically lead to merit pay which already exists in the deep divide in, say, Detroit and suburb pay and benefits.

Militarization of schooling is part of the war agenda. National service=war agenda.

To some degree, privatization and charters are part of the war agenda. Privatization serves some sectors of elites, and others not. Why fully abandon a huge, tax supported, funnel for war, ignorance, and inequality; missions for capitalism and their unwitting, ever so nice, missionaries?
Restoring hope is part of the agenda, but it is false hope. The future is war, inequality, unemployment, horrible options for youth and it will not change without a mass social movement for equality. War means work; why many people enlist and proof that our choice is community or barbarism.

All of these interconnected attacks on life and reason have already happened, all over the western world.

Merely opposing any one of these factors, like merit pay, but not the rest just reinforces the entire project. As we see, NEA now dishonestly speaks out about merit pay, but NEA backed the regimented curricula and high stakes exams, sharply attacked people like Susan Ohanian who spoke against them, and dumped the students who suffered most from them.

Too late for NEA which is merely trying to keep the rubes sending dues money, but there is now nothing much NEA can do. Only direct action strikes, boycotts, etc., can halt the drive to the factors described above.

NEA has done nothing at all to prepare for that, and is not likely to do so. The union leaders are completely corrupt and their structures don't unite people. They divide people: city from suburb, students from teachers, teachers from other public workers and private employees---as easily seen in the California Teachers Association's effort to pass off a tax on poor and working people just months ago, a project that cost dues-payers millions of dollars and failed miserably, convincing the public, again, that educators want to pick their pockets.

What would be helpful is to wonder about the analytical and critical mistake that led to all that support for Obama, a demagogue.

Several things led to the hysteria around Obama.
1. A misunderstanding of capitalist democracy which is now sheer capitalism and little democracy. There was no significant difference between the Bush/Obama/McCain or even Clinton policies. Obama has betrayed, if we take his consistency as a betrayal, his liberal supporters who, for what have to be psychological reasons, still support his personification of the reign of capital which has, among other things, failed in every important arena of human life.
2. A misunderstanding of the gravity of the current situation vis-a-vis the war of empires. The US is in rapid decline in relationship to Russia, China and even Europe and Japan---economically and militarily-- and the US has lost any ability to promote itself as a moral nation, internally and externally. This puts extraordinary pressure on elites who need soldiers, Boeing workers, prison guards, and teachers too.
3. A misreading of the real internal crisis inside the US; the rapid rise of segregation and inequality--which has not, yet, led to civil rebellions. But everything is in place to lay the ground for those uprisings, except a left which can make sense of why things are as they are, and what to do. Lost wars. Collapsed economies. Immoral leaders caught with dozens of hands in a thousand cookie jars, war without reason pulling 1.5 million people into direct action---and the wreckage of their lives. All that, and more, should mean massive resistance. But that has not happened? Why not? No draft. No left. Spectacles. Divide and Rule. Carrot and stick. The education system. The same ways tyrants always ruled.
4. The continuing appeal of racism and nationalism. [One need only look at the continuation of residential segregation in most of America’s major cities; the segregation of children of color, generally, into lower-tracked curricula; the percentage of Black and Brown men in prison, the Black unemployment rate vis-à-vis their fellow white workers; and the assault on immigrants from the Global South]
5. Acceptance of the division of labor inside academia which means, for example, historians talk to historians and write books while literacy people talk to literacy people and write books, and few academics seriously organize anything at all, as the state of the campuses illustrate now. (And, there is an open willingness of the overwhelming majority of faculty to abandon their academic freedom in favor of standards). [As well, the university commons continue to be sold off to corporate interests, students become customers, and faculty become tradable entities focused more on chasing after grants than focusing on their craft.] This means historians, as in AHA, don't pay much attention to teaching while too many education personnel don't know much history.
6. A general public so mindless about history and social processes (class war) that it can rightly be called hysterical, potentially dangerous. Steeped in spectacles and consumerism for more than a decade, so vacant about their location in the world that Chalmers Johnson says they cannot connect cause and effect (as with the endless wars, but in regard to NCLB’s schooling as well). Fickle to the core, they howled for Bush, abandoned him when things went wrong, then another bunch howled for Obama, and now we see a new crowd howling about health care--all leaping for thousands of forms of selfishness that keeps the war of all on all that is the system of capital alive and well.

