No Equality in Struggle for Basics

School Board Member Claims Hispanic Kids Don’t Need Air Conditioning

by William Bigelow, 8 Apr 2015

A recording of a school board meeting has gone viral after a Martinez school district school board member was recorded suggesting that a school largely comprised of low-income and Hispanic students could do without air conditioning while another school with mostly white, wealthier students should receive air conditioning.

The recording of Denise Elsken’s comments featured her saying, ‘I don’t really care how this comes out. I would say 95% of the students at Las Juntas do not have air conditioning in their homes. So whether that means those students are more acclimated and can handle a little bit more heat than the John Swett students, which I would say 95% of their residences have air conditioning in their homes …”.

Elsken was asked: “So, you don’t want to do anything …” She responded, “No, Plant a couple more trees. That’s all I really want to do. Maybe bigger trees.”

In the Belly of the Beast, too — Capitalism Sucks

[Once again, reality is a stunning refutation of the claims of the irresistable American Dream, ever-progressing, of US superiority over all others, greatness, a “gold mountain” for migrants running from poverty and oppression elsewhere.   Since most of the statistics cited here come from official sources, which routinely give all such stats a cosmetic “uplifting sheen”, the situation on all fronts is actually many times worse, as the re-proletarianization of the falling middle class becomes the main stream.  — Frontlines ed.]

Sobering New Evidence: at Least Half of Americans are Broke

The Contributor, February 10, 2015 

 

“Happy Monday! S&P 500 now up 10% for year” —CNN Money
“Third-quarter U.S. economic growth strongest in 11 years” —Reuters
“The U.S. economy is on a tear” —Wall Street Journal

Half of our nation, by all reasonable estimates of human need, is in poverty. The jubilant headlines above speak for people whose view is distorted by growing financial wealth. The argument for a barely surviving half of America has been made before, but important new data is available to strengthen the case.

1. No Money for Unexpected Bills  A recent Bankrate poll found that almost two-thirds of Americans didn’t have savings available to cover a $500 repair bill or a $1,000 emergency room visit.  A related Pew survey concluded that over half of U.S. households have less than one month’s income in readily available savings, and that ALL their savings — including retirement funds — amounted to only about four months of income.  And young adults? A negative savings rate, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Before the recession their savings rate was a reasonably healthy 5 percent.

2. 40 Percent Collapse in Household Wealth  Over half of Americans have good reason to feel poor. Between 2007 and 2013 median wealth dropped a shocking 40 percent, leaving the poorest half with negative wealth (because of debt), and a full 60% of households owning, in total, about as much as the nation’s 94 richest individuals.  People of color fare the worst, with half of black households owning less than $11,000 in total wealth, and Hispanic households less than $14,000. The median net worth for white households is about $142,000.

Chris Hedges: Malcolm X Was Right About America

[Journalist Chris Hedges describes his personal views on the life and teachings of Malcolm X, whose life was stolen with his assassination 50 years ago. — Frontlines ed.]

Our refusal to face the truth about empire, our refusal to defy the multitudinous crimes and atrocities of empire, has brought about the nightmare Malcolm predicted.

By Chris Hedges  truthdig.com  February 1, 2015

Malcolm X about two weeks before he was murdered in 1965. AP/Victor Boynton

NEW YORK—Malcolm X, unlike Martin Luther King Jr., did not believe America had a conscience. For him there was no great tension between the lofty ideals of the nation—which he said were a sham—and the failure to deliver justice to blacks. He, perhaps better than King, understood the inner workings of empire. He had no hope that those who managed empire would ever get in touch with their better selves to build a country free of exploitation and injustice. He argued that from the arrival of the first slave ship to the appearance of our vast archipelago of prisons and our squalid, urban internal colonies where the poor are trapped and abused, the American empire was unrelentingly hostile to those Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth.” This, Malcolm knew, would not change until the empire was destroyed.

