Michigan is in track to make record investments in the quality of life for children and schools.
My friend Mitchell Robinson, a member of the State board of education, shared the following good news:
The State of Michigan passed a third consecutive historic education budget last night—and did so with bipartisan support, meaning the changes included in this budget can go into effect immediately.
It’s amazing to see what a state education budget can look like when you have pro-education legislators in charge–and teachers chairing the House and Senate Education Committees and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on PreK-12.
The budget includes:
•universal school meals
•foundation allowance increase of 5% — the largest in state history
•fully funded special education programs
•expanded Pre-K programs
•student teacher stipends for K-12
The budget also appropriates $11 million to a K-5 Music Education Pilot Program that provides funding to school districts that currently do not have elementary music instruction to hire certified music teachers.
Budgets are about more than dollars—they are moral documents; and in Michigan we are showing that we value our children, our families, and our future by directing funding to programs and initiatives that strengthen our schools and communities.
As you surely know, any kind of protest against the war is forbidden in Russia. Anyone who dares to speak against the war is immediately arrested and jailed. Even calling the war a war is illegal. Protestors may be sent away for years. In this climate of repression, some bold Russians have found a way to express their anti-war views. The New York Times published some examples of these tiny acts of rebellion. Learn how a fish became an anti-war symbol.
Last year in St. Petersburg, an artist uploaded a few images of tiny clay figurines in a public space to Instagram under the account Malenkiy Piket, meaning Small Protest. In a separate post, he invited others to join him in his silent demonstration.
One of Malenkiy Piket’s first posts.
Since that post, he has received almost 2,000 images containing homemade figurines, many holding posters of protest with curious symbology. Contributors are able to preserve their anonymity by sending private messages in the app to the artist, who then posts their images. At its peak, the account received around 60 images daily, the artist told The Times.
Sending such pictures, even privately, carries enormous risk: Sharing antiwar messages can be a cause for imprisonment. Hiding figurines in public spaces could be captured by surveillance cameras. Police used CCTV footage to track and arrest one contributor in 2022.
“Don’t be silent”
Using strategic ambiguity to protest authoritarian governments is not unique to Russia: pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong held up blank signs as a form of protest, and social media users in China used the candle emoji to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The artist told The Times that it’s important for people to see that Russians oppose the war, too. “Not everyone is with Putin. We know how the media just skips this, cuts out everything that shows people against it.”
The messages in the images
FISH
In 2022, a woman was arrested for writing “нет в***e” in graffiti in a public square, putting asterisks instead of letters in some places. The police believed she had intended to write the word “война” for war, but the woman said she had written “вобла,” a fish native to the Caspian Sea that Russians traditionally eat with beer or vodka.
The story went viral, producing tons of memes and even a song. The woman was eventually fined, but by then, her story had already turned the vobla fish and asterisks into symbols of protest.
Next to a road.
At the base of a sculpture.
Three asterisks, followed by five more. A code among protesters meaning “нет войне” (No to War).
In a bush.
BLANK POSTERS
Blank posters underscore how Russia has criminalized free speech. During the first months of 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, many Russians took to the streets with blank posters, and the police arrested them.
A mouthless monk sitting on a fence.
A sticker attached to a lamp post on Bolotnaya Naberezhnaya, Moscow.
By a river.
By a road.
ANTIWAR FLAG
Recognized as an antiwar symbol, the white flag with a blue stripe in the middle was created by Russians who opposed the invasion of Ukraine and disapproved of Putin’s government.
A Ukrainian flag is sometimes paired with an antiwar flag.
Paper figurines stuck to a graffitied wall.
Both flags are again represented in the embrace of these crying figurines, atop a memorial stone.
A fence outside of a Russian government building.
THE CROSSED OUT Z
Members of the Russian army emblazon their tanks and trucks with the letter Z to differentiate themselves from Ukrainians in the field. Many of Malenkiy Piket’s images show the letter Z crossed out.
This figurine wears Ukraine’s colors.
On a park bench.
Attached to a wall.
PEACE
About a hundred images shared by Malenkiy Piket show the peace sign.
At the foot of a statue in a public square.
On the ground.
At the Moskva River, across from Moscow’s Red Square.
Congressman Adam Schiff replied in the House chamber to the vote to censure him for his role in investigating Trump, including his leadership of the first Trump impeachment trial. The House voted 213-209 to censure him. Watch his five-minute speech. He was censured for doing his job as a member of a Congress.
