Sanitation Workers: You Gotta Love Them
[three_col]
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Sanitation Workers: You Gotta Love Them
Review of Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City By Robin Nagle (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013). Rationally, we know garbage isn’t picked up by the faeries, but to much of the public, it might as well be. We “take out” the garbage, but who…
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A political earthquake strikes Ukraine
UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT Viktor Yanukovich appears to have been driven from power after the mass protest movement that has occupied Kiev’s Maidan (Independence Square) since November survived a deadly crackdown last week. In a matter of days, the country’s corrupt and autocratic regime was overwhelmed.
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Essential ingredients versus recipes: social movement teachers unions and granola
There’s no single recipe for building the social movement we need to make public education what it should be, to nurture and protect democracy and kids’ well-being. But we can see essential ingredients coming together in many different places.
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A Letter from Ukraine
Dear Friends, As the uprising in Ukraine seems to be coming to a crisis after weeks of mass demonstrations and occupations, I would like to translate for you the following letter received last week from Julia Gusseva, the Russian translator of Victor Serge and co-organizer of the International Conference of Independent Labor Unions in Kiev…
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Pitting students against teachers
In California a legal battle is being fought that has political implications for teachers everywhere. It’s being cast – incorrectly – as a confrontation between teachers’ jobs and students’ rights.
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Preschool and snow days
Is the push for preschool something we should celebrate? Yes and no.
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Defending teachers, protecting US kids: What's needed
It’s hard to overstate how frightened US teachers are in many schools and districts. We know from research that many teachers in schools now chose this career because they love kids and/or their subject matter. Some of activists in social justice causes but many have never taken an interest in what they’ve viewed as…
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How A Famous 90-Year-Old Doctor Survived Hospitalization, But You Probably Won’t
Enclosed in and insulated by their own structures of thought, many doctors are quite blind to the role of privilege, including their own, in getting or not getting medical care and in determining the quality of that care. If they acknowledge some flaw (or even ignorance or barbarity) in individual health care, they see it…
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Carmen Fariña and New York City's schools: What to expect?
Does appointment of Carmen Fariña signal a dramatic shift in policy for New York City public schools? Writing in the Indypendent, NYC teacher and union activist Brian Jones suggests, correctly I think, the situation is more complicated than supporters of Bill de Blasio want to believe.* On the one hand, Fariña is indeed different from…
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Teachers union leaders need union democracy
Teacher activists have been buzzing in the blogosphere about AFT President Randi Weingarten’s shift, endorsing a moratorium on linking teacher evaluation to students’ scores on standardized tests and on the new national curriculum, Common Core.
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Closing Bridges While Building Bipartisan Bridges for Corporate-Backed 'Reform'
It remains to be seen whether NJ Governor Chris Christie will be able to avoid having his political career crash and burn.
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A recipe for building social movement teachers unions – and fig cake too
There’s no strict recipe we can follow to build social movement teachers unions though the process will require some indispensable ingredients, robust democracy for one. Another element is creating relationships among people who inhabit very different social spheres. While the principles on which we organize are key, so are the ways we struggle together,…
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'Operation Enduring America'
"As we reassure our partners that our relationships and engagement in Afghanistan will continue after the military transition in 2014, we should underscore that we have long-term strategic interests in the broader region… As the United States enters a new phase of engagement in Afghanistan, we must lay the foundation for a long-term strategy that…
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Write on behalf of Iranian teachers facing death
In much of the global south, teachers are leaders of their communities. In Iran, two teachers are in mortal danger because they have defended their community’s religious freedom. Amnesty International has sent an alert for urgent action to defend them. I’ve sent an email message, reproduced below.
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Duking it out with Weingarten on Common Core
One of the most confusing aspects of the last decade’s education reforms is that a reform that will do great harm often contains an element that’s useful, even progressive.
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Liberals, race(ism), and ed reform – a NJ fairytale
From Doris Mercado-Melon Union City, NJ had a brief minute in the sun as the liberals’ example of good school reform.
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Maybe We All Need Something More Than a Wife
During the early days of second-wave feminism, I remember reading Judy Brady’s essay “I Want a Wife” about how everyone needed “a wife,” that is someone to take care of the tasks of everyday life, as women were raised to do.
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Too old to work, too young to die: The struggle for pensions is the battle for retirement
Illinois, which has a Democratic governor and a state legislature controlled by the Democratic Party, has just gutted its pension system for public employees.
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On Electoral Reforms, Sewer Socialism, and Concern-Trolling Technocrats
One of the many great things about having a card-carrying socialist elected to a major municipal office [in Seattle] is that we can start to have good arguments. Peter Lavenia started one with me a couple of weeks ago and I’m going to argue back.
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How teachers unions should respond to the PISA test results
How should we respond to the barrage of propaganda about the latest international test of student achievement, PISA? Test data are (once again) being used to show that US schools are failing.
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Thanksgiving and “identity politics”
Nasty exchanges about “identity politics” in Left circles on FaceBook I’ve glanced at recently haven’t seemed very relevant to my work as a teacher educator or union activist. This is curious because I know one reason education is so contested is that schools reproduce (or change) the beliefs that underlie the society’s political and economic…
