tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8469463426396956232024-02-20T08:14:34.413-08:00Teaching ResistanceTeaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-64111952437077801302019-10-30T17:08:00.003-07:002019-10-30T17:08:44.716-07:00TEACHING RESISTANCE book out now and updates!<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #282828; font-family: "Maison Neue Book", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 3rem; margin-bottom: 3rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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NEXT RELEASE EVENT: Monday, November 11th in San Francisco at 7pm. Readings and discussion with contributors @xicana.brava (Michelle Gonzales - happy birthday!), Kadijah Means, Lindsay McLeary, Sarah Orton, Melissa Merin, editor John No, and more. The Green Arcade at 1680 Market Street, San Francisco. thegreenarcade.com</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What does it mean to be an openly radical teacher? </em></div>
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Radical punks, cultural subversives, and revolutionaries have infiltrated classrooms worldwide - and we aren't going away. </div>
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<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Teaching Resistance: Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom </strong></em>is a collection of the voices of fierce, activist educators from around the world with a focus on those in and around DIY/punk subculture who engage inside and outside the classroom from pre-kindergarten to university. These educators emphasize radical teaching practice. Brutally honest and written in accessible language, this book cuts through the usual sanitized tone used in most teacher-penned anthologies, and provides dozens of uncensored reflections and specific examples of deeply critical pedagogy in action. More than just a book for teachers, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Teaching Resistance</em> is for anyone who wants to explore new ways to subvert educational systems and institutions, collectively transform (and re-imagine) educational spaces, and empower students and other teachers to fight for genuine change. Topics include community self-defense, Black Lives Matter and critical race theory, intersections between punk/DIY subculture and teaching, ESL, anarchist education, Palestinian resistance, trauma, working-class education, prison teaching, the resurgence of (and resistance to) the Far Right, special education, antifascist pedagogies, and more.</div>
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Edited by social studies teacher, author, and punk musician John Mink, the book features expanded entries from the long-running monthly column in politically insurgent punk magazine <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Maximum Rocknroll</strong></em>, plus new works and extensive interviews with subversive educators, all of whom are unified against oppression and readily use their classrooms to fight for human liberation, social justice, systemic change, and true equality. Contributing teachers include Michelle Cruz Gonzales, Dwayne Dixon, Martín Sorrondeguy, Alice Bag, Miriam Klein Stahl, Ron Scapp, Kadijah Means, Mimi Nguyen, Murad Tamini, Yvette Felarca, Jessica Mills, Melissa Merin, Mike Frieberg, Frankie Mastrangelo, John Fleissner, Sarah Orton, Frederick Schulze, Christiana Cranberry, Lindsay McLeary, Kadijah Means, Natalie Avalos, E. Schmuse, Stephen Raser, Ash Tray, Ian McDeath, Roburt Knife, Jessalyn Aaland, Lena Tahmassian, Taylor McKenzie, Ruth Crossman, Scott Campbell, and Mike Corr.</div>
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Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-51038626548236024502017-08-30T15:25:00.001-07:002018-09-24T12:53:16.965-07:00Natalie Avalos on Insurgent Pedagogies: Decolonization is For All of Us<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>June 2017's Teaching Resistance column in MaximumRockNRoll deals with the educational imperative, at
ALL levels, of decolonization and how we can facilitate this process
as teachers in a world where literally no one is exempt from the
structures and processes that have kept colonialism and oppression
intact. The column is by </i><i><b>Natalie Avalos</b></i><i>, an
ethnographer of religion whose research and teaching focus on Native
American and Indigenous religions in diaspora, healing historical
trauma, decolonization, and social justice. She is currently a
Visiting Assistant Professor at Connecticut College. She was born and
raised in the Bay Area and cut her radical consciousness teeth in its
underground music scene.</i></div>
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<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Insurgent Pedagogies: Decolonization is For All of Us </b>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We
hear the word decolonization often in resistance circles but what
does it mean? Some of you may dismiss it as irrelevant by thinking
“I’m not a POC, I haven’t been affected or constrained by
colonialism?” Bad news, buddy. We are ALL affected and constrained
by colonialism, not just in the U.S. but around the globe. The
parallel logics of modern colonialism can be seen more readily in
20<sup>th</sup> c. U.S. interventionism such as in El Salvador or
Vietnam, but its contemporary expression, contingent on racial
hierarchies (where whiteness sits atop as the ideal locus of
humanity), religious persecution, and “economic development,”
have been replicated in places like Tibet, by China. The strains of
empire that transformed the Americas hundreds of years ago have
morphed into a global, multi-national system of neocolonial players
that subjugate less powerful nations through economic bullying. We
are still in the throes of colonization. Whiteness does not preclude
you from decolonizing projects. If you are descended from European
settlers, the social and economic privileges of whiteness contribute
to your individual social capital. My constraint and dispossession
have directly supported your access to wealth and prosperity. We are
deeply linked through these overlapping histories and so share their
legacy. Although they shape and constrain us in different ways, the
ideological and material structures (racialization, patriarchy,
heteronormativity, neoliberalism, the objectification of the earth)
produced in their wake act as the foundation of our social life. And
thus, we have a collective responsibility to undo them. <b>Together</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We can think of decolonization most simply as the undoing of
colonialism, not only its structures (see above) but also the
amelioration of its affects, like historical trauma and internalized
colonialism. For instance, in a material context, it can mean
deconstructing settler states and redistributing lands back to
Indigenous peoples or even organizing against racist policies. In an
affective context, it can mean personal empowerment, healing, and
cultural regeneration. These two contexts are contingent—one
necessitates and supports the other. Decolonization is the driving
theme for many of my classes, meaning my primary pedagogical
objective is for students to not only understand specific histories
of colonialism, whether in the Americas, Oceania, or Asia and their
correlating structures, but also learn about the many paths of
resistance, material (boots on the ground organizing) and immaterial
(developing a radical consciousness). As a religious studies scholar,
I emphasize that we cannot decouple the material and immaterial
dimensions of life because they shape one another. Ideas, ethics, and
belief are a major component of this resistance. We cannot transform
our material conditions without deconstructing the ideologies and
affective drives that have forged them. We cannot transform our
material conditions without naming the multiple forms of our
dispossession and claiming our existential rights to live in our full
humanity. We are whole beings that have been subject to
ideological/structural violence for generations. Even those of us who
have benefited the most from these injustices are still affected and
disfigured by their horror. It will take time and effort to undo this
doing. First we have to understand what we’re resisting, why were
resisting it, what forms of resistance have been effective and why.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">My approach to teaching decolonization projects, since they are
multiple and diverse, is exploring how at heart they are about
transforming our relationships to power. Franz Fanon noted that
colonization estranges the colonized from their own metaphysical
worlds—their cosmologies, knowledges, and ways of being. Multiple
forces of power (institutional, epistemological, religious) collude
over time to produce this estrangement. Decolonial scholar, Nelson
Maldonado-Torres, describes coloniality as a matrix of knowledge,
power, and being. Naturally, a decoloniality that addresses these
three dimensions of human experience is necessary. I agree with Fanon
and Maldonado-Torres that understanding the nature of coloniality is
critical to its intervention. However, we can’t stop there. We need
to consider (and celebrate) real and existing solutions. The
exploration of power is a generative starting place for understanding
<i>how</i> to decolonize projects because it is often a catalyst for
resistance. Although colonial dispossession of power (material and
immaterial) has appeared totalizing, the dispossessed have found
creative entry points to take back power. For example, individuals
and communities may begin to take back their power by regenerating
their ways of being through revitalized religious traditions and
other forms of traditional lifeways or by researching their own
institutional histories and forming a new locus of governance. The
simple but powerful refusal to be complicit in racism or homophobia
is a tacit way to take back power. Thinking through these
possibilities de-naturalizes hierarchies of power, forcing us to
consider what more lateral forms of power look like. A framework of
decolonization also forces us to see social life as deeply
interconnected. When a constellation of social change in line with
decolonization is taking place, whether through movements for Native
sovereignty or Black Lives Matter, our web of relations is forced to
continually shift and accommodate these new rules for living and
being. We are forced to consider our relationship to unjust
expressions of power and respond in kind. You may think “well thas
cool, but how do we negotiate decolonization in our everyday lives?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Many of us in the underground music scene were intuitively resistant
to normative social structures and expressions. For me, and likely
many of you, I remember feeling distrustful of social norms that
appeared to be rooted in unjust relations of power, whether this was
traditional gender roles, racial hierarchies, or even normative
beauty standards. I found myself reveling in social critique. It was
a way for me to take back power. This critique motivated me to learn
more about these structures of oppression and eventually understand
them as complex expressions of empire. But after awhile (years) of
criticizing these structures, I found myself longing to believe in
something, for a kind of social analysis that could both deconstruct
and construct and maybe even instruct. I was drawn to working as a
scholar because it provided me with unique opportunities to be
critical but also generative. As an educator, I am invested in
helping students develop their critical voices, which is fundamental,
but also explore solutions to social problems. Why is this
important? Because we need direction. Colonization has stripped many
of us of our ethical and political systems and left us with a
hollowed out social world that has exchanged consumerism for ethics
and meaning. We need alternative visions for living and being. And we
need to remind ourselves it is possible to live in a different kind
of world. To remind ourselves that we have so much more power than we
realize. To remind ourselves of the possibilities beyond all those
oppressive structures shaping our lives, such as misogyny and racism,
when they seem totalizing. To recognize that we have internalized
these structures in ways that may take us a lifetime to unravel and
to be gentle with ourselves when we feel defeated by our own
shortcomings (not being “aware enough” “having the right
analysis” etc.). To recognize that needing community (and
direction) doesn’t make us flawed, it makes us human.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>
Yes. I love me some good social critique. Here, here, y’all woke
boo boos around the world. But we can get stuck there. Our love of
critique may be rooted in our natural inclination to scratch beneath
the surface, to act as dialecticians, seeking the antithesis of the
thesis. But we often struggle with synthesizing our new insights into
a coherent worldview that allows us to step into a better future. One
of the problems we face teaching radical forms of resistance is that
we can never come up with perfectly objective solutions. One
community’s decolonization is going to look different than
another’s. One individuals’ relationship to power, depending on
their social position will determine how they <i>decolonize</i>. We
often have to feel our way through particular scenarios of injustice
in order to understand our options for resolution. This is highly
contextual and a lot of work. But teaching students to both critique
and be generative allows us to see that this is not only possible but
that the macro structures constraining our lives are replicated in
the micro relations of our everyday lives. We may not be able to
eliminate Racism as a structure in our everyday <b>but</b> we can
recognize and challenge our internalized assumptions about others,
and ourselves, enabling us to build stronger happier communities. We
may not able to eliminate the settler state overnight <b>but</b> we
work towards building functional communities from the bottom up. The
fact that we intuitively seek to improve upon our social world is a
sign that we want to improve it. Many of us in this struggle are
idealists that want to see and live in a better world. But sometimes
we lose track of the trees for the forest. We forget that when we
transform the micro relations in our everyday lives—relationships
with our families, co-workers, friends, partners, etc.—we are
actively transforming our social world.<b><i> --Natalie Avalos</i></b></span></div>
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Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-64249286121881962662017-08-30T15:08:00.000-07:002018-05-10T14:58:47.946-07:00Prisons and Schools: Institutional Education and the State<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><i>Miles
of ink have been spilled debating and dissecting the fabled
school-to-prison pipeline, a problem endemic to the U.S. education
system that almost-exclusively affects its most socioeconomically
disadvantaged students; students for whom realistic options for
survival and resistance were always slim and high-risk. Less commonly
discussed, however, is what options exist for these students'
educational attainment following their likely incarceration at the
hands of an oppressive capitalist state – and what options for
survival and resistance remain in this most-restrictive of
environments. March 2017's Teaching Resistance column in MaximumRockNRoll features some powerful reflections
from </i></span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><i><b>Lena
T.</b></i></span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><i>, a
PhD researcher and teacher living in Oakland, CA, and a perennial MRR
reader as well as contributor in more recent years. Her column
focuses on the importance of not-for-profit prison higher education
and solidarity in the post-reason era. Lena can be reached at
</i></span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><i><u>lena.tahmassian@gmail.com</u></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">On
February 1, 2017 inmates took over a wing of the Vaughn Prison in
Delaware, protesting Trump and demanding better conditions and
“remedies conducive to reform and rehabilitation” with education
at the top of their list. A guard who was taken hostage died and
there is now, at the time of writing, a civil rights coalition asking
for a transparent federal investigation. Little more than that
information was made known to the public. While most prisons are
public institutions, there is not much common knowledge about what
goes on in them. Whether or not there will be a further degradation
of prison conditions under Trump (there could easily be), this act
holds symbolic weight: members of the most marginalized group in
society (most can’t even vote) protest an administration that will
more than ever place private profit over people, an administration
that has already made explicit that various (disproportionately
nonwhite) sectors of the population are essentially disposable. </span>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Returning
to the prisoners’ demands, this column is in defense of
not-for-profit higher education in prisons, not only because I
believe that people are not disposable, but also that teaching and
learning go both ways. My higher education teaching experience to
date has been split between graduate student teaching at an elite
university and volunteer teaching for the accredited college program
at San Quentin State Prison. I got involved in the latter because
there was a need for my particular skills, I wanted to do something
less self-serving than just getting a PhD, and to expand my teaching
skills. In general, I was up for the challenge of teaching people
whose experiences would mostly be very different from my own.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">While
I’ve taught in two radically different learning environments, my
basic objectives are fundamentally the same: to teach them to create
meaning out of texts and to critically think and rethink the basis of
knowledge production. One notable difference of prison higher
education, other than the technological lack (only pen and paper are
available), is that when your everyday reality is the very definition
of confinement, the classroom acquires a new liberating dimension.
