Category Archives: civil rights

Ethnic Cleansing in Chicago Public Schools

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Fred Klonsky has this up on the ethnic cleansing of Chicago Public Schools.  But I would go a step further and say not just ethnic, but prejudice against the poor in general.  They have made it abundantly clear that they don’t believe the poor have any worth or value or potential.

He links to the Chicago Teachers Union website.  This just says it all:

Schools slated for “turn around” include McNair, Dvorak and Gresham elementary schools. At McNair, 52 percent of the staff are African American; at Dvorak 70 percent of the teachers are African Americans; and at Gresham 65 percent of educators are African American. Black students are 97.1 percent of the student body and 98 percent of them are low-income.

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They also make note that most of the educators are in their 40s and 50s–a favorite target of the schools-for-fun-and-profit mob.  Get rid of the higher paid older folk, and you can a) pay younger ones much, much less, and b) get more compliant employees who are desperate for a job and will subject kids to enforced abusive testing because without a union to help them protest, they’re SOL.

 

 

Dear White People… **edited

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DN! has a piece up today on a documentary entitled “Dear White People…”

We need the conversation to begin, so I’m glad that they are taking it on…but as I viewed the excerpts, I started to get that feeling of dread.  Because a young African American woman states that we (black folks) are all different and another clip one states that because she is the person of color in the room, suddenly she becomes the “voice” of the African American community.  But it seems lost on the black community that perhaps whites feel the same way?  We don’t all think alike and because one treats you badly or is prejudiced does not mean that we all agree with that person’s actions.  Most white folks have good hearts but don’t realize some of the stuff that is said and done is hurtful (as the producer of the documentary states.)

During the interview with “Reggie” –he talks about his personal life and how he lived on an all-black floor in college.  He said it helped to be with his “people’ after having people touch his hair and professors say “stuff” to him….my thought was:  doesn’t he think some white people could understand that?  Again, it is a block put up to sharing a common bond.  White people whom have been bullied, put down, ostracized can all understand how being singled out feels.  They may not understand how it is to be black, but they can understand pain.

And the tipping thing?  Hello! Women are also stereotyped for being bad tippers.  A long time ago, when I had a life, I sat in a restaurant and waited while the white waitresses were gossiping for twenty minutes until one finally came over to take my order.  And it was cold when she brought it out.  And yeah, I left a penny tip.  Screw that.

In other instances, I would leave 15% tips when the going rate was 10%.  Sometimes the service warranted that, but most times it was just okay, but I left the bigger tip because of the prejudice against women.

As far as his admission that black folk use their blackness as a tool sometimes to navigate the world…but it creates barriers. As I experienced in Ft. Wayne, an African American guy had created a serious problem for the entire building that could have meant injury or death for the residents.  When one of the white fire fighters said something to him because he was yelling at them to shut the alarm off (they could not do that–it was a door alarm and they had the door open to let all the smoke out)** edited, he immediately blamed it on racism.  He went on and on about it instead of taking a step back and realizing HE was the problem, not his skin color.  And this is not a condemnation of the guy–he wasn’t a bad person, but had a screwed up view of the world.

It’s funny that this came up today, because when I was getting dressed this morning, I thought about seeing the Light in others.

Buddhists popped into my head –the Buddhists don’t believe in a God as one Supreme Being, but that God resides in each of us.  Their greeting “Namaste” means that they recognize God within you and within themselves.

Even if one doesn’t believe in the Buddhist religion, if we could stop looking at each other’s skin color…or anything physical…and recognize the Light within the other, we could move past the prejudice.  Our hearts involved in decision making instead of just our heads…

**edited for link to DN and further explanation above.

Yet another oil spill **edited

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…off of the Texas coast.

How in the world does one collide with a barge?  It’s not like they’re speed boats zipping past one…

…looks like another drunken captain.

The words George Bush I echo the oil man’s empty promises of safety…and clean up…as we have witnessed with every freaking oil spill since then–Kalamazoo and Arkansas and the Gulf are evidence of that.  As one of the commenters said, the captain was made the scapegoat while the company escaped blame.

And Tricky Dicks’ comments?  “The Alaskan pipeline is on the way…and the environment will be saved…” Priceless.

The proponents of XL pipeline are saying it’s going to create jobs…but as this video illustrates, how many jobs are lost (income lost) by the spills?  How does one put a price tag on the oiled soil, water, and dead/impaired wildlife?  Why are they even *considering* XL after all that has happened…?

**edited to add link to XL pipeline petition.

Wall of Women stand opposed to Kinder Morgan

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First Nations and Greenpeace women stand together against pipeline expansion…

“We’re standing here together to link arms to build the wall of women to say no, we do not want that in our communities, we will not accept this in our communities, we want better,” said Nahanee. “Canada has a responsibility to protect their communities, we have the right to live in healthy environments— healthy environments to raise our children, to take care of our grandparents, to drink healthy water, to eat healthy food. It’s basic human rights.”

– Mandy Nahanee

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Who would have thought that we would actually have to protest keeping our water clean and healthy??

Good on the women standing together, protecting the Earth. She needs us.

Video of Russian forces breaking down the gate

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Global News has obtained video of the Russian gate crashers at the Ukraine air base in Crimea. The report states they are not sure if they are Russian military or pro-Russia militia in Ukraine.

It’s hard to see the layout, but it does look rather open.  I would think with the situation, there would have been more armored vehicles to prevent such an attack.  It just looks like they “walked” up to the door and let themselves in.

The second question I thought was why have they not begun to pull back once Crimea voted to join Russia?  Are there more people in Crimea wanting them to stay and we aren’t being told this by the lame media?  Because if the gate crashers are pro-Russia militia…with obvious military capabilities…that are intimidating the peaceful ones of Crimea…then Houston, we have a problem.

I think I’ve found my answer here.

 

School Bullies?

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Has it really come to this?  That a mother has to assert her child’s civil rights to be let alone from government intrusion, via the pro-Common Core/anti public schools mob??    That a child can be interrogated by Chicago Public Schools for opting out of an abusive test?

Who are the bullies in this scenario? Because it ain’t the kids…

New Election Rules for First Nations

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You know, if I didn’t know better, I would think this was written in the 1950s, by conservative busybodies with too much time on their hands.  Talk about cutting out the young people!  Keep in mind that the whole system of chiefs was forced upon the indigenous…so the concept is really against their tradition.

“It’s the end of us… we’re not going to vote,” one man said. “Eighty per cent of this community is under 40 and us, the young people, we need some attention. We need public attention, media attention. This is discrimination.”

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More here from Warrior Publications on Kinder Morgan taking what it wants whether a landowner wants to cede ownership or not.

A home is your castle…until Big Oil wants a piece of that castle…

NPE Twitter storm

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Reclaim Reform has a post up on the twitter storm demanding Congressional investigation into the profiteering of standardized testing.

From the link to NPE:

How good are the tests?

Problems with the actual content of tests have been extensively documented. There are numerous instances of flawed questions and design, including no right answer, more than one right answer, wording that is unclear or misleading, reading passages or problems that are developmentally inappropriate or contain product placements, test questions on material never taught, and items that border on bizarre, such as a famous example that asked students to read a passage about a race between a pineapple and a hare. Tests are not scientific instruments like barometers; they are commercial products that are subject to multiple errors.

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