Tidbits - February 26, 2015 - Netanyahu; Greece; George Washington, Slavery, Populist Challenger, Lynching, Teachers, Militarized Future, Water Privatization, and more...

Reader Comments- Netanyahu Doesn't Speak for All American Jews; SYRIZA, Greece; George Washington and Slavery; Lesley Gore; Needed-Populist Challenger; Tax Top Incomes; Militarized Future; Mississippi's Racial Murders; Ai-jen Poo, Aging; Walmart; West VA Coal; Bad Cops; Chapel Hill Murders; Water Privatization; Teachers and Education Today; Medical Volunteers Needed: Rojava Announcements: Film "Made in Dagenham", Identity Politics-Foundation for Coalition Building

Portside
Printer friendly  
Tidbits - Reader Comments and Announcements - February 26, 2015,Portside

Re: Re: Leaked Cables Show Netanyahu's Iran Bomb Claim Contradicted by Mossad

We saw this same graphic before with Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq..... go back to your hole Netanyayhoo..... We don't need your garbage here!

Eric Hahn
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Here we go again - new WMD - that don't exist. Israel's own Mossad says they do not exist, there is no danger of Iranian nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future. Secy. Kerry says progress is being made in current negotiations. But the right-wing war machine and Israel's Netanyahu want to drag the United States into a new war in the Mideast. Call your Senator and Congressional representative, tell them to boycott Netanyahu's speech before Congress.

Jay Schaffner
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

The warmonger from Israel wants the warmongers in the U.S. to start another needless war

Rick S Smith
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Rick R. Smith, if Obama was not President, Iran would have been bombed to the stone age; that is why the PM is addressing congress to continue his scare tactics.

Allsaints Macauley
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Netanyahu Does Not Speak for All American Jews

I am saddened to imagine that Netanyahu speaks for ANY American Jews. Israel's path seems to me a recipe for clear disaster, and I am sorry to have good people involved in it.  Simply my own feeling, and I am aware that no one asked for my opinion.

Larry Sherk

     ====

I believe in the state of Israel, but it needs to be taken back from the right wing religious and arrogant fanatics. - Those assholes who criticized those of us who speak out on the Likud policies, and call us Jews AntiSemite!

Howie Leveton
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Sure he speaks for all Jews. Just like a Muslim extremist speaks for all Muslims.

Will Brown
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

the people need to learn to live together despite their differences. in the modern age, the concept of (exclusive) countries with a national religion is archaic and destructive.

Steve Fields
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Time to cut Israel's welfare check of 8 million dollars a day

Scott Millard
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

A full page ad regarding Netanyahu's planned speech to Congress will appear in the New York Times. To read & sign the ad go to www.tikkun.org/peaceproject

Diane Laison
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

A timely and welcome rebuttal to those who label any opposition to current policies of Israel with Palestine as "anti-Semitic" or the views of "self-loathing Jews."

Charles Berthold
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

He doesn't even speak fro all Israelis, any more than "W" spoke for all Americans.

Jeff Kleiman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

I along with a Spanish guy, Mexico guy and USA guy almost got killed for witnessing Israel soldier stealing Palestinian land. NO more money or weapons to Israel from USA. We are travelers and we could NOT believe what we saw and experienced. We have NOTHING to gain or lose from sharing the truth.

Dalia L Tapia
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

HOW DARE Bibi commit daily atrocities and degradations in my name, using the suffering of my martyred relatives as his pathetic excuse...

My relatives would turn in their graves to hear disagreement with lock step racism called that disgusting red herring "self hatred." Shame on you to violate what they fought and died for.

Laura Alonso
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

...The idea in India that hundreds of millions of people needed to move hundreds or thousands of miles away just because of their religion was and is nuts. It was European colonialism run amok! It killed huge numbers of people. The outside European colonial divisions of the Middle East has not been any better.

Stephen Scott Crockett
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

I Think Portside holds a minority view here. We are hopeful for a settlement with Iran that holds up safety as well as enhances their energy economy. The negotiations of the past few days demonstrate Ernest engagement. Netenyahu's invitation is ill-timed.

Clint Black
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/Portside.PortsideLabor

     ====

I don't feel like an expert on this but I agree with the Portside post.