Students are eager to speak and share their experiences, and the
classroom is, unlike their cellblocks, racially integrated. For us as
instructors, being a volunteer in a free program is also in itself
liberating (provided you can make time for it). This dynamic does
seem to partially inform the students’ attitudes which shift more
towards “Thanks for teaching us!” rather than the “Hey, I’m
paying for this!” vibe of the increasingly neoliberal academy. That
said, I’ve had many considerate and inquisitive students at the
traditional university, but some do treat education like a product to
be consumed. I suppose in defense of the student-as-consumer mindset
(from their perspective), one must recognize that the astronomical
cost of higher education and the fact that many students will be
indebted into the foreseeable future places increasing pressure on
them to see learning as a serious financial investment on which they
must see a return. </span>
</div>
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<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">In
my experience, incarcerated students tend to ask “is this how they
do things at… (Stanford, Berkeley, etc.)?” They want to know that
they are being challenged and not patronized. It’s also a good
practice for me to always question and reflect on my methods by
having to explain why we assess learning a certain way. I’ve come
to believe strongly however that it’s not just about importing and
adapting methodologies from the elite academy for those who in many
cases were never afforded the opportunity of higher education, but
that prisoners also have a lot to teach us. Bringing all of their
diverse life experiences to the table opens up new possibilities for
discussion. Also, many of us tend to slide through life avoiding our
problems, burying our traumas, making the same mistakes, and never
facing our insecurities head on. For those seeking rehabilitation,
self-reflection is unavoidable and often involves identifying and
extirpating the markers of toxic masculinity. I’ve seen how the
various programs offered, including college education, help develop
self-awareness, discipline, resolve, and a spirit of cooperation that
I have not seen anywhere else. For prisoners it can be a matter of
life or existential death. Those who go through the rehabilitation
process have accomplished the very difficult task of confronting
their issues head on and facing those whose lives they have
potentially damaged. To thrive within the walls for the time being,
you have to be able to imagine something better beyond them. Perhaps
this is something we can all learn from. </span>
</div>
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<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Upon
advocating for prison higher education, I know that on ethical
grounds maybe I am mostly preaching to the choir in this column. But
for the naysayers (maybe they’ll be at your next family function),
it also makes a lot of sense from a utilitarian standpoint. Even
though most of us don't have much of a clue what goes on in prisons,
we nevertheless fund them through our taxes. Like it or not, most
prisoners are eventually released, and access to education while
incarcerated dramatically decreases the rate of recidivism. Yes,
there are dangerous people who are probably incapable of not harming
others–those who fit this profile are not typically eligible for
rehabilitation programs in the first place. </span>
</div>
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<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Thus
higher education in prison is good for both prisoners </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><i>and</i></span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">
society, and those who initiated the Vaughn prison uprising surely
knew that. But the current rise of corporate fascism is indeed a
double whammy, as it seeks to designate enemies of the state </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><i>and</i></span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">
profit off of their subjugation, which can take the form of public
prison labor and private prison contracts, border walls, armaments,
etc. Now more than ever, electoral political discourse is beyond
logic and reason, with no longer even a semblance of concern for
others (unless you’re white and poor, then there is just a
semblance of concern for you, but seriously, wake up people: those
industrial jobs are not coming back and its not brown people’s
fault).</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">However,
on a positive note, there is a whole new generation of resistance
cropping up who is questioning what they’ve been told about who the
“bad guys” are in the first place. The consensus has fallen out.
Let’s hope that sliding back to corporate liberalism is not the
best we can do. Specifically, on the topic of issues that impact
incarcerated people directly: last year Obama did bring back Pell
Grants for prisoners for the first time since 1994 when Bill Clinton
pulled the plug on all federal funding for prison higher education by
signing the Violent Crime Bill, which was actually written by the
then senator Joe Biden. The democrats of old may have reversed their
stance on that disastrous bill, but the damage is surely done. Also,
I can’t say for sure, but my best guess is that Pell Grants for
prisoners will be going away again. (Is the incoming Education
Secretary seriously a semi-illiterate billionaire and advocate of
for-profit education and arming schoolchildren?) </span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">These days, a lot of people
seem to be asking a variation of the question: “What is our
responsibility to people we disagree with?” (“Is it ok to punch a
Nazi?”) I don't claim to have all the answers (Yes, it’s ok to
punch a Nazi). I think there’s actually a simple formula for this:
if your worldview is defined by exclusion and denying people’s
humanity, then you’re actually the one shutting down the
possibility for discussion. Aside from the more extreme examples
(unfortunately, I think they’ll be increasing), should we try to
change people’s minds? We need to build our resistance, but is
there a tool to measure the distance between our ideas, to determine
when it’s no longer worth our breath? I think teachers are in a
privileged position to promote dialogue, expand minds, and also build
empathy bridges in the classroom, but also way beyond. A lot of the
students share my worldviews, many don’t. In light of the current
reality, I’m all for increasing the possibility of encounters with
people you would probably otherwise never engage with. Sometimes I
feel like our social media echo chambers will be the death of us.
I’ll carry on contemplating the limits of our responsibility. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">On
a final note, I highly encourage grad students, graduate degree
holders, and faculty to get involved with prison higher education in
your area. There are also organizations that take book donations to
send to incarcerated people–I’ve met inmates who have accessed
important literature this way! If you live in the Bay Area, I can
point you in the right direction. You will talk to a lot of
interesting people, learn about the prison system, and subsequently
become a prison abolitionist or at least an advocate for the humanity
of those who deserve a second chance, or even an actual first chance
at a decent life. Compounded by the fact that American reality is now
producing marginality at a rapid rate, it has been reassuring to hear
the marginal voices growing louder and more plentiful in the last
weeks. We must continue to also defend the basic rights of those who
have no voice at all.</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><i>
</i></span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><i><b>-Lena
T.</b></i></span></div>
Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-50226919715123273372017-01-09T15:22:00.001-08:002017-01-09T15:22:23.248-08:00Yvette Felarca: Building the Movement to Stop Trump<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-after: auto; page-break-before: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i>December 2016's </i></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i><b>Teaching
Resistance</b></i></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i> is written
by the one and only </i></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i><b>Yvette
Felarca</b></i></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i>, a bay
area-based educator, activist, and tireless voice of anti-fascist
resistance who is an inspiration to radical teachers everywhere. </i></span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><b>Building the Movement to Stop Trump</b></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><b>Lessons From Victory in Berkeley by an Anti-Fascist, Civil Rights Educator</b></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">Donald Trump has used the presidential
election in the U.S. to build a movement modeled on the semi-fascist
ultra-right wing immigrant bashing parties of Europe, like the Le Pen
National Front, and the historical experience of the rise to power of
Mussolini’s fascists and Hitler’s Nazi’s. With Donald Trump’s
assumption of the presidency, the first step would be taken in the
creation of a fascist power over the American government and the
American people. The feeble electoral tactics of Clinton’s
Democrats have failed to prevent this disaster for democracy in the
U.S. and around the world. Both the Democratic Party and the American
news media have proven bankrupt in defeating Trump or even in
speaking the plain truth about the threat he presents and the real
character of the movement he heads. </span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">Trump and his movement can be defeated,
but only by a new mass movement committed to the principles of
democracy, equality, diversity, and openness. Only such a movement
can defeat Trump, his billionaire club backers, and his mass
lynch-mob followers’ struggle to undermine those principles in
order to carry out draconian attacks on immigrants, organized labor,
and all oppressed communities. Trump’s movement is at war with the
new majority-minority America with its progressive commitment to
diversity, tolerance, and internationalism. Trump’s demagogy and
even his personal image promises a return to a reactionary utopia of
white-skin privilege and male power over women. </span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">To defend the democratic gains of the
past, and realize the potential for a fully human liberation in the
future, and to avoid the destruction of both Americans’ most
cherished principles and a world of increasing division, hate, and
violence, we must build a new mass movement to defeat Trump and
everything he stands for. The building of such a mass democratic
movement is the greatest and most urgent challenge of our times. Our
new mass movement, by mobilizing everything that’s best in us, can
defeat Trump and his ugly mob, which concentrates everything that is
worst in American history. </span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">I know this first hand, because I just
won my own victory against Trump’s Nazi and KKK backers. My name is
Yvette Felarca. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">I have been
dedicated middle school teacher in Berkeley, and longtime civil
rights and trade union activist. I came under attack from the
Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) administration for my work as
a progressive teacher and for my political activity. I teach ELD
(English as a Second Language) and Humanities at Martin Luther King
Middle School in Berkeley, where I’ve taught for 10 years. I
consistently received strong teaching evaluations and support from
students, co-workers, and parents. As a teacher and a political
activist, I believe in engaging young people in their education by
encouraging them to connect their learning to their own lives and
struggles for social justice. </span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">On June 26, 2016, during summer vacation,
I protested self-identified neo-Nazi and KKK Trump supporters who
scheduled a rally on the steps of the capitol in Sacramento. Instead
they violently attacked us, and nine anti-fascist protesters,
including me, were stabbed by the Nazis. These same fascists had
already stabbed and almost killed black and Latino protesters in
Anaheim earlier in the year, and had gone to Sacramento to try to do
the same thing. The day after the Sacramento rally, violent threats
were made by Nazi and racist Trump supporters against me and against
my school if I was not fired.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">Instead of defending me, the neo-liberal
BUSD administration attacked me and began their witch-hunt. Four days
after I was stabbed, the District issued me a formal discipline, then
later, on August 31, they took my entire August paycheck. On Wed.