Not recognizing the historical moment, rejecting the real whole of the situation, capitalism in decay everywhere, shatters analytical and strategic capability, meaning many people cannot tell left from right, muddle along looking for someone else to save us when no one but the collective Us is going to save us.

Those who are not angry and seething a bit these days may not be witnessing the ravages of war, hunger, unemployment, and unreason itself. The education agenda is a war agenda. The war agenda requires an education agenda: 49 million kids in school; many draft eligible.

Yup. We told them so. Big deal. Those who have not made a big mistake in life can be absolved. We are all lambs among wolves. But we do not have to be lambs among wolves if we recognize, and act on, the role of class consciousness.

Good luck to us, every one. Join Us!

Finance oligarchy captures US government; US government preps for civil unrest

[Cross-posted from Where the Blog Has No Name]

The conventional wisdom, to this point, has been that current economic crisis cannot be as bad as The Great Depression. Conventional wisdom is apparently changing.

Last week, renowned investor George Soros said the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.

Soros believes the current economic crisis has created more severe turbulence than the Great Depression and former Fed chairman Paul Volker, speaking at the same conference at Columbia University, agrees: "I don't remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world," Volcker said.

Referring to events in Septmeber 2008, when Lehman Brothers went under, Soros said, "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system. It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."

The bailout money is being abused in a number of ways, all of which recycle bailout cash back to corporate elites and the political class:

* Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has criticize AIG, not for using bailout cash to give huge bonuses to its executives, but for repaying, in full, its investment banking partners—steering additional federal dollars to Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase and others when they already were already being propped up by Washington.

* And, Newsweek reports that filings with the Federal Election Commission reveal that the political action committees of five big TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) recipients doled out $85,300 to members of Congress in the first two months of this year—with most of the cash going to those who serves on committees who oversee the TARP program. For example,

"Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels. Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOP Whip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG "counterparty."

But Spitzer and Newsweek are talking small potatoes compared to the Simon Johnson's assessment of the current economic crisis. In "The Quite Coup" (The Atlantic, March 2009), Johnson, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, says that that the finance industry has "effectively captured our government" not through violence or bribes (Abramoff and K Street notwithstanding), but

Instead, the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.

What we have is an ideological coup. The government quite clearly acting as the executive committee of the rich. Johnson explains why we have been been denied the pleasure of of seeing fat cats jumping out of Wall Street skyscrapers—the financial oligarchy remains in control, blocking essential reforms and continuing to push us toward the Greatest Depression.

Johnson's article is the most clearly reasoned, knowledgeable, and accessible piece I've read on root causes of the current crisis and he presents a "tried and true" strategy for solving it too—IMF shock therapy. He likens the U.S. economic and financial crisis to what has been seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets) like South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again).

In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn’t roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay. This is precisely what drove Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy on September 15, causing all sources of funding to the U.S. financial sector to dry up overnight. Just as in emerging-market crises, the weakness in the banking system has quickly rippled out into the rest of the economy, causing a severe economic contraction and hardship for millions of people.

The financiers who created the crisis with the able assistance of Wall Street alumni in government (particularly ex-Goldman Sachs executives who have been ensconced at the Treasury Department for multiple administrations) are now, according to Johnson, "using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them." Well, the financiers are the government.

For Johnson the two major, interrelated problems are the banking sector "that threatens to choke off any incipient recovery that the fiscal stimulus might generate" and "a political balance of power that gives the financial sector a veto over public policy, even as that sector loses popular support." On the former, he suggests the IMF's nationalization approach. On the latter, Johnson suggests replacing our current elites, with a new batch. Hmm.

While Johnson's analysis is compelling, his solutions, unsurprisingly, aren't—two scenarios: IMF approach solves the problem or catastrophic global depression smartens up the elites).

Meanwhile the US government moves forward to on plans to use the military to control civil unrest as a result of the collapsing economy, as legislation to establish internment camps on US military bases has been introduced into the House of Representatives.

Doesn't look to me like the finance oligarchy is planning to step down any time soon.

The Education Agenda is a War Agenda

See Rich Gibson's and Wayne Ross's essay on Znet: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20965.

As the economic crisis sparks upheaval globally, analysts fear possibility of class war in the USA

[Cross posted from Where the Blog Has No Name]

As global capitalism implodes there is has been a marked uptick in social upheaval worldwide and now establishment analysts are expressing their concerns about "class conflict" and "civil war" in the USA.

