two feet in.

Día de los Muertos in Oaxaca

I've been wanting to write about the situation in Oaxaca, but haven't taken it on mainly because there are many excellent sources for information out there, so head on over to Narco News for the latest updates.

Last weekend I went to a local Día de los Muertos celebration.  There was a large room full of various altars created by local community groups, social organizations, families, etc.  There was an impressive altar memorializing activists thoughout history who have died or been killed.  Seeing the wall full of faces, names, and the words of these courageous warriors made me very emotional (i.e., I got all teary, which actually doesn't take much to happen.  Looking into the eyes of dead heroes will do it for sure).

There wasn't anything there about those who have been murdered in this latest struggle in Oaxaca.  However, I did manage to find some images of this year's Day of the Dead, in Oaxaca.  One is above, and you can see the rest here.

Kiss Me

Since I've been fixated lately on various forms of educational uprising happening around the world, I was thrilled to come upon yet another example this morning:

Japanese who object to being forced to sing their country's national anthem have a secret weapon: the English language. Kiss Me, an English parody of the Kimigayo, has spread through the internet and was sung by teachers and pupils at recent school entrance and graduation ceremonies, local media reported yesterday.

The song, whose composer remains a mystery, takes the syllables of each word of the Japanese original and turns them into phonetically similar English words, allowing non-conformist singers to escape detection. For example, "Kimigayo wa" becomes "Kiss me girl, your old one".

Weeks after a British music producer caused uproar in the US with a Spanish version of the Star-Spangled Banner, the conservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun denounced the new song as an attempt to "sabotage" Japan's traditional anthem.

Leftwing teachers unions regard Kimigayo, which is based on an ancient poem wishing the emperor a "thousand years of happy reign", as a symbol of Japan's militarist past. The controversial anthem was not legally recognised until 1999, and in 2003 the Tokyo metropolitan government, led by the rightwing governor Shintaro Ishihara, ordered teachers to stand and sing it at school ceremonies. Hundreds of teachers have been punished for refusing to follow the order. (Via Rage Against the Washing Machine)

Okay, so perhaps not an uprising, but resistance of a sort, nonetheless. 

The English lyrics are as follows:

き　 み　が 　あ　よ 　お 　わ
        kiss me, girl, and your old one
        ち　 よ　 に　い い　や ち　よ　　に
        a tip you need, it is years till you're near this
        さ　　　ざ　 で 　 い 　し 　の
        sound of the dead "will she know
        し　わ お と　な　り 　て
        she wants all to not really take
        こ　 け　の　 む う　す　う　 ま あ　で
        cold caves know moon is with whom mad and dead"

The new lyrics apparently refer to "tens of thousands of Asian 'comfort women' who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during the second world war," and thus represent a political retooling of the "emperor's thousand years of happy reign."  I don't know enough about Japanese history or language to comment any more than that. 

I'd love to find a linguistic expert out there who might be able to map another language onto Oh Say Can You See, subverting the meaning towards one of unity, peace, global understanding.

Revolution of the Penguins

Yesterday I wrote about Mexico, and now more mass mobilizations in support of education -- this time in Chile:

Chile has been overrun by high school students whose mass protests have forced the government to drop planned cuts in education spending.

Called “penguins” because of their suit-and-tie uniforms, the students have shaken the foundations of the rigid Chilean social structure, inherited from the bloody dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Now, the government of President Michelle Bachelet of the Socialist Party, which took office earlier this year, has been forced to retreat.

The last six weeks in Chile have been marked by a strike of over 1 million students; the occupation of up to 1,000 high schools and most of the country’s universities; and weekly, sometimes daily, marches. The movement has also persevered in street battles against Chile’s sophisticated repression machine -- complete with carabineros (the national police) clad in riot gear and tanks firing water cannons that shoot a mixture of water and tear acid. Students, some as young as 13, fought back with sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails.

The struggle began as a defensive fight -- stopping the Bachelet government proposals last March for an increase in  the cost of the University Entry Exam (PSU) and a restriction on student transportation passes to two trips per day.

But it has since snowballed into an offensive struggle. The movement now demands free transportation and an end to all fees for the PSU, as well as the elimination of a law (known by its initials LOCE) implementing the privatization of Chile’s education system -- the last law that Pinochet approved before stepping down.

Abajo la LOCE, roughly translated, "down with privatization." 

We've got our own LOCE here, otherwise known as NCLB, a political agenda "designed to promote privatization and market reform" of our public schools.  Stan Karp's recent Rethinking Schools piece gives a good overview of what this law has in store for public education in this country, so if you need to study up for our own mass mobilization in support of educational rights, that's a good place to start.

Deadly Repression of Teachers in Mexico

Here's a picture of the more than 400,000 people from all walks of Mexican society that marched Friday in response to the government's brutal attack on the encampment of striking teachers in the city of Oaxaca:

There is, of course, little to nothing in the mainstream media about this attack and massacre on teachers (the number of dead is unconfirmed, but there are hundreds injured, and others "disappeared").  If you've missed this story, one of the best sources for information (that I've found in English) is Narco News Bulletin.

As the site details, these events will certainly have regional, if not national, implications:

The struggle by Section 22 of the National Education Workers’ Union has not been a simple question of teachers’ salaries, nor of the pitiful level of education in this, Mexico’s second-poorest state. From the first days of the strike nearly four weeks ago, the idea of impeaching URO was mentioned. The calls to oust him gain strength even while renewed labor negotiations take place.

Since the attack on June 14, a civil movement has emerged and coalesced around Section 22’s  aggressive demand that URO [Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz go, an event which would break the grip of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI in its Spanish initials) in Oaxaca. The demand has united all levels of Oaxaca society.

The next presidential election (Mexico has six-year terms) takes place on July 2, and URO is best buddies with PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo. According to popular accounts, URO siphoned off hundreds of millions of pesos in public funds from the extraordinary number of undesired public works undertaken in the city of Oaxaca in the past year. The funds are alleged to have gone toward the election campaign of Madrazo.

