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Tragedy in Afghanistan

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2021 //
43

I am not a foreign policy expert. Some who read this blog are experienced military veterans, and your views are far better informed than mine. I am sharing my personal opinion here. I welcome you to respond.

Trump made a deal with the Taliban to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan by May 2020. Biden inherited that agreement and shifted the exit date to August 31, 2021. Knowing that we were leaving, the Taliban moved rapidly to regain control of the country, district by district.

Kori Schake, who worked for the George W. Bush administration in the State Department and the National Security Council, wrote in the New York Times that Trump’s deal with the Taliban was “disgraceful.”

She wrote that:

The problem was that the strongest state in the international order let itself be swindled by a terrorist organization. Because we so clearly wanted out of Afghanistan, we agreed to disreputable terms, and then proceeded to pretend that the Taliban were meeting even those.

Mr. Trump agreed to withdraw all coalition forces from Afghanistan in 14 months, end all military and contractor support to Afghan security forces and cease “intervening in its domestic affairs.” He forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters and relax economic sanctions. He agreed that the Taliban could continue to commit violence against the government we were there to support, against innocent people and against those who’d assisted our efforts to keep Americans safe. All the Taliban had to do was say they would stop targeting U.S. or coalition forces, not permit Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to use Afghan territory to threaten U.S. security and subsequently hold negotiations with the Afghan government.

Not only did the agreement have no inspection or enforcement mechanisms, but despite Mr. Trump’s claim that “If bad things happen, we’ll go back with a force like no one’s ever seen,” the administration made no attempt to enforce its terms. Trump’s own former national security adviser called it “a surrender agreement.”

Biden has accepted responsibility for the chaotic evacuation. He reset the exit date to August 31, and he rejected the pleas of our allies to push the date back a month or two to allow an orderly exit and save more lives. Consequently, an unknown number of American citizens will be left behind, as will many thousands of Afghans who helped us and whose lives (and those of their families) are now in danger.

It’s easy to second-guess the decisions of other people after the fact. But consider this article by Jonathan Guyer in The American Prospect about “The Unheeded Dissent Cable.”

It begins:

A month before the Taliban stormed Afghanistan’s capital, two dozen diplomats in the U.S. embassy in Kabul sent a memo to the State Department warning of imminent collapse. The July 13 dissent cable warned Secretary of State Tony Blinken that the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul would quickly follow a U.S. withdrawal. They said an urgent plan to evacuate Afghan partners was needed.

It was a message that never reached the White House and the National Security Council, which was coordinating President Biden’s directive to end the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

Indeed, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan only learned about the memo after it was reported in The Wall Street Journal, a month after it had been sent, according to three well-placed sources who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the dissent cable.

It’s a lapse that reflects how centralized power in Biden’s orbit has constrained necessary communication among the country’s top national-security leaders.

Beyond the poor communication, I wonder why Biden went along with Trump’s promise to the Taliban. He had already reversed others, like Trump’s absurd decision to leave the Paris climate accord. Biden could have left 5,000 troops in the country to maintain stability. We left many more troops in South Korea, Japan, and Germany, not to wage war but to support our allies in maintaining the peace.

But if we go back to the beginning, twenty years ago, we discover that this was a completely unnecessary war. At the time, the media reported that the Taliban offered to hand Osama bin Ladin over to a third country if only we would stop bombing them. But President George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected the offer. They wanted war, not negotiations.

Alissa J. Rubin reported a few days ago in the New York Times, in an article titled “Did the Afghanistan War Have to Happen?”:

Taliban fighters brandished Kalashnikovs and shook their fists in the air after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, defying American warnings that if they did not hand over Osama Bin Laden, their country would be bombed to smithereens.

The bravado faded once American bombs began to fall. Within a few weeks, many of the Taliban had fled the Afghan capital, terrified by the low whine of approaching B-52 aircraft. Soon, they were a spent force, on the run across the arid mountain-scape of Afghanistan. As one of the journalists who covered them in the early days of the war, I saw their uncertainty and loss of control firsthand.

