My reply:
We must work for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing free and equal pubic education for all, including at state colleges. This is the only way to overcome the disparities among state and municipality funding schemes. With constitutional protection we can demand equal access to resources--sufficient resources--and demand that any "reforms" stay within the realm of the public school system, not privatized and corporatized.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
South Bend Teacher of the Year on educational "reform"
Friday, April 23, 2010
I was very surprised!
Beautiful plate the Trinity and Milwaukee people gave me tonight.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Quality Education is a Constitutional Right
It’s time for quality education as a constitutional right. Time to cut away all the rhetoric about failing schools, failing teachers, union dominations, myths of creations, Christian nations, vouchers, charters, texts, contexts, atheism, fundamentalism, Catholicism, discipline or lack of such, morality or lack of much, droopy drawers and cutaway tops, fashion plates and sorority slouches, negativity, and exclusivity, dichotomies and academies. Time to shed the shibboleths about “those” blacks, “those” whites, “those” Latinos, those dummies, those nerds, the rich kids and poor kids, and never the twain should meet, flight to the suburbs on three hundred dollar feet.
It’s time for quality education as a constitutional right. Time to amend the U.S. constitution to reflect the promise of the preamble to create a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for a common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity—that is, our kids and their kids—by passing a Twenty-eighth Amendment that all in this country have a right until—let’s pick an age—oh, maybe twenty six, maybe sixty-six, never too late—have a right to be educated as far as he or she can go.
It’s time for quality education as a constitutional right. Unofficially, under the radar, we permit failing schools then use strategies to “rescue” some kids with a private brand of corporate indoctrination. We spend twice the money we should have spent on the public school on some buzz word schools with names like new tech, high tech, math tech, science tech, med tech, instead of making public schools with all these “techs” and a few others that never should have been left behind, like shop tech. We used to have the finest lathe machinery made right here in South Bend. Must we wait for a trade war with China to force us to learn how to make our own stuff again? Anybody learning to set timing on valves? Hone cylinders? Make the cars we have to hold onto (‘cause we can’t afford new ones) last even longer—like mine with 192,000 miles that gets 38 miles per gallon? How are we going to attract good manufacturing jobs that require both math skills and lathe skills if we don’t combine all these “techs” in a good public school available to all?
It’s time for quality education as a constitutional right. If, as the constitution asserts, all are created equal, it’s time to equal-ize the per-pupil allocations from district to district, rich to poor local, rich state to poor state. But that’s not all. While we consider strategies of economic equality we have to take the wrappings off race and put it on the table.
R
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The Twenty-eighth Amendment reads simply this: “all in America have a right to a free, quality, public, education.” We have a birthright to be all we can be. This is the beacon we can shine once more for all the world to see.
David James and Lesson Factory Chicago in the April Irish American News
With the blessing of the former World Music Company, the spirit of the beloved neighborhood music school lives on at the new Lesson Factory Chicago, 10936 S. Western Ave. A core group of teachers, who enriched WMC for 13 years and built a large and devoted following of students before the school closed last November, is now teaching at Lesson Factory (773-779-7059).
Acclaimed Irish musician, David James, is one of those teachers, teaching violin, Irish fiddle, tin whistle, hammered dulcimer and bodhran.
David James was the 2002 All-Ireland Champion, the only American to win solo senior All-Ireland Championships in the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann (Festival of Irish Traditional Music) on the hammered dulcimer. That was his third championship (Listowel, Co. Kerry, Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, 2002). The first was in Sligo in 1989, the second at Listowel in 1995, where he also performed in the International Concert and was featured in the official Fleadh video. He is the 1996 Winfield (KS) Walnut Valley Festival National Hammered Dulcimer Champion. He received a Master Folk Fellowship award from the Indiana Arts Commission in 1990, and another Individual Artist Award in 2000. He has won many US Midwest Fleadh titles on the dulcimer, fiddle, in trio competitions, in traditional singing and newly composed song categories. He was included among 100 Fascinating People of the Century in Michiana (northern Indiana, southern Michigan) by the South Bend Tribune newspaper.David was also the Saturday night headliner at the first dulcimer festival ever held in Ireland, the Cork Dulcimer Festival.