---

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck,” Malcolm said. “Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, then capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”

Mexico and US actions link Ayotzinapa, Ferguson, Garner

Weekly News Update on the Americas, December 9, 2014

Hundreds of Mexican immigrants and other activists held actions in at least 47 US towns and cities on Dec. 3 to protest the abduction of 43 teachers’ college students by police and gang members in Mexico’s Guerrero state in September; each of the 43 students had one of the actions dedicated to him.

The protests were organized by UStired2, a group taking its name from #YaMeCansé (“I’m tired now,” or “I’ve had it”), a Mexican hashtag used in response to the violence against the students, who attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa. The protesters focused on US government financing for the Mexican government—especially funding for the “war on drugs” through the 2008 Mérida Initiative—but they also expressed outrage over the US court system’s failure to indict US police agents in two recent police killings of unarmed African Americans.

New York: City College Protest Leaders Suspended As Demonstrations Continue

 

By Jeff Mays, www.dnainfo.com

 October 28, 2013

 

 

HARLEM—Two City College students who led protests against the closure of a student-run community center have been suspended indefinitely after officials accused them of trying to incite a riot.

 

Khalil Vasquez, 22, a senior and Tafadar Sourov, 19, a sophomore, say they were intercepted by campus police and an NYPD officer as they attempted to attend class Monday morning and told they were no longer allowed on campus following last week’s protests over the closure of the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Student and Community Center on the third floor of the North Academic Center at 138th Street and Convent Avenue.

Judge Tashima (WW2 ethnic Japanese internment camp victim) upholds Arizona ban on Chicana/o studies

The history of US racial oppression is exposed and challenged by ethnic studies in schools. Such critical studies are now illegal in Arizona

Arizona on our minds — Racism Legalized

by Rodolfo F. Acuña,  March 18, 2013

U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima has made his decision to uphold disparate treatment of Mexican Americans, and the constitutionality of HB 2281. The purpose of this law was to destroy Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program. In doing so, Tashima returned us to the times of Joseph McCarty.

The Arizona law broadly banned courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, foster racial resentment, were designed for students of a particular ethnic group or that advocated ethnic solidarity.

The penalty if Tucson did not comply was that the district would lose 10 percent of its annual funding — some $14 million over a fiscal year.

Tashima ruled that the plaintiffs “failed to show the law was too vague, broad or discriminatory, or that it violated students’ first amendment rights.” On the positive side, he held that courses made-to-serve students of a particular ethnic group were not unconstitutional, which seems to imply that it is alright to ban ethnic studies programs.

The ruling raised more questions than it answered. The judge’s legal reasoning and wording was not consistent with his previous decisions, and it left me with the feeling that it had been written by law clerks and that the decision was not properly vetted by Tashima who has been more precise in previous rulings. A survivor of the Japanese internment camps, he had been expected to be sensitive to the rampant racism in Arizona.

Tashima noted that Attorney General Tom Horne’s anti-Mexican American Studies ardor bordered on discriminatory conduct, saying that Horne’s “single-minded focus on terminating the MAS (Mexican-American Studies) program” raised concerns.

Then Tashima engaged in mental gymnastics: “Although some aspects of the record may be viewed to spark suspicion that the Latino population has been improperly targeted, on the whole, the evidence indicates that Defendants targeted the MAS program, not Latino students, teachers or community members who participated in the program.” This conclusion is mind boggling.

This wrongheaded logic would condone the bombing of a village as long as the villagers were not targeted.

Carlos Montes, a voice for change – the 60s, the civil rights movement and today

[Carlos Montes, a prominent leader of Chicano people in Los Angeles for nearly 5 decades, is the latest target of FBI raids aimed at international solidarity activists.  June 16, the same day as the court hearing in his case in Los Angeles, the Committee to Stop FBI repression is leading demonstrations nationwide to protest this repression and to pledge further deepening and broadening of the international solidarity movements.  See stopfbi.net for more information. — Frontlines ed.]