Marjorie Kramer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

It's complex. Of course, we're dealing with humans on every side of this long-standing, historical conflict. Transparency and clarity of emotion and intent is crucial to moving forward to any resolution.

David G. Carleton
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Abused children often become abusers...Same with nations. Not an excuse in either case, but it is the same psychology

Marian Paroo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

News flash... he doesn't speak for all Israelis either.

Perry Stein
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Many Israelis voted against this guy, and a few thousand have marched in the streets of Tel Aviv to oppose his policies. Are they antisemites?

Josh Lukin
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
 

Re: The Pro-worker, Pro-growth Experiment in Greece is Under Threat - Sen. Bernie Sanders

The Greeks initiated Democracy for the world to emulate. Perhaps the new Greek government is providing us with a model again, a government which seeks the best for its people and not the banks & corporate interests.

Lawrence Winans
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Maybe we'll have a European Spring!

Willie Williamson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: George Washington, First President and Slave Catcher

It turns out he didn't chop down that cherry tree, he had his slaves do it. Then he lied about it.

Seymour Joseph
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

This piece on Washington is great as far as it goes, but it neglects another aspect of Washington --  before he was a full-fledged slave owner or slave catcher, he was a surveyor. Surveyors were the social architects of the other key form of capital in the settler colonies -- the conversion of the indigenous land and forest commons (cultivated and developed by the native people) into private property. Even before the European enclosures that the "New World" wealth and commerce allowed and promoted, it was the creation of private property in land in the Americas that laid the basis for the existence of both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Surveyors drew the geometric straight lines that turned natural terrain and eco-systems into parcels of property, simultaneously (and similar in this regard to labor) a commodity and capital (as a social relationship among people and between people and land) -- a source of wealth and surplus. It is LAND plus labor that creates wealth, and it was the straight lines that the surveyors drew in creating boundaries of both private property and communal sovereignties, that made it possible to reduce nature (and thus humans) to a quantifiable factor of production -- the basic theft that underlies all property and the state, and all calculations of "profit."

Indigenous people, even the ones who were settled agriculturalists, found the idea that you could privately and personally own, buy and sell land as absurd as owning the air or the waters. Now of course, water is also privatized and permission to pollute the air becomes a marketable commodity.

Michael Novick

     ====

If I had a daughter, she would be named Ona Judge, who escaped from the evil grip of the first US President, seized her freedom, married who she chose, and lived free with her community.

Lisa Husniyyah Owens Pinto
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Washington spent years saving up the money to free his slaves on his death (paying his debts, etc.). Fighting and living alongside blacks during the Revolution had changed his perspective on them. As you note, Ona was his wife's slave, not his, so recapturing Ona was Martha's prerogative, not George's. Considering the time and situation he lived in, he did pretty well. Better than almost all. Better than Thomas "All men are created equal" Jefferson. Cut him some slack.

Jeffrey Turner
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

What!???? Are you saying politicians can & do tell lies??? Shocking!!!

I will use this segway to bring the slavery discussion forward into 21st century USA.

Watch John Legend and Common's Stirring Acceptance Speech's at the Oscars

Fran Gillespie
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Lesley Gore, Feminist Hero, Dies at 68

My first feminist teacher has left the building.

Constance McIntosh
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

She was way too young. She ranks up there with the suffragettes.

Gretchen Grossman Mobley
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Why the Country Needs a Populist Challenger in the Democratic Primaries

If no other reason to give a different possibility to the people

Andrew Bowe Douglass
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

If for no other reason than a much-needed public debate --

Alfred Rose
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Or you could just vote Green.

Susan Lamont
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Indeed, the Country needs such a challenger. But they will not swoop in like Batman to save Gotham City. Instead, they must come, ground up, from the Party that they supposedly represent. And the fact it that what America needs, and needs desperately, is a liberal middle-class who are not, at heart, self serving and fully in denial. What America needs are millions of middle class who are willing to consider the world outside of their own dominion.

Roland Shield
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Time for fresh, populist leadership...not another Bush or Clinton.

William Poole
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Trying to reform the Democrats is a lost cause. I'm too old to waste my precious time on them, so I am going Green!

