As the New York Times reports, the City Council voted overwhelmingly on June 30th to add two Muslim holidays to the NY public school calendar. As of now, no Muslim holidays are on the calendar although about 12% (> 100,000) of the public school system's students identify as Muslim. This would have been fine and dandy but Mayor Bloomberg, who became the autocrat of NYC's public schools in 2000 and ultimately designates days off from the NYC public school calendar (and pretty much everything else) has opposed the measure.
Bloomberg explains that: "If you close the schools for every single holiday, there won't be any school," G. Oliver Koppell, one of the few council members to vote against the measure, explains that if one would accept these days, then other holidays on the schedule would have to be trimmed.
God forbid anyone took one day off Hanukkah, what would that menorah look like?!?
Koppell goes on to explain that if other religious groups in NY start demanding their own days off then "Where are we going to end with this?"
In other words, if non-authoritative religious groups in NYC begin demanding their fair share of recognition and respect then we may just swirl into a chaotic abyss of truancy. Worse yet, it might even expose how ludicrous it is to force unwilling individuals to sit in buildings for 9+ hours a day, 5+ days a week, 9+ months a year.
The argument "Where are we doing to end with this?" smells terribly familiar. Oh yes, it reminds me of the arguments against gay marriage and legal recognition of one's non-conforming gender expression. Usually the arguments sounds something like this: "But if we allow two men to marry then the next thing that will happen is that women will marry frogs and llamas will marry blenders" and "If we allow men to identify as women on their driver's licenses then where will it end? Soon women will identify as frogs and llamas as blenders."
Oh the Judeo-Christian organization of the world. Will it ever deconstruct?
The News and Observer reports that: "The House approved by a one-vote margin a bill that would ban bullying against school children for actual or perceived differences including sexual orientation."
I actually find this to be repulsive that the bill wasn't approved by a much wider margin. Apparently the reason is that...
"Opponents, particularly Republicans, have said the bill should not name special categories of victims and have said the bill should simply ban all bullying. Supporters, mostly Democrats, have said the bill focuses attention on children who are the most likely targets in schools across the state."
In reality, GLBTQ and gender-nonconforming young people need special protections because they receive special abuses. Of course it is imperative that all young people feel safe in schools, and that the onus is on EVERYONE to ensure that school spaces are safe spaces, but it is a fact of reality, uncovered in oh so many studies, that GLBTQ and gender-nonconforming young people are particularly trageted and abused physically and emotionally in schools and are thus more likely to have a lower self-esteem, abuse themselves, and committ suicide.
The dismal state of this bill proves that our homophobic and/or ignorant representatives need to be educated.
The New York Post recently put out a news story uncovering one of the better kept secrets in NYC, that while students of the City University of New York (CUNY), who are predominately people of color and/or working class, work multiple jobs to stay in school, "The presidents of five City University of New York colleges and the dean of the university's law school get free housing in lavish homes in top-notch neighborhoods.
"Another 15 CUNY presidents and deans receive monthly $5,000 housing allowances, enough collectively to cover a year's tuition for nearly 200 students. Matthew Goldstein, the CUNY chancellor, earns $450,000 and gets an extra $90,000 a year for housing, giving him the highest allowance in the nation along with the new State University of New York chancellor and a college administrator in Kentucky."
All of this goes is someone legitimized despite the upcoming $600 increase in tuition for CUNY students, an increase that will purge thousands of students from the system.
"Whose Schools/Our Schools: A Strategic Round Table on the NYC Student Movement at the Brecht Forum"Check out a panel on activism at NY schools at the Brecht Forum this Sunday featuring a good friend and fellow activist, Tara Mulqueen. Whoa!
Featuring organizers at the forefront of the student movement in New York, this event will address the successes and failures of student organizing from the perspective of activists engaged in ongoing struggles against university administrations across the city. Along with long term strategic questions for student organizers, we will be discussing the relationship between universities and capital, and the role of student organizing for the left in general.
Sunday April 26th, 4pm
Sliding scale
With:
Tim Hearin - New School
Yotam Marom - Radical Student Union (New School)
Tara Mulqueen - CUNY Movement
Drew Phillips - Take Back NYU!
Banu Quadir - Take Back NYU!
Doug Singsen - CUNY Movement
The Brecht Forum is located at 451 West St. on the West Side Highway between Bank and Bethune Sts in the West Village. for more info and directions visit www.BrechtForum.org
Global Week of Action is HERE
As some of you may know, Global Week of Action Against the Commercialization of Education is 4/20-29. Via Mo from the Emancipating Education for All website, here are some highlights of the last two days.
