OWS: Occupy Santa Monica, Chicago etc.

This is the first in a semi-regular series of posts that will be based at least partially on articles piped in from Occupy Wall Street; in most cases the segment from the Occupy Wall Street will be highlighted or marked as such otherwise and a link will be provided to the full article. They may not always be completely up to date so those of you who already check with OWS should, of course, continue doing so; additional details below. 

(This was originally posted on Open Salon April, 13, 2011)

Santa Monica Students Attacked By Campus Police

Yesterday, hundreds of students from Santa Monica College gathered outside a Board of Trustees meeting to disrupt planned tuition increases and preferential treatment for students who are able to pay more at their school. During the demonstration, around 30 students were pepper sprayed by campus police forces. Students say there was no warning for this unprovoked attack. Even though no one was arrested and there were no reports of violent behavior on the part of the peaceful protesters, two people were taken to a hospital after one officer indiscriminately sprayed into the crowd. Officials at the college are ¨investigating¨ the incident. full article

These protests may not have been coordinated with the Occupy Wall Street movement but they have similar goals and they use similar non-violent tactics and the police have, once again responded in a similar oppressive manner. This may be a week old now but it is worth remembering for much longer.

The police said the protesters were behaving in an “unlawful” manner; they din’t seem to have any objection to the people with political power that were rigging the system and participating in an enormous amount of activities that should be considered much more unlawful and that this is what they were protesting.

There has been an enormous amount of corporate corruption in many powerful places which have been documented elsewhere by me and many others so I’m not going to go too much farther into that.
One thing that is worth noticing is the fact that the video at the Occupy Wall Street web site was removed for copyright reasons. Additional videos are available from various sources including Huffington Post and the LA Times (ads required in this article) below.

“Dr. Chui Tsang, Santa Monica College President, Defends Campus Police Pepper-Spraying Protesters” Huffington Post
“No warning before pepper spray, Santa Monica College students say” LA Times

This is ironic because one of the reasons that tuition costs are being driven up is because of the incompetent copyright bureaucracy. This is done to support an enormous bureaucracy that spends more time and effort controlling the distribution of educational information than it does rewarding those that do the work that copyright laws were originally intended to protest. If this was reformed then they could provide education to many more people at a much lower cost instead of increasing the costs.

In addition to that this video should have been available under the fair use clause especially since it is news that is related to such an important issue. This is a blatant infringement on the right to the free press and it is being used to slow or stop the reporting on abuses by the police regardless of why they intended it or what their excuse is. The alleged excuse is that they have to sell ads which are almost certainly deceptive promotions for one thing or another; a close review of most ads will clearly indicate that few if any of them will strand up to scrutiny and they’re intended to encourage consumers to base their decisions on false impressions. This is considered more important than informing the public about police brutality in our current system.

To make matters worse they even pepper sprayed a four year old child who was with the peaceful protestors. This clearly seems to indicate that they haven’t learned much if anything since the UC Davis incident which was recently reviewed as this was happening and they came to the obvious conclusion that the police used excessive force.

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Take The Spring - Today in Chicago, Minneapolis, Philly and Beyond 
 
Occupy Chicago is hosting a day packed with community events and demonstrations throughout the city. Dubbed the beginning of the Chicago Spring by local organizers, today will be a celebration of the upcoming spring of resistance worldwide! Smaller neighborhood events will be happening throughout the day, with a 1pm Central Time gathering at LaSalle and Jackson and march to Butler Field at Grant Park for an evening of workshops, panel discussions, and more. For the full list of all the impressive actions and endorsers for today’s events in Chicago, see http://chicagospring.org/ or the Occupied Chicago Tribune and follow @OccupyChicago on Twitter. full article

For those of you who don’t already know Occupy Wall Street is planning more protests for May during some economic summits in Chicago. The G-8 Summit has moved to Camp David, presumably in response to the anticipated protests. Occupy Wall Street has portrayed this as a victory; and in some ways it may be since it shows that they’re not willing to let the public participate; however it is also an indication of how little they’re willing to respect the will of the people and it shows how much more there is to do.

They’re also planning many more protest throughout the spring and I’m sure there will be more during the RNC and DNC conventions.

This isn’t ending!!

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Why We Need Free Media

Free and independent journalism is under attack. From violent police suppression to corporate media censorship, the need to create and defend movement-based journalism has never been greater - especially as we prepare for May Day and beyond -- see below for a list of Occupy media.

Last weekend, Minneapolis police charged a peaceful march, beating protesters and arresting a dozen people. As described by Occupy Minneapolis:

Videos show officers pulling several people off public sidewalks, slamming one violently into the street and deliberately censoring the mainstream and independent press. [...] We had hoped to reestablish an occupation to bring attention to social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the foreclosure crisis, but instead were met with a crackdown by the Minneapolis Police Department. full article

The lack of coverage in the corporate media clearly indicates that we can’t rely on them to report on this accurately if at all. Occupy Wall Street has a major point with their call for more diverse media, which is part of the reason why I’m going to start feeding some of these articles into OS on a semi-regular basis. This doesn’t mean that alternative media should be limited to those provided by Occupy Wall Street and I’m sure they wouldn’t argue with that point which is why I may come up with my own, even if it is only for my purposes, or if you have some of your favorites let me know.

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Semi-regular updates from Occupy Wall Street: I am beginning to feed some portions of this into Open Salon due to the fact that this clearly hasn’t ended yet the coverage of it has declined dramatically. I’m sure that many people have already done a better job keeping up with than the news than I have which is great; however there may be others that haven’t and the coverage of this at OS has dropped to a trickle. Part of this is for my own purposes as well since I haven’t kept up with all the coverage at their site in many cases although I often intend to. If anyone else decides to provide additional coverage feel free. 

All posts in this series will begin with “OWS:” then presumably something related to the news of the day; other posts about other subjects will continue as usual. 

It is generally polite when doing something like this to say something like, “if there is something good here give the credit to Occupy Wall Street if there is something wrong blame me.” 

I’m OK with the first part of that OWS deserves the credit; however I don’t want the blame. I’m not going to make up any excuses, I just don’t want the blame give it to Obama or Romney. They always try to make up all kinds of excuses and they’re almost always incredibly bad, so they deserve plenty of blame.

(For more information on Blog see Blog description and table of context for most older posts.)

The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

Occupy Chicago joined with mental workers and community residents to occupy a mental health clinic on the City's South Side that Mayor Rahm Emanuel threatened to close. 23 people were arrested after police forced their way through the door protestors had barricaded.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/13/woodlawn-mental-health-ce_n_1423247.html

Bob Simpson April 13, 2012 02:49 PM

Barack Obama is suppo0sed to be the defender of the lower and the middle classes that will save us from the extreme Republicans. With his ally Rahm Emmanuel implementing his privatization plans while he comes up with positive election year rhetoric it should be obvious to anyone that pays attention that they both work for the corporations with little or no regard to the will of the people.