For more analyis and personal observations of the significance of these events, see here and here. 

This is also completely interrelated with so-called reforms imposed by IMF, World Bank, and NAFTA which have gradually undermined the right to a free and secular education in Mexico.  The amazing documentary, Granito de Arena, gives a moving and in-depth portrait of this struggle.  I highly recommend this film!

Here's a quote from Granito de Arena, that has been in my mind as I've watched the events from the past week unfold: 

Un maestro tenia un lugar fundamental en la sociedad y en la comunidad.  El maestro es sinonimo de lucha, de transformacion, de solidaridad, de apoyo. 

The teacher has a fundamental place in society and in the community.  The teacher is synonomous with struggle, transformation, solidarity, support.

Can we say the same thing here?

Bridges

I am going to continue to post some the Christian Peacemaker Teams Iraq Reflections on this site.  This one is written by Michele Naar:

The Baghdad area has many bridges, because the Tigris River snakes right through the middle of the city. Over the years, these bridges have been blown up, damaged, burned, blocked, and sometimes repaired.

Iraq has many sects.  Over the years the bridges that connect  different groups of people have been blown up, damaged, burned, blocked and sometimes repaired.  Right now, we see that the bridges binding humanity together in Iraq are crumbling.

I have traveled to Iraq four times since 2002.  Each year the rivers of blood that flow under these bridges get deeper. This year, it seems like we're drowning in it. The rivers are overflowing with the blood of the Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Christian, Palestinian, and coalition forces. They are filled with the blood of men and women, children and the elderly. I often feel way over my head and the thought of one more drop of blood added to these rivers is too much to bear.

Recently, two members of the CPT Iraq team met with a number of the Muslim Peacemakers in Najaf who are Shia. They have been strengthening bridges they built with the Sunni in Fallujah.  Now they want to deliver gifts to the poorest families in Kurdistan during their religious holiday.  This simple action has enormous potential for bridge building.

As the Muslim peacemakers shared other ideas for building bridges, the light in their eyes shone so bright and strong one could visualize the rivers of blood beginning to recede.

RSVP to George W. Bush

Dear President Bush,

On Saturday, February 4th, 2006, thousands will gather outside of the White House, coming to tell you that the world cannot wait, that we do not accept either your assessment of the state of the union, or your plans for controlling our destiny through your conception of illegitimate “leadership.”

I am writing to let you know that I will regretfully be unable to attend this White House event.

I send my regrets as a mother of two young children, children who, while materially comfortable, must grow up in a world infinitely more dangerous, more fractured, more on the edge due to your actions.

I send my regrets on behalf of all mothers who stand against the lies and corruption that fuel our countries so-called spreadng of democracy, our opening of hearts and minds -- the mothers of the more than 2,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis that have died for your quest, the mothers who, when confronted by an American convoy in Iraq, hold their baby up to prevent attacks from the scared and stressed US soldiers waving weapons.  That is the safety you have brought -- a deep-seated fear that lives on, that kills, if not directly then in spirit.

I send my regrets also on behalf of mothers of the 16,000 Iraqis imprisoned, many without charges, of those imprisoned in Guantanamo, and at each of the secret US-run and sponsored facilities around the world, those held without recourse to justice, those tortured in both body and mind.

I send my regrets as a citizen of your country, but more importantly as a member of the global community that is rising up to speak against your administration’s policies, to stand against empire.  As I read recently, “Every bomb released over Iraq explodes from Mobile to New Orleans,” and as members of the world community we cannot fail to acknowledge these connections.  My daughter asked me today when it will be that all the people in world will start to love each other.  Perhaps this is the naive vision of a young child, or perhaps it is a question that we all need to take seriously as we do everything in our collective power to drive out your regime that does nothing but breed and perpetrate hatred, bigotry, and intolerance.

So, please understand that my absence on February 4th in no way speaks to an endorsement of you or your policies.  My body will be working and caring for my children in California, tending to the day to day obligations that I cannot at this moment put aside.  However, my spirit will be beating down your doors, infiltrating the White House grounds, flowing through the bodies and mouths of all who are able to come to Washington to let you know that we, the world, will not wait any longer.

Comfortable Prisons Redux

Note: This is a rewrite and expansion of a previous posting, which I have sent out into the world beyond cozy little Two Feet In. 

The above image shows California Youth Authority students in their classroom.  The students are the ones inside the cages, and they are being taught to read.  A friend drew my attention to this photo after I shared a story about a similar kind of prison, about kids learning to read in cages, albeit ones where the bars, while not visible, are nonetheless solidly constructed.

Awhile back I was observing in a local urban elementary school classroom -- all kids of color, mostly free lunch, low test scores.  One of those schools that is mandated to use a scripted literacy curriculum for at least 90 minutes a day in order to meet federal testing requirements.  At times when I have criticized such curricula, I've been accused of having an "overly sentimental, humanistic" view of students (god forbid, humanistic) -- I have been accused of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" when I have said that "high expectations" are not necessarily being met by having kids and teachers follow a script.

This point was starkly illustrated as I was sitting in this classroom watching the teacher implement the Open Court literacy curriculum lesson-of-the-day.  Since teachers and students generally don't have much choice in how and when they do different activities, I could hear the same sentences coming out of both adult and student mouths from other classrooms up and down the school hallway.  The teacher I was watching was running a few minutes behind, so I'd hear instruction coming from other classrooms, and sure enough, several minutes later nearly the same words would be replayed in the room where I was sitting.

I thought I might be mishearing things when the kids down the hall started chanting, "It was a comfortable prison!  It was a comfortable prison!"  But no.  Moments later the students in my room were directed to chant the same sentence.  Nobody blinked an eye -- these beautiful, vibrant children who had not moved or been asked, pushed, prompted, or inspired to think an original thought for the entire hour that I'd been sitting there, were chanting "It was a comfortable prison."  Direct from the teacher's manual.

