Police State Repression Adds Fuel To Flames Of Protest -- Who Could Have Guessed?

I'm traveling and not able to post as often as usual, so please bear with me. Just keeping up with current events is impossible as developments in the global resistance to Israel's genocide in Gaza are constant and rapid these days.

A few of the items that stood out in my news feeds:

https://twitter.com/probablyreadit/status/1785427534898737304

This comment nails why I felt that this event in particular was significant. Taxpayers employ police to block a major New York City train station in order to preemptively silence 1st amendment protected political speech?

Here's another one that has stayed with me:

It is a companion to the many posts on social media right now by parents of high school seniors saying some version of: I see you called the police to violently attack peaceful student protesters on campus. We are crossing (Columbia, NYU, Emory, UT Austin, etc.) off our list. 

What's that old saying, money talks and bullshit walks? Parents expressing these opinions are looking at shelling out a quarter to half a million dollars so their kids can earn degrees from these schools. Also, if they're white boomers like me they may remember when their own college protected students from police, not allowing cops on campus at will, and certainly not calling in stormtroopers to suppress dissent.

I don't know about President Roth of Wesleyan's conscience, but I do know a smart marketing move when I see one.

As I've noted before, commencements are going to be wild this year. I wish I was going to be back in time to post up at the University of Vermont in Burlington where students are planning to protest keynote speaker Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, for her complicity in no less than three vetoes of a ceasefire in Gaza.

You remember Burlington, right? That's where three Palestinian college students were gunned down last Thanksgiving weekend wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic while walking down a street (off campus).  

Cue the constant corporate media stories about "Jewish" (they really mean Zionist) students claiming they feel unsafe on campus. Then maybe check out the news from UCLA where Zionist mobs descend at night to attack the encampment there while police stand by and watch.

Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives in its wisdom just passed this mess. From Associated Press:

Several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support to the universities, placing another pressure point on campus administrators who are struggling to manage pro-Palestinian encampments, allegations of discrimination against Jewish students and questions of how they are integrating free speech and campus safety.

Also, have you been wondering why pitching tents on the quad of so many universities is against regulations? To keep unhoused people out of course.

All these items add up to a sea change for post secondary education as we've known it, and that is fitting as a consequence of the genocidal horrors that our elected officials and university administrators and boards are supporting. 

One last tweet with my prediction that Columbia can kiss being the "top journalism school" in the U.S. goodbye.

https://twitter.com/zdroberts/status/1785781719603273893

Divide & Conquer, Part 1: Higher Edu For You v. For All

Besides beefing up militarized police departments, what else can U.S. oligarchs do to keep the masses from revolting? Divide and conquer! Today I begin a series on some of the many false divisions being actively sown by our corporate overlords.

My first topic is in the news due to promised cancelation of a small fraction of federal student loans. It's hot now because the pandemic pause on loan repayments was set to expire (and has now been kicked down the road to January 1, 2023.)

Supporters of student loan cancelation v. those who think it's unfair

This one pretty much boils down to an argument about whether you believe that higher education benefits individuals or benefits society as a whole. Talk about a false dichotomy! It benefits both, but you might miss that in the harsh exchanges about Biden's promise to cancel student loans if elected.

Lots of real people plus a legion of trolls are attacking those promised a paltry $10-20k of debt relief in an era of predatory student lending with interest rates so high the principal lingers for decades.

And, unlike other forms of debt, there is no relief possible via bankruptcy (thank Senator Biden c.2015 for that one).

One big objection seems to be that being coerced into the military in order to pay for college is no longer working as well as it did. 

So, where's the cannon fodder going to come from?

Such are the concerns of our corporate overlords.

I was once in an emergency room doubled over with pain from diverticulitis. Another woman was sharing loudly that her daughter, a special ed student, had left school in 9th grade because, "they weren't teaching her nothing, and she weren't learning nothing." I was too sick to voice the thought in my head: "Aren't we lucky that the nurses and doctors we're waiting to see didn't feel that way?"

A few years later, the RN at my primary care doctor's office recognized me and introduced herself as a student from my very first year of teaching. She was happily married with two kids and had fond memories of our school year together.

"In a study done by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) in 2017, 50% of nursing graduates said their number one concern was their ability to pay their loans back." Source: StudentLoanPlanner.com

I didn't ask about her student loans but she was from a low-income family and I doubt she got a nursing degree without debt in some form.

