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A Deeper Examination of the Sheer Joy of Oklahoma Students Chanting About Hanging N*gg*rs from Trees

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By Shaun King/ Daily Kos

Money, during a bad economy, doesn’t actually disappear, it just moves around into different hands and different accounts. If a whole segment of America all of a sudden doesn’t have money because of shifts in the economy, it just means that it has shifted to another group, but please understand—that money still exists—just not in your wallet.

Racism is like money. It changes hands. It shape-shifts and finds itself a new carrier, a new account, a new way to express itself in changing times, but it never actually disappears. Suppressed racism is no less real than money in a savings account, but rest assured, suppressed racism always has a way of telling on itself—sometimes in the most despicable, hurtful, and shocking ways.

Before I dig into why a group of white University of Oklahoma college students from the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, clad in tuxedos and ball gowns, so giddily chanted about “hanging n*gg*rs from trees” let me clear—racism is dangerous. It’s not funny. It’s not just words. It’s not kids being kids. It’s not playful. This is shit is real and it’s dangerous.   [Read more…]

5 Takeaways After Watching ‘The Hunting Ground,’ the New Documentary on Campus Sexual Violence

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By Sandra S. Park / ACLU Blog of Rights

Agonizing. Enraging. Inspiring. These are a few words that came to mind after watching “The Hunting Ground,” a new documentary on campus sexual violence that opened this past weekend.

Like “The Invisible War,” the Oscar-nominated documentary on military sexual violence also created by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, “The Hunting Ground” makes the case that there are systemic problems at colleges and universities to addressing sexual assault that must and can be confronted, right now.

As public debate continues on how we can best respond to campus sexual violence, the film makes an important contribution by highlighting the voices of survivors, their parents, and university staff in rallying together to become advocates.   [Read more…]

A Call to Action on the Labor Crisis in Higher Ed: Colleges Are Running On the Backs of Underpaid Part-Timers

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February 25th is National Adjunct Walkout Day

By Jim Miller

As I have noted here recently, the successful assault on public sector unionism has marched hand in hand with the surge of income inequality and the erosion of the American middle class. Of course, central to this is the ongoing war on teachers’ unions and the nationwide trend toward austerity budgets in state capitols across the country.

In the world of higher education, what this means is that as we have seen taxes go down for the wealthy and corporations over the last thirty years, budgets for education from K-12 to the university have suffered.

And while the growing student debt crisis has received significant attention, far fewer people are probably aware that in addition to gouging students, colleges across the country are increasingly relying on an exploited army of highly educated part-time teachers in the classroom to help keep their budgets in line.
  [Read more…]

‘Black Girls Matter’: Report Exposes System Oppression of Often-Ignored Groups

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Girls of color routinely punished by institutions and ignored by school-to-prison pipeline reformers, report finds

By Nadia Prupis /Common Dreams

Girls of color regularly face harsher school punishments than their white counterparts, while simultaneously being ignored by legislative and community efforts to close the school-to-prison pipeline, despite the proven negative impacts of zero-tolerance discipline which exposes minority girls to expulsion, violence, and arrest, a new study released Wednesday has found.

Punitive disciplinary policies “negatively impact Black girls and other girls of color. Yet much of the existing research literature excludes girls from the analysis, leading many stakeholders to infer that girls of color are not also at risk,” according to the report, titled Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected.   [Read more…]

The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights: Three Women Who Worked at Neighborhood House and Became Part of the Community

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Miss Gertrude Peifer, Mrs. Wilfreda Brackett and Miss Julie McClure

By Maria E Garcia

Last week I wrote about three women who shaped the direction of Neighborhood House from the 1920’s to World War II. The leadership of Mary Snyder, Rebecca Halley and Anita Jones reflected the influence of the newly recognized profession of social work and the progressive era’s spirit of social reform.

There are three more women during the same time period and into the early 1950’s who deserve recognition for their contributions to Neighborhood House and the Logan Heights community.   [Read more…]

Community Planning Boards Have Democratic Elections Because of One Group From Ocean Beach

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The Ocean Beach Community Planning Group Was the Forerunner to OB’s Planning Board

By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag

On March 10, the Ocean Beach Planning Board will hold its annual election of Board members. It will take place at the OB Rec Center. Every resident, property owner and business-owner in Ocean Beach is authorized to vote – with ID proving residency.

