News & Letters, July – August 2013. Lead: Turkey, Syria and Iran at crossroads of world revolt; From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: ‘Russia more than ever full of revolutionaries…’; Editorial: Support striking prisoners!; Essay: Communization theory and its discontents truncate Marx’s dialectic; Workshop Talks: The boss is spying; Revolutionary from Turkey speaks; Brazil’s uprising; Teacher and school struggles; and more…
teachers
Teachers and allies fight restructuring
February 20, 2013Lake County, Ill.—Recently, teachers in my district received a warning that the district would be undergoing “restructuring” for the 2013-14 school year. When the superintendent visited our school after the winter break, she informed us that scores were still not reaching our goal and that sweeping changes would be necessary.
She needed to submit a “bold [=>]
Undoing Michigan election
February 6, 2013Editorial
With lightning swiftness a super-majority of Michigan lame-duck Republicans passed a series of oppressive bills at the end of December. Defying voters’ expressed views, they passed an anti-union “right-to-work” law, an anti-abortion bill and a dictatorial emergency manager act. This was accomplished despite a record number–over 12,500–of protestors who stormed and occupied the legislative chamber [=>]
January-February 2013 issue of News & Letters is now online
February 2, 2013Lead
Uprisings in Egypt and Syria confront counter-revolution
Slightly over two years since the beginning of Egypt’s revolution, those heady days can seem distant. The current government of Mohamed Morsi was able to push through a reactionary Constitution. It includes anti-working class Articles allowing for child labor and forced labor, in certain circumstances; limits the right to [=>]
Readers’ Views, July-August 2012, Part 2
August 15, 2012RICH AND DUNAYEVSKAYA: A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
Thanks for your In Memoriam to Adrienne Rich. It revealed a dimension that many who were appreciative of her poetry and feminism may not have known—Rich’s exploration of Marx’s ideas through her reading of Raya Dunayevskaya. One piece Rich wrote was titled “Dunayevskaya’s Marx.” It was crucial how you [=>]
Occupy the school—keep Lakeview open!
August 1, 2012Photo by Urszula Wislanka for News & Letters
Parents, students and teachers have occupied Lakeview Elementary School in Oakland, Calif., since June 15 to keep it open, just one of five schools slated for closure. Under threat from police and the Oakland Unified School District, the protesters, including Occupy Oakland, nevertheless have created social [=>]
NYC May Day march
July 27, 2012New York—There was a large May Day rally and march in New York City—but you would not have known it from reading The New York Times. The march of around 10,000 was a convergence of individuals, organizations, and participants in actions earlier in the day, primarily targeting sites of labor disputes and financial headquarters.
Although the [=>]
Parents, students protest schools hit list
April 15, 2012From the March-April 2012 issue of News & Letters
Chicago—Several hundred people rallied against Chicago’s school “turnarounds” on Feb. 20 and marched to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house. Many marchers wore stickers over their mouths that read “Silenced” or “Excluded,” symbolizing how the mayor and his school board have run roughshod over schools without listening [=>]
Workshop Talks: Making teachers redundant
February 8, 2012Workshop Talks
by Htun Lin
Over a billion dollars has been spent in the last decade to comprehensively computerize the workplace at the nation’s largest HMO, where I work. For the executives, it’s as if the line between the virtual and the real has finally been eliminated. Not so for us rank-and-file workers, trying to provide real [=>]
January-February 2012 issue of News & Letters now available on the web
January 29, 2012Lead
Protests began in September in Wukan, a village of 20,000 people in Guangdong province on the South China Sea, against seizure of more than 100 acres of Wukan’s common land to be sold to those with insider ties to the village Communist Party leadership. Village authorities escalated the conflict by identifying protest leaders and hauling [=>]
Stop leeches bleeding public schools dry
December 21, 2011Stop leeches bleeding public schools dry
New York City—”The Trial Is On! The People of NYC are gathering to put the perpetrators of education crimes and human and civil rights violations against our children on trial—in our own People’s Court!” On Oct. 15, the Coalition for Public Education (www.forpubliced.org) took testimony from parents, teachers and [=>]
Chicago city workers defy new thug mayor
December 13, 2011From the November-December 2011 issue of News & Letters:
Chicago—Mayor Rahm Emanuel has made no secret of his contempt for City workers and his desire to weaken their unions. His attitude was perfectly captured in early September when he screamed “F—k you, Lewis!” at Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis during a meeting [=>]
Readers’ Views, September-October 2011
October 7, 2011From the September-October 2011 issue of News & Letters:
Readers’ Views
Contents:
- REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION: ARAB SPRING AS CROSSROADS IN HISTORY
- KARL MARX AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
- REMEMBERING CHRISTINA SANTIAGO
- THELONIOUS MONK
- CANADA AS ‘CONTESTATAIRE’ SOCIETY
- MAN-MADE DISASTERS: NUCLEAR POWER AND WORLD WAR
- LABOR STRUGGLES IN 2011
- WHY WRITE FOR N&L?