Bob Alft
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Democrats have strayed to far from the old shoe leather and door knocking and went straight away to money politics - the candidate with the most cash gets the nod, but electable they often aren't and once they get where they are going, probably aren't democrats either.

Steve Hanken
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Sanders and/or Elizabeth Warren

Deirdre O'Meara Humphrey
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Taxing Top Incomes at the Same Rate as the Middle Class Could Fund Critical State Priorities-Including Education, Infrastructure, and Public Pensions

Sadly, it's hard to get folks interested in tax policy unless it clearly impacts their own wallet. Still, it's good to keep talking about it.

Eric Fain
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The U.S. is Heading Into a Heavily Militarized Future

I read Tom Englehardt's article on the increasing militarization of America with the knowledge I had read it many times before. I am glad we don't have a  rigid orthodoxy on the left, as there is on the right, so I can make my points heard.

The article is really about worshiping false gods -- in this case, the god of military power. Then there is the god of consumerism, the god of celebrity worship, the god of the perfect society if we can just socially engineer and nudge enough -- that's the god that produces Huxley's Brave New World.

As a lapsed Catholic, I have to say that there's another god -- the real one. Pope Francis says serve the poor, reject materialism, protect the earth.  This is a God greater than ourselves and our plans. Let's surrender to His will.

Alan Saly

     ====

This was an excellent piece and especially important. This point needs to be hammered away at because the military appropriation of capital-- which is what this build-up, jingoism and investment boil down to -- is the material face for fascist movements and dictatorships. When profits wither in the civil part of the economy, that's when this stuff military profiteering heats up. The ideology to promote and accompany the transition is worked out on the fly, fitted to the characteristics of the given nation-state.

John Woodford

     ====

This long and well documented article by Tom Englehardt explains how the militarization of the US is unprecedented in both breadth and depth. Bottom line: The US even under Obama is locked into a permanent war footing! This truth is disconcerting for two basic reasons, both obvious and inevitable: one politics, and one economic. Militarization of police is happening on all three levels, and the many iterations of each of these respective levels: namely, the federal (US marshals, FBI, Homeland Security, NSA, DOD, Immigration, Parks, etc.); the state (police, criminal justice [jails], "War on Drugs," etc.; and the local (police, schools, fire, park services, etc.) All of this means heavy capital investments and of course the ensuing immense corporate profits are inevitable. However, there is radical cultural transformation effected by all this militarization that is highly undemocratic and privatizing of the public sector. In the not so long run we are definitely looking at creepy but not so creeping fascism.

Larry Aaronson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Since NRA and the big corporations { including weapon companies and military machines} became controlling power , our government is heading to militarization . War after war after war !! we don't see any end to it.

Fahima Gaheez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

To quote Edward Snowden. We are becoming a country comprised of the rulers and the ruled and less the electorate and the elected. My biggest gripe with the Obama administration is how they have towed the line with these issues of security and privacy. Sometimes less government sounds like a good thing

David Tica
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: American Police Brutality, Exported from Chicago to Guantánamo

US war crimes, crimes against humanity, and human rights abuses. The greatest nation on earth? Not a chance....

David Brookbank
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

I become a little more ashamed of America every day.

Nancy Marshall
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

So sorrowful on so many levels. Let us pray. Let us not give up hope. Let us measure our speech. There is light and love in this world, along side of injustice. Be that light and love. Be courageous. Peace.

Marylou Nunamaker
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: A Black Mississippi Judge's Breathtaking Speech to 3 White Murderers

This is a serious, compelling judicial history in Mississippi -- the lesson is what is "normal"

Tillyruth Teixeira
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

I appreciate what U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves had to go through to arrive at the sentencing of these men, and I wonder how he compares this case to the murder case of James Byrd described in this article. There will never be enough watch-dogging.

New Racial Incident Hits Texas Town, Site of Truck-Dragging Murder

Sara Krohn
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

What I loved about his message is that he put the horrors of these crimes in perspective and that he inspired a sense of hope if we are vigilant to the cause.