-More than 500 students and pupils kicked off the Global Week of Action with a demonstration through the old town of Heidelberg, Germany right after a general assembly on campus.
-Tampere, Finland. The day began with lowering a banner from the rooftop of the university, followed by a welcoming speech and everyone entering the university. There were several dozen participants. Societal songs were sung inside the university. Actions executed by the student movement in Tampere and elsewhere in Finland were presented.
There was a discussion on which themes the student movement should grab in the future, both inside and outside universities. Students' monetary situation and basic security matters were also discussed, as well as the administration of spaces at university and general societal situation.
After the opening of Global Action Week documentaries were shown as a basis for discussion. The chosen documentaries were "The Potentiality of Storming Heaven", "Money as Debt" and "Good Copy/Bad Copy". [The following day,] the student movement served free soup and provided information in front of a university building as part of a boycott on Sodexo (there is a Sodexo restaurant in the building). A reporter from a prime Finnish newspaper documented the action, as well as several other medias.
On-going reading circles at the university presented themselves, and there were public discussions on selected texts by Bourdieu, Gramsci and on a pamphlet called "Wissensarbeit Macht Frei".
In the evening a Finnish movie called "Vihreä leski" [Green widow] was shown. The movie is about the anxiety and alienation caused by suburbanity.
- Zagreb, Croatia.
The Independent Student Initiative for the Right to Free Education has organized a peaceful occupation of the Faculty of Philosophy.
The occupation has been initiated as a mean to promote their demand for free education for all. They have stopped classes and exams, and have organized various lectures, discussion and movie screenings instead of normal classes.
They'll be translating some of their press releases in English and German, to make the information about the occupation available to others outside the region. Right now, their materials are only available in Croatian, at this web page: slobodnifilozofski.bloger.hr
Video, unfortunately only in Croatian, is available here.
Why I'm Walking out of Class
Via SocialistWorker:
Conor Tomás Reed explains why he's ready for an April 22 protest at City College of New York against a tuition increase and faculty cutbacks.
WE STUDENTS are not told of the inspiring radical history of our City College of New York. We are not told that our school was free until 1976, or that it was such an exciting hotbed of political ideas in the 1930s that Black writers like Richard Wright affectionately called it the "Little Red Schoolhouse."
Most conspicuously, we are not told of the mass 1960s struggles that rocked our campus for the people's basic right to an education, culminating in the historic 1969 CCNY Open Admissions Strike. This action successfully fought the school's previous racist admissions practices, and ultimately forced its doors open to welcome huge numbers of students of color and the creation of ethnic studies departments all over CUNY.
Such victories are not officially discussed because, hey, what happens if the students decide to advocate again for our educational rights?History does not repeat itself, but rather interacts its past with its present and future in a continuous dynamic process. Right now, we are seeing history being looped and remixed. The disastrous economic crisis has politicians and bankers alike scrambling to find ways to apply band-aids here and there at the terrible expense of students and working people.
For CUNY students, a recent state legislature decision in early April to impose $300 more in tuition fees each semester demonstrates that our lives and our right to an education are under attack. This tuition increase is not even going toward more investment in our schools; 80 percent will be funneled directly into the state budget. We are effectively being taxed for wanting to go to college.
That's why CCNY students are organizing a mass walkout on April 22 at 2 p.m. with a clear message: We are walking out today so we don't have to drop out tomorrow.
This walkout has been a long time coming. Military recruiters are still invited every semester to peddle their education-for-murder-abroad exchange program. Whole departments, like Black Studies, Women's Studies, Psychology and more, are being eroded into oblivion. Baskerville Hall, the place where in the past clubs could actively congregate, is a never-ending construction nightmare.
Professors and adjuncts are being told to work more for less pay, to endure larger class sizes with fewer resources. CCNY security makes entrance into NAC more and more of an aggressive process. Who knows--maybe we'll soon have to take off our shoes and be administered body searches?
We are walking out on April 22 because we think that CCNY can reclaim its original vision, as stated on January 21, 1849, the day it opened free educational doors to NYC--that "the experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated; and whether an institution of the highest grade, can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few."
We are walking out on April 22 because we are feeling more and more disenfranchised from this "Poor People's Harvard," which should be seen as a haven from the economic crisis, not an extension of its uncertainties. At a time when our city and state governments should be consciously investing in our futures with more educational funding, more scholarships and more resources for students and teachers, we are being told to learn with less.