As Jay Kuo explains in this post, censure is rare, administered for financial or ethical improprieties. A censure vote against Schiff was taken twice. The first time it failed, because 20 Republicans opposed it (some may have thought it was a dumb idea, but most were bothered because it would have fined Schiff $16 million for daring to lead the charge against Trump). The second vote passed for two reasons: 1) the $16 million fine was dropped, and 2) Trump threatened to primary any Republican who opposed it. Trump still terrifies House Republicans.
Schiff is running for the Senate in California. After watching his speech, I went to his website and contributed to his campaign.
Someone left a dead raccoon and a racist note outside the office of the mayor of Redmond, Oregon. The note was directed at the only Black member of the City Council. Redmond is almost 90% white.
The incident is being investigated as a bias crime. The City Council discussed the matter at its next meeting. A 10-year-old boy, Gavin Alston, asked his parents if he could go with them to the City Council meeting. He wanted to speak and share his experience of racism. He wrote some notes to read.
Gavin Alston, aged 10, accompanied his parents to the meeting and read a speech that he, too, had prepared – explaining how, at a different school in third grade, “I felt like I belonged.”
“Now I’m in fourth,” he continued. “A lot of people have been calling me the n-word or a monkey, even ‘Black Boy.’ One girl said to me, ‘I would hit you, but that’s called animal abuse’. We should not get treated like this. We should get treated equally. This is not fair to us Black people.”
His mother, Heather Alston, warned Gavin that “everybody’s going to be looking at you” and he was “going to be the centre of attention,” she told The Washington Post – but he remained unwavering in his resolve to speak and share his experience.
He finished his remarks to applause from meeting attendees. But as he walked back to his parents, his speech in hand, tears started flowing down his face. He was thinking back to what he had felt during the incidents he’d written about.
“I was sad because I know how it feels for that to happen,” Gavin said.
Though he’d felt scared to rehash those moments in front of the council and community members, he hoped it had gotten his message across.
“I want people to change and not judge people just because of their skin color,” Gavin said. “They’ve got to know them for their personality, their kindness and respect.”
Mitchell Robinson is a professor of music education at Michigan State University who was recently elected to the Michigan State Board of Education. He shared a resolution that he introduced and that was passed by the State Board. Are there books that are not age-appropriate? Yes. Can we trust teachers and librarians to select the right books for the children in their care? The Michigan State Board of Education thinks we can. Michigan law already forbids pornography in schools.
Robinson sent the following to me:
Proud to introduce the “Freedom to Read” resolution yesterday. The State Board of Education respects the professional judgement of teachers and librarians when it comes to selecting learning materials that support the curriculum in their classrooms, and respects the rights of parents and caregivers to determine the developmental appropriateness of books and other materials for their children.
Teachers and parents are natural partners in the education of our children, and attempts to drive a wedge between schools and families by creating outrage over fabricated “crises” will simply not work.
—
“Board Of Ed Adopts Resolution Supporting ‘Freedom To Read'”
A resolution to support K-12 students reading whichever books they like as book bans continue to sweep the country was adopted by the State Board of Education Tuesday.
Board member Mitchell Robinson (D-Okemos) introduced the Freedom to Read Resolution. Robinson cited in the resolution that PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans listed 1,477 instances of individual books banned.
The resolution said in the first six months of 2023, 30 percent of the unique titles banned were books about race, racism, or feature characters of color and 26 percent of the unique titles banned had LGBTQ characters or themes.
On Monday, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a law that deems Illinois public libraries ineligible for state funding if the library restricts or bans materials because of “partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”
“Closer to home, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission has asked the Attorney General for an official legal ruling on book banning as discrimination in respect to the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act that has expanded to include…LGBTQ+ communities,” Robinson said.
During public comment, several parents and organizations, including Moms for Liberty, spoke out against the resolution. They argued that none of their members were in favor of banning books but did not want their children to read what they deemed as inappropriate and pornographic content.
Board member Tiffany Tilley (D-West Bloomfield) introduced an amendment to the resolution supporting parents in their right to choose age appropriateness of material for their child and rights to make “critical decisions with their local schools.”
Tilley said as a child, she read several pieces of literature, including Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” that included content that some would say was “racy.”
