The Whole World is Watching!
The Capitol Belongs to the People!
Urgent: Protesters Inside Wisconsin Capitol Need Your Support
Gov. Starts Punitive and Restrictive Measures
The Wisconsin Finance Committee Announces Plans to Eject Protesters this Sunday at 4 P.M.
Tell Gov. Walker, the Wisconsin Legislature and the Obama administration:
DON'T EJECT THE PROTESTERS!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT http://www.bailoutpeople.org/wisconsinworkerspetition.shtml
For 12 straight days peaceful protesters: high school and college students, families with children, workers from all of the unions including teachers, state workers, nurses and firefighters have continued a 24 hour presence at the Capitol.
The presence of the people inside is the only way to insure that the politicians and the bought and paid for Governor Walker heed the democratic will of the people.
The Capitol belongs to the people! We built it: we paid for it.
On Friday night, police were ordered to lock doors at 9 P.M. and to restrict people from bringing in bedrolls, blankets and air mattresses to make it more difficult for people to maintain their 24 hour people's lobby.
Prior to this, loudspeaker systems boomed all night long forcing people including the police to wear ear plugs.
None of this has daunted the spirit of those who are participating in the occupation.
But they need your support.
Many inside are prepared to go to jail if need be.
The time is critical-let Governor Walker, the Koch brothers and his rich cronies and all the politicians know that the whole world is watching!
Stop punitive measures! Defend the democratic right of protesters to stay in the Capitol! Eject Walker instead! Defend workers rights! Kill the bill!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT http://www.bailoutpeople.org/wisconsinworkerspetition.shtml
In solidarity,
Bail Out the People Movement www.bailoutpeople.org
Please donate! Go to http://www.bailoutpeople.org/donatewi.shtml
Sign-up for updates at http://www.bailoutpeople.org/bopmupdates.shtml
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Wanted: Diverse East Charlotte Residents for Education Community Circles
Introductory Informational Meeting with Carrie Gibson from The Lee Institute
on Education Community Circles
September 3, 2009
5:30 to 6:00 PM
Hickory Grove Recreational Center, prior to Candidates Forum
A generous opportunity is being offered by The Lee Institute for us to collectively bring a voice to bring attention to what is needed to help Achievement Zone students to get ready for college and work by bringing community circles together.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Lee Institute is organizing Community Circles to support education in CMS Achievement Zone high schools. These community circles have taken place throughout the city except East Charlotte. Such community circles might be of value to East Charlotte residents and to the Charlotte East Community Partners Education Committee as a means of developing a collective voice and formulating our goals, missions and advocacy programs.
Each Community Circle will follow a process designed and guided by The Lee Institute. The goal is to make sure that many different voices and perspectives are heard and can be brought together to support student achievement.
I am willing to offer my office as meeting space for the East Charlotte Community Circles. These circles however can take place at any location in East Charlotte.
For more information or to sign up as a participant call Queen Thompson at 704 563-7360 or 704 568-1228.
on Education Community Circles
September 3, 2009
5:30 to 6:00 PM
Hickory Grove Recreational Center, prior to Candidates Forum
A generous opportunity is being offered by The Lee Institute for us to collectively bring a voice to bring attention to what is needed to help Achievement Zone students to get ready for college and work by bringing community circles together.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Lee Institute is organizing Community Circles to support education in CMS Achievement Zone high schools. These community circles have taken place throughout the city except East Charlotte. Such community circles might be of value to East Charlotte residents and to the Charlotte East Community Partners Education Committee as a means of developing a collective voice and formulating our goals, missions and advocacy programs.
Each Community Circle will follow a process designed and guided by The Lee Institute. The goal is to make sure that many different voices and perspectives are heard and can be brought together to support student achievement.
I am willing to offer my office as meeting space for the East Charlotte Community Circles. These circles however can take place at any location in East Charlotte.
For more information or to sign up as a participant call Queen Thompson at 704 563-7360 or 704 568-1228.
New CMS list: 1,176 layoffs
Large high schools lost the most teachers, while elementary schools lost fewer.
By Ann Doss Helms, CharlotteObserver.com, July 2, 2009
Myers Park High took the biggest hit from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools budget cuts, losing 23 teachers and six other employees, according to a new list of 1,176 laid-off employees released Wednesday.
About three weeks ago, the district released a list of 855 teachers, psychologists, social workers and assistant principals whose contracts were not renewed. But that list, which contained no details about the jobs those people lost, had several errors and did not include laid-off workers who didn't have a teaching license.
At the Observer's request, CMS provided a list of all employees whose jobs were eliminated because of budget cuts and who were not placed in a new job as of Tuesday. It includes their job, where they were working and when CMS hired them.
The Observer also requested the race, gender and appeal status of the laid-off employees. CMS spokeswoman LaTarzja Henry said that is not classified as public information by N.C. law.
Only 66, about a half-percent of the laid-off staff, were not working in schools. That includes 11 cut from the alternative education department, 10 from human resources, eight from building services and five each from the Bright Beginnings prekindergarten and career/technical offices. The six regional administrative offices, known as learning communities, lost a total of five employees, most secretaries. Before the cuts, CMS had almost 20,000 employees.
Superintendent Peter Gorman and board members have said they wanted to protect classrooms, but the majority of CMS's staff and spending is in the schools. All told, CMS cut about 1,300 jobs for the year that started Wednesday in response to a $35 million cut in county money for 2009-10, as well as big state cuts that are expected. State legislators have not approved a budget. Gorman says that budget could force more CMS layoffs.
The new layoff list doesn't provide a full picture of all the changes playing out in schools and CMS offices. People whose jobs were eliminated but who landed other CMS posts by Tuesday are not on the list. Nor are teaching jobs that were eliminated from schools where enrollment is expected to drop in August; those teachers are often reassigned to other CMS schools, including six new ones opening in 2009-10.
Not surprisingly, large high schools dominated the layoff list. West Charlotte and Garinger high schools each lost 16 teachers and four other employees. Butler, Independence, Olympic and Providence highs each lost 15 teachers, and Independence lost seven additional employees.
J.T. Williams Middle, with about one-fourth as many students as the big high schools, lost 13 teachers.
Elementary schools, which tend to be small, lost fewer teachers, but many took a hit on teacher assistants.
ahelms@charlotteobserver.com
By Ann Doss Helms, CharlotteObserver.com, July 2, 2009
Myers Park High took the biggest hit from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools budget cuts, losing 23 teachers and six other employees, according to a new list of 1,176 laid-off employees released Wednesday.
About three weeks ago, the district released a list of 855 teachers, psychologists, social workers and assistant principals whose contracts were not renewed. But that list, which contained no details about the jobs those people lost, had several errors and did not include laid-off workers who didn't have a teaching license.
At the Observer's request, CMS provided a list of all employees whose jobs were eliminated because of budget cuts and who were not placed in a new job as of Tuesday. It includes their job, where they were working and when CMS hired them.
The Observer also requested the race, gender and appeal status of the laid-off employees. CMS spokeswoman LaTarzja Henry said that is not classified as public information by N.C. law.
Only 66, about a half-percent of the laid-off staff, were not working in schools. That includes 11 cut from the alternative education department, 10 from human resources, eight from building services and five each from the Bright Beginnings prekindergarten and career/technical offices. The six regional administrative offices, known as learning communities, lost a total of five employees, most secretaries. Before the cuts, CMS had almost 20,000 employees.
Superintendent Peter Gorman and board members have said they wanted to protect classrooms, but the majority of CMS's staff and spending is in the schools. All told, CMS cut about 1,300 jobs for the year that started Wednesday in response to a $35 million cut in county money for 2009-10, as well as big state cuts that are expected. State legislators have not approved a budget. Gorman says that budget could force more CMS layoffs.
The new layoff list doesn't provide a full picture of all the changes playing out in schools and CMS offices. People whose jobs were eliminated but who landed other CMS posts by Tuesday are not on the list. Nor are teaching jobs that were eliminated from schools where enrollment is expected to drop in August; those teachers are often reassigned to other CMS schools, including six new ones opening in 2009-10.
Not surprisingly, large high schools dominated the layoff list. West Charlotte and Garinger high schools each lost 16 teachers and four other employees. Butler, Independence, Olympic and Providence highs each lost 15 teachers, and Independence lost seven additional employees.
J.T. Williams Middle, with about one-fourth as many students as the big high schools, lost 13 teachers.
Elementary schools, which tend to be small, lost fewer teachers, but many took a hit on teacher assistants.
ahelms@charlotteobserver.com
US Strategy for Color Revolution in Iran: A continuity of American policy under Bush and Cheney
By Francis A. Boyle, ZMag.org
Francis A. Boyle is a scholar in the areas of international law and human rights, Professor Boyle received a J.D. degree magna cum laude and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at the College of Law, he was a teaching fellow at Harvard and an associate at its Center for International Affairs. His latest book for 2009 is, Tackling America's Toughest Questions, ZNet interview. (More below.)
click here to listen to audio interview with Talk Nation Radio
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT - TRT:29:49
Is the US running a covert operation in Iran designed to promote a color revolution as a way to bring about regime change? We asked international law expert Francis A. Boyle.
According to Professor Boyle, the Obama administration is likely trying this policy out prior to implementing other strategies, and notes that the people working on the region now are maintaining continuity with previous administration. The U.S. may well delay diplomatic talks at least for now.
We hear about Obama's MidEast advisory team and discuss what the events in Iran mean in context with US policy.
Under former President Bush and Vice President Cheney the US was supporting opposition candidates, and in 2007 Bush authorized a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, according to ABCNews.com. You can read a May 22, 2007 report about the operation in www.GlobalResearch.ca.
Questions about Iran's election results persist and they are more specific now that the Guardian Council there has released more of the numbers. Professor Ali Ansari, Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul, have written a report for the London think tank, Chatham House questioning the result of 13 million more votes for Ahmandinejad. The report notes that two districts produced more votes than eligible voters. A joint BBC and ABC News poll taken before the election did predict an 89 percent turnout with Ahmandinejad the winner by two to one over leading contender Mir Hossein Mousavi. The poll was taken by the Center for Public Opinion of the New America Foundation.
Former State Department, NSC, and CIA official Flynt Leverett is now with the New America Foundation and he has said he finds the Ahmandinijad win credible, even if the election was imperfect.
The US press has largely covered political controversy surrounding President Barack Obama's reaction to violence against election protesters in Iran. And some of the details of the election itself have not been well analyzed. For example, opposition candidates declined a proposed ten percent recount early on. (Note, the ten percent election review standard is also used in various US states including Connecticut, which uses it for audits.)
A spokesperson for opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, told al-Jazeera only a fresh election would do. And on Tuesday June 23rd the opposition was offered a five day extension to a deadline for looking into election complaints. It is not clear if the extension was accepted, but there was something of an answer in large street protests called by two remaining opposition candidates, Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.
Dozens of people have been killed during street protests though reports on the numbers vary widely. [See this report in Al Jazeera, English.]
At a press conference Tuesday June 23rd President Obama responded to questions about a video depicting the death of Neda Agha Soltan. She appears to have been shot by government troops during a protest in Tehran June 20th.
BACKGROUND: By 2006, US journalists and scholars like Dahr Jamail, Seymour Hersh and Francis A. Boyle, were expressing concern that the Bush administration's policy of regime change for Iran would include a military attack, likely conducted with Israel.
The University of Southern California's Muhammad Sahimi provides a detailed overview of the political climate in Iran in 2006 in a report titled: The Neoconservatives' Strategy for Regime Change in Iran. He argues that US efforts to use the Persian Press to build up opposition candidates in Tehran would likely be seen as propaganda. But there were other operations that seemed far more ominous.
Guy Dinmore reported in the Financial Times of London that the US Marine intelligence wing had launched a probe into Iran's ethnic minorities, and were searching for any grievances against the Islamic Government that could be exploited. The Pentagon was studying whether like Iraq, Iran might be prone to violent fragmentation along ethnic lines.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, carried out a well funded operation on behalf of the International Republican Institute. The institute had historically been used to funnel money from the National Endowment for Democracy into foreign aid projects.
In August of 2003, former CIA agent Philip Agee, tied the International Republican Institute to both the National Endownment for Democracy and the CIA.
Elizabeth Cheney had gone to Iran on an overt operation on behalf of the US State Department and MEPI, the Iran Middle East Partnership Initiative, as well as ISOG, the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group. In that capacity she had millions of US dollars at her disposal for propaganda using radio outlets like the US owned Radio Farda and Voice of America.
