Wisconsin public school teachers came to the Chicago Temple to support the Chicago Teachers Union. (photo credit: Kari Lydersen)
“You’ve got a way to keep me on your side
You give me cause for love that I can’t hide
For you I know I’d even try to turn the tide
Because you’re mine, I walk the line”
by Johnny Cash
For many of us, there comes a time in our lives when a line is drawn in sidewalk chalk by the very real schoolyard bullies in our midsts, daring us to cross over and challenge their dominance. In September of 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union which represents the district’s teachers, who are one of the largest sectors of public employees in the country, walked the line for reals. The framing of the discourse that have led some to believe that teachers single-handedly orchestrated the country’s financial meltdown in 2008, during their 40-minute planning periods, has been well documented by better minds than this not so humble blogger. What I want to explore is what makes seemingly rational, everyday people decide their only career choice left is to glue a poster to a stick and wear the same shirt in public? Have they gone temporarily insane? Have they been dipping into the wacky weed they found in their students’ backpacks? Or could it be something even more sinister and elusive…could it be they actually care about the students, families and communities they serve, as well as the profession itself which some have committed the majority of their lives to improving? In a capitalist culture that views people ultimately as assets or liabilities, teachers have been given too much power to enable liabilities (poor, non-privileged minority students) to actually think they can become an asset (non-poor, non non-privileged minority students). Paulo Freire recognized decades ago that education can be a both a vehicle for liberation or for oppression depending on who is large and in charge. When the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, one of their first targets were the teachers and professors because they were a threat to the new status quo. Educated citizens tend to ask annoying questions like “Is the minimum wage the maximum you are going to pay me?” or “Why are there ambulances in the parking lot where I work?”
Civil Rights Memorial (Photo credit: Elvin Wong)
Now, why exactly is it that teachers care so much about this cause that they would try to turn the tide? There are the obvious reasons, the fat paychecks, the cushy teacher’s chairs that spin around and go up and down, the yummy school lunches, but there’s got to be more to this story. I would like to submit that in order for a man, woman or child to make a conscious decision to stick their necks out and risk conflict, their current state must have become so untenable that the status quo is no longer comfortable or acceptable. Teachers tend to be non-confrontational to a fault, one criticism I have had of teachers is that they have been mostly silent while other labor groups were being dismantled and shipped overseas. Now that they’ve come for the teachers, many educators are now realizing this struggle is universal. The outside “experts” and education “reformers” who speak of accountability and improving test scores don’t understand what public education means because they don’t care. These chosen few don’t care because they don’t go home hungry and they don’t fly coach. They don’t care about equal, single payer healthcare for all and they don’t give a damn if your home is foreclosed by Goldman “Too Big To Jail” Sachs. They don’t lose sleep if our children can’t get an affordable education because they profit if our children do go to college through onerous student loans and escalating tuition rates and they profit if our children don’t go to college through privatized prisons, low wage jobs and military service. And if they can’t pick apart and sell off public education completely like Bain Capital on the blue sky then they can at least neutralize it through unceasing standardized testing and curriculums. There is a reason that education was an integral focus of the civil rights movement in America.
School closings rally (Photo credit: chicagopublicmedia)
Good teachers learn quickly that teaching is more than just a job, it’s a craft. They are continually shaping, molding and refining. Real teachers come to work everyday because it calls to them…like an artist who sees light where others see only shadows. Like Johnny Cash pledging to remain faithful to his wife while on the road…to walk the line, teachers are being compelled to stay faithful to their first love, which are the reasons they became teachers in the first place. The lines have already been drawn by the designers of global austerity for the “have nots” and unprecedented wealth for the “have lots”. Now it’s their turn to get up and stand up for all of our rights because they cannot deny their true nature that demands that knowledge be shared and not hoarded. That recognizes that critical thinking is necessary to crack the codes of language and text that hide the true motives and agendas of the power culture. Because they cannot hide their love for lifelong learning and their passion to win the hearts and minds of the future generations of this nation they walk the line, even as mass school closures in Chicago and Philadelphia rock the inner city communities they serve. So, for those about to walk we salute you and extend a virtual fist bump in your honor. Hopefully, when they come for the rest there will be a teacher left to speak for us.
Peace to all readers.
A bug eat bug world
(Photo credit: _ambrown)
Hopper: “Now let me tell you how things are supposed to work…
The sun grows the food, the ants pick the food, the grasshoppers eat the food.“
I had the privilege of reading an insightful post this past week from a fellow blogger that serves for me as a reminder that change, real and lasting change, never starts from the top but always rises like a groundswell from the grassroots. Maria further brings to our awareness that the desire for positive change and social justice must lead to action in order to move from the shallow waters to the deep sea where the real sharks and predators swim. One group that understands this reality is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a true coalition of the willing that has been speaking out on behalf of farmworkers in the fields of Florida for the past twenty years. Along the way, the CIW has forged valuable alliances and won long overdue reforms and fair food agreements with major corporations such as Chipotle, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. In March of this year, I was fortunate to join the CIW for two days out of an epic, 16-day march from Ft. Myers to Publix corporate headquarters in Lakeland, FL, to bring awareness of Publix supermarkets refusal to join the fair food program. The CIW is once again taking it to the streets and to the people to bring pressure to bear on the powers that be making them cool, refreshing Frosty’s. Wendy’s official response to the CIW’s request for justice for farmworker justice was that “America doesn’t work that way.” Alas, their statement is all too true in this day and age where the corporate capitalists have made known their desire to make us all into serfs to work on the corporate plantations. For much of my life I avoided the political arena but as a social worker, teacher and writer, it is impossible to stay on the sidelines and be complicit any longer in the inflicting of misery and suffering upon others that the present system enables.