It was in the waning days of November 2001 that Taliban leaders began to reach out to Hamid Karzai, who would soon become the interim president of Afghanistan: They wanted to make a deal.The TalibanAnswers to questions about the militants who have seized control in Afghanistan again

“The Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands, except amnesty,” recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the United Nations’ political team in Afghanistan at the time.

Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would keep the militants from playing any significant role in the country’s future.

But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.

“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The United States wanted him captured or dead.

Had the Bush administration taken the deal, there would have been no war.

This was a tragedy: for the Afghan people, especially women and girls; for those Afghans who wanted to build a new society; and for the American service members who were maimed or lost their lives.

Categories Personal

A Tribute to Laura Chapman by a Former Student

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2021 //
22

A former student who all’s him/herself “ArtTeacher” left the following moving tribute to our beloved friend and frequent contributor Dr. Laura Chapman. I wonder if she knew how many lives she influenced, how admired and respected she was? I learned from everything she wrote here.

ArtTeacher wrote:

I was an art education student of Dr. Chapman and her life partner, Patricia Renick from 1974-78 at the University of Cincinnati. We called Patricia “Pat,” and she was vivacious, loving, and upbeat. Her nickname was “Mother Art.” Even as adults, my classmates and I had difficulty dropping the “Dr.” because we held Laura in such high esteem.

I was the first Art Education major to graduate summa cum laude from the school of Design, Architecture and Art, and I still have her letter of recommendation that described me as one of the “brightest and best.” I felt as if I had failed them both when I quit teaching after being RIFed from 2 schools in 3 years.

In 2000 when I became an art teacher again, NCLB was in full force in Ohio, and I boldly phoned her to meet and catch up on current education trends. She laughed when I told her how she struck fear in our undergraduate hearts if we showed up unprepared for her class. She was interested in hearing that two of my 8th graders filled in their scan-tron sheets to create a smiley face and a penis. When I asked what on earth they were doing, one of them said that he was only there so he could attend the dance that Friday. “I happen to know this test doesn’t affect my GPA,” he told me, pointing a finger at my face, “It affects YOU, and I don’t care about you. You can make me come to school, but you can’t make me try.” I told Laura that surely the principals and superintendents would protest the obvious flaws in forcing a school in a rural, low-income area to improve scores on such a test each year, when students’ home lives were such a struggle. The next year I was hired by a surburban elementary school to teach art to over 600 fourth graders, many of whom became physically ill on testing days because they wanted so much to do well, the opposite of the other school.

In 2012 she sent an email asking me to describe how I’m evaluated, how many students I taught, budget, schedules, etc. for a research paper. She said, “The evaluation of teachers by standardized test scores and principal observations is going in the direction that hit the teacher at Oyler (a public school in a low-income area near U.C.). In fact, more standardized tests are in the works and scheduled for administration in 2014, grades 3-12, as a condition for schools receiving federal funds from the ESEA. New state mandates are getting on the books regardless of the governor’s political affiliation. Since 2009, Bill Gates who thinks he is qualified as an expert on education, had been funding many projects that converge on more data gathering and sruveillance of teachers and the overall performance of schools.” So you can see that even as a retired professor, Laura was right on top of everything that was happening, who was doing it, and why.

I started meeting her for breakfast every month or so, to fill her in on what was new at school, and she explained the agenda behind it all, and warn me about was was coming next. I used to awaken in the wee hours with the chlling thought that it was like the plot of a bad sci fi movie, where there seemed no way to effectively fight the evil forces that had taken over. I joined BATs about a month after it began, full of hope that all we had to do was reveal what we knew was going on, and our communities (and unions) would shut it right down. I had even greater hope listening live to the first NPE convention from my home as I prepared art lessons. I remember our union presidents promising Diane to stop accepting Gates’ money, then reneging on that promise three days later.