The US continued its covert operations at the Iraq/Iran border, even using the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) [also spelled: 'Mojahedin Khalgh Organization' or 'MKO'] which had been listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Dept. [See also, Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, 'Has the U.S. Played a Role in Fomenting Unrest During Iran's Election?' and also, Biden Vows to Continue Bush Policy Towards Iran, by Jeremy R. Hammond.]
The US and Europe also declassified the MEK as a terrorist organization, leading some to wonder about possible ongoing intelligence roles involving the group.
Members of Congress have been arguing for military attacks on Iran, and have set forth numerous bills that would effectively place America on a war footing with Iran.
See this piece too on the vote count in Iran. ‘A Hard Look at the Numbers', By Esam AL-Amin, Counterpunch.
Francis A. Boyle bio: continued from above
Francis A. Boyle practiced tax and international tax with Bingham, Dana & Gould in Boston. He has written and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on the relationship between international law and politics. His eleventh book, Breaking All the Rules: Palestine, Iraq, Iran and the Case for Impeachment was recently published by Clarity Press. His Protesting Power: War, Resistance and Law (Rowman & Littlefield Inc. 2007) has been used successfully in anti-war protest trials.
Francis A. Boyle is a scholar in the areas of international law and human rights, Professor Boyle received a J.D. degree magna cum laude and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at the College of Law, he was a teaching fellow at Harvard and an associate at its Center for International Affairs. His latest book for 2009 is, Tackling America's Toughest Questions, ZNet interview. (More below.)
click here to listen to audio interview with Talk Nation Radio
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT - TRT:29:49
Is the US running a covert operation in Iran designed to promote a color revolution as a way to bring about regime change? We asked international law expert Francis A. Boyle.
According to Professor Boyle, the Obama administration is likely trying this policy out prior to implementing other strategies, and notes that the people working on the region now are maintaining continuity with previous administration. The U.S. may well delay diplomatic talks at least for now.
We hear about Obama's MidEast advisory team and discuss what the events in Iran mean in context with US policy.
Under former President Bush and Vice President Cheney the US was supporting opposition candidates, and in 2007 Bush authorized a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, according to ABCNews.com. You can read a May 22, 2007 report about the operation in www.GlobalResearch.ca.
Questions about Iran's election results persist and they are more specific now that the Guardian Council there has released more of the numbers. Professor Ali Ansari, Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul, have written a report for the London think tank, Chatham House questioning the result of 13 million more votes for Ahmandinejad. The report notes that two districts produced more votes than eligible voters. A joint BBC and ABC News poll taken before the election did predict an 89 percent turnout with Ahmandinejad the winner by two to one over leading contender Mir Hossein Mousavi. The poll was taken by the Center for Public Opinion of the New America Foundation.
Former State Department, NSC, and CIA official Flynt Leverett is now with the New America Foundation and he has said he finds the Ahmandinijad win credible, even if the election was imperfect.
The US press has largely covered political controversy surrounding President Barack Obama's reaction to violence against election protesters in Iran. And some of the details of the election itself have not been well analyzed. For example, opposition candidates declined a proposed ten percent recount early on. (Note, the ten percent election review standard is also used in various US states including Connecticut, which uses it for audits.)
A spokesperson for opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, told al-Jazeera only a fresh election would do. And on Tuesday June 23rd the opposition was offered a five day extension to a deadline for looking into election complaints. It is not clear if the extension was accepted, but there was something of an answer in large street protests called by two remaining opposition candidates, Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.
Dozens of people have been killed during street protests though reports on the numbers vary widely. [See this report in Al Jazeera, English.]
At a press conference Tuesday June 23rd President Obama responded to questions about a video depicting the death of Neda Agha Soltan. She appears to have been shot by government troops during a protest in Tehran June 20th.
BACKGROUND: By 2006, US journalists and scholars like Dahr Jamail, Seymour Hersh and Francis A. Boyle, were expressing concern that the Bush administration's policy of regime change for Iran would include a military attack, likely conducted with Israel.
The University of Southern California's Muhammad Sahimi provides a detailed overview of the political climate in Iran in 2006 in a report titled: The Neoconservatives' Strategy for Regime Change in Iran. He argues that US efforts to use the Persian Press to build up opposition candidates in Tehran would likely be seen as propaganda. But there were other operations that seemed far more ominous.
Guy Dinmore reported in the Financial Times of London that the US Marine intelligence wing had launched a probe into Iran's ethnic minorities, and were searching for any grievances against the Islamic Government that could be exploited. The Pentagon was studying whether like Iraq, Iran might be prone to violent fragmentation along ethnic lines.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, carried out a well funded operation on behalf of the International Republican Institute. The institute had historically been used to funnel money from the National Endowment for Democracy into foreign aid projects.
In August of 2003, former CIA agent Philip Agee, tied the International Republican Institute to both the National Endownment for Democracy and the CIA.
Elizabeth Cheney had gone to Iran on an overt operation on behalf of the US State Department and MEPI, the Iran Middle East Partnership Initiative, as well as ISOG, the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group. In that capacity she had millions of US dollars at her disposal for propaganda using radio outlets like the US owned Radio Farda and Voice of America.
The US continued its covert operations at the Iraq/Iran border, even using the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) [also spelled: 'Mojahedin Khalgh Organization' or 'MKO'] which had been listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Dept. [See also, Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, 'Has the U.S. Played a Role in Fomenting Unrest During Iran's Election?' and also, Biden Vows to Continue Bush Policy Towards Iran, by Jeremy R. Hammond.]
The US and Europe also declassified the MEK as a terrorist organization, leading some to wonder about possible ongoing intelligence roles involving the group.
Members of Congress have been arguing for military attacks on Iran, and have set forth numerous bills that would effectively place America on a war footing with Iran.
See this piece too on the vote count in Iran. ‘A Hard Look at the Numbers', By Esam AL-Amin, Counterpunch.
Francis A. Boyle bio: continued from above
Francis A. Boyle practiced tax and international tax with Bingham, Dana & Gould in Boston. He has written and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on the relationship between international law and politics. His eleventh book, Breaking All the Rules: Palestine, Iraq, Iran and the Case for Impeachment was recently published by Clarity Press. His Protesting Power: War, Resistance and Law (Rowman & Littlefield Inc. 2007) has been used successfully in anti-war protest trials.
June 9: Rally Against Teacher Layoffs in Charlotte
Tues., June 9, 2009
5:00pm
Marshall Park
3rd St & S. McDowell St
Charlotte, NC
March to School Board meeting at Government Center that starts at 6:00pm.
****************
Article on Rally For Teachers that took place the day before:
Families, faculty rally for laid-off teachers
By Ann Doss Helms, CharlotteObserver.com, June 8, 2009
About 50 students, parents and teachers protested teacher layoffs this afternoon, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools police blocked entrances to the parking lot where the rally was being held.
“What's up with that? It's public property. Why can't we park here?” said Marisa Foster, who has kids at Greenway Park Elementary, McClintock Middle and East Mecklenburg High.
A teacher issued an e-mail call last week for people upset with job cuts to gather at 5 p.m. at the uptown Education Center. That teacher did not contact CMS officials or offer public identification, saying that would be “dangerous” in the climate of fear over job cuts.
Shortly before 5, CMS law enforcement cars were parked beside both entrances to the Education Center lot, which has dozens of spaces. Officers standing in both driveways said they were not letting anyone coming to the rally to park there. They said they need to preserve spaces for Metro School's graduation at the nearby Blake Hotel.
Metro, a school for severely disabled students, has a 7 p.m. ceremony for 16 graduates.
CMS spokeswoman LaTarzja Henry said the whole parking lot was not blocked. She insisted only one entrance, closest to the Blake Hotel, was closed and that rally participants could have parked on the other side of the building.
Parents and students trickled in, parking on the streets and walking to the lot. Their messages ranged from 8-year-old Anna Keener's hand-lettered plea for a Sharon Elementary teacher – with “We Love Her” written inside a heart – to a high schooler brandishing “Hey Peter, You're Fired,” a reference to Superintendent Peter Gorman.
Participants included several Myers Park High families and about two dozen students from East Meck, led by civics/economics teacher Josh Swartzlander.
Swartzlander said he moved from Ohio three years ago to take the East Meck job. “I love my job and I feel like I'm good at it. I never thought I would leave my job because of something like this,” he said.
Swartzlander said he's being transferred to a middle school, based on low seniority. Such transfers are based on shrinking enrollment, rather than budget cuts that have led CMS to eliminate about 1,300 jobs for 2009-10.
Sophomore Jonathan Garcia, one of his students, said it's still the wrong move. “He pays attention to us, you know. He understands us,” Jonathan said, adding that students have made gains on test scores.
With no organized program, a few high school students started making speeches. Kelly McClintock, who is graduating from Providence High, compared the current situation to the Industrial Revolution, when “bosses wouldn't let people organize.”
“Something's not right,” he said. “They're letting go some of our best teachers.”
Another anti-layoff rally is planned for Tuesday, before the school board's meeting. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators is urging people to gather at 5 p.m. in Marshall Park, next to the Education Center, then march to the 6 p.m. meeting at the Government Center across the street.
ahelms@charlotteobserver.com
*******************
Also see:
NC Association Of Educators
5:00pm
Marshall Park
3rd St & S. McDowell St
Charlotte, NC
March to School Board meeting at Government Center that starts at 6:00pm.
****************
Article on Rally For Teachers that took place the day before:
Families, faculty rally for laid-off teachers
By Ann Doss Helms, CharlotteObserver.com, June 8, 2009
About 50 students, parents and teachers protested teacher layoffs this afternoon, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools police blocked entrances to the parking lot where the rally was being held.
“What's up with that? It's public property. Why can't we park here?” said Marisa Foster, who has kids at Greenway Park Elementary, McClintock Middle and East Mecklenburg High.
A teacher issued an e-mail call last week for people upset with job cuts to gather at 5 p.m. at the uptown Education Center. That teacher did not contact CMS officials or offer public identification, saying that would be “dangerous” in the climate of fear over job cuts.
Shortly before 5, CMS law enforcement cars were parked beside both entrances to the Education Center lot, which has dozens of spaces. Officers standing in both driveways said they were not letting anyone coming to the rally to park there. They said they need to preserve spaces for Metro School's graduation at the nearby Blake Hotel.
Metro, a school for severely disabled students, has a 7 p.m. ceremony for 16 graduates.
CMS spokeswoman LaTarzja Henry said the whole parking lot was not blocked. She insisted only one entrance, closest to the Blake Hotel, was closed and that rally participants could have parked on the other side of the building.
Parents and students trickled in, parking on the streets and walking to the lot. Their messages ranged from 8-year-old Anna Keener's hand-lettered plea for a Sharon Elementary teacher – with “We Love Her” written inside a heart – to a high schooler brandishing “Hey Peter, You're Fired,” a reference to Superintendent Peter Gorman.
Participants included several Myers Park High families and about two dozen students from East Meck, led by civics/economics teacher Josh Swartzlander.
Swartzlander said he moved from Ohio three years ago to take the East Meck job. “I love my job and I feel like I'm good at it. I never thought I would leave my job because of something like this,” he said.
Swartzlander said he's being transferred to a middle school, based on low seniority. Such transfers are based on shrinking enrollment, rather than budget cuts that have led CMS to eliminate about 1,300 jobs for 2009-10.
Sophomore Jonathan Garcia, one of his students, said it's still the wrong move. “He pays attention to us, you know. He understands us,” Jonathan said, adding that students have made gains on test scores.
With no organized program, a few high school students started making speeches. Kelly McClintock, who is graduating from Providence High, compared the current situation to the Industrial Revolution, when “bosses wouldn't let people organize.”
“Something's not right,” he said. “They're letting go some of our best teachers.”
Another anti-layoff rally is planned for Tuesday, before the school board's meeting. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators is urging people to gather at 5 p.m. in Marshall Park, next to the Education Center, then march to the 6 p.m. meeting at the Government Center across the street.
ahelms@charlotteobserver.com
*******************
Also see:
NC Association Of Educators
N.C. workers fight cuts in jobs, services
‘State of Emergency’ campaign launched
By Dante Strobino, Workers World, May 31, 2009
Durham, N.C. - When North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue announced that all state workers would be mandated to take 10 unpaid hours off to help balance the budget, many workers began discussing how they could collectively withhold their labor by organizing to take the same time periods off.
Then the state legislature began discussing furloughs of up to 20 days for all state workers. But that plan was soon taken off the table after seeing the mass outrage it caused.
City and local governments began looking at similar measures to cut costs on the backs of workers and the oppressed. The city of Durham announced it was laying off 35 workers and eliminating 78 jobs. The city of Charlotte announced similar cuts, including threats to privatize the entire Recycling Department.
