For My Palestinian Student, Teacher and Friend

Posted on by Alan Weber

(I posted this on the Facebook page of a friend who happens to be a devout Palestinian Muslim. Its intention is that our friendship serve as an example to others of her friends and mine of possibilities that exist in this growingly divided, hateful, chaotic and violent world, even at its epicenter. I have changed her name to “Mudarris,” which means “teacher” in Arabic.)

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while now, but decided to wait until the right time. My understanding is that Mudarris will be leaving to go back to Jordan at the end of the month, so I think this is that time. I hope, Mudarris, that you find it appropriate, otherwise you can delete it.

Mudarris was my Education student in three classes, and one of my best. In addition to her intelligence and decency, she always seemed to take to and agree with my philosophy of teaching and I always admired the things she wrote and said. But I’m not writing this to commend Mudarris, as remarkable as she is; that I can and will do privately. I have something more to say.

Mudarris and I have become friends, and in addition to substantial agreements on an approach to teaching, I think we have substantial agreements on an approach to living. I am Jewish… and an atheist. To me those things are irrelevant to the values one exhibits in one’s dealings with people and issues. Maybe I should tell you a little about myself before I continue.

I wasn’t raised with either a sense of religion or of nationalism (of any kind). In the 1960’s I was dramatically changed as a person. I became an activist against war and for civil rights and social justice. It became important to me to surround myself with a diversity that had been missing, and to be consistent, without blinders, regarding my principles. As such, I began to learn about the plight of the Palestinian people and came to support their struggle for justice.

It was common practice during those times for radical political organizations to set up tables of literature for passing students. Learning in college was not about what happened in the classroom then, it was about finding our place in and our potential impact on the world. As I remember it, a new manifesto or constitution had just been published by the PLO, and I wanted a copy for our table, to show students, who were disproportionately white and quite possibly Jewish at the time (until we closed down the campus to force open admissions), that they would not find the words “drive the Jews into the sea” as any kind of current and official position. So I went down to the PLO headquarters near Grand Central Station and introduced myself and my mission to the representative. Given that they had just been printed, he had only one copy. And he gave it to me (this was before affordable copy machines) on my promise to return it, having just met me and knowing I was Jewish, but apparently appreciative of my purpose.

I have never forgotten that gesture. I have, ever since, debated and written about “the Palestinian question,” fought against anti-Islamic prejudice and discrimination, and dreamed of and worked (albeit in small ways) for a world in which we, the “seed of Abraham,” the Semites, would rediscover our common roots and bonds, histories of oppression and aspirations for our children. I once organized a luncheon for the victims of a hate crime right around the corner from our College after 9/11, and demonstrated at the site of the mosque that was proposed near Ground Zero that met with so much ignorant opposition. It is painful for me, as a Jew, to hear the stereotypes and lies that have followed my people for millenia being perpetuated because the government and too many people of the Jewish state have acted so inhumanely and uncharacteristically based on the tenets that we are supposed to believe in. It is equally painful for me, as a human being, to hear the stereotypes and lies that have been cast at Muslims, also for centuries but of course especially now because of those who have acted so inhumanely and uncharacteristically based on the tenets that they are supposed to believe in.

From the time that my ancestors were driven from their homeland, not for the first time, by the Romans, we have suffered characterizations ranging from “Christ killers” to “money grubbers” to a secret conspiracy of evil that rules the world. These myths of bigotry, like all myths of bigotry against any persecuted peoples, were used to justify atrocities, including the exile, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms and ultimately The Holocaust. Muslims, based on other myths of bigotry, suffered the Crusades, their own pogroms, exiles and attacks, and ultimately the likes of “Shock and Awe” throughout the Middle East and roundups and persecutions in America. We should understand one another. In fact, we should be united.

I understand that there is a fine line between “terrorists” and freedom fighters, as there was in Ireland, and, for that matter, America when it fought the British. I also understand the reality and legitimacy of feelings of rage, desperation, powerlessness and limited options, and that bombs and drones, kill lists and black sites are terrorism, too, in fact the most egregious. Nonetheless, there is a line, there has to be.

This is my perspective. My ancestors wanted a country of their own. They felt that it was God-given, that it had been taken from them, and that it was the only way they could defend themselves against eternal persecution. I would have preferred had the Allied powers carved up Germany and made half of it a Jewish state instead of a military outpost for the West. But I am not religious. There were those, Zionists in its original meaning, who believed that their Bible decreed that the Jewish state be in Palestine. I do believe that while some among the Zionist movement were imperialists, many were following an honest religious belief. They were told by their leaders that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” It’s not very different from the European settlers who came to the New World having been told that it was largely unpopulated except by “savages” who didn’t know how to use the land anyway, and that it was their “Manifest Destiny” as ordained by God, to have America for their own.

Once they got to Palestine, they had to realize that they had been lied to. Some, like those in the Irgun and Stern Gang, became terrorists, and committed massacres and forced exiles. Some, like in the Haganah, while being the more moderate, certainly gave tacit permission for and willful ignorance of what was happening. Many of the Jewish immigrants were scared, exhausted, even barely surviving their tortures. Was it hypocrisy to allow to be done to the Palestinian people what had just been done to them, of course. Some used religious justification for retaking the land, and what happens when two peoples both believe that God is on their side and has bestowed to them the same land? Would it be moral to send many if not most of the immigrants back to Germany, Russia, etc. and return it to the Palestinians? One could make that argument, just as one could make the argument that Europeans should be returned to Europe and America returned to the Native Americans. But time, for better or worse, always obscures morality with practicality. How far back do we honor claims? So what’s the solution from my perspective?

To me, the practical solution is easy. at least easy to conceptualize, albeit not accomplish. Israel has to pull back all of the settlements to at least the 1967 boundaries, cease all acts of martial law in exchange for a permanent, mutual cease fire, supervised if necessary, and recognize a Palestinian state in the otherwise occupied territories of sufficient size and cultivatability to allow a Palestinian economy to flourish. With temporary neutral international monitoring that seems very doable. I would also make Jerusalem an international city. Again, I’m not religious, so that’s easy for me to say. People who believe that God granted them the city would undoubtedly not be so easily convinced, and I don’t have a good answer for that. Look, I’m not an historian, nor a geographer, I’m just someone who wants people to stop killing and dying, misunderstanding and hating each other, and have our children taught to and be able to live in peace. I would love to be further educated, because I am the first one to admit to my relative ignorance of other perspectives. I just want each reader to believe that everything I have expressed is heart felt and free of any agendas other than one simple one, love.

