The latest issue of the Rouge Forum News is available here as a pdf.
Thanks to Adam Renner, the editor of the Rouge Forum News, and all the contributors for making RFN #15 the best issue yet!
15 December 2009
Rouge Forum News #15
The latest issue of the Rouge Forum News is available here as a pdf.
Thanks to Adam Renner, the editor of the Rouge Forum News, and all the contributors for making RFN #15 the best issue yet!
13 December 2009
A Winter Reflection
In its more than decade of existence, the Rouge Forum has attempted to contribute to the conversation on social justice within national organizations, in union halls, in K-12 schools, in colleges/universities, at work places, and in community organizations. It has attempted to bring a reasoned analysis to contemporary issues using an historical lens, a sense of the total, and, often, pedagogical strategies. It has produced an appreciable amount of scholarship among its members—sometimes award winning scholarship—and has among its membership winners of academic freedom awards.
Undoubtedly, the Rouge Forum has become a relevant voice for social justice, particularly related to education. We hope to amplify that voice and continue to develop its relevance in the days to come. Recent events, tethered to their historical predecessors, indicate there is little time to dither.
One of the best things about the Rouge Forum, particularly those who have been able to take part in conferences and joint actions, is the sense of community. My partner and I remarked a few years ago at the conference in Detroit that we felt like we were home. We were among comrades who, while we didn’t agree on everything, seemed to have a congruent idea that things need to change and a relatively common idea of what that might look like. We could at least outline the picture.
Times together, such as these, assure us we are not crazy—that another world is not only necessary, but possible. Our work is continuing to figure out how we support one another, how we can have a voice in our particular locations, and how we craft and apply a vision of what is more just, more human, and right. Community. Voice. Vision. Connect reason to power, as Rich would say. Go.
And in that go-ing, we need sustenance for the journey—sustenance in the form of community and consciousness (ever-deepening, ever-evolving), but also hope. The hope I/we suggest is not naïve hope. It is hope grounded in struggle, connected to others. It is hope that is participatory. It becomes the essence of who we are. It is a politics of prefiguration that suggests if we want democracy and we want justice, then our actions, to the extent possible, will need to bear these out. It is to understand the journey/struggle not as precise, but as punctuations of imperfections, of hypocrisies that bring us back to the start, such that we can begin again.
This idea of the politics of prefiguration is espoused by a thoughtful theorist on hope: Rebecca Solnit. Her text, Hope in the Dark, pushed me to find hope in the struggle—in fact, catapulting me into that struggle. Solnit has enlivened that sense again in her recent essay in TomDispatch: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175168/tomgram:__rebecca_solnit,_writing_history_in_the_streets/, entitled Learning how to Count to 350. Re-citing a history of action in the streets and reasons to hope (in the face of all the reasons to despair), Solnit suggests, "To survive the coming era, we need to re-imagine what constitutes wealth and well-being and what constitutes poverty." Considering the dismal performance of communism in the 20th century (often more totalitarian and capitalist than liberatory) and the fact that global capitalism was brought to its knees last year, she suggests we've got work to do to (re)imagine the world.
And, we—that is, people of conscience—must occupy that void. Else, something else will. The steel-toed rhythm can be heard goose-stepping just inside the ear's horizon. I submit we'll need to step into that space sooner than later.
I'll see you at the barricades.
We'll have to resist what is more than likely coming next—find a voice, speak truth to power, take to the streets, take over a building. Escalate. Extending Rich’s metaphor from earlier work, we lambs look good to the wolves who regroup in the penthouses of their nearby woods (whose fuel is nearly spent) and in the corporate board rooms overlooking ever-drying creeks (more parts pollution than potable). They're finished buying what we have, as how much more cheaply can our labor power be had? Now, they plan to just take it (see: http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html).
And, they will use a god to convince you they are right. They will call on him, attempting to scheme us into doing the same (a little deposit of flesh now, and your children's flesh, for an eternity of made-up bed time stories, "Now I Iay me down to sleep....").
I'll keep my soul, whatever is left of it, thank you very much.
I'm looking, instead, for what Solnit calls a moment of creation—moments for which democracy, social justice, creativity, freedom, take one step forward.
Solnit is good at flipping the script, looking at the underside of the paper and seeing the scribbling of possibility. What she submits is an alternative read to the corporate media prophets (or is that profits?). We would do well to listen. Hers is not a naïve re-rendering or postmodern apologetics. My take is that Solnit’s proposition is grounded in the real. The alteration takes into account the work that is being done, often diminished by our popular discourse and corporate media. This alternative understanding helps us realize that others are struggling, voices are shouting, a history of resistance leads us to this moment of possibility.