Already mass lay-offs and plant closings mean the state now suffers from the country’s second-highest official unemployment rate at 10.8 percent. In reality it is much higher when counting total unemployment, including permanently discouraged workers and the underemployed.
On May 16, a thousand teachers from around the state, organized by the North Carolina Association of Educators, rallied against the 10-hour furloughs. Many of the teachers from rural areas had never been to a rally before, yet it seemed clear to them that cuts to teachers can only be stopped through mass action.
Jennifer Lanane, president of the Wake County Chapter of the NCAE, led the teachers in a strong chant: “Shut it down!” After the rally, the teachers jumped in their cars and went on a motorcade to the governor’s mansion.
On May 18, over 50 city of Durham workers crowded into the chambers of City Hall to listen to City Manager Tom Bonfield present his proposed budget plan. It includes a water utility hike of up to 9.5 percent, a pay raise for police and fire totaling $1.8 million, and elimination of 113 city worker jobs, saving the city $6.5 million.
According to officials, the plan allows the city to get out of the hole from lower sales taxes, state revenue sharing, charges for services and permit fees. At the same time, the city will keep $19.8 million in a reserve fund for what Bonfield called “worse economic times to come.” This amount represents 12.1 percent of the general fund! Unionists have calculated that the city could spend $6.8 million of this money, which only lowers the reserve to 8 percent, maintain a maximum bond rating and save city workers’ jobs.
George MacNeal, a member of the Durham City Workers Chapter of the Electrical Workers union Local 150, told Workers World, “It’s a rainy day now and those funds need to be released. ... If it wasn’t for us, this city wouldn’t run.” The union is launching a broad campaign to get community support against cuts in such services as trash pick-up, which, if it’s allowed to pile up on sidewalks and streets, could become a major public health hazard.
Workers fight to save jobs
UE Local 150 has launched a State of Emergency Campaign around the state to give workers the tools to fight back against budget cuts. Workers have already begun to circulate a petition that demands “No layoffs, furloughs, pay or service cuts,” and “Tax the corporations and the wealthy.”
The state budget has a deficit of up to $4.8 billion, yet the state Senate revenue plan includes additional tax breaks to big corporations like Bank of America, which already receive over $1 billion in tax breaks every year from the state. According to the plan, these tax breaks will increase by as much as $350 million per year!
Gwen Burwell, a licensed practical nurse at state-run Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh and secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Council of UE Local 150, told Workers World: “I think it is outrageous. It makes me sick that the state is lowering taxes for corporations. What about other people who have children, who have to eat, pay light bills and car bills?”
Burwell continued: “The big corporations’ taxes are cut, but what are they doing with that money? They aren’t giving it to us! We are the ones on the bottom, working hard, getting paid less as they sit on the throne getting richer and richer while our people are suffering.”
North Carolina already has low tax rates for multinational corporations whose hunger for profits and super-exploitation of workers knows no limits. Corporations cannot be lured to stay for any long period of time by lowering taxes, as the politicians claim.
As part of the State of Emergency Campaign, some workers who are members of the Carolina Auto, Aerospace and Machine Workers Union, a chapter of UE Local 150, are fighting for recall rights. They are organized in a non-majority union without a collective bargaining agreement. In March 390 of almost 1,500 workers at the Cummins Rocky Mount Engine Plant were laid off. Workers have been rallying and mass petitioning ever since.
The Raleigh People’s Assembly will host a forum on May 30 where teachers, state workers, city workers and youth will speak out against budget cuts. Led by a powerful rank-and-file workers’ organization, this will be an important opportunity for other left and progressive forces to unite and help build a statewide fight-back. The campaign also plans to launch similar actions in 10 other cities throughout the state.
Part of this campaign demands collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, who are still denied that right by law. There are currently two bills in the state General Assembly that would repeal the ban. This is the first time that such a bill has had support in the state Senate.
On May 26, the HOPE (Hear Our Public Employees) Coalition, which includes UE Local 150, NCAE, the Teamsters, the North Carolina AFL-CIO, Triangle Labor Group, the State Employees Association of North Carolina in Service Employees union Local 2008, and others, will convene a lobby day to repeal the ban on collective bargaining.
By Dante Strobino, Workers World, May 31, 2009
Durham, N.C. - When North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue announced that all state workers would be mandated to take 10 unpaid hours off to help balance the budget, many workers began discussing how they could collectively withhold their labor by organizing to take the same time periods off.Then the state legislature began discussing furloughs of up to 20 days for all state workers. But that plan was soon taken off the table after seeing the mass outrage it caused.
City and local governments began looking at similar measures to cut costs on the backs of workers and the oppressed. The city of Durham announced it was laying off 35 workers and eliminating 78 jobs. The city of Charlotte announced similar cuts, including threats to privatize the entire Recycling Department.
Already mass lay-offs and plant closings mean the state now suffers from the country’s second-highest official unemployment rate at 10.8 percent. In reality it is much higher when counting total unemployment, including permanently discouraged workers and the underemployed.
On May 16, a thousand teachers from around the state, organized by the North Carolina Association of Educators, rallied against the 10-hour furloughs. Many of the teachers from rural areas had never been to a rally before, yet it seemed clear to them that cuts to teachers can only be stopped through mass action.
Jennifer Lanane, president of the Wake County Chapter of the NCAE, led the teachers in a strong chant: “Shut it down!” After the rally, the teachers jumped in their cars and went on a motorcade to the governor’s mansion.
On May 18, over 50 city of Durham workers crowded into the chambers of City Hall to listen to City Manager Tom Bonfield present his proposed budget plan. It includes a water utility hike of up to 9.5 percent, a pay raise for police and fire totaling $1.8 million, and elimination of 113 city worker jobs, saving the city $6.5 million.
According to officials, the plan allows the city to get out of the hole from lower sales taxes, state revenue sharing, charges for services and permit fees. At the same time, the city will keep $19.8 million in a reserve fund for what Bonfield called “worse economic times to come.” This amount represents 12.1 percent of the general fund! Unionists have calculated that the city could spend $6.8 million of this money, which only lowers the reserve to 8 percent, maintain a maximum bond rating and save city workers’ jobs.
George MacNeal, a member of the Durham City Workers Chapter of the Electrical Workers union Local 150, told Workers World, “It’s a rainy day now and those funds need to be released. ... If it wasn’t for us, this city wouldn’t run.” The union is launching a broad campaign to get community support against cuts in such services as trash pick-up, which, if it’s allowed to pile up on sidewalks and streets, could become a major public health hazard.
Workers fight to save jobs
UE Local 150 has launched a State of Emergency Campaign around the state to give workers the tools to fight back against budget cuts. Workers have already begun to circulate a petition that demands “No layoffs, furloughs, pay or service cuts,” and “Tax the corporations and the wealthy.”
The state budget has a deficit of up to $4.8 billion, yet the state Senate revenue plan includes additional tax breaks to big corporations like Bank of America, which already receive over $1 billion in tax breaks every year from the state. According to the plan, these tax breaks will increase by as much as $350 million per year!
Gwen Burwell, a licensed practical nurse at state-run Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh and secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Council of UE Local 150, told Workers World: “I think it is outrageous. It makes me sick that the state is lowering taxes for corporations. What about other people who have children, who have to eat, pay light bills and car bills?”
Burwell continued: “The big corporations’ taxes are cut, but what are they doing with that money? They aren’t giving it to us! We are the ones on the bottom, working hard, getting paid less as they sit on the throne getting richer and richer while our people are suffering.”
North Carolina already has low tax rates for multinational corporations whose hunger for profits and super-exploitation of workers knows no limits. Corporations cannot be lured to stay for any long period of time by lowering taxes, as the politicians claim.
As part of the State of Emergency Campaign, some workers who are members of the Carolina Auto, Aerospace and Machine Workers Union, a chapter of UE Local 150, are fighting for recall rights. They are organized in a non-majority union without a collective bargaining agreement. In March 390 of almost 1,500 workers at the Cummins Rocky Mount Engine Plant were laid off. Workers have been rallying and mass petitioning ever since.
The Raleigh People’s Assembly will host a forum on May 30 where teachers, state workers, city workers and youth will speak out against budget cuts. Led by a powerful rank-and-file workers’ organization, this will be an important opportunity for other left and progressive forces to unite and help build a statewide fight-back. The campaign also plans to launch similar actions in 10 other cities throughout the state.
Part of this campaign demands collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, who are still denied that right by law. There are currently two bills in the state General Assembly that would repeal the ban. This is the first time that such a bill has had support in the state Senate.
On May 26, the HOPE (Hear Our Public Employees) Coalition, which includes UE Local 150, NCAE, the Teamsters, the North Carolina AFL-CIO, Triangle Labor Group, the State Employees Association of North Carolina in Service Employees union Local 2008, and others, will convene a lobby day to repeal the ban on collective bargaining.
Brown at 55 and counting
by Mumia Abu-Jamal, Prison Radio, Recorded May 21, 2009
Written May 17, 2009
click here to listen to audio column
Brown v. Board of Education
It has been over 1/2 a century (55 years) since the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Brown vs. Board of Education case, desegregating American public education.
The decision came to be regarded as a landmark ruling, one which transformed the very nature of U.S. public schools.
Or did it?
There is no question but that Brown dealt a severe blow to the common American practice of educational apartheid, by finding the nation's public school systems, which were unevenly divided between Black and white institutions, were separate and unequal, and thus violative of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. As such, Brown became the precedent by which all racial segregation came to be declared unconstitutional.
But back to the public schools.
Who can doubt that millions of public school students now attend inner-city schools that are just as segregated as they were 50 years ago?
How can this be, we wonder?
Well, there are differences. Funding for schools is based on property taxes, and as inner cities are sited in poor urban cores, where taxes are lessened, there are fewer resources for such schools.
And while racial segregation is unconstitutional, class segregation is not. This, coupled with the segregated housing customs which still determines where people live, also determines where young people go to school.
Just because a law changes, doesn't mean life does.
There are other reasons, as well.
Millions of whites fled to the suburbs, and many built private schools that could legally segregate. Much of this energy went into the voucher school movement, so that parents could siphon off public monies to pay for private, and even religious schools.
With some major American cities facing drop-out rates of 50%, public schools are failing in their mission of teaching and training children to handle the glaring needs of tomorrow.
And what of No Child Left Behind? It was by any honest measure, a disaster.
The less said about it, the better.
--(c) '09 maj
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
PLEASE CONTACT:
International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ
P.O. Box 19709
Philadelphia, PA 19143
Phone - 215-476-8812/ Fax - 215-476-6180
E-mail - icffmaj@aol.com
AND OFFER YOUR SERVICES!
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!
Submitted by: Sis. Marpessa
Subscribe: mumiacolumns-subscribe@topica.com
Read: http://topica.com/lists/mumiacolumns/read
Subscribe ICFFMAJ email updates list by e-mailing
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www.FreeMumia.com
Written May 17, 2009
click here to listen to audio column
Brown v. Board of Education
It has been over 1/2 a century (55 years) since the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Brown vs. Board of Education case, desegregating American public education.
The decision came to be regarded as a landmark ruling, one which transformed the very nature of U.S. public schools.
Or did it?
There is no question but that Brown dealt a severe blow to the common American practice of educational apartheid, by finding the nation's public school systems, which were unevenly divided between Black and white institutions, were separate and unequal, and thus violative of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. As such, Brown became the precedent by which all racial segregation came to be declared unconstitutional.
But back to the public schools.
Who can doubt that millions of public school students now attend inner-city schools that are just as segregated as they were 50 years ago?
How can this be, we wonder?
Well, there are differences. Funding for schools is based on property taxes, and as inner cities are sited in poor urban cores, where taxes are lessened, there are fewer resources for such schools.
And while racial segregation is unconstitutional, class segregation is not. This, coupled with the segregated housing customs which still determines where people live, also determines where young people go to school.
Just because a law changes, doesn't mean life does.
There are other reasons, as well.
Millions of whites fled to the suburbs, and many built private schools that could legally segregate. Much of this energy went into the voucher school movement, so that parents could siphon off public monies to pay for private, and even religious schools.
With some major American cities facing drop-out rates of 50%, public schools are failing in their mission of teaching and training children to handle the glaring needs of tomorrow.
And what of No Child Left Behind? It was by any honest measure, a disaster.
The less said about it, the better.
--(c) '09 maj
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
PLEASE CONTACT:
International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ
P.O. Box 19709
Philadelphia, PA 19143
Phone - 215-476-8812/ Fax - 215-476-6180
E-mail - icffmaj@aol.com
AND OFFER YOUR SERVICES!