Sept. 21, three weeks into the school year, the BUSD administration
removed me from a faculty meeting, escorted me to my classroom to
collect my personal belongings, and then marched me out of the
school. I was placed on administrative leave.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">Every witch-hunt includes a shameful
round-up, and Berkeley was no exception. I found out that the same
day I was placed on administrative leave, several of my immigrant and
ELD students were removed from class and questioned about me by the
school district’s lawyer, without their parents being notified or
present. They were also questioned about their off campus, outside of
school political activities and activism. They were forced to answer
questions in English, which is not their native language. My other
immigrant and international students, and only my immigrant and
international students, were rounded up and questioned on a variety
of days during the time that I was on administrative leave. Even
Latina students who had been my students years earlier, but who had
spoken out in my defense at school board meetings, were also
interrogated by District officials. And just when it seems like it
couldn’t be more shameful, students were told by BUSD lawyers and
administration to keep their "interviews" a secret and to
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i>"tell no one</i></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">."
</span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">The initial shock and fear that I and my
students experienced from this victimization soon gave way to anger,
and that anger galvanized me and my students to take action. Before I
even left the school on the first day I was suspended, I asked my
co-workers to announce what happened to the rest of the staff, and to
urge them to get to the school board meeting that evening. Teachers,
school support staff, students, and parents filled the school board
meeting to speak out in my defense, and even shut down the meeting to
demand the right of one my students’ parents to speak. The
following school board meeting we had twice as many people there and
shut down the meeting again. Me and other teachers, school employees,
students, parents, and community members attended every school board
meeting since then, and held mass organizing meetings where we voted
on demands and a plan of action from week to week. Students, in
particular, were incredibly courageous and inspiring—making
speeches at School Board meetings, writing and circulating their own
petition, wearing stickers and buttons, even organizing each other
internationally to call in to the School Board meetings to make
speeches from Mexico City. I spoke to the media every chance I got.
And even though there were days where the pressure and uncertainty
certainly took their toll on me, the movement sustained and bolstered
me far more than anything else could have. I knew that I had to speak
up, because if I didn’t, not only me, but other good teachers would
get run out of teaching if I didn’t. </span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">I am a union and civil rights activist. I
am member of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) Executive
Board, a founding member of the Equal Opportunity Now/By Any Means
Necessary (EON/BAMN) Caucus in both the National Education
Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). I am
a national organizer with the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action,
Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means
Necessary (BAMN). If not for my experience as a political organizer,
and the support of my national organizations, I would have felt too
isolated to fight the way I did. Thanks to EON/BAMN and to teachers
in my school and others who supported me, I got my union to file a
grievance to restore my pay and to also advocate for my swift return
to my classroom. My lawyers in BAMN also filed lawsuit on my behalf
against BUSD for discrimination, violations of free speech, due
process, and academic freedom. They also filed a lawsuit on behalf of
my students and their parents for discrimination, racial targeting
and intimidation, and for violating the students’ freedom of
speech. </span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">It’s a huge mistake, however, to rely
on either the union bureaucracy or the court system to win justice.
By far, credit for our Berkeley victory goes to the movement that
spread nationally and even internationally with each passing day.
Building that movement would not have been possible without the
backing and movement organizing methods of EON/BAMN. Despite the best
efforts of Trump’s racist threats and policies, our movement won,
and I was returned to my classroom after six weeks. </span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i>The outcome of my struggle was and is
vital to the rights of other teachers and to the struggle against
racism and the growth of American fascism. In the context of growing
violent racist and far right-wing attacks being waged across the
globe, and by the racism and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s cabinet,
the decision of BUSD to discipline and suspend me for my off duty
political activities and political affiliations and activism place
Berkeley on the wrong side of the historic struggle to stop the rise
of the far-right wing and their violent attacks. That, in turn,
discredited that neo-liberal school board members with each passing
day. More importantly, I urge more teachers who face the same kind of
threats and attacks in the future to stand up and wage a public
fight, too—and to contact me and BAMN. We beat the neo-liberals who
rolled out the red carpet for Trump. Now let’s defeat Trump! Se se
puede! </i></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i><b>--Yvette Felarca</b></i></span></div>
Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-28723987561698888992017-01-09T15:19:00.000-08:002017-01-09T15:19:04.157-08:00Liner Notes for the MRR Radio "Teaching Resistance" segment<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">---You can download or stream the MRR Radio broadcast featuring Teacher Punks (co-hosted by John No, editor of the Teaching Resistance column) right here: </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><u><b>http://www.maximumrocknroll.com/mrr-radio-1522/</b></u></span></i></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Cops
and Teachers: Both have been the subject of shit-talking by punk
bands since the first day some zitty kid from nowhere decided to pick
up an instrument they didn't know how to play and immediately sing
songs about how and why things suck, especially things they have to
personally deal with. Both teachers and cops were and are worthy
targets of hatred – cops always, teachers frequently. Both serve as
instruments of coercive authority that is often institutionally
supported, and both can act as lethal agents of oppression in that
capacity (often in tandem). Both tend to treat their 'charges' in
very different ways depending on the levels of structural privilege
said 'charges' have from their individual circumstances and specific
context, with highly dissimilar personal outcomes based on race,
gender, sexuality, class, and other factors being the norm. In their
modern form, both policing and teaching sprang from colonialism and
capitalism, and both are subject to overwhelming, relentless top-down
pressure from those who explicitly support those toxic
practices/philosophies. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">The
difference between teachers and cops, however, lies in their basic
functions on the social and individual level, and in the methods by
which they work. Philosophically, the difference is simple and stark:
Teachers are (at least on paper) expected to nurture, support, and
protect their students as human beings, while the function of police
is to protect private property and enforce law by capturing and
punishing those who they suspect of breaking it. On the surface of
it, these professions should not share any common ground. In
practice, in the modern world these professions often dovetail into
interconnected mechanisms of social control that explicitly and
implicitly (quietly) maintain established hierarchies of structural
inequality and injustice. We ignore the history of these institutions
at our peril, and the history of both policing and modern
state-directed teaching practice are full of stark disparities that
forcefully (and often lethally) marginalize many while others benefit
from levels of structural privilege carefully calibrated to maintain
the status quo.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Punks
are (and have been) right to go after both teachers and cops, as both
have long track records of serving as agents of oppression. Yet we
need to keep in mind that the basic function of these professions is
different at the core. There is no way that policing can be utilized
in a liberatory fashion for marginalized people who have to come into
contact with police, and almost always ends up as purely toxic to
those people who are being “policed”. In contrast, it has been
shown time and time again that teachers who are genuinely dedicated
to the core (non-institutional) philosophies of their profession can,
through radically innovative practices and active subversion of the
institutional aspects of their jobs, play a major role in helping
empower their students to take greater control over their own lives
and potentially become catalysts for affecting real structural/social
change.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">This
difference is why there are punks who are teachers, but there are no
cops who are punks, at least not by any definition of “punk” that
makes any sense at all.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">In
celebration of the 20</span><sup><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">
entry of the Teaching Resistance column (this one), I (John No)
recently hosted a segment on MRR Radio on the theme of radical
teachers in punk, with a focus on songs from people who happen to be
teachers and play in bands. These people also combine their teaching
practice, radical principles, and the aesthetics+ethics of punk (the
smart kind) into a deliciously flammable cocktail to lob at the
nearest cop car or shitty administrator, all while simultaneously
teaching students how to make a similar cocktail to lob at whatever
they like. You can find it at
</span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><u><b>http://www.maximumrocknroll.com/mrr-radio-1522/</b></u></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">,
and here's a breakdown of some details on what songs were selected.
There will be more of these in the future!</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>1.
SEEIN' RED: “Resist” (Marinus 7", Ebullition 1996)</b></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">
(tough choice between this one and "It Must Fall" from the
Critical Pedagogy comp 12”, 2000)</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Probably
the most obvious choice of bands to lead this comp off with, Dutch HC
legends SEEIN' RED are the first band punks usually think of when
they imagine teachers in bands. Jos from SEEIN' RED is a teacher in
Holland, and has been since before LÄRM morphed into SEEIN' RED in
the late 80s. Radical politics are woven deeply into their music and
life practice. SR continued to be really good through the 90s, which
is when “Resist” was recorded. Though I didn't play it on the
show, the song "It Must Fall" is also great, from the same
period, and was the crucial “Critical Pedagogy” 12" comp put
out by longtime teacher punk Athena K. on her label Six Weeks Records
in 2000...a worthwhile record indeed. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>2.
THE OVENS - “Bureaucrats Know Best” (from "Settings", a
cassette- and bandcamp-only release, 2012)</b></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">The
OVENS are a queercore band who play early KRS-influenced,
distortion-saturated punk with catchy vocals, and this song also has
the distinction of being the only song in this set that is actually
about specific issues that teachers face in our line of work. I think
both Heather and LB from the OVENS are public school teachers in
Chicago, and LB also writes the excellent, radical teaching-focused
zine TRUCKFACE. . Chicago has become one of the most embattled school
districts in the country under neoliberal overlord mayor Rahm
Emmanuel (a former Obama administration official, natch). Under
Rahm's forceful attempts to privatize public education, he has closed
dozens of schools deemed to be "underperforming" in
standardized tests, mostly in the poorest districts. This policy has
forced students from these closed schools to either travel huge
distances to go to the nearest public schools, or to attend private
charter schools where profit motive is the main administrative
priority and students can get kicked out for pretty much anything if
they are threatening to bring down the school's test score or
behavioral metrics. Here is some writing in TRUCKFACE a little while
back from LB, talking about what was happening:</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">"<i>Today
I spent 8 class periods in the library, dressed as a zombie for our
world war z book festival. Over 600 students came to the festival to
play games about the book (bingo, zombie musical chairs, jeopardy)
and get their faces painted. We dressed as zombies while other
schools heard their sad fate.</i></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><br />
</i></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><i>We
will survive, while other schools will not. Though we have received
repeated threats this year and have begun to wither due to the
excessive stress, our school was spared. We still remain on
probation, an arbitrary designation when our test scores are higher,
our attendance levels are higher, and graduation rates continue to
move upwards, we still have that label affixed to our beloved school
as a way to scare us, threaten us and control us.</i></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><br />
</i></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><i>Five
years ago, i got a job at at a school that will be spared while
thousands of other hard working teachers, just like me, will no
longer have jobs. and thousands of students out there will no longer
have passionate teachers. It was luck to get a job at a higher
performing school. And as many words that the politicians will spill
about resources and test scores, they are unwilling to admit that
they are driving good teachers away either through school closings or
excessive bureaucratic control.</i></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><br />
</i></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">To
say it plainly, businessmen and women are destroying public
education. </span>
</i></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><br />
</i></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><i>After
an exhausting day of celebration with my students, I mourn the losses
around the city and know that anyone of us could be next if we don’t
do something first.</i>" </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><i>--LB
in TRUCKFACE</i></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>3.