The Economic Meltdown Sparks Global Unrest

The financial crisis has sparked unrest globally and particularly across Europe, with demonstrations, strikes, and protests in 16 European countries. Here are a just a few examples:

• Tens of thousands of workers marched in Lisbon, Portugal on March 13 against the policies of the Socialist government, which unions say are increasing unemployment and favoring the rich at a time of crisis;


• Hundreds of workers at Bulgaria's Kremikovtzi steel mill protested on March 9 over planned lay-offs and unpaid salaries, demanding the Socialist-led government find a buyer for the insolvent plant; thousands of police officers marched in Sofia on Sunday to demand a 50 percent wage rise and better working conditions;


• In Greece, the fatal police shooting of a 15-year old in December sparked the country's worst riots in decades, fueled by anger at economic hardships and youth unemployment. Anarchists and left wing guerrilla groups have followed up with a wave of attacks against banks and police; Greek unions, representing about 2.5 million workers, have also staged repeated protests against the government saying its measures to tackle the global crisis only burden the poor;


• Last month over 100,000 people marched against cutbacks in Ireland.

High unemployment rates have led to protests in Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to strikes in Britain and France.

Last month, a half-million Mexican truckers shut down the countries highways to protest high fuel prices.

In December, Russian riot police busted up protests in Vladivostok against new taxes intended to "help prop up Russia's domestic car industry and prevent people buying cheaper, imported products." BBC reports that the protests were fuelled by the severe impact of the global economic crisis on Russia. According to Newsweek, "the Russian Interior Ministry set up a special command center in Moscow, packed with surveillance equipment designed to deal with street unrest. The Duma, on Kremlin instructions, added seven new articles to the criminal code including a law that makes "participating in mass disorders" such as the one in Vladivostok a 'crime against the state.'" 800,000 Russians lost their jobs in December and January, making the total number of unemployed more than 6 million or 8.1 percent. Gennady Gudkov, former KGB colonel and current chair of the Duma's security committee, said, "We are expecting mass unemployment and mass riots. There will be not enough police to stop people's protests by force."

There a have been massive general strikes in the French territories of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Réunion. The general strike in Guadeloupe prompted the French government to fly in riot police (Guadeloupe is a French "overseas department" in the Caribbean). And while the general strike lasted 6 weeks—it ended on March 4 with an agreement among the strike collective, the employers federation and local and French governments, which granted 20 of the strikers primary demands and set out negotiations on a long list of remaining issues—strikes and protests continue, involving tens of thousands of workers.

The agreement to end the Gaudeloupe strike , called the “Jacques Bino Accord”, identifies the underlying cause of discord as “the present economic and social situation existing in Guadeloupe [that] results from the perpetuation of the model of the plantation economy”. An economy “based on monopoly privileges and abuses of dominant positions that generate injustices.” The accord calls for an end to these obstacles “by establishing a new economic order enhancing the status of everyone and promoting new social relationships”.

Just as the general strike ended in Guadeloupe, social unrest over economic conditions spread to Réunion (a French "overseas department" in the Indian Ocean).

There is a definite pattern developing world wide. And now, US elites are starting to worry about what might happen if the American workers take action as a result of their frustrations with massive economic inequalities.

USA Prepares for Class War




In his latest monthly commentary (Mar. 15, 2009, Commentary No. 253), sociologist and world-systems analyst Immanuel Wallerstein discusses the breakdown of taboos as the world's economy continues to disintegrate.

He notes, for example, that "nationalization" of banks and industry is now being seriously discussed by establishment intellectuals and analysts such as Alan Greenspan, Senator Lindsay Graham, and economist Alan Blinder.

But Wallerstein's most dramatic example of the breakdown of taboos is the open discussion of the possibility of class war breaking out in the USA. Wallerstein says that "after hearing nationalization proposals by arch-conservative notables, we are now hearing serious discussions about the possibilities of civil war in the United States. Zbigniew Brzezinski, apostle of anti-Communist ideology and President Carter's National Security Advisor, appeared on a morning television talk show on February 17, and was asked to discuss his previous mention of the possibility of class conflict in the United States in the wake of the worldwide economic collapse."

In Brzezinski's interview with Joe Scarborough on MSNBC about his recently published book—America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy, co-authored with another former National Security Advisor (to Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush) Brent Scowcroft—Brezenzki was straightforward about the belief that class war in America is real possibility:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: You also talked about the possibility of class conflict.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I was worrying about it because we’re going to have millions and millions of unemployed, people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve. And at the same time there is public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America…And you sort of say to yourself: what’s going to happen in this society when these people are without jobs, when their families hurt, when they lose their homes, and so forth?