Rick Moore
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Thank you for publishing this story about lynching and Mississippi. I spent a bit of time in a Greenwood Mississippi jail. The jail keepers let three large thugs come into group jail cell. They asked "Who1s the plumber here?" (I'm a plumber.) A poor drunken old guy said "I'm a plumber." They all but killed him. But for our shouts, they would have killed him.

That time in 1964 was the most terrifying and shameful night of my life - not to have stood up to them and taken the beating the old man took. He was removed from the cell. I don1t know if he died.

With this story you have given us, this issue will, I think, be part of our union meeting in a few weeks.

Would you please inform us of the verdict against the people on trial for the murder of James Craig Anderson in Jackson.

In solidarity,

Fred Hirsch

     ====

[Moderator's Note: Three sentenced in Mississippi hate crime death of black man

February 12, 2015
CBS6 - Richmond, Virginia

Three defendants have been sentenced to prison for their roles in the hate crime death of a black man in Mississippi who died after being beaten by a group of white teens and run over by a truck in 2011, U.S. authorities said. Deryl Paul Dedmon, now 22, was sentenced to 50 years in prison; John Aaron Rice, 21, to more than 18 years; and Dylan Wade Butler, 23, to seven years, federal authorities said this week.

Each defendant had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in the death of James Craig Anderson, 48, authorities said.

Re: New Study--Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror

they used to hang the person....burn the human until only ashes were left.....then sew them into a little pillow to sell to the people attending.....Ma ,Pa ,kids could have a little souvenir.....I'm told this is where the racist slur smoke came from........suns going down now ...dark gonna catch me here.....don't wanna be alone on the road!

Dennis Donnelly
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Always show pictures of the perpetrators, the white fascists who for too long have terrorized all kinds of people in the US. Never show pictures of the victims of lynching. No need to re-terrorize. But get those fascist faces in the brightest light. Here in Omaha we can start with the smug fascists who posed by Willie Browns burning body in 1919.

Doug Paterson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

It is a beginning. Late. But a start. Unbelievable that foreigners arrived in America, stole land from its people, wiped them out and then did much the same to imported black slaves. A country born in blood and hatred

Maureen Jansen
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Lynching is now done with bullets and legalized murder called Stand Your Ground.

Karen Stephens
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Ai-jen Poo's `The Age of Dignity' Is a Wake-up Call for an Aging-and Unprepared-Nation

Important that we oldersters start working for justice and fair pay and working conditions for domestic workers and care providers -- we are sharing common interests here for both the work and the necessary funding!

Leanna Noble
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

DIGNITY IN LABOR

This article and book about aging is the normal perspective of old people as objects, people who need care. It envisions a static society where people work to a certain point in their 60's and then become totally consumers. No amount of optimism will fix this picture.

I believe the answer lies in a complete reformation of work...and this goes for kids as well as the old. Most work today is exploited. People count the days to when they can escape, and when we retire we are generally already to some degree disabled. I think the future will be different, and the aging of society will be one of many revolutionary catalysts.

WORK IN SOCIALISM

Work is the central involvement of humanity in society. Capitalism has made profit more important than the products of work, or the process itself. The goal of socialism is to spread work out over the entire society, to the point where it is easy and healthful. Full employment in its highest form. No more children penned in an abstract world for their entire youth. No more vast numbers of adults languishing in insecurity and underemployment. No more warehoused elders. All of these crimes of capitalism are the result of the primacy of the profit motive.

When, under socialism, we accept the right of everyone to a creative, productive role in society, the fear of aging will fade away.

This means not only an end to exploited labor but a re-organization of living systems and their integration with work. Everyone has something to offer, right till they are ready to die, as soon as they can walk. The huge effort envisioned by Ai-jen Poo to mobilize and compensate care for drone-like elders would be better spent on revolution.

Bill Shortell


Re: Walmart Worker Victory Shows What We Can Win If We Keep Fighting

while 10 dollars an hour is very important to these workers....it is still a low wage according to the cost of living....working people should never require public assistance to take care of their families....that is unamerican and no corporation should be getting away with paying slave wages anywhere in america....

Rolland Mousseaux
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: West Virginia Coal Mine Owners Have Blood on Their Hands

My grand father was killed in a mining accident in West Virginia. I t could have been this one.