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!
Submitted by: Sis. Marpessa
Subscribe: mumiacolumns-subscribe@topica.com
Read: http://topica.com/lists/mumiacolumns/read
Subscribe ICFFMAJ email updates list by e-mailing
icffmaj@aol.com!
www.FreeMumia.com
Deadline nears for teachers to appeal layoffs
News14.com, May 28, 2009
click here for video
CHARLOTTE -- Teachers who have already been laid off from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have until the end of day Thursday to file an appeal.
CMS laid off more than 300 teachers last week and about 60 more layoffs are expected this week.
Officials say annual contract teachers, those having problems getting their license and rehired and retirees are next in line to be let go.
Many teachers won't find out if they'll be laid off until the state budget is finalized, which might not be until July.
click here for video
CHARLOTTE -- Teachers who have already been laid off from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have until the end of day Thursday to file an appeal.
CMS laid off more than 300 teachers last week and about 60 more layoffs are expected this week.
Officials say annual contract teachers, those having problems getting their license and rehired and retirees are next in line to be let go.
Many teachers won't find out if they'll be laid off until the state budget is finalized, which might not be until July.
The Power of Culture
by Mumia Abu-Jamal, May 5, 2009
[Review of: Beats, Rhymes + Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy + The Politics of Identity, by Marc Lamont Hill (New York: Teachers College, 2009.)
For years now, scholars have tried to grasp and utilize the various tools of hip-hop to stimulate and educate American school students (perhaps especially urban youth) with various measures of success or failure, depending, of course, on who does the measuring.
Some have done so from a position of presumed superiority, looking down on this late 20th century art form much as a biologist peers through lens at a microscopic germ. Some have unjustly painted hip-hop as a symptom of a rebellion that has rarely flashed elsewhere.
Marc Lamont Hill, a professor of education and anthropology at Teachers College, Columbia University, has produced something between these two poles, for, as a relatively young scholar, one raised in the temporal and spatial era of hip-hop culture, he sees it neither with the derision born of age, nor the projection born of hope.
It is as real, and as present as the weather, and as such, it influences and informs those under its syncopated spell, with fascinating effect and impact.
Dr. Hill spent several months in a sweltering South Philadelphia classroom, and instead of blasting CDs, he and a colleague presented their classes with printed lyrics of prominent hip-hop artists, and using discussion and journaling, sought to plumb young minds not merely about the devices and parts of speech utilized in the works, but also about the meanings and messages embedded in the music, and how (or if) the themes presented in the music had relevance to their lives.
What followed were discussions of rare and revealing frankness from students who are not usually asked nor allowed to speak of issues of race, class and culture.
Although open to all students, the majority of sign-ups in Hip-Hop were Black, but whites, Latinos and Asians attended.
In one telling chapter, Hill noted the comments of four white students regarding their views on hip-hop. Despite being fans of the genre, they expressed a discrete racial identity that separated them from many of their classmates and the music:
Hill has his pulse on a vital node of American, African-American, urban, musical and youth culture at the dawn of this new century.
--(c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal
===============
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
Audio of most of Mumia's essays are at: http://www.prisonradio.org
http://mumiapodcast.libsyn.com/
Mumia's got a podcast! Mumia Abu-Jamal's Radio Essays - Subscribe at the website or on iTunes and get Mumia's radio commentaries online.
Mumia Abu-Jamal's new book -- JAILHOUSE LAWYERS: PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V. THE USA, featuring an introduction by Angela Y. Davis -- has been released! It is available from City Lights Books: http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100448090
If you are planning to organize an event or would like to order in bulk, you can also receive a 45% discount on any bulk orders of 20 copies or more. The book retails for $16.95, for orders of 20 copies or more the discounted price would be $9.32 per book, plus shipping and handling. Prepayment would be required and books are nonreturnable. If you or your organization would like to place a bulk order, please contact Stacey Lewis at 415.362.1901 or stacey@citylights.com
Let's use the opportunity of the publication of this brilliant, moving, vintage Mumia book to build the momentum for his case, to raise the money we desperately need in these challenging economic times, to get the word out – to produce literature, flyers, posters, videos, DVD's; to send organizers out to help build new chapters and strengthen old ones, TO GET THE PEOPLE OUT IN THE STREETS … all the work that we must do in order to FREE MUMIA as he faces LIFE IN PRISON WITHOUT PAROLE OR EXECUTION!
Please make a contribution to help free Mumia. Donations to the grassroots work will go to both INTERNATIONAL CONCERNED FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL and the FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL COALITION (NYC).
WWW.FREEMUMIA.COM
Please mail donations/ checks to:
FREE MUMIA ABU JAMAL COALITION
PO BOX 16, NEW YORK,
NY 10030
(CHECKS FOR BOTH ORGANIZATIONS PAYABLE TO: FMAJC/IFCO)
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
215 476-8812
212-330-8029
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!
Subscribe: mumiacolumns-subscribe@topica.com
Read: http://topica.com/lists/mumiacolumns/read
Subscribe ICFFMAJ email updates list by e-mailing
icffmaj@aol.com!
[Review of: Beats, Rhymes + Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy + The Politics of Identity, by Marc Lamont Hill (New York: Teachers College, 2009.)
For years now, scholars have tried to grasp and utilize the various tools of hip-hop to stimulate and educate American school students (perhaps especially urban youth) with various measures of success or failure, depending, of course, on who does the measuring.
Some have done so from a position of presumed superiority, looking down on this late 20th century art form much as a biologist peers through lens at a microscopic germ. Some have unjustly painted hip-hop as a symptom of a rebellion that has rarely flashed elsewhere.
Marc Lamont Hill, a professor of education and anthropology at Teachers College, Columbia University, has produced something between these two poles, for, as a relatively young scholar, one raised in the temporal and spatial era of hip-hop culture, he sees it neither with the derision born of age, nor the projection born of hope.
It is as real, and as present as the weather, and as such, it influences and informs those under its syncopated spell, with fascinating effect and impact.
Dr. Hill spent several months in a sweltering South Philadelphia classroom, and instead of blasting CDs, he and a colleague presented their classes with printed lyrics of prominent hip-hop artists, and using discussion and journaling, sought to plumb young minds not merely about the devices and parts of speech utilized in the works, but also about the meanings and messages embedded in the music, and how (or if) the themes presented in the music had relevance to their lives.
What followed were discussions of rare and revealing frankness from students who are not usually asked nor allowed to speak of issues of race, class and culture.
Although open to all students, the majority of sign-ups in Hip-Hop were Black, but whites, Latinos and Asians attended.
In one telling chapter, Hill noted the comments of four white students regarding their views on hip-hop. Despite being fans of the genre, they expressed a discrete racial identity that separated them from many of their classmates and the music:
Lisa: I mean, I love hip-hop and everything. I always did. But I'm still a white girl, you know? Like, the same way that a Black person would love opera but it's still white, a white person could love hip-hop but it's still Black. In here, I'm still white.Hill found their insights both complex and contradictory, yet it gave insightful glimpses at the formation of current youth identity (often at variance with one's parents) and racial identity. Clear from their comments is a sense of racial identity, which made them see themselves as outsiders from a culture that they all confessed to loving -- if only from a certain distance.
Maggie: Right. I mean, I love hip-hop but I can't be hip-hop so I just play my position in here.
Joe: I disagree. I am hip-hop, just like Black people. But I still play my position. It's still certain ways that I'm not in.
Kristen: Exactly. [Hill, Beats....59]
Hill has his pulse on a vital node of American, African-American, urban, musical and youth culture at the dawn of this new century.
--(c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal
===============
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
Audio of most of Mumia's essays are at: http://www.prisonradio.org
http://mumiapodcast.libsyn.com/
Mumia's got a podcast! Mumia Abu-Jamal's Radio Essays - Subscribe at the website or on iTunes and get Mumia's radio commentaries online.
Mumia Abu-Jamal's new book -- JAILHOUSE LAWYERS: PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V. THE USA, featuring an introduction by Angela Y. Davis -- has been released! It is available from City Lights Books: http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100448090
If you are planning to organize an event or would like to order in bulk, you can also receive a 45% discount on any bulk orders of 20 copies or more. The book retails for $16.95, for orders of 20 copies or more the discounted price would be $9.32 per book, plus shipping and handling. Prepayment would be required and books are nonreturnable. If you or your organization would like to place a bulk order, please contact Stacey Lewis at 415.362.1901 or stacey@citylights.com
Let's use the opportunity of the publication of this brilliant, moving, vintage Mumia book to build the momentum for his case, to raise the money we desperately need in these challenging economic times, to get the word out – to produce literature, flyers, posters, videos, DVD's; to send organizers out to help build new chapters and strengthen old ones, TO GET THE PEOPLE OUT IN THE STREETS … all the work that we must do in order to FREE MUMIA as he faces LIFE IN PRISON WITHOUT PAROLE OR EXECUTION!
Please make a contribution to help free Mumia. Donations to the grassroots work will go to both INTERNATIONAL CONCERNED FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL and the FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL COALITION (NYC).
WWW.FREEMUMIA.COM
Please mail donations/ checks to:
FREE MUMIA ABU JAMAL COALITION
PO BOX 16, NEW YORK,
NY 10030
(CHECKS FOR BOTH ORGANIZATIONS PAYABLE TO: FMAJC/IFCO)
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
215 476-8812
212-330-8029
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!
Subscribe: mumiacolumns-subscribe@topica.com
Read: http://topica.com/lists/mumiacolumns/read
Subscribe ICFFMAJ email updates list by e-mailing
icffmaj@aol.com!
Credit Woes Hit Funding For Loans to Students
By LIZ RAPPAPORT and RANDALL SMITH, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 13, 2008
The credit crunch that has so far caused more than $100 billion of losses for big Wall Street investment firms now extends to students in Michigan, and it could soon hit many other borrowers, ranging from California museums to the prestigious Deerfield Academy prep school in Massachusetts.
Yesterday, the Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority, a state agency, said on its Web site that "due to the current and unprecedented capital-markets disruption" it will stop making loans under the state's Michigan Alternative Student Loan, or MI-Loan, program. More than 100 Michigan colleges and universities participate in the program.
In the past few days, problems have mounted for many borrowers as an obscure -- but important -- corner of the credit market called auction-rate securities has gone into a deep freeze.
Borrowers ranging from student-loan authorities to municipalities to big bond funds depend on this market to raise money for making loans and funding projects. They do so by selling securities whose interest rates are reset every week as they change hands in auctions arranged by Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Moody's Investors Service estimates the size of this market at $325 billion to $360 billion.
In recent days, the money managers and other investors who typically buy auction-rate securities have been balking, out of fear the credit turmoil is spreading. The remaining bidders have commanded higher interest rates from borrowers including Deerfield, San Francisco's de Young Museum, New York's Carnegie Hall and many others. A call to Deerfield's finance department wasn't returned. The de Young Museum
declined to comment.
Meantime, many investors who hold the securities would like to sell them but can't. Of roughly $20 billion in such securities auctioned yesterday, half -- or about $10 billion -- failed to generate enough demand from money managers to sell, according to one trading executive at a top dealer. That pushed up borrowing costs for the issuers to levels ranging from 4.6% to 18%, as their interest rates reset to "penalty" rates that kick in when an auction fails.
'Wave of Panic'
"I think this is a wave of panic, but it could signify a real change in the banks' tolerance for taking debt onto their balance sheets," says Matt Fabian, managing director of Municipal Market Advisors, an independent research firm.
Many of the more than 100 auctions that failed yesterday were held on behalf of closed-end mutual funds, which use auction-rate securities as a way to borrow to enhance the returns in their funds. The managers of these funds include such well-known names as Nuveen Investments Inc., BlackRock Inc. and Allianz SE's Pacific Investment Management Co.
Student-loan authorities in places like Mississippi and Montana were also on the list of failures, as were de Young and Carnegie Hall.
The Michigan student-loan authority wasn't on the list of failed auctions. It previously has issued auction-rate bonds, though it isn't clear whether that market was the cause of its current financial crunch.
Spokesmen for the authority weren't immediately available for comment.
In a memo Monday to the authority, Patricia W. Scott, director of Michigan's student financial services bureau, said, "This is attributable to the capital-markets disruption on our ability to issue new debt," and added that new lending to students would resume, "when conditions warrant and funds become available."
