One of the greatest speeches in American history was delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 28,1963,on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
You can watch and listen here.
Much better than reading it is hearing it.
I was somewhere in the back of the crowd with my husband. I was 25 years old.
What would Dr. King say about Donald Trump and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions?
Abraham Lincoln delivered this brief speech to dedicate the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 1863. We are called today to save his vision that a government “of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
This is what July 4, 2018, means to me.
Not hot dogs, mustard, and potato chips, but our obligation to fight for our democracy.
At the present time, we are losing it day by day.
The U.S. Supreme Court has recently approved state laws that purge voters from the voting rolls because they have not consistently voted. It is not difficult to determine whether voters have died or moved out of state. Meanwhile, a basic right is whittled away because it was not exercised.
The high court recently approved racial gerrymandering.
The high court approved a Muslim Ban disguised as a national security issue.
The high court in Janus struck a blow at labor unions, allowing free riders to collect benefits without paying any dues.
The high court will soon be dominated by five justices determined to overturn Roe V. Wade and gay rights.
The administration wants to destroy the healthcare on which millions of Americans rely.
The administration denies climate change and is repealing regulations that protect the environment, Our air, our water, our national parks.
Our president and attorney general callously initiated a policy of separating children from their parents at the Southern border, some as young as three months, and cruelly shipped them far away. More than 2,000 have not been returned to their parents. Children and families languish in cages. We have become a pariah among nations, known for our cruelty, belligerence, and stupidity.
The administration daily insults our allies and courts the friendship of dictators.
Now is the time to resist.
Now is the time to recall the brave history of dissent and protest.
The best way to demonstrate your love of country is to resist, protest, demonstrate, join with others who are committed to democracy, equal rights, and the rule of law.
We must together stop the precipitous descent into fascism and plutocracy.
We must pledge ourselves to fight for the America we love, the America put at risk by venal, malevolent, unethical, and greedy leaders.
I will post today a few of my favorite examples of patriotic resistance. You are invited to add your own.
Arthur Camins recalls his father’s rise from poverty to the middle class, and his political evolution, reminds Camins about what matters most.
“Countless state, local, and national offices across the country are controlled by Republicans who care only about protecting the privileges of wealthy white folks. They will spare no expense nor let anything stand in their way- not the health or education of children, seniors or the disabled; not the fate of blameless children of immigrants; not the threat of annihilation from a nuclear war; not the steady erosion of the right of every citizen to vote; not even the sustainability of life itself on the planet. Nonetheless, Americans elected them. Americans need to vote to defeat them.
“The dangers are imminent. For the foreseeable future an electable progressive third party is a pipe dream. Unless and until the Democratic Party unambiguously regains the trust and loyalty of working people and does so explicitly across racial lines, there is no hope of reversing the tide of growing inequality, alarming erosion of democracy, and destruction the environment.
“The New Deal and to a lesser extent, the Great Society made social obligation through government action a normative value. However, the political failure to link racism with broader inequality sowed the seeds of an individualism that is defined by selfishness.
“My father’s Democratic Great Depression- and World War II-influenced generation is gone. The most recent chance to build cross-racial solidarity– the Great Recession– was squandered. However, that opportunity can yet be reclaimed.
“A WPA-like massive job creation project to rebuild roads, highways, bridges, develop clean energy, and fund scientific and medical research was never seriously considered– at least as a rallying point if not achievable legislation. Instead we got some private sector so-called shovel-ready projects.
“Federal action avoided complete disaster, but the nation got nothing on the bold unifying scale of Social Security to deal with dwindling retirement incomes or Medicare to address the unaffordability of health care. Universal guaranteed healthcare for all was never on the table–even as moral and economic principle. Instead we got limited, private insurance-based, high-deductible plans. For the vast majority of Americans with employer-provided health insurance, the Affordable Care Act was easily perceived, once again, as being for them, not all of us. Nothing is on the horizon to substantively address the unaffordability of housing.