Let's hope people pay attention.

zacherydtaylor April 14, 2012 09:32 AM

[r] Zachd, thanks for this. we must not let the police violence be "normalized" which is happening. Smug Bloomberg and his NY Gestapo tactics were never challenged by our local NYC media as well as the national media. Bloomberg's paternalistic righteousness made me sick. The Santa Monica strong arm tactics, 2oo people attending a meeting and the deciders allowing only 12 to enter and be heard and there was legitimate agitation and then POLICE GROSS OVER-REACTION. Over the top roughing up and spraying eyes and mouths with pepper spray and injurying 30 people. The college agreed to pay for the medical bills as they defended the cops behavior as appropriate.

All this US violent militarization going on globally. The government responsible for that probably figures anything less than out and out killing a so-called "belligerent" even in the US is light weight. Citizens of this country need to take the blinders off to the global militarization because that is at the root of the domestic militarization. It is late in the game, and the denial and minimization is ferocious. The cronyism with Team Dem astonishes. The rat bastards seem to be able to get away with anything since their propagandists will minimize it all and beef up the evil attributed to the other evil party. best, libby

libbyliberalnyc April 14, 2012 03:10 PM

Libby, excuse the late reply; it sounds good that they agreed to pay the medical costs for starters but much more should be done and they clearly should start thinking about how their own activities are increasing expenses for no good reason. If they allowed reform instead of setting the stage for unnecessary medical costs and m7uch more in court and police costs they wouldn’t be adding even more to the amount of waste that they never had to begin in the first place.

This is as much about the suppression of education as it is about price gouging.

Their current behavior in Santa Monica NY and many other places is totally inexcusable if people think about it instead of accepting corporate propaganda.

zacherydtaylor April 17, 2012 09:24 AM

OWS: May Day, Charter Schools, support reoccupation! etc.

May 1st Blockade Called For New York Bridges, Tunnels, and Ferries — Commuter Delays Expected

NEW YORK – On May 1, 2012, autonomous direct action groups within Occupy Wall Street, as a part of the global mobilizations for general strike and economic non-compliance, will block one or more Manhattan-bound bridges or tunnels to protest the shameful opulence of the 1%. Working and unemployed people across this country have seen no improvement to their lives in spite of all of the chatter about a recovery from the Financial Crisis of 2008. We don’t care what Obama or Romney say because only working people —domestic laborers, rank and file union members, undocumented workers, restaurant, retail and chain-store workers— can solve today’s problems.
Last fall, when Occupy Wall Street blocked the Brooklyn Bridge for several hours, we were acting within a long line of protest in New York City that stretches back to the so-called Fiscal Crisis of 1975, which much like now, was a bank led assault against working people. In the summer of 1975, striking hospital employees, including doctors and nurses, blocked the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge was even blocked by thousands of laid-off police, the very people who act as the guard dogs of the 1%. More recently, both the Brooklyn Bridge and the Holland Tunnel were shut down during protests of the shooting death of Sean Bell. But this May 1, we will create the biggest shut down the city of New York has ever seen.

We are announcing these blockades now as a fair warning to the rest of the working people of New York and New Jersey who are considering joining the strikes and mobilizations of the day: the city will be shut down, so enjoy the day without the 99%! original article additional May Day protests updates

Occupy Wall Street has been preparing for a large month of protests starting on May 1st. This has apparently led to Barack Obama’s decision to hold his summit at Camp David where he won’t be so close to the protests as part of his effort to downplay and ignore the Occupy Wall Street movement. This is a clear indication of the fact that the government is paying little attention to the will of the people as any sincere democracy is supposed to do; which is all the more reason why we should make an effort on our own to support the OWS movement and spread the word among ourselves. The corporate media clearly can’t be trusted to report on this in an accurate manner; this includes the seemingly more liberal MSNBC network.
This is part of a semi-regular update of some of the latest stories from the Occupy Wall Street web page for additional details see previous post introduction to series.

Occupy Piccolo! Chicago Communities Occupy School In Protest of Privatization

The Brian Piccolo Specialty School in Humboldt Park, Chicago is currently Occupied by parents, teachers, and students. Occupy Chicago and other allies are outside the building in solidarity and have set up an encampment. Around one hundred people are present and are taking shifts to ensure the safety of the occupation. The Chicago Teachers Union has expressed support for the action. Piccolo, an elementary school with a student body that is almost entirely from low income communities of color, is one of 16 Chicago public schools slated to be closed by Mayor Rahm's service cuts to the poor…… Full article 

See also: May 1st Public High School Walkout Called by Occupy High

This is actually an old post from February but it is important enough that it shouldn’t be forgotten. This is part of a major effort to corporatize schools and enable the people in the board rooms at Wall Street to control the education that is provided to children and either restricts it if it serves their purposes or turns it into propaganda. Another part of the effort at corporatization of schools is the effort to increase advertising in schools which has been research by several academics including Susan Linn who wrote the following:

In-school advertising began escalating in earnest in 1990. It now includes (but isn’t limited to) corporate-sponsored newscasts, field trips, classroom materials, vending machines, gymnasiums, walls, and whole buildings. Have you visited your child’s school lately? Perhaps she’s learning about energy production and consumption through the lens of companies like Exxon Mobil or professional associations like the American Coal Foundation (“Unlocking Coal’s Potential through Education”). Her inspiration for reading may be coming from Pizza Hut-complete with coupons to be redeemed at your local franchise. She may be attending mandatory assemblies where she can learn about job interviewing from McDonalds. If she lives in Washington, D.C., and wants to go into the hotel business, she might be attending the Marriot Hospitality Charter School. If she’s a kid in trouble, she could attend a Burger King Academy.

If she’s on a school athletic team, her shoes may come from Nike or Adidas. Her school’s scoreboard could owe its presence to the countless bottles of Coke or Pepsi she’s bought from school vending machines and a sport company logo. Access to her opinions and ideas may have been sold to a market research company. Her only exposure to current events might be brought to her courtesy of the aforementioned Ed Winter. He’s the guy who thought of Channel One, the twelve-minute news program that includes two minutes of commercials that her school is obligated to show daily for 90 percent of the school days each year. (Susan Linn "Consuming Kids" 2004 p.75-6)

They have indicated with their actions that they may attempt to use people that have been portrayed as consumer advocates to advance this agenda, like Elizabeth Warren, who has indicated that she support Charter Schools and as I have indicated previously may not be a sincere consumer advocate. Other Researchers have also looked into the effect that advertisers have on children at an early age including Roy Fox author of “Harvesting Minds” which indicates that Channel One is being used for propaganda purposes not education. there is much more to their efforts to control the educations system and ensure that it is maintained for the benefit of the ruling class and the rest get a second tier system; this hasn’t been openly acknowledged but a close look at many similar activities clearly indicates the intentions of those in power.
The following is a link that was pointed out on the OWS page with a couple articles worth taking notice of:

Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?