Revolutionary praxis remains our guide: the simultaneity and dialectic of self change and the changing of society.
We should understand what it's going to take for that moment of creation. Those moments: when we realize the politics of divide and conquer have gotten the best of us (color/class/gender/sexuality-coded inequalities); when we realize that we that we are killing others (bought and paid for bombs with our signature on them), killing babies, mothers, difference with our own babies barely able to know differently in capital's schools (the militarization of schools); when we realize that our knowledge has been regulated by corporate interests to keep us docile and ignorant (high-stakes testing) in order to prepare us for jobs we will more than likely hate (alienation) so we will seek pleasure in (fetishize) commodities, that is, things, and our social relations will be mediated by reality TV and video games.
Try Wendell Berry’s recent poem on for size at your upcoming holiday celebration to bring the above into sharp relief: http://everydayliturgy.com/blogs/thomas/questionnaire-by-wendell-berry. You may not be invited back (which may or may not be a bad thing…)
When we recognize these issues as material reality, a moment will emerge. A moment (consciousness grounded in the real) that must lead to another moment (courage to change) in which we will need to figure out how to live differently (protest, resistance, occupation, freedom schools, sustainable living, new solidarities). Moments in which we own our labor power: the free development of each creates the conditions for the free development of all, since we will all recognize our interdependence and the strength of our difference.
More than likely, these moments will blur--because the barricades will not only be in the streets, but they will be in our work places, in our schools, in our churches, in our homes, in our community centers. Consciousness will merge with courage will merge with consciousness will merge with a more materialist understanding of reality, which will lead to how we can re-imagine wealth, well-being and poverty in the coming era.
We must. The wolves are hungry.
But, the lambs are plentiful. And, we will realize that we far outnumber the wolves when conscious because we will see and do differently.
When we see differently, we won't be divided so easily. When we see differently, we won't abide by mystical explanations of injustice; we will see it for what it is. When we see differently, we’ll stop looking at the deadness of the center and instead explore the possibility at the periphery. When we see differently we won't believe the mythology of national holidays intended to white-wash history and to, more importantly, mark the beginning of a new holiday season of debt and guilt built by the capitalists. Just look on the rez. How did Thanksgiving work out for those who welcomed the newcomers? Can we call it what it is, please: a celebration of genocide. And, we are still killing them (see the December, 2009, Harper’s Magazine article about life on the modern reservation). Christmas could use an RF News issue all its own…
When we see differently, we will note the possibility of solidarity born in moments of creation where we understand richness as fullness (of life and community), in the bread broken amidst laughter AND tears, in the totality discovered, in one more sunrise.
The Rouge Forum seeks this fullness.
Struggle. We must. Eyes open. Spirit fully engaged. Hands ready for the work.
See you at the barricades…
Undoubtedly, the Rouge Forum has become a relevant voice for social justice, particularly related to education. We hope to amplify that voice and continue to develop its relevance in the days to come. Recent events, tethered to their historical predecessors, indicate there is little time to dither.
One of the best things about the Rouge Forum, particularly those who have been able to take part in conferences and joint actions, is the sense of community. My partner and I remarked a few years ago at the conference in Detroit that we felt like we were home. We were among comrades who, while we didn’t agree on everything, seemed to have a congruent idea that things need to change and a relatively common idea of what that might look like. We could at least outline the picture.
Times together, such as these, assure us we are not crazy—that another world is not only necessary, but possible. Our work is continuing to figure out how we support one another, how we can have a voice in our particular locations, and how we craft and apply a vision of what is more just, more human, and right. Community. Voice. Vision. Connect reason to power, as Rich would say. Go.
And in that go-ing, we need sustenance for the journey—sustenance in the form of community and consciousness (ever-deepening, ever-evolving), but also hope. The hope I/we suggest is not naïve hope. It is hope grounded in struggle, connected to others. It is hope that is participatory. It becomes the essence of who we are. It is a politics of prefiguration that suggests if we want democracy and we want justice, then our actions, to the extent possible, will need to bear these out. It is to understand the journey/struggle not as precise, but as punctuations of imperfections, of hypocrisies that bring us back to the start, such that we can begin again.