And back to Mudarris, I want to again express my respect and admiration, not only for what she has accomplished here, but for her courage and self-sacrifice in her desire to bring her gifts and what she has learned back to the needy children of Jordan and hopefully, one day soon, Palestine. First and foremost, I wish her safety and peace. However, I recognize that America isn’t the safest and most pleasant place for Muslims these days or for the foreseeable future, and I promise that I will continue to speak out, to those who support Trump and those who support Netanyahu, to Americans in general and particularly Jewish people because that is my special responsibility, against words and acts of hate or ignorance. The world would be so much better if people took responsibility within their own “families,” if Whites took the lead in educating other Whites about the stereotypes and history of prejudice that affect Blacks, so Blacks wouldn’t have to, if Anglos took the lead in educating other Anglos about the stereotypes and history of prejudice that affect Latinos, so Latinos wouldn’t have to, if Straights took the lead in educating other Straights about the stereotypes and history of prejudice that affect Gays, so Gays wouldn’t have to, if Jews took the lead in educating other Jews about the stereotypes and history of prejudice that affect Muslims, so Muslims wouldn’t have to, and if Muslims took the lead in educating other Muslims about the stereotypes and history of prejudice that have affected Jews, so that Jews wouldn’t have to. And please be aware that there are many, an increasing number of Jews, inside and outside of Israel, who do condemn its policies. It is in the tradition of the Jewish people, with this one glaring exception, to side with the oppressed, and I am proud of our tradition of commitment to education, free thinking, progressive politics and compassion (and guilt). It is my job to teach them to remove their blinders and, despite defensiveness and bias, remember that.

To Mudarris, I hope we remain friends and keep in touch across the waters. I am eager to find out about your accomplishments, which I know will be outstanding. And I hope you are happy with what I have written here, as I would like to think that our friendship provides just a little example of hope that we can all begin to see our differences as opportunities for learning and enrichment in the context of our common humanity, rather than divisions that scare and silence us, although ultimately we are just two people who had the good fortune to meet. Best wishes to you and your family on a safe trip and fulfilling futures.

 

Baseball and Boycotts: Suffolk County Community College Earns an “F” on LGBT Rights

Posted on by Alan Weber

I have been a faculty member of Suffolk Community College for more than a quarter century. I have served on their Faculty Senate, their Academic Standards Committee, their Student Liaison Committee, their Curriculum Committee, their Diversity Committee and their Academic Integrity Committee. In addition to having taught seven different courses in and helping to redesign their Early Childhood Education Program, I have been Co-Coordinator of the Academic Advisement and Mentoring Center, I have taught in their College Success Program, I have participated in workshops on multiculturalism and the first year student experience, and I have designed a game for the College website which serves as an interactive “map” for students of the College’s components, functions, requirements and supports. I have been loyal, but I have rarely hesitated to speak out when College policies and decisions have run counter to their stated mission, as they frequently have. And now I find myself ashamed of the institution to which I have devoted more than half of my adult life.

Last week, the Board of Trustees, essentially an unreachable group of appointees, voted that the College baseball team be “allowed” to travel to North Carolina, in the face of the nationwide boycott against its new discriminatory laws against the LGBT community, because, since the team is partially paid for by student fees, it is “not covered” under the New York State ban on interstate commerce with North Carolina in support of LGBT rights. In other words, since students are paying to collude with discrimination rather than solely the taxpayers, that’s somehow okay. Their unanimous vote clearly misses the point, and undoubtedly deliberately so. The issue is not whether they “could” go, it was whether they should. They could have ruled that the College stands in opposition to discrimination and, therefore, the Board directs its components to abide by the sanctions against North Carolina. Or, in recognition of the fact that the College is supposed to be an institution of learning, it could have drafted an advisory statement on discrimination, including specifics about the new law and an historical perspective on previous boycotts, including those in the world of sports. It chose to do neither. And one has to wonder just how committed they are to supporting the rights of all people when it was just a year ago when they voted to ignore another boycott in support of the LGBT community, and contracted with Chick-Fil-A, whose profits derived from those student fees are donated to anti-LGBT groups and causes.

Whether one calls their statement a cop-out or a sell-out, they violated their own mission statement, which reads, “Suffolk County Community College promotes intellectual discovery, physical development, social and ethical awareness, and economic opportunities for all through an education that transforms lives, builds communities, and improves society.” One can see phrases like “ethical awareness,” “build(ing) communities” and “improv(ing) society,” all of which the decision made a mockery of, but where do we find anything about, say, “ignoring the plights of others in the privileged pursuit of the personal fruits of competition?” Allegedly the buck was passed to the ballplayers themselves, and if there had been a responsible, facilitated dialogue about the matter, that could have made for an empowering teachable moment. But as far as I am aware, no such dialogue ever took place, even after I reached out via email to the College President, the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, the Director of Athletics, the Coach of the baseball team, the Faculty Advisors of the LGBTQ student club, the Coordinator of Multicultural Affairs, Faculty Governance and its Chair, and the Faculty Advisor of Student Governance. What resulted was the typical silence that has too often been Suffolk’s history.

I recognize that these kids would have been put into a position to sacrifice something that at the moment was big to them. But don’t we teach that sacrifice can be noble? Don’t we want them to see that there are things that are bigger than themselves? Should we turn away so they can have their moment in the sun while others are reaching out from a storm? Do we buy into the national model of having the athletic tail wagging the academic dog and making ethical exemptions for athletes, who bring money and “prestige,” or do we continue the values that these kids once were taught in little leagues and junior soccer, that what’s most important is “how you play the game?” Which course would have been more likely to have had the greater impact on the adult citizens they become, and don’t we have more than enough self-centeredness, obliviousness, privilege, mispriorities and division in our society without making decisions which do nothing but contribute to their continuation? And which would be better advertising for the College’s recruitment and reputation, that we won yet another sports award, or that when push came to shove we stood on principle? I am disappointed in the ballplayers that played in my name, but I am more disappointed for them. A perfect opportunity for substantive learning. about tough decision making, about values, about one’s place in the world, was blown. And that’s a tragedy for an institution of “higher” learning.

The Case Against Clinton: Why Hillary Is an Unacceptable Alternative

Posted on by Alan Weber

With the rigged nomination process reaching its inevitable conclusion, we are once again being manipulated with the fear tactics that make us postpone our principles for another four years and resign ourselves to “the lesser of two evils.”  Yes, minor differences can make major differences in the lives of vulnerable people, say with Supreme Court nominations.  But many of us have been waiting for forty five years for another progressive and idealistic youth movement to emerge, and we cannot tell them to settle and wait.  Now that they have looked behind the curtain, we cannot provide cover for the power brokers anymore.  Now that they have turned around and beheld the light, we cannot divert them back to the shadows cast on the cave wall by the puppet masters.  We have to have long term vision, and to achieve it, to realize solutions that will finally end the cycles of fear and powerlessness and pain, we have to stop believing what the corporate media, CNN (the Clinton News Network), the sell-outs at MSNBC and the unabashed liars at Fox News, tells us.  Donald Trump is scary, no question.  But the deeper one looks at what they can actually get done, and what they would want to get done, the more one begins to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton is in fact not “the lesser of two evils” at all, and that the Democratic Party, by nature of the plutocracy, will always be part of the problem rather than the solution.  And here is why.