“On education– another potential unifier– Democrats, instead of addressing burdensome property taxes, pushed taxpayer funded, privately governed charter schools and high-stakes tests, with a hefty measure of anti-union rhetoric.
“Whereas the New Deal wrought decades of allegiance to the Democratic Party, their response to the Great Recession ended in voter cynicism, a drop in voter turn-out among African Americans, and the election of a racist, wealth-protecting Republican.
“Disconnected from either the unions or social movements that catalyzed the New Deal or Great Society programs, my father ascribed progress to great men. Because FDR and LBJ responded with tangible actions, they won his allegiance. Those same forces and responsive Democratic men and women can win back the allegiance of a vast cross-section of Americans.
“In fact, it is when we bound in a web of mutual that we are most fulfilled and reach our greatest human potential.
“That is the winning Democratic platform.”
This is a gripping account of the move to privatize large numbers of public schools in San Antonio. This is the work of the business community and a neoliberal Democratic establishment mayor, determined to turn public schools over to Out-of-state charter chains.
https://therivardreport.com/charter-takeovers-erode-san-antonios-public-school-system/
“While school privatization “reformers” are backed by big money donors and corporations, opponents include San Antonio’s Our Schools Coalition of community members, teachers, and parents, the Movement for Black Lives, the Network for Public Education, and the NAACP – the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.
“It’s big corporate money versus civil rights organizations, community groups, and teachers. The choice could hardly be starker. That’s why charter advocates pretend this argument is about teachers’ contracts and unions that are scared of change: if they were to tell the public the truth, they’d lose the argument before it started.
“Who supports [Superintendent] Martinez’s plans for charter collaboration in SAISD? San Antonio Charter Moms, an advocacy group for charter expansion, and what is loosely referred to as “the business community.”
“Parents, teachers, students, community groups do not.
“In fact, in order to hand over Stewart Elementary to a New York-based charter company, Martinez and his board drowned out debate, community and teacher input, and consultation.
“Parents, community members, and teachers repeatedly called on Martinez and the board of trustees to consult and partner with them in deciding the future of their neighborhood school. Again and again their calls were ignored by the district leaders whose job is to serve them and act in their interests. Again and again district leaders refused to consider alternatives to plans which had been devised behind the scenes many months earlier. While the Stewart community was excluded at every turn, Democracy Prep was being courted by district leaders.
“Stewart teachers, parents, and students were effectively dismissed and denied the chance to escape the State’s “improvement required” rating by a district leadership unwilling even to make its contract with Democracy Prep conditional on the school’s failure to meet standards.
“But last week, preliminary STAAR scores indicated that Stewart Elementary could obtain a passing, or “met standard” rating from the state, SAISD Deputy Superintendent Pauline Dow said. While final STAAR results and the State’s accountability ratings won’t be released until August, those of us trained on the state calculators for school performance are certain Stewart Elementary will finally emerge from its “improvement required” status.
“Regardless, Democracy Prep is slated to take over Stewart on July 1.
“A campus that could be safe from state sanction is being dismembered and sold off, all but two of its teachers leaving rather than work for the charter company with high teacher turnover rates (34 percent across all campuses last year), low expectations for teacher qualifications (as few as 44 percent of teachers being certified), and regressive and punitive disciplinary practices (28 percent suspension rate). Many students have opted to leave, even under district pressure to remain, and the campus’s future remains uncertain.
“It could have been a different story, and now we have proof that our most underperforming campuses can turn themselves around without the “expertise” of outside charter companies.
“San Antonio’s public schools are far from perfect, and we should move boldly to transform them into the schools our children deserve. But handing them over to private, profit-seeking entities isn’t the way to proceed. Powerful forces are doing everything they can to cash in on the privatization of public education in this country. They are desperately working to shape a narrative which – if they succeed – will have you fighting the people you should be supporting, and supporting the people you should be fighting.”
I wrote this article, which was posted just online by the Washington Post.