STRANGE FACES - “No Peace” (off their 2016 demo, also on the
“Frequency of the Truewave Volume II” tape comp from Nervous
Intent Records </b></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><i>*shameless
plug*</i></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>)</b></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Ben
from this killer new bay area darkwave band (he also plays in </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>KAPITAL</b></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">
and formerly of </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>NEW
FLESH</b></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">) is currently
inching his way closer to a masters' degree and doing a lot of
teaching along the way, and I believe April is a health educator for
at-risk youth. They are also recently played a benefit for the
striking teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, who have come under extreme
government repression (including murder) for standing up for their
own rights and those of their students as they battle pretty much
exactly the same neoliberal forces of public school privatization and
related "accountability" issues (i.e. union-busting) that
we are dealing with as teachers in the US. The violence and
repression that these teachers have faced, however, is markedly
worse, and solidarity right now is super important. Also see the
Teaching Resistance column in issue #401, which is dedicated to the
subject of the teacher revolt in Oaxaca from first-hand perspectives.
</span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>4.
DIAMOND GLAZE - “Diamond Glaze”, streaming on bandcamp, 2015</b></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">-Nani,
who lives in London and recently visited here in the bay area, is a
teacher who has worked at a school for students with severe learning
difficulties for 13 years. She focuses on expressive arts there,
helping students figure out a way to express themselves via art and
music. I think she works with Richard Phoenix as well (with whom she
also plays in the raging teacher-centric punk band KICHIGAI). Some of
the most recent work Nani and Richard did was helping the students
(all high school and junior high ages) form and record two band
projects, ROCK PENGUINS and DIAMOND GLAZE - this is a powerful,
snotty and noisy early postpunk (ala RAINCOATS) jammer from DIAMOND
GLAZE!</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>5.
SCHOLASTIC DETH – “Killed By School”. From the 2002 “Killed
By School” 7” on 625 Thrashcore</b></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">-You
really can't fuck with short-lived thrashcore legends SCHOLASTIC
DETH, who formed in 2002, put out a bunch of music, and broke up that
same year because B (of the crucial JUD JUD) was going off to
graduate school – thus the song “Killed By School”, duh. B came
back after a bit and has played in numerous innovative hardcore
combos since including CONQUEST BY DEATH, NO STATIK, and REPLICA. In
the latter, Julianna and Alicia are both teachers in Oakland, B is
now a professor, and Dharma just schools everyone anyway. Just gonna
go ahead here and say it's a crime that I didn't also include such a
teacher-centric bay area modern band as REPLICA on this playlist, but
I will get them in on the next one. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">5.
</span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>LOS CRUDOS - "Tiempos
De La Miseria". From the 1993 "La Rabia Nubla Nuestros
Ojos..." 7”.</b></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Martin
of Crudos, Limp Wrist, etc. was a teacher for many years. As is
evident from this CRUDOS song and many others, just because you work
as a teacher does NOT mean you have to act as an agent of a fucked-up
government and structurally racist, capitalist system. If you are a
teacher, </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><i><u>resist</u></i></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">
that system and help your students acquire the tools to do the same.
And while you are at it, teacher punks/punx/ponx/puunx/etc, submit a
guest column to Teaching Resistance and let us know what is going on!
</span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><u><b>teachingresistance[at]gmail.com</b></u></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><b>
--<i>John No, Teaching Resistance Editor</i></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-14397063873019101522017-01-09T15:11:00.001-08:002017-01-09T15:11:22.272-08:00The People and Teachers Unite Against the State and Neoliberalism in Oaxaca<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">While
</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Teaching
Resistance</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
has frequently addressed the many problems with so-called public
school “reform” efforts, i</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">t
is important to note that the hypercapitalist and neoliberal forces
which have forced teachers to defend themselves and their profession
from destruction are not restricted to </span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the
United States</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.
</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In
Mexico, the teachers of Oaxaca state </span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">are</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
in a state of open conflict with the government over its efforts to
privatize the public school system there. This conflict, which has
recently turned openly violent (generally violence inflicted by the
state), has flared into the global news cycle a few times over the
last several months – but while attention from the rest of the
world comes and goes, the violence and repression by capital in full
collusion with the Mexican state continues unabated. </span></span></i>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>The
author of August 2016's Teaching Resistance is </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><b>Scott
Campbell</b></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>,
a radical writer and translator based in Oakland, California. He
previously lived in Mexico for several years, including Oaxaca. His
pieces appear frequently on </i></span></span><em><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><u>El
Enemigo Común</u></i></span></span></em><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>
and </i></span></span><em><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><u>It’s
Going Down</u></i></span></span></em><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>.
He can be found online at </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><u>fallingintoincandescence.com</u></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>
and </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><u>@incandesceinto</u></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>
on Twitter. </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>Solidarity
to our Mexican colleagues, and power to the people everywhere against
hypercapitalism and imperialist hegemony over public education.</i></span></span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>The
People and Teachers Unite Against the State and Neoliberalism in
Oaxaca</b></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In
the fall of 2008 while in the city of Oaxaca, I walked with David
Venegas in the plaza in front of the Santo Domingo Cathedral, a
massive four-block church and former monastery whose construction
first began in 1572. We were returning from the courthouse nearby,
where Venegas had to report every 15 days. A prominent member of the
Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) and the
anti-authoritarian group Oaxacan Voices Building Autonomy and Freedom
(VOCAL), Venegas was arrested, beaten and tortured in April 2007,
held for eleven months on charges of “<i>possession with intent to
distribute cocaine and heroin, sedition, conspiracy, arson, attacks
on transit routes, rebellion, crimes against civil servants,
dangerous attacks, and resisting arrest</i>,” and eventually
conditionally released. Until he was found innocent in April 2009,
one of those conditions was his semi-monthly presentation at the
courthouse. As with any trip he made in public, Venegas had at least
one person accompany him to provide some security against being
arrested or disappeared.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> During
this walk he recounted a story from July 2006, about a month after
the people of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca rose up in open
rebellion against the state government. From the plaza in Santo
Domingo, which served as the center of the social movement in 2006
after it was forcibly removed from the city center – the Zócalo –
one can see an auditorium on a nearby hill called Cerro del Fortín.
This auditorium was built by the state government specifically for
the annual celebration of the Guelaguetza. Guelaguetza is both an
event and a concept. It is an indigenous Zapotec word meaning
reciprocity or mutual aid, an important tenet of communal indigenous
life. It is also a state-run occasion which brings dancers from
Oaxaca’s seven regions to perform “traditional” dances,
modified from indigenous festivals which marked the beginning of the
planting season. The state’s biggest tourism draw, tickets to the
annual July Guelaguetza cost around 400 pesos (at the time around $40
US dollars), beyond the means of the average Oaxacan, thereby
excluding them from a celebration of their own culture.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Just
before the state-run Guelaguetza was to be held in July 2006, Venegas
told me, “During those days of freedom, I was walking here in front
of Santo Domingo and saw people up in the auditorium painting ‘FUERA
ULISES’ in huge letters on the seats.” (“<i>Ulises Out,</i>”
referring to then-governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.) Opposition was so
great that the state ended up canceling the commercial Guelaguetza,
while the APPO organized its own, free People’s Guelaguetza.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> The
above anecdote of an anecdote serves as a microcosm for a story still
unfolding. A story told standing in the shadow of a building which
serves as a reminder of the 500 year legacy of colonialism, by a
survivor of state repression, about a social movement not only
fighting against a despotic regime, but at the same time working to
reclaim and reimagine life and culture outside of the structures of
an authoritarian state and an impoverishing neoliberal system. While
the 2006 Oaxaca Commune was crushed by federal police and military
force five months after running the state government and police out
of power and administering affairs via popular assemblies, the embers
which led to that rebellion remained smoldering. Fast forward a
decade later, and the resistance in Oaxaca has just finished
celebrating its Tenth Annual Teachers-Peoples Guelaguetza. For good
measure, they also set up blockades around the Cerro del Fortín at
6am the morning of the second of two commercial Guelaguetza
performances, causing the festivities to occur in front of a largely
empty auditorium. </span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Just
as in 2006, what started this year’s revolt was a teachers’
strike. Teachers belonging to the National Coordinator of Education
Workers (CNTE), a more radical faction of about 200,000 inside of the
1.3 million-strong National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), the
largest union in Latin America, have been on indefinite strike since
May 15. Their primary demand is the repeal of the “Educational
Reform” initiated by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in 2013.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A
neoliberal plan based on a 2010 agreement between Mexico and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the reform
seeks to standardize and privatize Mexico’s public education
system, as well as weaken the power of the teachers’ union.
Publicly supported in his efforts by pro-business lobbying groups
such as Mexicanos Primero and the Employers Confederation of the
Mexican Republic (COPARMEX), Peña Nieto set out to implement the
OECD agreement and then some, changing Articles 3 and 73 of Mexico’s
Constitution. Together, they create a standardized system of teacher
evaluation, as well as granting schools “autonomy” — that is,
autonomy to raise funds from the private sector — in other words,
to become privatized.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A
standardized evaluation system that is imposed from above without the
input of teachers, yet at the same time placing the fault for low
scores solely on teachers’ shoulders, is extremely problematic. The
attempt to create a monoculture, one-size-fits-all education system
that produces a certain type of student, as Gallo Téenek noted,
“<i>doesn’t, knowing the cultural diversity that exists, take into
account the reality and local conditions of each of the regions,
municipalities, communities and states in the country, as well as the
inequality and poverty that prevail throughout the nation — for
example, in regions of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, contrary to the
better conditions that exist in cities such as Monterrey, Guadalajara
and the Federal District.</i>”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
second major aspect of the reform, making schools “autonomous,”
opens up each school to be directly influenced by capital. As CNTE
Section 22 from Oaxaca explained in a letter to parents, <i>“Parents
will have to pay for the education of their children, since the
federal government has disowned its responsibility to maintain
schools, meaning it will not send funds to build, equip or provide
teaching materials for schools. It also clearly states that parents
and teachers will manage the financial resources to maintain the
operation of the schools, which will lead to the establishment of
compulsory monthly, bimonthly, or semiannual fees.”</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">By
forcing schools to continually fundraise in order to exist, CNTE
Section 9 in Mexico City points out that the legislation <i>“opens the
door for, in the name of autonomy, and with the pretext of involving
parents in the management and maintenance of the schools, the de
facto legalization of fees, allowing the entrance of businesses into
schools and turning the constitutional provision guaranteeing free
public education into a dead letter. This has a name: privatization.</i>”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
teachers are also demanding more investment in education, freedom for
all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, truth and
justice for the 43 disappeared students from Ayotzinapa, and an end
to neoliberal structural reforms in general.</span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">While
the CNTE has been fighting against the educational reform for the
past three years, a teachers’ strike in and of itself is fairly
uneventful. It occurs annually in Oaxaca as a tactic used by the
union leading up to the beginning of the school year in the fall.
