Thank You, South Africa!

The boys are up at 7 watching Invictus and talking about Mandela and Apartheid and change. I thank the South Africans for being amazing hosts, but most of all for their dignified and humanizing public media pedagogy. For teaching the next generation why we should pay attention to the past, present, and future of this great nation.

G20 Summit: Economic Recovery or Economic Hegemony?

The G20 (i.e. Group of Twenty Nations) collectively control 85% of the world's GDP and 80% of the world's trade. Collectively they also create 99.8% of the world's waste, pollution, and chaos. As a group however, when they meet today and tomorrow in Toronto, they are generally working to figure out how to maintain their collective economic hegemony. Under the guise of a debate between "austerity" (this word in quotes because the median citizen of the globe would hold a far different definition of the term austere) and "stimulus", they collectively avoid any conversation about the responsibility that comes along with privilege. The agenda is one that frames economics as the science of understanding financial markets and not the politics of accumulation and alienation that have configured so much power and wealth in the hands of so few and at the expense of so many. Even in these democratic nations many many people are denied access to this accumulated wealth. So the protests at the event are warranted, and I wish the organizers and activist luck in this regard. Because under the pretense of security the organizers of this event are doing everything they can to eliminate civil disobedience and the democratic imperative. The long-term goal, however, requires us to create an agenda that redefines economy to include the science of the impacts of capital accumulation on the lives of real people! Here are a few items that might be included in a more authentic G20 Summit:
1. The concentration of global poverty in black and brown and female bodies
2. The concentration of global poverty in Africa and Asia
3. The increasing gap between rich and poor in the G20 nations
4. The impact of corporate hegemony on the environment
5. The economics of war
6. Educational attainment and economic power
7. Service
Not that I don't care about the Dow Jones, but I believe there are other indices of economic health that are far less abstract and far more essential to our global recovery.

Remember Selma, 1965?

Remember Selma? Remember "Bloody Sunday?" Remember the Women's Suffrage Movement? All of that energy, all of those lives gladly sacrificed to give us a right we all too frequently take for granted. Please find the time to be heard tomorrow. Vote, for all of those who would have and couldn't and for those who still can only dream.

Acts of Love

Trapped in a chamber of wood and stone
Distanced by miles and orientation
Drowned in white sheets of perspiration
Rocked by the rattle and hum

The gentle lies, blind to the maelstrom
Baptized in symbolic initiation
Deaf to the cries of those who’d fallen
Amid the shouts of those reborn

Guitar strums sacred notes of freedom
Pages turned versed emancipation
Murals sprayed resistance and rebellion
Opened his palms raised them towards the son

Acts of love refuel a generation
Acts of love reverse the destination

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.