When ex-President Bush was elected in 2000, he brought with him former Houston Superintendent of Education Rod Paige to be Secretary of Education. He also brought the "Texas miracle"—supposedly increased test scores attributed to Texas' strict accountability system. All eyes smiled on Texas as those measures quickly became part of No Child Left Behind, passed into law in 2001 by both political parties. Before the end of Bush's first term, Paige would leave in disgrace, thanks to revelations of cooked scores, forced-out students, and other barely legal means of inflating test results. ……

The Corporatization of Public Education 
 
Before an audience of big-city mayors and school superintendents in late March, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan offered an early - and troubling - indication of his vision for the future of public K-12 education in the United States. Duncan told audience members at the Mayors' National Forum on Education in Washington, DC, that more mayors need to take control of low-performing, urban school districts, and that he was prepared to do whatever it takes to shift leadership of urban districts from school boards to City Halls. "I'll come to your cities. I'll meet with your editorial boards. I'll talk with your business communities," Duncan said. "I will be there." ……. full articles

Occupy Earth Day!
Jazz Funeral for the death of Earth as we know it 12pm Noon BP Gas Station, 300 Lafayette St (@ Houston), NYC Occupy Earth Day will begin with a New Orleans-style jazz funeral march for the Gulf Coast led by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra and commemorating the anniversary of the BP Deep Water Horizon oil spill, which began on April 20, 2010. Full article

Earth day has come and gone by now but it is important to keep in mind that the corporations and the government are clearly not doing anything to repair the damage that ahs been done let alone even slow down the destruction that continues. Some of them may provide some propaganda intended to indicate that they’re doing so but a close look indicates that this isn’t so. The Occupy Wall Street movement and the Green Party have both demonstrated that they’re much more sincere on this subject as I have previously indicated in my comments about Natural Born Killers of the Planet and my attempt to take a closer look at Jill Stein which clearly indicates that she is far more qualified than the candidates considered viable by the corporate media.

Four Ways to Support Re-Occupation

As the weather warms across much of the world, Occupiers are retaking public space. Even after we were violently removed from many of our home encampments last fall and winter, we never stoped organizing - and now we are back outside. With the rebirth of spring, re-occupation has begun in earnest.

For a full week, Wall Street - the original target of our indignation - has been #Occupied. Thanks in part to a 2000 decision by a federal court in Manhattan, protesters are legally allowed to sleep on the sidewalk, as long as they don't block building entrances or take up more than half of the sidewalk. Occupiers have used similar tactics to occupy sidewalks in cities like Tucson since last year, while Occupy D.C were among the first Occupiers to use sidewalk sleeping in front of banks earlier this month. Empowered by the federal court ruling, #SleepfulProtest first came to New York as a way to escape constant police harassment at Occupy Union Square and soon spread to the heart of the financial district. This new tactic allows us to rebuild the face-to-face community and constant public presence that were so crucial to the Occupation of Liberty Square, without the complex logistics of maintaining a permanent encampment. Our new Occupations are mobile, viral, and targeted right at the heart of the 1%'s power. …… Full article

Without support from as many people as possible the Occupy Wall Street will eventually fizzle like the Tea Party; I don’t expect this to happen but how much success it does have depends on how much support they receive from the public. One of the things that any movement needs is money however this should always come with accountability and in a grass roots movement I wouldn’t consider this as important as the contribution of time and ideas as well as any new ways to protest. One of the methods that I have been recommending is to stand up to planned obsolescence and deceptive advertising by not buying things that aren’t necessary and when it comes to necessities saving receipts and demanding accountability when products turn out to break down much sooner than they should; I have indicated in Loud complaint brings quick free replacements that simply by speaking out in front of other customers about the details of the fact that merchandise falls apart faster than it used to that it will encourage corporations to replace it fast before they interfere with the other customers and put them on notice that if they go to far consumers won’t be so complacent.

There is always more where this came from at the OWS web site; at least until we have a sincere reform effort and even then it will still be necessary for the public to continue to stay alert.

(For more information on Blog see Blog description and table of context for most older posts.)

The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

It's incredibly encouraging to see the Occupy movement waking up again. I love the idea of occupying sidewalks. There's something incredibly energizing about a large segment of the population that simply refuses to be sheep like the corporate elite wants them to.

Danny Weil wrote an excellent series of articles awhile back documenting some of the awful stuff Arne Duncan and Obama have done to the public schools. It was Weil who first widely reported the condition Obama imposed on states to qualify for school stimulus money - they had to pass legislation transferring more public school monies to charter schools.

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall April 21, 2012 02:14 AM

Stuart, agreed although the most important things should follow or accompany it; the public needs to be better educated about the issues and they need to control the system then it will no longer be necessary to sit on the sidewalk while those in power try to ignore them.

The people on the sidewalks should move into the legislature without forgetting where they came from.

zacherydtaylor April 21, 2012 09:26 AM

[r] this is inspiring, Zachd!!! thank you!!!!

the corporatization of schools is sub-basement evil. gutting teachers' pays and corporations trying to get federal money for education for their own aggrandizement at the expense of kids.

the advertising feature is nauseating. and the propaganda to be shoved out at the kids is outrageous.

The demonization of teachers, like the demonization of unions, like the demonization of single payer people as "socialists" (like the totally backward demonization of obama from the right that unfortunately doesn't even fit him) ... is so far out of hand. Titillating schandenfreude so nobody gets nuttin'. In some people's warped hearts better that everybody suffers including the nation's children. always believe the worst. and the media is so dirty and craven with all of this. change we don't and can't believe in.

I am heartened to hear OWS spirit once again! Thank you. I hope more and more people join in and have their backs.

best, libby

libbyliberalnyc April 23, 2012 02:46 AM

Libby, a lot of the demonization of Obama is unjustified and absurd, while the legitimate criticism of Obama is downplayed or ignored; this enables him to portray himself as the one that is standing up to the fanatics. However this won’t stand up if scrutiny which is ignored by the Mass Media, is applied; the fact that he supports Charter Schools and other methods to indoctrinate kids and that he’s taking a record breaking amount of money from the corporations should clearly indicate his lack of sincerity.

The growing protests by Occupy Wall Street, as well as other unrelated organizations is providing an indication that many people aren’t being fooled.

You may have noticed that the latest are a bunch of people in wheel chairs protesting cuts to Medicare and instead of allowing them to carry out their protests they arrested them; there were pictures of cops lining up to put handicapped people in handcuffs so that they can indirectly protest tax cuts for those that are looting the country.

zacherydtaylor April 24, 2012 09:27 AM

OWS: Medicare protests, Nurses, May Day, Bradley Manning etc

The May Day protests are about to pick up and they’re supposed to continue through the month of May. The government and the media have already indicated that if at all possible they’ll ignore them; for more information see Occupy Wall Street; however I’m starting with a protest that wasn’t affiliated with Occupy Wall Street but it still deserves attention. It is the protest that happened on Monday where dozens of people were arrested in Wheelchairs.

This is part of a semi-regular update of some of the latest stories from the Occupy Wall Street web page for additional details see previous post introduction to series.

89 arrested in Medicaid plan protest
Capitol Police arrested 89 disability rights protesters late Monday for occupying the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building in a demonstration against Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicaid plan, which they said would force people with disabilities to live in nursing homes rather than in their own homes.

The protesters were arrested on charges of unlawful conduct — demonstrating in a Capitol building, according to Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, a spokeswoman for the Capitol Police.

The charge is a misdemeanor offense, and most of the protesters probably will be released unless they have other outstanding offenses on their records, Schneider said. The arrested demonstrators were being processed in the Rayburn House Office Building.