Usually the strike happens, followed quickly by negotiations with the
state. A compromise is reached and everyone goes home. This year,
however, the CNTE upped the pressure by announcing a national strike
instead of on a state-by-state basis. And this year, like in 2006,
the state refused to even talk to the union, instead deploying
thousands of federal police and gendarmerie to areas where the strike
is strongest — primarily Oaxaca, Chiapas, Michoacán and Mexico
City, though also in states such as Guerrero, Tabasco and Veracruz.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> In
another echo of 2006, it was a brutal act of state repression that
turned a labor dispute into a widespread revolt. Ten years ago, it
was the pre-dawn raid and destruction of the teachers’ encampment
in the Zócalo of Oaxaca on June 14. Following the beginning of the
strike this year, there were several police actions against teachers
in Oaxaca, Mexico City and Chiapas; as well as the arrest of the
Oaxaca union’s leadership. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> In
response to police attacks, teachers in Oaxaca began setting up
barricades and highway blockades around the state. By mid-June of
this year, the CNTE controlled 37 critical spots on highways
throughout the state, blockaded in part with 50 expropriated tanker
trucks. The blockades were so effective that ADO, a major first-class
bus line, indefinitely cancelled all trips from Mexico City to Oaxaca
and federal police began flying reinforcements into airports in the
city of Oaxaca, Huatulco (on the coast), and Ciudad Ixtepec (on the
Isthmus).</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Given
the climate of escalating state repression, in a statement released
on Friday, June 17, the Zapatistas posed the following questions:</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b><i>They
have beaten them, gassed them, imprisoned them, threatened them,
fired them unjustly, slandered them, and declared a de facto
state-of-siege in Mexico City. What’s next? Will they disappear
them? Will they murder them? Seriously? The ‘education’ reform
will be born upon the blood and cadavers of the teachers?</i></b></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">On
Sunday, June 19, the state answered these questions with an emphatic
“Yes”. The response came in the form of machine-gun fire from
Federal Police directed at teachers and residents defending a highway
blockade in Nochixtlán that for a week had been successful in
preventing hundreds of federal forces from reaching the city of
Oaxaca.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Initially,
the Oaxaca Ministry of Public Security claimed that the Federal
Police were unarmed and “not even carrying batons”. After ample
visual evidence and a mounting body count to the contrary, the state
admitted federal police opened fire on the blockade. In total, eleven
were killed that morning in Nochixtlán. At the time of this writing,
a total of fourteen have been murdered by the state in Oaxaca during
the course of the conflict, including Salvador Olmos García, aka
Chava, a community radio journalist and pioneer of the anarchopunk
movement in Huajuapan, who was kidnapped, beaten, run over and left
for dead by police on the streets of that city on June 26.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Following
the Nochixtlán massacre the struggle has taken on an increasingly
popular dimension. This has looked like direct actions, marches,
material support and expressions of solidarity from across Mexico and
beyond, in numbers far too large to recount individually.</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
By way of example, here are some of the actions that have occurred
since. Parents and teachers took over toll booths in both Mexico City
and Durango for a day, allowing cars to pass through for free. On
July 3, an explosives device was detonated at the headquarters of
business associations in Mexico City who have been lobbying the
government to crush the uprising. There were three days of intense
mobilizations from July 5-7 in Mexico City. On the first day, there
were at least 70 simultaneous blockades and marches, followed by four
mass marches on July 6, and at least ten blockades on July 7. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
Zapatistas have continued releasing statements in support of the
teachers’ struggle, stating, “To say it more clearly: for us
Zapatistas, the most important thing on this calendar and in the very
limited geography from which we resist and struggle, is the struggle
of the democratic teachers’ union.” They also went further and
announced that they were suspending their participation in the July
17-23 CompArte Festival for Humanity, which they had called for
earlier this year. Instead, they sent delegations from all the
Zapatista caracoles to donate the food they would have eaten during
the seven day festival to the teachers in resistance in Chiapas. This
amounted to 290,000 pesos (15,600 USD) worth of food.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In
recognition of the contribution of the people to their struggle and
the fact that the people have demands which extend beyond the
immediate concerns of the union, on July 9, Section 22 of the CNTE in
Oaxaca called for a gathering of teachers and indigenous leaders to
“<i>build a peoples’ agenda against structural reforms.</i>” The union
met with authorities from 90 municipalities in the state. Important
to note is that these authorities are selected as the moral
leadership of their communities not through a vote based on political
party, but through nominations, discussions and agreements reached in
community assemblies. A second such gathering was held in early
August.</span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">At
the same time that all these actions have been occurring, the CNTE
and the Interior Ministry have been holding negotiations –
negotiations which the state agreed to following the massacre. They
have met a total of seven times, addressing political, educational
and social issues. At each meeting the teachers come prepared with
specific proposals and ask the government to do the same. After each
meeting the end result has been the same: no progress on the core
issues.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">With
the beginning of the school year fast approaching, the union and the
parents committees that have been forming to support them, state that
classes will not start and the strike will continue if the demands of
the movement are not met. As the movement has grown beyond the
initial framework of a teachers’ strike to object to the
functioning of the state and neoliberal capitalism as a whole, the
likelihood of an agreement reached around the negotiating table seems
improbable. The conflict is far from being resolved and the peoples
of Oaxaca have shown they will not be silenced in the face of the
weapons of power, ten years later providing another lesson in
dignified resistance. As the popular slogan goes, “A teacher
fighting is also teaching.” <b>--Scott Campbell</b></span></span></div>
Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-26830015988380214902017-01-09T14:59:00.002-08:002018-10-01T12:04:57.032-07:00Student Literacy and the Digital Divide<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.14in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>Late June 2016's Teaching Resistance is written by </i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><b>Brian
Moss</b></i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>, who
teaches at a public Junior High School in San Francisco. From his
personal teaching experience and careful research, he has reached
some strong conclusions about the relationships between perceptions
of student literacy, the infamous “digital divide” stemming from
unequal access to resources, and overall inequity in education that
can severely impact student success. Brian can be reached directly at
</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><u><b>hurricanewe@gmail.com</b></u></i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>.
</i></span>
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.hzhdxt8vqa2r"></a>
While it may be a philosophical foundation of the country, the
existence of true and thorough equal opportunity in the United States
is a mere myth. It is used as a fabricated defense of greed and
ironically, our greatest divides. Belief in it perpetuates false hope
– bread and circus. In a society that is built around and
encourages extreme competition and economic individualism, inequality
is inherent. Children are born into our world as subjects of their
parents’ circumstance, with the odds inevitably stacked to varying
degrees for or against them.
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.6e6yytb4ybe8"></a>
Sadly, public schools often further exasperate these differences.
Whether it’s a matter of resources, the quality of teachers,
technology, community support, or familial/guardian support, all too
often, the education system aides in keeping obstacles in place for
the unlucky, disadvantaged, and marginalized, while making sure the
upper hand stays with those who were born with it. As educators, we
see an array of these disparities on a daily basis and must strive to
narrow or eliminate them, no matter how difficult or insurmountable
the task may seem.
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.5104h2wavurq"></a>
The value and power of technology in the workplace and society at
large is undeniable, and its place in schools has created new equity
issues and perpetuated preexisting polarizations. It has become
apparent that there are vast differences in both students’ and
schools’ levels of access to and uses of computers. This
phenomenon, in schools and society at large, is often referred to as
the digital divide. The following is an excerpt and summarization of
a field research project I conducted during the 2014/’15 school
year:
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.413q37dsm5m2"></a>
Following a growing trend to utilize technology in the administering
of testing, the now implemented Common Core Standards involve
computerized testing of students. During the Language Arts test,
students are required to both navigate a basic operating system and
type timed writing responses. Thus far, public research on the new
test/s, their effects, and what factors influence student
performance, has been minimal.
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.h2s21zi4jzq6"></a>
For students who lack prior experience with computers, either at home
or in their educational histories, test scores may not be indicative
of a lack of comprehension of the curriculum that they have been
taught. One potential factor that could affect scores is that based
on their prior experience with technology and/or their access to it,
students simply do not have the skills required to convey their
knowledge in the medium of computerized assessment. Since the
inception of computerized testing, both educators and social
scientists have shared concerns regarding differences between
paper-and-pencil and computerized administration modes. Essentially,
a test that is designed to strictly measure content area mastery in
English Language Arts could simultaneously be unfairly measuring
students’ basic computing abilities.</div>
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As many students with limited or no access to computers come from
socioeconomically challenged backgrounds, this issue could
additionally perpetuate preexisting gaps in public education. In
<i>Technology and Equity in Schooling: Deconstructing the Digital
Divide</i>, Warschauer, Knobel, & Stone (2004) address this
threat. They suggest that there are “a host of complex factors that
shape technology use in ways that serve to exacerbate existing
education inequalities.” Perhaps computer-administered testing is
an example of this phenomenon. Technology in schools with low
socioeconomic majorities often is not functioning properly, is not
up-to-date, or is not used in educationally enriching manners
(Warschauer, Knobel, & Stone, 2004). Conversely, students
attending schools with a high socioeconomic status majority had a
significantly higher rate of access to both computers and the
internet at home (Warschauer, Knobel, & Stone, 2004).
Furthermore, in a country with a vast population of residents for
whom English is not their native language, studies that draw
correlations between English fluency and computer literacy present
the possibility that computerized assessment could increase divides
in education along ethnic and cultural lines (Ono & Zavodny,
2008).
