See you at the annual PIELC (Public Interest Environmental Law) conference! Join members of Move to Amend’s national leadership team - Ashley Sanders and Ben Manski - in this three-part workshop that tackles both corporate capitalism and the U.S. Constitution. The session is entitled, "Move to Amend: A New Constitution for a New Society and Ecology."
On Wednesday, February 13th, Governor Walker is having his annual "performance review" in front of his real bosses. No, not the people of Wisconsin. The corporate lobby group Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Who buys elections? Who bribes politicians? Who writes the anti-worker and anti-environment laws? First and foremost, the answer is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its state affiliate, the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC).
Join Dennis Kucinich, the fighting progressive from Ohio, former mayor of Cleveland, seven term congressman, and twice presidential candidate. as he joins us in launching a national campaign to "Shut the Chamber!"
This election is being threatened by unverifiable voting machines, voter ID laws that disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, restrictive election laws for third party candidates and voters who wish to vote early, as well as many other forms of voter suppression that we are likely to witness on and before November 6. Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 have taught us that our elections can be stolen if we do not act.
A coalition of local labor and community groups has formed a CTU Solidarity Commitee to support the striking Chicago teachers. Buses/caravans are being organized from the Memorial Union/ Labor Temple in Madison to send folks down to a mass "Wisconsin Style" rally CTU is holding on Saturday.
A talk by Tom Hayden, one of the founders of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He served as president of SDS from 1962 to 1963 and drafted its most famous work, the Port Huron Statement. He is currently a peace & justice activist based in Los Angeles and founder and director of The Peace and Justice Resource Center.
Tom Hayden’s talk will be introduced by John Nichols, political correspondent for The Nation magazine and associate editor of The Capital Times.
A talk by Carl Davidson, who was Vice President and National Secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society from 1968 to 1976. He is currently national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network.
Carl Davidson’s talk will be introduced by Matt Rothschild, editor of the Progressive Magazine
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." ~ Abraham Lincoln
Presenters:
- Ben Manski, Esq., Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution; Associate Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies
- Dr. Margaret Flowers, National Occupation of Washington D.C. (NOW DC)
- Daniel Wayne Lee, Los Angeles Move to Amend; Occupy Los Angeles
- Steve Cobble, adviser to Free Speech For People; Associate Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies
The conveners "invite you to attend a conference which brings together historians, social theorists, contemporary student activists, and Port Huron veterans to discuss the origins, historical impact, and contemporary relevance of the New Left's founding manifesto."
Inspired by our friends at Occupy Wall Street, and Dr. Cornel West, Move To Amend is planning bold action to mark the second anniversary of the infamous Citizens United v. FEC decision!
Learn how to engage the public and gather signatures for a campaign to demand a Constitutional Amendment to end Corporate Personhood, get the money out of our political system, and reverse Citizens United.
Right here, in Iowa… as the movement spreads across America.
Where do the movement to abolish corporate personhood, the Wisconsin protest wave, global resistance to austerity, and the voting rights, election integrity, anti-war, and campus democracy movements come together? Beneath the branches of Liberty Tree, committed to "building a democracy movement for the U.S.A." since 2004.
You’re invited to a free community forum, Corporations Are Not Persons and Money Is Not Speech. The event includes a presentation by and discussion with David Cobb, the national spokesperson for Move to Amend.
Cobb will discuss the national Move to Amend campaign and what we can do to abolish never-intended corporate constitutional rights and reverse the legal doctrine that money is speech! Download flyer here.
Oregon Area Progressives is sponsoring All About ALEC, a forum on the American Legislative Exchange Council with an outstanding lineup of speakers, including Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D - IL) Sen. Mark Miller Rep. Mark Pocan Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts Lisa Graves - Center for Media and Democracy Mike McCabe - Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Jack Norman -Institute for Wisconsin's Future Jim Cavanaugh - South Central Federation of Labor Dan Holub - WEAC Julie Underwood - UW Madison School of Education Joanne Ricca - Wisconsin AFL-CIO Robert Kraig - Citizen's Action of Wisconsin and Jay Heck - Common Cause Moderated by John Nichols Advance Registration $10 - includes lunch register now at www.allaboutalec.org
The Dover Delaware United Nations Association will be celebrating World Water Day!
We will be passing out statistics and requests for water advocacy as well as offering car pooling to events sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia UNA and the League of Women Voters luncheon to discuss Economic Disparity.