I took out federal student loans for a masters degree in education in order to become a teacher, and part of the focus in those years (early 90's) was improving science education at the elementary school level. Not my area of strength, so I put more effort there. I also completed the Ms.Ed at my employers' expense, and paid off the student loans just about as my oldest child entered college.

Who benefited most from education in this situation?

Me? My son? My former student? Or the community she serves as a health care provider and I served as an educator?

Also, right around when a college education started being pushed for everybody in order to benefit wealthy owners who needed high quality workers trained at someone else's expense is when predatory student lending took off. Clueless boomers like me thought going into debt for a college degree was a good investment in yourself and your future ability to feed your family. That's because we were able to pay off our student loans in a decade or so without breaking the bank.

A recent flame war on Twitter was set off when an elder commented that millenials seem "cavalier" about the decision to not have children.

This is a nice segue to the next divide and conquer strategy I'll address: sowing discord between generations.

Markos Miller: Maine Families Need A Senator Like Lisa Savage

Sharing an excellent speech by former mayoral candidate Markos Miller of Portland, which drew raves from the crowd at our campaign announcement event on October 10. 

Markos is a dad and former high school Spanish teacher, now an entrepreneur revitalizing his neighborhood with some very cool projects. It was super to hear from him in support of my campaign for the U.S. Senate seat of Susan Collins under ranked choice voting!

Visit LisaforMaine.org website for more information.

Hello,

My name is Markos Miller. I am former public school teacher, small business owner, and parent of a child in middle school here in Portland.

I have known Lisa Savage for nearly 2 decades. She is smart, she is passionate, she is caring. I need a senator like Lisa Savage

As an active member of her community Lisa understands the realities of Maine families and Maine communities.

As a former small business owner Lisa has wrestled with the challenges of economically challenged downtowns and contributed to enhancing community vitality. Maine communities needs a senator like Lisa Savage.

As a public school teacher Lisa has first hand knowledge of the educational needs of Mane students, and the challenges facing their families. Maine students need a senator like Lisa Savage.

Lisa works day in and day out in our chronically underfunded schools, sees their needs and challenges, and still can celebrate the strengths of Maine educators. Maine schools need a senator like Lisa Savage.

Lisa knows from experience that student needs are growing more complex and educators need training to address these needs. Maine teachers need a senator like Lisa Savage.

Lisa knows the crushing burden families experience with college debt and will fight for free college. Maine families need a senator like Lisa Savage.

Lisa cares about our kids, cares passionately about education, and will be our voice in the Senate. The United States needs a senator like Lisa Savage!

Photo credits: Peter Woodruff

War Profiteers Winning In Afghanistan, School Kids Losing In USA

The announcement that more resources would pour into the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan confirms that, no matter who is in the White House, war profiteers are in the driver's seat of U.S. government. Photo: TheNewsDoctors.com

It's no surprise that the swamp got the demagogue with bad hair to embrace imperial overreach and come out as a supporter of ramping up the 16 year war in Afghanistan.

War profiteers like Erik Prince of Blackwater -- which made a bundle on the U.S. war in Iraq -- are insiders in a regime that has incorporated ever more military personnel into supposedly civilian posts like Chief of Staff. War profiteers like Lockheed meanwhile pour millions of dollars a month into lobbying members of Congress who are alleged to represent the people.

How to fund these long, expensive, designed not to be winnable wars?

A recent action alert from my union, the National Education Association, gives a hint:

The FY 2018 education funding bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee recently is a frightening read in its disregard for the welfare of the millions of students who attend public schools, and the educators who teach in them. 

The House spending bill:

• Cuts education spending by $2.4 billion.

• Completely eliminates Title II (within ESSA), which funds class-size reduction, professional development, and more.

• Slashes 21st Century Community Learning Centers that provide afterschool services to students most in need.

• Fails to increase funding for Title I, despite record numbers of low-income students in need of the services it provides.

Third grade teacher Teresa Danks made international news this summer by literally begging for the $2,000 or so she spends annually in her classroom. She's been a teacher in for decades and her annual salary in Oklahoma is around $35,000. She says: “I want the proper tools to do my job well. I wouldn’t ask somebody to build my house with a spoon.”