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.9h0ycaksxuaf"></a>
My research situates itself in studies that have uncovered the
presence of the digital divide. The digital divide, as previously
mentioned, is defined as an unequal distribution of technology based
on varying factors such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity,
geographic location, and language ability. The growing trend of
moving from paper-and-pencil assessment to computer-administered
modes presents a new set of concerns. Considering that in public
education, standardized test scores weigh heavily on the judgment and
direction of students, teachers, administrators, schools, and entire
districts, ensuring fairness and equity in terms of assessment and
analysis of data plays a crucial role in narrowing the achievement
gap.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.c87vosuuxfd8"></a>
My study sought to answer the following question: What is the
relationship, if any, between sixth grade students’ access to and
prior experience with computers and their short written response
scores on computer-administered practice test items?<b> </b>As of
yet, research on relevant material has not provided students with
much of a voice. It is my belief that in order to truly understand
the topic, they must be heard. Thus, my study also delved into the
following subquestion: What are students’ thoughts and opinions
regarding computerized testing and its relationship to their own
experiences with technology?</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.k6v7yiqcsy7l"></a>
The study commenced by giving sixty 6<sup>th</sup> grade English
Language Arts students a questionnaire survey. The survey included
seven questions with four point answer scales regarding access to
computers at home and in school, extent and length of experience with
computers, and frequency and type of computer use. Following the
survey, students were grouped into groups of high, medium, and low
prior computer experience based on their responses. Thirty five
participants were female, and twenty five were male. This number was
a result of certain students failing to provide individual and/or
parental/guardian consent. The sample groups consisted of fifteen
students in the low survey range, twenty nine in the medium survey
range, and sixteen in the high survey range. The survey
administration process, gaining consent, and grouping students took
roughly one month. No students were made aware of their groupings.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.c6jn2ec4wsme"></a>
Once the sample was been obtained, students were assigned numbers to
ensure confidentiality and then randomly selected to complete either
a paper or computer-administered version of one question from the
Common Core 6<sup>th</sup> Grade English Language Arts Practice Test.
The question was identical on both tests and asked participants to
make an inference in paragraph form with textual evidence based on a
short reading sample. Both the paper and computer tests were
administered in a randomized order. Two weeks was provided as a
resting period. The group that initially took the paper version of
the test was given the computer version and vice versa.
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.c6jn2ec4wsme1"></a>
Six students were then selected for interviews. They were selected
based on the principle of ensuring an equitable sample of gender,
ethnicity, and computer grouping. Students were interviewed
individually for roughly ten minutes after school in my classroom.
The interviews sought to gather information regarding their feelings
and experiences with prior technological use and education, both at
home and in school, as well the computer and paper-and-pencil
assessment administered in the study.
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.nysrnm7nz58v"></a>
The numerical data gathered supported the study’s hypothesis.
Participants in the high computer skills and exposure group showed
less of a difference between testing modes than those in the low and
medium groups. Additionally, a somewhat significant percentage of
participants in the high group also scored higher on the paper test.
Data collected from the medium group showcased a substantial increase
in lower scores on the computer-administered test question. The low
group, as expected, contained a large number of participants that
scored substantially lower on the computerized version of the
assessment tool. Additionally, score differences favoring the paper
assessment showed greater point variances in the low group.
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.wcekyntynjng"></a>
In a localized context, the findings of the study showcase a highly
problematic disparity between paper and pencil and computerized
assessments based on students prior exposure to and experience with
computers. As made evident by a steady increase in higher paper
scores within the medium and low groups, it is clear that within the
sample group, computer access and experience affects consistency in
scores between paper-and-pencil and computer-administered testing
modes. Furthermore, given that the high group also had 19% of its
participants scoring higher on the paper test, with none scoring
higher on the computer test, the findings also foster additional
questions about computer testing in general. This is further
supported by the fact that when examining the entire sample without
grouping, the majority was equally split at 46% each for no score
difference and lower computer scores, with only eight percent scoring
higher on the computer test. In consideration of the findings of
existing research, and the percentages from this study being so
heavily weighted in favor of paper-and-pencil testing, a strong case
is made against potential flaws of computerized testing.
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.qyvfwacl84ya"></a>
Additionally, based on follow-up interviews, it is apparent that many
students in the sample group who come from backgrounds lacking in
computer familiarity and education feel as though they have not
received adequate computer education and experience increased anxiety
and lack confidence when asked to carry out academic tasks,
specifically testing, on computers. Furthermore, many of these
students may go into computer tests believing that they could score
higher on a paper version. Even students who have had a fair amount
of exposure to technology in terms of access and education often feel
unprepared when it comes to computer testing. Much of the anxiety,
lacking confidence, and feelings of being underprepared can be
attributed to a lack of typing skills and having to type a test
within an allocated time frame. The findings showcased a broad desire
amongst participants to increase their computer skills, specifically
typing, regardless of prior exposure and education. The data
suggests that exposure to computers, computer education, and computer
access needs to be increased, not only for students who lack
experience and education, but for those who have had it.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.c6jn2ec4wsme2"></a>
Ultimately, on account of the relationship between computer
experience and access and score differences, and students’
recurring expressions of anxiety and lacking confidence when it comes
to computerized test-taking, the validity of Common Core computerized
assessments comes into question again: Are these tests simply
measuring the content areas they claim to, or are they additionally
measuring students’ ability to effectively use technology, and
therefore placing students who have had more exposure, access, and
education at an advantage? Are these tests equitable?
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.c6jn2ec4wsme3"></a>
In order to narrow the digital divide and foster equity in
technological education, more computer access and instruction needs
to be provided in schools where the student population comes from
backgrounds lacking in access and prior education. Additionally,
perhaps even for students who feel as though they have had ample
technological access and education, more is still needed. Without it,
technological disparity is inevitable and students may continue to
experience feelings of anxiety and lack confidence when asked to take
tests on computers. They may also feel and be unprepared for the
modern world’s workplaces and educational institutions that rely so
heavily on technological proficiency.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.c6jn2ec4wsme4"></a>
In order to meet the technological demands set by Common Core
computerized testing, typing and fundamental computer navigation
skills must be taught. If we are going to ask students to take
computer-administered tests that to some extent factor in computer
proficiency, we must provide them with the skills needed to take them
or allow for an option in the form of a paper test. If not, some
students may be facing unjust obstacles. Given correlations between
primary language, ethnicity, and class to computer access, we must
additionally consider what populations are being marginalized by
these obstacles and what the resulting effects could be. Furthermore,
results suggest that even those with experience could also be judged
unfairly, as computerized testing may still be a rather unfamiliar
process for many students.
</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="h.c6jn2ec4wsme5"></a>
Educators, administrators, policy-makers, and students face countless
and immense challenges in the push to overcome the obstacles that
lead to and perpetuate polarization and imbalance. Technological
access, education, and assessment is now situated at the forefront of
these challenges. Common Core computerized assessment, a tool by
which all students, teachers, districts, and states are evaluated by,
must be diligently studied and scrutinized to ensure that students
have a fair chance to express their knowledge without being judged
according to extraneous factors. <b><i>--Brian Moss</i></b></div>
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<br /></div>
Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-42500371407568587812016-08-19T14:22:00.000-07:002016-08-19T14:22:01.130-07:00Neurotypicals and the Rest of Us <div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>All teachers who have more than one pupil work with a diverse body
of students who have different backgrounds, needs, learning styles,
and methods of effective communication. It is very much part of our
gig to figure out how to best reach every student individually, so at
the very minimum they know the door to learning is being kept open
for them; and there are a few useful techniques we learn for
accommodating a diversity of student learning styles in our graduate
teaching programs (along with a heaping helping of lip service and
tokenism). </i>
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Most teachers, however, realize they have a much more complex task
at hand when they actually step into the classroom and attempt
individualized instruction. Some teachers work with student
populations where individualized instruction isn't something solely
for a few struggling or exceptional students, but rather the only way
to reach </i><i><u>any</u></i><i> of your students. You will find
that quite a few of these teachers also happen to be punks, because
our entire culture is essentially a cult populated by beautiful
weirdos who see the world differently from everyone else. </i>
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>The Teaching Resistance column in MRR for January 2016 is by Ash, who teaches very young
(5 – 7 year old) children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in
urban England. She also plays in some bands you may have heard of
like </i><i><b>Frau</b></i><i> and </i><i><b>Good Throb</b></i><i>,
and she helps make pretty rad things happen with the beautiful
weirdos of the London punk scene.</i></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I teach year 1 children with severe ASD in an inner London school. I
have 7 students who are all killer people. Their learning happens at
a painstakingly slow pace sometimes and that’s fine. There are
benchmarks that neurotypical children will reach before the age of
two that some of my students are still working towards and that’s
fine. It's all fine because at school, at least, we don’t exist in
the neurotypical world, we exist in the realm of the spectrum. And
that’s great. Because fuck integration politics, ASD is something
that clearly (to me) demands that we change ourselves, our
environments and our teaching methods to be personalised to each
individual child.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Going backwards from that list lets look at teaching methods –
change the learning experience so it becomes visual, kinaesthetic and
relevant to that child's needs – once you know the child, that’s
easy enough. We do this in punk too right? We encourage new bands to
be experimental, we celebrate the addition of a hammer against a bell
because when that thing hits we feel like, ‘fuck, I see’.
Experiences are vital to our understanding, otherwise its just
something that looks questionable on paper. I could say I saw
Asesinato Del Poder play one of the toughest gigs I’ve ever seen in
a basement in France, but unless you were there you won’t know what
it felt like to stand in that room with your fists balled into the
side of your ribs so hard you thought you’d puncture a lung and
possibly die happy and angry all at once, screaming “INFIERNO”.
Second – change the environment – my class is a low-stimulus room
(and we have a playroom, and a separate workroom, and two outdoor
pods – but who’s bragging – did I mention this is a state
funded school? Who loves ya Hackney) and that’s exactly what each
child needs – then they are way more able to focus on me and my
teaching, ergo themselves and their learning. In punk we make our
environments as open and safe as possible right? Right? Right?</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now the first thing I mentioned is what I mostly want to talk about
in this article. This is the big one. Changing myself is something iv
been learning to do slowly and begrudgingly over a long period now.
Punk shows us that you either stick with something that’s already
there (oh hey your band sounds like discharge, cool) or you steer off
course and make something new (oh your band is a gothy plus sized
greek woman singing about nightmares, hello dream lover - EFIALTIS is
my girlfriend). Either way changing ourselves is something that to do
actively we have to struggle with. To be reflective enough to say, ‘I
don’t know what I'm talking about here’ or ‘maybe if I tried to
be less A, I wouldn’t suffer so much B’ – whatever the thing
that you don’t really want to admit about yourself is, be assured
that to be truly reflective that stuff is gonna come up and you’d
better be prepared to look at it if you want to handle your shit and
change yourself. To look at yourself under a glaring light of ‘how
do I make me better’ isn’t anything new – women have been
taught to be self critical from birth so in a way perhaps we have an
advantage with this – but it's important to remember that there is
a history to your thought patterns, your responses and reactions, the
way you organise yourself and the lifestyle you have chosen. The
point is to have an objective – you can’t reshape all of that
history, but you might be able to understand how it has left you and
choose which specific parts of that might need tweaking, fiddling
with or just straight carving the fuck out.