  1. Hillary Clinton is a war hawk. She supported the invasion of Iraq, and without even reading the intelligence because she wanted to appear “tough” in foreign policy to advance her own political ambitions, which is the only thing she has ever cared about. She counseled Obama to widen the war in Afghanistan, to force regime change in Libya and to be more militaristic in dealing with Iran, all allegedly against Biden’s advice, and as a result ISIS has grown and been armed, and weapons have been collaboratively smuggled from Libya to Turkey. Now she wants a no-fly zone in Syria and to be more aggressive in the Ukraine, not to mention against the Palestinians, putting us into direct conflict with Russia. Her Foundation has raked in millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, China and other “bad actors,” including anonymous ones lying in the shadows of international geopolitics. We don’t really know all of the covert alliances and abominations that go on in the world, but we can “safely” assume that she is somewhere in the middle of them. Accordingly, her tenure as Secretary of State was praised by Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney, while being criticized by Jimmy Carter for a complete absence of initiatives for peace.
  1. She has gotten millions of dollars herself from Wall Street and the banking, insurance, pharmaceutical, fossil fuel and educational profiteering lobbies. She claims they haven’t influenced her, but Elizabeth Warren tells us that in the nineties she had warned the then First Lady about a pending bankruptcy bill that would have been a windfall for credit card companies and a disaster for consumers. As a result, she convinced her husband to veto the bill, but then she became Senator and the money from the lobbyists started pouring in, and magically she flip-flopped, like she has on every single issue, and voted for the bill. She claims that all of the money from the fossil fuel industry has come from “the workers,” but as Secretary of State she tried to force fracking around the world, and still supports fracking, which poisons the drinking water as much as in Flint. She also refused to take a position on the Pipeline until it was politically untenable to support it. In the nineties she aided in the push to deregulation, helping her masters further, and also helping to cause the economic collapse after the Clintons left office, and then blamed it on those taking out mortgages, not the banks. She supported the dismantling of Glass-Steagall, and refuses to release the transcripts from the closed door Wall Street speeches she was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for, even though no one remaining in the race has made any such speeches to release with her. And she supported every trade deal written by multinational corporations for their own profit and to the detriment of American workers.  Previously, she had sat on the Board of Walmart and did nothing about the slave wages and lack of benefits of their workers, and was an attorney for Monsanto and defended their toxic agricultural and environmental practices.
  1. She claims to be a champion of the LGBT community, but was against same-sex marriage until the polls swung in favor. She claims to be a champion of women, but as an attorney she got the rapist of a twelve year old girl off with a slap on the wrist by putting the young girl’s sexual fantasies on trial, and then laughing about it in a subsequent interview. She savaged the courageous women who stood up to her husband’s predatory behavior. And she has always, and continues to this day, to pay women working for her less than men, and treats them like crap. She claims to be a champion of the African American community, but didn’t hesitate to play the race card not once but four times against Obama during the contentious South Carolina primary eight years ago. She built her career working for a segregationist, and praised the career of Senator Robert Byrd, much of which was spent as a Grand Dragon of the KKK. The criminal justice “reforms” she helped her husband draft have had a devastating effect on inner city minority youth, whom she once referred to as “superpredators,” and, as a footnote, she still supports capital punishment, which almost the entire civilized world has come to reject, along with private prisons and, of course, the Patriot Act. She actually traveled with her husband to witness the execution of a mentally challenged man whom he refused to pardon so that they could look “tough” on crime, again solely for the sake of personal ambition. She claims to be a champion of gun victims, but do you remember when Obama nicknamed her “Annie Oakley” for her defense of guns and coziness with the NRA? And she claims to be a champion of children, but that didn’t stop her from saying that poor children fleeing war, oppression and poverty in their native Latin American countries, largely due to American foreign policy, should be sent back to their deaths “to send a message.” She also supports the destruction of the public school system through privatization, having received lots of money from the charter school billionaires. And she helped her husband draft a welfare “reform” bill outlined by the Republicans which killed “Aid to Dependent Children” and has created abject shadow poverty, primarily for children. People support her because of her “experience.” But as Senator from New York, she authored not one piece of legislation. She doesn’t like her handiwork noticed, or her positions pinned to her.
  1. She is a pathological liar. Remember when she claimed she ducked sniper fire in Bosnia, claims which she embellished more and more in every speech, even when video surfaced showing her strolling the tarmac in the unbulleted sunshine greeting children? How about when she claimed at the most recent debate that she always supported the $15 minimum wage when all one had to do was replay the past debates to hear her say the opposite? How about when she claimed that Chelsea was jogging around the World Trade Center on 9/11, or when she claimed that all of her grandparents were immigrants, or when she claimed that much of what was on her email server was correspondence with her husband when he has made it clear that he never uses email, or when she claimed to have been a civil rights worker, or when she claimed that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary? How about when she was caught in her claim that Bernie Sanders’ Vermont was the chief supplier of guns used in crimes in New York? How about her flip-flops on everything from the environment to criminal justice, war to trade, guns to gay rights, deregulation to desegregation? Not a single genuine word comes out of her mouth, it’s all completely calculated and self-interested.
  1. She, her machine and the DNC have conspired to fix this nomination. There is documentation across the country of voter suppression, of covert disenfranchisements and party re-affiliations, of electoral fraud and illegal electioneering, of hidden ballots and deceitful robocalls, of closed polls and rigged machines, and of monetary and informational collusion between the DNC and the Clinton campaign, all to Clinton’s benefit. And then there are the superdelegates, many of whom are lobbyists for the banks, the fossil fuel industry, etc. Just read about the controversies in Nevada, Iowa and New York, among other states. And the oligarchy is taking good care of her, from the SuperPacs, including not only those that previously supported the Clinton cousins, the Bushes, and Marco Rubio, but the infamous Koch Brothers, to George Clooney’s $350,000 a plate dinner and the $100,000 a head benefit by the heir to the Rothschild fortune.

I hope you will join me in going Green and voting for Dr. Jill Stein for President.  We have to build a progressive, independent and uncorrupt force to serve as an alternative to the two-party duopoly.  There is no more time and there really is no other legitimate choice.

Time to Go Green: An Endorsement of Dr. Jill Stein for President

Posted on by Alan Weber

Time to Go Green

An Endorsement of Dr. Jill Stein for President

So it’s all over. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was sabotaged into hopelessness, and all indications now are that he will be a “good Democrat,” stop the anti-oligarchist attacks on Hillary, and “do everything he can” to make sure a Republican isn’t elected. Yes, I supported him. Hell, I voted for Obama the first go-round, too. Since the sixties, when I was a young radical, I have known that the two-party duopoly serves the same interests, and more often than not, over the years, I went third party instead of falling for the “lesser of two evils” fear tactic. But I was always a little torn. After all, even small differences can have a large impact on the lives of vulnerable people. Take the Supreme Court, the example most conflicted progressives cite to justify the postponement of their ideals for one more election.

In 2000, I voted for Nader. Then the Bush Coup became apparent, we had “Shock and Awe” in Iraq, Al Gore subsequently moved to the left (not the first Democratic candidate to seemingly snap out of a political coma once the election was over and lost), and I questioned my decision. When Obama ran, I wanted to believe. I mean, electing the first African American President surely would at least send a symbolic message, and here was someone who had not only been a community organizer, but had worked with Bill Ayers, for God sake. So I suspended my belief that any viable candidate who claimed to want to qualitatively change the system would either be a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a dead duck. And, like ol’ Bill Clinton before him, a once idealistic young man showed that, somewhere along the way, he had sold out. We have had the most secretive Administration in history, the most deportations, drones, military expansion, secret wars and black sites, trade deals, renewal of the Patriot Act, little but lip service for the poor, minorities or the environment, and a sell-out to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries after a closed door meeting no sooner than he had moved his furniture in.