In the second half of the meeting we will read an article together and then and request support for "Move to Amend." Come join us!
March to End the Wars!
Ten Years in Afghanistan - Ten Billion Dollars a Month
March & Rally in Madison, Wisconsin
Saturday, Oct. 15
Join the Madison Area Peace Coalition (MAPC) for a March and Rally to mark 10 years of U.S.-led war in Afghanistan on Saturday, Oct. 15th. We will call for an end to this war and all wars. We want jobs, schools, and healthcare -- not war.
Please gather at UW Library Mall at 11:30 am. Bring your peace and labor signs. Come early for parking because it's a football Saturday and Farmer's Market Day. We'll begin marching after noon, and be up at the Capitol by quarter to 1:00 pm.
Sponsored by the Madison Area Peace Coalition. Endorsed by AFSCME 171 and the South Central Federation of Labor (SCFL).
We're going public this month for the first time by holding our October meet-up at the Infinitea Teahouse! This month's notable attendees will be Eau Claire City Council member, Dana Wachs, as well as Eau Claire County Board member, John DeRosier, who are considering sponsoring a resolutions in support of reversing the Supreme Court's "Citizens United v. FEC" decision.
Come share how unlimited/undisclosed corporate influence of our elections has made an impact on the issues that you care about! We'll need your input as we propose, discuss, and vote on local resolutions to pass.
Bringing the inspiration of the Wisconsin protest wave -- from the occupation of the state's capitol to the recent national Democracy Convention in Madison -- to the planned October 2011 occupation of Freedom Plaza in D.C.:
From August 24th to August 28, 2011 over 1200 people from around the country covened in Madison for a Democracy Convention designed to further the growing nationwide Democracy Movmeent. This event, sponsored by the Liberty Tree Foundation (which also sponsors the Wisconsin Wave) gave participants and organizers alike the skills to return to their communities and fight for Democracy where it matters most -- in our schools, our workplaces and local economies, our military, our governm
Come one, come all, hear the call to . . .
DUMP TEA! DUMP PALIN!
Speakers and Music TBA…as confirmed.
MC's John "Sly" Sylvester and Sarah Manski.
NOON, SATURDAY, APRIL 16th
WI STATE CAPITOL
Change: STATE STREET CORNER
Please share widely. The puppets are coming, the puppets are coming! Corporate puppets Sarah Palin and "Americans" for "Prosperity" are rallying at our Wisconsin State Capitol on 4/16. For more information:http://www.danegop.org/latestnews.aspx
12:00pm-2:00pm RALLY AT STATE CAPITOL: Ride the Wave Back to the Capitol!
2:00pm-3:00pm MARCH TO WMC: Take Wisconsin Back from the Corporate Interests!
4:00pm Registration Opens at Georgia O'Keefe Middle School, 510 South Thornton Ave., Madison
5:00pm & 7:00pm MAJOR PANELS at Georgia O'Keefe Middle School:
5pm UNDERSTANDING AUSTERITY: Wisconsin in a global perspective
7pm BUILDING A POPULAR MOVEMENT: Overcoming inequality & uniting us all in common cause
~ Sunday, April 10th ~
8:30am Registration Reopens at Downtown Campus of Madison Area Technical College
9:30am-11:00am MAJOR PANEL: DIRECT ACTION CAMPAIGNING: Achieving the Will of the People when government closes its doors
11:30am-1:00pm WORKSHOPS
1:00-2:30pm Lunch Break
2:30pm-4:00pm WORKSHOPS
4:30pm-6:30pm MAJOR PANEL: DEMAND DEMOCRACY: Democratizing our elections, economy, budget process, and constitutions
The Joint Finance Committee voted today to end the independent agency status of the Wisconsin Arts Board, moving the oversight of arts to the Tourism Board. The proposal will now go before the State Assembly and Senate for final approval as part of Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011-13 biennial budget. The vote was along party lines with 14 Republicans voting in favor and four Democrats voting against.
The committee did restore some of the cuts Walker proposed, returning over $350,000 to the agency over the next two years. The Board was facing a drop from $3 million to $750,000; now it will have just over $1 million in the next budget period.
The JFC also reversed Walker by allowing the Arts Board the autonomy to select its own executive director in the future.
Protests have engulfed the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where students are standing against a proposed bill that threatens teacher's unions. The outcries come as the state's new Republican Governor Scott Walker announced a plan to end collective bargaining for most of the state's 175,000 public employees.