*"If student loan providers are having trouble raising money, then that's a concern for us," says Justin Draeger, spokesman for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. He says the loans tend to go to low-income students. "If there's a problem with getting the funds, then they may not be able to pay for their education."*
Peter Warren, vice president of government relations for the Education Finance Council, which represents nonprofit lenders and state lending agencies, said that while Michigan may be the only state yet to announce a student-loan halt, others are "seriously evaluating" the viability of their programs.
Problems in the auction-rate securities market have been mounting for days. Last week, about $3 billion in auctions of these securities failed. The tally of failed auctions grew as investor fears intensified.
Wall Street firms generally stayed on the sidelines, taking few of the securities onto their books.One list of failures compiled by Citigroup and circulated by some market participants totaled $6.6 billion in securities in 105 auctions. But one person in the market said the amounts were larger.
The market allows borrowers with long-term financing needs to tap investors who want to hold short-term investments that can be readily turned into cash. Wall Street firms hold auctions of these securities regularly, allowing investors to roll them over with new interest rates or to sell them to somebody else. When auctions fail, which is unusual, investors like funds and corporate treasuries can find themselves
suddenly saddled with long-term securities.
A big problem with some of these instruments is that they are insured by troubled bond insurers like MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., which have sold guarantees on securities tied to ill-fated subprime mortgages. The insurers run the risk of losing their triple-A credit ratings because of their subprime exposure, and that, in turn, has investors running from other instruments they back. The Michigan Higher Educational Student Loan Authority has issued some auction-rate securities backed by such bond insurance.
New Rounds of Turmoil
Trouble in the credit markets has been cascading for months, with moments of quiet interrupted by new rounds of turmoil. Wall Street firms like Bear Stearns Cos., Merrill Lynch & Co., UBS AG and Citigroup have taken more than $100 billion of write-offs because of their mortgage-linked securities holdings. Along the way, problems rippled into other obscure short-term lending markets, like commercial paper tied to mortgages, and short-term funding entities called structured investment vehicles run by banks.
The new woes in auction-rate securities could be a problem for corporate treasurers who invest their cash holdings in the market.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. earlier this month recorded a $275 million charge, attributing it to the global credit crunch and its effects on the company's short-term investment portfolio. The company held some auction-rate securities tied to mortgage and corporate-bond debt.
Caught Off Guard
The charge contributed to a net loss for Bristol-Myers in the fourth quarter and it is now seeking a new treasurer. The company's chief financial officer, Andrew Bonfield, told analysts in late January that the company was unable to unload some of its securities in the auction process.
The problems in the market have caught many investors off guard. In the past, the Wall Street firms that conduct the auctions and underwrite the securities have often acted as a buyer of last resort. But with their own balance sheets already bloated with other assets they don't want to hold, Citigroup, Goldman and others are limiting their support for the market.
As one banker in the market said, they are not obligated to be "liquidity providers."
"It is like a multicar pileup," said one auction-rate securities trader.
The trader says that investors saw last week's failures, and "people are
nervous because they want to have a liquid product."
Spokesmen for J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs declined to comment, while a
Citigroup spokeswoman repeated a comment she made Monday, saying the firm "has seen widening spreads, reduced demand for certain auction-rate securities and failed auctions, including some auctions which Citi acted as broker dealer."
The auction-rate securities problems could also affect the many closed-end mutual funds that use this market. The auction failures raise the specter that these funds could sell some of their assets as their financing costs increase.
"It all came to a head today. Investors wanted liquidity -- they're afraid of the next shoe to drop even if they don't know what the next shoe will be," says William Adams, executive vice president at Nuveen.
A spokesman for MFS Investment Management confirmed that its MFS Municipal Income Trust tapped the auction-rate market for funding but didn't have information about what impact the turmoil there might have. Representatives from other mutual-fund firms couldn't be reached for comment or declined to comment.
--Tom Lauricella, Robert Tomsho, Karen Richardson and Romy Varghese contributed to this article.
The credit crunch that has so far caused more than $100 billion of losses for big Wall Street investment firms now extends to students in Michigan, and it could soon hit many other borrowers, ranging from California museums to the prestigious Deerfield Academy prep school in Massachusetts.
Yesterday, the Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority, a state agency, said on its Web site that "due to the current and unprecedented capital-markets disruption" it will stop making loans under the state's Michigan Alternative Student Loan, or MI-Loan, program. More than 100 Michigan colleges and universities participate in the program.
In the past few days, problems have mounted for many borrowers as an obscure -- but important -- corner of the credit market called auction-rate securities has gone into a deep freeze.
Borrowers ranging from student-loan authorities to municipalities to big bond funds depend on this market to raise money for making loans and funding projects. They do so by selling securities whose interest rates are reset every week as they change hands in auctions arranged by Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Moody's Investors Service estimates the size of this market at $325 billion to $360 billion.
In recent days, the money managers and other investors who typically buy auction-rate securities have been balking, out of fear the credit turmoil is spreading. The remaining bidders have commanded higher interest rates from borrowers including Deerfield, San Francisco's de Young Museum, New York's Carnegie Hall and many others. A call to Deerfield's finance department wasn't returned. The de Young Museum
declined to comment.
Meantime, many investors who hold the securities would like to sell them but can't. Of roughly $20 billion in such securities auctioned yesterday, half -- or about $10 billion -- failed to generate enough demand from money managers to sell, according to one trading executive at a top dealer. That pushed up borrowing costs for the issuers to levels ranging from 4.6% to 18%, as their interest rates reset to "penalty" rates that kick in when an auction fails.
'Wave of Panic'
"I think this is a wave of panic, but it could signify a real change in the banks' tolerance for taking debt onto their balance sheets," says Matt Fabian, managing director of Municipal Market Advisors, an independent research firm.
Many of the more than 100 auctions that failed yesterday were held on behalf of closed-end mutual funds, which use auction-rate securities as a way to borrow to enhance the returns in their funds. The managers of these funds include such well-known names as Nuveen Investments Inc., BlackRock Inc. and Allianz SE's Pacific Investment Management Co.
Student-loan authorities in places like Mississippi and Montana were also on the list of failures, as were de Young and Carnegie Hall.
The Michigan student-loan authority wasn't on the list of failed auctions. It previously has issued auction-rate bonds, though it isn't clear whether that market was the cause of its current financial crunch.
Spokesmen for the authority weren't immediately available for comment.
In a memo Monday to the authority, Patricia W. Scott, director of Michigan's student financial services bureau, said, "This is attributable to the capital-markets disruption on our ability to issue new debt," and added that new lending to students would resume, "when conditions warrant and funds become available."
*"If student loan providers are having trouble raising money, then that's a concern for us," says Justin Draeger, spokesman for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. He says the loans tend to go to low-income students. "If there's a problem with getting the funds, then they may not be able to pay for their education."*
Peter Warren, vice president of government relations for the Education Finance Council, which represents nonprofit lenders and state lending agencies, said that while Michigan may be the only state yet to announce a student-loan halt, others are "seriously evaluating" the viability of their programs.
Problems in the auction-rate securities market have been mounting for days. Last week, about $3 billion in auctions of these securities failed. The tally of failed auctions grew as investor fears intensified.
Wall Street firms generally stayed on the sidelines, taking few of the securities onto their books.One list of failures compiled by Citigroup and circulated by some market participants totaled $6.6 billion in securities in 105 auctions. But one person in the market said the amounts were larger.
The market allows borrowers with long-term financing needs to tap investors who want to hold short-term investments that can be readily turned into cash. Wall Street firms hold auctions of these securities regularly, allowing investors to roll them over with new interest rates or to sell them to somebody else. When auctions fail, which is unusual, investors like funds and corporate treasuries can find themselves
suddenly saddled with long-term securities.
A big problem with some of these instruments is that they are insured by troubled bond insurers like MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., which have sold guarantees on securities tied to ill-fated subprime mortgages. The insurers run the risk of losing their triple-A credit ratings because of their subprime exposure, and that, in turn, has investors running from other instruments they back. The Michigan Higher Educational Student Loan Authority has issued some auction-rate securities backed by such bond insurance.
New Rounds of Turmoil
Trouble in the credit markets has been cascading for months, with moments of quiet interrupted by new rounds of turmoil. Wall Street firms like Bear Stearns Cos., Merrill Lynch & Co., UBS AG and Citigroup have taken more than $100 billion of write-offs because of their mortgage-linked securities holdings. Along the way, problems rippled into other obscure short-term lending markets, like commercial paper tied to mortgages, and short-term funding entities called structured investment vehicles run by banks.
The new woes in auction-rate securities could be a problem for corporate treasurers who invest their cash holdings in the market.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. earlier this month recorded a $275 million charge, attributing it to the global credit crunch and its effects on the company's short-term investment portfolio. The company held some auction-rate securities tied to mortgage and corporate-bond debt.
Caught Off Guard
The charge contributed to a net loss for Bristol-Myers in the fourth quarter and it is now seeking a new treasurer. The company's chief financial officer, Andrew Bonfield, told analysts in late January that the company was unable to unload some of its securities in the auction process.
The problems in the market have caught many investors off guard. In the past, the Wall Street firms that conduct the auctions and underwrite the securities have often acted as a buyer of last resort. But with their own balance sheets already bloated with other assets they don't want to hold, Citigroup, Goldman and others are limiting their support for the market.
As one banker in the market said, they are not obligated to be "liquidity providers."
"It is like a multicar pileup," said one auction-rate securities trader.
The trader says that investors saw last week's failures, and "people are
nervous because they want to have a liquid product."
Spokesmen for J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs declined to comment, while a
Citigroup spokeswoman repeated a comment she made Monday, saying the firm "has seen widening spreads, reduced demand for certain auction-rate securities and failed auctions, including some auctions which Citi acted as broker dealer."
The auction-rate securities problems could also affect the many closed-end mutual funds that use this market. The auction failures raise the specter that these funds could sell some of their assets as their financing costs increase.
"It all came to a head today. Investors wanted liquidity -- they're afraid of the next shoe to drop even if they don't know what the next shoe will be," says William Adams, executive vice president at Nuveen.
A spokesman for MFS Investment Management confirmed that its MFS Municipal Income Trust tapped the auction-rate market for funding but didn't have information about what impact the turmoil there might have. Representatives from other mutual-fund firms couldn't be reached for comment or declined to comment.
--Tom Lauricella, Robert Tomsho, Karen Richardson and Romy Varghese contributed to this article.
A military route to citizenship
Plan for undocumented youths stirs debate
Daniel González, The Arizona Republic, Sept. 17, 2007
Hundreds of thousands of undocumented-immigrant youths could become eligible to join the military to offset shortages of qualified recruits under a bill pending in Congress.
Intense public opposition forced the Senate in June to abandon an immigration bill that included a path to citizenship for undocumented youths.
The proposal still has a strong chance of passing if backers in Congress are successful in attaching it to the annual defense-authorization bill this fall.
The Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act would allow undocumented high-school graduates to gain citizenship if they either attend college for two years or serve two years in the military.
Undocumented immigrants now are not permitted to serve.
Military analysts say the DREAM Act would help the armed forces find qualified recruits, whose numbers have dwindled because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some immigrant groups, however, say the DREAM Act amounts to a "de facto draft."
Using immigrants to boost the ranks of the military is not new.
With the demands in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States began offering legal immigrants a chance to expedite citizenship applications for themselves and relatives if they enlisted.
Roughly 70,000 immigrants serve in the military, and about 40,000 are non-citizens. Immigrants make up about 5 percent of the total 1.4 million men and women on active duty.
A 2005 study by the Center for Naval Analysis reported that non-citizens are less likely to drop out of the military shortly after enlisting than are citizens and that non-citizens are significantly less likely to drop out after three years.
The bill was proposed six years ago as a way for undocumented minors brought to this country by their parents to get an education so they could achieve their full potential as tax-paying members of society.
With the military having trouble meeting recruiting goals and the public wary about any bill resembling amnesty for undocumented immigrants, supporters of the DREAM Act are playing up the bill's military provisions over its educational benefits. Unlike legal immigrants with permanent residency green cards, undocumented immigrants are barred from enlisting in the military.
"The DREAM Act would address a very serious recruitment crisis that faces our military," Sen. Dick Durbin, the bill's author, said on the Senate floor in July while trying to muster support for the DREAM Act to be attached to the annual defense-authorization bill.
Durbin wasn't successful, but Sandra Abrevaya, a Durbin spokeswoman, said that the Illinois Democrat will try again, possibly as early as this month.
The DREAM Act has broad bipartisan support in Congress.
U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson, is a co-sponsor of the bill in the House. He said the legislation has a better chance now that the military aspect is being played up.
"I think it is being emphasized more because it makes it politically more palatable for some of my colleagues in Washington," Grijalva said.