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Things like misogyny for instance. You might not know that its there
until you’re faced with someone saying that you did a fucked up
thing. You might not have even seen your actions as harmful at the
time or even a few months down the line. You still might not really
understand what all the fuss is about when people stop wanting to
hang out or won’t really look you in the eye at shows anymore all
because one time this one girl said that one thing about this total
non-event that you didn’t even think twice about. That’s
something you might want to get the carving knife out on – I give
you permission to bleed over this one. Just til you think its all
gone, then I'm gonna need you to go for regular check ups in the
mirror with a hefty dose of ‘what am I bringing to the world and
why?’</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What about validation? We all seek that in a myriad of interesting
ways, you ever stop to ask why? You ever stop to question if its
meaningful – or purposeful or harmful and how? And again, WHY? You
ever just stop?
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
At work I have to be reflective, anything less is a disservice to the
community I work in. I guess my question is why this isn’t more of
the norm in punk – and I don’t mean sitting around discussing
intersectionality (though HI, that’s always good) I mean looking
deeply in to yourself, the words you say, the body you control, the
actions you choose and the cultures within cultures that you promote.
You feel okay with them all? A good teacher is always reflecting, I
reckon a decent punk will be too. <b>--Ash </b></div>
Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-79775289546048512382015-11-23T14:54:00.000-08:002015-11-24T11:54:58.449-08:00The Koko Lepo Free School Project, Belgrade, Serbia <div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-after: auto; page-break-before: auto;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P_ApGe8dZRs/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P_ApGe8dZRs?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<i>While most of the teachers reading and writing for this column
work in public/state educational systems, the importance of
autonomous, independent, and anticapitalist educational projects
across the world cannot be understated. The September 2015 Teaching Resistance column in MaximumRockNRoll (MRR) is by "Ferdi", a teacher and doctoral candidate from Texas who
has lived in Central and Eastern Europe for six years and Belgrade
(Serbia) for two at the InexFilm squatted social center. He describes
himself as an anarchist and anti-fascist and intends to stay in
Belgrade for as long as 'they' let him. The autonomous, collective
educational project he works with, Koko Lepo, welcomes new contacts
and encourages any readers who are interested in establishing
contacts or continuing the project to please get in touch (see
contact information at the end of the article).</i></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>The
Place</b><br />
<br />
InexFilm is a squat in the Karaburma
neighborhood of Belgrade, Serbia–the 'White City'. For four years
the place has been host to a variety of artists, 'activist' groups,
concerts, and various spatially-oriented initiatives. It has no
relation to NGOs nor the State and it is always under threat of
falling to the tides of commercial development in the area. The
latest rumor is that the bulldozers are coming for us in less than a
week as of this writing. By the time you read this, a battle may
already have occurred, the outcome anyone's guess.<br />
<br />
The
squat also houses an autonomous kindergarten and youth program called
'Koko Lepo' within its colorful concrete halls. Koko Lepo is a
completely free weekly pedagogical program that serves the residents
of a slum called 'the Dump' nearby the squat. Most of our students
are the children of Kosovar war refugees from the 90s and speak
Romani and often Albanian as well as Serbian. Most of the parents of
these children work as urban collectors, a thankless, dangerous, and
demanding job which will be passed down to our students. <br />
<br />
A
brief note about language: when speaking about our program to
outsiders, we oscillate between using the epithets ‘Roma’ and
‘Gypsy’ to describe the background of our students. ‘Roma’ is
an internationally accepted term which describes either an ethnic
group or a stateless nation depending on who you ask. ‘Gypsy’ is
typically pejorative but is nonetheless used with greater frequency
within the slum itself; historically, it signals a troublesome
relationship with the State and hegemonic society. So when we talk to
people whose politics we are unsure about, I use the word “Roma”
or say nothing at all. When I talk to liberals and NGO careerists, I
say ‘Gypsy’ and watch them squirm. Incidentally, the people of
the Dump often simply call themselves ‘Serbs’ or ‘Albanians’.
Identity is a site of great contention as well as gaming for Roma in
the Balkans; it has, in the past, meant the difference between having
a job and being buried in a mass grave. People are justifiably
sensitive about it.<br />
<br />
Roma education rates in Serbia are
abysmal compared to the almost total enrollment of Serbian students
in the same cities. Amnesty International estimates that only 66
percent of school-aged children are enrolled in primary school while
the number drops to a dramatic 10 percent for slum dwellers. Those
that do enter school are discriminated against at every level. Their
fellow students experiment with their parents’ racism while the
parents themselves often go so far as to call school administrators
and threaten to withdraw their own children if the school accepts
Roma students. Members of our collective have had doors closed on
their face when trying to enroll some of our students in primary
school.<br />
<br />
Koko Lepo endeavors to pass on the skills
necessary for success in Serbian primary schools while imbuing a
sense of autonomy and egalitarianism amongst our students. Serbia is
far from a bastion of gender and racial equality despite its
socialist heritage. I work as an English teacher for money in the
same city. My classes at the private school I work in within a more
upscale neighborhood of the White City are based largely on debates
about gender parity, heteronormativity, racism, and consumerism. A
critical approach to these topics does not come naturally to my
English students who are typically unaccustomed even to thinking
about<i> anti-ciganism</i>, prejudice against gypsies, as a form of
racism at all. Racism is what Americans do.<br />
<br />
Koko Lepo
identifies as anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-authoritarian and as
such find our key allies, as well as sources of funding, amongst the
international anarchist and anti-fascist movement, particularly in
Germany, as well as a bevy of radical hardcore and punks bands. We do
not cooperate with NGOs or any other representative of the capitalist
State. While I feel compelled to mention a couple of bands in
particular who have bent over backwards for the kindergarten, such as
Osnabrück's Hirnsäule and <span style="background: #ffffff;"><a href="https://www.google.hu/search?es_sm=122&biw=1600&bih=775&q=Schw%C3%A4bisch+Gem%C3%BCnde&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0CBgQvwUoAGoVChMI-OeKtZCzxwIVCb4UCh0DSwuF">Schwäbisch</a><a href="https://www.google.hu/search?es_sm=122&biw=1600&bih=775&q=Schw%C3%A4bisch+Gem%C3%BCnde&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0CBgQvwUoAGoVChMI-OeKtZCzxwIVCb4UCh0DSwuF">
</a><a href="https://www.google.hu/search?es_sm=122&biw=1600&bih=775&q=Schw%C3%A4bisch+Gem%C3%BCnde&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0CBgQvwUoAGoVChMI-OeKtZCzxwIVCb4UCh0DSwuF">Gemünde</a></span>'s
Wasted Youth, the close relationship the kindergarten has to the
Belgrade antifascist booking collectives Cherry 76 and Destroy
Babylon has brought us closer to the scene than any of us could have
hoped. This has also included powerful voices from the Roma hip-hop
scene, like the explicitly anti-fascist Gipsy Mafia and the Romani
rap legend Lord Kastro who once toured with us as a way to develop
our solidarity networks and build awareness about our program in
Western Europe.<br />
<br />
<b>The Day</b><br />
<br />
On kindergarten
days, at least three of us will prepare the room in the morning, text
the parents that we will come to pick up their kids, and then head
into the slum. We are greeted with love as well as complaints,
criticisms, personal problems and gossip. All in all, the pick-up
might take up to an hour on particularly chaotic days. We are now
starting our third year as an institution in the Dump and the trust
the parents have in us means more to us than anything. We treat it
with all the care and affection we try to afford their incredible
kids.<br />
<br />
Class consists of a warm-up activity, usually with
singing, before moving on to a (more or less) voluntary calendar
lesson where we focus on numbers, letters, colors, time, and seasons.
After this, we have free time where the kids play with the mountains
of donated toys and art supplies given to us by our solidarity
partners the world over. We have a hot vegetarian lunch which we cook
everyday, often with the kids' help, and then play some games,
perhaps do some directed educational activities, sing some songs, and
then get ready to walk back home.<br />
<br />
On youth program days,
which we call<i> Školica</i>, or “Little School”, we typically
take between twenty and thirty kids between the ages of 8 and 14 on
field trips around the city. We have taken over parks, pools,
cinemas, youth theaters, and other places in Belgrade that our kids
might otherwise feel marginalized in or at best see as extensions of
their workplace as collectors. When<i> Školica</i> uses the city,
our kids own it. When such trips aren't possible, we tend to do some
modest program in the anarchist infoshop 'Furija' in the same squat.
Our two collectives share several members and, for the most part, the
same ideals of autonomy, equality, and direct action.<br />
<br />
The
program is exhausting and addictive. There isn't one amongst us who
hasn't felt the sense of satisfaction that can only come with doing
something you are proud of for people you adore and all on the basis
of voluntary association. The total absence of any monetary
consideration or valuation of our labor allows the project to be
valued only by its effects. We see the value of this program in our
student's development and, in some key cases, eventual success in
their official primary school programs after graduating from ours. We
count our losses in missed days, disappointing our families through
broken promises and an all-too-often surface level commitment to
their daily struggles. Each day ends with a tally of both and far too
many of them have ended with our accounts in the red. The long arc,
however, bends towards victory. Each loss is a lesson and each
success a precious reminder that this whole thing could actually mean
something to someone in the end.<br />
<br />
<b>The Paradox</b><br />
<br />
Of
course, the paradox of training our children in our autonomous
alternative program so they can better integrate with an inherently
exploitative and often soul-crushing State education system is never
far from my mind. I won't speculate on the thoughts of my comrades in
the collective, but I have never seen our mission as strictly one of
integration. For me, we are arming our children to meet the system
that hates them with a slightly better footing than they might
otherwise have without us.<br />
<br />
It is important to me and
others in the collective that Koko Lepo never become merely a DIY
version of a mission trip. We cannot be some teenager's Guatemalan
summer where the deep inequities and structural violence of global
capitalism are boiled down into a few selfies and the phrase, “I
think I really did some good<i> down there</i>”. How we maintain
and materialize this separation is never entirely clear and we try to
be vigilant of it. Sadly, we have failed miserably at this from time
to time. One ex-member would even occasionally do tours of the slum
for guests before he was kicked out of the collective for even worse.
To help combat these tendencies we've made rules about photography in
the program, try to keep the topic of race and class alive in our
meetings, and have experimented with integrating members of the
settlement into the program to help 'offset the white balance', so to
speak. This last task has proven prohibitively difficult as those who
are old enough to help out with the kids but are not yet working
full-time for the family are generally supposed to be in school. We
decided early on that Koko Lepo should not be an excuse to skip
school even if we don't like the system: the paradox again...<br />
<br />
Our
program is far from perfect. We are constantly tackling issues of
race, gender, tradition, inequity, and all the myriad problems one
might expect from such an effort. Our meetings are often sites of
heated and mean arguments, tearful accounts of our failures, gallows
humor, etc. Despite this, I doubt there is one amongst our members
who has not felt, standing at the open door of our colorful
kindergarten that we built with our own hands, that there can be
nothing in this world more worthwhile or more necessary. Moreover,
there is nothing in this world that will stop us from seeing it
through.<br />
<br />
<b>The Lesson<br />
<br />
</b>It took only three
people and safe space to make this happen initially. Since then,
members have come and gone but the consistency of our program and the
consistency of its message, at this point, might outlast all of us in
the current collective. We are a consensus based group with no
distinction between workers and members. Anyone interested in
committing their time to the program who is in line with our basic
principles is welcome to participate. We do take care to pull, in a
general sense, from our existing affinity groups–or at least make
sure we can find someone who can speak for new members as a way to
protect ourselves from possible infiltration by the police or worse.
