When the city of Pontiac, Michigan, shut down its fire department last Christmas Eve, city councilman Kermit Williams learned about it in the morning paper. "Nobody reports to me anymore," Williams says. "It just gets reported in the press." This was just the latest in a series of radical changes in the city, where elected officials such as Williams have been replaced by a single person with unprecedented control over the city's operation and budget.
Wisconsin's public school open enrollment period begins Monday, and for the first time, families will have three months to decide whether and where to enroll their students outside of their home school district.
For the Madison School District, the extra time could mean more families choosing to leave for other districts or virtual schools, though Superintendent Dan Nerad said it's too early to know what the affect will be.
"By the nature that there's an open window, that's likely to happen for us as well as other districts around the state," Nerad said.
WASHINGTON — Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.
All will march to Jean Klock Park to
protest Harbor Shores and Whirlpool's
hostile takeover of the city.
Everyone is invited. For info contact
Rev. Edward Pinkney, 269-925-0001, banco9342@sbcglobal.net
Background: Benton Harbor, Michigan, is the center of a fightback against corporate power and control as the people of the city organize to oppose a corporate takeover of public land, their much-beloved Jean Klock park, for conversion to a privately owned golf course and lakefront development called Harbor Shores. Executives of the Whirlpool corporation, which is based in the city, are behind the effort to redevelop the land over strong public opposition. The struggle has been led by the Rev. Edward Pinkney, who has continued to speak out despite efforts by city officials to silence him, including a local judge's sentence of 3-10 years in prison that was later overturned as a violation of Rev. Pinkney's free-speech rights.
As people throughout the country struggle under the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, public education from pre-K to higher and adult education is threatened by budget cuts, layoffs, privatization, tuition and fee increases, and other attacks. Budget cuts degrade the quality of public education by decreasing student services and increasing class size, while tuition hikes and layoffs force the cost of the recession onto students and teachers and off of the financial institutions that caused the recession in the first place. Non-unionized charter schools threaten to divide, weaken and privatize the public school system and damage teachers’ unions, which are needed now more than ever. More and more students are going deep into debt to finance their education, while high unemployment forces many students and youth to join the military to receive a higher education. And all of the attacks described above have hit working people and people of color the hardest.
In California, students, teachers, workers, parents, and faculty have taken action against these attacks. They took to the streets in a one-day strike on September 24th, organized strikes and actions across the state during the University of California Board of Regents meeting from November 18th to 20th, and have called for a state-wide day of action on March 4th. These actions have created a broad mass movement in California, drawing in students from all over the state to create a powerful struggle. As the effects of the economic crisis continue to spread into the education system nationally, it’s time to join our voices with students and workers in California and draw inspiration from their example.
We support each group or coalition organizing in the manner and for the duration of their choosing. In solidarity with those in California, we the below-signed individuals and organizations call on students, teachers, workers, parents, faculty, and staff across the country to join together on March 4th to Take A Stand For Education!
We, the undersigned students, faculty, staff, parents, and concerned citizens worldwide stand united across all divisions of nationality, race, religion and field of studies to declare our support for the aims and objectives of the "Education is NOT for - Global Week of Action" called for by the independent "International Student Movement".
We are united in working to ensure that:
Public education is accessible to all and recognized as a fundamental right; NO to tuition fees!
Public education is free from exploitative corporate practices and state interests which conflict with those of the individual and the public interest.
Public education primarily serves democratic and public interests, instead of private, business, state and/or labour market interests.
Public education empowers individuals to become emancipated and autonomous people, able to critically evaluate themselves and their environment, and thus be actively involved in a genuinely democratic society.
If we are to have such a society we need general public discussions on the role of public education systems: Whose interests do they - and should they - primarily serve?
Despite weeks of students, labor, and community protests, Middle State Tennessee University (MTSU) President Sidney McPhee continues to move ahead with plans for major program cuts, outsourcing and layoffs, and other cuts that will have drastic effects on the campus community.
The current cuts being considered include the dismantling of Physics, Philosophy, Geosciences, Criminal Justice, all of which constitutes an attack on the academic core of the University; the closing of a beloved community resource in WMOT Jazz 89 as well as the closing of the June Anderson Woman's Center; and the further outsourcing of more of our campus's hardest working employees.
These cuts have been hastily proposed with minimal justification and despite Governor Bredesen's acceptance of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid meant to offset deep and lasting cuts to the state's education systems, and are being considered prior to a state budget being introduced, let alone passed. Read more.
On Wednesday, October 12, 2011, the Liberty Tree Foundation convened a special briefing, the Teleconference on the Global Wave of Resistance. This global conference featured over 100 participants, and updates from leading organizers of the global wave of student and labor strikes, occupations, and revolutions. Panelists include core organizers from the UK, Germany, Israel, and Chile, as well as Wisconsin, Boston, Oakland, Washington D.C., and Wall Street, among others. This was the second such teleconference on corporatization and austerity org
Additional Information:
Panelists included Nicolas Valenzuela, Uri Gordon, Mo Gas, James Sevitt, Adam Porton, Sarah Manski, Nadeem Mazen, Elaine Brower, Matt Nelson, plus moderator Ben Manski.
The protests that began in Wisconsin this year, and which now also fill the streets of Manhattan, Boston, Chicago, and this week, Washington D.C., have gotten the attention of the American political class. And how could they not? 2011 is becoming a remake of the 1999 Battle of Seattle, except this time the protests are ongoing, national and global, and the target is not just the World Trade Organization, but the entire edifice of corporate capitalism.
Ellen Schrecker, a history professor at New York City's Yeshiva University, starts "The Lost Soul of Higher Education" with a blunt assessment: "In reacting to the economic insecurities of the past forty years, the nation's colleges and universities have adopted corporate practices that degrade undergraduate instruction, marginalize faculty members, and threaten the very mission of the academy as an institution devoted to the common good."
Resources provided by Education For All Coalition members and coordinating affiliates. We’ve also included flyers, and with each flyer you’ll find a BLANK TEMPLATE version for you to utilize for your own specific purposes.
Free Speech Organizing Toolkit – A helpful handbook on your Free Speech Rights with an emphasis on educational institutions, provided by The Center for Campus Free Speech.
The Free Speech Organizing Toolkit is designed to provide campus leaders and free speech supporters with the tools to work with higher education leaders to remove impediments to a marketplace of ideas on their campus.
This valuable toolkit was produced by the Center for Campus Free Speech. The Center acts as a clearinghouse of information, provides specialized support to campuses, and connects concerned educators, administrators, lawyers and students into a national network. The Center draws advice and guidance from a group of leaders in the higher education and legal communities.
The Center for Campus Free Speech releases there Guide to Student Activity Fees - a primer on the legal issues involved in creating and managing a student activity fee system.
Student fee systems are used by students across the country to provide the resources for a wide variety of out-of-classroom activities.
Students fund everything from service organizations to advocacy to educational forums and guest speakers. They debate and learn about critical issues like multiculturalism, the environment, education policy, conflicts in the Middle East and religion. They learn new skills and create change on major problems the world faces.
Student activity fees give involved students the resources to create a vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus.
This report, by John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, updates an earlier report from January of 2007, which found a steep rise in illegal firings of pro-union workers in the 2000s relative to the last half of the 1990s. It updates the index of the probability that a pro-union worker will be fired in the course of a union election campaign, using published data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It also takes into consideration the increase in card-check organizing campaigns that began in the mid-1990s and adjusts the index for this factor.