David has performed and conducted workshops from California to Maine. He performs on the hammered dulcimer, fiddle, guitar and Irish bouzouki, concertina, bodhrán, and harmonicas. He sings and plays Irish tunes and songs, liberally laced with American old-time music and his own compositions. He appears as a soloist, also with Midwestern Fleadh tin whistle and singing winner Kim Hoffmann. They have joined others to create larger ceili bands for Irish social dancing at places like Milwaukee Irish Fest, Chicago’s Gaelic Park and the Irish American Heritage Center.
David is available as a solo Feis musician on the fiddle, or hammered dulcimer, if you’re adventurous!
He frequently co-hosts Irish Music Sessions at the Fiddler’s Hearth, 127 N. Main St. in South Bend, IN, with Kim Hoffmann.
www.tiompanalley.com/index_files/Appear.htm
www.tiompanalley.com/index_files/AboutDJ.htm
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Grandfather.jpg
April 3, 2010, 5:18AM CDT. 7lb 14oz Clara Weir James! Perfect!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Thursday, March 25, 2010
My bedroom at Memphis campground
Fortunately I'm little. But look! It's computer equipped (no y-fi but who cares). Tonight Memphis tomorrow Jackson MS.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Sent using: Contact Us Form | Congressman Joe Donnelly, Representing the 2nd District of Indiana
February 12, 2010
Dear Congressman Donnelly,
This is in response to your latest e-newsletter, The Donnelly Dispatch, February 12, 2010, headlined by your attendance at the "National Prayer Breakfast."
Being a part of the "National Prayer Breakfast" is nothing to be proud of unless you're a right-wing Christian. The same people behind the "National Prayer Breakfast"--the Family--are behind the Uganda effort to execute gays for being gay, to soft-soap their unfettered "free enterprise" god-will-make you-rich anti-labor philosophies of greed on decent people under the guise of prayer. This is shameful; watch what you brag about.
Sincerely,
David James
see: Sharlet, Jeff. 2008. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. N.Y.: Harper.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Jobs With Justice/ St. Joe Valley Project News
Members of the Michiana Jobs with Justice/ St. Joe Valley Project meet with United Steelworkers USW-AFL-CIO/CLC Coordinator for Women's Issues Markeya McDaniel-Wilkerson (pictured at left) to plan a week of action, March 1-7, 2010 to coincide with the national Week of Action for Jobs.
Michiana Jobs With Justice will hold a rally/ press conference Friday, March 5, from 4-6PM, to mobilize congress for action for the unemployed and for living wage jobs, featuring music and speakers from the labor movement.
Location: at the Elkhart Local 12273 Steelworkers' Hall, 56355 Ash Road, Elkhart.
Information:
Joseph Carbone, CWA Local 4900, (574) 674-6645; (574) 292-8137
U.S. Social Forum, June 22-26, 2010
Another World is Possible, Another U.S. is Necessary
http://video.ussf2010.org/play/ussf-2007
Please take a moment to look at this video from the U.S Social Forum, about the upcoming national convention in Detroit, June 22-26, 2010.
Members of the Michiana Jobs with Justice Coalition/ St. Joe Valley Project, are planning to fill a bus with participants, and preparing a package to cover the week of the Forum. For more info, call: Joseph Carbone, CWA Local 4900, (574) 674-6645; (574) 292-8137.
An organizer for the Forum, "B" Loewe, will be at the March 5 Elkhart rally, and at other locations, to energize participants for the conference
Jobs With Justice/ St. Joe Valley Project News
Members of the Michiana Jobs with Justice/ St. Joe Valley Project meet with United Steelworkers USW-AFL-CIO/CLC Coordinator for Women's Issues Markeya McDaniel-Wilkerson (pictured at left) to plan a week of action, March 1-7, 2010 to coincide with the national Week of Action for Jobs.
Michiana Jobs With Justice will hold a rally/ press conference Friday, March 5, from 4-6PM, to mobilize congress for action for the unemployed and for living wage jobs, featuring music and speakers from the labor movement.
Location: at the Elkhart Local 12273 Steelworkers' Hall, 56355 Ash Road, Elkhart.
