From Z Magazine’s Roger Burbach:

The upshot is that a reform-minded president supported by labor unions and social organizations is now pitted against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite that is accustomed to controlling the Supreme Court, as well as congress and the presidency. It is a story often repeated elsewhere in Latin America, with the United States almost always weighing in on the side of the established, entrenched interests.

The Honduran elites were outraged that a member of their class would carry out even modest reforms. They began to portray Zelaya as a demagogue, and demonized Hugo Chavez as trying to take over the country. When Zelaya announced that he would hold a plebiscite on June 28 to see if the country wanted to have the option in the upcoming November presidential elections to vote for the convening of a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution, the political establishment would have none of it. They incorrectly claimed that Zelaya was trying to stand for re-election. In fact the possibility that a president might serve a second term could only emerge in a new constitution that would not be drafted until well after Zelaya left office in January, 2010. The elites did however have reason to fear a new magna carta, since this is the path that Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador have used to draft new constitutions to begin transforming their countries political, social and economic structures.

Posted under Culture, Politics

I recommend Bill Quigley’s “Letter to a Law Student Interested in Social Justice” to anybody considering a legal career and interested in justice.

Also recommended is the book “Against the Tide,” by Debbie Hagan,to those who want to understand the social role of lawyers. It is the story of Lawrence Velvel, Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, who dreamed of running a law school in the public interest but met resistance at every step from the legal establishment.

Also recommended is a book I’m in the middle of reading, Unequal Justice, which explores the political interests behind the origins of many of the legal institutions we are familiar with, such as law schools, the big law firm, the bar exam, the American Bar Association, and the National Lawyers Guild. It’s dated (from the mid-1970s), but still very interesting and useful.

The comments section here might be a good place to compile recommended resources on this subject.

Posted under Culture, Politics

“Union boss” is a common epithet used by people who despise unions, seek to weaken unions, or are involved in a particular anti-union campaign. Despite my having observed many campaigns against the leadership of a particular union, and once having participated in such a campaign, I have not heard the term “union boss” used by union members who acknowledge the value of unions, no matter how bitterly antagonistic their relationship with the union leadership.

This suggests that “union boss” is a term of abuse and/or propaganda, not of analysis. My question here: are there circumstances in which the term is legitimately used?

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Posted under Culture, Economy, Politics, Uncategorized

I am proud to live in Obama’s America too. Long time coming. Let’s work together now to bring us back into the international fold.

- Steve, November 4, 2008

There are many lessons to be learned from the recent U.S. Presidential election – but many more lessons commentators claim we have learned.  It’s been a month since the election, and it’s time to look back with some perspective.

• It was a historic election – this should not be understated.  A Black man was elected to the highest office in a country where 2nd-class citizenship and economic inequality was written into our laws just 55 years ago.  A woman was a serious competitor for the candidacy of one of two major parties in a country where gender inequality is still rampant and largely unaddressed.  This represents progress along racial and gender lines.
• It was a historic election – but this should not be overstated.  Despite the competitive candidacies of a person of color and a woman, racial and gender disparities are real and ongoing.  They are not merely anecdotal, but devastatingly economic.  The average white household made $48k last year; the average Black household made $30k.  The fact of Obama as president is not going to close that gap. Read More…

Posted under Culture, Economy, Politics

I apologize for my lack of a post last week — I was visiting Emily in New York, and the disruption of all my usual routines caused me to forget many of my responsibilities. This week, I’m right in the middle of my finals, strapped both for time and for brainpower. Nonetheless, I have prepared short rumination for you.

I’m thinking today of the mythical Amazons. I say “mythical” not to make any statement about their actuality, but because I’m thinking specifically of the mythology. That is, what does this mythic idea mean?

The idea is of a woman warrior, but she’s more than that. She is a person who occupies the space between sexes. She cuts off one breast, the better to shoot arrows, but leaves the other: a combatant who can nurse children. All her life is dimorphic. Women are her friends and comrades, men her enemies; her daughters are treasured children, her sons left out to die.

I am being somewhat ahistorical here. I’m interpreting this idea from my vantage point as a 21st century dyke, wondering what the symbol means today — I find its simple endurance as an idea noteworthy — and, to a lesser (and less informed) extent, what it might have meant once, what purpose this idea serves.