The protesters were from the disability rights group ADAPT, which filled the Cannon rotunda early Monday afternoon and refused to leave. They were protesting the House-passed budget resolution, which would turn Medicaid into block grants and reduce the program’s spending by more than $700 billion over 10 years. full article

Se also “Seniors Join Occupy Chicago, Protest Cuts To Medicare, Social Security” at Huffington Post

The charges that they were arrested for technically are minor, “unlawful conduct,” but they shouldn’t have had to participate in conduct that would be considered unlawful at all. In nay sincere democracy they should have had just as much right to consult with their congressman as anyone else including campaign contributors but that isn’t the case. For all practical purposes the only people who have real access and influence are those that contribute an enormous amount of money to campaigns and they got to virtually, if not literally write the laws. The corporations and wealthy contributors are participating in an enormous amount of fraud and they often have the assistance of both the government and the Mass Media who refuse to cover it; then when money comes short they routinely cut funds, or increase the burden in other ways, to those that don’t contribute to campaigns.

If we had equal or somewhat equal access to participation in the democratic system this wouldn’t be illegal at all, nor would it be necessary.

There is a much larger segment of the population that oppose these cuts than those that support it but only the campaign contributors get their say.

This may not be technically a result of bribery but that is only because the people who accept the bribes thinly disguised as campaign contributions write an absurd definition of bribery that few if any other people would accept if it was scrutinized properly.

Bay Area Nurses Announce May 1st Walkout

4500 nurses in the San Francisco Bay Area will walk out of work on May 1st to protest more than a hundred cuts to health care services and RN standards planned -- despite massive profits -- by their hospital chain, Sutter Health. National Nurses United, which represents thousands of nurses with affiliates across the U.S., has long been an ally of Occupy Wall Street, even assisting with first aid at Liberty Square since October, 2011. NNU will also join occupiers and other allies in Chicago on May 18th for a massive march against austerity, war, and the global 1%....

…. Despite making over $4 billion in profits since 2007, and handing its chief executive Pat Fry a 215 percent pay hike to over $4 million a year, Sutter is demanding huge cuts for its RNs, many of which would pose risks to patient safety. Since the last strike in December, the corporate chain has refused to modify its massive call for cuts, and at several hospitals imposed reductions in standards for nurses and their families.

“As an RN at Sutter Delta Medical Center, I feel I need to go on strike for the safety of my patients,” said Sutter Delta RN Amy Black. “The medical center is attempting to take away sick leave, vacation time, and education time which effectively forces me to come to work sick, stressed, and not up to date on the latest advancements of my profession.” …. full article

A close look at the article will clearly indicate that the signs they’re carrying saying that “If nurses are outside something is wrong inside,” are fully justified! The current activities of those running the system are clearly indicating that they’re gouging people at a massive rate and putting lives on the lives so that a small number of people that don’t contribute much except the control that is corrupting the system can get away with grand larceny!

Break the Link Between Wall Street and Education: Abolish Student Debt!
April 25th, the total amount of student loan debt in the U.S. will top 1 trillion dollars. This marks a momentous victory for Wall Street—much to the despair of student loan debtors across the country. On this date, the profiteers on Wall Street will be popping champagne bottles, eating caviar, and sneering at the debt-burdened students and graduates who lug around this 1 trillion dollar ball and chain. full article

This protest has come and gone by now but there will be many more unless the government does a sudden about face and starts to respect the rights of its citizens; this is part of a complex system that artificially increases the price of education. Part of the way they do that is by using unnecessary copyright laws and many other tactics. Almost one hundred years ago Woodrow Wilson said "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." The way the system is currently being run clearly indicates that even though they’re much more cautious about making similar comments most of the time they clearly are continuing to use this ideology and covering it up with more complex propaganda.

Obama has made the headlines lately sounding relatively good about this issue compared to Mitt Romney and the Republicans but that is clearly only because they have become so extreme that they make Obama’s position seem good by comparison. In my previous blod I cited a couple articles I found, “Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?” and “The Corporatization of Public Education” that clearly indicate their true objective along with other low profile news stories about how Obama and his appointee Arne Duncan support charter schools at the expense of students and the quality of education. Arne Duncan has made a couple appearances on TV since then and he sounds quite rational, or at least he would have if I hadn’t heard of his agenda previously and made a point to listen carefully and think things through. On one occasion he responded to a question about the abolishment of public schools in favor of charter schools and he carefully avoiding providing a clear answer implying that this is only something the Romney camp supports; however even if he doesn’t support this he does support the dramatic increase of reliance on Charter Schools even thought they have clearly proven not to work. He also hedged when facing criticism about problems with Charter Schools implying it is only some of them that have problems; while the good ones should be increased; however the very principles of this concept is flawed. It introduces a profit motive that should never be there in the first place and it enables the corporations to increase their influence on the educational agenda which is already much too large.

May 1st Coalition: UNIONIZE, LEGALIZE, ORGANIZE

This May Day, Occupy Wall Street is rising up in solidarity with the immigrant rights movement. Years before #OWS, May Day was revitalized in the U.S. as a day of mass mobilization against the unjust, racist U.S. immigration system. On May Day 2006, the May 1st Coalition helped organize the largest protest in NYC history, bringing hundreds of thousands of people to the streets in a march stretching over 26 city blocks. This year, as we gather as a unified front for economic justice in a Day Without the 99%, they are leading the struggle to UNIONIZE, LEGALIZE, and ORGANIZE…. full article

The debate about illegal immigration has routinely ignored one extremely simple and basic fact; the fact that the crime that aliens are guilty of is, for all practical purposes, being born in the wrong location. This country is supposed to be the great defender of democracy which is supposed to defend the rights of all not just the privileged class born into the right families. The discussion about immigration clearly doesn’t even take this into consideration. Even if there are some practical reasons why they should have some regulation for this it should be kept to a minimum and they shouldn’t be using this as an excuse to maintain a class of second class citizens that can be used and abused for the benefit of the privileged class.

Kris Kobach, a Romney advisor, and Michael Hethmon are lead supporters of the growing draconian policies on immigration; and they have indicated that they do so partly if not entirely so that they don’t become a majority gaining as much power as white people, as indicated in the following quote from the Washington Post, ‘Immigration is “on track to change the demographic makeup of the entire country. You know, what they call ‘minority-majority,’ ” said Hethmon, who is general counsel at the Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute. “How many countries have gone through a transition like that — peacefully, carefully? It’s theoretically possible, but we don’t have any examples.”’ Self-deportation proponents Kris Kobach, Michael Hethmon facing time of trial

There has been little if any information that will stand up to scrutiny indicating how or why these illegal aliens might be a threat to the peace of the country; although there is an enormous amount of propaganda to back this up. The truth is that the US has had a large part in interfering with the democratic process in the countries that many of these people come from and in many cases they have been fleeing oppression that has often had the support of the US government and the government has been reluctant to admit it so the blame has been shifted to those without power. There are many sources to back this up; a couple of the most credible and well documented include “Deterring Democracy” By Noam Chomsky PDF and “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Kline. these are just a sample of the well sourced history of US action that is rarely mention by the traditional media although they do often confirm many aspects of it in a low profile and unorganized manner.
The truth is that the US has been making many decisions based more on propaganda than they do on the facts; and Barack Obama is no exception. He has actually deported more people than the previous administrations have, as indicated by several articles including US Supreme Court reviews Arizona immigration law and Supreme Court hints OK on Ariz. immigration law.

