An Open Letter To My Union, MEA/NEA: Stop Backing The War Party

Students in Newark walked out of class calling for support for public vs. privatized education for its citizens, and a return to local control of how education funds are spent. Source: PopularResistance.org 

I kind of needed irony guard yesterday morning while reading the Maine Education Association (MEA) newsletter in my email.

AT LEAST 5  KIDS IN YOUR CLASS ARE PROBABLY HUNGRY On Tuesday the Legislature held its third public meeting for the Task Force on Student Hunger in Bangor. Representatives from a variety of stakeholders spoke on the importance of providing our students with adequate meals so that all students have the chance to optimize their learning.  
One in 4 (25%) of Maine's students experience food insecurity, with over 45% of our kids qualifying for free or reduced lunch.  According to the Good Shepherd Food Bank some ways to identify hungry students are:

• food hoarding  

• anxiety about when meals will be served  

• rushing to get to the cafeteria and/or being one of the first in line for school meals  

• complaints of headaches, stomachaches, or falling asleep 

Your school may qualify for the Backpack Program through Good Shepherd, a program that provides food for families and students.  You can learn more here (large PDF file please allow time for it to download). 

HELPING KIDS COPE Recently there have been many stories in the news that are upsetting, even to adults.  These are particularly difficult for children.  We need to be letting kids know that our schools will protect them and are safe havens.  The American Psychological Association has put together some resources at their website.
Resources:

• How Much News Coverage is OK for Children?

• Resilience Guide for Parents & Teachers

And here is the feedback I sent the MEA, my union as an educator in Maine, and an affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA):

Regarding the high incidence of child poverty in Maine, and the many disturbing stories in the news that teachers need to support students in handling...

One of the reasons so many news stories are upsetting is that the Democratic Party, which the MEA/NEA unfailingly supports, is a war party. More than 50% of the discretionary federal budget each year under Democratic leadership has gone to the Pentagon and its contractors. Now President Obama has announced he will (continue) bombing Iraq and Syria, ostensibly to fight ISIS which the U.S. and the Saudis helped create, fund and arm. Then there is Ukraine, where the Obama administration is backing the neo-Nazis.

If the MEA/NEA cares about the well being of students as much as it says it does, it must stop supporting the war party. Any war party.

For years I implored the MEA to get involved in Maine's Bring Our War $$ Home campaign, waged to bring pressure on Congress to redirect military spending to needs at home. They never even dignified my requests with a reply must less joined us. Because they are beholden to the Democrats, who have not just stood by but actually helped gut the social program that made the U.S. prosperous and literate once upon a time. Like free, quality public education.

Hats off to students in Newark, N.J. this week who blocked traffic to protest the privatization of education in their high poverty city.  State control of the schools there has hastened a charter school takeover.

“We are building a movement to take back democratic local control of our schools,” Kristin Towkaniuk, president of the Newark Students Union to Eye Witness News. “Our action…will be an escalation demonstrating the community’s unrest over Chris Christie’s efforts to privatize our public schools.” 

You can read more about students' impressive organizing and resistance here. Follow events on twitter:#OurNewark.

Might Makes Right vs. Democracy

Source: Tweet June 4, 2013 by grinch1969 MARJİNAL ÇAPULCU #EylemVakti TURKISH police are erasing their id numbers on their helmets before torture citizens pic.twitter.com/h8j4Bln2EE

In a democracy, the police and military are public servants. Their actions are accountable -- to be monitored and reviewed by those who pay their wages. To further this accountability system, they are required to wear identification on their uniforms as they perform public duties.

When state violence is turned against the people, what happens to those systems of accountability?

First, identifying marks are erased so that citizens have no way to identify the individual police or soldiers harming them.

Second, watchdogs, whistleblowers and journalists are especially targeted for repression and brutality.

Third, official lies are broadcast 24/7. One of my favorite tweets from June 2 as Taksim Square was being raided violently by Turkish police:

Gokce Piskin ‏@gokcepiskin
If millions are uprising but TV channels are broadcasting only Erdoğan, something's are wrong. Seriously wrong. #occupygezi #turkishspring

Fourth, communication channels used by the people are shut down: cell phones, Twitter, Facebook, even the entire Internet. It's a bit of a last resort, because it often backfires as those angered by feeling the heavy hand of repression on their own information feed spill into the streets, swelling the numbers of those protesting.

Source: Tweet on June 4, 2013 by NameDerRose Melikeall Arınç says that the government can shut the Internet down in a second! #Anonymous #opturkey #EylemVakti pic.twitter.com/bFKcg8kgBt

And if, like the Erdogan government, you've already got this kind of mass mobilization rising

Source: Spanish Revolution blog "June 1. The people crossing the Bosphorus at dawn. Photos via occupygezipics.tumblr.com"

you're in deep doo-doo. Even before the Confederation of Public Workers' Unions (KESK) calls a two-day solidarity strike citing "state terror implemented against entirely peaceful protests...continuing in a way that threatens civilians' life safety." The translation of today's trending hashtag #EylemVakti is "time for action."

