Outlawing Shakespeare: The Battle for the Tucson Mind is a documentary that focuses on the elimination of the Mexican American Studies program within the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) in Arizona. [See full version below.] Under a federal desegregation decree, Mexican American Studies was created and was successful at improving academic achievement for Latino students in Tucson until earlier in 2012 when it was shut down by the TUSD School Board.
The documentary explores Arizona Attorney Tom Horne’s crusade as he and other Arizona officials claim the program in Tucson is attempting to convince students to secede from the United States by creating “Aztlan.” Baffling students, parents and teachers, Outlawing Shakespeare explores why this tactic is being utilized and explores how officials use the mythology of Aztlan to pass legislation outlawing literature by Latino authors and the reading of that literature by Arizona citizens.
Some of you will be shocked at the comments of elected officials and the affects of comments on youth.
There are better ways to burnish your legacy than trying to deny firefighters, garbage collectors and other hard-working people a decent retirement. Unless, of course, your name is Richard Riordan.
Since leaving office in 2001, the former mayor has not exactly distinguished himself as an elder statesman of L.A. politics. But at age 82, Riordan seems determined to leave a permanent imprint on the city he once governed by gutting the pensions of some 30,000 city employees.
Riordan is promoting and helping to bankroll a ballot petition that, if it qualifies and passes, would replace the modest but secure retirement plans of future city workers with their poor cousin, the 401(k). Current city employees would theoretically retain their retirement benefits, but these too would almost certainly get the axe because the ballot petition empowers the City Council to eviscerate pensions.
If all this sounds extreme, it is —
Ballad for Jimmy Damour
Bursting out of ourselves,
rush of coat and elbow,
we rode over, over
Jimmy Damour, standing guard in the dawn—
the door yanked from its socket.
We rode as though on horseback
in the direction of our wanting.
They say you lay in a sleep of bronze
on the white linoleum,
while we shopped for TVs.
You a stone in the current of us.
Like water, indifferent, serpentine,
we carved the earth,
with our urgent business.
They say you shielded a pregnant woman
with your body,
that beneath the weight of us
she heard the grinding of her own teeth.
I’d like to say that because of you, Jimmy,
we make do with less.
It would suit my miserly heart
to cut, extract, leave out,
William Anderson knows more than anybody about the negative effects of coal. He’s the Tribal Chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, who occupy 70,000 acres of land northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. He has seen his tribal members sickened by pollution from a nearby power plant. He worries about the impact of the pollution on his three-year-old son.
Anderson jumped at the opportunity to advocate for a giant solar project that will provide power to the reservation, as well as to the 1.4 million customers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The project will be developed by K Road Power Holdings on reservation land, with the tribe’s participation, and produce enough energy to power more than 100,000 homes.
I got a chance to sit down with Anderson after the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the K Road Moapa Project.
Talk about your perfect storm. Walmart, which in recent years has been raising the danger level for shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, has now created a new attractive nuisance that’s being called Gray Thursday. This is when Walmart stores open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving evening, ostensibly to alleviate security and safety pressures on Black Friday, the traditional pre-dawn running of the bulls – er, shoppers – down the stores’ aisles in search of cut-rate prices.
The safety rationale of opening a store six or eight hours ahead of Black Friday is highly debatable; what’s not disputed is that Walmart is ordering in armies of its underpaid employees to work on a night they have traditionally enjoyed as a holiday. But the only tradition this company respects is that of making money on the backs of its mistreated “associates” – workers who are only able to live paycheck to paycheck with the help of food stamps and other government-provided poverty entitlements.
» Read more about: Hello Walmart Shoppers! A Guide to Black Friday Strikes »
Despite President Obama’s important, even landmark, accomplishments, by the time November 6 arrived, many Americans were disappointed with his first term. They expected him to be a “transformational” president who would somehow, single-handedly, change Washington’s political culture. When their hopes were dashed, they blamed Obama rather than the corporate plutocrats’ stranglehold on Congress—especially (but not only) on the Republicans, who acted like sock puppets for the Chamber of Commerce, opposing every proposal to tax the wealthy and regulate corporations as a “job killer,” and insisting that their top priority was to make Obama a one-term president.
Given the power of the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street banks, the insurance industry, the oil lobby and the drug companies, it’s remarkable that Obama managed to enact the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank legislation, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and tough new standards on fuel efficiency and electric plant emissions. Voters rewarded Obama with a second term and defeated many business-backed candidates and ballot measures,
» Read more about: Obama Reboot: A Second Term Transformation? »
October was a banner month for Walmart workers nationwide. Each week saw more Walmart workers speaking up and going on strike, to protest Walmart’s attempts to silence workers and retaliate against them. The strikes culminated in an announcement at Walmart’s Arkansas headquarters that if the retaliation does not cease, workers will make Black Friday a “memorable” day for the company.
To make Black Friday a success, Walmart workers need the support of community members like you. Our website now features a number of ways to get involved and support Walmart strikers on Black Friday.
» Read more about: Support Walmart Workers on Black Friday »
Looking back on the eight weeks of the Long Beach living wage campaign, I could write about the conversations with voters, or the discovery of neighborhoods in a city I thought I knew like the back of my hand. I could go on and on about those I got to know through the canvassing work, the friendships that started and blossomed over the two months that went by so quickly.
But the real story is how we strengthened community in the city of Long Beach.
Yes, in the spring 35,000 people signed petitions supporting the workers in Long Beach’s largest hotels, helping them get one step closer to fair pay, sick leave and tip protection by placing Measure N on the ballot. And this fall not only did we get support from six city council members, we passed Measure N with the support of 63 percent of voters.
» Read more about: Long Beach: Creating Community and Serving the People »
Thanksgiving is a time of year when most people give thanks for their family and their friends, for having a job (if they are lucky to have one) and for many other things in their lives. I am hoping that this year, you also give thanks to the hands that feed us.
The Food Chain Workers Alliance is launching the first annual International Food Workers Week during this Thanksgiving week (November 18-24) to bring more awareness to the hands that feed us – from the Native Americans and African slaves of not so long ago, to the Asian and Latino immigrant farm workers from the middle of the last century, and especially the nearly 20 million people in the U.S. from all races, ethnicities and genders who today ensure that food gets from the farm to our plates.
Yes, you are reading that right.
As you prepare to head to the grocery store to pick up your Thanksgiving dinner ingredients, double-check your shopping list to make sure your Turkey Day fixin’s are all union-made in America. Check out some highlights from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor’s resource site, Labor 411. Here are some of the best union-made Thanksgiving eats and tools from the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), Machinists (IAM), United Steelworkers (USW) and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).
Appetizers
Turkey
Cookware/Cutlery
Side Dishes
Bread
» Read more about: Labor 411's Union-Made Thanksgiving Shopping List »