Barack Obama clearly isn’t much if any more reasonable on this issue or many others than Mitt Romney although his rhetoric often sounds better; however there are other candidates that are who don’t get much if any coverage from the Mass Media. One of those is Jill Stein who wrote the following:

Immigrants have long given vitality to America. Today's immigrants should not be discriminated against by those of us who are descended from immigrants, many of whom similarly, were undocumented or "illegal." I will resolve the current crisis in immigration while respecting human rights and economic justice. Undocumented immigrants will be offered a path to citizenship. I will repeal NAFTA, which undermined small farmers across Latin America and the U.S., deprived millions of their livelihoods, and made them economic refugees in search of work. Replacing NAFTA with a fair trade agreement is essential to solving the ongoing immigration crisis. Jill Stein at Project Vote Smart

Jill Stein hasn’t been covered as much as the so-called viable candidate but as I indicated when I took a closer look at Jill Stein I suspect that her positions are much more in line with the public and that she may have a much better chance than many people realize. If the Mass Media provided fair coverage to all eligible candidates then the public would be much more familiar with her; instead they only provide coverage for the candidates that they consider “viable;” which essentially means that they cover those that collect money from corporations and don’t challenge them on many of the most important issues. Fortunately there are a growing number of people that are learning how corrupt this is, thanks in part to the Occupy Wall Street movement and other protest organizations, and they’re much more inclined to find information on their own; others will be more inclined to do so if they learn more about people like Jill Stein.

Jill Stein has also taken a more sincere position on foreign policy than the establishment candidates including the arrest and trial of Bradley Manning as indicated when she wrote the following:

"My name is Jill Stein and I’m running with the Green Party for President of the United States. If elected, I will immediately pardon Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army soldier accused of leaking classified material to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks, while working as an intelligence analyst near Baghdad.

Many people know some of the highlights among the 3 million pages of leaked cables. Probably the most well-know is the horrifying so-called “Collateral Murder” video of the Apache helicopter attack on Reuters journalists and then on the civilians, including the children in that van, who tried to take the wounded away for treatment.

Another revelation concerned a military night raid that killed six children, followed by a U.S. air strike to destroy the evidence and cover up the atrocity.

The overall impact of the leaked information has been huge, leading indirectly to the recent withdrawal of the U.S. military from Iraq much sooner than our government intended. That’s because these revelations compelled the Maliki government in Iraq to refuse to extend criminal immunity to U.S. soldiers. It contributed to the turn of American public opinion to overwhelmingly oppose the war in Afghanistan. And it added momentum to the Arab Spring uprisings against dictatorial U.S.-backed regimes.

The war criminals whom these Wikileaks cables exposed have suffered no consequences. The only one who is suffering consequences is Bradley Manning, the one who is accused of exposing the crimes.

Whistleblowers are indispensable for democracy. They enable the people to defend themselves against government malfeasance and tyranny. Those U.S. cables released to Wikileaks contained more information on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries than all the media organizations in the world combined have been able to unearth. And they are all too filled with malfeasance, tyranny and war crimes.

So it may be that Bradley Manning was actually doing his duty, since he swore in his Oath of Enlistment to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” It is, after all, the duty of every citizen to bring their government to account when it violates the Constitution and the law, including especially laws against war crimes…. full article

Contrary to the propaganda that has been presented to the American public Bradley Manning hasn’t endangered the lives of Americans soldier; instead he may have revealed information that exposed the fact that we have been fighting wars based on lies and help increase opposition to a war and end it earlier; which would actually save lives. This has been compared to the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers which also helped bring the Vietnam war to an end; in that case the war was clearly based entirely on lies and contrary to the claim that we were defending democracy the US was actually suppressing the leaders that had much more popular support among the Vietnamese people than the generals the US was propping up who were suppressing the rights of their own people. In both cases the whistle blowers weren’t the threat the lives they were threats to corrupt people in power.

Unlike the “viable” candidates Jill Stein and other independent candidates aren’t beholden to the multi-national corporations who donated an enormous amount of money and expect a return on that money which will come at the expense of the vast majority of the public one way or another. The corporate media and the political establishment would like us to believe that we’re throwing away our votes unless we choose candidates that we have reason to know will not do what we want; but the opposite is actually true; we’re throwing away our vote if we accept their lies and vote for those who have been corrupted based on the say so of the pundits.

(For more information on Blog see Blog description and table of context for most older posts.)

The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

Rated. So much here... Oh, those student loans? Much like the mortgage interest write-off that made owning a home such a "good deal" (you get to write off a fraction of the interest, then get to pay an amount equal to the cost of the home to a bank) it would seem that those whom it truly intended to benefit, win again.

Samasiam April 27, 2012 02:40 PM

Great post. It's extremely encouraging to see so many Americans protesting the federal government's dreadful agenda.

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall April 28, 2012 04:08 AM

Sam, the high cost of tuition is rigged in more ways than one; copyrights is just the beginning of what they do that could be done more efficiently and without price gouging. It would take a much longer post to review and detail all the methods they use to rig it.

Doc, Torritto, agreed, the progress that has been made in the past has always been spurred at the grass roots level before the politicians came in and took credit for the work done by the people.

zacherydtaylor April 28, 2012 09:26 AM

OWS: May Day, college education, Charter Schools, propaganda

Occupy Wall Street has begun their May Day Protests in New York and around the wo

Breaking News: Obama has made a surprise visit to Afghanistan!

We interrupt this Blog post to inform you that President has conducted a surprise visit to Afghanistan and the corporate media has provided obsession coverage of it on the day that the Occupy Wall Street protests were set to begin. There has been no discussion on whether or not this was done to intentionally overshadow the protests and there is no solid evidence to indicate that this is a possibility; however intentionally or not this is exactly what has happened. The corporate media has relegated the protests to a small side story if it is mentioned at all while they spend an enormous amount of time on Obama’s visit and the speech that he made Tuesday evening.

During his speech Barack Obama said, “As President, nothing is more wrenching than signing a letter to a family of the fallen, or looking in the eyes of a child who will grow up without a mother or father.” Transcript He didn’t say whether or not this mattered only for the children of American soldiers that died during wars that were based on lies or also to foreign children including the thousands of children that were killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere that have received little or no acknowledgement from the US government including the one below.

The source cited for the story was a Washington Post article “Bush Estimates Iraqi Death Toll in War at 30,000” which is no longer available at the Washington Post web site for one reason or another; if you go to the page that is linked in the picture you will find that the source it cites is a dead link. In order to present the article to you I had to find it elsewhere and repost in under the fair use policy of copyright laws which shouldn’t be a problem for educational material that is important to making decisions about participating in a democratic system. However these things are routinely taken down; and I don’t know whether this is more likely when it comes to material that may be inconvenient to the political and business establishment.

Regardless of why this isn’t available on line it makes it much harder for many people to find material if they don’t know where to look although this could easily be confirmed at any good library. This is just a small example of how much more difficult the corporate media makes it for most of us to research important subjects when this information is readily available to many people with the proper access in data bases that aren’t available to the general public.

