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Pope Francis - Where is the Catholic Church Headed?
| Dan La Botz September 26, 2013 |
In the six months since Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentine cardinal, became Pope Francis, it has become clear—particularly from his recent interview—that he is a reformer who intends to turn the Catholic Church away from some of the rightwing attitudes and elitist style of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI.
MEXICAN TEACHERS WIN MORAL VICTORY—STRUGGLE CONTINUES
| Dan La Botz September 25, 2013 |
Since school began again on August 19, tens of thousands of teachers have been engaged in strikes and demonstrations throughout Mexico—including seizing public buildings, highway toll booths, and border crossing stations, occupying public buildings and city plazas, and blocking foreign embassies—actions taken against the Education Reform Law and the new Professional Teaching Law and over local demands linked to wages and working conditions. While these are traditional tactics, these are the largest and most militant teachers’ union demonstrations in Mexican history.
Media, TFA, and the Vietnam War "body counts"
| Lois Weiner September 25, 2013 |
During the war in Vietnam, I heard Frank Bardacke (honored recently for his wonderful book on union democracy in the Farmworkers), give a short speech at a rally laying out how all three national TV networks and major newspapers had carried exactly the same analysis of a battle.
Is the Tea Party Taking the Government Hostage?
| Barry Finger September 24, 2013 |
That is the affirmative conclusion one might reasonably come to by listening to the Democrats and their MSNBC and Nation magazine echo chambers. Far right monies bundled together by conservative “social welfare” groups are said to be defying a hapless public powerless to thwart the House Republicans from exercising veto power over the budget process, in their effort to impose more austerity and defund the Affordable Care Act.
Remembering Marshall Berman
| Jason Schulman September 23, 2013 |
The death of Marshall Berman—City University of New York political theory professor, author of books including the seminal All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Dissent editorial board member, and one-time professor of mine—caught me quite by surprise, as I’m sure it did many. I’d last seen him in person at a Dissent holiday party and last talked to him on the phone some months ago. Alth
Stalin, the Soviet science wars, and “junk science” selling marketizing of education
| Lois Weiner September 18, 2013 |
One of the most glaring contradictions in policies being foisted on public schools (charter schools are generally exempt from these regulations) is that research on which they are based is fundamentally flawed. Ethan Pollock’s examination of “Stalin and the Soviet science wars” (Princeton University Press, 2006) teases out the complex relationship between science and ideology.
AFL-CIO Convention Days 3 and 4: Inspiring Resolutions & Internal Tensions
| Michael Hirsch September 13, 2013 |
[I blogged daily for The Indypendent from this week’s quadrennial AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles. This is my third blog. For my coverage from Days 1 and 2 of the convention, click here and here.]
Urgent Action: Colombia
| Dan La Botz September 13, 2013 |
Update 9/14/13: There is now a petition available here!
The Problem with the German Workers Council Movement –A Response to Comack
| Dan La Botz September 13, 2013 |
Martin Comack is absolutely correct to recognize that I wrote a Leninist critique of his book Wild Socialism about the revolutionary shop stewards or council movement that existed in Berlin at the time of World War I and on into the early 192
Jean Anyon: Loss of a giant
| Lois Weiner September 11, 2013 |
With Jean Anyon’s death, the Left and education have lost a giant.