- VOICES FROM BEHIND THE BARS
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION: ARAB SPRING AS CROSSROADS IN HISTORY
The West supports any revolution where they [=>]
World in View: Students awaken Chile
September 19, 2011From the September-October 2011 issue of News & Letters:
World in View: Students awaken Chile
Hundreds of thousands of students–teenagers, and college students–have taken to the streets of Santiago, the capital, and the cities of Concepción, Valparaíso and Temuco, among others, to demand a decent public education. Hundreds of schools have been taken over. Students have been [=>]
Needed: debate on education in era of cutbacks
September 17, 2011Essay
by Erica Rae
From college level all the way down to pre-school, education is in crisis across the U.S. Teachers are made the scapegoats for why students are not “measuring up” to keep our country competitive in a global market that is falling apart across the globe. But, what is the reality?
At the college level: many students [=>]
New September-October 2011 issue of News & Letters now available online
September 10, 2011News & Letters, Vol. 56, No. 5
September-October 2011
Lead
Political spectacles cannot hide reality of deranged capitalism
At the end of a months-long political spectacle in Washington–manufactured over irrelevancies concerning what should have been a routine raising of the national debt limit before the Aug. 2 deadline–reality struck with a bombshell: the anemic “jobless” recovery in the U.S. [=>]
Stand up, Chicago!
August 16, 2011Chicago–Thousands of people rallied on June 14 under the banner, “Give It Back!” Three separate marches downtown, each led by a 12-foot-tall “corporate welfare king” puppet, met up outside a Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce summit. Then 24 people sat down in the street and were arrested. There were contingents of teachers, healthcare workers, janitors, anti-eviction [=>]
Lift campus wages!
June 13, 2011Memphis, Tenn.–On April 8, over 75 students, faculty, and staff members of the University of Memphis came out in support of a living wage for campus workers. Some workers have been employed at the university for more than 15 years, and they have not seen a raise in over four years.
The custodial staff only makes [=>]
Making teachers mad
June 10, 2011Los Angeles–In the school district where I work, they have cut two hours per day from the non-teaching staff. It affects insurance for employees with a family. A security worker told me, “I lose $700 per month.” Teachers are losing six furlough days per year, and step increases are frozen. That is in an economy [=>]
Teachers’ real value
April 11, 2011New York–Politicians are clamoring to get rid of the tenure system for K12 public school teachers. They claim tenure makes it impossible to fire teachers, even those known to have abused students. The real motivation is financial: tenured teachers earning maximum salaries and benefits “cost” districts more than recent hires.
Many people assume that senior teachers [=>]
Readers’ Views (March-April 2011)
April 2, 2011THE MIDDLE EAST EXPLODES: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER?
The Middle East events are bringing lots of people to talk about 1979 as well as the 2009 movements in Iran. I appreciated Raha’s essay in the Jan.-Feb. issue, Philosophy and Iran’s revolution: Where to now? because it raises the question of what could go wrong right now in [=>]
In-person report: Wisconsin at front line of class war
March 23, 2011Madison, Wisc.–Day after day, tens of thousands of people–and over 100,000 on Feb. 26–have taken to the streets around the Wisconsin State Capitol building. They filled the Capitol rotunda with protest signs and rallies for over a week. As you walk towards the Capitol you can hear loud chanting and drum playing spilling out of [=>]
Corporate assaults on workers and women
March 20, 2011Editorial:
As the national assault against the working class in the U.S. increases, most openly evidenced by the orchestrated attacks aimed at destroying public employees’ unions, workers and their unions are challenging these vicious attacks. The most blatant attack, by Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin–who introduced legislation to eliminate the right of public worker unions [=>]
New York’s ‘F’ in math
March 11, 2011Impelled by “Race to the Top,” New York State has mandated that by 2013, 25% of a teacher’s evaluation be based on a value-added system–which supposedly means improved student scores on standardized tests. New York City supports public release of such rankings.
The “science” behind the national race to convert teachers from professionals into producers is [=>]
‘Waiting for Superman’ review
March 3, 2011New York City–The controversial film “Waiting For Superman” started with the premise that U.S. public schools are broken. It blamed the teachers’ unions and tenure, and demonized the President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten. The film ignored the facts. It held up Finland as a model but failed to mention that Finland’s public schools are much [=>]
Teachers mock boss
February 25, 2011New York City—The following statement along with others was delivered at a press conference called by the NYC Green Party on Nov. 30 at 11:00 AM at Hearst Headquarters, 8th Ave. and 57th Street:
I am applying to head the Magazine division of Hearst Publications, a position vacated by Cathie Black [to become Schools Chancellor]. Although I have no [=>]