We have the government trying to repair: repair the banking system, to bail the housing out. But what about the rich guys? Where is it? [What are they] doing?

Brzezinski went on to compare the current economic meltdown to the "Panic of 1907":

It sort of struck me, that in 1907, when we had a massive banking crisis, when banks were beginning to collapse, there were going to be riots in the streets. Some financiers, led by J.P. Morgan, got together. He locked them in his library at one point. He wouldn’t let them out until 4:45 AM, until they all kicked in and gave some money to stabilize the banks: there was no Federal Reserve at the time.

Where is the monied class today? Why aren’t they doing something: the people who made billions, millions. I’m sort of thinking of Paulson, of Rubin [former treasury secretaries]. Why don’t they get together, and why don’t they organize a National Solidarity Fund in which they call on all of those who made these extraordinary amounts of money to kick some back in to [a] National Solidarity Fund?

Brzezinski continued saying,

"And if we don’t get some sort of voluntary National Solidarity Fund, at some point there’ll be such political pressure that Congress will start getting in the act, there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots!

Wallerstein points out that "almost simultaneously" LEAP/Europe a European agency that issues monthly confidential bulletins for its clients—politicians, public servants, businessmen, and investors—devoted its February issue to global geopolitical dislocation, discussing the possibility of civil war in Europe, in the United States, and Japan; and foreseeing a "generalized stampede" that will lead to clashes, semi-civil wars.

Wallerstein quotes the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin as saying:

"If your country or region is a zone in which there is a massive availability of guns, the best thing you can do...is to leave the region, if that's possible."

And Wallerstein also points out that, "the only one of these countries which meets the description of massively available guns is the United States. The head of LEAP/Europe, Franck Biancheri, noted that 'there are 200 million guns in circulation in the United States, and social violence is already manifest via gangs.' The experts who wrote the report asserted that there is already an ongoing emigration of Americans to Europe, because that is 'where physical danger will remain marginal.'"

Wallerstein emphases that "these analyses are not coming from left intellectuals or radical social movements.…Verbal taboos are broken only when such people are truly fearful. The point of breaking the taboos is to try to bring about major rapid action - the equivalent of J.P. Morgan locking the financiers in his home in 1907."

And US elites are obviously fearful enough to start planning for military responses to potential social upheaval as a result of the collapsing economy.

Last November, the US War College's Strategic Studies Institute posited a number of “strategic surprises” that the country should be prepared for, including potential for disruption and violence caused by the economy's failure. The report Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development, says “widespread civil violence inside the US would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.”

And now, for the first time ever, US military units are staged and are training inside the country to address civil unrest rising from inequality. The Army Times has reported on the US Northern Command's (NORTHCOM) deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Combat Brigade Team (BCT) on U.S. soil for "civil unrest" and "crowd control" duties. The 5,000-member force was one of first units deployed in Baghdad.

How Shall We Live as Lambs Among Wolves? Reason–Passion–Power and Organization. What to Do?

Click comment for the full text of this recent essay from Rich Gibson.

Test boycott! United Teachers of Los Angeles

See http://www.utla.net/pab for more info.

Excellent interview with the late Utah Phillips on Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2009/1/1

Fight Back Against Obamagogue's Latest Lie: War

Dear Friends,

Thanks to Adam for setting this up.

I hope the blog helps us spur discussion, especially within the SC. And it may make the RF Updates better too. I am planning to send a version of this out to the email list Sunday night. Anyone have anything they think should be added or deleted?

Below the RF update proposal is a letter to the NYTimes, which they probably will not print.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/us/politics/04military.html?emc=eta1
The US is not going to leave Iraq or any other oil region and the US ruling classes are fully prepared to try to make war forever over their collapsing empire, Note that war costs are not even being factored into the massive debt crisis the US now builds,

while liberals call for a full blown corporate state
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/saving-the-big-3-for-you_b_147970.html

And the UAW leadership begs to make more concessions
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/business/04auto.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
demonstrating that the union executives are a voice of employers in the workers's midst
http://clogic.eserver.org/2006/gibson.html

when the main lesson from thirty years of labor history is that concessions do not save jobs, rather like giving blood to sharks, bosses only want more,

Next in line are teachers and here we have a bellwether NEA local offering concessions right off the bat
http://mobile.washingtonpost.com/news.jsp?key=324055&rc=me

What we are witnessing is the rapid emergence of fascism as a worldwide popular force: class warfare everywhere hastened by imperialist war: http://www.richgibson.com/teachinOct2008.htm

It is possible to fight back but only if that resistance takes up the question of the system of capital itself as well as the impact of this crisis in schools where curricula regimentation, high stakes testing, and miltarization will intensify under Obama as that is what this social system requires---unless school workers, parents and kids develop the solidarity and good sense to fight; not starve.