And yet, proponents of these so-called high expectation promoting programs, would claim that such instructional techniques will help prevent today’s chanting and figuratively-caged students from becoming tomorrow’s literally-caged prisoners.  After all, many states predict the number of future prison beds based upon the number of 4th graders who don’t read at grade level.  So, as this reasoning goes, if such practices help to achieve these ends, then chant they must, to the exclusion of much else that constitutes education.  I find this reasoning to be narrow and incomplete if we are to value children as more than labels, test scores, future prison beds, or dollar signs.

I pondered these cages, scripts, figurative and real prisons as I followed the execution last week of Stanley Tookie Williams.  As the debate swirled around issues of guilt or innocence, change and redemption. I couldn’t help but note the lack of attention towards the larger question -- what it means for our society that so many of us unquestioningly watch as state-sanctioned murder becomes the norm.  How much have we all bought into the script that prevents us from recognizing, much less achieving the bigger picture of a more just and moral humanity?  How do we support, through our silence and compliance, the scripts that are created and replayed to legitimate our government's imperialistic world endeavors?

What would it mean to truly have high expectations, not only for other people’s children, but also for ourselves as fellow humans, for our collective redemption and renewal?  Can this vision be scripted, packaged and sold... guaranteed?  Which are the prison walls that need to come down?

“It was a comfortable prison.”  We may never do away with the actual prisons we create for others.  However, those that we fail to acknowledge, those that we tacitly accept for ourselves, these are the scripts and prisons that can hopefully one day be read in the past tense. These cages may have indeed been comfortable, for some.  But at what price for others and for us all?

Equal Cookies For All!

My kids don't watch TV very often, but I must admit to the occasional non-work morning when I really just want to drink my coffee and read the paper for a few minutes before play-doh, trains, park excursions, and dress-up.  On such days, I've often tried to convince my daughter to watch Sesame Street for just a bit, only to be greeted by an adamant NO by the-only-child-alive-who-doesn't-WANT-to-watch-TV. (Actually, that's no longer true -- when she turned 4 a few months ago, TV was suddenly cool.)

However, even Sesame Street bears close scrutiny.  Here's a little vignette from Paul Street on ZNet:

Flipping through the television clicker one morning, I recently I happened upon "Sesame Street" (SS), the venerable educational PBS series for pre- and early grade-school children. 

The morning's lesson was on the just and inviolable nature of socioeconomic inequity and the sanctity of private property and possessive individualism.   

At the point I clicked on the program, two very concerned and mature adults --- a black man and a black woman, both in their 40s it appeared --- were listening with raised eyebrows to a blue puppet animal ("Cookie Monster" perhaps) who had just designated himself "Cookie-Hood." "Cookie-Hood" was a play on Robin Hood. 

"Cookie Hood" had just come to the alarming (for him) realization that "some people have lots more cookies than they need" while "other people have no cookies at all." 

That's a prescient observation in the industrialized world's most unequal and wealth-top-heavy society, where the top 1 percent owns at least 40 percent of total wealth and more than 1 million black children are growing up at less than half the federal government's notoriously low and inadequate poverty level.

The solution, "Cookie-Hood" announced, is to take the surplus cookies away from the wealthy few and give them away to the poor, cookie-less many. Imagine! 

"Hooray!" the other puppet animals shouted. 

The two adults were not pleased.  "That," the father figure sternly intoned, "is stealing." And "stealing is wrong," he elaborated, "because it means taking something that doesn't belong to you." 

No room, of course, in the SS script for why the cookie-less exist in the first place: because of societal dispossession, repression, and, well, theft.  No room for moral outrage at the fact that masses of cookie-less are born into a world they never made where billions go hungry and ill-housed while a wealthy minority lives surrounded by extravagant opulence.  No sense of justice in the demand of equal cookies for all. 

"Cookie-Hood" felt sad and ashamed.  He thought he'd been doing something good and just, but really he'd been doing something wrong.   

He'd been stealing cookies that didn't belong to him!  Bad cookie puppet!!

The other puppet animals were confused.   

What to do now?  And what about the cookie-less?

Not to worry!  Sesame Street's wise and benevolent adults had a solution.   

The solution is....currency.  Puppets and people don't have to steal cookies from the rich because, the father figure explained, "we can all go to the store and buy cookies." Yes, all of can us get as many cookies as we want with a magical medium called.....drumroll...ta-da....MONEY.

Because everybody's got money, right?   

Money is equality. 

Who needs Robin Hoods when we've all got that great universal leveler and destroyer of hierarchy and inequality called money.   

Three cheers for money!  Hooray for the means of exchange! 

"Cookie-Hood" (Cookie-Monster?) was happy because he remembered that he just gotten his allowance.  He held up a little bag of coins and shouted, "Hooray, let's go the store and buy cookies."  

He wasn't worried anymore about whether other people have enough cookies. Now he just cared about getting his own.  He knew that other people get money (allowances) too. 

Before going to the store, however, Cookie-Hood had to take back the surplus cookies he'd stolen from the privileged few.

I suppose this should come as no surprise from the show that used to be "Brought to you by the letter..." but is now brought to you by... McDonald's.  Hurray for capitalism!

Grassroots/Low-income/People of Color-led Katrina Relief

Go to this webpage for extensive infomation about organziations who are:       

• Organizing at the grassroots level in New Orleans, Biloxi, Houston and other affected areas
• Providing immediate disaster relief to poor people and people of color
• Directed by, or accountable to, poor people and people of color
• Fostering the democratic inclusion of poor people and people of color in the rebuilding process.                 

Please consider the groups listed there as you plan your own actions and donations to support victims in the Gulf region.

Tomato, Tomaato... Katrina, Corrina... What's the Difference?

Laura Bush continues to council families displaced by Hurricane Katrina to get their children into school as soon as possible. 