I've objected to U.S. imperial wars on the basis that they're morally wrong, that they're racist, that they churn out tons of carbon pollution, that they harm or kill soldiers and their families, and that we can't afford to pay for them.

"Drug War? American Troops Are Protecting Afghan Opium. U.S. Occupation Leads to All-Time High Heroin Production" Globalresearch.ca

I could also add that the occupation of Afghanistan specifically is fueling the U.S. heroin crisis by making the byproduct of opium poppies cheap and readily available (ka-ching goes the CIA cash register). 

All these pleas have fallen on deaf ears. There is no reason to believe that the militaristic cabal brought the demagogue with bad hair to heel will listen to the voice of the people.

My government no longer represents me. But it hasn't succeeded in silencing me yet, and so as another school year begins -- when hungry children who need sneakers and backpacks and a safe place out of the weather come trundling back to school -- I say:

BRING OUR WAR $$ HOME!

Graduates At #BethuneCookman Boo DeVos As Dean Scolds: 'Choose Which Way You Want To Go'

Image source: CNN.com

In a sea of bad news this morning, my bright spot was video of graduates at Bethune Cookman, a historic Black college, booing and turning their backs on honorary degree recipient Betsy DeVos.

#bethunecookman grauduates turning their back during Ed. Sec #BettyDevos speech at their graduation ceremony!!!!! pic.twitter.com/NN0Dp4f0Wm

— °•° (@iainfelipe) May 10, 2017

In an ironic touch, a dean who appeared to be angered and no doubt embarrassed by the crowd's reaction to DeVos at the podium admonished graduates to "choose which way you want to go." This followed a threat that if the disturbance did not cease that diplomas would be mailed rather than handed out as they marched in caps and gowns.

Celebrating years of hard work to achieve a college degree by protesting an uneducated white representative of the openly racist regime of the demagogue with bad hair seems like making a good choice to me. 

Other notable tweets reporting the controversy:

Holy cow, #bethunecookman dean interrupts DeVos speech, threatens students "your degrees will be mailed to you!" They persist! pic.twitter.com/nkcqZrbXJ0

— Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) May 10, 2017

DeVos is an heiress of the Amway fortune and sister to notorious Pentagon contractor Eric Prince. Famously uneducated herself, she was instrumental in harming public education systems in Michigan and Texas before ascending to the federal post of Secretary of Education. She is an avowed enemy of public education favoring privatization schemes and charter schools over fully funding schools that serve all children.

This generation will not turn the other cheek while you make decisions that hurt them. Thank God for that. #BetsyDeVos #bethunecookman

— Meredith (@QueenOfSangria) May 10, 2017

Respect is earned, not bought. Well done #bethunecookman graduates! #BackstoBetsy #SavePublicEdu #ilovepublicschools

— Mandy (@Naseku18) May 10, 2017

Penny Poll Results: Money For Health And Education, Not For Wars And Occupations

A young busker raising money for a trip to study in Japan took time to do our penny poll.
She put all ten of her pennies in the jar for education, and so did her sister.

As part of our war tax resistance my husband and I tabled with other resisters in central Maine on a blustery spring Saturday. Set up next to the Waterville Opera House where a matinee of The Little Mermaid was being presented, our penny poll drew 51 responses from passersby on the main street of this former mill town now home to two small colleges. 

Each participant had ten pennies to spend representing one year of federal discretionary spending, and ten possible categories to spend them on.

A wide range of ages including children, elders and millenials participated over the course of four hours. A man toting a giant bag of retunables found a bottle under one of the shrubs near our table after stopping to do the poll. He, like the violin students, put all ten of the pennies provided into the jar marked EDUCATION. His explanation: "If you take care of that area, it takes care of all the rest."

Here are the results of our April 8, 2017 penny poll of 51 people in Waterville, Maine:

EDUCATION          26%

HEALTHCARE       19%

ENV / ENERGY      18%

FOOD/FARMS        10%
VETERANS               7 %

HOUSING                  6%

MILITARY                 6%

TRANSPORT.            3%

DEBT                           3%

GOVERNMENT        2%

I compared our results yesterday with a similar poll we helped conduct in 2011 across every county in Maine. As reported in "Mainers Want Their Federal Income Taxes Spent on Education, Health Care" on the National Priorities Project website:

Education, health care, and veterans’ benefits were the top choices for federal spending among the 1,552 Mainers participating in polls conducted in each of Maine's 16 counties. Results showed that education (21%), health care (19%) and veterans’ benefits (12%) were the top choices among the people who participated. Those were followed by environment/science (11%), food/agriculture (9%), both transportation and interest on the national debt (7%), housing (6%), defense (5%), and general government (2%).