All the best,

r
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/opinion/06ayers.html


Bill Ayers claims he was just another part of the anti-war movement and never killed anyone. Phooey. I am a former member of the Students for a Democratic Society, the largest student movement in US history and a radical yet today. The terrorist Weatherman sect destroyed SDS when, in 1969, they sought to replace a movement of people organizing for equality and peace with Ayers’ authoritarian mis-leadership and bombs. Before the biggest outpouring of student activism in the last century, the Weathermen demolished the SDS mailing list, leaving the movement with no center. They killed themselves and SDS. Weatherman was the “action-faction,”celebrating irrationalism, drugs, and exploitative sex, pandering to the peasant nationalism of the day. They opposed the radical, “going to the root,” of social problems. They held most people in the world in contempt. Then, Ayers was a liberal with explosives and hubris. Today, Ayer is a foundation-funded liberal: see Mayor Richard Dailey’s endorsement. There is no "new" Bill Ayers, as he claims. He opposed a mass based class conscious movement for equality and freedom then, and opposes it now. Those of us who fought the Weathermen in SDS, and who did not abandon the grassroots struggle for worldwide justice, know him for what he is. That Ayers clearly backed the liberal Obama, who promises wider wars, and bailouts to the rich, is no surprise.

Dr Rich Gibson
Emeritus Professor
San Diego State University

Eyes wide open; spirit fully engaged; hands ready for the work: On turning points and new (unwritten) chapters?

I couldn’t resist an opportunity to check in and challenge us as the first decade of the new millennium winds down; as the shocks that characterize it amplify: militarism, standardization, genocide, economic disenfranchisement, et al; as a president of color (finally) takes office; and as neoliberalism begins to flame out, helping many more see its impossibility as economic policy and offering the US (and the world) a choice of one of two directions: fascism and authoritarianism or humanism and democracy.

In many ways this essay, this riff, this stream concludes a series of essays I’ve posted since our last trip to the Global South. In these essays, I imperfectly raised issues of economics, social difference, education, and religion. (Click on any of the links to peruse these essays; education probably the more important of any of the four.) More recently, I offered an essay on violence, which I am revising and will post soon at pucknation dot com. Whether or not you have been privy to these earlier essays, I offer this final one as a way forward—possible turning points and new (unwritten) chapters—for your consideration and critique.

Keep writing in the dark: / a record of the night, or / words that pulled you from depths of unknowing / words that flew through your mind, strange birds / crying their urgency with human voices (Denise Levertov, Writing in the Dark)[1]
Since I realized a more critical consciousness was possible and necessary (when I began graduate school in 1996), I have consistently attempted to reconcile this consciousness and understanding of theory with more critical and constructive practice. Often, this has happened pedagogically, using the classroom as a sort of laboratory. But, it has also unfolded more concretely in my engagement with the world outside (the often times insular) school walls. At my (imperfect) best, I have sought to share this evolutionary reconciliation, openly—always coming to more critical consciousness and constructive practice based on your critique, questions, and nuance. I learned this praxis from many of you to whom I write. And, it has been energizing to see others engage this evolutionary praxis as a result of my teaching and learning with them/you. So, it is with this spirit that I offer what follows. Five, ten, twenty years from now we will return to these reflections and note how far we have no doubt traveled beyond these elementary considerations. Nonetheless, I present them as a marker to be imbibed, transgressed, and developed.

As we move ahead, I want to urge you to consider joining the work of the Rouge Forum. I want to encourage connecting to a broader national coalition with international possibilities and implications. This larger, connected body has an even better shot at confronting standardization, militarization, and the coming recession/depression with reason and passion.