Ah, wise "first lady" that she is, so full of comforting, good advice.  Somehow, though, I think we all might take her concern more seriously if she could, at the very least, get the name of the hurricane right: 

Go here to see what I mean (via Bob Harris).

Katrina Aftermath Radio Project: Denied

The Katrina Aftermath Radio Project was working to obtain permission to run a low-power FM broadcast radio station in the Houston Astrodome complex.  They obtained three special FCC licenses, and after days of bureaucratic red-tape, clearance from county officials, FEMA, and others.  They even dealt with (racist) concerns expressed by some officials about "incendiary gangster rap" and "people fighting over the radios."  The project had more than 10,000 radios ready to go, along with all of the necessary broadcasting equipment.

But...

KAMP has been denied access to the Astrodome due to an official's refusal to provide electricity to the station. This dictate was handed down by RW Royal, Jr., Incident Commander of the JIC (Joint Information Committee). Our offers to run the station from battery power were declined.

According to an interview on Flashpoints today, Tish Stringer, who helped establish the project was told:  “the only people who can overturn this decision would be the head of Homeland Security or the President himself.”

Here's a sense of the kind of incendiary information that this radio project would have provided:  How do I register my child for school?  Where can I access free immunizations necessary for school registration? Where are the job fairs?  When is food coming?  How can I communicate to my lost mother, father, cousin, sister, brother, lover?

Very, very, dangerous indeed.

Note that military recruiters have already descended and scheduled job fairs in the Astrodome.  Luckily, there will be no pesky independent media project broadcasting information about alternatives -- that is, unless the president overturns the decision.  Unlikely.

Many, Many Casualities Today as a Result of the War in Iraq

Via This Modern World... Here's the whole thing:

Horrible.  Unthinkable.  But read the article.  (I've added emphasis to a few lines below.)

When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain.

And this was reported at the time.  Not as a partisan attack.  As a public safety issue.

At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

This is not a left/right issue. The Army Corps of Engineers, who described the reasons for the money shift, are hardly a left-wing organization. This is not a partisan issue. Plenty of Democrats bought into the war wholesale, and plenty of them still do.

Here it is: the money to maintain the levees was apparently yanked away for the same reason half the Louisiana National Guard was.

We may never know if the levees would have held if the funding hadn't been shifted to Iraq. But if so, there would be only one conclusion:

New Orleans has become a casualty of the war in Iraq.

And, just in case it escapes the radar screen -- more than 800 people died today in Iraq. 
More than 800. 
More than 800. 
I repeat, more than 800. 

Abstinence and Monogamy Are on the March

I've written before about the Bush administration's emphasis on, and funding of, abstinence-only sex education in the public schools.

Unfortunately, American teens are not the only ones receiving this limited education.  Salon has a piece that discusses the abstinence-only focus in Africa, and its disastrous consequences:

Bush is using AIDS funds to place religion over science, promoting abstinence and monogamy over comprehensive sex education that includes information about and access to condoms. This should be no surprise, given the administration's track record. Yet it is still shocking to observe an administration that claims to be acting in the name of morality consigning tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of people to death because of its policies.

...

Just as U.S. abstinence-only programs that push partial or false information on teens have doubled under Bush, so are such morality-driven programs cropping up under U.S. auspices in places like Africa -- where the stakes are much higher and a lack of vital information can kill. PEPFAR is fast becoming equated with a notorious emphasis on abstinence education -- nearly $1 billion of Bush's global AIDS pledge is earmarked for abstinence promotion. Bush's plan calls for an ABC approach to HIV prevention -- which stands for "Abstinence, Being faithful, Condom use," but the administration is stressing the "A." In its first year, PEPFAR spent more than half of the $92 million earmarked to prevent sexual transmission on promoting abstinence programs. "It's only a matter of time before the impact of abstinence-only programs can be measured in needless new HIV infections," says Jonathan Cohen, an HIV/AIDS researcher with Human Rights Watch.

...there is a good reason global AIDS experts haven't focused on abstinence: Scientific evidence shows no indication that trying to persuade young people to abstain from sex at the expense of condom education reduces the spread of HIV. Studies show that such programs actually increase risk by discouraging contraceptive use.

What's more, focusing on abstinence and monogamy ignores the reality facing young women and girls in Africa and other impoverished regions, who are often infected by wandering husbands or forced to have sex in exchange for food or shelter. Among 15- to 24-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa, studies show, more than three times as many young women are infected with HIV as young men. Preaching about abstinence and faithfulness to girls and women in risky situations "can't be made sense of on any level," Jacobson says. "It's not only contrary to public-health best practices, it's contrary to common sense and contrary to human rights principles."

To sum it up:  "All [conservatives] can think about is making Africans abstinent and monogamous," says a Democratic staffer. "It's the crassest form of international social engineering you could imagine."

Here is one example of how this policy plays out:

Uganda has taken a dangerous turn toward an abstinence-only approach. In April, the country's Ministry of Education banned the promotion and distribution of condoms in public schools. To make matters worse, the government has even engineered a nationwide shortage of condoms, issuing a recall of all state-supplied condoms and impounding boxes of condoms imported from other countries at the airport, claiming they need to be tested for quality control. As of this year, a top health official announced, the government will "be less involved in condom importation but more involved in awareness campaigns: abstinence and behavior change."

More than 12 million children have been orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.  Our efforts to make Africans abstinent and monogamous will likely result in millions more needless HIV infections.  And, once they're infected, access to low-cost, generic, antiretroviral medicines is becoming increasingly difficult (thanks to the WTO). 

The article in Salon ends with the question, "What kind of country are we?"  As we spread our supposedly life-affirming morality and freedom around the globe, millions die.  Is that answer enough?