If Durbin is successful in attaching the DREAM Act to the defense-authorization bill, the proposal is almost assured of passing.
"Given the current climate over illegal immigration, the calculation has been to emphasize the military aspect to get more Republicans to vote for it," said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.
Wilkes said joining the military would be "very attractive" to a large number of undocumented youths, the majority of whom are Hispanic. Latinos have a long history of serving in the military, which they view as a way of climbing into the middle class and gaining leadership skills.
"There is a lot of pride among the community over their (military) service," he said. "We are happy that (the military) option exists."
The DREAM Act's new emphasis on military service, however, does not sit well with some advocacy groups.
The Association of Raza Educators, a teachers group in California, for example, is opposed to the bill because of the military provision.
Poor educational conditions and inadequate schooling make military enlistment the only option for many undocumented youths, the group says.
"We are afraid that it's going to cause a de facto military draft for our undocumented youth," coordinator Jose Lara said. "We fully support the college part of it, but the reality is Latino college rates are low, so the majority will pick the military part of it."
Luis Avila, 25, a student at Arizona State University, organized a weeklong hunger strike at the end of July to raise public support for the DREAM Act in Arizona. He said he is troubled by the increased emphasis on the bill's military provision.
"The DREAM Act is not really for them to join the Army, it's for them to get their education," Avila said.
Still, many undocumented immigrants he spoke with during the fast said they would prefer to join the military.
"I told them they should go to college and then join the military so they can enter as an officer rather than be put on the front lines," Avila said.
If it passes, the DREAM Act would create a substantial pool of potential recruits. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C., estimates about 360,000 undocumented high-school graduates in the United States are of military age, between 18 and 24.
Another 715,000 undocumented youths are between the ages of 5 and 17, according to the institute.
Military analyst Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer from Anchorage, Alaska, teaches at West Point about immigrants in the military. She said fears that the DREAM Act would turn into a "back-door draft" are unfounded.
That's because the military would need only a fraction of the undocumented immigrants made available by the DREAM Act to help offset shortages of qualified recruits.
Stock said the DREAM Act would help the military "a great deal." The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq make it hard for armed forces to find qualified recruits, and the military has been forced to pay bonuses and, in some cases, lower standards to meet recruitment goals, she said.
"Yes, they have met their goals, but at a cost in tax dollars and diminished quality of recruits," she said.
Studies show that Latinos do well in the military, she said. For one, they have a higher propensity to join the military. About 44 percent of Latino males of eligible age think joining the military would be a good idea.
For White males, it's about half that, she said.
Latinos have more success getting through boot camp than do other ethnic groups. They also stay in the military longer and have fewer disciplinary problems, Stock said.
"The modern military needs a lot of smart, successful people, and a lot of the DREAM Act kids are like that," she said.
Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8312.
Daniel González, The Arizona Republic, Sept. 17, 2007
Hundreds of thousands of undocumented-immigrant youths could become eligible to join the military to offset shortages of qualified recruits under a bill pending in Congress.
Intense public opposition forced the Senate in June to abandon an immigration bill that included a path to citizenship for undocumented youths.
The proposal still has a strong chance of passing if backers in Congress are successful in attaching it to the annual defense-authorization bill this fall.
The Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act would allow undocumented high-school graduates to gain citizenship if they either attend college for two years or serve two years in the military.
Undocumented immigrants now are not permitted to serve.
Military analysts say the DREAM Act would help the armed forces find qualified recruits, whose numbers have dwindled because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some immigrant groups, however, say the DREAM Act amounts to a "de facto draft."
Using immigrants to boost the ranks of the military is not new.
With the demands in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States began offering legal immigrants a chance to expedite citizenship applications for themselves and relatives if they enlisted.
Roughly 70,000 immigrants serve in the military, and about 40,000 are non-citizens. Immigrants make up about 5 percent of the total 1.4 million men and women on active duty.
A 2005 study by the Center for Naval Analysis reported that non-citizens are less likely to drop out of the military shortly after enlisting than are citizens and that non-citizens are significantly less likely to drop out after three years.
The bill was proposed six years ago as a way for undocumented minors brought to this country by their parents to get an education so they could achieve their full potential as tax-paying members of society.
With the military having trouble meeting recruiting goals and the public wary about any bill resembling amnesty for undocumented immigrants, supporters of the DREAM Act are playing up the bill's military provisions over its educational benefits. Unlike legal immigrants with permanent residency green cards, undocumented immigrants are barred from enlisting in the military.
"The DREAM Act would address a very serious recruitment crisis that faces our military," Sen. Dick Durbin, the bill's author, said on the Senate floor in July while trying to muster support for the DREAM Act to be attached to the annual defense-authorization bill.
Durbin wasn't successful, but Sandra Abrevaya, a Durbin spokeswoman, said that the Illinois Democrat will try again, possibly as early as this month.
The DREAM Act has broad bipartisan support in Congress.
U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson, is a co-sponsor of the bill in the House. He said the legislation has a better chance now that the military aspect is being played up.
"I think it is being emphasized more because it makes it politically more palatable for some of my colleagues in Washington," Grijalva said.
If Durbin is successful in attaching the DREAM Act to the defense-authorization bill, the proposal is almost assured of passing.
"Given the current climate over illegal immigration, the calculation has been to emphasize the military aspect to get more Republicans to vote for it," said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.
Wilkes said joining the military would be "very attractive" to a large number of undocumented youths, the majority of whom are Hispanic. Latinos have a long history of serving in the military, which they view as a way of climbing into the middle class and gaining leadership skills.
"There is a lot of pride among the community over their (military) service," he said. "We are happy that (the military) option exists."
The DREAM Act's new emphasis on military service, however, does not sit well with some advocacy groups.
The Association of Raza Educators, a teachers group in California, for example, is opposed to the bill because of the military provision.
Poor educational conditions and inadequate schooling make military enlistment the only option for many undocumented youths, the group says.
"We are afraid that it's going to cause a de facto military draft for our undocumented youth," coordinator Jose Lara said. "We fully support the college part of it, but the reality is Latino college rates are low, so the majority will pick the military part of it."
Luis Avila, 25, a student at Arizona State University, organized a weeklong hunger strike at the end of July to raise public support for the DREAM Act in Arizona. He said he is troubled by the increased emphasis on the bill's military provision.
"The DREAM Act is not really for them to join the Army, it's for them to get their education," Avila said.
Still, many undocumented immigrants he spoke with during the fast said they would prefer to join the military.
"I told them they should go to college and then join the military so they can enter as an officer rather than be put on the front lines," Avila said.
If it passes, the DREAM Act would create a substantial pool of potential recruits. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C., estimates about 360,000 undocumented high-school graduates in the United States are of military age, between 18 and 24.
Another 715,000 undocumented youths are between the ages of 5 and 17, according to the institute.
Military analyst Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer from Anchorage, Alaska, teaches at West Point about immigrants in the military. She said fears that the DREAM Act would turn into a "back-door draft" are unfounded.
That's because the military would need only a fraction of the undocumented immigrants made available by the DREAM Act to help offset shortages of qualified recruits.
Stock said the DREAM Act would help the military "a great deal." The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq make it hard for armed forces to find qualified recruits, and the military has been forced to pay bonuses and, in some cases, lower standards to meet recruitment goals, she said.
"Yes, they have met their goals, but at a cost in tax dollars and diminished quality of recruits," she said.
Studies show that Latinos do well in the military, she said. For one, they have a higher propensity to join the military. About 44 percent of Latino males of eligible age think joining the military would be a good idea.
For White males, it's about half that, she said.
Latinos have more success getting through boot camp than do other ethnic groups. They also stay in the military longer and have fewer disciplinary problems, Stock said.
"The modern military needs a lot of smart, successful people, and a lot of the DREAM Act kids are like that," she said.
Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8312.
Immigration raid a crisis school hadn't planned for
DENISE SMITH AMOS, Cincinnati.Com, Sept. 13, 2007
At Heritage Hill Elementary, where 65 percent of the students are Hispanic, the first day of school was nearly a crisis.
That day, Aug. 28, immigration agents raided Koch Foods, a poultry packing plant in Fairfield, and arrested 161 suspected illegal immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Peru and other countries.
Tianay Outlaw, principal at Heritage Hill, knew that some of her 310 students would be affected. With 45 percent of her students designated as "limited English proficient," Outlaw feared some youngster would be related to the detained workers.
"We found out almost immediately about the raid, because parents who worked there ... they called Heritage Hill," Outlaw said.
"One father said, 'Please, take care of the children,' " said Sonia Velez Rodriquez, a parent liaison and education aide at the school.
But which students? Who was going home after school to an empty house or apartment because of the raid? Whose families would be packing and leaving in fear, Outlaw wondered.
She tried to find out discreetly.
Because it was the first day of school, most parents hadn't yet filled out contact cards, indicating place of employment and emergency numbers.
Outlaw visited classrooms and asked students to raise their hands if they had parents working as a nurse. Or as a teacher. In a restaurant. Or elsewhere in the food business.
When she asked about Koch foods, five students raised their hands, though Outlaw suspected there were more.
"I was really trying to get information from them without alerting them or getting them nervous," she said.
When school ended and students boarded buses, teachers and school staff followed in cars, watching as children disembarked in neighborhoods and apartment complexes with high immigrant populations.
"We wanted to be sure of how many students would be affected and how many are not coming back," said Lynn Yosua, school psychologist.
Every child was met by a parent or relative, Outlaw said.
"We did see parents who had loaded up their cars and were ready to leave," Outlaw said. "They met us at the bus stop."
Some parents said they were unsure if their child would return to school; they didn't feel safe going home, said Velez Rodriquez.
"They took the most important things and they were gone," she said.
The next day at school about 20 kids were absent, but Outlaw said it was unclear how many absences were because of the raid.
Over the next few days, most students returned to school, Outlaw said, even though a few were not living at home but with relatives or friends.
Teachers talked with classes about how the raid affected some families, saying that some children may have to go back to the country their parents came from.
Only one student asked to speak with a school counselor.
"One student had nightmares because a family member was detained," said Lynn Yosua, school psychologist.
Yosua said Heritage Hill has crisis plans in place for most conventional threats to schools, such as natural disasters, but there's nothing in the crisis books about immigration raids.
"The unnerving thing was that this was the first day of school," Outlaw said. "But everyone went above and beyond the call of duty. Everyone had a common focus; it was the safety of our children."
At Heritage Hill Elementary, where 65 percent of the students are Hispanic, the first day of school was nearly a crisis.
That day, Aug. 28, immigration agents raided Koch Foods, a poultry packing plant in Fairfield, and arrested 161 suspected illegal immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Peru and other countries.
Tianay Outlaw, principal at Heritage Hill, knew that some of her 310 students would be affected. With 45 percent of her students designated as "limited English proficient," Outlaw feared some youngster would be related to the detained workers.
"We found out almost immediately about the raid, because parents who worked there ... they called Heritage Hill," Outlaw said.
"One father said, 'Please, take care of the children,' " said Sonia Velez Rodriquez, a parent liaison and education aide at the school.
But which students? Who was going home after school to an empty house or apartment because of the raid? Whose families would be packing and leaving in fear, Outlaw wondered.
She tried to find out discreetly.
Because it was the first day of school, most parents hadn't yet filled out contact cards, indicating place of employment and emergency numbers.
Outlaw visited classrooms and asked students to raise their hands if they had parents working as a nurse. Or as a teacher. In a restaurant. Or elsewhere in the food business.
When she asked about Koch foods, five students raised their hands, though Outlaw suspected there were more.
"I was really trying to get information from them without alerting them or getting them nervous," she said.
When school ended and students boarded buses, teachers and school staff followed in cars, watching as children disembarked in neighborhoods and apartment complexes with high immigrant populations.
"We wanted to be sure of how many students would be affected and how many are not coming back," said Lynn Yosua, school psychologist.
Every child was met by a parent or relative, Outlaw said.
"We did see parents who had loaded up their cars and were ready to leave," Outlaw said. "They met us at the bus stop."
Some parents said they were unsure if their child would return to school; they didn't feel safe going home, said Velez Rodriquez.
"They took the most important things and they were gone," she said.
The next day at school about 20 kids were absent, but Outlaw said it was unclear how many absences were because of the raid.
Over the next few days, most students returned to school, Outlaw said, even though a few were not living at home but with relatives or friends.
Teachers talked with classes about how the raid affected some families, saying that some children may have to go back to the country their parents came from.
Only one student asked to speak with a school counselor.
"One student had nightmares because a family member was detained," said Lynn Yosua, school psychologist.
