For the last two years, Dan La Botz has provided an annual roundup of social struggles in the US.
Author: newpolitics
Explaining the defeat of tenure and teachers unions in Vergara
Tenure and teacher unions suffered a defeat this week when a California court ruled in the Vergara case that the state's law giving teachers tenure violated California's constitution. I've blogged about why the claims in Vergara were manufactured to pit students against teachers.
Reimagining and remaking union solidarity
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) hosted a conference on global education “reform” May 24, bringing together NUT activists with union leaders and scholars from the global south and north. My blog this week adapts my presentation, which along with papers from others (all quite informative) will be published on the Research Collaborative of www.teachersolidarity.com
Hats off to Philly's Caucus of Working Educators (CWE)
This brief story about the Philly TAG (Teacher Activist Group) conference suggests what was special about the occasion but it misses what was the most salient political feature of the conclave. Philly teachers who are committed to social justice have formed a caucus in their union, an AFT l
Steve Kindred (1944-2013) and University of Chicago Students for a Democratic Society
A distinctive strain within the New Left, both passionate and reasoned
Steve Kindred, my friend, brilliant Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) leader, organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union, activist in the struggle to keep the Stella d’Oro plant in the Bronx open, campaigner against a lockout of workers by Sotheby’s auction house—all this, and a thousand other causes. Steve is, for lack of a better word, “gone,” in a New York hospital, suffering from abdominal cancer, which has spread. Having been close to Steve and having admired and loved him now for 50 years, I am very sad.
New faces and base-building
In studying urban teacher preparation (the hat I wear professionally when I’m not thinking about teacher unionism), I examine how school practices and organization influence teachers and students. To understand what goes on inside classrooms we have to look at the welter of powerful influences within schools and outside their walls. Blaming “teacher quality” f
Teacher Appreciation Week: How to #thankateacher
This is “Teacher Appreciation Week.” Should we mark the occasion? How? Why?
Teachers unions need critical friends
Union Power’s sweep of the election for union officers in United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) signals a seismic shift in power relations in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
Rosa Luxemburg—a revolutionary for our time, or a liberal?
Review of Jason Schulman (ed.), Rosa Luxemburg — Her Life and Legacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 214 pp.
Teachers, teachers unions and the “Common Core”: This is a test
1. More rigorous academic standards required by the new national curriculum, Common Core Curriculum Standards (CCSS) and its high-tech national test PARCC controlled by Pearson will alter employment for US students by making them “college and career ready.”
2. The Common Core Curriculum Standards are a “state-led” initiative.
Beyond the ER
Eminent doctor takes a small and belated peek at how his own privilege saved his life as a patient at Mass General
The February 6 issue of The New York Review of Books carried Dr. Arnold Relman’s account of his own hospitalization at Massachusetts General Hospital (and elsewhere) under the title “On Breaking One’s Neck.” In a subsequent article, I said that the appearance of Dr. Arnold Relman as a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital, accompanied by his wife, Dr.
NEA feels the heat
It’s official. Colorado teachers and parents have launched a state-wide caucus, RAVE, that aims to transform both the AFT and NEA affiliates in their state. To my knowledge theirs is the first caucus that includes teachers in both AFT and NEA as well as parent activists. They’ve also reached out to student groups who oppose testing.
Jogging our Memory
Review of Savage Portrayals: Race, Media and the Central Park Jogger Story
By Natalie Byfield
Temple University Press, 2014
"Teacher jail" in Los Angeles now "jail teacher" in NYC
Intimidation of US teachers has become truly chilling. Denver has a "do not hire" list on which any school employee can be placed by any supervising administrator. Los Angeles, like New York City, can assign a school employee to what LA teachers have referred to as "teacher jail," and NYC the "rubber room." School employees are sent to a room where they are not permitted to do anything productive, languishing while the administration drags its feet in pursuing claims of misconduct, hoping the teachers will be worn out and quit.
A Rejoinder to Greco on Chomsky
Anthony Greco, in his book Chomsky’s Challenge to American Power, charged Noam Chomsky with too often failing to meet “minimal standards of intellectual honesty” (p. 229). To prove his point he provided instances of things Chomsky wrote over the course of some fifty years that were inaccurate.
Noam Chomsky on American Power: A Reply to Shalom
I conclude my book, Chomsky’s Challenge to American Power (Vanderbilt University Press, 2014), by describing Noam Chomsky as a contradictory figure.
Race, racism and teachers unions: Making the connections
This past week I participated in a “Don’t tread on educators” workshop for NYC teachers who are fighting against having been given unsatisfactory ratings by supervisors. They shared personal stories of being singled out for punishment after years of satisfactory service and of their union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) that will not support them and worse, often collaborates at the highest levels with the administration in pushing them out of their careers.
The Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band 1970-1973
A Slapstick Demolition of Male Supremacy
[Introduction by Naomi Weisstein: My paper, “The Chicago
Women’s Liberation Rock Band 1970-1973: A Slapstick Demolition of Male Supremacy” was presented at the end of March at the Boston University Conference “A Revolutionary Moment: Women’s Liberation in the Late 1960s and early 1970s.” This landmark conference drew a multiplicity of papers, rigorously retrieving a suppressed history, and countering such contemporary notions as that “leaning in” is what the radical women’s liber
Reply to Davenport on Climate Change
In a posting on March 4, 2014 Nicholas Davenport criticizes me for “a misunderstanding of activists’ arguments against carbon trading and, more fundamentally, a lack of attention to the dynamic of reform and revolution.”
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