The Triple Evils

Lately I've been reading Kathy Kelly's new book, Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison.  If you are not familiar with the work of Voices of the Wilderness, and Kathy Kelly, then you should check out the VITW website.  I've read Kelly's essays online for some time now, but somehow having them all collected together, forming a cohesive narrative, has been particularly informative and inspiring.   

As I read, my mind has frequently gone to Martin Luther King's Beyond Vietnam speech, where he speaks of "the triple evils that are interrelated" -- the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation/poverty, and the problem of war.  As Kelly documents the horrors of US-led sanctions against Iraq in the 90's, the 2003 war and occupation, and her time in Pekin prison as a result of an SOA protest at Ft. Benning, she magnifies the interrelationship of these evils in a way that has been particularly powerful for me. 

Here is but one example, where Kelly writes of several Palestinian students imprisoned, by our country, in Iraq (because they were "guilty of being Palestinian"):

The people we left behind in the Bucca compound were not criminals.  Every time I left Iraq, during sanctions, war, and occupation, I felt as if I were leaving one big prison.  How ironic that Voices in the Wilderness members were accused of being criminals, while we felt, every time, like we were leaving the scene of a vast crime.  But whenever I have been released from U.S. prisons, into comfort and security, I have also felt like I was walking away from a vast crime.  These crimes are connected.  I see a war that is also going on here at home.  When I last entered the U.S. prison system, Jayyad's words easily echoed:  "There are many here, Help us all."

In my own life, and work in the area of education, it has become crucial for me to more deeply understand the interrelationship of these evils:  empire, racism, and  poverty.  I'd like to say that I've always had this focus, but the reality is that I've most often directed my energy on one, or another -- or, more often than I am comfortable admitting, ignoring them all.

As King said in the Vietnam speech: "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."  Reading Other Lands Have Dreams has been yet another reminder of extent to which I have remained on the side of flinging coins, but has also helped me "catch courage" as I move forwards.  It is highly recommended reading.

Be on the Lookout for White Male, 60's, Wearing a Business Suit!

UC Berkeley sends out weekly crime alert notices to students and employees.  Usually we are informed about purse snatchings and muggings around campus.  Here is this week's alert.  Be aware!

Strong-Arm Robbery
Iraq

On March 3rd, 2003 at about 1:20 AM, a civilian population was the victim of a strong-arm robbery between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Three male suspects confronted the victims on the street and in their homes with a massive bombing campaign, demanding their oil reserves; the victims resisted. The suspects then continued to bomb them incessantly, entered a silver F-14 jet and flew away, fleeing the area. Before committing the crime, the suspects collided with popular opposition, but once the crime was in process everyone went to the weekend Macy’s sale. Well over 100,000 victims were killed, countless physically injured and personal, public and national property was stolen.

No one searched for the suspects, but can easily locate them.

The victim described the suspects as follows:
Suspect #1 A Male White, 60's, wearing a business suit
Suspect #2 A Male White, 50's, wearing a business suit
Suspect #3 A Female Black, 40's, wearing a business suit

If you have any information about this crime, do not bother to contact your government, including:
The White House, Congress, State Department or Law Enforcement.

As with any emergency situation, if you see war crimes, call the World Court, the Hague, but know there is no justice without struggle.

Note:  Either someone hacked into the UC Police alert service, or the university is getting a conscience.  Hmm, which could it be?

Love Thy Neighbor

This past week in a New York city, a school administrator chose to deal with a minor scuffle between two Haitian immigrant fourth graders in the following manner:

According to parents and students, Miller, who is white, chose to punish all 13 Haitian pupils in the school's only fourth-grade bilingual class - even though just two were involved in the March 16 incident.

She ordered all 13 to sit on the cafeteria floor, then made them use their fingers to eat their lunch of chicken and rice, while all the other students watched.

"In Haiti, they treat you like animals, and I will treat you the same way here," several students recalled Miller saying.

Some of the punished fourth-graders were so humiliated they began to cry. A few begged Miller for spoons to eat.

To read of this incident deeply saddened me, but, I am sorry to say, it did not shock me.  While an extreme example, it represents the kind of degradation and humiliation that goes on within our schools day-in and day-out.  Indeed, I have written here about many such instances that have surfaced in the media:  the fifth-grader arrested for bringing scissors to school in her backpack, and Birmingham's decision to use Tasers on the "new breed" of "criminals" that attend their schools, to name just a couple of examples.

Degradation and humiliation done in the name of zero tolerance and control.  However, even more insidiously, through the default language that we use to create a world of us versus them. 

Children are at risk or underperforming. 
Schools are persistently dangerous or failing. 
Human beings are illegal aliens. 

We, the comfortable, educated, non-immigrant, English-speaking, and usually white -- we know what is best for the rest, we're going to make them do it.

It all contributes to this:

And, yes, it all contributes to this:

Update:  We now also have degradation and humiliation of school kids in the name of  imminent threat -- see bookofdays for details on the case of the arrest and detainment of high school "would be suicide bombers".

No Third World Village or Household Left Behind

“We want them to develop their education that works for them, just like we do the same thing in our country.”

That's Laura Bush on her 5-hour trip to Afghanistan.  (via WIIIAI)

Good time to revisit an old posting of mine, where I highlighted Chester Finn's vision of the education opportunities that -we- have to look forward to in the coming years.  Much of the piece was predictable:  choice, vouchers, testing, accountability. 

Then, he gets all virtual on us.  Ah, technology...

Underwrite the spread of virtual schools and virtual charter schools, thus bringing the benefits of enriched curricula and high-quality instruction, as well as educational options and modern technology, to rural and small-town America and to home-schoolers.

What's good for us is good for them, right?  Chester went on to speculate...

There's even a foreign-policy angle here. Virtual schooling is a terrific way to beam the lessons of democracy into third-world villages and households whose governments--or mullahs--don't want them to learn such things.

Will Laura Bush bring the lessons of democracy to Afghanistan packaged in the form of a scripted curriculum?  Will the "third-world villages and households" be tested and punished if adequate yearly improvement goals are not achieved?