And that should have done it. It should have confirmed everything I kind of knew that I really knew. But then Bernie Sanders comes along. He’s a socialist. His record seems reasonably clean, although not unblemished by what could have been some bad but honest decisions. And that long-awaited third wave of a student movement, the descendants of the children of the sixties, and, to a lesser extent, the eighties, starts to emerge from the disconnect and apathy. So once again, let’s play ball on the home field of the plutocracy. As of this writing, I don’t know, and we may never know, whether Bernie was the real deal or a smokescreen. Regardless, now his campaign is on life support, yet his young followers want to keep “Bernie or Bust” alive, confusing a cult of personality with a movement of principle. Some will write him in, ignoring the fact that some states don’t allow the practice, and the reality that if so many votes for a candidate actually on the ballot can be taken away one can only imagine how many write-in votes would merely be discarded. Some want him to run as an independent, which he won’t do, but even if he did, perhaps in the event that the Republicans split, too, what would we be left with after his inevitable loss?

Some will succumb to the fear, yet again, and fall in line with the Democratic National Committee. But how can a former Sanders supporter vote for someone: who is for the death penalty, traveled with her husband to watch the execution of a severely mentally disabled man, and helped architect a criminal justice reform initiative that has devastated inner city, minority communities; who supported the war in Iraq, was instrumental in the expansion in Afghanistan and regime change in Libya, and now wants a no-fly zone in Syria, setting up a confrontation with Russia; who has raked in millions from Wall Street and other national and international financial powers, has refused to release the transcripts of her closed door speeches for which she was paid hundreds of thousands, and despite her claims to the contrary, was clearly influenced by these donations, whether it be the flip-flop on the bankruptcy bill for credit card companies that Elizabeth Warren exposed or her aggressive promotion of fracking here and around the world; who built her career working for a segregationist, was not above playing the race card not once but four times during the contentious South Carolina primary against Obama, and referred to inner city youth as “superpredators” then and engages in raised-voice confrontations with instead of listening to African American activists today; who pretends to be a champion of LGBT rights yet opposed same-sex marriage until polls moved in their favor, pretends to be a champion of women but who got a slap on the wrist for the rapist of a twelve year old girl by lying that she had made false accusations before and putting the girl’s sexual fantasies on trial (and then laughing about it in a later interview), and pretends to be a champion of children but argued that Latin American children who successfully escaped their dangerous and impoverished countries (thanks in large part to American intervention) should be sent back to “send a message”; who has flip-flopped on every single issue, from the environment to criminal justice to foreign policy to trade to deregulation to guns, etc.; who is a pathological liar, who claimed to have ducked sniper fire in Bosnia until (and even after) footage showed her strolling down the tarmac in the bright sunshine greeting children, who claimed to have always supported the $15 minimum wage even though in previous debate she quite specifically argued against it, and who claimed that most of those emails still hanging over her head, and ours, were communication with her husband even though it’s well known that he doesn’t use email; and who has, in conspiracy with the DNC and her own massive machine, stolen this primary through voter suppression and mysterious party reaffiliations, hidden ballots and illegal campaigning, and SuperPacs and superdelegates.

Some will even vote for Trump, for various reasons whose logic I am still working on, but, nonetheless, a calculation I believe to be morally repugnant, given his history of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, ruthless and failed business practices, ignorance, incitement of violence, statements in support of torture and the killing of family members of suspected terrorists, and positions that would shred the Constitution and lay the groundwork for fascism. So that leaves us with one constructive option: voting for Dr. Jill Stein and building the Green Party as an alternative to the two-party trap, one that already has a framework and ballot access, a progressive platform stronger and more consistent than Bernie’s, and no baggage requiring future ethical dilemmas. No, she won’t win, but it’s about long-term building so that we might have what other, more democratic nations have, a real choice of parties and positions. If we keep voting for “the lesser of the two evils,” then we shouldn’t be surprised that we continue to end up with evil. If we keep giving into short-term fear, then we have no long-term hope. We survived “The Reagan Revolution.” We survived “The Bush Coup.” I suspect we would even survive “The Trump Reality Show.” We would fight back against it, but, as compelling as the argument that little differences matter may be, there is the counter-argument that it’s only when we stop masking the system that it is exposed for what it really is.

So the hell with the DNC, Hillary Clinton and “politics as usual.” I hereby renounce my enrollment in the Democratic Party, I have ordered my Jill Stein button, I have just discovered a Green Party chapter in Suffolk County, and you will be reading all about the campaign here and around social media.

Aim Both Barrels At the NRA: A Radical Perspective on Gun Control

Posted on by Alan Weber

 

There was yet another school shooting yesterday, at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, where ten students have died.  This is the forty fifth school shooting this year alone.  When is enough enough?  How many children have to be sacrificed to the gun lobby?  How much blood money in the coffers of the gun manufacturers, in the salaries of their puppets in the NRA leadership, and in the pockets of the politicians they’ve bought is each child worth?  Forget all this crap about “sensible” gun control.  What we need are radical measures, like those in all other of the industrialized countries, whose gun deaths combined don’t equal ours.

Okay, let’s start where all unfanatical and uncorrupted people would hopefully agree.  Ban semi-automatic weapons.  One doesn’t need an AK-47 to shoot Bambi.  People who argue against this conjure images of a slippery slope.  So if we have an uninfringeable right to “bear arms,” why not let everyone have atomic missiles for recreational use?  The slippery slopers, and they are awfully slippery, make the same argument against limiting the number of rounds per marketable firearm, despite the fact that the mass murderers have generally been caught while attempting to reload. So enough bullshit.  And that goes for their other arguments, too.

How about we look at the Second Amendment and read what it actually says?  My copy of the Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  Come on English majors, what does that actually say?  The sentence is governed by the premise of “a well regulated Militia.”  This is what guarantees the right of “the people” to security.  No “strict constructionist” alive can offer proof that it has anything to do with each individual citizen’s rights.  Why is there a comma before “shall not be infringed” if that related directly to some universal “right?”

And if one is not a strict constructionist it’s even easier.  When this was written, people had one shot muskets that had to be painstakenly reloaded with gunpowder.  People needed to hunt for food.  The union, on the heels of a revolution, was shaky.  We actually had a popular militia.  Could the authors of this amendment have had even an inkling of the completely different realities of today’s society, and don’t we in other areas, such as equal protection and the right to privacy, interpret the Constitution based on projecting its principles to today’s circumstances and knowledge?

Today few people have to hunt for food or clothing.  Those who do can be otherwise supported in their need.  Hunting now is done for sport or tradition.  Sorry, but that’s not good enough.  Personally, I think that killing animals for sport is a sickness, not unconnected to why we have so many killings of people.  And past cultural customs often have to give way to the general mores and welfare of the society as a whole.  But even if one can justify hunting, is that “thrill” worth parents having to bury their children?  Can’t people find another way to satisfy those alleged primal urges for adventure, perhaps by using it toward some form of freeing or rescuing rather than stalking and destroying?

So if not for hunting, what about for protection?  More bullshit.  Guns in the home are thirty four times more likely to result in unjustifiable homicide, suicide or accident than in any protective action.  Gun owners are forty three times more likely to kill a family member than a dangerous intruder.  People with guns in their possession are four and a half times more likely to be killed by gunfire.  Those with guns in the home are at three times greater risk of being killed.  And those guns are at least twice more likely to be used by the intruder against the homeowner than vice versa.  A hundred children a year die from accidental gun deaths.