This idea of the politics of prefiguration is espoused by a thoughtful theorist on hope: Rebecca Solnit. Her text, Hope in the Dark, pushed me to find hope in the struggle—in fact, catapulting me into that struggle. Solnit has enlivened that sense again in her recent essay in TomDispatch: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175168/tomgram:__rebecca_solnit,_writing_history_in_the_streets/, entitled Learning how to Count to 350. Re-citing a history of action in the streets and reasons to hope (in the face of all the reasons to despair), Solnit suggests, "To survive the coming era, we need to re-imagine what constitutes wealth and well-being and what constitutes poverty." Considering the dismal performance of communism in the 20th century (often more totalitarian and capitalist than liberatory) and the fact that global capitalism was brought to its knees last year, she suggests we've got work to do to (re)imagine the world.
And, we—that is, people of conscience—must occupy that void. Else, something else will. The steel-toed rhythm can be heard goose-stepping just inside the ear's horizon. I submit we'll need to step into that space sooner than later.
I'll see you at the barricades.
We'll have to resist what is more than likely coming next—find a voice, speak truth to power, take to the streets, take over a building. Escalate. Extending Rich’s metaphor from earlier work, we lambs look good to the wolves who regroup in the penthouses of their nearby woods (whose fuel is nearly spent) and in the corporate board rooms overlooking ever-drying creeks (more parts pollution than potable). They're finished buying what we have, as how much more cheaply can our labor power be had? Now, they plan to just take it (see: http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html).
And, they will use a god to convince you they are right. They will call on him, attempting to scheme us into doing the same (a little deposit of flesh now, and your children's flesh, for an eternity of made-up bed time stories, "Now I Iay me down to sleep....").
I'll keep my soul, whatever is left of it, thank you very much.
I'm looking, instead, for what Solnit calls a moment of creation—moments for which democracy, social justice, creativity, freedom, take one step forward.
Solnit is good at flipping the script, looking at the underside of the paper and seeing the scribbling of possibility. What she submits is an alternative read to the corporate media prophets (or is that profits?). We would do well to listen. Hers is not a naïve re-rendering or postmodern apologetics. My take is that Solnit’s proposition is grounded in the real. The alteration takes into account the work that is being done, often diminished by our popular discourse and corporate media. This alternative understanding helps us realize that others are struggling, voices are shouting, a history of resistance leads us to this moment of possibility.
Revolutionary praxis remains our guide: the simultaneity and dialectic of self change and the changing of society.
We should understand what it's going to take for that moment of creation. Those moments: when we realize the politics of divide and conquer have gotten the best of us (color/class/gender/sexuality-coded inequalities); when we realize that we that we are killing others (bought and paid for bombs with our signature on them), killing babies, mothers, difference with our own babies barely able to know differently in capital's schools (the militarization of schools); when we realize that our knowledge has been regulated by corporate interests to keep us docile and ignorant (high-stakes testing) in order to prepare us for jobs we will more than likely hate (alienation) so we will seek pleasure in (fetishize) commodities, that is, things, and our social relations will be mediated by reality TV and video games.
Try Wendell Berry’s recent poem on for size at your upcoming holiday celebration to bring the above into sharp relief: http://everydayliturgy.com/blogs/thomas/questionnaire-by-wendell-berry. You may not be invited back (which may or may not be a bad thing…)
When we recognize these issues as material reality, a moment will emerge. A moment (consciousness grounded in the real) that must lead to another moment (courage to change) in which we will need to figure out how to live differently (protest, resistance, occupation, freedom schools, sustainable living, new solidarities). Moments in which we own our labor power: the free development of each creates the conditions for the free development of all, since we will all recognize our interdependence and the strength of our difference.
More than likely, these moments will blur--because the barricades will not only be in the streets, but they will be in our work places, in our schools, in our churches, in our homes, in our community centers. Consciousness will merge with courage will merge with consciousness will merge with a more materialist understanding of reality, which will lead to how we can re-imagine wealth, well-being and poverty in the coming era.
We must. The wolves are hungry.
But, the lambs are plentiful. And, we will realize that we far outnumber the wolves when conscious because we will see and do differently.
When we see differently, we won't be divided so easily. When we see differently, we won't abide by mystical explanations of injustice; we will see it for what it is. When we see differently, we’ll stop looking at the deadness of the center and instead explore the possibility at the periphery. When we see differently we won't believe the mythology of national holidays intended to white-wash history and to, more importantly, mark the beginning of a new holiday season of debt and guilt built by the capitalists. Just look on the rez. How did Thanksgiving work out for those who welcomed the newcomers? Can we call it what it is, please: a celebration of genocide. And, we are still killing them (see the December, 2009, Harper’s Magazine article about life on the modern reservation). Christmas could use an RF News issue all its own…
When we see differently, we will note the possibility of solidarity born in moments of creation where we understand richness as fullness (of life and community), in the bread broken amidst laughter AND tears, in the totality discovered, in one more sunrise.