In 2014 Laura gave a lengthy slide presentation at the Ohio Art Education convention that was titled “The Circular Reasoning Theory of School Reform: Why it is Wrong,” explaining in part why SLOs and VAM were invalid measurements of learning. It was, as you can imagine, annotated like a Master’s Thesis. Her voice was weak because was suffering from COPD and recovering from a cold, but her presentation had an enormous impact. Immeditately afterward we art teachers attended a workshop by the Ohio Dept. of Education intended to train us to write SLOs for our K-12 art students. We nearly rioted. Yet, the following school year, I had to give a test to my fourth graders the first day of school over a list of art vocabulary words I was certain they would not already know. At the end of the year, I tested them on the same 15 words, and nearly every one of 850 students passed with flying colors. Yet most were upset to see their low scores from the beginning of the year. “I can’t believe I was that stupid,” one girl said. I told her that I had to show that she learned something from me, so she was supposed to fail the test the first time. “WHY would you DO that to us?” she gasped. Now we have opted for shared attribution, where 50% of my evaluattion as an art teacher is based on 4th grade math and reading scores.

My students look forward to art class, and I have lost no enthusiasm for teaching them. This is my 20th year at my school, and every year I have something new to try, something marvelous to experience with my students. I rarely miss a single day of teaching. My way of fighting back is to absolutely refuse to let anything dampen my love for teaching art. I actually feel lucky to be an insider during these years, to see and know that even with the most misguided of mandates, my colleagues and I show up every day for the children who come through our doors.

The last time I saw Laura was in late February 2020 when it was becoming obvious that teaching in a building with 2400 fourth, fifth and sixth grade students was putting me at risk for contracting COVID, and that our Saturday breakfasts must stop to protect Laura’s health. I held my breath and hugged her. My school shut down mid-March, and I was allowed to teach online from home last year — to about 900 students in grades 1-4. I sent long emails describing what that was like, and she was fascinated by my reports. She said she was picking up groceries, staying in her condo, and of course, continuing her research and advocacy. In the spring I asked if we could get together again, and although she didn’t say no, she closed by wishing me and my famliy good health and happy lives. I knew that it was her way of saying good-bye.

Categories Arts Education, Education Reform, Personal, Teaching

We Have Lost a Dear Friend: Laura Chapman

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2021 //
43

Laura H. Chapman was a devoted supporter of public education, the Network for Public Education, and this blog. I was honored to post her carefully researched and well documented comments on this blog. Although her health clearly was in decline, she faithfully attended every annual meeting of NPE.

Laura was a distinguished arts educator. Please read her obituary in The Cincinnati Enquirer. We have lost a treasured friend.

Laura shared my dislike of billionaire reformers who didn’t know much about education but imagined they could solve its problems with Big Data. She was opposed to privatization of public funds. She opposed the substitution of technology for real teachers. She was a fierce and eloquent supporter of a rounded liberal arts education. she never failed to inspire me with her wisdom.

Categories Arts Education, Cincinnati, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Personal

A Tribute to the Great Mike Rose

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2021 //
10

I received a notice a few days ago from a scholarly organization, informing me that Mike Rose had died. Mike was a beloved teacher, scholar, and author. He had keen empathy for working people. He taught at UCLA. I met him a decade ago, and we became friends. You may have met him through such books as Lives on the Boundary, or Why School?, or Possible Lives.

Other people knew Mike far better than I, and I invite you to read what they wrote about him.

His literary agent, Anna Sproul-Latimer, who worked with Mike on his latest book, wrote a deeply personal article about him.

She wrote, as part of a longer piece:

Five days ago, just hours before what was probably going to be the last of our four editor meetings, my beloved client Mike Rose dropped dead. He woke up at dawn, sent me a quick email, walked into his kitchen, and—bam, there went the cartoon anvil of fate. Spontaneous cerebral hemorrhage. He was 77.

Mike didn’t die right away. Or maybe he did? Depends on how you define it. When the cops broke down Mike’s door Friday morning, twenty-four-plus hours after he went down, he was still breathing, but most of him had already left. In the bloodbath of his brain, only the brainstem remained functional. It kept chugging away, obliging, with the breathing and the circulating, until Sunday night…

Dramatic irony: I knew something was wrong the instant Mike missed our Thursday afternoon editorial call. He was the most neurotic man I have ever met. He would never ever ever.