One hears, in response to a massacre like yesterday’s, that if only someone there had been packing it could have been averted, that we need more guns not less to prevent tragedies.  More bullets flying “old West style” would make bystanders safer?  Does anybody see a problem with putting guns in the hands of school personnel, mall guards or theater ushers and hoping they stay cool under pressure, aim well, judge clearly, guard them safely, don’t ever have any mental episodes, don’t ever inaccurately interpret threat or self-defense, and haven’t evaded anything in their background checks?  We don’t even have reliable background checks as it is, now we want to use our schools and public places for such a social experiment for which we can’t call on a single one of those cases where it’s been successful?

There’s only one argument that, in my opinion, has any reasonability, although it carries its own kind of dangerous irrationality.  It is the fear of having an unarmed population.  If we give the government the right to disarm us, we potentially enslave ourselves.  Okay, but even considering the high unlikelihood that we’ll be facing outright fascism here in the foreseeable future, if there were armed insurrection we’d be massacred.  And considering the political mentality and insight of the average American and how much more likely, in that eventuality, they could be driven by politicians and media to turn on scapegoats and each other than on the government and plutocrats, are we really safer with, say, a well armed North Dakota or Texas, or will we have to shoot it out with them first?  Yes, police brutality is still alive, but we saw what happened when the Black Panthers asserted their right to bear arms: they’re not.  And this is all gross speculation.  Meanwhile, real children, seven a day in America, are dying.  You know how they say that regardless of laws criminals can always get guns?  Well, in the midst of an outright revolution, desperate insurgents can always get guns, too.

But let’s examine that mantra about gun control taking guns out of the hands of “the good guys” while the “bad guys” can always get them by virtue of being “bad guys.”  In this context, what exactly are “good guys” and “bad guys,” other than comic book caricatures?  They tell us we need to focus on “sick people,” not guns, because “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”  And of course we need to devote more money and care to people with mental illness.  But those with pre-diagnosed disturbances make up only a tiny percentage of armed killers.  Most gun deaths are not premeditated or motivated by some ascertainable “evil,” they occur in “the heat of passion” or rage, during some kind of unpredictable psychotic break, in some irrational perception of self-defense, unintentionally or accidentally.  But even if we tightened background checks, which we of course have to do (and the NRA fights even that), even if we had the best system of mental health care in the world (instead of one of the worst), it would only begin to chip away at the epidemic we face.  If guns are available, they’re more likely to be used, it’s as simple as that.

When the victim of bullying starts to seethe, when the depression of the teen starts to deepen, when the man thinks he sees his wife with another man, when the spousal abuse begins worsening, when the fight continues to escalate, when the immature fool wants to show off, what does common sense say about whether it makes a difference whether a gun is readily available or not?  If they even first had to go out and get them, how many lives would be saved?  How many more would be saved if they couldn’t?  We see this phenomenon in research.  Those with guns are more likely to taunt and bully, to engage in road rage and reckless behavior, to escalate and not back down.  So how the hell do they make us safer?

We need a war on guns.  Bottom line: they have no place in a civilized society.  Gun violence is a national health and child welfare emergency.  We talk about it for a couple of days after a tragedy like this most recent one and then let it die, just like we let the next group of kids die.  A new study by the Boston Children’s Hospital confirmed that the states with the strictest gun control measures tend to have the fewest gun fatalities, as if that wouldn’t be self-evident. But then there’s that pesky problem of neighboring states.  In the news just today, surveillance tapes were released capturing a gun runner bragging about how he had bought an arsenal of weapons down south, in states with weak gun laws, and then sold them on the streets of New York. We need to expose the many politicians, more than half in Congress as of the last accounting, who put their NRA contributions before common sense and common decency.  We can disagree about how far to go, although how far is far enough when it comes to our most vulnerable and precious resource?  But at very least, it’s time we stopped talking, and then stopped stopping talking, and began to act.

The Trump Lemmings

Posted on by Alan Weber

There is a televangelist by the name of Peter Popoff.  He professes to be a faith healer.  With his funny hair and his claims to be able to make people richer and safer, he has amassed quite a fortune and quite a following.  He has been caught numerous times, for using secreted listening devices, for planting collaborators in his audience and for various schemes to swindle the sick and the greedy.  But the more he has been exposed, the more outrageous he has become in response, the more his desperate and oblivious flock just keep believing and growing… just like Trump followers.

In Donald Trump’s case, the fraudulence has been a bit different.  Since he has neither facts nor positions, he shows his slipperiness by making things up or evading questions with empty slogans and self-aggrandizement.  In place of political debate he prefers juvenile name calling.  In the guise of trying to elicit greatness, what he actually appeals to are people’s basest instincts, prejudice and ignorance.  And every time he is called out, for racism or sexism, for lies or gibberish, or for his many flip-flops despite presenting himself as the anti-politician, or his many corrupt, ruthless or failed enterprises despite presenting himself as the model businessman, his supporters defend him with even more fury and in even greater numbers.

Charges that Trump is a racist have been largely met by either excuses or attacks on “political correctness.”  Pride in incorrectness and uninformedness appears to be winning the day.  It goes beyond his having said that “they,” referring to Mexican immigrants, “are rapists,” criminals, leeches, etc.  Let us for now fast forward past the facts that, even if this were not expressed as a collective racist stereotype reminiscent of similar and similarly purposed characterizations of African Americans during Reconstruction, there is no basis in reality for any such assertions according to law enforcement or simple statistics.  And as many of the immigrants are from Central America as from Mexico, which apparently makes for a difficult distinction for Trump, as it was for his party’s transfigured hero, Ronald Reagan.  Let us also not dwell on any enlightened perspective as to the reasons so many from Latin America have been forced to come here, including the impoverished and brutal conditions in their native countries thanks to the raiding of their labor and natural resources by American corporations such as United Fruit, and the installing by our government of dictatorships considerably more friendly to our politico-economic interests than to their own people.  Beyond all of this, we have other examples of Trump’s racist history and appeals with which to expose him.

As arguably the leading spokesperson for “the birther movement,” certainly Trump was conveying a message that Barack Obama, America’s first African American President, is “not one of us.”  But even those who might dismiss that interpretation would find it hard to justify one of the off the cuff remarks Trump is not only known to make but, rather than well thought out and factually supported statements, is actually a great part of his appeal.  In an interview with the Associated Press several years ago, Trump wondered out loud how a “terrible student” like Obama could have “merited” admission into two elite schools, raising the implication of affirmative action, similarly to how his fellow Republicans have referred to Obama as “the food stamp President,” with no records and no sources.  It was a little like when he was asked at the first debate where he had gotten his information about the rapes and such and his response, after first trying to dodge the question, was something vague about some unnamed members of the border patrol saying some unspecified stuff.  Lest we forget, he had gone down there with the intention of meeting with them but they refused to involve themselves in his media stunt.  But he assures us that he has “a great relationship with the Blacks,” just like he assured us that Hispanics love him just like he loves them because so many work for him (including so-called “illegals,” by the way).  I’m sure most Hispanics simply loved when he castigated Jeb Bush for speaking in Spanish, and I wonder if that “great relationship” with “the Blacks” was at all strained by his proclamation that “laziness is a trait in Blacks.”

