Bill Ayers

Schools need to reopen, but the process is complicated by problems created by years of underfunding, not by teachers unions.

~~New York Magazine

23)  Free. Free Palestine!

Fifty years ago, Americans who understood and acted upon their responsibility to rise up in solidarity with the oppressed people of the world, stood with the Vietnamese against the US invasion, occupation, and genocidal assault. Through the years internationalist consciousness and activism here has focused on defending the Cuban revolution against the US boot, and supporting anti-imperialist struggles around the globe from South Africa and Mozambique and Angola to Chile and Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Today anyone who stands in solidarity with the oppressed against imperialism recognizes the urgency of fighting for the liberation of Palestine. We’re joined today by a long-time friend and comrade, Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of seven books about the Middle East, including the acclaimed Palestinian Identity, and most recently, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. 

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.

To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.

To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.

To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to.

To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Beware:

All too often,

We say

What we hear others say.

We think

What we’re told that we think.

We see

What we’re permitted to see.

Worse!

We see what we’re told that we see.

Repetition and pride are the keys to this.

To hear and to see

Even an obvious lie

Again

And again and again

May be to say it,

Almost by reflex

And then to defend it

Because we’ve said it

And at last to embrace it

Because we’ve defended it

And because we cannot admit

That we’ve embraced and defended

An obvious lie.

Thus, without thought,

Without intent,

We make

Mere echoes

Of ourselves — 

And we say

What we hear other say.

New York Times Crossword Puzzle today (2/25/2021):
22 Across, 5 letters, last letter S, clue: “Bill___,noted Vietnam War-era activist”…Hmmmmmm?
Last time this word appeared in the NYT puzzle the clue was “Bill__of the Weather Underground.” I guessed GATES!

https://rick-ayers.medium.com/everyone-shouts-black-lives-matter-but-heaven-forbid-we-change-anything-42dfafc9a09a

22) What history do you stand on? What future do you stand for?

Life can only be lived leaning forward, of course, even as its shifting and dynamic meanings can only be sorted out looking backward. Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, in effect, that you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you—and so it is with history. With no impulse toward nostalgia, we struggle to understand this moment more clearly by glancing back: First, Malik Alim brings us up-to-date on a victory for justice that we mentioned earlier, the unprecedented and many-sided struggle against money bail; we’re then joined by Flint Taylor, a human rights lawyer whose dogged pursuit of justice  takes us from the 1969 state murders of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark, through the widespread use of torture by the Chicago Police Department against young Black men over decades, on to the ultimately successful campaign to end the death penalty in Illinois and to obtain reparations for torture survivors. His book The Torture Machine Racism and Police Violence in Chicago was recently published by Haymarket Books in Chicago.

Just as you can’t get the Republican mobs to admit that the election was lost, you can’t get liberal American intellectuals to recognize that the United States is a leading terrorist state,
~~Noam Chomsky

Clearance

Dissenters Anti-Militarist Organizing 101

Saturday March 13th, 2 PM – 6 PM ET // 1 PM – 5 PM CT // 11 AM – 3 PM PT

bit.ly/dissenterstraining 

FINAL GRAPHICS 

Event Description

Learn About Our Plan to Win: Join Dissenters Anti-Militarist Organizing 101 Training 

We need to #DefundThePolice and #DefundTheMilitary, but what does that look like and what will it take to get there?

Join Dissenters’ Anti-Militarist Organizing 101 Training on March 13 to get trained up in what we’re fighting for and our plan to win a just and life-affirming future. You’ll learn:

All about militarism, war, policing and abolition

How to organize direct action campaigns against militarized institutions on your campus & community

How to build resilient & healing movement culture

  About our role in the fight for collective liberation

… and more!

SIGN UP: bit.ly/dissenterstraining

More details: 

➡️  Saturday, March 13 from 2 PM – 6 PM ET // 11 AM – 3 PM PT

➡️  Open to students based in the U.S. or Puerto Rico. BIPOC, Queer and/or Trans folks are strongly encouraged to sign up!

➡️   We are prioritizing young people ages 18-24 who are already members of Dissenters crews or who attend schools where there are Dissenters students, but all young people are encouraged to sign up. 

➡️  Accessibility: We will have follow along notes and automated closed captioning.

SIGN UP: bit.ly/dissenterstraining

Dissenters is a new, national anti-militarist youth organization fighting to divest from war & policing and invest in life-giving institutions. Join us.

Karen Lewis has left us.

Inspired teacher, brilliant organizer, intrepid leader, and a gift to humanity.

She is missed; she lives on in us.

Rest in Power, Sister.

PRESENTE!