I'm a graphic designer and student organizer. I give lectures and workshops on student activism & organizing, and I also run the blog www.forstudentpower.org, which fights for student power on campus. It's crucial that students campaign for institutional power along side of traditional demands of the university; only then can we win fights that will sow the seeds of bigger victories down the road.
The ultimate goal, of course, is the democratizing of our educational system - from kindergarten to grad school. Our humanity demands nothing less.
Groups/Activities:
Coalition For Student Power
Democratizing Education Network
Students for a Democratic Society
http://www.forstudentpower.org/blog
Everything is for sale, and this summer's Democratic National Convention in Denver is no exception.
More than four dozen national corporations have signed up as sponsors of the convention - everyone from Allstate to Xerox. And almost all of them have the same thing in common: They either have business with the federal government or they lobby on pending issues.
[...]
They include companies like 3M, Allstate, AstraZeneca, AT&T, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co., Ford, Merck, Qwest, the Service Employees International Union, US Bank, Visa and Xcel Energy.
"Welcome to the American political system," Barnes-Gelt said of the companies ponying up money on both sides of the aisle.
Chris Lopez of the Democratic National Convention Host Committee acknowledged that sponsors get "opportunities" that depend on the level of their support. Those opportunities can include tickets to events surrounding the convention and even access to the Pepsi Center itself, where the convention will be held.
The host committee does not have to file documents outlining the level of sponsorships until after the convention. But Lopez said the access goes up as the contributions do.
Further evidence that if progressive activists want to seriously challenge corporate hegemony, they'll have to look outside party politics.
The latest polling (likely voters) to come out of the Maryland Senate race has the Democrat and Republican, Rep. Ben Cardin and Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, respectively, in a dead heat at 48%-47%, with Green candidate Kevin Zeese polling at 4% and 2% undecided. Read More »
A few friends and I are interested in getting in touch with progressive/left activists from all the area DC universities -- everyone from AU to Howard to Gallaudet to Montgomery Community College. Read More »
On September 19, dogmatic- Marxist- turned- dogmatic- capitalist David Horowitz participated in a debate at Bloomsburg University with BU philosophy professor Kurt Smith. From the few accounts I've seen and heard, Horowitz got trounced. The student newspaper has just-the-facts coverage here (registration required(wtf?) - use bugmenot.com). However, here's a much more in-depth (though clearly one-sided) review by Dave Lindorff. An excerpt from Lindorff's piece struck me in particular:
Horowitz asserted, without providing any evidence to back his claim, that liberal professors are indoctrinating students, telling them that America is bad, that criminals are just rebels against an unjust society, etc. But Smith said, "We held hearings in Pennsylvania, and not a single case came forward to show indoctrination of students by professors. Where's the bogyman?"
Smith won boisterous applause for insisting that university classrooms are not public spaces where all speakers have equal rights. In the classroom, he asserted, there is a natural asymmetry, as a consequence of the professor's "experience and credentials." In a dig that caused Horowitz to visibly stiffen, Smith said, "You only have a master's degree in English, have never sat on a hiring committee, and never taught, and yet you are expressing expertise about higher education." He concluded, turning to the audience, "Mr. Horowitz should follow his own advice about professors sticking to their subject areas. Since he has no experience in higher education, he should not offer to solve higher education's problems. He's feigning to be an academic."
"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
The University of Minnesota released a study which asserted that atheists, more than any other group, are least trusted by the American public. From the press release:
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
The study's lead researcher concluded that atheists today are taking up the mantle of past marginalized groups such as communists, Catholics, and Jews.
So if Christianity is all about "love your brother," why all the hatin'? Read More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Aug. 4) - A convicted killer who sold postcard-sized paintings he created with dye from M&Ms and brushes fashioned from his hair was disciplined for running an unauthorized business out of his Pelican Bay cell.
While Donny Johnson hasn't profited from his art - all the money is being used to start a program for children of inmates - prison officials said he was wrongfully engaged in a business without the warden's permission.
Johnson, 46, has been locked up since 1980 for second-degree murder in a drug-related killing. In 1989, he was convicted of assaulting one guard and slashing the throat of another. He's now serving life without parole in the most secure unit at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, about 10 miles south of the Oregon border.
At least some good is coming out of his tenure at Pelican Bay. It also shows that we should allow inmates to contribute positively to society in more ways than just by stamping license plates and picking up trash.
The argument that "generally, people are stupid" is a rather compelling one, at first blush. We all have our own personal mountain of anecdotal evidence supporting such a statement.
What's scary is when people base political ideas and actions off such a silly, sweeping phrase. For one, it can lead down some disgusting paths (paeans to "those meant to lead and those meant to follow", justifications for removing power from the people to bureaucratic and elected self-proclaimed mandarins, etc.). A much better sweeping statement would be "generally people rise up (or lower down) to your expectations."
Here's some anecdotal evidence that may prove a bit of a cure to the arguments that the people Frank writes about in What's the Matter with Kansas and poor, white (and rural) Republicans in general, and a brief sketch of what the real problem may be... Read More »
John Dean's new book, Conservatives without Conscience, looks at the growing authoritarian tendencies among both Republican elected officials and their followers. I have yet to pick up the book (though I plan to), but it reminded me of a study I saw a few years ago, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition." It's a survey of the past 50 years of psychological research into the nature of conservatism and authoritarianism, and it draws some striking (if not surprising for some) conclusions.
Here's the full study [PDF]. For the uninitiated, the first several pages may seem tough to wade through, but things get really interesting after that.
Keith Olbermann has a nice interview with John Dean. Dean was also on the Daily Show, but I don't think Stewart really let him say much substantive. Video here.
Candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, courtesy WaPo
While conservative Calderon's lead has shrunk to less than one half of one percent, his campaign is eager to declare the recount over and Calderon the winner. Obrador, the left's candidate in the race, has issued a statement challenging the validity of the outcome as ballot boxes are being found in garbage dumps, including 10 official ballot boxes found in a dump in a poor area, according to the Mexican paper El Universal. Link
This is Mexico's first real test of election safeguards since they were installed roughly a decade ago -- all other presidential elections up until now under the new election scheme have not been close at all.
Echoing jre's post, Instant Runoff Voting would have likely produced a clear majority winner (neither Obrador or Calderon have more than 40% of the vote!). IRV is gaining some serious traction here in the states, with cities like Takoma Park, San Francisco and Burlington having adopted it, and states like Delaware, Maryland and Vermont considering it statewide. Both IRV and PR (proportional representation) may be exotic here, but to much of the rest of the world it's nothing new -- and it works.
Democrats: easiest way to eliminate the "spoiler" role of Greens and progressive Independents? Implement IRV!
Whoops, we can't. It failed yesterday by one vote, 66-34. Sheesh, can't Bill Frist get anything passed anymore?
The constitutional amendment would not have banned flag burning per se, but would have given Congress latitude on anti-flag-desecration matters: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." The intriguing thing would have been the SCOTUS interpretation of how far "desecration" extends, and at what point 28th Amendment laws would interfere with the 1st amendment. (I wonder if all those frayed mini-flags on the antennae of SUVs would be violations? With American flags everywhere, including our clothing, it's sure been a long time since Abbie Hoffman's star-spangled adventures.)
Of course all the instances of flag-burning and desecration we see on TV happen overseas, where conveniently our Constitution doesn't apply. A telling quote of just how terribly dire the flag-desecration situation is here in the states, from Dana Milbank's WaPo column:
"The Citizens Flag Alliance, a group pushing for the Senate this week to pass a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, just reported an alarming, 33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year. The number has increased to four, from three."
Milbank also makes the good point that a lot of recent incidents of flag-desecration also would fall under existing vandalism statutes.
Good work, Congress: we voters will dutifully reward you in November for all your hard work and dedication to those most-pressing issues of our day!
Bush was in Hungary today, commemorating the heroic 1956 uprising against puppet-rule of the country by an outside invader. While comparing the struggle to Iraq, he forgot to urge the public not to arrive to the comparison's obvious implication.
President Bush praised Hungary's bloody 1956 uprising against communist rule on Thursday and said the country's eventual success in ousting authoritarian rule was a shining example for Iraq to follow.
...
He compared Iraq's struggle to develop into a democracy to Hungary's effort to bring down communist rule 50 years ago and said Iraqis would need the same kind of patience as Hungarians as they try to establish a thriving democracy. [Reuters]
Assuming Bush knows something about the 1956 uprising (yeah, big assumption), he's probably really, really glad that Iraqis aren't doing now what Hungarians were doing 50 years earlier. Direct establishment of workers' councils and regional councils as a basic unit of political and economic power, demands for the occupying country to leave and a desire to align closely with regional neighbors doesn't strike me as something in this Administration's gameplan.
So if in this metaphor, Iraq is Hungary, will we end up being the USSR? Time will tell whether history paints us as liberators, or as a foreign occupying and controlling force that, like the Hungarians of the last century, Iraqis will have to fight against for decades before they win true sovereignty. I'm really hoping it doesn't come to that.
Looks like both Iraqis and Hungarians are good at toppling large moustachioed statues.
Hey folks, FYI, this is my new username now; I've retired RevolutionAM (the name was picked in haste, it's the name of a great Rustic Overtones song - not the most thoughtful, eh?).
Welcome to part 2 of our 230-part series, "_______ students revolt!".
Students have been on strike since between 5,000 and 10,000 of them began ransacking the campus on Thursday night, with several hundred police brought in to quell the unrest, according to witnesses and participants.
Photos posted on the Internet from Zhengzhou University in Henan province showed an on-campus bank branch, dormitories and cars had been vandalized, while chairs had been torched and bicycles strewn across the grounds.
The students, from the university's Shengda Economics, Trade and Management College, said they were protesting because they had been misled into believing they would get diplomas bearing the name of Zhengzhou University.
However they were later told they would only get diplomas from the less prestigious college affiliate.
Okay, I'm all for student agitation, but is this reason enough to stage a massive rampage? Especially in a country like CHINA, which doesn't have the rosiest history of student-state relations? One student interviewed said that the University had been treating them badly for years, so perhaps this was the final straw? If I spent four years at Harvard and found my degree to say Boston University, I know I'd be pissed as hell, but "rampage" really wouldn't enter my mind. NYT gives us a bit of back story:
Once a magic ticket into the government or business elite, college has become an expensive gamble for millions of cash-short families who find that even the most prestigious degrees cannot guarantee success in a market economy.
The number of college graduates has multiplied fivefold in the last seven years, to an estimated 4.1 million this year. But at least 60 percent of that number are having trouble finding jobs, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.
Apparently, students were enticed to fork over their (and their parents') hard-earned dough to go to this subpar college, Shengda, that's linked to a more prestigious school, Zhengzhou, with the promise that the degree would not mention the Shengda at all, just Zhengzhou. Looks like they either want a diploma that says Zhengzhou or their money back.
Most of the students that went to Shengda went there because their grades did not get them into Zhengzhou itself -- Shengda said "hey, if you pay us five times their tuition, we'll make sure you get a Zhengzhou diploma!" Problem is, a new law passed in 2003 required schools to list their own names on diplomas -- the students graduating this year entered into the school before that was passed. We'll end with a sobering statistic:
By the government's tally, China's economy, though growing by about 10 percent a year, will add about 1.6 million positions for people with college degrees this year. The country produced 4.1 million new college graduates.
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