Join us on that day, when we will reclaim our radical history of City College by leaving our classes en masse at 2 p.m. to hold a rally at the NAC plaza and firmly assert that education should be for the people, not for profit.
Walkout Against Cuts at University of Vermont
 Via SocialistWorker:
Students and faculty at the University of Vermont (UVM) walked out of classes on April 9 in the latest action against the university administration's proposed budget cut measures that will result in 107 faculty and staff layoffs, ballooning tuition and an increase in class sizes.
Students left classes to join a 1,000-strong rally and were quick to point out that the administration's drive to balance the budget on the backs of students and workers reveals a twisted set of priorities.
The administration has attributed recent budget cut measures to the economic crisis, presenting their case in the all-too-familiar language of "shared sacrifice," despite the fact that state appropriations--thanks to federal stimulus money--will restore university funding to normal levels in 2009.
The proposed cuts come at the same time that 40 top-level administrators, whose combined base salaries--before benefits--add up to $7,312,381, were revealed to have received nearly $1 million in Wall Street-style bonuses in the last several years. If these same administrators were to take a 5 percent pay cut, the savings would be enough to restore all 27 lecturers laid off from the school of Arts and Sciences.
The protesters congregated to listen to outraged faculty and community members speak out against the cuts. Members of Students Stand Up, the group responsible for organizing the event, engaged the crowd with a political skit about the budget cuts, using a puppet resembling UVM President Dan Fogel.
First-year student Naadhira Ali said she was excited to see the turnout of both faculty and students. "Usually, faculty are kind of resistant to the idea of protest, but my biology professor told us this might be her last lecture at UVM, and she appreciates everyone walking out against the cuts," said Ali. Not only did professors allow their students to leave class, but manyended class early so students could attend the protest.
Larry Ziegler-Otero, an anthropology lecturer facing layoff, said he was encouraged by the scope and spirit of the rally. "I think it's wonderful," said Ziegler-Otero. "I'm deeply grateful to the students for making this effort."
After the spirited speak-out, the crowd marched to the Waterman Building, which houses the university's bloated administration, chanting, "They say cut back, we say fight back," and "Money for jobs and education, not for Fogel's administration."
Upon arriving at the Waterman Building, the demands of the campaign were read to the crowd. They include revoking all layoffs, issuing a statement of neutrality regarding faculty unionization, reinstating the discontinued varsity baseball and softball teams, and allowing students, staff and faculty a role in future university decision-making.
Students then stormed into the building and gathered outside the administrative wing chanting, "One, we are the students; two, you can't ignore us; three, stop the cuts at UVM!"
After some time, Vice President of Finance Richard Cate emerged from the wing to address the crowd. When asked if the administration was ready to accept student demands, he responded by saying, "Not yet." After a few more minutes, people began to leave the building chanting, "We'll be back!"
About 50 students returned to the Davis Center for a discussion of the next steps for the campaign, including strategies for outreach and the potential of a building occupation.
This protest was the largest at UVM since the anti-apartheid struggles of the 1980s. The stirrings of a mass movement uniting all forces against the administration are apparent as students and faculty plan their next move in the fight against putting profit before UVM community members.
Public Schools, Private Money
Cross-posted from The Wonkster:
Since taking control of the city schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and School Chancellor Joel Klein have sought private funds for schools and also used supposedly private non-profit groups to boost their education agenda. All this may well have brought needed funds to city classrooms, but it also has created a tangled web and led to concerns about conflicts of interest and where the private roles stops and the public one begins. As evidence, look to a few recent events and reports. First there was yesterday’s City Council hearing on education contracting, which inevitably turned to discussion of the $15.7 million contract awarded in 2006 to Alvarez & Marsal — without benefit of competitive bidding. (For more on other subjects discussed at the hearing see this account of alleged cost overruns from Gotham Schools, a report on how the department’s contracting procedures allegedly hurt small local businesses and an account of the range of issues in question.) Questions of financial rectitude aside, council members blame A&M for suggesting changes that lead to the school bus botch of winter 2007.