So at least Trump is an equal opportunity racist.  “Black guys counting my money!  I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”  He used an offensive mock Asian dialect in describing Chinese and Japanese business practices during a stump speech in Iowa, and attempted to sue the American government to declare Native American run casinos, one of the few sources of revenue left to the severely impoverished Indian nations, unconstitutional to close them down, presumably so that they couldn’t compete with his own casinos, in court even saying, “They don’t look like Indians to me!”  This is from a man who tried to have an elderly woman evicted from her home so he could bulldoze it to make room for VIP parking for one of his casinos.

Then we get to Trump and women.  The Donald has two ways of dealing with women, patronizing and insulting.  (That is unless one doesn’t include raping, as alleged by his former wife.)  He also has a habit of cheating on and divorcing them, it appears when they, unlike Donald of course, age and, like Heidi Klum, are no longer a “perfect ten” who looks like his daughter, of whom he said that given her “nice figure” he would perhaps “be dating her” if he weren’t her father.  After all, in his inimitable words, “You know, it really doesn’t matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”  He tells us that all of the female contestants of his other reality show flirted with him, and who could resist someone who publicly fantasized about how good one of them must have looked on her knees in front of her?

Those of us who watched the first debate surely remember that exchange with Megyn Kelly, of friendly Fox News, which began with a question about his belittling comments, and how at first he tried to pretend that they were restricted to Rosie O’Donnell.  It took only a few seconds before he admitted that he had just lied, but those alone speak to Trump’s character, having referred to her as a “slob,” a “fat pig” and a “disgusting animal.”  He even brought her partner, Kelli Carpenter, into it by not only saying that her parents were “devastated at the thought of their daughter being with (her),” but that he should send one of his friends to pick her up (and presumably “straighten her out”) because, “I mean, would you want to wake up next to that?”

Of course, Ms. Kelly’s question about him having referred to women as pigs and dogs and animals, while generously leaving out “sluts,” “whores,” and a word starting with “c” that she could not even hint at on television, ignited a firestorm, because nobody asks “hard questions” of The Donald, that’s just not fair, waah waah.  So needless to say, he, in his schoolyard bullying ways, had to respond to Ms. Kelly, by calling her a “bimbo.”  “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes… blood coming out of her wherever.”  Trump later denied that he was referring to women’s irrationality when on their period, which was as convincing as when he said about opponent Carly Fiorina, the only woman in the race, “Look at that face.  Would anyone vote for that?!”, and then trying to tell us he was referring not to her looks but to her persona.  Donald has a history of difficulty with women’s womanhood.  He once had what was reported as “an absolute meltdown” when an attorney had to take a recess to pump breast milk, which he found “disgusting.”  Oh, and while Fox quickly got back into the good graces of The Donald, by apparently promising no more tough questions, Megyn Kelly found herself on vacation.

Okay, enough of the interpersonal.  Let’s get to the would-be political.  Now recognizing that his platform is about as hollow as one of those breakaway blocks used by impostor karate show-offs, this one might not be so easy.  His talking points on the issues of the day, no matter what they might be, nearly always come down to, “I’ll do such a great job you wouldn’t believe it.”  He did, however, promise us that he would hire some unnamed people who actually know something about foreign policy, so that by the time he’s President, even if he himself still knows nothing about all those strange names and places out there, ignorance he pretty much unabashedly admitted to at the more recent debate, we will be fine, no, better, we will be “great again.”  Plus, we know he knows how to make shrewd deals.  So convincing Mexico to pay billions for that two thousand mile wall with that “big, fat, beautiful door” in it somewhere (probably near the Trump insignia), built to keep in Mexico the Central Americans coming from the south and the American-born babies flying over it from the north, or China to agree to less favorable trade conditions for no apparent reason other than that The Donald always talks “tough” and gets his way, should be a piece of cake.  And he’s sure he’d “get along with Putin,” but there’s always name calling as a first resort.  So there we have it.

Oh, wait, he does have one somewhat more tangible strategic position.  His answer to the threat of ISIS would be to “bomb the hell” out of Iraq to get the oil from them and take it for ourselves.  Now it’s easy to understand why the idea of hoarding other people’s (the Iraqis’, although Trump contends there “is no Iraq”) assets would come easily to Trump.  But wasn’t he supposedly against the invasion of Iraq in part because of all of the deaths caused?  Or perhaps he was only talking about American deaths and not the inevitable mass civilian casualties caused by such “shock and awe” bombing, whose only effect on terrorist movements is to help them grow by creating greater anti-American sentiments that drive otherwise moderates to their side and sow the seeds of eventual world war.  Trump’s sympathy with American soldiers is well known; how can one forget how he attacked John McCain, and by extension all POW’s, for having been captured?  That’s not heroism, according to The Donald, he’s a real hero.  It’s a good thing then, that he evaded the draft, first with four separate student deferments and then with a mysterious medical deferment that he has been unable to clarify, otherwise he wouldn’t have been so stupid as to have been captured.  He’s smarter than all of us, as he constantly reminds us.  “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest – and you all know it!  Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure,it’s not your fault.”

Trump’s popularity stems from the fact that he’s not a politician.  So what are his qualifications?  Or as Rand Paul pondered just yesterday, “How could anyone in the GOP think that this clown is fit to be President?”  He brags about his wealth and how successful a businessman he is.  He fails to mention that he inherited his wealth and almost squandered it several times, having filed for bankruptcy on four separate occasions.  Presumably that’s the way he’d bring the American economy back.  Hopefully America would be one of his successes, given how many failed business ventures he’s had: “Trump Airlines,” “Trump Vodka,” “Trump the Game,” “Trump Magazine,” “Trump Steaks,” GoTrump.com (for luxury travel), “Trump University,” “Trump Mortgage” and the Trump Casinos in Atlantic City.  But it’s only money, trump change.  So why do his followers support and identify with him?  It’s the illusion of the “American Dream.”  Americans, since the time of the “robber barons,” have been conditioned to believe that they too could climb the ladder to infinite success if only they were to step on those beneath them who are, in some twist of logic, blocking their way.  The richest one percent of Americans hold more wealth than the bottom ninety percent.  But it’s not the billionaires, freeloaders benefiting from tax loopholes, corporate welfare, golden parachutes, off shore accounts and oligarchical inheritances, who are the ones taking our money, oh no, it’s the immigrants, “welfare mothers,” public employees and those struggling with their mortgages.  Trump shamelessly brags about the ways in which he played the system at the expense of our economy while telling us he’s on our side, and how he “bought” politicians while telling us he’s running against the corruption. And when was the last time he built anything for anyone other than the rich?

But people want to be like him, though that’s not quite the way the system is rigged.  People see this as leadership, but the only place he’d lead us is over a cliff.  People are drawn to his ignorance and, at the same time, his brilliance, his being an outsider and, at the same time, the ultimate insider, his speaking for and being one of “us” and, at the same time, being a celebrity with luxuries and arm candy that we can only emulate in our dreams.  Did he give a damn about “us” when he outsourced his companies, when he laid off workers, when he displaced homeowners, when he squashed small business competitors, when he rigged the system to his benefit… and who is best known for the phrase “You’re fired?”  Because someone shoots from the lip that doesn’t mean they’re speaking the truth.  Because someone isn’t a politician certainly doesn’t mean they are uncorrupt.  And because someone is “entertaining” it doesn’t mean they are qualified.  The Trump lemmings need to wake up before they follow him over that cliff, and take us with them.