NTWVHLB (No Third World Village or Household Left Behind)!  As acronyms go, it's kind of clunky... But I'm sure that Bush can always sell it as his jobs program for the new world order. 

If it works for us, then I'm sure it'll work for them too.

When is a Silent Vigil not so Silent?

A silent vigil becomes not very silent at all when you bring your 19-month old son to "seek peace and pursue it" with the Quakers.  We were on the lawn of the Capitol building (yes, the one in Washington, DC), and Isaac quickly worked his way around the gathered circle, staggering on the grass like a drunken sailor, walking up to each seeker of peace, grabbing their legs, and saying "Hi! " before moving on to the next person with a few random "choo choo!", and "truck!" expletives thrown in for good measure.  I thought he fit in quite well, but it is difficult to say how the Quakers felt about his very vocal fascination with large vehicles.

Being silent wasn't exactly my top choice for this 2-year anniversary of the bombing and invasion of Iraq, but it felt nonetheless important to me to be there, to be present, and to use the time to reflect on ways that I have and have not been present to the reality of this war. 

I also wondered why some of these people weren't there:

These vigilers, along with our hardworking legislature, are determined to make our world a better place.   It's Saturday, but I hear that our government officials are up there in the Capitol buidling, busy as bees:

On Friday night, Frist (Tenn.) and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) announced that congressional committees will work through the weekend, saying in a statement that they "are committed to reaching agreement on legislation that provides an opportunity to save [Terri] Schiavo's life."
...
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) called the removal of the feeding tube "barbarism" and "an act of medical terrorism." (Link)

I am so touched by Frist, Hastert, and DeLay's sudden concern for the sanctity of human life -- just as long as the human life is white and American, they'll be sure to work all weekend long to save it. 

It'll last a lifetime! But, we're not responsible for misuse of this product.

None of this news is new, but somehow reading it all on the same day -- each story within minutes of the last, lends new force to the concept of insanity throughout the ages.

First I read this:

Nearly a dozen detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp contend they were wrongly imprisoned after repeated abuse by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including beatings with chains, electric shock and sodomy, their lawyer said Monday.

Then, this:

Everything about it seemed surreal. Just 21 years old, Matt Carrington died, authorities said, after fraternity members kept him up all night, ordering him to do pushups, splashing him with cold water and forcing him to drink gallons of water. It was the water that killed him...  After some dumb stunts -- making Carrington dress up as a prostitute and exchange shirts with a homeless man -- the brothers at Chi Tau appear to have crossed the line.  Matt and his pledge buddy (authorities are withholding his name) were in the basement, wearing socks and thin pants, a hose and a five-gallon tub of water in front of them. They were doused with water, blasted by a fan and bombarded with questions. If they didn't get the answer right, they had to chug water and do pushups.

Followed by this:

The parents of a Santa Rosa boy who died at a Missouri boot camp for troubled youths have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the operators and some employees of the facility... 
The lawsuit, filed in Buchanan County, Mo., states Roberto M. Reyes, 15, was "subjected to sadistic, cruel, and harmful acts. ... He was thrown into solitary confinement, refused bathroom facilities, and forced to (lie) in his own excrement for extended periods of time."  An autopsy of the 6-foot-2-inch teen "documented numerous bruises, cuts, and ulcerations consistent with physical abuse," the suit alleges.

And, finally, via a completely different "news" source:

Note that the chastising instrument fits conveniently into your diaper bag!  I suppose you can't start too young?

Could it be that, just possibly, this is all somehow related?

 

What a proactive, creative, audacious world it could be...

Last night I had a rather unpleasant dream about Jenna Bush.   As there are innumerable people whom I would much prefer to populate my dreams, I decided that it is time to leave the subject of my letter behind and move on.  Plus,  the other blog categories are getting jealous of all the attention that education has been getting lately, and have threatened a revolt unless they get equal representation. 

One last education-related bit for now.  Here's a quote from The New Yorker (via Education at the Brink):

[They] had so loaded training schedules with doctrinaire requirements and standardized procedures that [the students] had no time--or need--to think for themselves. [The instructors] were encouraging "reactive instead of proactive thought, compliance instead of creativity, and adherence instead of audacity."

This could be referring to teacher "training" on scripted instruction, or to the experience of kids under almost any form of test-driven curriculum, or to the general state of compulsory schooling in our society.

But, no.  It is talking about the training of army officers, and leaves many questions knocking about in my mind.  Could Abu Ghraib have happened were these conditions reversed:  proactive instead of reactive thought, creativity instead of compliance, audacity instead of adherence?  Would there be 100,000+ dead Iraqi civilians? 

Before I get angry phone calls from teacher friends who will surely vow never to speak to me again, let me stress that I am not, repeat, NOT, equating teaching a mandated curriculum with torture or death.  And I am, admittedly, boiling complex issues down to much simpler than they should perhaps be.   

However, the fact is that it is too easy to deflect moral responsibility from oneself in such a system.  When things break down it can quickly be blamed on "the program" or "commands from military intelligence" or some other factor outside what you as a human being know to be right or best.  And so we conform, follow the program, the doctrinaire requirements, the orders.  To do otherwise is harder, riskier, and a whole lot more alienating.

Think about it:  a world based on proactive instead of reactive thought, creativity instead of compliance, audacity instead of adherence.   Education can potentially take us there, schooling cannot.

bedrock of sanity

I've gotten much response to my Jenna Bush letter that was published here.  Ms. Bush herself has not responded yet, and I guess that I won't be holding my breath to hear her reaction. 

The following message gets to the heart of what weighs on my heart.  At the same time, it also illuminates what drives me forward in my work towards educational change:

the funny thing is that poetry is not a frill.  it is not even a challenge.  it is the bedrock of sanity.  a person who understood "the world is too much with us" by wordsworth could NOT carry out the depredations against nature that our present rulers do.  a person who understood the iliad as simone weil did could not start a war.