For some reason, though, I didn’t take the thought seriously. I told myself he probably just got confused by technical difficulties. That he was out of pocket. That he’d call later.

“Or maybe he’s DEAD!” The idea floated around like a diaphanous scarf, something designed for a witchy Instagram aesthetic and little else. I ran its weightless silk through my fingers. I emailed it to him, as a tease. “I’m beginning to worry you’re dead!”

When I woke up Friday morning, the scarf was strangling me…

I loved Mike Rose so, so much, even though he also might have been the single most aggravating client I’ve ever had. There was no way in hell any commission I’d ever receive on his book would financially justify the time demands of our relationship, let alone the exhaustion.

I stayed in the relationship anyway. Happily. It brought me so much joy.

Never in the depths of orgiastic moroseness could Charles Schulz have imagined a neurotic ruminator more determined to wrest disappointment from his every success than Mike Rose. Neither for all the wonder in Schulz’s childlike soul could he have dreamed up a character more warm, tender, careful, open-minded, sincere, brilliant, tenacious, and faithful.

You should read Mike Rose.

Read the last two entries on his blog. The last is called “The Desk,” and it’s the story of a magical desk he owned as a child that allowed him to imagine other worlds. Sproul-Latimer described it this: “It is a tender, quiet, devastating personal essay about growing up in squalor in South Central Los Angeles. He describes a childhood at once desperately lonely and overcrowded to the point of suffocation.”

Fred Klonsky blogged about the deaths of both Mike Rose and Bob Moses in recent weeks. Mike Rose’s next to last blog post was about Bob Moses, written last May, before Moses’ death.

Klonsky wrote:

When I was 34 and decided I wanted to teach I was introduced to a world of brilliant thinkers who were entirely new to me. Few were more brilliant than Mike Rose. Mike Rose touched me in a way few others did. His class roots. His understanding of students whose courageous struggle to learn got them labeled in the worst way. His respect for work and labor as an intellectual enterprise. His book, Lives on the Boundary, still has an honored spot in my collection.

Mike Rose had a unique voice. He was not in the thick of policy battles. He worked on a different level, seeking to understand people and their lives.

Categories Goodness, Personal

What I Said About NCLB and Standardized Testing a Decade Ago

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2021 //
12

In 2011, I was interviewed by Terri Gross on “Fresh Air,” her NPR program. When my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. When it was published, there was quite a lot of speculation about why I changed my views. Apparently, no one ever has a change of mind or heart. I have been consistent over the years in admitting that I was wrong when I supported charter schools, testing, and accountability. It was really hard for some people to accept the plain statement, “I was wrong.”

On the 10th anniversary of this interview, I post it now (I didn’t have a blog in 2011).

The book became a national bestseller, a first for me. (My next book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement, was also a national bestseller).

I had a wonderful appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart about Death and Life. When I heard I was invited on his show, I had never heard of it. I watched the day before I appeared. Stewart interviewed Caroline Kennedy, and my heart sank, thinking what a nerd I was. When I went on the show, the booker had me wait in the wings until he announced me. As he started to announce me, the audience began applauding loudly in anticipation of a celebrity, but the applause died down when they realized I was no celebrity, no big name. I hesitated behind the curtain, and the booker gave me a sharp shove that propelled me onto the stage. Jon Stewart was very kind to me, and I truly liked him. The next day, the book was the number one nonfiction book on Amazon. Seeing it rise to number one was one of the most thrilling moments of my professional life!

I appeared again on The Daily Show when Reign of Error was published.

Again, he was wonderful, and he helped propel the book to the bestseller list. No one was sadder when he retired than I.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Personal, Standardized Testing

My Signal Contribution to the U.S. Department of Education

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2021 //
8

When I served in the George H.W. Bush administration, I was Assistant Secretary for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

OERI, as it was then called, had almost no discretionary money. There was very little opportunity for any initiatives, which may have been a good thing at that time. I became very involved in advocacy for national standards, which I now regret. I also spoke up for the national goals (remember them?), most of which were out of reach (like, we will be first in the world in math and science by the year 2000). OERI has since been pretentiously renamed the “Institute for Education Sciences.”

