Civil Disobedience and the Democratic Privilege

The story of the youth being detained for peacefully declaring their right to exist. National coverage, but what they need is justice, and that will not happen unless we exercise our democratic privilege. YES, I said privilege! For if we fail to exercise our privilege, we are no better off than the people who's actions we so happily denigrate in the comfort of our peaceful existences. Because evil requires the complicity of the silent majority, we cannot be among them. Speak your discontent, speak it loudly and often to all who will listen and all who need to hear.

Below are a number of sites that are carrying the story. What we need to do is create our own stories. We are the media that we've been waiting all this time for.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100518/METRO/5180404/1409/Officials-want-Michigan-student-in-custody-in-immigration-protest

http://vivirlatino.com/2010/05/18/update-on-dream-act-students-arrested-in-sit-in-at-john-mccains-office.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/us/18dream.html?emc=

http://kasamaproject.org/2010/05/18/undocumented-students-arrested-at-arizona-protest/

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2010/05/undocumented-students-arrested-at.html

http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_political/6217064.html

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100518/METRO/5180404/1361/Michigan-student-arrested-in-Arizona-immigration-protest

http://www.chasingevil.org/2010/05/courage-undocumented-students-arrested.html

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicanisima/2010/05/immigrant-students-arrested-at-mccains-office-to-be-arraigned-tuesday-chicagos-tania-unzueta-not-arrested.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-ralls/a-gay-immigrant-reaches-f_b_579488.html

http://www.kgun9.com/Global/story.asp?S=12502141

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/Valdez/83648

College Access for Public Service

Black teachers comprise only 8 percent of teachers nationwide and Black males only comprise 2 percent of teachers nationwide. We need a diverse teaching force to serve in our increasingly diverse schools. College access isn't only about bolstering the economy; it is also about expanding the pipeline to public service. Currently the United States ranks 12th amongst nations in percentage of 25-34 year olds receiving college degrees (College Board, 2008). Generally, this crisis in college access is talked about in terms of economic capital. While I am all for job creation and developing a competent workforce, I believe we also need to look at this crisis in terms of the loss of human capital. A lack of a college education means that you cannot become a teacher, or a principal, or a school counselor, or an educational researcher, or any number of jobs in education that are needed if we are to effectively reach and teach the next generation. I'm with Arne Duncan on this one; we need to step up and recruit, educate, and mentor a new generation of culturally diverse, intellectually curious, competent, and committed teachers to join the ranks of America's schools.

Powerful Knowledge

Picture, if you will, a world filled with peace, justice, equity, and democracy. A world of abundance fueled by creativity and production; spurned by fruitful collaborations across nations, religions, and ideologies. A world free of hunger and want; where bellies and minds are full and where all are citizens with powerful words and ideas to contribute to the global human family.
Why do we not have this type of world? What have we been led to believe about the inherent nature of humanity and about the inevitability of suffering, ignorance, and war? And how has our education precipitated these negative attitudes toward our world, our possibilities, each other and ourselves? Can the quality of education determine the quality of the human condition? Do we possess the untapped human potential to solve our greatest problems?
I believe emphatically that the answer is yes. Ignorance and nihilism are the leisure of privilege. We disdain what we cannot yet comprehend. Our Miseducation has made that incomprehension the norm. No weapon is more powerful than ignorance, save knowledge. No revolution has been or could be more complete than the immediate and total transformation of human thought and no institution is more essential to that transformation than our public schools. The challenge is ours to provide the necessary (and possible) critical global education to enable all of our people to live in the world of their dreams.

Lifetimes of Action

A Day of Action is a great thing when people come together united for change. I applaud the students, faculty, and community members now and historically that have stood up and spoken out for what they believed in. What we need are lifetimes dedicated to action. The question is not whether the world can change, but how it will change and who will be responsible. A silent, fragmented majority is no advantage to anyone, but the people united and moving as one can overcome even the greatest of obstacles. The twentieth century was testimony to that; advocates came together to demand women's suffrage and civil rights. Students protested to end wars, free political prisoners, and abolish racist, colonial governments such as Apartheid South Africa. We are constantly besieged by the forces of greed, selfishness, and inhumanity. The variable is always the will of the people. What will we do with our moment? What will history say about us? The good news is that the choice is ours because that history is ours to define. We have everything that we need, free minds, the power to speak and act, and, most importantly, we have each other. I am with you because right now, as always, there is no other place to be.

Civic Agency in Politically Dangerous Times

Real grassroots reform happens when small groups of people get together to think about how to become involved in the change they want to see. That thinking together, that critical dialogue then emerges into organic praxis. Reform happens best when it bubbles out of the cafes and living rooms out into the streets. What we need now is a model of civic agency in these politically dangerous times that forefronts the localized collective. This model needs to include the reclaiming of public space; it needs to have a critical political education, opportunities for dialogue and leadership development, and, most importantly, opportunities for real and active involvement in the immediacy of civil life.

What We Really Want

I haven't forgotten the Bush years; the two-termed nightmare with its lies, its invasion, its economy at a grounded halt; the scorn of the world. How can we compare our problems now to our worst fears at the end of 2007? There's no way that we can go back there again. The only direction is forward, and we have the president to lead us. I am not daunted, I have no second thoughts, and my hope burns just as bright as the night we all cried when we made history. Change is painful, but the status quo is just plain lethal.

We must continue in our collective struggle. Hope is not short of will. We’ve only begun to fight. Our cause is just; a better world filled with more peace, more freedom and more light; healthier children with better opportunities to learn and grow; decent and plentiful jobs with livable wages; clean air, civil liberties. Human dignity and justice are not political terms, or at least they shouldn’t be. What we want is what everyone wants; only we want it for everyone.

The Qualities of Youth

"This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease."- RFK



When I think about the change we need, what I think about most is the changes we must demand from ourselves. Radical and substantive changes that allow us to retain these qualities of the young. It will be our courage, our imagination, and our relentless pursuit of dignity and justice for all that will bring about the changes we want to see in others, in our schools, in our government and political institutions, and in the world at large.