Another reader asked:  "When and how will your message ever penetrate?" 

Somehow I think that the answer may lie, at least in part, in the effort to nurture and build that bedrock of sanity -- through creating spaces for poetry, music, talk... through reaching out for human connection across difference.  No, this will not be enough, but it is surely a good place to start. 

Repeat after me: "You will forget the secrets you know..."

At this moment I am announcing to the world that I have close connections in a certain governmental agency of a certain imperial power.  This governmental agency is to be known in this blog posting as the Military Death Machine (MDM). 

In case you are not familiar with MDM, here's a short description:

[MDM] is the central research and development organization for the ["defense" military branch of certain imperial power]. It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and  development projects for ["defense" military branch of certain imperial power], and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.

In other words, MDM funds and does the research that allows for super-high-tech "defensive" killing capabilities.  Yes, and I have connections.  Ah, the contradictions with which we live. 

It has been reported to me that MDM has a rather new policy for employment:  four years maximum and then you're out, done.  Here is what is interesting though, MDM has a large heart and great concern about the welfare of its soon-to-be ex-employees.  MDM cares.  In fact, they care so much that they will go the extra mile to make sure that these soon-to-be ex-employees are psychologically ready to face the rest of their lives.

Here's how it works:

1. Soon-to-be ex-employee notifies MDM that they would like to partake of special two-day counseling session to map out post-MDM life plan.
2. MDM contracts with outside agency and sets up counseling session, with not one, but two certified psychologists.
3. Soon-to-be ex-employee chooses location of choice (within continental US), for two-day counseling session.  Key West and New Orleans are reportedly popular destinations.
4. Soon-to-be ex-employee is flown to chosen location (along with not one but two certified psychologists).  All involved are housed and fed, while soon-to-be ex-employee comes to grips with his/her future with the help of two certified psychologists.

And just what happens during these two days of soul-searching and life-planning?  As of yet I cannot report on that.  However, speculation among those in the know has touched upon brain reprogramming, memory extermination, and certain forms of suggestive hypnosis ("You will forget the secrets that you know...  You will forget the secrets that you know... "). 

So, this is what they do for the brains behind MDM.  And for those responsible for actually carrying out the plans?

...veterans from the war in [occupied Middle Eastern country] are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the [previous quagmire in which certain imperial power was involved].
...

[Returning combat veteran] said he felt pushed out of the military too quickly after getting back from [occupied Middle Eastern country] without medical attention he needed for his hand -- and as he would later learn, his mind.

"It was more of a rush. They put us in a warehouse for a while. They treated us like cattle," [Returning combat veteran] said about how the military treated him on his return to [certain imperial power homeland].

Like I said, MDM has a large heart and deep concern about the welfare of soon-to-be ex-employees, but you better have a PhD and top secret security clearances in order to benefit.

 

"Tell more about earthquakes and the water that comes."

This image of grieving at a mass burial site in India was on the front page of the paper this morning.  My three-year old daughter, R., was fascinated by it, and thus began a long explanation about earthquakes, tsunamis, and the disaster happening far from our home. 

R. has since been concerned all day, often climbing up into my lap and asking me to "tell more about earthquakes and the water that comes."  I can see how these concepts are really too big for her to be able to fully understand, even when explained ten different ways.  And, I sometimes worry that her partial understandings, and misunderstandings, might be more than a three-year old can handle. 

Compared to many contemporary kids, R. is probably quite sheltered from actual images of death and destruction -- whether natural disaster related, war related, or otherwise.  She does live through war...  and does not see television news broadcasts, though we do listen to a lot of news on the radio.  Lately, I've even been tempted to turn that off, as she is getting more and more attuned to what she hears. 

Who can say, though, what a three-year old can handle?  Perhaps the more accurate question is what must children of all ages endure due to issues of inequality, injustice, and inhumanity? (and I do count tsunami victims in this group) 

I certainly do know that I live with great privilege to be able to decide what my kid sees and hears and what she doesn't, and it is a fine line to walk between my instinct to shelter and my belief in the importance of teaching. 

I want her to be a part of the world -- not to stand apart from it -- and to always act from a place of care and empathy and trying-to-understand.  So, when she asks questions, we answer them in as honest a way as possible.  I try to tell her what I see as right, and what seems very wrong in the world, and hope that bit by bit her understanding will increase. 

natural disaster and equal opportunity

55,000 so far.  Blogging seems a completely inadequate response to the deep sadness of this tragedy -- at least my blogging seems so. 

Go here for a an often-updated blog about the disaster and ways that you can help.  Or, donate to East Timor Action Network -- your money won't end up in a huge bureaucracy and will directly aid the Aceh area.

While this was of course a natural disaster, we must all remember just who is most affected by such events and why:

But it was not quite an equal opportunity killer.
It’s likely that the vast majority of the dead were poor people, those who make their subsistence living as small fishermen, those who live in ramshackle huts on or near the beaches, those who service the tourist industry for a paltry wage.
And while such a brutal force of nature would have exacted a terrible price in any event, the magnitude was compounded by man-made factors.

The first was a lack of a functioning early-warning emergency system. The United States set one up for countries on the Pacific more than five decades ago, but none was in operation for the countries bordering the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.

The second factor is not technological at all, but economic and political: and that is, mass poverty.  Half the world’s working population makes $2 a day or less.

Those who live in coastal areas cannot afford the high rent of the high ground. They live where they can, often in the path of the next hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami. And they are not hooked up to TVs or cell phones that could privately have warned them, had there been such warnings.

Ten years ago, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued a report on disaster mitigation. “Principally as a result of their poverty,” it noted, “developing countries are especially vulnerable to natural hazards. Hazard events which would cause limited damage and few casualties in a rich country often cause extensive damage and substantial loss of life in a developing country context.”