However, there is one thing that I am very proud of. I initiated a statistical review of the history of American education and the best brains in the Office of Research gathered the data to show the progress of education. It was published in 1992.

It is called 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait.

I still refer to it when writing essays that require historical information about education.

It should have been updated by now, but it has not been.

It is a wonderful resource for scholars and others engaged in research about education.

This is the introduction that I wrote in 1992:

Diane Ravitch Assistant Secretary

As an historian of education, I have been a regular consumer of education statistics from the U.S. Department of Education. For many years, I kept the Department’s telephone number in my address book and computer directory. It did not take long to discover there was one person to whom I should address all my queries: Vance Grant. In my many telephone calls for information, I discovered he is the man who knows what data and statistics have been gathered over the years by the Department of Education. No matter how exotic my question, Dr. Grant could always tell me, without delay, whether the information existed; usually, he produced it himself. When I asked a statistical question, I could often hear the whir of an adding machine in the back- ground, even after the advent of the electronic calculator.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, to find myself in the position of Assistant Secretary of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), the very home of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The latter agency is headed by Emerson Elliott, the first presidentially appointed Commissioner of Education Statistics. And imagine my delight when I encountered Vance Grant, face to face, for the first time. The voice on the telephone, always cheerful and confident, belonged to a man employed by the Department or Office of Education since 1955.

Vance Grant, a Senior Education Program Specialist, and Tom Snyder, NCES’ Chief of the Compilations and Special Studies Branch in the Data Development Division, prepared 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. They did so enthusiastically, because—like me—they knew it was needed. Historians of education customarily must consult multiple, often disparate, sources to find and collect the information in this one volume. They can never be sure if the data they locate are consistent and reliable. This compilation aggregates all relevant statistics about the history of our educational system in one convenient book. It will, I believe, become a classic, an indispensable volume in every library and on every education scholar’s bookshelf, one that will be periodically updated. Vance Grant’s and Tom Snyder’s careful preparation of this report substantially enriches our knowledge of American education. But collecting these historical data in one volume not only benefits professional historians. As a Nation, we need to develop an historical perspective in analyzing change. Too often, newspapers report important political, economic, or social events without supplying the necessary historical context. We are all now accustomed to reading headlines about the latest test scores. Whether up or down, they invariably overstate the meaning of a single year’s change. And the same short-sightedness often flaws journalistic reports of other major educational trends.

Historical Context

One does not need to be an historian to recognize the tremendous importance of historical context. Each of us should be able to assess events, ideas, and trends with reliable knowledge of what has hap- pened in the past. If we cannot, our ability to understand and make sense of events will be distorted. This volume would become a reference for all who wish to make informed judgments about American education. We must struggle mightily against the contemporary tendency towards presentism, the idea inspired by television journalism that today’s news has no precedent. As we struggle to preserve history, we preserve our human capacity to construct meaning and to reach independent judgment.

In an age when we are awash with information and instantaneous news, it is meaning, understanding, and judgment that are in short supply. This collection of historical statistics about American education provides its readers with the perspective they need to understand how far we have come in our national commitment to education and how far we must still go in pursuit of our ideals.

I especially thank Vance Grant and Tom Snyder for their untiring efforts in assembling this book. Without their dedication, and without Emerson Elliott’s support for the importance of this work, it would never have happened.

Emerson was the career civil servant who directed the National Center for Educational Statistics, which was the heart of the original Department of Education, created in 1867. As I mentioned, in the thirty years since this publication was issued, it has not been updated. What a shame.

Categories Data, History, Personal, Research, U.S. Department of Education

Diane’s Practical Tips for Dog Lovers

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2021 //
49

My spouse and I have a wonderful dog named Mitzi. She is a 57-varieties mixed breed. When people ask me what she is, I say she is a genuine pedigreed Muttheimer. She is black with white paws and weighs 100 pounds. She may be the sweetest dog I have ever known.