Overall, we see similar priorities in 2011 and 2017; education remains at the top of the list along with health care in second place. The environment and energy have a more prominent spot now after six years of climate chaos, while concern with benefits for veterans and servicing the debt dropped a bit. The military -- which actually receives well over half the discretionary budget year after year -- climbed one point from 5% to 6%.

It is also the biggest carbon polluter on the planet so no amount of spending on sustainable energy solutions will halt global warming without addressing the Pentagon's contribution to the problem.

Here's a graph of the actual way our taxes were spent for fiscal year 2015.

Milennials who came to help shared that they avoid war taxes by avoiding income. They can't afford to own a home or start a family, and they worry about the chilling effect this has on relationships. Many work multiple jobs just to pay their student loans and barely get by.

Milennials have been creative about finding ways to not end up in this situation:

Follow up interviews with those polled would be necessary to determine, case by case, why they vote with their pennies as they do. One theory I have about why they allocate so little funding to essential areas like food or housing is that they do not consider feeding or housing people a proper function of national government; whereas education and healthcare are seen as proper functions of national government.

Have central Mainers lived so long without any meaningful public transportation systems that they've forgotten the role of governments in providing this?

The train lines that used to run north from Waterville were torn up in favor of better paved highways a couple of generations ago. Those highways now have potholes the size of small cars mostly caused by the overloaded pulp trucks busily carrying away Maine's forests. Low income people can't get to most jobs because they can't maintain a car in legal working condition what with inspections and insurance costs, and there are no busses they could use to commute.

rural bus service in India  https://c2.staticflickr.com

A family of newly settled refugees near Waterville pays people to drive them to and from their jobs in an indoor tomato farm 20 miles from where they live. In any country I've ever visited -- Canada, Mexico, England, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Afghanistan, India -- there would be bus service even in rural areas. 

But if all you've ever known is the U.S. drunk on exceptionalism and imperial hubris, it can be hard to realize what we're missing in order to fund endless war and obscene profits for weapons manufacturers or "security" providers like Blackwater was in Iraq. The latter's CEO Erik Prince is now said to be a chief advisor to the new regime in the White House. Things are not likely to move in the direction of giving people what they actually want in exchange for their federal taxes anytime soon. 

It's taxation without representation, folks. And you know where that sort of thing leads.

#FY16Budget Is Bad For Kids, Good For Pentagon Contractors -- Again

Blaming poor school funding on bad Republicans is only half the story.

I continue to be amazed in these declining days of neoliberalism by the adamant refusal of economic justice and public education advocacy organizations to name the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is out of control military spending at the expense of programs that benefit actual people, such as SNAP food stamps for low income families, or quality public education starting at Pre-K. Also contributing to the problem: corporate tax breaks on the income side of the balance sheet.

The elephant in the room is also a donkey, by the way. And therein lies the fundamental problem. Despite decades of evidence to the contrary, economic justice and public education groups continue to ignore the cold hard facts: wealthy corporate interests are represented by Democrats and Republicans alike, at the expense of the people.

Click here for a letter to the editor tool created by Win Without War.
Let your community know how you feel about the proposed FY16 federal budget.

During the years when Obama's party controlled Congress, Pentagon contractors continued to make huge profits. Meanwhile, vast numbers of workers had two or three part-time jobs that fail to produce a living wage. And schools in low income neighborhoods were underfunded year after year. If education is the path out of poverty, what message is U.S. corporate-controlled government sending to children going to school? 

According to a landmark study by the Southern Education Foundation, the number of states where more than half of students qualify for free or reduced lunch quadrupled in ten years.

The project of keeping the false dichotomy of elephants and donkeys alive of course has nothing to do with maps like these. It has to do with elephantine villains and fools of comic proportions on the one hand

"Get out of here, you low-life scum" snarls Republican Sen. McCain at antiwar protesters from Codepink.

juxtaposed with articulate, highly educated donkeys on the other.

But donkey budgets look like the people who made them aren't intelligent at all. 

They look like the people who made them got a lot of campaign contributions from military contractors:

There is always a giant slice of the pie for the Pentagon (which includes the NSA spy-industrial complex) and crumbs for welfare and public education. 

Not only is unequal access to education and public services for kids a bad investment for our collective future, it is also unfair, often in a racist way. From "The Engagement Gap: Social Mobility and Extracurricular Participation among American Youth" by Kaisa Snellman, et al. 

Over the past two generations, the difference in educational achievement between the children from poor families and that of children from wealthy families has grown substantially. Whether we look at standardized test scores, college admission, or college graduation, the achievement gaps between children from upper-middle-class families and children from working-class families are steadily increasing. Today, the income gap in test scores is 40 percent larger than it was three decades ago (Reardon 2011). 

For high-income students, the college graduation rate increased by 18 percentage points over the past two decades; in contrast, the graduation rate of low-income students grew by only 4 percentage points (Bailey and Dynarski 2011). Moreover, wealthy students make up an increasing share of the enrollment at the most selective and prestigious four-year institutions (Reardon, Baker, and Klasik 2012), while low-income students with similar test scores and academic records are more likely to attend two-year colleges (Alon 2009; Hoxby and Avery 2012).

And inequity extends far beyond the crumbling walls of inner city schools. What kids do after school is affected by poverty, and poverty is affected by what kids do after school. 

...new analyses of four national longitudinal surveys of American high school students that reveal a sharp increase in the class gap in extracurricular involvement. Since the 1970s, upper-middle-class students have become increasingly active in school clubs and sport teams, while participation among working-class students has veered in the opposite direction. 

A vicious cycle that the fight over donkeys vs. elephants willfully ignores.

Education A Political Football In The Scramble For Pentagon Contracts #SuperBowl

What could be more shameful than underfunding public education for an entire generation that is slipping into poverty a little deeper with each passing year?

How about using widespread support for public education as a political football in the battle to make sure Pentagon contracts keep rolling in.

Here's what the federal budget looks like under sequestration, a fiscal responsibility measure allegedly choking the life out of Pentagon fat cats aka big campaign donors.

The National Priorities Project has helpfully colored the 6% for Education slice of the pie bright orange to assist you in finding it. Realists know that quite a bit of federal spending on the military is also hidden in some of the other slices: nuclear weapons research and development is under Energy, for instance. Perhaps as much as 2/3 of the federal discretionary budget each year goes to military-related costs.

Now comes faux progressive President Obama with his latest budget proposing that the Pentagon get its sequestration funding back. But (here comes the smoke and mirrors) Education and other "non-defense" budget lines should also get their funding back, dollar for dollar.

In the Punch and Judy show that constitutes bi-partisan politics in our day, this gives the red state bad guys a chance to bloviate thus:

The above is a quote from a National Education Association email insisting that all good educators must rally round and defend President Obama's fine plan. As educated people you would think they could figure out where the potential funding for public education is going: to corporations. The lion's share goes to corporations who build weapons, or in the form of tax breaks to corporations who control the food supply, pollute the planet extracting oil or frack for "natural" gas. A small share goes, not to children themselves or teachers or school districts, but to corporations who profit from testing children and to other education-based money making schemes.

No stone is left unturned in the quest to make support for education pay off in massive campaign donations to people like Sen. Susan Collins. Here's a brag from the email newsletter she sent me this week:

Because releasing all that extra carbon into the atmosphere via the KXL will do so much to improve the future health and wealth of children attending school in more energy-efficient buildings.

The U.S. slips farther behind other nations in education investment and in learning attained with each passing year. How this bodes for our #1 national priority, which is supposedly SECURITY, seems not to trouble the educated middle class players who have clawed their way to being insiders in Washington DC. They are wealthy now, and the Koch brothers will keep them that way as long as they don't make the mistake of listening to constituents when voting on the federal budget. 

Because that budget would look like the piles of copper pennies in this chart (data is from 2011):

One in five children in the U.S. suffer from food insecurity while the rich -- especially those who build weapons -- keep getting much, much richer. Growing up in poverty adversely affects the ability to learn for life. Wasting the potential of at least 20% of your population is a recipe for a disastrous future. So is bankrupting the national treasury keeping General Dynamics and pals happy.

Source: Organizing Notes

Join the Spring Rising March 18-21 national mobilization to push back against endless wars and war spending. Because all our grandchildren deserve a better future than the one we're heading toward.