This particular incident happened on George W Bush’s watch but Obama has been carrying on the same military agenda and has declined to investigate anything more than necessary to appease the public. There continues to be no review of the policies that lead up to this war on terror including the fact that George HW Bush could have spoken up loud and clear a week before Iraq invaded Kuwait and made an enormous difference possibly avoiding the first invasion which led to the presence in Saudi Arabia that enraged Osama bin Laden and contributed to the circumstances that led to 9/11. There continues to be no effort to stop the non-stop state of war and the amount of collateral damage continues under his watch in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other areas including the much lower profile reporting of “the drone strikes [that] sometimes kill innocent people.” they claim that these are “exceedingly rare;” however they total three hundred according to the official tally which is about thirteen percent of the people killed in the drone strikes and it is presumably a small fraction of the total number of civilians killed by collateral damage. Furthermore even the “guilty” people don’t receive trials anymore and the circumstances continue to receive minimal investigation.

Furthermore I don’t mean to imply that the lives of the soldiers that they send to fight in foreign countries shouldn’t be disregarded; however the best way to do this involves simply not sending them in the first place. Many details may be more complicated than that but some of those can be summed up quickly.

Instead of maintaining a massive class divide they can provide more jobs by bringing back the factories they shut down. This will save money even though they will have to pay the workers more because they will no longer have shipping costs, subcontractor costs and they can do much more direct marketing; additional savings can be achieved by cutting the advertising budgets that are mainly professional lies and the lobbying and campaign contributions which are virtual, if not literal, bribes.

They can also reduce the cost of education dramatically by reforming the draconian copyright laws which drive the cost of education through the roof and they can reduce the reliance on income from gambling which is an extremely inefficient way of collecting revenue.

If they do these things, and more relatively simple and easy to understand things, then the poor will have more opportunities and won’t need to rely on the military for a career. They would also reduce their foreign involvement by abstaining from inciting hatred through collateral damage and there will be much less need for sincere defense activities and there will be no need to use boot camp tactics to indoctrinate troops.

Barrack Obama has also been walking a fine line on the recent incident about Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng who recently escaped in China. He seems to be attempting to portray himself as a defender of human rights and attempting to maintain good relationships with China, presumably so that the corporations that donate to his campaign can continue to profit from the sweatshop labor in China and this puts Obama in a bind. Due to the fact that Mitt Romney isn’t in power yet and he knows that he can etch a sketch before he gets into power he has called for Obama to Protect Chen Guangcheng.

However this is all besides the point which is that you shouldn’t allow the Occupy Wall Street protesters to draw your attention; nor should you consider any candidate for political office that hasn’t been approved by the corporations and their mass media!

We now return to our regularly scheduled blog already in progress.

This is part of a semi-regular update of some of the latest stories from the Occupy Wall Street web page for additional details see previous post introduction to series.

Ahem, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, Occupy Wall Street has begun their May Day Protests in New York and around the world. The following are just a small sample of the related stories:

Legalize! Organize! Unionize!
We want to be heard! We need to be heard! We will be heard!
We are here to celebrate May Day. We are here to celebrate our power as people who have found unity of purpose. Today we assert our power as working people. We declare our solidarity with all people of the world. We affirm our rights to economic security, to meaningful work, to health care, to public services, to safe and healthy communities, to free, quality public education from pre-K to college, and to civil liberties. Today, we stand in solidarity with all who take popular action to secure such rights, as we begin to form genuine alliances that challenge a system that breeds inequality. full article

The Struggle Continues! May 2nd Brooklyn College Education Convergence

Another University is Possible. Today, May 2nd, students from across NYC will be joining together at the Brooklyn College Campus to take back our future from the 1%. Hundreds of students will be staging a continuation of May Day and the Free University by taking over the Quad at Brooklyn College with teach-ins, political theater, food, music, and events to show an alternative university. While subsidies, tax breaks, and corporate loopholes continue to exist allowing banks and corporations to make record profits, slashes to education have resulted in students paying more and more in CUNY while receiving less and less. full article

One of the biggest problems with the education system especially college education is the use of copyright laws to control the distribution of educational knowledge which they refer to as “intellectual property.” This creates an enormous bureaucracy that spends more trying to restrict access to educational material than it does trying to provide it. This has overwhelmingly proven to be an extremely inefficient way of financing research and often does the opposite. A recent Globe article about Harvard University has indicated what some people are trying to do to solve this problem over the objections of those that want to strictly control access to education and make large profits from it.

Harvard panel pushes benefits of free journals 
 
Harvard may be the world’s wealthiest university, but fees for its academic journal subscriptions have gotten so steep - some as much as $40,000 a year - that an advisory council is encouraging faculty to submit their work to “open access’’ online journals that are available for free.
The council also asked Harvard faculty to consider resigning from the editorial boards of the high-priced subscription publications and to urge professional associations to “take control’’ of scholarly literature in their fields.

In a memo sent to faculty last week, the council called the rising prices of journals, which connect researchers with cutting-edge ideas and findings, “untenable,’’ “fiscally unsustainable,’’ and “academically restrictive.’’ It is a sentiment being aired by scholars and universities around the world as academic libraries struggle with rising costs.

“The escalation is simply spectacular and it’s inflicting serious damage,’’ said Robert Darnton, a university professor and chairman of the council. The memo states that in 2010, a fifth of the library’s entire expenditures on subscriptions went to certain unnamed publishers that bundle together journals and raise prices. This year, the memo said, the library is spending about $3.75 million on journals from just those publishers…. full article at Boston Globe

This is also driving up costs for information that the public need to participate in the democratic process including the ability for corporations to use their copyrights to withdraw news stories or make them harder to find when it suits their purposes and put more emphasis on the stories that advance their agenda while the majority have a much tougher time doing research. And on top of that the efforts to corporatize schools is continuing in Philadelphia as indicated in the following report from the Black Agenda:

Why Isn't Closing 40 Philadelphia Public Schools National News? Where Is the Black Political Class?

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

If some racist made an inappropriate remark about the First Lady or her children our national "civil rights leaders" Obama fans all of them, would be all over that. But standing up for ordinary black children is something our leaders just don't do much any more. When was the last time you heard Sharpton, Jealous or any of that tribe inveigh against school closings and the creeping privatization of our schools?

In what should be the biggest story of the week, the city of Philadelphia's school system announced Tuesday that it expects to close 40 public schools next year and 64 by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40% of current enrollment to charter schools, the streets or wherever, and put thousands of experienced, well qualified teachers, often grounded in the communities where they teach, on the street. full article at the Black Agenda Report

Or for more information about other stories go to their home page at Black Agenda Report

This is actually an old story as well; in 2001 there was a major protest and walk out that led to the scaling back of attempts to increase charter schools, at least temporarily.

Students protest privatization of Philadelphia schools 
 
On Nov. 29 hundreds of students walked out of Philadelphia high schools and took to the streets to protest a looming state takeover of the city's school district. The action was organized by the Philadelphia Student Union and Youth United for Change.

The students later formed a human chain around the school administration building to protest plans to allow Edison Schools, Inc., to privatize some of the city's schools.