The Rouge Forum seeks this fullness.
Struggle. We must. Eyes open. Spirit fully engaged. Hands ready for the work.
See you at the barricades…
07 December 2009
Rouge Forum Update--from Rich
Dear Friends,
www.richgibson.com/blog
Check the link above but note that Detroit may be the next centerpiece for education struggles soon. The Detroit Federation of Teachers bosses signed a tentative agreement (TA) with the Broad Foundation’s Detroit Financial Manager, Bob Bobb who now runs the system, that offers DPS $500 a month from each teacher’s check, or $10,000 a year, to be paid back as a no-interest loan when the teacher quits the system. With about 7000 school workers in DPS (not all classroom teachers), paying the dun for 2 1/2 years of the 3 year contract, that’s a $105 million no-interest loan to a school system that claimed it needed about $40 million in concessions from the school workers. More, DPS claims its on the brink of bankruptcy, which would likely dissolve the debt to educators.
The TA also includes huge give-backs in insurances (eliminating Blue Cross), merit pay, teachers evaluating teachers, and worse.
The contract language is murky on what looks like a union bracero program, selling the labor of members to DPS with a specious promise of repayment on the “loan,” (blackmail for a job).
The TA is here: http://mi.aft.org/dft231/ although in the past members have complained about not being told of the full measure of TA’s.In a meeting of about 2500 of the DFT members at Cobo Hall on Sunday, most rank and filers agreed that 90% plus rose to oppose the TA that was bargained behind their backs, involving the top national leadership of the AFT, like President Randi Weingarten.
No group of organized educators has been on strike in the last decade more than DFT rank and filers who led a huge wildcat strike, against their union, against the law, and against the employer–and they made gains.But today the DFT is relatively isolated. The union leadership stayed silent in the face of massive corruption and incompetence that infected nearly every aspect of Detroit school life. Citizens turned against the system as a whole.
When Broad’s Bobb arrived, citizens applauded as he rooted out the more obvious small time crooks in the system, but he left aside the contractors who looted the public by stealing millions in no-bid contract during the five year period of the Takeover Board, when the governor wiped out the elected board and replaced them with, mostly, suburban auto execs from the failing Big Three. The Takeover Board left DPS at least $40 million in debt.
Now, there are at least 10 newly built schools that sit empty and stripped of everything of value, schools that were built in the Takeover period–in a system that loses 12,000 students a year.
Bobb “won” a new $500 million bond issue to build more new schools by a 2/3 majority this fall, indicating his newly won clout, and his ability to syphon off more money from a system that claims it will build new schools, but demands blackmail payments from teachers. Bobb has already pulled out millions on no-bid offers to cronies in Broad related companies.
The DFT’s sellout Tentative Agreement will appear in urban bargaining tables everywhere next year, if DPS gets away with this. An injury to one really will go before an injury to all.Every expression of solidarity in opposition to this TA will matter. More, suburban MEA members need to unite with the DFT rank and file, join with parents and kids to create enough educational civil strife that drives the DFT bosses back to the bargaining table, forces them to report out a TA that makes gains, not concessions.
No union is ideologically or structurally prepared to take on the battles ahead–why we formed the Rouge Forum a decade ago.
When they say “Cutback,” We say “Fight Back!”
There is MUCH MORE on the blog linked above.
Good luck to us, every one.
r
www.richgibson.com/blog
Check the link above but note that Detroit may be the next centerpiece for education struggles soon. The Detroit Federation of Teachers bosses signed a tentative agreement (TA) with the Broad Foundation’s Detroit Financial Manager, Bob Bobb who now runs the system, that offers DPS $500 a month from each teacher’s check, or $10,000 a year, to be paid back as a no-interest loan when the teacher quits the system. With about 7000 school workers in DPS (not all classroom teachers), paying the dun for 2 1/2 years of the 3 year contract, that’s a $105 million no-interest loan to a school system that claimed it needed about $40 million in concessions from the school workers. More, DPS claims its on the brink of bankruptcy, which would likely dissolve the debt to educators.
The TA also includes huge give-backs in insurances (eliminating Blue Cross), merit pay, teachers evaluating teachers, and worse.
The contract language is murky on what looks like a union bracero program, selling the labor of members to DPS with a specious promise of repayment on the “loan,” (blackmail for a job).
The TA is here: http://mi.aft.org/dft231/ although in the past members have complained about not being told of the full measure of TA’s.In a meeting of about 2500 of the DFT members at Cobo Hall on Sunday, most rank and filers agreed that 90% plus rose to oppose the TA that was bargained behind their backs, involving the top national leadership of the AFT, like President Randi Weingarten.