Yosua said Heritage Hill has crisis plans in place for most conventional threats to schools, such as natural disasters, but there's nothing in the crisis books about immigration raids.
"The unnerving thing was that this was the first day of school," Outlaw said. "But everyone went above and beyond the call of duty. Everyone had a common focus; it was the safety of our children."
A Book on Hold
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, Sept. 11, 2007
Many university presses in the United States distribute books for publishers from other countries — and vice versa. The University of Michigan has recently discovered that such an arrangement can land a university in the middle of a controversy over a book neither written by one of its professors nor published by its press.
The University of Michigan Press last month halted distribution of Overcoming Zionism, which argues that the creation of Israel was a mistake and urges adoption of the “one state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which Israelis and Palestinians would form a new country, without a Jewish character. The book was written by Joel Kovel, distinguished professor of social studies at Bard College. The publisher is Pluto Press, a British outfit that describes itself as having a left-wing focus and that publishes books by and for scholars in the social sciences. The University of Michigan Press is the American distributor for Pluto.
Michigan halted distribution last month after “serious questions” were raised about the book by “members of the university community,” according to Kelly Cunningham, a university spokeswoman. Cunningham said that the faculty committee that oversees the press has been reviewing the matter, as well as the relationship between the press and Pluto. An announcement will be forthcoming, perhaps this week, she said. Cunningham stressed that “the expression of diverse points of view on this and other issues is one of the most deeply held values is the university.”
There are signs that Michigan may be getting ready to resume distribution of the book. The author and a senior official at Pluto said that they had been informed that the review of the book had concluded and that distribution would resume. Phil Pochoda, director of the press, declined to comment. But when asked what would happen if someone called the press to try to order the book, he said that while it wouldn’t be shipped immediately, an order would be taken. Cunningham said that the university was not prepared to announce whether the book would again be distributed.
The controversy comes at a time of intense debate on many campuses in the United States about the Middle East and professors’ views about Israel.
Several pro-Israel blogs have been publishing criticism of Overcoming Zionism, calling it full of “hate speech,” and questioning why the University of Michigan would have any role in its distribution. The Michigan chapter of Stand With Us, a pro-Israel group, has issued a statement calling the book an “unscholarly propaganda text” and complaining that it could not get press officials to say why it was being distributed.
A blog sympathetic to Kovel — Dissident Veteran for Peace — has printed what it says is an e-mail from Pochoda, the press director, to Kovel, explaining why distribution was halted. Pochoda declined to comment on the e-mail, but Kovel said it was accurate. The e-mail reads: “Because it is a distributed title for Pluto Press, no one at UMP had read Overcoming Zionism prior to the Stand/With/Us diatribe. I and others read it after that assault, and had fully expected to gear up for, at least, a free speech defense. Though I had no trouble with the one-state solution your book proposes nor with a Zionist critique, per se ... I (and faculty members I asked to read the book, as well) were apalled [sic] by your reckless, viscious [sic], and unmodulated attack on Zionism and all Zionists.
“For us, the issue raised by the book is not free speech but hate speech. Perhaps such vituperative and aggressive rhetoric works for the barricades, but it cannot be countenanced or underwritten by the university or the university press, even in this peripheral, distributed capacity. Even worse for me, as a result of your book, the university is in the process of reassessing our relation as a whole to Pluto (and that has been a four year relationship that I have cherished, both personally and professionally). While that review goes on (and I am only marginally involved), we have ceased shipping Overcoming Zionism.“
In an interview, Kovel called his work “a very carefully reasoned book” and said it was “most certainly not hate speech.” He said that the ideas he supports are “not part of the American discourse, but are much discussed around the world.” To get a flavor of Kovel’s language in talking about Israel, this is a Q&A he did with Briarpatch Magazine about his new book (an interview Kovel said was reflective of his views).
He said things like this: “There are a lot of people who consider themselves to be on the left and also Zionists. It is a contradiction, however, to advocate the cause of universal justice while still supporting the Zionist project of conquest. This is an untenable position that must be ideologically and politically combated because it weakens both the overall struggles of the left and the struggle against Zionism.” And this: “I understand the desire to smash Zionism, for after all, Israel is an abomination and has caused endless suffering to innocent people. I believe, however, that humanity is capable of escaping these endless cycles of violence. The desire to lash out against those who have oppressed us is understandable, but it is a dead end.”
Anne Beech, managing director of Pluto Press, defended the book and its publication, saying “he’s a scholar of standing — not a ranting madman.”
In Britain, Beech said the book has received some criticism and some praise, but has not been the source of major controversy. “To be honest, the cultural differences between the U.K. and the U.S. are so profound that we’ve been astonished at the intemperate criticism of this book. You don’t have to accept the argument in full, but I would unreservedly support Joel ’s right to express his carefully thought out opinions,” she said.
She noted that she was at a conference over the weekend where some American scholars were on a panel discussing the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and they remarked about how it was “so nice to be able to discuss this issue without being shouted down,” as they said would have been the case in the United States. “I feel sorry for publishing colleagues and academics who have to contend with this manic pressure.”
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit legal group, has also called on Michigan to resume distribution. In a letter sent last week to Mary Sue Coleman, the university’s president, the center questioned why a review “based upon the content of the writing” of Kovel’s book would take place when the press had agreed to distribute Pluto’s works. “We are sure you appreciate the gravity of such a decision for one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the country, particularly at this juncture in our history when outside pressures threaten a full and open discussion of one of the major foreign policy issues of our day.”
Laurie A. Brand, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California who heads the academic freedom committee of the Middle East Studies Association, said she had not read Kovel’s book but had recently been informed that Michigan had suspended distribution. “It does sound very disturbing,” she said.
Whether the book is good or bad, she said, “let him publish it and let people talk about it,” and if people condemn it or ignore it or praise it, that would be their choice, Brand said. “But what we should not do is to try to prevent its arrival on the market.”
Jonathan Schwartz is a blogger who has been urging people to demand that Michigan stop distributing the book. A Michigan alumnus, Schwartz publishes Anti-Racist Blog: Exposing Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism on American College Campuses. In an interview, Schwartz rejected the idea that he was encouraging censorship. “I’m a free speech advocate. People can say whatever they want to, and I’m not saying that nobody should distribute it or that it should be banned from libraries,” he said.
“But for the University of Michigan to be associated with racist hate speech is not a good idea,” he said, adding that he would feel the same way about anti-black or anti-Asian books. He stressed that while Kovel had a right to be published, the university didn’t need to help him in any way.
“It seems like the university did not know what it was distributing,” Schwartz said. “I personally have my opinion about the book, but what’s most telling is the letter from the director of the university press. So why, if after reading it, would he distribute it? The university is not obligated to distribute a book like that. Look at the director’s own words.”
Many university presses in the United States distribute books for publishers from other countries — and vice versa. The University of Michigan has recently discovered that such an arrangement can land a university in the middle of a controversy over a book neither written by one of its professors nor published by its press.
The University of Michigan Press last month halted distribution of Overcoming Zionism, which argues that the creation of Israel was a mistake and urges adoption of the “one state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which Israelis and Palestinians would form a new country, without a Jewish character. The book was written by Joel Kovel, distinguished professor of social studies at Bard College. The publisher is Pluto Press, a British outfit that describes itself as having a left-wing focus and that publishes books by and for scholars in the social sciences. The University of Michigan Press is the American distributor for Pluto.
Michigan halted distribution last month after “serious questions” were raised about the book by “members of the university community,” according to Kelly Cunningham, a university spokeswoman. Cunningham said that the faculty committee that oversees the press has been reviewing the matter, as well as the relationship between the press and Pluto. An announcement will be forthcoming, perhaps this week, she said. Cunningham stressed that “the expression of diverse points of view on this and other issues is one of the most deeply held values is the university.”
There are signs that Michigan may be getting ready to resume distribution of the book. The author and a senior official at Pluto said that they had been informed that the review of the book had concluded and that distribution would resume. Phil Pochoda, director of the press, declined to comment. But when asked what would happen if someone called the press to try to order the book, he said that while it wouldn’t be shipped immediately, an order would be taken. Cunningham said that the university was not prepared to announce whether the book would again be distributed.
The controversy comes at a time of intense debate on many campuses in the United States about the Middle East and professors’ views about Israel.
Several pro-Israel blogs have been publishing criticism of Overcoming Zionism, calling it full of “hate speech,” and questioning why the University of Michigan would have any role in its distribution. The Michigan chapter of Stand With Us, a pro-Israel group, has issued a statement calling the book an “unscholarly propaganda text” and complaining that it could not get press officials to say why it was being distributed.
A blog sympathetic to Kovel — Dissident Veteran for Peace — has printed what it says is an e-mail from Pochoda, the press director, to Kovel, explaining why distribution was halted. Pochoda declined to comment on the e-mail, but Kovel said it was accurate. The e-mail reads: “Because it is a distributed title for Pluto Press, no one at UMP had read Overcoming Zionism prior to the Stand/With/Us diatribe. I and others read it after that assault, and had fully expected to gear up for, at least, a free speech defense. Though I had no trouble with the one-state solution your book proposes nor with a Zionist critique, per se ... I (and faculty members I asked to read the book, as well) were apalled [sic] by your reckless, viscious [sic], and unmodulated attack on Zionism and all Zionists.
“For us, the issue raised by the book is not free speech but hate speech. Perhaps such vituperative and aggressive rhetoric works for the barricades, but it cannot be countenanced or underwritten by the university or the university press, even in this peripheral, distributed capacity. Even worse for me, as a result of your book, the university is in the process of reassessing our relation as a whole to Pluto (and that has been a four year relationship that I have cherished, both personally and professionally). While that review goes on (and I am only marginally involved), we have ceased shipping Overcoming Zionism.“
In an interview, Kovel called his work “a very carefully reasoned book” and said it was “most certainly not hate speech.” He said that the ideas he supports are “not part of the American discourse, but are much discussed around the world.” To get a flavor of Kovel’s language in talking about Israel, this is a Q&A he did with Briarpatch Magazine about his new book (an interview Kovel said was reflective of his views).
He said things like this: “There are a lot of people who consider themselves to be on the left and also Zionists. It is a contradiction, however, to advocate the cause of universal justice while still supporting the Zionist project of conquest. This is an untenable position that must be ideologically and politically combated because it weakens both the overall struggles of the left and the struggle against Zionism.” And this: “I understand the desire to smash Zionism, for after all, Israel is an abomination and has caused endless suffering to innocent people. I believe, however, that humanity is capable of escaping these endless cycles of violence. The desire to lash out against those who have oppressed us is understandable, but it is a dead end.”
Anne Beech, managing director of Pluto Press, defended the book and its publication, saying “he’s a scholar of standing — not a ranting madman.”
In Britain, Beech said the book has received some criticism and some praise, but has not been the source of major controversy. “To be honest, the cultural differences between the U.K. and the U.S. are so profound that we’ve been astonished at the intemperate criticism of this book. You don’t have to accept the argument in full, but I would unreservedly support Joel ’s right to express his carefully thought out opinions,” she said.
She noted that she was at a conference over the weekend where some American scholars were on a panel discussing the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and they remarked about how it was “so nice to be able to discuss this issue without being shouted down,” as they said would have been the case in the United States. “I feel sorry for publishing colleagues and academics who have to contend with this manic pressure.”
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit legal group, has also called on Michigan to resume distribution. In a letter sent last week to Mary Sue Coleman, the university’s president, the center questioned why a review “based upon the content of the writing” of Kovel’s book would take place when the press had agreed to distribute Pluto’s works. “We are sure you appreciate the gravity of such a decision for one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the country, particularly at this juncture in our history when outside pressures threaten a full and open discussion of one of the major foreign policy issues of our day.”
Laurie A. Brand, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California who heads the academic freedom committee of the Middle East Studies Association, said she had not read Kovel’s book but had recently been informed that Michigan had suspended distribution. “It does sound very disturbing,” she said.
Whether the book is good or bad, she said, “let him publish it and let people talk about it,” and if people condemn it or ignore it or praise it, that would be their choice, Brand said. “But what we should not do is to try to prevent its arrival on the market.”
Jonathan Schwartz is a blogger who has been urging people to demand that Michigan stop distributing the book. A Michigan alumnus, Schwartz publishes Anti-Racist Blog: Exposing Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism on American College Campuses. In an interview, Schwartz rejected the idea that he was encouraging censorship. “I’m a free speech advocate. People can say whatever they want to, and I’m not saying that nobody should distribute it or that it should be banned from libraries,” he said.