Most of the people affected also do not necessarily have the internet as a tool for finding their lost loved ones:

"A 2-year-old boy who was found dazed and alone on a roadside in the wasteland of a tsunami-devastated Thai resort was reunited Tuesday with his uncle, who spotted the child's picture on the Internet."  SF Chronicle

I celebrate any hope, any life that is saved, any family that is reunited after this event.  But, I can't help questioning how equal opportunity works both in who is killed in the greatest numbers, who is left to wander the beaches and morgues in a desperate search for their own loved ones (see quote below), and who's picture is flashed around the world -- the image of the white Swedish boy was the only tsunami-related picture on the main home page of the Chronicle when I visited it earlier.  You had to click in to the stories to see other images.  It is wonderful that this boy's family found him because of pictures on the internet, but I guess I don't see it as front-page news. 

"My mother, no word! My sisters, brothers, aunt, uncle, grandmother, no word!" yelled a woman at a makeshift morgue in Lhokseumawe, Indonesia. "Where are they? Where are they? I don't know where to start looking."

Update:  Apparently, the Chronicle isn't the only media highlighting the incredible surviving (or not) white people in Asia -- including the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model who was spared:  New York Times Says Tsunami Kills White People, Too!

guilty.

So Scott Peterson has been found guilty of killing his wife and unborn child.  This shouldn't be news to anyone, as it has been just about the only story reported in the last day or so, especially here in the Bay Area's SF Chronicle.  Arafat?  He's now old news.  Fallujah?  It's under our "control".  So, let's analyze the Peterson case!  Let's devote five pages of the morning paper to the verdict!  Let's show picture after picture of cheering, jubilant Americans who probably just can't wait until the sentencing part of the trial so that they can again hug and cheer when he is sentenced to death. 

There are so many levels at which this media circus is just wrong, and sick. 

When I saw the four-inch GUILTY headline this morning, my first thought was not about Laci Peterson and her unborn child.  Please don't misunderstand -- what happened to them was horrible and tragic, and I am not in any way trying to diminish their death, or downplay the pain and grief that their family and friends have gone through. 

It's just that I didn't think about them when I read the paper this morning -- I thought about a different mother and unborn child who were killed much more recently. 

I heard a report the other night from Dahr Jamail, one of the only independent journalists right now in Iraq.  He had interviewed Muna Salim, who just days before lost eight members of her family when her house was hit with US bombs in Fallujah:

She weeps while telling the story. The abaya (tunic) she wears cannot hide the shaking of her body as waves of grief roll through her. “I cannot get the image out of my mind of her foetus being blown out of her body."  Muna Salim’s sister, Artica, was seven months’ pregnant when two rockets from US warplanes struck her home in Fallujah on November 1. “My sister Selma and I only survived because we were staying at our neighbours’ house that night,” Muna continued, unable to reconcile her survival while eight members of her family perished during the pre-assault bombing of Fallujah that had dragged on for weeks.

Somehow, I don't think we'll be seeing "guilty" headlines for the killers of this mother and baby.  There won't be drinks on the house when the verdict is announced.    Few people in this country will ever know of this Iraqi mother and her baby, or of any of the other mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers -- humans --  that are dying daily from our actions.  There will be no trial here, but we will rightly be condemned in the hearts and minds of the rest of the world.

mountains

Yesterday’s depression and has subsided – somehow the combination of my intense dislike of William Bennett combined with the audacity of his attaching the word “decent” to anything surrounding George Bush got the better of me. 

I recognize now that Bennett and I have a fundamental definitional clash when it comes to decency, and I'm okay with that.  (By the way, the "decent" word popped up again today, in another context related to Bush, which you can read here).

However, what really lifted me out of my depressive state was consulting one of my favorite sources of inspiration, Paulo Freire:

I am convinced that in order for us to create something, we need to start creating…I am sure that in trying to create something inside of history we have to begin to have some dreams…The dreams push me in order to make them real, concrete, and the dreams of course, also are surrounded by values of other dreams.  We never finish having dreams.  As you said earlier, in a very beautiful language, that you think about climbing the mountain, but suddenly you climb the mountain and discover that there is another one whose profile you could not yet see.  Then, without rejecting the first dream, you discover that the first dream, which was the mountain, implies or demands that your dream be expanded into new dreams or visions, with different moments.  (from We Make the Road by Walking:  Conversations on education and social change)

A good reminder for all of us that our dreams and hopes, the things that we work for in the world of education and elsewhere, are the same now as they were a week ago before Bush was reelected -- and, wallowing in depression, despair, or pessimism does not serve to create or change anything.   

Had Kerry won, I’d still be working in the exact same direction, though perhaps nuanced slightly differently – but little would have been easier.  The testing, labeling, sorting, and blaming of children, families, and teachers would continue (fully funded, even).  Fallujah would still be under attack today.  The name of the leader might have been different, but the fundamental shape of the mountains would remain the same.

The image of the quilt seems to fit well with Friere's words, so I included it here.  It also, to me, implies hope, which must continue to drive us forward.

the mandate question

I've been reading a lot in the past few days about whether or not this election really gives Bush a mandate -- given voter suppression, fraud, the percentage of people who didn't actually vote, etc, etc..  See here, among other places for some of the arguments for or against, yes or no, maybe but not really, on the mandate question.

Call it denial, but somehow I had managed not to be too depressed about the reelection until I read this little gem from William Bennett, arbiter of all that is virtuous (unless you count addiction to gambling...):

Having restored decency to the White House, President Bush now has a mandate to affect policy that will promote a more decent society, through both politics and law. His supporters want that, and have given him a mandate in their popular and electoral votes to see to it. Now is the time to begin our long, national cultural renewal ("The Great Relearning," as novelist Tom Wolfe calls it) — no less in legislation than in federal court appointments. It is, after all, the main reason George W. Bush was reelected.

Mandate, no mandate, perceived mandate, stolen mandate -- in the big picture it just really doesn'