Recently, I have accepted a post within the RF as the virtual community organizer, attempting to connect the various constituents within the Rouge Forum toward resistance of the above, as well as helping others launch a number of new and continuing projects, including: an edited text on more humanizing curricula, our annual conference (this year in Ypsilanti at EMU: see http://www.therougeforumconference.org/ for more details, and the following essay from Rich Gibson for some more background: http://richgibson.com/eeeecrossroads.html), a print edition of the RF News, etc. Simultaneous to this work, there are also some interesting stirrings emerging from the southwest relative to the formation of an institute for social justice, which may provide an apt space for education, training, and action. Finally, our work in the Global South continues to evolve with more critical possibilities, providing one of many potential international satellites for this work. More to come, for sure. In any event, my encouragement is to seek out this broader community, this wider theoretical agenda, and this growing movement for resistance and transformation.

Seeing usually / was a matter of what was / in front of my eyes / matching what was / behind my brain (Audre Lorde, Contact Lenses)
In the previous dispatches noted above I made several conclusions, pulling from recently read work and drawing upon ongoing discussions. I suggested paths that induce agency and/or demythologize reality, recognizing that roads which go through organized religion are often counter-revolutionary. I noted, simply, the need to collectively organize and become conscious, wrestling with our socialization/indoctrination/domestication, choosing to become political agents of hope, and recognizing education as a tool for domination by the rich). I pulled from Paul Farmer’s concept of “pragmatic solidarity,” highlighting that our words of concern must be matched by on-the-ground work that represents a “being with” not just a “talking about.” I also tried to wrap my head around Gustavo Gutierrez’s notion of a “permanent cultural revolution” in which our process motivates us to struggle against all the forces that oppress humankind. As well, related to process, I consistently attempted to recycle Rebecca Solnit’s ideas regarding “moments of creation” and “the politics of prefiguration.” Finally, I have tried to keep Milton’s concepts of “voice and visibility” in front of us, helping to re-imagine the struggle and to re-define what the terms of victory might, instead, look like.

Now my eyes have become / a part of me exposed / quick risky and open / to all the same dangers (Audre Lorde, Contact Lenses)
These considerations, of course, remain at play. We can use and reuse them in a recursive and reflective turn to make sense of our work. And, they can help launch us into renewed action. I consider, also, a few more concepts which may illuminate a way forward. Michael Lebowitz, very much considering a socialism for the 21st century, talks of the “revolution of radical needs”—that is, the interplay of self-change and systemic change. As well, he proffers a “democracy as protagonism,” which is a democracy of people who are transforming themselves into revolutionary subjects. In this way, then, we must conceive of history differently—not only as a “totality” (something our education fails to give us), but as something constantly to be written and re-written, lived not in the past but in the present as we imagine a future. In this history-in-the-making, then, we constantly make and re-make ourselves as subjects impacting this record rather than as objects dictated to by someone else’s narrative.

A few concrete projects may help cement the point:

For those of us who have been and are involved with the work in the Global South, this work has been an evolutionary process ( which Gina and I highlight here: http://www.richgibson.com/rouge_forum/2008/decadework.htm). Most of its history, certainly, is yet to be written. As we seek to launch a second decade of work there, many of us feel as though we have just gotten started and finally have a firmly articulated foundation which will help us implement new critical literacy initiatives with our ongoing partners as well as (hopeful) new partners. This process of reading the word and our worlds more critically will lead to a deeper consciousness, hopefully, on both sides. However, beyond the potentially reciprocal nature of this process, our desire is that the process actually become a generative one in which unimagined possibilities will emerge, conjointly and solidaristically, and from which an entirely new history—a new chapter—may take root. As well, we continue to envisage a more critical medical partnership, launched from a premise that health care is a human right. And, we continue to attempt contact with progressive movements within Jamaica, such as the International School of Bottom-Up Organizing, in order to partner and be led by grassroots groups within Jamaica.

More local to Louisville, work with the Volunteers of America Family Shelter continues into a seventh year. This winter season we’ll share in a fifth annual holiday celebration and next semester, with some new and former students, we’ll launch yet another partnership with the shelter. As I’ve written in the past, Louisville has a mostly unreported problem with poverty (a ranking of 3rd in the nation in concentrated poverty as well as a population of 7500 children who qualify as homeless, 8% of the total student population, attending its public schools). This issue of poverty and homelessness will only worsen given the economic downturn. While several of us have continued to raise awareness related to homelessness locally, nationally, and internationally through shantytown actions and ongoing service to this and other shelters, we still have miles to go—shifting from social service to social change. But, like the history of our work in the Global South, this partnership with VOA is a history-in-the-making—never quite certain when we may reach a turning point. So, we struggle on, making more critical sense of poverty and its root cause (capitalism), connecting our lives to those impacted by the inevitability of this system, and working together.