“I got to a certain age, and I realized we were talking about a 16-year-old boy, 13-year-old girl and they both committed suicide,” Tilley said. “I’m not for banning books. My mom allowed me to read those things. I think that made my life richer, but for some parents, they may not be ready for their children to read about something.”
Tilley emphasized that her amendment would signal to parents that the state is not trying to make decisions for them, but also the state is not trying to ban certain books for everyone. If a parent reads a book and decides they do not want their child to read it, then they need to make that decision with their local school district, she added.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Michael Rice said this amendment was similar to resolutions the board supported previously. In February 2022, the Resolution on Sex Education included language that allowed for parents and legal guardians to opt-out of sex education classes without penalty.
Board member Tom McMillin (R-Oakland Township) wanted wording included that would make clear the board was stating pornography should not be allowed in schools. Board member Marshall Bullock (D-Detroit) jumped in, saying that there are already laws forbidding pornography in school. He asked McMillin how he defined pornography, saying his definition may lead to the banning of other subject matter such as the teaching of human anatomy in a biology course.
In the end, the board voted to approve the resolution 6-2, with McMillin and board member Nikki Snyder (R-Dexter) voting no.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been blasting away at knuckle-headed Republican governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott for their cruel indifference to other people. He’s already suggested he may sue DeSantis for kidnapping, after Florida sent two private planes with Venezuelan immigrants to Sacramento. Now, he’s going after Abbott for his refusal to take action against gun violence.
He wrote:
Texas… where elected officials are relying on Winnie the Pooh to teach their kids about active shooters because they don’t have the courage to keep our kids safe.
Texas… where Greg Abbott signed a law to send DNA kits to parents of school children so their bodies can be identified after a shooting.
Guns are the leading cause of death for kids in America. Kids!
We’re not talking about accidents, or cancer or something unpreventable. We know the steps to take to save our kids lives. But leaders like Greg Abbott lack the courage to act.
Until then… It’s Winnie the Pooh for Texas families.
SPRINGFIELD, IL — Banned books will soon be a thing of the past at public libraries in Illinois now that the Library Freedom Act has been signed into law. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bill Monday at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago.
Under the new law, public libraries must reject outside attempts at banning books for reasons that are partisan or doctrinal, to retain their eligibility for Illinois state grants.
The law allows Illinois to withhold state funding from public libraries and schools that remove books from their shelves and do not follow the American Library Association’s “Bill of Rights,” which states that books “should not be removed or restricted because of partisan or personal disapproval.”
“Here in Illinois, we don’t hide from the truth, we embrace it,” Gov. Pritzker said in a statement. “Young people shouldn’t be kept from learning about the realities of our world; I want them to become critical thinkers, exposed to ideas that they disagree with, proud of what our nation has overcome, and thoughtful about what comes next. Everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in the books they read, the art they see, the history they learn. In Illinois, we are showing the nation what it really looks like to stand up for liberty.”
John Merrow reports on his ambitious birthday bike ride: he turned 82 and he successfully biked 82 miles! He was so exhilarated that he added another ten miles for good measure!
But, the bad news is that he was scammed in the process.
John Merrow started a challenge to himself in 2011, on his 70th birthday. He set himself the goal of biking 70 miles, one for each year, and raising money for charity. He has done it every year since then. This year he turns 82. Can he bike 82 miles? I’m betting on John!
In a few days, Lord willing, I will turn 82, and that means it’s time for another attempt at biking my age. I began this exercise in putting off the inevitable in 2011, the year I turned 70. I’ve achieved my goal for 12 consecutive years, but the distance increases every year and I get a year older, so, as those financial ads warn, please remember that “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
As I have in the past, I’m asking you to dig deep for a preferred good cause, which this year is World Central Kitchen, the remarkable charity founded in 2010 by Chef José Andres. WKC, a non-profit, is first to the frontlines–whether it’s Ukraine or countries like Haiti devastated by a natural disaster. WKC provides fresh meals in response to crises, while simultaneously working to build resilient food systems with locally-led solutions. WKC has served more than 250 million nourishing meals around the world. Charity Navigator makes it clear that 100% of your gift, which is 100% tax-deductible, will help WKC provide more meals to those in need.
Here’s an easy way to donate $820, or $82, or $8.20 to World Central Kitchen. Thank you.
Please open the link to finish reading the post.
I have sent several donations to WKC. I will send another to honor John.