(Photo credit: cool revolution)
Hopper: “You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up!
Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one
and if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life!
It’s not about food, it’s about keeping those ants in line.”
The divide and conquer policies of the corporate media and entertainment industry are intent on preventing us from realizing our collective humanity and power, which is what they really fear the most. This is the clear and present danger that Bradley Manning and now, Edward Snowden, pose to the ruling class and the apparatus of the state that has been constructed to fit their objectives. They care a little about the war crimes that Manning leaked to Wikileaks and the legally dubious and morally indefensible spying on American citizens that Snowden exposed to The Guardian. They care a lot about the precedent set by Manning and Snowden that could potentially unleash an authentic ground swelling of the people. How dare Manning or Snowden or you or I, for that matter, think critically or question our
handlersdear leaders. For a country that has seen a President’s head blown apart while riding in a motorcade and a Space Shuttle blow up before our very eyes, not to mention the enslavement of Africans imported like Hondas and genocide of the indigenous people, we should be able to handle a little bit more of the truth that Manning and Snowden sought to impart. In America, however, we are taught (conditioned) at an early age to suppress our emotions, boys and girls are told to play nicely and never argue. Kids learn early that it’s how they appear more than how they are that matters. Children are especially trained to not question authority under any circumstances…teachers, parents, pastors, police. By the time we grow up, we are psychologically and emotionally stunted. Some go on to inflict hurt on themselves or others because they never learned to express themselves coherently and their inner self rages against any perceived slight. We might do well to learn from the apostle Paul who learned the hard way that growing up is not so easy to do, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.“(Photo credit: 0neiros)
Hopper: “First rule of leadership. Everything is your fault.”
As the Age of Austerity™ continues to play out in America and across the globe, it is important to decode the hidden messages of it’s architects. Austerity is not an economic policy, it is an ideology that Naomi Klein showed us has devastating real world implications. It has been a hallmark of American history for the captors to blame the captives for their predicament, whether it’s the heathen savages of North America or the uppity slaves of the antebellum South or the welfare queens of the 1990′s. The best and brightest from Madison Avenue to Langley have been waging psychological warfare on the hearts and minds of the people for decades. A trait commonly held by abusers or those in positions of power and dominance over others is to project all responsibility for the suffering of the victim back on to the victim. This is why austerity has been framed as a debt problem because of the tremendous amount of psychological baggage that accompanies the word. People are loathe to be looked upon as debtbeats (totally, made that up) or someone who doesn’t meet their obligations. So, the global capitalists use our sense of moral duty and conscience against us by putting the blame squarely on our shoulders, in order to justify the crushing economic measures that have facilitated an unprecedented transfer of public wealth and resources to the private sectors, where its hidden away from prying eyes. Again, divide and conquer worked in Roman times and it works to this day. Choosing to acknowledge the damage done by unfettered capitalism forces me to take the blinders off and see, really see, my fellow human beings. For the struggle for liberation to even begin, it is necessary to first break the psychological chains that bind us to our captors so that our collective case of Stockholm syndrome can finally be treated. Then, we can start to raise our voices in unity and flex our muscles in solidarity until every last prisoner is set free.
(Photo credit: Intrepidteacher)
Flik: “For the colony, and for oppressed ants everywhere!”
I had an interesting back and forth recently with a fellow blogger who made an astonishingly revealing statement that resonated with me, “My voice and my wishes were buried so deep that I had lost them.” Lurana’s refreshingly honest post talked about how we choose in the course of our daily lives to be polite rather than to be ourselves and, in the process, we lose our voice. This is a sentiment I can relate to as I, too, kept my voice buried for so long that I forgot what it sounded like, even to myself. This blog is not only about sharing my voice but helping others to find the voices that they may have been misplaced or set to the side in the day to day of making ends meet in a bug eat bug world. I feel strongly that every voice is needed in the struggle to build a better world for ourselves and future generations. There is something freeing about facing our accusers, looking them in the eye and speaking in our own voices. It is for our benefit more so than it’s ever for theirs. Throughout the world, from Turkey to Greece to Guatemala, people are finding the courage to say enough, no más…we’ve listened to enough of your stories filled with war mongering and fictional terrorists, pinkos and paranoia, it’s time to tell our story and the stories of our people. It’s time to rewrite history in our own image rather than in the image of our oppressors. Then together, perhaps, we can bend that arc of the moral universe thingie towards justice just a little bit faster.
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