 

P.S. Just yesterday Trump finally came out with something concrete, other than a foundation for his luxury buildings. It sounds kind of promising until one gets into the details, which is why he has avoided details for so long. He would lower taxes on everyone, including the rich, costing the U.S. economy trillions of dollars which would be made up for by cutting social programs of course, specifically education. He said he would be eliminating a bunch of loopholes that he has benefited from, but he would also lower the corporate tax rate, so his businesses would get a windfall, and would completely eliminate the estate tax, so he could pass down his entire fortune to his children, and they to their children, keeping the Trump dynasty lording over our descendants forever Plus, when asked on Fox News, of all places, to name one specific loophole he would actually eliminate, besides an easily circumventable one for hedge fund managers, he couldn’t attest to a single one, and when asked about business write-offs, as for luxury jets or baseball tickets, he said no, they would stay. Even conservative analysts have determined that this smoke and mirrors plan would actually benefit rich people like him.

A Different Cultural Lesson Learned At the Pow Wow

Posted on by Alan Weber

I attend the Shinnecock Pow Wow every year.  I have long felt a special, only partially explainable affinity with Native American culture(s), and not only enjoy, but feel especially comfortable being there amongst the people, sounds, rhythms, scents, tastes and colors (including those of the diversity of the participants).  And I am not generally a comfortable person.  I’ve taken in and taken home a number of things over the years, but something special happened this year.

Due in large part to the current battles over the direction of public education, there is a lot of attention focused these days on children and what they need to learn and grow.  Now before I go any further with this, I want to acknowledge that what I am about to present as insight is bound with more than a few subjective assumptions and generalizations.  But what I perceived and how it affected me beg that risk.

Simply put, I have never seen more happy, peaceful, independent and in tune children.  I and my companion watched a beautiful toddler experimenting with blades and clumps of grass and the wheel of his carriage, and one could almost see the cerebral synapses firing.  His family seemed to strike a perfect balance of loving affection and respectful space, a watchful eye and following his lead.  We saw a number of parents affectionately holding their children up to give them a clear, engrossed view of the dancing up on stage, or playing with them attentively, or walking with or behind them regardfully.

And we saw the effects.  There was absolutely no crying or fussing, from the babies nor what could have been “the terrible twos” nor the older ones right up through teenage.  It was in their body language: how relaxed and contented they looked in their strollers, on their blankets or in the arms of their parents, and how free and proud they appeared in their postures and movements while walking or running or dancing.  And it was in their faces: the fascination with every interpersonal and sensory experience surrounding them, and the confidence to explore, approach and partake.

There was one notable exception.  A school-aged boy, observably less comfortable with himself and his surroundings, was trying to capture the attention of his father, who seemed much more interested in his camera and his considerably younger blonde girlfriend.  Fairly or unfairly, he appeared to us to be a too-typical every-other-weekend custodian.  And he also appeared to us, unlike the parents described above, to be, in accent and appearance, assumptively non-Indian.

Obviously, as a non-Native Caucasian myself, I am not trying to assert that all White parents are bad ones.  There was a wonderful, loving mother, later finding herself next to us, whose daughter was a joyful, liberated dervish, even when the music stopped.  She clearly relished in her daughter’s exuberance, at least up to a point where a slight hint of a self-conscious need for over-control revealed itself.  So what am I really saying here?

From what little I may have read or have observed, the parenting tradition among Native Americans, discounting any corruptive effects of poverty and its corrolaries, has historically been one of respect, restraint, naturalness, immersion and communalism.  The parents that I witnessed whom I presumed to have some Native American cultural influences may well have been showing that continuing tendency, more likely than others in American culture to see children as a gift to the future rather than a burden to the present.  Or maybe it was less about lineage than it was about atmosphere.

I find peace and acceptance in the white sage, in the music and rhythms, in the natural environment, and in the people, their diversity, their hospitality and their spirit.  Why wouldn’t others be influenced by the same sensory, or dare I say spiritual, envelopers?  Could the reservation hold some collective consciousness, some enduring wisdom, when it comes to children and parenting?  Am I making too much of all this, stereotyping and mystifying sheer coincidence, or can I trust what I, what we, became so seemingly aware of?

As someone who is supposed to have some expertise in child development, I am so often disappointed, when not horrified, by the way children are raised, taught and treated in our society.  I have done pretty much no traveling in my life, so haven’t had a first-hand view of the experiences of children in other societies around the world, some I nonetheless know to be better, and some far worse.  But a mere forty minute drive brought me to another nation, one which, for all their struggles with poverty and oppression, seems to know or induce far better what children really need and deserve.

As I approached and sought an ending for this reflection, I thought I’d do a little research to satisfy myself that I am not completely off base here.  I came upon references to a book, Keepers of the Children: Native American Wisdom and Parenting, by Laura Ramirez.  I will be buying and reading it.  But I was immediately struck by her having interwoven the traditional wisdom of Native American perspectives with the very compatible psychological theories of Erik Erikson, who did engage in cross-cultural studies in determining what is universally best for children.  Erikson’s theories on child development have always been at the heart, quite literally, of my teaching and parenting.  So, this now all comes full circle for me.  And, again from my meager knowledge of the subject about which I am writing, truth is supposed to come in a circle.

The Assault on Public Education and Teachers

Posted on by Alan Weber

I’m sure you’ve read quite a bit about “Common Core,” the charter school take-over, teacher assessment measures and the “Opt-Out” movement.  Please allow me to explain the resistance to a revolution designed to privatize, politicize and homogenize American education.

Certainly there can be no dispute over the idea of improving public education.  But like with any profession, betterment in the field of education needs to be driven by educators.  Educators, however, have instead been treated with disrespect, scapegoating and bullying.  What may have begun as an education movement saw independent experts in teaching more and more marginalized in favor of private foundations and political think tanks that saw children as “human capital” and went into the business of creating standards and practices to prepare them for the international economic competitiveness of American corporations and even “the national defense.”  A new industry began to grow, with political donors, textbook publishers and private businesses seeing education as the next frontier to exploit for profit.

A rationale for any form of “common core” is debatable.  On the one hand, for those teachers, localities and states whose curricular quality may be substandard, it is arguable that certain general benchmarks and guidelines as to “best practices” be offered.  On the other hand, the idea that every teacher should be teaching and every child should be learning the same things at the same times, let alone in the same ways, is anathema to appropriate, individualized and creative teaching.  The Federal government should set standards, for safety, nutrition, inclusion, non-discrimination, etc., but, despite the beliefs of too many politicians, it takes training in education to understand and be qualified to touch curriculum.  Common Core is based on minimal, faulty, disjointed and unproven research, designed to allegedly prepare students for college and careers.

But it has been changed along the way.  Whereas originally there was meant to be emphasis on the twenty first century need for creative and critical thinking, once a “business model” began to set in and standardized testing was attached to the standards, the focus became on “knowledge acquisition,” as in old-fashioned memorization and regurgitation.  Whereas originally Common Core was intended to merely be recommended guidelines, to be adopted by educators voluntarily and used with discretion based on the needs of their particular children and the circumstances in which they teach, now discretion was replaced by imposition.  Money from the Federal “Race to the Top” program, which the Obama Administration claimed would improve “No Child Left Behind” but instead doubled down on its worst features, was used essentially to threaten states, already strapped for public school funding, into compliance.  Whereas under “No Child Left Behind,” scores on standardized tests were not to be used for teacher assessment, retention or promotion, now the wall had come down, and teachers were pretty much forced to teach to the test, and even worse, shy away from working with the children who most need them, children from poverty or with special needs, for fear they would bring down the almighty test scores on which they were being judged.  And by now it’s fairly common knowledge to everyone but the ones making policy how flawed, biased, unreliable and anxiety-inducing standardized tests are.