Carolyn Harris Scrivens
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

So the mines are engaging in activity that the government deems illegal and its common knowledge? I think the government is complicit as well as mine companies !

Norman D Pratt Jr.
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

From a recent union song, "I just came to work here mister - I didn't come to die."

Doug Richardson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

The first aerial bombing from planes was done against striking miners in WVa.

Gary Lefebvre
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Haven't the owners always had blood dripping from hands and mouth?? As a child, I actually lived in a "company" town. Dreadful existence!

Gayle Neville Muskus
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The Bad Cop Database

Fortunately there are still more good cops than bad. Otherwise we would have anarchy!

William David Osburn
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

We need to police the police, since they want do it.

Gary R Tunnell Sr.
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary.

(One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.)

     ====

We certainly have mostly good cops. There are bad ones that should be monitored and prosecuted when they brake the law. The police that try to cover up for the bad ones should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Jim Flatley
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Gee, and defense lawyers fight tooth and nail to keep criminals' history from being taken into account. This is a slippery slope. Remember the sword cuts both ways.

Phil Davies
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Something similar will definitely be extremely valuable in South Africa as long as it's proven misconduct. It will mean only committed and trustworthy people remain in the force who will be respected and looked up to by all law abiding citizens.

Koos Roos
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Until the so-called good ones stop covering up for the obvious killer cops, the whole force is suspect.

Susan Wohlbruck
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The Chapel Hill Murders: Why Muslim Lives Don't Matter

for the same reason people rallied around george zimmerman and why rudy guilianni says obama doesn't love america,,,conservatives are the "mean girls" of junior high.
their entire lives are based in the doctrine of he or she is either "one of us, or they are not."

conservatives suffer from arrested development. they are the people who, at the ripe old age of 16 or 17, decided they knew everything there was to know and for them learning is abhorrent behavior. they spend their entire lives chastising and bullying anyone who isn't exactly like them.

Claude Miller
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Water Privatization: "Notoriously At Odds With Democracy"

It's not about Human rights or needs it's about Money Power Greed not your needs! You can't even legally collect rain water in some places any more...

Rex Runnels
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

If you wish, take a look at how the Irish are pushing back on this issue.

Marcia Nelson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Nobody "owns" a natural resource......

Leonard Brown
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

This is where the 1% is taking us. Over the past few years there have been taxes put on solar & wind energy, conferences at the UN discussing the selling of the worlds water supply, and people arrested for collecting rain water.

Dutch Masta
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

yes utilities Should be publicly owned...even as a little kid...i could never understand how basic utilities could be Owned ! seems logical ( and moral) to be Publicly Owned....

Linda Crowley
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Cuba Through the Looking Glass

For years, I have heard that the Cubans have a vaccine for Hepatitis C.

Margaret E. Roney

     ====

I visited Cuba for the first time and have just returned. It is a beautiful island with very friendly people. It has a very difficult history with both Spain in the early period and the U.S. since 1898 trying to rule it.

The Cubans I met were proud of their achievements in medical care and education. They are poor but work very hard. They were cautious about the recent overture by President Obama - optimistic to a degree but determined to keep their own country independent. They were scathing about Roberta Jacobson's hypocritical comments about human rights so close to Guantánamo where the scandalous behavior of the American government persists and agreed with their government that it should be returned to Cuba.

In reading about what the U.S. wants in return for lifting the embargo, it basically wants to reverse the revolution. The American proposal for compensation for properties taken over by the Cuban government is very high, represents interests today that were successors of owners in 1959 and gives high value estimates for property that today is often a ruin. It also wants cash, which the Cubans don't have.

So the Americans still have not rethought their relationship with Cuba, and before the revolution that relationship was truly despicable and supported corruption, vice and exploitation of the Cubans. So until there is a genuine change in attitude and an extensive change in U.S. governance a rapprochement will not happen soon, although there are American tourists coming in and they are welcomed by the Cubans.

Tourism is now the largest industry but it is too bad that such a lovely place and such decent people are still being punished for seeking a type of independence.

