Gaza on my Mind

May 16, 2018
The spectacle of US-armed ($3 billion annually) Israeli snipers and mobilized IDF troops picking off unarmed protestors day in and day out is infuriating. The orchestrated campaign inside the US to dehumanize the victims and defend the criminals is despicable. This week, while American royalty toasted Israeli war criminals in Jerusalem, and Christian Zionists anointed the next step toward the End Times and the Second Coming, the butchers murdered in just hours at least 61 unarmed people (including an eight-month-old baby) and injured 3000 more. Israel routinely murders civilians, and then scrambles for a justification. For years the propaganda held that Palestinians were all terrorists engaged in armed struggle, and that was meant to justify extrajudicial killings and ethnic cleansing; when the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement found traction internationally, the propaganda cried anti-semitism and claimed BDS was helping “the terrorists;” this week the propagandists are working overtime to convince Americans that they should not believe “their own lying eyes” or hearts or common sense, but should listen instead to the US ambassador to the UN who called the Israeli war crimes “restrained.” Thousands of people rushing at a fence (it’s not a border by the way) and being mowed down by automatic fire is somehow understandable to the New York Times, NPR, and other powerful media outlets. Note to Tom Friedman and Brett Stephens: Looking up from your roast beef and red wine for a moment, how would you advise the prisoners of Gaza to raise their voices and be heard?Armed struggle, no. BDS, no. Demonstrations at the fence, no. I guess your advice is simple: shut up and die.
Gaza is an “Occupied Territory,” or more accurately the world’s largest open air prison, a concentration camp, a manufactured ghetto to enclose, control, and target the Palestinians trapped there.
Two million Palestinian civilians are inmates in that prison—over half of them children. People are not allowed to leave, and last year scores of people died of treatable medical conditions—several women with breast cancer—because they could not secure permission form Israel to leave the prison for treatment.
Let’s stay with “Occupied Territory” for a moment. Supplies allowed to enter Gaza are strictly controlled by the occupier, and the occupier is responsible by law for the well-being of the population. Israel restricts the import into the prison of concrete, steel cables, epoxy, shipping containers, baby chicks…the list is lengthy and mind-boggling. 95% of the water Israel supplies is polluted.
What is to be done?
Raise your voice. End US military aid to Israel. Support BDS.
Stand with Palestine.

Fresh Ayers

May 16, 2018

https://www.semcoop.com/event/fresh-ayers-howard-waitzkin-health-care-under-knife


GRIT!!!

May 16, 2018

Paul Gorski on Grit

If you are still on the “grit” of “mindset of poverty” bandwagon, consider this. Compared with schools with low percentages of students experiencing poverty, schools with high percentages of students experiencing poverty are more likely to have:

  • less access to school nurses and college counselors;
  • more limited access to computers and the Internet;
  • inadequate learning facilities such as science labs
  • more teacher vacancies and substitute teachers
  • more teachers unlicensed in their subject areas;
  • less rigorous and student-centered curricula;
  • inoperative or dirty student bathrooms;
  • serious teacher turnover problems;
  • higher student-to-teacher ratios;
  • insufficient classroom materials;
  • fewer extracurricular programs;
  • fewer experienced teachers;
  • lower teacher salaries;
  • larger class sizes; and
  • less funding.

This is on top of all of the out-of-school challenges, such as less access to preventive healthcare, stable housing, and more.

So explain to me how we can meaningfully respond to the impacts of these conditions by completely ignoring these injustices while “fixing” the mindsets, cultures, or grittiness of students or families experiencing poverty.

By the way, this list can be reproduced with great precision for students of color, so stop using grit on them, too.


More David Gilbert

May 14, 2018
Dear friends,
 
Today show was on North Korea in the first part and the Columbia ‘68 Student strike in the second. Eleanor Stein, Stefan Bradley, and David Gilbert, whose words are read by Jim Lafferty, are featured. Check it out. And get to know David!
 
Please share.
 
 
 

Loud and Clear

May 8, 2018

https://www.spreaker.com/user/radiosputnik/education-for-liberation-with-bill-ayers_6


JOHN BROWN LIVES!!

May 6, 2018

Leaving the beautiful Adirondack mountains later today—we were here to celebrate the life and legacy of John Brown, to lay a wreath on the grave where he lies with his wife and several children under the gaze of the high peak, Mt. Marcy, also known as the Cloudsplitter. By the mid-1800’s there’d been talk and argument and compromise about slavery for many years, with self-liberating Blacks forcing a crisis and the openings of a new narrative. When John Brown’s army—tested inKansas and active in the Underground Railroad—invaded Harper’s Ferry, the gauntlet was down and there was no turning back. John Brown Lives! is an extraordinary organization doing important work in prisons (the main business in upstate NY) and keeping the spirit of John Brown alive. JBL! hosted the weekend remembrances and gave the “The Spirit of John Brown Freedom Award” to a social justice environmentalist, Katie Morgan, the intrepid activist lawyer Soffiyah Elijah, and the revolutionary poet Martin Espada. JOHN BROWN LIVES!


Moving Forward

May 6, 2018
 

Unearthing Truths: 

Israel, the Nakba, and the Jewish National Fund

This special issue of Moving Forward  commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic word for ‘catastrophe.’ The Nakba refers to the expulsion and dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland during Israel’s creation (1947-1949).

In this issue, the editors have assembled material that lays out the historical record of those years to show that the Nakba was the result of a deliberate policy of mass expulsion, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing—a strategy designed to ensure that the Palestinians who had lived on the land for generations would be barred from ever returning.

The issue also zeroes in on the fundamental role played by the 117-year-old international organization, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), in facilitating that dispossession.

Read Moving Forward here.

http://fowardd.com/

 


Happy 200th Birthday, Karl Marx!

May 5, 2018

PRESENTE!


Imagination Jailbreak!

May 3, 2018

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/44350-a-jailbreak-of-the-imagination-seeing-prisons-for-what-they-are-and-demanding-transformation


“Nominate Bryan Stevenson for the Nobel Peace Prize”

May 2, 2018

http://www.kzoo.edu/praxis/montgomery-alabama/