No group of organized educators has been on strike in the last decade more than DFT rank and filers who led a huge wildcat strike, against their union, against the law, and against the employer–and they made gains.But today the DFT is relatively isolated. The union leadership stayed silent in the face of massive corruption and incompetence that infected nearly every aspect of Detroit school life. Citizens turned against the system as a whole.
When Broad’s Bobb arrived, citizens applauded as he rooted out the more obvious small time crooks in the system, but he left aside the contractors who looted the public by stealing millions in no-bid contract during the five year period of the Takeover Board, when the governor wiped out the elected board and replaced them with, mostly, suburban auto execs from the failing Big Three. The Takeover Board left DPS at least $40 million in debt.
Now, there are at least 10 newly built schools that sit empty and stripped of everything of value, schools that were built in the Takeover period–in a system that loses 12,000 students a year.
Bobb “won” a new $500 million bond issue to build more new schools by a 2/3 majority this fall, indicating his newly won clout, and his ability to syphon off more money from a system that claims it will build new schools, but demands blackmail payments from teachers. Bobb has already pulled out millions on no-bid offers to cronies in Broad related companies.
The DFT’s sellout Tentative Agreement will appear in urban bargaining tables everywhere next year, if DPS gets away with this. An injury to one really will go before an injury to all.Every expression of solidarity in opposition to this TA will matter. More, suburban MEA members need to unite with the DFT rank and file, join with parents and kids to create enough educational civil strife that drives the DFT bosses back to the bargaining table, forces them to report out a TA that makes gains, not concessions.
No union is ideologically or structurally prepared to take on the battles ahead–why we formed the Rouge Forum a decade ago.
When they say “Cutback,” We say “Fight Back!”
There is MUCH MORE on the blog linked above.
Good luck to us, every one.
r
30 November 2009
Rouge Forum Update--from Rich
The MORAL LAW causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger. Sun Tzu
Dear Friends,
There have been at least 16 occupations seeking to rescue education from the ruling classes in California this month, and more to come. UC Irvine next. Germany, Austria, and France also witnessed fight-backs coming from united students and workers.
To date, the only organized school voice in the US that recognizes the current crises as class war is the Rouge Forum–which may speak well for us, or not so well for others who, so far, hold onto wisps of unfounded hope made up of the shreds of democracy and citizenship in the USA.
The direct action occupations and the defenders outside the buildings up the ante for thought and action in schools and in the streets, demonstrating the violence behind capitalist democracy; overcoming the alienated notion that people other than us will save us.
On the Education Agenda is a Class War Agenda Front: Video: UC Berkeley Occupation and Cop Attack: “This university has no moral legitimacy at all…just violence.” And segment of comment from Susan Harman on the scene, “students we talked to who’d been inside said they broke hands and noses and clubbed people, and that they could hear the crackling of tasers.”
http://www.ktvu.com/news/21674608/detail.html
Every Movement Has its Scabs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHOnIJ2W1R4
UC Students Statement on the Necrophilia of University Life: “Being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening.”UC President Mark Yudof; “Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor.” Karl Marx http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/25/18630552.php
UC Santa Cruz Prof Robert Meister on the Use of Student Fees to Prop Up the Bond Income for the UC System (video and text): http://www.newspress.tv/main.jsp?category=News&id=585B
Peter Phillips of Project Censored: Higher Ed Cuts Serve the Rich: “The students who are protesting tuition increases know they are being ripped off. They know that we are bailing out the rich with hundreds of billions dollars for Wall Street and massive budget cuts for the rest of us. The corporate media doesn’t explain to over-taxed working families how they are paying more while the rich sock it away.”http://dailycensored.com/2009/11/22/the-higher-education-fiscal-crisis-protects-the-wealthy/
Ohanian on the Dem/Repub Alliance to Deny Education to the Public: “no group was a stronger supporter of NCLB than the Democratic Leadership Council. Take a look at this page. Click on a few of the articles–if you have the stomach for it.” http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=614