While the Cuban government has widened options for Cubans with the result that there are small entrepreneurs taking initiative every day to set up businesses and a kind of property ownership of housing for Cubans, many of whom are fixing up their places, the government still needs to permit Cubans more news of the world and deal with the prisoners it still holds.

It is not a perfect society, but it does give every person access to free public education and free health care which is more than the American government does. So let us hope that with more dialogue, more open mindedness will develop so that this small country can better develop its potential in its own way.

Laurel MacDowell

Re: Rightist Venezuelan Mayor Arrested for Role in "Blue Coup" Plot

I'm sorry to be crude here but it seems the Venezuelan government is bending backwards to suit nothing but a rabid pack of murderous fascist hoodlums. To hell with the US ruling class and its endless streak of horrible bullshit.  How much more can we take, how much more outraged could we be?

Mike Liston

Re: Teachers Alone Can't Fix the "Accumulated Hurt"

 Promoting privatization and competition when kids really need resources is also cruelty.

What???

That is one of the most stupid, illogical sentences ever uttered by anyone.

Competition is bad, something to be avoided?

Seriously???

This delusion is so fatally flawed, it dooms anyone who actually believes this to a life of perpetual dependency and failure.

Sorry Portside . . . you are way, way off on this one.

Charles Osterman
Sebastopol,  CA

     ====

Schools should be the LAST thing to be defunded and a top funding priority. The single most powerful reason our nation is going down is the raiding of school funds. Children first! Education, food, safe shelter. Everything else will follow if a nation cares for her children.

Constance McIntosh
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

This is the sad situation in North Carolina as a Tea Party-dominated legislature wreaks havoc on the public education system.

Furaha Youngblood
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

The issue is violence against children, particularly low income and minority children. But all violence doesn't come at the end of a gun. Keeping public schools defunded and dysfunctional is also a form of violence. Promoting privatization and competition when kids really need resources is also cruelty. And when society's evils are visited upon innocent children, teachers alone can't protect them.

Deborah Wall McGraw
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Yes... heartfelt article of truth... I a am not a dedicated school teacher. I love that those teachers are who they are. Variable levels affect our youth. For the horrors and random dangers available at large, in my experience (in my rather limited experiences), anytime things are coming down, "Be instinctual, and don't forget to breathe, it will then reason out spontaneously 'in the now', action/inaction, and what one will then do best... etc..." Good luck all!

Thomas Naught
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

What good teachers do is work themselves into a frenzy fighting the odds, then burn out, then quit and find something else to do that is not soul-destroying. The lousy teachers stay and rise to administrative positions (with bigger salaries).

Lisa E. Davis
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Our teachers need our collective support... It is of great concern to me to hear the fatigue and despair in the voices of so many teachers I know. They are warriors in the battle to educate and nurture our children into the future. They deserve our support.

Paul-Kealoha Blake
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

Enough could replace more as access could replace excess. Jobs in education cost 1/10 what jobs cost in the chemical dye industry, a capital intensive industry.

Marc Batko
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: How teachers unions must change - by a union leader

It is funny the teachers are the first things cut when democrats can't get taxes increased, I have seen it happen in 3 states now, so who is really using the teachers union as a tool. Education she be the top priority in every state. But when it is used as a pawn in a chess game, as it is now. I think there lies the problem.

Steve Schifano
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

"It also means overcoming old habits and stagnant organizational structures that weigh down efforts to expand internal democracy and member engagement."

Kristine Oliveira
Posted on Portside's Facebook page


Re: Teacher Unions Default on the Fightback

I'd like to like this, but I have yet to know what you're saying and a long day ahead of me. How wonderful to be free from editors, I suppose, but you're not really connecting here.

William Cutlip
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     ====

    "... the only effective response will require breaking with the Democrats and acting independently by creating a huge mass movement that would demand our education operate above all in the interests of the people, not the corporations. "

The only proposal in Counterpunch, characteristically sectarian, infantile, futile, and nothing less than a 5th column for Republicans.

How about running for school board first.

Jesus. How can u publish this crap.