For-profit" colleges have come under fire for saddling students with big debts in exchange for dim job prospects. But what about "real" colleges? They're pushing huge debts on students, too. We crunched the numbers to find the worst (NYU).
To help protect their schools from California's unrelenting budget crisis, some communities are voting to pay more property taxes to preserve teacher jobs, smaller class sizes and electives such as art and music.
So far this year, more than 20 districts have held elections for school parcel taxes, which are levied on individual parcels of property, and at least 16 have approved them. More districts are trying to place such measures on the ballot later this year.
But the tax measures, which require a two-thirds majority to pass, are mostly winning approval in smaller, wealthier districts, according to education experts, raising worries about growing inequality between schools in rich and poor communities.
Wednesday, after a heated debate among members of the Board of Trustees, a consensus on language was finally reached.
INS learned that the intervention of trustee and UPR ex President Norman Maldonado, was key in convincing Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees Ygrí Rivera, to drop her consistent hard line regarding the application of penalties to the strikers. Maldonado had not previously intervened because he was off the island.
“Maldonado and Rivera had strong encounters; he favored the student’s language, while she maintained her position of not bargaining,” a source told INS.
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."
Eastern Michigan University students celebrated their school’s decision to hold the line on tuition and fees hikes at an all-campus picnic Thursday, and gathered for a photo — with a message.
EMU photographer Randy Mascharka took the shot from the roof of the Ypsilanti campus’ Student Center.
Eastern President Susan Martin told me last month that she knows the university is taking a risk by not asking students for more money at a time when state aid could be slipping and busing expenses continue to rise.
In Puerto Rico, an ongoing strike by students at the University of Puerto Rico is coming to a head. Riot police have surrounded the main gates of the university’s main campus and are trying to break the strike by denying food and water to students who have occupied the campus inside. The strike began nearly four weeks ago in response to budget cuts at the university of more than $100 million. On Thursday, a mass assembly of more than 3,000 students voted overwhelmingly to continue the strike. The next day, riot police seized control of the main campus gates. We go now to Puerto Rico, inside the occupied campus at the university.
Despite tuition increasing 46.6 percent over the last five years, professors and students at the Community College of Rhode Island say there are fewer services and not enough spots for even the mandatory core courses.
Jim Brady, the college’s outgoing student body president, said the situation — particularly the tuition hikes that don’t seem to have an end at all three of the state’s higher education institutions — is “completely disgusting” and counterproductive to helping the state build a 21st-century work force.
A call-to-action rally at the community college’s Knight Campus Wednesday afternoon was the first of several planned events to let the General Assembly know “enough is enough.” A petition is also circulating and a march to the State House is in the works.
Making the drive up to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point once again on Monday, pro-democracy advocate and attorney Ben Manski returned to the campus he had visited in his college career. Only this time the faces had changed, but the message was the same. At 8 p.m. in the Dreyfus University Center’s Theatre, Manski delivered a multimedia presentation on “Winning Democracy,” in the hopes that it would inspire students to do just that.
“I hope that I helped to broaden some perspectives about what other students are doing around the world: what they’ve done in recent generations, that it wasn’t all just in the 60’s. I’m a little bit older, but in my generation student activists, we accomplished a lot,” said Manski. “In my experience, when people think big, they dream big and they work to accomplish those big goals. They sometimes succeed, and if you don’t try at all, then they’re not going to happen and that’s not acceptable.”
Want to travel back in time? Drive 80 miles east to Milwaukee, park on Downer and Kenwood and walk a block west. Complementing the anachronistic architecture crowding around, the tenor of student body activism pulsating across the UW-Milwaukee campus could easily fool the most well-informed Madisonian into thinking he or she had traveled to another era, one where college students fought hard to protect and nourish their education.
The impassioned and fair demands made by UWM students last March precipitated last Thursday’s revealing panel discussion with embattled UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago. Previously, UWM’s participation in a national day of action in defense of higher education on March 4 met a rude end when administrative officials called in police to break up a passionate though peaceful demonstration. Campus and city police aggressively targeted students with pepper spray and physical violence in an effort to neutralize vociferous demands for an audience with Santiago.
More Info:
Sam Stevenson is a graduate student in public health.
According to a new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, at least 28 states have implemented cuts to public colleges and universities and/or large increases in college tuition to make up for insufficient state funding, and four more states have proposed cuts but have not yet carried them out. Full report here...