————————–

http://www.alhambrasource.org/stories/voice-change-60s-civil-rights-movement-and-today

by Tim Loc, Staff, Alhambra Source, June 16, 2011

Carlos Montes | Photo from http://www.stopfbi.net

Activist Carlos Montes, a familiar face in the 1960s Chicano Movement, moved to Alhambra 20 years ago because he saw it as a peaceful enclave that was close to his homebase of East Los Angeles. He had a rude awakening on May 17 when the FBI and deputies from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department executed a search warrant on his home. He was arrested after the search turned up a firearm. Montes speaks to The Alhambra Source on his history with activism, and what he alleges is the FBI’s agenda of targeting activists like him.

You were a co-founder of the Brown Berets. How did it begin?

It started as a civic youth group. It became the Young Chicanos for Community Action, and then it got more involved in direct grassroots organizing. Then it became the Brown Berets, and we dealt with the issues of education and police brutality. It started small, but once it took on a broader view of the political situation it grew really fast. It became part of the movement of the 60s. I grew up in East LA, so I saw the police mistreating the youth. We’d cruise down Whittier Boulevard with the music on in the car and we would be harassed by the sheriffs. And in the schools the students were mistreated and the classes were overcrowded.

US: the economic crisis and the choices of the bourgeois state

Must See Chart: This Is What Class War Looks Like, via dailykos.com

via dailykos.com

This chart puts the class war in simple, visual terms. On the left you have the “shared sacrifices” and “painful cuts” that the Republicans claim we must make to get our fiscal house in order. On the right, you can plainly see WHY these cuts are “necessary.”

AP: Protesters flood Wis. Capitol over anti-union vote

March 10, 2011) Protesters use furniture to block access to the Assembly chamber.

Thousands of protesters pushed past security, climbed through windows and flooded the Wisconsin Capitol on Wednesday night after Senate Republicans pushed through a plan to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights.
Within an hour and a half of the vote, the protesters had seized the building’s lower floors, creating an ear-splitting free-for-all of pounding drums, screaming chants, horns and whistles. Police gave up guarding the building entrances and retreated to the third floor.

The state Department of Administration, which operates the building, estimated the crowd at about 7,000 people. There were no reports of violence as of late Wednesday evening. DOA spokesman Tim Donovan said no one had been arrested as of late Wednesday evening. By midnight dozens of protesters had bedded down in the building’s corridors and alcoves. Some slept in front of the office of Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon.

UC Irvine: Stand With the Eleven–protest Israeli Ambassador at UCI

Feb 11, 2010
VISIT http://www.irvine11.com for updates

On February 8th, 2010 Israeli Ambassador Micheal Oren spoke at UCIrvine. During his speech Oren was interrupted by 11 protesters who had every right to speak out. Now they are charged with disrupting the peace and are being targeted by hostile university administrators.

On UC Irvine’s selective punishment against the Justice for Palestine movement:

Raheim Brown, RIP: Protesters at Oakland school board condemn fatal shooting by school district police

By Katy Murphy, Oakland Tribune

01/26/2011

OAKLAND — Dozens of protesters came to Wednesday’s Oakland school board meeting to speak out against the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Raheim Brown by a school district police officer on Saturday night.

 

“My son was murdered by your police officers,” said Lori Davis. “I want to know who killed my son. I want all the information.”

Brown and a 20-year-old woman were parked on Joaquin Miller Road with their hazard lights on when they were approached by a pair of Oakland Schools Police officers who had been patrolling the area outside of a Skyline High School dance at a park facility, Oakland Schools Police Chief Pete Sarna said. Police said Brown and the woman were in a stolen car but that they didn’t know it at the time.

NY City: Activists struggle against Racial Profiling in School Suspensions

YOUTH AND COMMUNITIES WIN THE STUDENT SAFETY ACT!

On Monday, December 20^th, City Council members voted unanimously to pass the Student Safety Act after a three year campaign with youth organizing at the forefront.

DRUM YouthPower!,as a part of the Urban Youth Collaborative and Student Safety Act Coalition, mark a major victory for school policing accountability in NYC and look ahead towards our Dignity in Schools campaign!