Charters are not “progressive.” They pave the way for vouchers. They divert funding from public schools, which enroll 85% of American students. They are more segregated than public schools. Ninety percent are non-union. The far-right Walton Foundation is spending $200 million a year on charters and Betsy DeVos is currently spending $400 million, which may soon increase to $500 million. The vaunted “high performance” charters have either higher attrition or cherry pick their students.
Our nation is evolving a new dual school system, with one system choosing its students and the other required to find a place for all who apply.
Henry Giroux places the recent wave of teacher strikes in historical perspective. The teachers are fighting a battle on behalf of the public good against an assault by reactionary neoliberalism.
He writes:
“The power of collective resistance is being mounted in full force against a neoliberal logic that unabashedly insists that the rule of the market is more important than the needs of teachers, students, young people, the poor and those deemed disposable by those with power in our society. Teachers are tired of being relentless victims of a casino capitalism in which they and their students are treated with little respect, dignity and value. They have had enough of corrupt politicians, hedge fund managers and civically illiterate pundits seduced by the power of the corporate and political demagogues who are waging a war on critical teaching, critical pedagogy and the creativity and autonomy of classroom teachers.
“Since the 1980s, an extreme form of capitalism — or what in the current moment I want to call neoliberal fascism — has waged a war against public education and all vestiges of the common good and social contract. In addition, this is a war rooted in class and gender discrimination — one that deskills teachers, exploits their labor and bears down particularly hard on women, who make up a dominant segment of the teaching force. In doing so, it not only undermines schooling as a public good, but also weaponizes and weakens the formative cultures, values and social relations that enable schools to create the conditions for students to become critical and engaged citizens.
“Schools have been underfunded, increasingly privatized and turned into testing factories that deliver poor students of color to the violence of the school-to-prison pipeline. Moreover, they have also been restructured in order to weaken unions, subject teachers to horrendous working conditions and expose students to overcrowded classrooms. In some cases, the dire working environment and dilapidated conditions of schools and classrooms appear incomprehensible in the richest nation in the world…
“Moreover, as state and corporate violence engulfs the entire society, schools have been subject to forms of extreme violence that in the past existed exclusively outside of their doors. Under such circumstances, youth are increasingly viewed as suspects and are targeted both by a gun culture that places profits above student lives and by a neoliberal machinery of cruelty, misery and violence dedicated to widespread educational failure. Instead of imbuing students with a sense of ethical and social responsibility while preparing them for a life of social and economic mobility, public schools have been converted into high-tech security spheres whose defining principles are fear, uncertainty and anxiety. In this view, a corporate vision of the U.S. has reduced the culture of schooling to the culture of business and an armed camp, and in doing so, imposed a real and symbolic threat of violence on schools, teachers and students. As such, thinking has become the enemy of freedom, and profits have become more important than human lives…
“Rejecting the idea that education is a commodity to be bought and sold, teachers and students across the country are reclaiming education as a public good and a human right, a protective space that should be free of violence and open to critical teaching and learning. Not only is it a place to think, engage in critical dialogue, encourage human potential and contribute to the vibrancy of a democratic polity, it is also a place in which the social flourishes, in that students and teachers learn to think and act together.”
Okay, so we have a president who believes he is above the law, that he could murder James Comey in the Oval Office and it would be okay, that whatever he does is legal because he is THE LAW. Okay, so he knows nothing about the Divine Right of Kings, and thinks he is one. Okay, so he doesn’t know that the American Revolution came about because the colonists didn’t want to be ruled by a Mad King. True, he never read the Constitution.
But don’t give up hope!
Here is Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect. You too can share their wisdom for free by signing up here.
Kuttner on TAP
2018: The Case for Optimism. So let’s review the bidding. The investigative waters keep rising around Trump. The bill guaranteeing the safety of the special counsel won’t pass, but the support of four senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee sends Trump a warning—seven if Trump were to stage a Saturday Night Massacre. Too much information is now with the U.S. attorney in New York. And firing Mueller would lead directly to impeachment.