Vermont: A proposal to raise University tuition by 4.8 percent brought an angry response by the state's Governor, Jim Douglas, who called the increase "excessive, and an unfair burden on struggling Vermont families." Under the proposal, tuition at Vermont State Colleges would rise 4 percent. Read more...
College students were quick to protest proposed tuition hikes Thursday, after University of Alaska President Mark Hamilton called for increases far exceeding the rate of inflation, citing the economic outlook and tight state budgets.
Under university policy, the president must present the tuition proposal for the year beginning in fall of 2012, with a decision on the proposal expected at the Board of Regents meeting in September of this year. That meeting will be held in Juneau.
Student government leaders quickly announced opposition to the increase, and raised questions about whether it was needed. They held a rally Thursday at the campus in Juneau.
Tyler Preston, student body president at UAS, said the increase was too big, and not sufficiently explained.
"Mostly our problem comes from the lack of transparency or understanding of where the money is going to be going," Preston said.
We understand the University of Wyoming's reluctance to discuss litigation against it. Bill Ayers' threat of a lawsuit for not being allowed to speak on campus will likely become a reality this morning when it's filed in federal court in Cheyenne.
But UW has a broader responsibility to explain to the public why it has banned Ayers. This action is much different than what happened earlier this month, when the UW Social Justice Research Center rescinded its invitation to Ayers to speak at a conference on education.
That decision was made by the center's director, Francisco Rios, over security concerns. News that the former radical-turned-education professor was coming to Laramie prompted hundreds of e-mails and phone calls to UW officials expressing outrage that someone with Ayers' past was invited to the university. According to Rios, some people made threats of violence. Others said they would stop donating money to UW.
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.
"In the 21st century countries that out educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow.” Thus spake President Obama in announcing that his administration would award a total of $4 billion to states demonstrating seriousness of commitment to education reform. Imagine that that tired mantra, some fifteen years after NAFTA and the outsourcing of the U.S. manufacturing, service, and information economies, is a proclamation still being rolled out as a constructive commentary on the state of education and pretext, in the name of reform, for ending its public character.
Additional Information:
Todd Alan Price is Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Inquiry at National-Louis University in Chicago, Illinois. He teaches in Illinois and in Wisconsin. In 2009 he was the Wisconsin Green Party candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. He is a Liberty Tree Associate.
Legal scholar and civil rights advocate Erwin Chemerinsky says there is. “There has to be a right to education in the Constitution,” he declares, “and equal protection is a Constitutional imperative.”
But according to Chemerinsky, this right has been fundamentally undermined by the Supreme Court. With the retirement of Justice David Souter, and the posible retirement in the next few years of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, the role of the court in defending the right to education will be thrust into the national spotlight. What role might their replacements play in guaranteeing education to American children, and reversing the conservative momentum of the last three decades?
As Ohio education reformers aim ahead toward the new century and prosperity through remaking of the public school system, the Obama administration reform plan takes us back to the “choice,” “free market,” and “small government” mindset of the 1980s, of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush:
Executive order 12803 issued by President George H. W. Bush, April 30, 1992: Sec. 3. Privatization initiative: To the extent permitted by law, the head of each executive department and agency shall undertake the following actions:
Additional Information:
Todd Alan Price is author of The Myth and Reality of NCLB: Public Education and High Stakes Assessment. He is a Liberty Tree Associate.
On May 1, 2009, Michigan's Board of Education, like boards in most of the other states across the U.S., issued a resolution "recognizing that teachers are vital to the very fabric of our society" and declaring the week of May 4-8 Teacher Appreciation Week.
Additional Information:
In Part II of this Counterpunch series, Liberty Tree Associate Todd Alan Price reports on his interviews with key players in the battle to which Ted Strickland has dedicated his governorship, to rebuild Ohio public education and stave off the charter phenomenon.
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.
See you at the annual PIELC (Public Interest Environmental Law) conference! Join members of Move to Amend’s national leadership team - Ashley Sanders and Ben Manski - in this three-part workshop that tackles both corporate capitalism and the U.S. Constitution. The session is entitled, "Move to Amend: A New Constitution for a New Society and Ecology."
Join Dennis Kucinich, the fighting progressive from Ohio, former mayor of Cleveland, seven term congressman, and twice presidential candidate. as he joins us in launching a national campaign to "Shut the Chamber!"
Call to Action
Come one, come all, hear the call to . . .