“The Student Safety Act will be one of the most progressive school safety reporting laws in the country. We will finally find out what is happening inside our schools when it comes to school safety practices and begin shedding light on the unproductive impacts of zero tolerance policies and aggressive policing in our schools.”- Nazifa Mahboob, youth leader of DRUM-Desis Rising Up & Moving.  Like many young people, Nazifa has spent most of her high school years working hard to pass this legislation.

The Act will require the Department of Education to report to the City Council on the numbers of suspensions, expulsions, arrests and student-police altercations in schools. The City Council can then track and monitor whether discipline is being enforced equally for all students.

University of California: Students Protest Yet Another Tuition Fee Hike

The Daily Californian Online: Regents’ Meeting Marred by Unrest

By Nina Brown and Javier Panzar,Contributing Writers

Thursday, November 18, 2010 

David Herschorn/Staff Protesters and police Officers clash outside of the Regents’ meeting Wednesday. The meeting sparked these demonstrations because the Regents considered implementing an 8 percent fee hike. Police used tear gas against student protest

SAN FRANCISCO – As the UC Board of Regents met at UC San Francisco Wednesday, violent skirmishes broke out between police officers and students protesting an impending 8 percent fee increase, resulting in 13 arrests throughout the day.

Defunding education, funding the prison-industrial complex

 

Prison in Coalinga, California

October 12, 2010, SF Bayview

 

Tim Young

Americans are facing the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression. States like California have responded by pulling the plug on public education. Other options exist, but policy makers are faint to trim any fat from their coveted war chest, or from the criminal justice system.

Has public education been thrown under the bus? According to a recent poll in Time magazine: 67 percent of respondents said public schools are in a crisis, and 76 percent said that teaching doesn’t pay enough. With a base income of only $32,000, teachers are definitely underpaid and unappreciated. Adding insult to injury, many have been terminated due to budget cuts.

Students, parents and educators have begun protesting: NO MORE JOB CUTS! NO MORE TUITION HIKES! In spite of these passionate pleas, public education has taken a back seat to the prison industry. Case in point, the California Department of Corrections is projected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new Death Row. Meanwhile, schools all across the state have been forced to close.

The defunding of public education can be attributed to globalization. In 1994 Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into existence. “Cha Ching!” The ruling class had hit the jackpot! To them this was the next best thing to slavery (slave wages).

Faster than you could say “unemployed,” American companies fled south of the border, setting up shop in places like Tijuana, Mexico. Companies such as Nike and Pepsi no longer had to pay American workers a living wage. And why would they? They now had international sweatshops to profit from, and they could slave drive their “international workers” for less than $2.00 a day!

UC Berkeley: Hundreds Protest on Day of Action

The Daily Californian Online

October 8, 2010

Protesters staged a sit-in within Doe Library's North Reading Room as they waited for Chancellor Birgeneau's response to their demands. (Evan Walbridge/Staff)

Thursday’s national day of protest in defense of affordable public higher education began in small numbers but escalated throughout the day as UC Berkeley students, faculty, staff and community members came out to show their support through teach-outs, sit-ins and a noon rally in front of Sproul Hall that at one point drew a crowd of over 700 people, as estimated by UCPD.

Oct. 7 began with less than 10 picketers at the intersection of Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue at about 7:00 a.m., chanting and distributing flyers and red arm bands to passersby. Protesters later delivered a list of demands for Chancellor Robert Birgeneau at about 10 a.m., accepted by Associate Chancellor Linda Williams at California Hall.

The demands included the democratization of the UC Board of Regents, free public education and full funding for ethnic studies on the campus.

The number of protesters grew steadily throughout the day. Professors and graduate student instructors in front of California Hall and around Moffitt Library held regular class sessions as well as discussions on the state of public higher education. Ashley Ferro-Murray, a graduate student instructor of theater, dance and performance studies, said she hoped the protests would foster a discussion between the administration and students regarding higher education.