NYC + AFT To Use Student Test Scores for Teacher Tenure: “The city already uses test scores in evaluating the system: to determine teacher and principal bonus pay, to assign the A through F letter grades that schools receive, and to decide which schools are shut down for poor performance. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/education/26teachers.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Detroit’s DFT May Soon Report Out the Worst Big City School Worker Contract in History Including Massive Pay and Benefit Cuts, Layoffs, Merit Pay, and a “Covenant” With the Broad Foundation. Here is a short photo tour of some of the 69 closed and stripped Detroit Public Schools. http://richgibson.shutterfly.com/26
New Fairtest on the Race To the Top (RATT) and Merit Pay: http://www.fairtest.org/newsletter
AAUP Speak Out for Academic Freedom: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/protectvoice/overview.htm
The Falling Sky and Endless War Fronts: Yes, of Course the Sky is Falling: 15 Signs of American Ruin: “The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate. You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Let’s look at the top 15 statistics that prove we are under attack.” http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144109V
Video Map of US Unemployment Growth Since Janurary 2007 (scary): http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
Every Hegemony Has its Holes: Reality Couple Meets Real Demagogue: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/us/politics/28crasher.html?hp
Demagogue To Send 34,000 More Troops to AFPAK: “Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he’s called “a war of necessity” in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy. Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/336/story/79380.html
Blair Warned Invasion Illegal: “Mr Blair refused to accept Lord Goldsmith’s advice and instead issued instructions for his long-term friend to be “gagged” and barred from cabinet meetings, the newspaper claimed. Lord Goldsmith apparently lost three stone, and complained he was “more or less pinned to the wall” in a No 10 showdown with two of Mr Blair’s most loyal aides, Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan. Mr Blair also allegedly failed to inform the Cabinet of the warning, fearing an “anti-war revolt”. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iraq-the-uwaru-was-illegal-1830508.html
Bloomberg: Goldman (Gov’t) Sachs to Pay Just 1% Tax: “Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007. The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent from 34.1 percent, New York-based Goldman Sachs said today in a statement. The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9 billion in employee compensation and benefits. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=a6bQVsZS2_18
Safely Bailed Out AIG Forces Poor to Choose Between Water or Food:http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144203/bailed-out_aig_forcing_poor_to_choose_between_running_water_and_food
Who Manufactured the Auto Bailout? Obama Did: http://www.detnews.com/article/20091124/AUTO01/911240365/The-inside-story-of-the-GM–Chrysler-bailouts/?imw=Y
The Rouge Forum Steering Committee meets on December 15. Suggestions and ideas welcome. Criticism too!
Thanks to AG, Bob, Wayne, Adam and Gina, Bill B, Greg and Katie, Sandra, Shelly, Peter, David, Kev, Donna, Carol, Elvira, Tony, Arturo, Jesus, Marisol, Ann W, Candace, Abraham, MrZ and MrJ, Lloyd, Eric and Steve, Phillip, the Susans, Sherry, Marc and Bonnie, Victoria, Ileana, and Kerrie.
Good luck to us, every one.
r
Dear Friends,
There have been at least 16 occupations seeking to rescue education from the ruling classes in California this month, and more to come. UC Irvine next. Germany, Austria, and France also witnessed fight-backs coming from united students and workers.
To date, the only organized school voice in the US that recognizes the current crises as class war is the Rouge Forum–which may speak well for us, or not so well for others who, so far, hold onto wisps of unfounded hope made up of the shreds of democracy and citizenship in the USA.
The direct action occupations and the defenders outside the buildings up the ante for thought and action in schools and in the streets, demonstrating the violence behind capitalist democracy; overcoming the alienated notion that people other than us will save us.
On the Education Agenda is a Class War Agenda Front: Video: UC Berkeley Occupation and Cop Attack: “This university has no moral legitimacy at all…just violence.” And segment of comment from Susan Harman on the scene, “students we talked to who’d been inside said they broke hands and noses and clubbed people, and that they could hear the crackling of tasers.”