One of the main reasons that this election is going forward in March – as it has been for the last 39 years – is because of the vision and diligence of a small group that existed back in the 1970s. It was the persistent push over a several-year period during the mid-70s for an election of this nature – a democratic election – to a neighborhood planning committee by an organization called the Ocean Beach Community Planning Group that was ultimately responsible for this democratic gain for communities.   [Read more…]

Kidnapped Student Teachers in México: An Inside Perspective

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By Luis Villanueva Rodríguez / Draft NOtices

For many, the September killings of three and disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in the Méxican state of Guerrero has been profoundly painful and tragic. My feelings of outrage and despair are also deep because I was educated in one of Ayotzinapa’s sister schools.

What many do not realize is that this crime was perpetrated by the Méxican government against students who had important social justice concerns and who were soon to become activist teachers. These rural teachers’ colleges are known for their progressive beliefs.

I have always understood my role as a social justice teacher and community advocate because of my education at these schools. There are important political and historical aspects to the recent events that most people outside of México are not aware of.   [Read more…]

The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights: Social Workers and the Progressive Era Spirit of Reform

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Mary Snyder, Rebecca Halley and Anita Jones, the early years

By Maria E. Garcia

Women had a great deal of influence and contributed to the work at Neighborhood House. A number of them did so as members of the newly recognized profession of social work. Settlement Houses originated in England and by the 1880’s they had become established in the United States. Neighborhood House came into being as part of the settlement house movement.

Settlement houses were usually established in poor urban areas and provided a variety of services to the community. Those services included cooking classes, adult education, craft and sewing classes. They also did crisis intervention and provided home health care and daycare for working mothers. The settlement house movement evolved in parallel with the social worker movement in this country. Both were unique agents of social reform during the Progressive Era from 1890-1920.   [Read more…]

Show’s Not Over at Che Cafe at UCSD – Its Fate Likely Rests on Students

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By Andrea Carter

The struggle continues to keep the historic CHE Café facility open on the University of California San Diego (UCSD) campus. This battle over a rare public, all-ages arts, food, and music venue should concern us all as it represents the canary in the coal mine for additional onslaughts of this nature to follow.

Undergraduate and graduate student government councils, respectively the Associated Students (AS) and the Graduate Student Association (GSA) are set to soon issue reports and recommendations to the University as to the CHE Café, its facility and the other cooperatives at UCSD concerning the lease issues, upgrades and dispute resolution. Recently, the councils moved in favor of adopting a joint resolution rather than two independent ones. In the coming weeks then the councils will be synthesizing their input and accepting more from students on these issues as well as from the CHE and other cooperatives.   [Read more…]

What Republicans Don’t Want Us To Know About America’s ‘Failing’ Schools (VIDEO)

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By Elisabeth Parker / Addicting Info

Every three years, 15-year-old students around the world take a test called the PISA, and every three years Republicans and neoliberals see our kids’ scores and scream about America’s “failing” schools. Since the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last held the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests in 2012, we’re due to hear that high-pitched shrieking sound in (countdown) 10, 9, 8…

The problem with our “failing” schools? Republicans love ranting about overpaid teachers who don’t work hard enough and need to be “held accountable;” lazy welfare parents who don’t care about their children’s education; and high levels of per-student spending that yield poor results.   [Read more…]

5 Facts About Charter Schools the ‘National School Choice Week’ Campaign Doesn’t Talk About

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It’s nothing more than a slick ad campaign, disguised as public service

By Laurie Levy / Alternet

Wow! Check out the fancy website for National School Choice Week. It’s polished, it’s colorful; it features kids of all races with bright smiling faces. They even have their own dance! The videos are tearjerkers, reminiscent, in emotional value, of the highly touted documentary film, Waiting for Superman, which propelled school choice advocates into the national conversation back in 2010.

I must confess that when I first watched that movie, seeing the tears of kids who lost the charter lottery and were doomed to attend terrible public schools hit me right in the gut. It struck me as so unfair that they’d have to miss out on… hold on a second. Something didn’t feel quite right. Was I being manipulated? Why did those kids and their parents have to gather in an auditorium to be publicly devastated by not being selected for their choice school, anyway? Wouldn’t a letter or email have done the trick?   [Read more…]

University of California Doctors Call One Day Strike

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By Doug Porter

Physicians at all 10 University of California student health centers will hold a one-day unfair labor practices strike on Tuesday.

They gave notice to the UC system on Friday, following the failure of 41 bargaining sessions over a year’s time to gain an initial contract for The Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD). Over 90% of the student health doctors voted in favor of striking in meetings during December.

The union has filed Unfair Labor Practice charges with the  California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) saying the universities are failing to negotiate in good faith. In one instance cited, the UC administration increased pension contributions without negotiating over the issue.   [Read more…]

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