In fact, we have suffered worse and have survived, learning all sorts
of hard lessons along the way.<br />
<br />
It is important to us that
our lessons be your lessons; I can promise you, reader, that yours
have been, and will continue to be, ours. Regardless of the fate of
our beloved Belgrade squat, this project is far from finished. More
importantly, there is little in it that is not replicable in some way
or another in your own neighborhoods given the right space and the
commitment of a handful of individuals. Mutual aid is how we express
solidarity for those with whom we seek equality in our common
struggle for both survival and significance in the face of
exploitation, hatred, and systemic violence.<br />
<br />
Thanks for
paying attention. – <i><b>‘Ferdi’</b></i><br />
<br />
<i><b>For
more information:</b></i><i><br />
Facebook:
facebook.com/kokolepoav<br />
Email: kokolepoav@riseup.net<br />
</i></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-after: auto; page-break-before: auto;">
<i><b>Other links:</b><br />
Infoshop Furija:
infoshopfurija.noblogs.org/</i></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Cherry 76
booking: facebook.com/cherry76collective<br />
Destroy Babylon
booking: facebook.com/destroybabylonbooking</i><br />
<br /></div>
Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846946342639695623.post-23716308399065939262015-11-23T14:43:00.002-08:002018-03-20T14:04:19.725-07:00Black Lives Matter, how Liberal Institutions Fail to Address Structural Racism, and What to Do About It<div style="line-height: 136%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>As
radical teachers, we are always learning from our students, and
understand that a student can very much be a teacher in a more broad
sense as well. One of the core tenets of truly student-centered
teaching practice is to listen, to not be afraid to allow students to
turn the lens of reflection on us (or our bosses/administrators), to
break down the hierarchical structures and authoritarian tendencies
of our profession so that we can all truly learn to be better human
beings together.</i></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.4px;">The June 2015 Teaching Resistance column in MaximumRockNRoll (MRR)</i><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i> is written by Kadijah Means, who attends Berkeley
High School (California) as a student and is a recent graduate of the
class of 2015. She is a student leader, heading up the Black Student
Union and Amnesty International groups on campus, and has been
regularly interviewed in local media - particularly with regard to
her involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement. </i></span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>Berkeley
High has an international reputation as an enlightened, modern high
school that has sometimes employed radical measures to address
systemic educational inequities that are rooted in racism, class
discrimination, gender/sexuality biases, and other problems that
plague schools across the U.S. (and worldwide). Even in this
“enlightened” institution, however, these problems persist and
often end up magnified. In her column, Kadijah discusses specific
examples from Berkeley High to illustrate the repeated failures of
the educational system in addressing racism, both within the school
context and in the wider world. She also gives some concrete
suggestions for ways that teachers, administrators, and school
districts can work long-term to be more responsive and help combat
the pervasive reality of race-based inequities.</i></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
topic of racism is again at the forefront of the average American's
mind. In response to non-indictments and injustice catching the eye
of mainstream media, movements like the Black Lives Matter have
spread across the US. The U.S education system, specifically in
‘progressive’ places like Berkeley, Ca., has found itself
scrambling to write lessons and alter curriculum to meet the needs of
the systematically oppressed. The system was completely unprepared to
address the idea of institutional racism. The fact that they were
unprepared is sad, but not surprising. To be frank this is a
recurring reality-- microaggressions and even explicit forms of bias
will occur on a daily basis. Faculty is ill-prepared to manage any
classroom conflict, not to mention racially motivated ones. There are
two issues colliding here: 1. Poor communication from administration
to Berkeley High students and faculty 2. The toxic racist environment
is preventing students of color from flourishing in the way their
white counterparts can.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">If
communication is key, we haven’t been able to unlock anything
lately. -- this cliché couldn’t be more accurate in regard to
Berkeley High. There are no processes in place to aid dialog between
administration, teachers and students. Furthermore, when concerning
events take place there is no effort to inform the faculty or
students. here are two solid examples of dis bullshit.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">On
October 1st, 2014, a BHS security officer discovered a noose hanging
from a tree on campus. The school administration waited more than
five days to announce the incident, even after pressure from the Dean
of Students and the Black Student Union (BSU). When they released a
statement via email, it was ineffective, as the majority of the
student body remained ignorant of the incident. As president of the
BSU and Amnesty International Clubs, I reached out to the
Gay/Straight Alliance to put pressure on the administration to act
decisively. We decided to force a response by releasing a statement
to local news notifying them of the occurrence. In addition to
organizing for news coverage, employing the tactics of guerrilla
warfare, I read a statement over the school's public announcement
system to inform all the students of what happened on our campus, not
in 1964, but today, in 2014. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There
was no plan to tell the students about the noose. A student group had
to bring this information to the student body. The administration
planned to put paper hearts in the tree. The hearts were placed in
the tree prior to the announcement. Students wondered why there were
paper hearts hanging in a seemingly arbitrary tree on campus because
they were never informed about the noose. You can’t </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>actually</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">resolve
problems before people realize there’s a problem. It doesn’t
actually work. I don’t want to make too many assumptions, but I
imagine the admin felt like “ this couldn’t have happened at our
school”, a classic ‘not in Berkeley’ scenario. Instead of
allowing us to feel shitty about the despicable event that occurred
on our campus the admin rushed into a band-aid or short-term
solution. Sometimes it is important for us to sit in the
uncomfortableness. </span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
noose was a reality check for many. We are not post-racial. Putting
hearts in the tree without telling the student body what happened was
a rush to solve something that is not solvable in the short-term.
This incident illustrates the poor communication and racial tension
stirring on campus. I felt the administration didn’t want to face
the possibility that this was a malicious act happened in Berkeley,
and therefore attempted to cover it up. In the case of the noose,
those affected by the triggering imagery were neglected. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">This
is a prime example of how the burden to educate students falls on the
affected community. A racially charged incident took place and people
of color were expected to respond. Students of color carry this
burden, and it definitely impacts them in the classroom. In
instances like this the </span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">marginalized
continue to be disenfranchised even when ‘it’s not on purpose.’</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">T</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">he
administration downplayed what happened to make sure the minority of
the school, the white students, were more comfortable than the 60
percent, student of color majority. Rather than confront the fact
that racism and prejudice still exist, the administration acted as if
ignoring the noose made the problem disappear. As an active advocate
for equality and equity, it is an understatement to say that I was
concerned the situation was not being taken seriously. I felt the
history of discrimination was being minimized. We remember the
Holocaust, but we constantly try to move past the racist and violent
history against black people in this country. The discriminatory
treatment of black people is easily ignored today because it is less
tangible than at the height of lynchings in 1895 or the violence
surrounding the 1960’s civil rights movement, but it is no less
insidious. </span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">This
silence of our community around issues of race play out in a very
dangerous way for students of color. Many experience discrimination
or microaggressions and have no where to turn. Learning in this
environment isn't impossible, but it is harder and that's what
matters. It is integral that we support students so they feel able to
express when inequities occur. </span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In
a place like Berkeley High where the school is dramatically divided
by race, class, and worldview it is hard to teach about race and
racism (they are different conversations). I have found that
difficult topics are often avoided. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Conversations
about racism, how it affects people of color and our community
are essential to preparing genuinely egalitarian humans. If that is
not the goal then at the bare minimum we should be creating critical
thinkers. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">I
love teachers. I don’t want to complicate their job. They are
already playing so many roles in the classroom. </span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I
understand that the omission of certain topics is due to lack of
training and a fear of discomfort. No one wants to be the racist
teacher who said something unintentionally offensive, so they’d
rather just skip the conversation completely. I get that. Teachers
simply haven’t been taught about systematic oppression, or how to
facilitate discussions about it. The intent of omission is to avoid
hurting anyone’s feelings, but the impact of omission onto students
of color is damaging. The one institution that is charged with
preparing young minds for higher order thinking, employs a pedagogy
that appeals to white students without regard for the students of
color in the classroom. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">We
have to reframe our approach. </span></span></span></span>
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<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Solutions</b></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I
am not an expert in education. I am a student who is keenly aware of
the impact racism has on students. If I was asked to reform the
current school system in the U.S here are a few things I would
suggest.</span></span></span></div>
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<ol>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Stop
buying textbooks from Texas</span></u></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
[</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>editor’s
note: since Texas is such a large textbook market, publishers in the
United States generally produce textbooks that conform to the
educational and curricular standards set by the Texas State Boards
of Education. Not surprisingly, Texas’ education boards are packed
with Republicans: religious conservatives, racist neo-Confederates,
and industrial lobbyists, so you can imagine what kind of
“standards” are set by these people, particularly in science and
social studies</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">]
</span></span></span>
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</div>
</li>
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<ol start="2">
<li>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Cultural
Competency Training </span></u></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There
are skilled educators who can explain the ideas of privilege,
systematic racism, micro vs. macro aggressions, and explicit vs.
implicit bias. Every school needs this attention. If a place like
Berkeley needs this training then every city in the U.S needs this.
I would suggest integrating inclusive curriculum that highlights the
contributions of all people to the world, as opposed to eurocentric
curriculum only. That means history, math, and science would need to
acknowledge contributions from all cultures. This will take time. We
have to be dedicated to change if we want it. </span></span></span>
</div>
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</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Diversifying
Thought</span></u></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">When
discussing the Black Lives Matter movement in class someone said,
“They couldn’t support such a violent movement.” In my
experience at Berkeley High I’ve had lots of students tell me that
‘nonviolence’ is the only way to change things (their idea of
violence is looting and property damage, which I do not believe is
violence). If I respond, it is usually something like this: “ I am
not asking nicely for those oppressing me to stop. In fact, I am not
asking at all. I am demanding the freedom and equity my people
deserve. So maybe that means some windows will be broken, and some
noise will be made after 10pm -- so what.” Unfortunately, I can
count the number of teachers who share these radical thoughts on my
hand. We can't expect students to question the status quo if the
people teaching them aren't willing to question it themselves. We
need minds stretching across the entire political spectrum.
Diversity of thought is what enriches the learning experience. The
entire reason we advocate for ethnic diversity is to expose students
to different walks of life. If everyone in the classroom looks
different, but have parallel mindsets, that is not enriching. We
need to expose students to more radical ideas. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Clear
Communication</span></u></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There
should be clear processes to inform students and teachers of current
events on campus, especially harmful events. When it comes to
inequity silence is violence.</span></span></span></div>
</li>
</ol>
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<div style="line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Change
is not always abrupt. These are societal flaws. Racism affects the
entire country. Tthe education system has to actively walk away from
racism in order to make a difference. The education system is forced
to clean up a mess that it did not create. It will take time, but we
have to make an effort. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>--Kadijah
Means</b></span></span></span></div>
Teaching Resistancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01020469702871466288noreply@blogger.com0