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

     ====

Neil R Friedman The time has come for our Unions to act more like labor organizations and join the battle against the corporate enterprises that are out to take our very livelihoods and the rights we have fought so hard to gain, away from us. . This is a time for action

Neil R Friedman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
 

Re: Hundreds of South Carolina Inmates Sent to Solitary Confinement Over Facebook

This is ridiculous!  When will America's criminal justice system learn basic lessons about crime and punishment.  Isolating a person for 37 years can turn a human being into something far less than human.  What a barbaric system, not better than medieval days.  Well, in the spirit of capitalism, who cares about the humans affected.  Staying in touch with friends and family is a humanizing experience, whether by live visits, letters, or facebook; it doesn't reduce the punishment that has been meted out.

Velva Spriggs

Medical Volunteers Needed in Rojava

I received this message from Saira Ismsz, a friend in Turkey.  She used to work for AWID and is trying to help people in the Rojava find medical volunteers.  Please post this and save.

If you know anyone who is interested, please have them contact Saira directly on Facebook--they can click on the link above.

The Mesopotamia Medical Association has been founded in order to facilitate medical volunteers who are able to spend a few weeks to help wounded fighters who were injured in defending Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan). If you know of anyone, especially physiotherapists or internal medicine specialists, who may be willing to give some time, I'll put them in touch with a contact on the board of the Association, which will facilitate the whole process. Please feel free to tag anyone who may be interested in the comments, particularly medical professionals or those engaged in solidarity work with Rojava who may be able to spread the word. Thanks very much!

Meredith Tax
www.meredithtax.org
www.centreforsecularspace.org

Film "Made in Dagenham" - 1968 women auto worker strike for equal pay

March 1 at 2:00pm

DePaul University, Schmitt Academic Center, Room 280
2320 N. Kenmore, Chicago
(2 blocks west of Fullerton Red Line stop)

A movie about British women auto workers' strike for equal pay for equal work, in the early second phase women's liberation movement in the West.

Rita O'Grady (a fictional character) leads the 1968 Ford sewing machinists strike at the Ford Dagenham plant, where female workers walk out in protest against sexual discrimination, demanding equal pay. The strike is successful and leads to the Equal Pay Act 1970.

The strike began on 7 June 1968, when women sewing machinists at Ford Motor Dagenham plant in London walked out, followed later by the machinists at Ford's Halewood Body & Assembly plant. The Dagenham sewing machinists walked out when, as part of a regarding exercise, they were informed that their jobs were graded in Category B (less skilled production jobs), instead of Category C (more skilled production jobs), and that they would be paid 15% less than the full B rate received by men. At the time it was common practice for companies to pay women less than men, regardless of the skills involved.

Inspired by their example, women trades unionists founded the Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women's Equal Rights, which held an 'equal pay demonstration' attended by 1,000 people in Trafalgar Square on 18 May 1969.

The ultimate result was the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970, which came into force in 1975 and which did, for the first time, aim to prohibit inequality of treatment between men and women in terms of pay and conditions of employment.

Sponsored by DePaul University Department of History, Chicago ALBA Solidarity Committee
**ChicagoALBASolidarity@gmail.com, 773-322-3168
More information here (Facebook posting)

Forum: Identity Politics - A Foundation for Coalition Building - New York - March 13

The Murphy Institute invites you to a forum cosponsored with 1199SEIU & Cornell University's Worker Institute

Identity Politics: A Foundation for Coalition Building
 
Barbara Smith argues that "identity politics" rather than presenting an obstacle to forming coalitions for social and economic justice - offer an essential foundation for such coalitions. Drawing on forty years of work with civil rights, feminist, LGBTQ and other movements, Smith's new book, Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around , edited by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks, poses an urgent set of related questions that she and forum panelists will consider.

  • Barbara Smith - Black Feminist organizer and author -- "Barbara Smith is one of the grand pioneering and prophetic voices of our time. Her truth still hurts and heals." Cornell West
  • Joo- Hyun Kang - Director, Communities United for Police Reform
  • Gerry Hudson - Executive Vice President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
  • George Gresham , President, 1199SEIU will open the panel
  • Alethia Jones, 1199SEIU Education Director will moderate.

Friday March 13, 2015
8:30 - 10:30 a.m.
 
25 West 43rd St, 18th floor
Murphy Institute, SPS, CUNY
 
Light refreshments will be provided.
RSVP for event: