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Liberals, ideology, and Teach for America (TFA)

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  • Liberals, ideology, and Teach for America (TFA)

    newpolitics

    Liberals have taken way too long to understand that the bipartisan educational agenda, which started with the so-called “excellence” reforms in the 1990’s, has done harm.

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  • As the 1 Percent Leaves the 99 Percent in the Dust, Bush’s Chief Economist is Smiling

         Perhaps you shouldn’t be surprised that the chief economist during George W. Bush’s presidency seems happy that economic inequality in our country is at its most extreme since the Great Depression.      After all, the Bush administration delivered huge tax breaks to the wealthy, the very people described by the former president as his…

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  • Working People for Peace: The Real Story of Popular Opposition to the U.S. Adventure in Vietnam

    [The following review of mine appears as Hardhats for Peace in the July 18 issue of The Indypendent, which calls itself with considerable justification "A Free Paper for Free People." An expanded version surveying a number of recent (and quite good) critiques of U.S. misadventures in East Asia from the Philippines to today, will appear in the…

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  • The Double Standard in Europe's Austerity Discourse

         The International Monetary Fund acknowledged making an egregious error in its evaluation of the Greek bailout it helped create after its ambitious push for harsh austerity last month. Their failed analysis highlights the dangers of austerity measures imposed on Greek citizens. According to the IMF report:

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  • Heartbreak and class warfare, Chicago-style

    newpolitics

    I’d be heart-broken by the layoffs announced by the Chicago Public Schools, (CPS) even if my pal Xian Barrett (in the photo, talking teaching with me at the DC Save Our Schools demo last April) weren’t one of the folks given a pink slip.

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  • Class Struggle from the Couch

    On Sept. 17, Grand Theft Auto V, the latest installment in the wildly popular video game franchise, will be released for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, perhaps as one of the final major games for the current console generation.

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  • A reply to Herman Benson: The Chicago Teachers Union is a different kind of labor union

    newpolitics

    The exchange between Herman Benson and Dan La Botz highlights one, if not the primary, issue that has to be resolved if we are to turn back the tidal wave of anti-union and anti-democratic policies that have transformed the nation’s social and political landscape.  I think both Herman and Dan would agree that we need…

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  • Real Unions and Unreal Unions

         This discussion has shifted ground. It started with what I proposed, but now we're discussing Dan La Botz's views on the AFL-CIO. I wrote about the need to democratize unions. Dan wants to turn existing unions into "real unions."

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  • Egypt: Not the next stage of the revolution

    [from Weekly Worker 969, July 4 2013]

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  • Randi Weingarten – my union president, not my bff

    newpolitics

    Diane Ravitch has been a powerful voice for US teachers against the Billionaire Boys Club, who have carried out a program of social engineering that has devastated our schools.  Ravitch is a friend of public education, a friend of the social movement trying to push back these terrible "deforms." This distinction is one Ravitch misses…

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  • Rejoinder to Bratsis

    In his review of Remaking Scarcity Peter Bratsis raises a number of important issues regarding the relationship between scarcity and economic democracy but does not always offer an accurate account of how the book specifies that relationship.

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  • Political Economy of the Environment

    newpolitics

    A Conference of the Union for Radical Political Economics Co-sponsored by New Politics St.

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  • Men Without a Country: Snowden and Trotsky

         I have been following the story of Edward J. Snowden, so far the most famous man of the twenty-first century without a country, who at the moment bides his time in an international way station in Moscow waiting for some country to offer him a visa and asylum. A whistle blower who revealed that…

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  • Union "reform" or reform?

     In These Times describes reformers winning elections in two key teachers unions, Washington DC and Newark NJ.  While the change in the DC local shows members’ dissatisfaction, that’s nothing new in the local, which for many years has been riven by competing cliques and individuals vying for power.  In contrast, the caucus that provided the…

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  • The Killing of Clément Méric

         The killing of Clément Méric, an 18-year-old anti-fascist activist and member of a student union, by a young fascist skinhead in Paris on May 6th has shocked French public opinion.

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  • Let’s Accept an Invitation from the Trumka of 1970—to Revolt

         When Herman Benson writes about the labor movement, I read with interest what he has to say, knowing that his last 50 years as head of the Association for Union Democracy (AUD) represent only the most recent part of an even longer career in the labor movement that began when he was a machinist in…

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  • Getting ready for the future

         If you’re a friend of labor, liberal or radical, Rich Trumka’s invitation applies to you. He’s asking for your thoughts on how the AFL-CIO can get ready for the future. (As you know, unions have not been doing so well these days, and maybe someone can come up with some good ideas.) Toward that end,…

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  • Positive winds of change in Newark NJ public schools

    A reform caucus in the Newark Teachers Union (NTU) made remarkable gains in the union election that ended on Friday. Out of about 3,000 members eligible to vote, 1,200 NTU members cast their ballots.  (Sadly, that proportion is about par for US unions.) The New Visions candidate for President lost by only 9 votes to…

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  • Remembering Margaret Thatcher, with Loathing

         The execrable Maggie Thatcher, erstwhile British prime minister, passed on April 8 with much rending of clothing by her nation’s Right but with something approaching joy by much of the nation’s rest. The following sendoff appears in the Summer 2013 Democratic Left, minus its last graf slapping the endlessly slappable Slavoj Zizek for writing that…

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  • On Syria

    ,

         During the past two years, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy has released official statements in broad support of the Syrian revolution: CPD Salutes Syria’s Courageous Democratic Movement and Message of Condolence and Solidarity from U.S. Peace Activists to the Syrian People. What follows, however, is not an official position but rather a personal statement…

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  • Reaffirming the Chartists’ Revolutionary Moment

    Book Review: David Black and Chris Ford. 1839: The Chartist Insurrection. Foreword by John McDonnell, M.P. London: Unkant Publishers, 2011. 233 pages. Chronology. Illustrations. Appendices. Index. £10.99.

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