“But for the University of Michigan to be associated with racist hate speech is not a good idea,” he said, adding that he would feel the same way about anti-black or anti-Asian books. He stressed that while Kovel had a right to be published, the university didn’t need to help him in any way.
“It seems like the university did not know what it was distributing,” Schwartz said. “I personally have my opinion about the book, but what’s most telling is the letter from the director of the university press. So why, if after reading it, would he distribute it? The university is not obligated to distribute a book like that. Look at the director’s own words.”
Criminalizing The Classroom
The Over-Policing of New York City Schools
NY Civil Liberties Union, published March 2007
This report documents the excesses of the New York City school policing program and offers realistic recommendations for reform.
To produce this report, the New York Civil Liberties Union(NYCLU) and the Racial Justice Program of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) conducted 1,000 student surveys and analyzed publicly available data. The organizations also interviewed students, parents, teachers, school administrators, school safety agents, and officials from the Department of Education, the United Federation of Teachers, and the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
The conclusions of this research are clear. Students and teachers are entitled to a safe learning environment that is conducive to education. The environment created by the massive deployment of inadequately trained police personnel in schools, in contrast, is often hostile and dysfunctional.
Since the NYPD took control of school safety in 1998, the number of police personnel in schools and the extent of their activity have skyrocketed. At the start of the 2005-2006 school year, the city employed a total of 4,625 School Safety Agents (SSAs) and at least 200 armed police officers assigned exclusively to schools. These numberswould make the NYPD’s School Safety Division alone the tenth largest police force in the country – larger than the police forces of Washington, D.C., Detroit, Boston, or Las Vegas.
Because these school-assigned police personnel are not directly subject to the supervisory authority of school administrators, and because they often have not been adequately trained to work in educational settings, SSAs and police officers often arrogate to themselves authority that extends well beyond the narrow mission of securing the safety of the students and teachers. They enforce school rules relating to dress and appearance. They make up their own rules regarding food or other objects that have nothing whatsoever to do with school safety. On occasion they subject educators who question the NYPD’s treatment of students to retaliatory arrests. More routinely, according to our interviews and survey, they subject students to inappropriate treatment including:
• derogatory, abusive and discriminatory comments and conduct;
• intrusive searches;
• unauthorized confiscation of students’ personal items,
including food, cameras and essential school supplies;
• inappropriate sexual attention;
• physical abuse; and
• arrest for minor non-criminal violations of school rules.
These types of police interventions create flashpoints for confrontations and divert students and teachers from invaluable classroom time. They make students feel diminished, and are wholly incompatible with a positive educational environment.
Statistical analysis shows that all students are not equally likely to bear the brunt of over-policing in New York City schools. The burden falls primarily on the schools with permanent metal detectors, which are attended by the city’s most vulnerable children. The students attending these high schools are disproportionately poor, Black, and Latino compared to citywide averages, and they are more often confronted by police personnel in school for “non-criminal” incidents than their peers citywide. These children receive grossly less per-pupil funding on direct educational services than city averages. Their schools are likely to be large and overcrowded, and to have unusually high suspension and drop-out rates.
The report offers the following recommendations for reforming New York City’s school policing program – all of which can be accomplished without any sacrifice to school safety:
• Authority over school safety must be restored to school administrators.
• School safety personnel must be trained to function in accordance with sound educational practices and to respect the differences between street and school environments.
• The role of police personnel in schools must be limited to legitimate security concerns for children and educators.
• Students, families and educators must be given meaningful mechanisms, including access to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, to report wrongdoing by school-based police personnel.
Read the full report at http://www.nyclu.org/pdfs/criminalizing_the_classroom_report.pdf
NY Civil Liberties Union, published March 2007
This report documents the excesses of the New York City school policing program and offers realistic recommendations for reform.
To produce this report, the New York Civil Liberties Union(NYCLU) and the Racial Justice Program of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) conducted 1,000 student surveys and analyzed publicly available data. The organizations also interviewed students, parents, teachers, school administrators, school safety agents, and officials from the Department of Education, the United Federation of Teachers, and the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
The conclusions of this research are clear. Students and teachers are entitled to a safe learning environment that is conducive to education. The environment created by the massive deployment of inadequately trained police personnel in schools, in contrast, is often hostile and dysfunctional.
Since the NYPD took control of school safety in 1998, the number of police personnel in schools and the extent of their activity have skyrocketed. At the start of the 2005-2006 school year, the city employed a total of 4,625 School Safety Agents (SSAs) and at least 200 armed police officers assigned exclusively to schools. These numberswould make the NYPD’s School Safety Division alone the tenth largest police force in the country – larger than the police forces of Washington, D.C., Detroit, Boston, or Las Vegas.
Because these school-assigned police personnel are not directly subject to the supervisory authority of school administrators, and because they often have not been adequately trained to work in educational settings, SSAs and police officers often arrogate to themselves authority that extends well beyond the narrow mission of securing the safety of the students and teachers. They enforce school rules relating to dress and appearance. They make up their own rules regarding food or other objects that have nothing whatsoever to do with school safety. On occasion they subject educators who question the NYPD’s treatment of students to retaliatory arrests. More routinely, according to our interviews and survey, they subject students to inappropriate treatment including:
• derogatory, abusive and discriminatory comments and conduct;
• intrusive searches;
• unauthorized confiscation of students’ personal items,
including food, cameras and essential school supplies;
• inappropriate sexual attention;
• physical abuse; and
• arrest for minor non-criminal violations of school rules.
These types of police interventions create flashpoints for confrontations and divert students and teachers from invaluable classroom time. They make students feel diminished, and are wholly incompatible with a positive educational environment.
Statistical analysis shows that all students are not equally likely to bear the brunt of over-policing in New York City schools. The burden falls primarily on the schools with permanent metal detectors, which are attended by the city’s most vulnerable children. The students attending these high schools are disproportionately poor, Black, and Latino compared to citywide averages, and they are more often confronted by police personnel in school for “non-criminal” incidents than their peers citywide. These children receive grossly less per-pupil funding on direct educational services than city averages. Their schools are likely to be large and overcrowded, and to have unusually high suspension and drop-out rates.
The report offers the following recommendations for reforming New York City’s school policing program – all of which can be accomplished without any sacrifice to school safety:
• Authority over school safety must be restored to school administrators.
• School safety personnel must be trained to function in accordance with sound educational practices and to respect the differences between street and school environments.
• The role of police personnel in schools must be limited to legitimate security concerns for children and educators.
• Students, families and educators must be given meaningful mechanisms, including access to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, to report wrongdoing by school-based police personnel.
Read the full report at http://www.nyclu.org/pdfs/criminalizing_the_classroom_report.pdf
Victimized youth organize against police brutality
By Kathy Durkin, workers.org, Jun 14, 2007
It was a somber day in May. Thirty-two grieving young people were walking to the subway train in Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighborhood. They were on their way to a wake for a friend, Donnell McFarland, who had been tragically murdered at the age of 18.
Then, like a bolt from the blue, as the youth neared the Myrtle Avenue station, police swooped down on them, harassing, cursing, and terrorizing them. They were all searched; nothing illegal was found.
All of these Black and Latin@ women and men—some as young as 13 years old—were handcuffed, arrested and taken to the 83rd police precinct. The majority were charged with so-called unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. Several were held overnight, some for 38 hours.
In his investigation of the horrendous May 21 police attack, journalist Bob Herbert interviewed several of the young people involved, who are all students at Bushwick Community High School, as well as other eyewitnesses including Kathleen Williams, a parent who was traveling with them. Everyone said that youth did absolutely nothing wrong. Williams was threatened with arrest herself when she objected to the arrests. (New York Times, 5/26/07)
The police even taunted them about their deceased friend. And later, to justify their outrageous actions, the cops pointed to the memorial T-shirts the youth were wearing with McFarland’s picture on them, and tried to claim the gathering was “gang-related.”
The young people called it what it was—a clear-cut case of racial profiling.
This is business as usual by New York City police. The callous mistreatment, racist humiliation, harassment and intimidation of youth from oppressed communities is a commonplace, citywide occurrence—on the streets, in the subways and even inside the schools.
There is a reign of terror against the Black and Latin@ youth of this city.
In fact, by their own admission, a New York Police Department report issued earlier this year stated that cops stopped-and-frisked 508,540 people in 2006, 85 percent of whom were Black or Latin@. The majority of these intimidating acts were leveled against young oppressed women and men.
Inside the schools, thousands of students every semester are verbally abused, intimidated, threatened, sexually harassed and physically assaulted by cops and security guards. Teachers and parents who come to their aid are also targeted.
A New York Civil Liberties Union report issued in March, “Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools,” details the aggressive practices of the New York Police Department’s so-called School Safety Division, which subjects students to “invasive practices and other forms of abuse everyday by nearly 5,000 SSA’s, many of whom are armed.” (www.nyclu.org)
But the students are fighting back! On June 5, the Student Coalition against Racial Profiling met with City Council members and community organizers to organize opposition to these racist police practices. Among those attending was City Councilperson Charles Barron, who expressed his solidarity with the young people there.
Dana Jordan, a Bushwick Community High School senior and a founder of SCARP, said, “We are coming together to let the community know what has been going on with the cops, the excessive stop-and-frisks, the profiling, to let them know that it is time for a change in our community. We started SCARP because we wanted the community to know that we are trying to fight this battle against police profiling and that we need their support.” (New York Times, 6/6/07)
Public officials, right up to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who have said nothing, must be held accountable. These racist attacks must be stopped!
The Bushwick 32 will be in court in mid-July. This is a time for progressive organizations and activists to come out in solidarity with them and to spur a larger struggle to stand with the oppressed youth of this city and demand an end to police abuse.
It was a somber day in May. Thirty-two grieving young people were walking to the subway train in Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighborhood. They were on their way to a wake for a friend, Donnell McFarland, who had been tragically murdered at the age of 18.
Then, like a bolt from the blue, as the youth neared the Myrtle Avenue station, police swooped down on them, harassing, cursing, and terrorizing them. They were all searched; nothing illegal was found.
All of these Black and Latin@ women and men—some as young as 13 years old—were handcuffed, arrested and taken to the 83rd police precinct. The majority were charged with so-called unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. Several were held overnight, some for 38 hours.
In his investigation of the horrendous May 21 police attack, journalist Bob Herbert interviewed several of the young people involved, who are all students at Bushwick Community High School, as well as other eyewitnesses including Kathleen Williams, a parent who was traveling with them. Everyone said that youth did absolutely nothing wrong. Williams was threatened with arrest herself when she objected to the arrests. (New York Times, 5/26/07)
The police even taunted them about their deceased friend. And later, to justify their outrageous actions, the cops pointed to the memorial T-shirts the youth were wearing with McFarland’s picture on them, and tried to claim the gathering was “gang-related.”
The young people called it what it was—a clear-cut case of racial profiling.
This is business as usual by New York City police. The callous mistreatment, racist humiliation, harassment and intimidation of youth from oppressed communities is a commonplace, citywide occurrence—on the streets, in the subways and even inside the schools.
There is a reign of terror against the Black and Latin@ youth of this city.
In fact, by their own admission, a New York Police Department report issued earlier this year stated that cops stopped-and-frisked 508,540 people in 2006, 85 percent of whom were Black or Latin@. The majority of these intimidating acts were leveled against young oppressed women and men.
Inside the schools, thousands of students every semester are verbally abused, intimidated, threatened, sexually harassed and physically assaulted by cops and security guards. Teachers and parents who come to their aid are also targeted.
A New York Civil Liberties Union report issued in March, “Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools,” details the aggressive practices of the New York Police Department’s so-called School Safety Division, which subjects students to “invasive practices and other forms of abuse everyday by nearly 5,000 SSA’s, many of whom are armed.” (www.nyclu.org)
But the students are fighting back! On June 5, the Student Coalition against Racial Profiling met with City Council members and community organizers to organize opposition to these racist police practices. Among those attending was City Councilperson Charles Barron, who expressed his solidarity with the young people there.
Dana Jordan, a Bushwick Community High School senior and a founder of SCARP, said, “We are coming together to let the community know what has been going on with the cops, the excessive stop-and-frisks, the profiling, to let them know that it is time for a change in our community. We started SCARP because we wanted the community to know that we are trying to fight this battle against police profiling and that we need their support.” (New York Times, 6/6/07)
Public officials, right up to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who have said nothing, must be held accountable. These racist attacks must be stopped!
The Bushwick 32 will be in court in mid-July. This is a time for progressive organizations and activists to come out in solidarity with them and to spur a larger struggle to stand with the oppressed youth of this city and demand an end to police abuse.
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