Even more local to many of our lives, several of us are taking this work to our classrooms in both university and K-12 environments. Even amidst rabid standardization, school to military/prison pipelines, and growing irrationalism (mysticism like Creationism taught in science classes), there are teachers doing the front line work of helping produce more revolutionary subjects. This work, as we know, is difficult because we as teachers must constantly re-educate ourselves based upon the mis-education we received for most of our lives. As well, we are consistently attempting to dislodge our consciousness from the slick socialization of a capitalist culture that attempts to turn us into unthinking consumers of our societal trappings. Though they attempt to keep us separate from each other, we must continually strive to ‘get together’: developing our own professional learning communities, making our unions work for us instead of for those who intend to oppress us, and taking action where prudent and necessary. We must continue to grow this mass base of front line workers who Rich characterizes as existing at the choke point of capital’s system. We have power. We need to harness it and be strategic in its use. This will lead to a turning point.

Aside from these particular projects or progressive pedagogical potentials, I know that each of us are also involved in several other projects and actions: from study groups to site-based decision-making bodies to community organizations. Where possible we need to link our actions. Resistive movements must be linked in order to mount the necessary action to overturn the status quo. We must make the time to seek out the intersections and, more importantly, engage these more conscious constituencies toward ameliorative action.

I think one rubric, under which we could connect this action is through the Rouge Forum, as it attempts to connect classrooms across the country in a more global attempt to resist standardization, militarism, and irrationalism. While there are a multiplicity of ways to formulate a calculus of resistance and hope, the Rouge Forum as only one such formulation, it seems as though we must get strategic, savvy, and together, as quickly as possible. While the symbolic hope of an Obama presidency has brought a certain suasion to some, we must know that our work today is the same as it was yesterday. What is most hopeful about Obama’s election is that folks demonstrated that they could still get together. The task for getting together for an electoral victory may be easier than getting together for systemic change, but folks got together, nonetheless. We know that improvements will be slight, if at all, since the rich still run the country/world. So, we must keep an objective reality clearly in focus. And, we must get about the business of mounting a commensurate resistance to the oppositional force that seeks to dominate truth and liberty, demolish hope, and dehumanize.

The killings continue, each second / pain and misfortune extend themselves/ in the genetic chain, injustice is done knowingly, and the air / bears the dust of decayed hopes (Denise Levertov, City Psalm)
We have choices to make. What Rich, Milton et al help to continue to remind us is that these choices are moral and ethical ones. These choices can point us toward what is right, humanizing, and just. And, we must think of it as a choice. This is a decision. To not make a choice for what is right, or to delay, or to remain silent, is to cast a vote for further oppression, marginalization, and disenfranchisement. To not consider it a choice, given our exposure, is to denigrate the legacy of resistors who have historically struggled for what was right, to find the right side of history. With a modicum of exposure to issues of injustice, everyone has always had a choice. Many, of course, have chosen the wrong side of history. Usually, it is the privileged that make this particular choice. And, we are also the ones who often sit, indignantly, with our perfect hindsight, castigating our less than enlightened forebears who chose slavery, who chose Jim Crow, who chose child labor, who chose the witch hunts, who chose to maintain a massive underclass to support our lifestyles. Aren’t these the same choices we have before us today? How will our posterity judge us? More importantly, how do those currently tread upon by the system judge us—the present-day privileged with our luxury of ‘choice’?

As I’ve noted quite ineloquently in the past, we need a massive systemic enema. I believe we are either working toward that or against that. Working toward that takes on many (imperfect) forms, but it must (inarguably) involve solidarity with other brothers and sisters who choose to struggle; it must (unquestionably) involve our self-change as we work toward and are informed by systemic change; and it must (at the very least) involve our voice—however shaky or initially soft—challenging the system. The oppositional force we face is strong. The only way to turn it is to mount a commensurate resistance that will eventually overcome this force. History tells us this is possible. This is, actually, the history to which we can contribute. But, we will have to choose to become producers of meaning rather than consumers of someone else’s propaganda. We will have to choose to become organic intellectuals rather than technicians for the empire. We will have to choose to become democratic and humanizing mechanisms for revolution and liberation rather than unconscious tools for the rich. I realize I am largely preaching to the choir, here. So, I look forward to the way we might make these choices together.