http://www.ktvu.com/news/21674608/detail.html
Every Movement Has its Scabs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHOnIJ2W1R4
UC Students Statement on the Necrophilia of University Life: “Being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening.”UC President Mark Yudof; “Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor.” Karl Marx http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/25/18630552.php
UC Santa Cruz Prof Robert Meister on the Use of Student Fees to Prop Up the Bond Income for the UC System (video and text): http://www.newspress.tv/main.jsp?category=News&id=585B
Peter Phillips of Project Censored: Higher Ed Cuts Serve the Rich: “The students who are protesting tuition increases know they are being ripped off. They know that we are bailing out the rich with hundreds of billions dollars for Wall Street and massive budget cuts for the rest of us. The corporate media doesn’t explain to over-taxed working families how they are paying more while the rich sock it away.”http://dailycensored.com/2009/11/22/the-higher-education-fiscal-crisis-protects-the-wealthy/
Ohanian on the Dem/Repub Alliance to Deny Education to the Public: “no group was a stronger supporter of NCLB than the Democratic Leadership Council. Take a look at this page. Click on a few of the articles–if you have the stomach for it.” http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=614
NYC + AFT To Use Student Test Scores for Teacher Tenure: “The city already uses test scores in evaluating the system: to determine teacher and principal bonus pay, to assign the A through F letter grades that schools receive, and to decide which schools are shut down for poor performance. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/education/26teachers.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Detroit’s DFT May Soon Report Out the Worst Big City School Worker Contract in History Including Massive Pay and Benefit Cuts, Layoffs, Merit Pay, and a “Covenant” With the Broad Foundation. Here is a short photo tour of some of the 69 closed and stripped Detroit Public Schools. http://richgibson.shutterfly.com/26
New Fairtest on the Race To the Top (RATT) and Merit Pay: http://www.fairtest.org/newsletter
AAUP Speak Out for Academic Freedom: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/protectvoice/overview.htm
The Falling Sky and Endless War Fronts: Yes, of Course the Sky is Falling: 15 Signs of American Ruin: “The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate. You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Let’s look at the top 15 statistics that prove we are under attack.” http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144109V
Video Map of US Unemployment Growth Since Janurary 2007 (scary): http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
Every Hegemony Has its Holes: Reality Couple Meets Real Demagogue: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/us/politics/28crasher.html?hp
Demagogue To Send 34,000 More Troops to AFPAK: “Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he’s called “a war of necessity” in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy. Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/336/story/79380.html
Blair Warned Invasion Illegal: “Mr Blair refused to accept Lord Goldsmith’s advice and instead issued instructions for his long-term friend to be “gagged” and barred from cabinet meetings, the newspaper claimed. Lord Goldsmith apparently lost three stone, and complained he was “more or less pinned to the wall” in a No 10 showdown with two of Mr Blair’s most loyal aides, Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan. Mr Blair also allegedly failed to inform the Cabinet of the warning, fearing an “anti-war revolt”. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iraq-the-uwaru-was-illegal-1830508.html
Bloomberg: Goldman (Gov’t) Sachs to Pay Just 1% Tax: “Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007. The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent from 34.1 percent, New York-based Goldman Sachs said today in a statement. The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9 billion in employee compensation and benefits. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=a6bQVsZS2_18
Safely Bailed Out AIG Forces Poor to Choose Between Water or Food:http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144203/bailed-out_aig_forcing_poor_to_choose_between_running_water_and_food
Who Manufactured the Auto Bailout? Obama Did: http://www.detnews.com/article/20091124/AUTO01/911240365/The-inside-story-of-the-GM–Chrysler-bailouts/?imw=Y
The Rouge Forum Steering Committee meets on December 15. Suggestions and ideas welcome. Criticism too!
Thanks to AG, Bob, Wayne, Adam and Gina, Bill B, Greg and Katie, Sandra, Shelly, Peter, David, Kev, Donna, Carol, Elvira, Tony, Arturo, Jesus, Marisol, Ann W, Candace, Abraham, MrZ and MrJ, Lloyd, Eric and Steve, Phillip, the Susans, Sherry, Marc and Bonnie, Victoria, Ileana, and Kerrie.
Good luck to us, every one.
r
23 November 2009
11 November 2009
>Workplace #16—Academic Knowledge, Labor, and Neoliberalism
The Editors of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor are pleased to announce the release of Workplace #16—"Academic Knowledge, Labor, and Neoliberalism."
