We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The Chicago strike is typical of American politicians' war on teachers

Click here to access article by Michael Paarlberg from The Guardian.

Many see the Chicago strike as a pivotal political event in the US. Will the neo-liberal steamroller succeed in crushing a well organized popular movement in Chicago to support education?  

In this article the author describes the One Percent's media campaign against teachers:
As you may have heard, these teachers are greedy, lazy bullies who are holding kids hostage in their mad lust for power. Their choice of profession is not at all motivated by an interest in child betterment, but entirely by the obscenely lavish salaries they receive – some even approaching those of skilled jobs that actually contribute to the public good, like sales managers and insurance underwriters. All this at – never forget – taxpayers' expense. Even liberal bloggers warn that this strike will leave children forever scarred and ruin their future earnings, or at least their test scores.
One aspect that writers for the liberal Guardian dare not venture into to any significant extent is that such a campaign serves to distract people's attention away from the real conditions which impair a child's ability to learn: hunger, family tensions, broken families, homelessness, etc. (He barely touched on it with one single sentence: "Might poverty and unemployment not be to blame?") Such devastation, of course, is caused by the reckless operations of casino capitalism.