It must be hard for ruling systems posing as democracies to know when to keep holding on to the illusion, maybe by having violent militias that appear to be acting independently do some of the regulating and terrorizing for you, at the risk of not being able to rein them in later. How do they decide when the time has come to stop pretending to be a democracy that fewer people each day can bring themselves to believe in?

From Agence France-Presse:

Erdogan has dismissed the protestors as “vandals” stressing that he had been democratically elected..."for me, democracy comes from the ballot box,” he said.

What's not difficult for repressive governments posing as democracies is knowing that truth must be suppressed as effectively -- and quietly -- as possible.

source: Salon.com article about the infamous Collateral Murder video which Bradley Manning admits he leaked.

Shout out today to epic leaker Bradley Manning, whose court martial trial enters its second day following 1,100 days of pre-trial detention with barely a whisper of corporate press attention. Press Freedom Foundation has published the first rush transcript made by a crowd-funded court stenographer denied access to the courtroom, and housed in a location with an audio feed that cuts in and out.

Watchdogs like the Center for Constitutional Rights keep pressing for more transparency in Manning's historic trial.

And the lies just keep rolling on...

Who's Representing You In Washington?

CODEPINK  in action today 9/13/11!

Medea Benjamin and others hold signs of our times as General Petraeus testifies to Congress in a joint intelligence hearing.

As a major assault on the U.S. embassy, the Afghan national security ministry, and NATO headquarters among other places had Kabul in chaos, here is what your government was doing: listening to the Pentagon.
 

Alli & Jim crashing the Super Committee meeting today.

That is, when they weren't listening to the boy billionaires club, the so-called Super Committee that was formed to raid the big enchilada of pension funds, Social Security. And order up austerity for you. Bring our war $$ home!

War Criminal enabler, lawyer John Yoo was seeing PINK today too!

The Heritage Foundation appearance by the man who wrote the torture memos during the Bush administration attracted Gael and other activists with messages: SHAME ON YOO.

All three of these men represent what is dangerously wrong with our country and the globe it tries to dominate. Endless war on "terror" as if such a thing were even possible. Pretend crisis in order to raid a fat pension fund to keep buying massive amounts of weapons. Pseudo-intellectuals who pervert their education to construct rationalizations for the darkest kind of human behavior. For-profit.

Grateful to my PINK sisters & brothers for being there.

Information is like food

Juan Cole's blog had a link to this video where one of the online activists who helped start the uprising in Egypt spoke from the heart, following 12 days in blindfolded detention, and 48 hours without sleep. Wael Ghonim is a self-proclaimed rich kid, one who lied to his boss at Google in the UAE to get some days off to join the revolutionaries in Cairo. But he got picked up right away and held by Egyptian security forces. They didn't inflict physical harm, but listen to the frantic tone when he reports his panic at being news-less for 12 days.

Information is like food to some people.

Thanks to Egypt’s DreamTV channel for providing fresh information about the intentions of the organizers, and the material and moral support from like-minded young people, in motion, rising across the region.

A fitting counterpoint is this reporting, by Al Jazeera journalist Mya Guarnieri, on the creep of fascism into Israel's hearts, minds and laws. I like how she notes that she may run afoul of Israel's creepy state security as a result of the article, and in the spirit of "might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb" adds:

(And, if I'm already headed for the clinker, I might as well state the obvious: A country that must force people to call it democratic, on pain of imprisonment, is not a democracy).

The quote that struck closest to my U.S.ian heart, however, was from a 29 year old who declined to be identified. How many of your friends and acquaintances does he sound like here? I'm reminded of a 20 year old telling me how he is disgusted by hipsters in the U.S. on the grounds that they have no principles and stand for nothing, but think themselves hip on the grounds of being vaguely artsy.

Oded, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, remarks that this kind of ultra-nationalism is at the root of both racism and fascism.

"Are you going to protest?" I ask.

"No," he says. "Right now, however self-centred it sounds, it doesn't really interest me because I have things in my personal life that are more important. And I'm lazy."

And the next thing he says reminds me of how old I am, unwilling to start over, skeptical that there's any place I'm needed more than here:

When I ask him if he thinks such apathy might allow extremists to take over, he nods. "I think [if we had a fascist government,] I would just leave," he says, voicing something I have heard many Israelis say.

Plus, I think the 20 year old might be wrong about the hipsters. If there's one thing uniting the youth of the planet at this point in history, it's their passion for information to be free. Why do you think cyber terrorists keep trying to crash Codepink's website? For fear it will feed the masses...

Bradley Manning, 258 days in solitary.