So. The Amazon is, I think, the visceral reaction to the gendering of violence. We code violence as male and tenderness as female and, therefore, men as dangerous and women as nurturing. Trapped in such a system, people respond in many ways — most frequently by performing these roles and behaving as if they are natural and inevitable. But I don’t think of any of us is truly comfortable with this incredibly reductive picture of human nature. The life of the Amazon is a life of both protest against this system and capitulation to it: a rejection of the system on the system’s own terms. The Amazon is following an older, crueler Golden Rule — treat others as they treat you. In a world where men, and only men, are brutal, and women, and only women, are kind,* the Amazon, in an imperfect stand against cruelty, becomes callous to men and considerate to women.

This is a profound assent to the premises of the gender system — she accepts that women are one way and men another. But it also, inevitably, gets her kicked out of that same institution. As soon as she practices both violence and tenderness, even in her sexist way, she is no longer qualified for membership in the group “woman.” This contradiction embodies the essence of life under this regime: we are trapped and re-trapped in the system even as we are constantly kicked out of it, constantly deemed unworthy of our assigned class. And that’s the real cruelty of it.

Even in exile there is no escape.

* This is not the real world. It is the world the gender system tells us we live in, though.

Cross-posted at Our Descent Into Madness.

Posted under Culture

I’m studying for exams and trying to finish a major paper all in the next few weeks. So instead of posting something original I’ll just post this letter I wrote to the editor of my school paper, and add a comment or two.

This past week was Palestine Awareness Week, when members of Students for Justice in Palestine worked to present facts and viewpoints that run counter to the traditional negative portrayals of Palestinians. As part of the effort, the organization created posters presenting facts about the Israel-Palestine conflict that would surprise most Americans, like facts illustrating the enormous disparities in military strength between the Israeli army and the Palestinian people, and between the magnitude of the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians and those committed by the Palestinians against Israelis.

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Posted under Culture, History, Politics

This is the final section of my series about school. Part I, Part II.

It seems to me that the foundational assumptions of traditional school are: that children, left to their own devices, cannot and will not learn; that children are basically helpless and stupid and deficient in curiosity; that children must therefore be taught, by a competent authority, or they will fail to grasp concepts and gain skills.

I think anyone who has ever spent any time with a child can attest that all of these ideas are patently false. Anyone who was ever spent time around a child who is learning to talk can attest as much with even greater confidence — tiny babies, unable even to feed themselves, crack the code of language with a speed and an enthusiasm most adults could envy. The reality, as far as I can tell, could not be farther from those assumptions.

And I do believe those are the underlying ideas. We would have to believe that children must be forced to learn in order to ask ourselves, “Is our children learning?”

That is an insane question. I know it’s also a much-mocked one, but no one would have laughed at it if our Ivy Leagued-educated* soon-to-be-former President had managed to formulate it correctly. And that’s absurd. There is no such thing as a child who isn’t learning. The only questions is, “Are our children learning things in the arbitrary order and at the arbitrary pace the school system requires?” If that’s more important to us than whether children are happy, healthy, curious, and engaged — and it certainly seems to be — we have our priorities precisely backward. Read More…

Posted under Culture

There’s much to be said about the election of Obama as President; there is the racial milestone, the end of the Bush era, the stopping of a McCain/Palin administration, and so on.  One of the most disconcerting phenomena since the election is the incessant praise for Obama (who has done little but win the election) and the oft-verbalized sentiment that “everything’s going to be okay”.

At the risk of appearing cynical, the election of any U.S. President (or any election) has never ensured a prosperous future.  On the contrary, politicians (and people in general) tend to do what they’re paid to do – and Obama’s $640,000,000 bankroll from the campaign means that there’s some rich folks who are expecting him to do things that will help them out.  Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Time Warner were not in the Top 10 of  Obama’s contributors because they believed that he would redistribute their wealth or give alms to the poor.  This is not a surprising expectation.  After all, sister Goldman once remarked, “Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.”

Even if Obama were an anti-war socialist with an agenda of ending world hunger (he’s not, and he doesn’t), he still faces a rather conservative Democrat majority and a reactionary Republican minority.  The machinations of the U.S. government are not easily pushed in the direction of change – even the tepid and abstract changes to which Obama has alluded.  The status quo tends to remain the status quo – and that does not bode well for most of the folks in the country (and the world).  For instance, even after populist uproar over the Wall-Street bailout/giveaway, AIG is getting another bailout of an additional $40 billion ($40,000,000,000) and this has evoked little response from Washington.