Check it out at: http://www.workplace-gsc.com
Table of Contents
Articles
Knowledge Production and the Superexploitation of Contingent Academic Labor
Bruno Gulli
The Education Agenda is a War Agenda: Connecting Reason to Power and Power to Resistance
Rich Gibson, E. Wayne Ross
The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education: The Eli and Edith Broad Foundation
Kenneth Saltman
Feature Articles
Theses on College and University Administration: A Critical Perspective
John F. Welsh
The Status Degradation Ceremony: The Phenomenology of Social Control in Higher Education
John F. Welsh
Book Reviews
Review of The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities
Desi Bradley
Authentic Bona fide Democrats Must Go Beyond Liberalism, Capitalism, and Imperialism: A Review of Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform
Richard A. Brosio
Review of Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools
Prentice Chandler
Review of Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism
Abraham P. Deleon
Review of Cary Nelson and the Struggle for the University: Poetry, Politics, and the Profession
Leah Schweitzer
Review of Rhetoric and Resistance in the Corporate Academy
Lisa Tremain
Read the Workplace Blog: http://blogs.ubc.ca/workplace/
Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24374363807&ref=ts
Check it out at: http://www.workplace-gsc.com
Table of Contents
Articles
Knowledge Production and the Superexploitation of Contingent Academic Labor
Bruno Gulli
The Education Agenda is a War Agenda: Connecting Reason to Power and Power to Resistance
Rich Gibson, E. Wayne Ross
The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education: The Eli and Edith Broad Foundation
Kenneth Saltman
Feature Articles
Theses on College and University Administration: A Critical Perspective
John F. Welsh
The Status Degradation Ceremony: The Phenomenology of Social Control in Higher Education
John F. Welsh
Book Reviews
Review of The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities
Desi Bradley
Authentic Bona fide Democrats Must Go Beyond Liberalism, Capitalism, and Imperialism: A Review of Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform
Richard A. Brosio
Review of Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools
Prentice Chandler
Review of Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism
Abraham P. Deleon
Review of Cary Nelson and the Struggle for the University: Poetry, Politics, and the Profession
Leah Schweitzer
Review of Rhetoric and Resistance in the Corporate Academy
Lisa Tremain
Read the Workplace Blog: http://blogs.ubc.ca/workplace/
Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24374363807&ref=ts
06 November 2009
Call for papers: Neoliberalism and public education
CALL FOR PAPERS
Educational Studies Special Issue:
Neoliberalism and Public Education
Guest Editors: Richard D. Lakes & Patricia A. Carter
Social Foundations of Education
Georgia State University, Atlanta
Email: rlakes@gsu.edu
Increasingly neoliberal economic policies are transforming the delivery of
public education. In the current era of marketplace reforms the idea of
the public has been supplanted by a private ideology of risk management;
whereby, under individualization, students as consumers are taught
responsible choice strategies designed for competitive advantage in the
so-called new economy.
Under Keynesian economics, which held sway in the U.S., Britain, Canada,
and Australia from the 1930s to the Thatcher-Reagan era of the 1980s, the
public sought to ameliorate inequities stemming from race, class and
gender bias, but under neoliberalism the state has shifted to promoting a
meritocratic myth of governing the self. As old collectivities and their
support structures such as working-class labor and unions have begun to
disappear under advanced capitalism so too have their counterparts within
the school system.
In this special issue we seek manuscripts that explore the devolution of
public education under neoliberalism. We are interested in scholarly
papers that trouble the notion of risk in an educational environment of
competitive capitalism, the nature of specialized curriculums that are
devoted to social advantage, the ways in which schools have outsourced
services and privatized operations; and the assaults on teachers’ rights
through de-unionizing practices, the dismantling of seniority, and the
erosion of benefits. We are interested in case studies of neoliberal
designed school-based reforms as well as accounts of teaching about
neoliberalism in the social foundations classroom.
To submit manuscripts please use our online submission and review system
at Manuscript Central: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/heds
Be sure to include a note that your submission is for the Special Issue on
Neoliberalism and Public Education.
Deadline for manuscript submissions: June 1, 2010.
Educational Studies Special Issue:
Neoliberalism and Public Education
Guest Editors: Richard D. Lakes & Patricia A. Carter
Social Foundations of Education
Georgia State University, Atlanta
Email: rlakes@gsu.edu
Increasingly neoliberal economic policies are transforming the delivery of
public education. In the current era of marketplace reforms the idea of
the public has been supplanted by a private ideology of risk management;
whereby, under individualization, students as consumers are taught
responsible choice strategies designed for competitive advantage in the
so-called new economy.
Under Keynesian economics, which held sway in the U.S., Britain, Canada,
and Australia from the 1930s to the Thatcher-Reagan era of the 1980s, the
public sought to ameliorate inequities stemming from race, class and
gender bias, but under neoliberalism the state has shifted to promoting a
meritocratic myth of governing the self. As old collectivities and their
support structures such as working-class labor and unions have begun to
disappear under advanced capitalism so too have their counterparts within
the school system.
In this special issue we seek manuscripts that explore the devolution of
public education under neoliberalism. We are interested in scholarly
papers that trouble the notion of risk in an educational environment of
competitive capitalism, the nature of specialized curriculums that are
devoted to social advantage, the ways in which schools have outsourced
services and privatized operations; and the assaults on teachers’ rights
through de-unionizing practices, the dismantling of seniority, and the
erosion of benefits. We are interested in case studies of neoliberal
designed school-based reforms as well as accounts of teaching about
neoliberalism in the social foundations classroom.
To submit manuscripts please use our online submission and review system
at Manuscript Central: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/heds
Be sure to include a note that your submission is for the Special Issue on
Neoliberalism and Public Education.
Deadline for manuscript submissions: June 1, 2010.
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