Issues that looked like winners for Trump are turning blurry at best. China is pushing back against Trump’s hard line, and efforts by even hawkish trade officials to get back on the same side with the EU (whose support we need against China) are running up against Trump’s stupidly uninformed cold shoulder to Germany and his insistence that tariffs apply to Europe. Korea, despite early euphoria, will be far from an easy win for Trump, since at best we are in for a period of protracted diplomacy and a deal is still a long shot.
Republicans continue to look worse and worse for the November midterms. Speaker Paul Ryan’s unforced error in firing the House chaplain alienates Catholic Republican voters and divides his own caucus. The pitiful mess with former White House physician and failed VA nominee Ronny Jackson creates yet another wedge between Trump and his party’s nervous supporters in Congress. Trump’s personal unpopularity spills over onto his Republican enablers.
And despite the Republican penchant for trying to rig or steal elections, please note that the six special elections for vacant House seats since Trump’s election went off more or less as normal.
A Democratic pickup of at least 50 seats in the House seems likely, and the Senate is now seriously in play as well. In Tennessee, polls show the popular Democrat, Phil Bredesen, leading the widely detested far-right Republican and likely nominee, Marsha Blackburn. Even Republican Bob Corker, who is retiring from the Senate seat, backs Bredesen.
Lots could happen between now and November, of course, but none of it is likely to be good for Trump and the GOP. Even a good economy is not translating into support for the incumbent party.
I know, I know, it’s risky to count chickens before they hatch. But with all the gloomy news, there are actually many things to celebrate—things that keep hope alive. ~ ROBERT KUTTNER
Tom Ultican here reviews Johann Neem’s history of public schools in early America: “Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America.”
Neem, a historian of American education, is an immigrant to the United States from India. He attended public schools. He met students from many different background. From his own life experience, he understood the genius of public education in fostering a democratic culture.
Ultican found Neem’s history to be especially relevant in understanding debates today.
He reviews important topics in the book and sees how they relate to today’s battles over curriculum, pedagogy, religion, and charter schools.
He writes:
My main take away from this read is that in developing universal free public education in America the foundation for democracy was forged. That foundation is under attack today. Read this book and you will deepen and reinforce your own need to protect America’s public schools.
Steven Singer here explains why any public school, no matter how “bad,” is better than ant charter school, no matter how “good.”
He begins:
But if one had to choose between the worst public school and the best charter school, you’d still be better off with the public school.
Does that sound crazy? Does it sound ideological, partisan, or close-minded.
I don’t think so.
Imagine if we said the same thing about tyrannies and democracies.
There are good tyrannies.
There are bad democracies.
Still, I’d prefer the worst democracy to the best tyranny.
Why?
Because even a badly run democracy is based on the principle of self rule. The government gets its right to make and enforce laws from the consent of the will of the governed.
Even if our representatives are corrupt and stupid, even if our federal, state and local agencies are mismanaged and disorganized – there is the potential for positive change.
In fact, the catalyst to that change is embedded in democracy, itself. Egalitarian systems founded on the principle of one person, one vote tend toward fairness, equity and liberty much more than others.
Bad leaders will be replaced. Bad functionaries will be retrained or superseded. Bad agencies will be renovated, renewed, and made to serve the will of the people.
However, in a tyranny, none of this is true.
Even if you have a benevolent tyrant who does nothing all day but try to do whatever is best for his or her subjects, that is a worse state of affairs.
Eventually the tyrant will change. Absolute power will corrupt him or her absolutely. Or even if this bastion of human goodness is incorruptible, he or she will eventually be deposed, replaced or die.
And there is nothing – absolutely nothing – to ensure the next tyrant is likewise benevolent. In fact, the system is set up to increase the likelihood that the next ruler will be as selfish, greedy and malevolent as possible.
This is because it is the system of tyranny, itself, that is corrupt – even if those that fill its offices are not.
The same goes for good charter schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 