But Mitzi has one problem. Since puppyhood, she has suffered from bouts of diarrhea. A few years back, I used metronidazole, which was prescribed by the veterinarian. One time, her diarrhea was so bad in the middle of the night that I rushed her to a vet clinic, where they gave her the same drug and charged me with $250. Then I learned I could buy it online without a prescription because it is used to treat bacteria in fish-tank fish. I passed along that advice and was chastised for advising a medical treatment for other people’s dogs.

So I now offer you a far better treatment. A few months ago, Mitzi got the ailment again. The metronidazole didn’t help her; it was completely ineffective. So I went online, read reviews of other products, and found something new. It is basically Kaopectate for dogs, called Pro-Pectalin. It has no drugs in it that require a prescription. It works like a charm. I grind it up, mix it with her food, and within a day, she was feeling herself again.

I wrote this in late March. I am in intensive care in the hospital now.

Categories Personal

Diane’s Practical Tips for Everyday Life

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2021 //
25

I know this is an education blog, but I sometimes take excursions into other areas of life that interest me.

So from time to time, I will share a few things that I have learned that I want to share.

Today I am going to tell you about the best treatment for leg cramps that I have ever discovered.

After I had a total knee replacement in 2014, I started getting occasional leg cramps that were beyond painful. My thighs would start cramping, then the rest of my leg, and the pain was excruciating. It would always catch me unawares, watching television, or while sleeping at night. There was nothing I could do other than wait it out, as tears rolled down my cheeks.

A couple of years ago, my son told me about a cure for leg cramps. I am always skeptical but it was worth a try. It’s called CrampsAway. It comes as little packets in a small box of 10. I bought a box online to give it a try. There is nothing in it but vitamins. It works. It is amazing. On three occasions since I bought it, I have had leg cramps and immediately opened the packet and swallowed the couple of tablespoons within. Cramps gone.

I am not a doctor or a physical therapist. I have no credentials. This is an over-the-counter product that you can buy without a prescription. It contains no prohibited substances. It worked for me.

In case you are wondering, I wrote this post in late March before my surgery. I’m guessing that at the moment, I am totally sedated on the operating table.

Categories Personal

My Broken Heart

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2021 //
206

I was born in 1938. I’m in pretty good health, considering my age. But one of the valves in my heart has a leak. It must be repaired. On April 8, I am having open heart surgery. The surgeon will break open my breastbone to reach my heart, then wire it back together. He assures me I will be fine, but fatigued, when it’s over.

I have tried to take it in stride, but it’s hard not to find it scary. Terrifying, actually.

To cheer me up, I keep thinking of hokey old songs that use the word “heart” in them. There are so many of them. Dozens. Scores. Hundreds. I’ve been singing Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart,” and “My heart cries for you, sighs for you, dies for you, please come back to me,” “Peg of My Heart,” “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” “You’re Breaking My Heart Cause You’re Leaving, you’ve fallen for somebody new,” Doris Day’s “Once I had a Secret Love, that lived within the heart of me,” “ Hoagy Carmichael’s “Heart and Soul, I fell in love with you,” Elvis Presley’s “Wooden Heart,” Patsy Cline’s “Heartaches,” another version of a different “Heartaches,” The Charms, “Hearts Made of Stone,” Billy Eckstine’s “My Foolish Heart,” The Four Aces, “Heart of My Hearts,” Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” and many more. “Heart of My Heart” is the one I keep singing to myself; it’s a barbershop quartet song. The Elvis Presley song is adorable, Elvis like you have never seen him before.

It’s a habit in my natal family to try to turn bad news into humor.

My heart is not amused.

When the nurse-practitioner called to review procedures, she asked me what kind of animal valve I wanted in my heart. Without hesitation, I said I wanted the valve of a Longhorn steer. My heart really does belong to Texas.