"We're fighting for our rights," one high school senior told reporters. "We're fighting for our future."
Angry students extended their protest by camping overnight outside Mayor John Street's office. They refused to leave City Hall until they had won a demand for a meeting with the mayor, where they laid out their own ideas about how to run the schools….. full article at Workers World
For update from 5/2/2012 see “Fight to save Philadelphia schools” at Workers World

For additional details on this story and a follow up one year later see Quietly, battle over private management of schools rages on PDF at Philadelphia Schools Notebook

After the first walk out they scaled back on the efforts to privatize their education and elected a democratic governor, Ed Rendell, who didn’t try to fix more than he had to in order to appease the public, as far as I can tell. He also did what he could to increase the reliance on revenue from gambling which targets the poor and those least able to pay for it and adds many more social problems than it solves. Then power was handed right back to the Republicans where they continue their efforts to try to take over the schools for the benefit of the corporations. If it suite their purposes they may have the Democrats come in and pretend to save the day again. This was mentioned by Ed Schultz last night who criticized Governor Tom Corbett for supporting charter schools but failed to mention the fact that president barrack Obama is also doing what he can to advance the use of charter schools.

Clearly they have no intention of allowing the lower classes obtain quality education without allowing the upper classes control it, presumably to ensure that it fits their ideology, and profit from it.

Unless of course the ninety-nine percent stand up to both the Republicans who don’t bother pretending to represent the people anymore and the Democrats who do pretend to represent the public.

(For more information on Blog see Blog description and table of context for most older posts.)

The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

“presumably so that the corporations that donate to his campaign can continue to profit from the sweatshop labor in China”

Made me laugh but do not underestimate Afghanistan Zachary. Recently I have become somewhat of an expert on the history of the Pashtun. And I have to say there is more going on in Afghanistan than meets the eye.

We don’t really need to know what's in the Harvard Journal, I would rather read OS. What we need to do is take the inordinate amount of political power the Alumni of Harvard and its ilk wield. Forty thousand a year is about the equivalent for the elitists of what you and I would spend on a subscription of Newsweek.

The government works on the assumption that if you just smile and nod at the Black man everything will be just fine. But I think they are in for a rude awakening. I know a lot of Black people and I can tell you the Obama “throw the dog a bone thing” is no longer working.

Jack Heart May 03, 2012 01:15 PM

Jack, I still think Afghanistan deserves attention but don't trust the way they're handling it.

The Harvard journal is just an example although I suspect that they do have something worthwhile to say. The bigger point is that we need to have more open source material of all sorts and we need to find a way to get the incentives to those that do the work, not those that control the system. Thanks

zacherydtaylor May 03, 2012 01:38 PM

Thanks for taking on the job the corporate media is neglecting - reporting news of importance to ordinary Americans, rather than the Dow Jones average.

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall May 04, 2012 02:11 AM

Stuart, no problem. This would be a lot easier if my corporate sponsors were up to date on the payments for their ads on my site; I don't remember the last time I saw a dime from them.

zacherydtaylor May 04, 2012 09:39 AM

OWS: War alternatives, Anarchy propaganda, The Black Agenda

Occupy Wall Street is continuing their protest while the Mass Media sleeps or focuses on the obsession du jour. As some of you may have noticed if you’ve been reading regularly, I haven’t been limiting these stories to ones from OWS, nor do I feel that I should. There are many other grass roots organizations with a common cause fighting for the best interest of the public and I have recently found a web page that seems to be well above par as far as I can see, this is “the Black Agenda” and I think they’re worth a closer look so I included several of their stories.

This is part of a semi-regular update of some of the latest stories from the Occupy Wall Street web page for additional details see previous post’s introduction to series. 

Here are some of the stories from both OWS and TBA that don’t fit the agenda of the Mass Media:

The People's Summit: Alternatives to War & Poverty

NATO war makers are preparing to meet in Chicago on May 20-21 following the meeting of the G8 heads of state behind the fortified walls of Camp David.

By contrast, the People's Summit invites community groups, labor unions, anti-racist organizers, Occupy activists, environmentalists, faith leaders, immigrant rights activists and anyone else committed to social justice to a grassroots, bottom-up forum of, by and for the 99 percent.

There will be large plenary sessions as well as more than 40 workshops that will provide everyone the opportunity to engage in a dialogue about the many pressing issues facing our world today. Full article

The political establishment doesn’t seem to think any problems can be solved unless it involves either making an enormous profit for the most well connected people in society or killing people that disagree, with them with the appropriate propaganda to justify it of course. This may be an obvious exaggeration but it isn’t nearly as much of an exaggeration as most of us would wish. Many people have tried to provide an enormous amount of better ideas to many of our problems; however whenever they contradict the fiscal ideology of those in power they’re routinely relegated to the fringes or the academic world without many if any opportunities to get their message across to the majority of the public. I’m not the only one that has attempted to address these problems, however I cite my own blogs, many of which are now listed on the left of the screen, since they’re the ones I’m most familiar with and they do include many other sources with better credentials than me.

Occupy Wall Street's anarchist roots

Almost every time I'm interviewed by a mainstream journalist about Occupy Wall Street I get some variation of the same lecture:

"How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what's with all this anarchist nonsense - the consensus, the sparkly fingers? Don't you realize all this radical language is going to alienate people? You're never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!"

If one were compiling a scrapbook of worst advice ever given, this sort of thing might well merit an honourable place. After all, since the financial crash of 2007, there have been dozens of attempts to kick-off a national movement against the depredations of the United States' financial elites taking the approach such journalists recommended. All failed. It was only on August 2, when a small group of anarchists and other anti-authoritarians showed up at a meeting called by one such group and effectively wooed everyone away from the planned march and rally to create a genuine democratic assembly, on basically anarchist principles, that the stage was set for a movement that Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa were willing to embrace. Full article

This is a common problem thanks to the enormous amount of propaganda that has been drilled into the heads of the public for many years and it doesn’t just apply to the misrepresentation of Anarchy. The current establishment uses the same tactics to define many other ideologies including their own. Most if not all ideologies are quite complex when you get into the details of them and they often require some degree of flexibility if people are going to avoid turning it into a cult ideology that is controlled by the leaders and contradictory beliefs are handed out to the followers depending on the circumstances. When it comes to the beliefs that they present for themselves they of course focus on the best aspects even if they don’t stand up to scrutiny; and of course when it comes to the beliefs of their opposition they focus on the worst and often distort them. When checking with the source I have often found that the people of any given belief system out of power don’t actually adopt the version as defined by the establishment. Anarchism is no exception; I first encountered several statements from Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky and later found some material the Anarchist themselves who write at Anarchist Writers and found that they were nothing like their portrayed. In fact while checking this site as I write I find they have an article near the top of their front page about The Age of Empathy; this isn’t unusual and at many other times they have been involved in non-violent protest against war while the so-called civilized establishment has been promoting war and down playing “collateral damage,” with lame justification.

Furthermore when it comes to gathering a list of demands from all the people and speaking for common beliefs, this is no easy task. It takes a lot of effort to enable people to speak for themselves and it is also necessary to make the appropriate education and information available to them so that they have the resources to develop rational beliefs. This takes time and effort. The representatives of the establishment routinely claim to speak for the people but they skip this step and routinely misrepresent the will of the people.