In New York, Governor Cuomo has made every effort to micromanage public education, trying to shove a formula for assessments based on test scores down the throats of public schools, while working to reward political contributors with the “rights” to private, profitable charter schools to compete with those public schools.  In other states, Governors have been even more blatant, trying to bust teachers’ unions and stifle teachers’ voices entirely.  It should also be noted that these politicians, from the President to Governors, have appointed and relied on education “czars” who with few exceptions have little to no experience with public education, coming instead out of the worlds of private educational entities or simply private business.  Another form of imposition emerged as well.  Whereas Common Core was designed to be a set of standards, not a methodology, more and more teachers were being taught, or, rather, forced to teach in “the Common Core way.”  Autonomy, creativity, individualization, personal knowledge and a sense of professionalism have been sucked from teachers, and, by extension, their students.

And now we get to the conspiratorial portion of our adventure.  Let’s take a look at Pearson Education.  At the very same time, they have been publishing textbooks aligned to Common Core, creating the test-preparation materials, developing the tests themselves, writing the teacher training curricula and producing the remedial materials for those who did poorly on the tests.  In other words, it is in their material interest to have students fail.  If one who happens to have a background in education looks objectively at Common Core, one sees that the pre-kindergarten standards are fairly consistent with those of the recognized experts, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, but each subsequent year the standards rise not developmentally but exponentially, so by grade school they have already started to exceed the reasonable capabilities of many students, and teachers.  And there is no objective evidence that they improve students’ education or potential.  And this article would be remiss were it not to mention that it might not be just the greedy publishers and the fattened CEO’s of charter schools who have their own material interest in “education reform,” the private drivers of Common Core may have their own hidden agendas. Hence the charges, for example, that the Gates Foundation, probably the chief engine in this entire movement, is using “reform” for many profitable purposes: money-making teacher training, pipelines to positions in the education industry and back from invested-in charter schools, major political leverage for future endeavors, and reinforcing a “market-based” approach in education that instills skills and mindsets that can be of ultimate benefit to Microsoft.

Parents have driven the “Opt-Out” movement primarily in reaction to the stress caused by the battery of tests and the piles of homework that teachers are made to feel is necessary to prepare the children for them.  With all of the talk about “research,” it might be interesting for the overlords of our current educational system to look at that relating to homework, most notably by Alfie Kohn.  Most studies have concluded that homework provides no academic benefits for students whatsoever, except in the sole case of late Elementary to Middle School math, wherein students benefit as to efficiency of speed by memorizing the times table and other formulas.  Schools that have experimented in doing away with homework have seen no drop in student achievement.  In fact, speaking as a trained educator, virtually every practice currently in use in public schools stands in total contradiction with what we know about child development and legitimate pedagogy.  And it’s getting worse and worse.  The only responsible response is to “Opt Out” and to fight back.  We have to fight for smaller classes, more equitable funding, quality and independent teacher training, the survival of public schooling, the rights of teachers (along with enforcement of their responsibilities), and keeping politicians’ hands and corporate greed away from our… our educational system.

Lessons from My Son

Posted on by Alan Weber

When my son was a toddler he was diagnosed with Autism, He displayed all of the early signs except for the ritualistic movements. He stopped speaking anything but jargon and echolalia, he played non-socially, randomly lining things up and banging them, and he failed to make eye contact and was sensory defensive. As he went through school, he was very delayed and hesitant when it came to socializing, was extremely distractible and disorganized, and at times showed worrisome depression and anger. Not understanding and fearing his emotions, he envisioned himself a robot or an alien, impervious to hurt, and, given his troubles with school, in its unwillingness or inability to accommodate to him, he considered himself stupid. As he got a little older, he became less sure he was “stupid,” but, nonetheless, intentionally lowered expectations and didn’t try very hard, not to minimize how hard things really were for him, out of fear of pressure and failure. We still had to supervise his interactions with peers, which remained egocentric and susceptible. We enrolled him in a number of social skills classes, made sure that he had the most understanding teachers and the best supports we could extract from the system, and gave him all the love and effort we could. One of the most emotional days of my life was when I was told by his very attentive guidance counselor in Middle School that my son was right, he didn’t need social skills training any longer, that, although he still struggled with school, he was now, for want of a better word, “normal.”

Something happened in his junior year of High School. Given his sense of practicality, maybe part of it was his realization that what he was doing in school now “counted” toward his future. But I think it was a lot more than that. Some switch went on, literally perhaps. Not only was he in the process of becoming the most sociable person I know, he was starting to show significant academic progress. I believe I planted some seeds for a career direction, and through electives taken in High School and the major he chose for College, the teenager who had up until then decided it was safer and more realistic to settle for menial work now had a path toward a promising future, one whose loss I had thought I had to mourn when he was young. He did okay in his first semester of College. The kid who in High School was satisfied with D’s and told us how we couldn’t expect him to exceed C’s was now looking at B’s and even A’s, and might have done even better had he not been misadvised by his advisor to take a load that was a bit too heavy, and by me to take classes with two colleagues who turned out not to be the, shall we say, quality educators they portrayed themselves to be in faculty meetings. After that we lightened his load, he learned from mistakes I had tried to warn him about (but I’m only his father), and has earned Academic Achievement awards, Dean’s List status and Phi Theta Kappa membership. He never liked to read or write, and had done so strugglingly and minimally. But suddenly he was not only writing competently, he was helping me with the writing of my novel and quite impressively. And, more recently, maybe in part due to an English teacher who not only talked the talk outside the classroom but walked the walk in it, he was reading. He has become comfortable with his intelligence, and although his next phase had been to accept that he was smart but not show it too much for fear of seeming uncool to his hundreds of friends, now, as I have always known from our debates, not to mention what he has overcome, he is getting comfortable with being the genius that, forgive me, I had expected my son to be before my world caved in with the diagnosis. He is now independently reading deep works of philosophy, and at this point I watch as he starts to surpass me in intellectuality, which is just what I had hoped for.

I know there is still no real understanding of what we call “autism.” He and I often talk about how all of our brains are different, how diverse are our styles and perceptions, and how we have to learn to accept and understand the implications of that. But he is something special. I often have this image which is no less “science fictiony” than were his grade school self-images. It’s almost like the evolved alien creature emerging in stages from the shell he had previously inhabited. I can’t imagine how spectacular he’s going to be in another few years given the qualitative changes in the last few, but I am looking forward to it, even though it will be from a greater distance, or at least a less frequent view, now that four year college looms. The latter thought continues to depress me, but this kid… pardon me, this young man, is going to make a difference in this world. And amidst the waking nightmares I’ve otherwise been dealing with lately, and despite my almost never getting to spend much time with him because of his constant and late night socializing when he’s not working, and still not being able to touch him except for obligatory five second hugs on my birthday and Fathers’ Day, a part of me is about as fulfilled and celebratory as possible.