One of the first people I turned to for advice about a surgeon was Checker Finn’s wife, Renu Virmani, who is a world-renowned cardiologist. She assured me that the surgeon recommended by my cardiologist was the best in New York City. The more I inquired, the better I felt about the person I chose. When I met him, he relieved my anxieties. At least some of them.

The blog will continue while I am hospitalized. I have written some in advance. Some of of my good friends agreed to write special contributions for me in my absence (most are original and never been previously published). And I expect to jump in to comment and maybe even post a few things as soon as the anesthesia wears off.

So please think of me on April 8. I will be grateful for your thoughts, prayers, and good wishes.

I’m not going away. I will be back with a stronger heart and a passion for justice. And maybe the heart valve of a lion or a tiger or a Longhorn.

Categories Personal

Bayard Rustin: A Remembrance

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2021 //
17

My youngest grandson is in second grade. His class was studying Black History, and each student was asked to make a project. He chose to create a poster about civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. I was thrilled to see his finished project, because it was not only well done, but because I knew Bayard Rustin and I started thinking about him. He was a good friend of my then-husband and me.

We got to know him in the mid-1960s. He was the bravest man I ever met. He was arrested many times for his pacifism and his civil rights activities. He was beaten many times by counter-demonstrators. He dedicated his life to standing up for others. He served prison time as a conscientious objector during World War II because he refused to fight. He told us that he realized later that he was wrong because he did not know then what a monster Hitler was.

He was very close to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and was the chief organizer for the March on Washington in 1963. Bayard was a strategist and a thinker, in addition to being a fearless activist. He was a brilliant speaker and writer.

Soon after we became friendly with him, in the late 1960s, he asked if he could give a concert in our new apartment on Park Avenue and 85th Street in Manhattan as a fundraiser for the Young People Socialists League. We did not yet have any furniture other than beds and a few chairs, so we said of course. Bayard gave an a cappella concert for about 50 members of YPSL. At the time, I thought to myself that the building had never before had so many black people and Socialists at one time in its history (or probably ever). I learned that night that years earlier, Bayard used to sing with Leadbelly.

I recall a speech that Bayard gave about the Kerner Commission report when it came out. He was a great proponent of creating economic opportunity (jobs with good wages) for blacks. He proposed a Marshall Plan for economic development of black Americans so that everyone would have a decent standard of living. He said that we could expend all our energies on things that didn’t make a difference, or actually fund the changes that would make a huge difference. We didn’t.

While the Vietnam War (which he opposed) was still raging, many Vietnamese people fled to Thailand and were living in refugee camps. Bayard organized a planeload of aid, delivered by himself and other civil rights leaders, to fly to the camps. He invited my 15-year-old son to join them. I was a nervous mother and did not want to put his life in danger and I didn’t let him go. I have since regretted that caution, but knowing how fiercely protective I was of my children, I would probably say no again.

Bayard was deeply devoted to the labor movement. He helped to found the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which worked closely with the labor movement to advance civil rights and equal treatment of black and white workers. Bayard knew that the labor movement was vital to the struggle for equality because black workers who unionized were assured good wages, healthcare, and a pension, and had a voice in working conditions. He always referred to his mentor as “Mr. Randolph.”

One of my favorite Bayard stories occurred in Miami (we heard about it later). He was there at a meeting of the AFL-CIO executive council. He went to a nightclub to see Marlene Dietrich perform. He sat at a table in front of the stage. He later described her as “luminous,” wearing a shimmering silver gown. When she finished, he jumped to his feet, and tossed a bouquet of flowers at her feet. He said later, “I love that woman. She told Hitler to go f— himself!”

Bayard was gay and he was not closeted. He dressed elegantly. He wore several exotic rings. We had dinner at his apartment in a union-built cooperative (Penn Station South), and the walls were covered with beautiful pieces of African art that he had collected in his travels. We met his partner, Walter, who adored him.

There is no one quite like Bayard Rustin on the scene today. No one with his courage, his independent intellect and his fierce devotion to equality and principle. I miss him.

Categories Civil Rights, Courage, History, Personal
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