As I have been saying in several posts I don’t think that we should limit our choices for political office to those that the corporate media present to us. There are many candidates at the local level that could and should deserve a closer look in many areas and I advise you to check your own area to see if some are running and take a close look or when it comes to the presidential election Project Vote Smart has a full list of candidates that receive little or no attention from the Mass Media. I still haven’t had a chance to look at them all but when I took a closer look at Jill Stein it was clear that she is much better than either of the two candidates that the corporate media have presented to the public based on the fact that they collected the appropriate volume of bribes thinly disguised as campaign contributions to make them “viable.” At least a couple of the authors at the Black Agenda have come to the same conclusion and if enough people follow through with this belief then the corporate media will no longer have veto power over who we can consider for president.

Not Voting for Obama: We're Not Even Buying a Voting Ticket to the Show

by Ezili Dantò

The author supported Obama in 2008, for the sake of Haiti, the U.S. and the world. But no more. “Under the Obama tenure, indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens is lawful in the land of the free and the brave and Haitians are saddled with George Bush and Bill Clinton.” When a duopoly rules, voting is a sham. “Susan Rice takes over the role Colin Powell played for the Bushes while Cheryl Mills is out there pushing the Duvalierist agenda in Haiti previously championed by Bill Clinton's commerce secretary, the late Ron Brown.”

We supported a vote for Obama in 2008 for both pragmatic and idealistic reasons. But more so because eight-years of Bush and the application of the Wall Street de-regulation excesses left under from Bill Clinton and others had reached a crescendo point that was shockingly, brutally horrible and demoralizing for the entire world. But we also campaigned and urged a vote for Obama, despite his apparent selection by one-percenter forces, because the symbolic victory and metaphoric narrative of "The Whitehouse: From Sally Heming to Michel Obama" was a powerful and compelling vision we wished to participate in and bring to reality for the human race. (That sentiment was expressed in this essay: I Don't Know this America...But I'm Most Happy to Meet It.) Full article

Does the Black Political Class Actually Protect or Defend Black People? If Not, What Do They Do? 
 
By Bruce Dixon

Do the black political class, our preachers, leading business people, and thousands of appointed and elected officials actually do us much good? Do they protect or defend us? Do they carry our wishes and will to the seats of power. Or do they just “represent” us by merely being there doing the bidding of corporate funders?

Let's take a trip to an imaginary black America, a place in which black leaders regularly stood on their hind legs to safeguard and protect the interest of their constituents against greedy banksters and institutional racism in the job, credit and housing markets. It's a pretend world where African American politicians are busily engaged in building and expanding opportunity for all, and leading the fight for peace, jobs, justice, and quality education and participatory democracy. It's a mythical place where prominent blacks in the business world too, work to create good jobs and stable communities and provide key support to the civic organizations engaged in this work as well. Full article

Ezili Dantò may be skeptical about the chances we have to beat an entrenched system but with the enormous amount of protest that have been going on there may be a lot of people that are waking up and if the join forces behind one candidate then they may have a chance. In the long run we should develop Instant Run-Off Elections but if there is any chance that we can get a sincere president like Jill Stein in office it is worth a try and it would be better than throwing away votes for candidates that have already indicated that they intend to sell everyone out.

If enough people are not dumb enough to fall for it anymore then it won’t work anymore!!

We have more stories for you but first a word from our sponsor; who happens to be more than ninety days past due on their payments but their reputable so I’m sure they’re good for it.

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Caller: Oh, um, all right; I guess you’re also a business and in addition to making money for me you also have to make money for yourself; so I’m wondering how you can do that if you have to pay all that money for advertising as well as commissions and overhead. Doesn’t that create a potential conflict of interest?

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Caller: How rude; I guess I’ll just go else where!

Charters Have Nothing to do With Community Control of Schools

by Glen Ford

Charter school advocates are among the biggest scam artists in politics. They use the language of community control to transfer public assets into private hands. “Promoters of 'trigger laws' have only one use for parents: to pull the trigger on a school so that it can be converted to, or make room for, a charter school operated by the private sector.” Have mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rahm Emanuel, both bullies for charter schools, ever supported community control?

The so-called “parent trigger” law is the newest weapon in the arsenal of the school privatizers and their billionaire backers. The law was passed in California in 2010, and versions of it have been enacted in several other states. The California law allows a majority of parents to pull the “trigger” on their local school and take it out of control of the school district. It’s only been used against two elementary schools: first in Compton, then in the town of Adelanto. In both cases, the process dissolved in acrimony and bitterness, with many parents claiming they had been bulldozed into signing petitions. Full article

The core principles for Charter Schools should raise some doubts; these are private organizations that are interested in making a profit which isn’t involved in public schools and they do little if anything to raise additional money for schools unless it comes at an enormous cost that often falls on those least able to pay. There has been no sincere explanation as to how they can improve the quality of education by adding the profit expense which provides an incentive for those running the schools to cut expenses which could reduce the quality of education; furthermore they have already demonstrated that they’ve been using this as a method to promote corporate ideology. Another couple of articles article by Jitu Brown, Eric (Rico) Gutstein, and Pauline Lipman and Andy Kroll “Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?” and “The Corporatization of Public Education” reinforce the one by Glen Ford and I have done by own review of Roy Fox’s book “Harvesting Minds” about Channel One which explains how much damage advertising has been doing to schools and the fact that they’re enabling corporations to influence the “educational” material given to kids that often avoids criticism of corporations.

Private Prison Corporations Are Slave Traders

by Glen Ford

Crime has been going down for nearly a generation, and the states have finally put the brakes on prison growth in response to the fiscal crunch. But Wall Street prison profiteers see the crisis as an opportunity. The Corrections Corporation of America has offered to buy nearly all the nation’s state prisons. “To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full.”

The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, this month sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner. Full article

The privatization of prisons should raise some major questions about the incentive to actually do a good job rehabilitating prisoners. Private industries are motivated by maximizing profit and they generally want their businesses to grow; which means that they have a disincentive to actually do a good job rehabilitating inmates! We already have a big enough problem with those running public prisons ignoring the best academic research to indicate what the most effective ways to rehabilitate people are; this is primarily due to the get tough policies of the politicians that appoint the people that run the prisons and it is virtually guaranteed that the privatization of them will only make it worse.

If Private Prisons are allowed to continue to expand they’re guaranteed to backfire; they’re among the most blatant examples of crime profiteering there is. In order for them to maximize their profits they need to ensure that the problems with crime aren’t solved!

On another not about the Black Agenda, which shouldn’t need to be addressed at all, as far as I can see they’re not promoting “radical” ideas that would threaten us nor do they appear to be promoting violence or revolution. However the reason I mention this is that it is virtually guaranteed that the right wing will attempt to stereo type them if they think they can get away with it; this ahs been the way they’ve operated on many other occasion. If more people take a close look at them I suspect they’ll find this isn’t the case at all; quite the contrary they seem to have much more rational views than those in power from what I’ve seen from them so far and they deserve a closer look.

And a final note on a campaign event with grass roots support that isn’t considered worthy by the corporations but if the rest of us want an alternative we might not want to let them screen our choices

Chicago: Join Dr. Stein's Green Surge!
This is your call to action: The leaders of most of the world's most powerful nations are meeting in Chicago. Their vision is of a world dependent on fossil fuels, a global labor market based on low wages and high unemployment, and a global political system that uses war to maintain order. additional information

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