The fundamental question is whether we believe that we are sheep to be herded by a shepherd, or whether we are all shepherds of our own future.  Is what “democracy” means that once in a few years we choose one of two narrowly-chosen candidates and expect him to lead us to redemption?  Is being a citizen a spectator sport, in other words?  Or are we to understand that if we wish to control our own destiny, that we will have to get up and do just that?

What the Obama victory means, among other things, is that unlike a McCain/Palin administration, the new president might be responsive to popular organizations and movements calling for reform.  Real change (i.e. revolution) is not likely an option.  The problems that face us are unparalleled in human history: climate change, ongoing war and occupation, nuclear proliferation – the list goes on.  Despite the accolades on Obama, the belief that he’s “going to cure everything, make everything perfect“, it is going to take a great gathering of the people of good will and intention of this country to sway him.  He’s not (and maybe cannot) do it by himself.

Posted under Culture, Politics

(Picking up where I left off. This is Part II of III, or possibly even IV.)

When I was in 10th grade, Emily and I started going to the bookstore during our free periods. We’d get coffee, and then just wander, reading title after title, picking up anything that interested us. We often read whole books in a single sitting, crouched on the carpet at the back of one aisle or another, sometimes reading silently to ourselves and sometimes out loud to one another. We read novels, collections of poetry, nonfiction volumes about science and history and feminism. This was fun — it was great, unadulterated fun, and the things we learned are immeasurable. I would learn more in ninety minutes, exploring an interesting topic with my best friend, than I did in an entire semester in any of my classes. Overall I’m sure I’ve learned significantly more reading with Emily — in bookstores, bedrooms and the blogosphere — than I did in my three* years of high school combined.

Being forced back into class every day after this was incredibly demoralizing. I’ve always been an A student and liked school more than most, but this exposed the great hypocrisy of what I was being forced to do. I was learning, passionately — and it felt nothing like sitting in those classrooms. That framework of school was actively hostile to my education, actively preventing me from learning, by forcing me to sit in my plastic chair as an often pathetic teacher tried and failed to gain control of the classroom, and as the other kids joked and flirted in their stupidly transparent ways.

(Emily simply sat silently reading through every single class, managing to get some value of that wasted time.)

To add insult to injury, those school officials would regularly force me into discussions and activities about “learning how to learn.” Learning how to learn! As if they new the first thing about it! As if learning is some trick children must be trained, like dogs, to perform!

Needless to say, there is something profoundly wrong with the school system when it inhibits learning. There is something profoundly wrong with the school system when the bookish, academic kids hate it.

So what are we doing here?

We’re treating children and teenagers like they aren’t people. People — human beings — are sensitive, curious, self-aware, self-motivating, cooperative creatures. We treat children like they’re numb, stupid, belligerent, apathetic animals, and then we complain when they act that way.

And what happened to Emily and me?

We figured out that we were people. We discovered we were smart, caring, inquisitive and enthusiastic. We discovered we were human beings.

Once the kid knows she’s a person, you can’t expect her to sit back down and shut back up again.

(Thanks to Dave at How to Save The World for reminding me of this a few weeks ago.)

In the next installment, more about the fundamental assumptions of school, plus a suggestion for further reading. Finally, in Part III if it fits or IV if it doesn’t, some ideas about what school should do and be.

* At the end of junior year I started attending college under an arrangement in which both schools agreed to let me count college credits toward my high school graduation.

Posted under Culture

Taking a break from the recent election madness, I’ve decided to dedicate a post to an entirely different subject (almost) : music.  So I ask the question: What are the top 10 (unranked – that’s just too difficult) political songs in recent history?  And I’m not talking about “of all time” – I’m looking for recent (within the last decade) of songwriting (So “Las Barricadas” from the Spanish Civil War and all your favorite Dylan songs don’t count)

I’ll leave readers to suggest the other 7, but I think deserving to be in at least three spots are the following:

(1 of 10)
The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello), “Road I Must Travel”:

Read More…

Posted under Culture, music