Department of Education officials said the $17 million contract had led to saving of $170 million — since the report has ever been released, who knows? And department contracting chief David Ross said there was no need to put the contract out for bid because A&M had already had a contract with the Fund for Public Schools, a foundation created by the administration. “Time was of the essence,” Ross said. “It just was not practical to do” a competitive bid.” Or as Ross reportedly said when questioned about this in 2007, A&M “had people on the ground” by the time the contract was awarded. As a supposedly private organization, the fund does not have to go public with its contracts the way the city does. Its officials do not have to file financial disclosure forms. But what if it serves as a kind of farm team for contractors, allowing them to escape the usual scrutiny? Or as Councilmember John Liu said yesterday, “allows them to get a $16 or $17 million contract without competitive bidding”? A similar situation arose last summer with the city’s program to train principals. The contract did go out for competitive budding but to no one’s surprise the group that won it was the Leadership Academy, the organization that had created the program when it was supported by private funds. As skoolboy wrote at the time, ““The DOE had a competitive bidding process to award a contract to an organization that Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein had created and publicly supported over the past five years.” To further blur the public private line, Klein, not content to run the nation’s largest public schools system and the Fund for Public Schools, last year co-founded the Education Equality Project (you’ve got to give the guy points for energy). A joint project of Klein and the Rev. Al Sharpton, it seeks to close the educational achievement gap between white and minority students. On Monday, the Post reported that the city’s malleable Conflicts of Interest Board had granted Klein and top education department staff permission to raise money for the Education Equality Project “using both city time and city resources.” Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Ernie Logan, apparently a supporter of the project’s program, reportedly called the fund-raising arrangement “the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.” Maybe — but you can’t argue with success. Yesterday, Juan Gonzalez reported in the Daily News that soon after Sharpton and Klein forged their alliance Sharpton’s National Action Network received a $500,000 donation to support his work for the project. “The huge infusion of cash — equal to more than a year’s payroll for Sharpton’s entire organization — was quietly provided by Plainfield Asset Management, a Connecticut-based hedge fund, where former Chancellor Harold Levy is a managing director,” Gonzalez writes. The money reportedly did not go directly to Sharpton but was channeled through Education Reform Now, a group Gonzalez said is headed by former Daily News reporter and charter school advocate Joe Williams, who also heads Democrats for Education Reform. Williams (another busy guy), who is president and treasurer of the Education Equity project, would not tell Gonzalez how the donation was handled or what it was used for. Williams did tell his former colleague that the project’s board has not met in the 10 months since Klein and Sharpton formed it and city Education Department employees have so far made all day-to-day decisions. At the time of the donation, Gonzalez writes, “Plainfield Asset Management, a major investor in gaming operations, was pressing city and state officials for approval of two deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.” At the same time, according to the report, Sharpton was settling a “longrunning IRS investigation of his organization” that resulted in his owing some $1 million in back taxes and penalties. The Education Equality Project group will be meeting in New York today and tomorrow as part of the National Action Network’s annual convention
New School in Exile update
Yesterday, Friday April 10th, at about 6am a group of students from the New School in Exile took over a New School building with two simple demands: the resignation of New School President Bob Kerrey and full control the building as a free student space. By noon, most of the occupiers were gassed and arrested and are now sitting in jail. Bob Kerrey and the NYPD claim that some of the occupiers were violent, albeit NSIE claims otherwise. Regardless, I can't image that the NYPD were too civil themselves.
For more info and pics you can visit the New School in Exile's website here.
Angus at StudentActivism.net added a video to his blogging about the matter. The video, which is 1 minute and 59 seconds long was put out by the NYPD. For the video click here.
He writes:
It’s a little odd that the cops would think that posting video in which they weren’t beating or pepper-spraying people would serve as a defense against evidence that they beat and/or pepper-sprayed other people at a different stage of the day’s events. What’s really odd, though, is that the video is so short. If there was no police misconduct at any point during the arrests inside 65 Fifth, that’s great news. But if that’s the case, shouldn’t the cops release all the tape they have from inside the building, instead of just a two minute clip?
The fact that the NYPD youtube administrator has decided to disable all commenting on the video is also pretty questionable, since they only appear to do that for a select few videos. We're not idiots, right?
Anyhow, I think its amazing that Kerrey is still sticking around. If most of your students and a fair amount of your professors hate you and wish you would leave, and the only people who respect the legitimacy of your presidency are the officers of the NYPD, then don't you think it's time to find a new day job?
CUNY reaches its monetary goals...and they're still gonna raise tuition on poor students
NY Times reports that CUNY has reached it's goal of raising $1.2 Billion in fund-raising from graduates. It did so 3 years earlier than scheduled. Regardless, they will still be raising tuition next year for CUNY students who are predominantly one, a mix, or all of these things: working-class, person of color, generally broke as hell.
I wonder what Chancellor Goldstein will do with all that money. Well, historically he has: raised his own pay and the pay of his adminsitration and given large chunks of money to the Macaulay Honors College, a college composed of a select group of CUNY students that gets pretty much everything they want.
Oh, the elite - hoarding our money as usual.
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