It is better to speak / knowing / we were never meant to survive (Audre Lorde, Litany for survival)

Or

The choice to speak / or not to speak. / We spoke. (Denise Levertov, Protestors)
The recipe for what we do is simple, involving three interactive and interdependent parts—something Milton and I have been messing with going on three years now. It necessarily involves both practical and reflective work. And, it involves commitment to its exercise and evolution. It is also not perfect, nor divine or dogmatic. Therefore, it involves the need for your reaction and voice. Only together can we get it right.

We must work together: community. This necessitates a movement toward each other, a tendency to privilege the collective over the individual, and an attitude of affirmation and critical constructiveness. Whenever possible, we have to think about how we can accomplish our tasks together—how could the PrESS Network help with this? What kind of resources might the Rouge Forum have? What other organization is also working on this issue?. We must consider who we trust and what side we want to take. We must see that our liberation and humanization is bound up and only possible in the liberation and humanization of others. We all know the ways we can better get together. We all know the commitment this will take. We know the in-the-moment decisions this will take as well as the long-term planning this will incorporate. There is no mystery to this work. It really just requires us to do it: to get together, to avoid our self-isolating tendencies brought about by narratives of competition or a socialization toward selfishness, and to be in solidarity against what is irrational, apathetic, and oppressive. In this way we renew our commitment to democracy; we focus on process and the evolution of relationships; and we believe we cannot be free until others are free.

Along with coming together, we must continue to wrestle with consciousness. We must continue to learn and relearn history, particularly alternative histories. If we don’t know where we’ve been, we can’t possibly know where we are or where to go. We must come to a clearer understanding of reality, particularly material reality which illuminates for us the very real disenfranchisement of billions of people. Recently, Gina, Sonya, Milton and I produced an essay we sent to Intercultural Education about the possibility of realizing a more reciprocal global education—particularly through our work in Jamaica. In this essay, which is contextualized against a backdrop of accelerating dehumanizing trends in our culture, Milton wove an intricate history which elucidates the formation and intimate interactions of patriarchy, racism, and Capitalism. Prior to our collaboration, I had been ignorant to much of the history he pulled from, offering a new moment of creation for me and providing a more critical conceptualization of the way I go about my own work. As the media-ting and socializing forces urge us to act in dehumanizing ways: getting dumber in front of TVs that conjure ‘reality’; purchasing products with plastic for which payment is a future, more costly, proposition; consuming commodities that we know were sown by or picked by the world’s poorest; we ultimately do so at our own peril. And, as we allow education to be dictated by the dogmatic divinations of the ruling elite, we sacrifice another generation of children to its grand delusion and doublespeak of ‘great equalizer’. Though we must be critical and strategic with the revelation and dialogical evolution of a different reality, we wait with great cost. So, we must get together, challenge our consciousness, and figure out the next move.

Finally, we will need to speak and act with courage. To move against the grain will require immense boldness and perhaps a little bit of counter-intuition (depending on the grip of our individual socialization). Audre Lorde and Denise Levertov capture it well above, I think. In the prior lines to Lorde’s conclusion, she enlists all the reasons we are typically afraid, even when silent. So, she suggests, why not speak? And, Levertov, helping provide a theme throughout this essay proposes that it comes down to choice. We can remain silent. Or, we can use our voice and speak. And, these voices must become a chorus. They should not be whimsical solo acts (though we may find, at times and in certain circumstances, that we are the lone voice). That voice should harmoniously resound alongside the historical echoes of others singing the same melody. The ready words are formed through conscious struggle and tireless practice in our shared communities. Those who speak are informed by movements which are driven by diligent study and liberating praxis. So, we get together to challenge each other toward a deeper consciousness. This challenge, then, offers the possibility of developing more critical, collaborative, and nuanced scripts—always ready to be shared and spoken, deconstructed and developed further, if necessary.

I recognize these are fairly elementary considerations and I’ve not said much that is new. I also recognize that I struggle with these reflections. That I find myself firmly implanted in a middle-class lifestyle and have become a poster-child of Paul Kivel’s “buffer zone” agents, signals that I have a long way to go toward consciousness and liberation. That I notice the hypocritical tendencies for which my practice does not match the theory I want to espouse, highlights the possibility that I may be closer to a turning point. That I more often make decisions which recognize that I have choice and agency in the matter, offers hope. That I seek out others with whom to share the work and figure out the process, presages a new chapter for the struggle—the chapter that we write as a community.

Eyes wide open; spirit fully engaged; hands ready for the work.

[1] Thanks, Gina, for bringing us this poetry and constantly providing us the metaphors to make more critical sense of our reality!