Information:
Joseph Carbone, CWA Local 4900, (574) 674-6645; (574) 292-8137
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Grace Notes: Shalom/ Mme Maxwell
Watch the Grace Notes! Diane Lofquist, hammered dulcimer; Leah Evison, whistle; Joan Radtke, violin; and Susan McCarthy, guitar. They performed the round, Shalom, and the Turlough O'Carolan piece, Mme Maxwell, Sunday at the Beverly Unitarian Church, Chicago.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Lest we forget, King championed economic justice, too
This Posting appeared in the South Bend Tribune, January 31, 2010
VIEWPOINT By PAUL C. MISHLER
This month when we honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., we rightly remember his role in leading the movement that dismantled legal racial segregation. Indeed, in honoring him we are also honoring the thousands of activists — black and white, in the North and in the South — who joined together to challenge a system of racist discrimination enforced by economic structure and terrorist violence that outlasted slavery by 100 years. King, and those he inspired and led, are truly worthy of honor and remembrance. Yet in our honoring and remembering King and the civil rights movement, we have had a tendency to forget that King's vision was larger than the non- violent dismantling of racial segregation. And as inspiring as the conclusion to his speech at the 1963 march on Washington, it is worth remembering other aspects of that day and that speech, as well as King's career after that bright day in Washington. The march on Washington had two demands. The first, for freedom, was the demand for an end to racist discrimination and oppression.
The second was for jobs.
The March on Washington was a "March for Jobs and Freedom." Not only was King committed to a struggle for economic as well as legal justice, the two men who were the working organizers of the march were veterans of the intersection of the labor movement and the civil rights movement. Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph knew, as King knew, that legal equality without economic justice would be seriously handicapped. Today, in the midst of an economic crisis that has laid waste to the hard work of millions of Americans of all backgrounds, African Americans still suffer almost double the unemployment of white Americans. The industries with the highest concentration of African Americans have suffered the largest layoffs, and the communities in which African Americans live have already faced persistent economic crises, even when times were better for white working Americans. Celebrating the end of legal segregation is worthwhile only if we recognize that effort as the beginning of a struggle to undo the legacy of slavery — it has moved from the legal/political front to the economic one. Only when African Americans (as well as all others) have good work at good wages can we truly commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. To look at that part of King's legacy, we have to look at what he said as he set the context for his inspiring dream. The first part of the speech was a thorough criticism of the politicians who, knowing that segregation had to go, were dragging their feet, appeasing the segregationist elected officials of the South, and telling the African-American community to soften its demands and to move more slowly. And in 1963 there was a Democratic Congress, and a Democrat in the White House. These people were "friends" of the civil rights movement, but that only made King's anger stronger. After Lyndon Johnson was elected in 1964 (he had already filled out Kennedy's term after the assassination), the civil rights movement had the most supportive president ever. Johnson was passionately committed to civil rights, and had pushed for the passage of both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. He publicly placed the federal government on the side of the movement. And yet ...
On April 4, 1967 (ironically one year to the day before he was shot), Martin Luther King spoke at the Riverside Church in New York City and, against the advice of many of his friends and advisers, publicly condemned the war in Vietnam, and Johnson's actions in expanding that war. King was attacked by many who wanted him to stay away from foreign policy, and who were afraid that raising the issue of the war would alienate important Democrats who were now on the side of civil rights. King would not back down. Today, after a long period we have a president whose election signifies the important victories won in those early days of the civil rights movement. We have in Barack Obama an African-American president who during his campaign called upon King's vision, and the vision of so many of the activists for social justice who had looked to King for leadership in vision almost 50 years ago. And today unemployment is rising, wars that were begun under the previous administration are ongoing, leading to devastation here and abroad, and the largest banks are about to give away millions in bonuses to their executives while hardship is common for millions of Americans. What would King do today? When King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, he was in the midst of mobilizing support for African-American workers who wanted a union. They wanted what many workers want today — a voice at work and the possibility of leading a life where hard work is rewarded. Today, perhaps, King would call upon our politicians — even those who claim to be friends of working people and advocates of peace — to live up to their pronouncements. We still lack, and we still demand, what King stood for in 1963 and in 1968. We want freedom, we want jobs, we want peace, and we want justice and dignity when we are at work.
Paul C. Mishler is an associate professor of labor studies at Indiana University South Bend and a member of St. Joseph Valley Jobs with Justice.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Costa Rica - I could get used to this!
Costa Rica is still a "third world" country although more prosperous. NO Wal-Marts out here, thank heaven. The Costa Ricans have a strong environmental movement in this neighborhood to keep the Americans, the Germans, and the Chinese from messing up the place with Wal-Marts and huge hotels. This is the view from the second storey of the house at which we're staying. Notice, no big mansions of the rich obstructing the view. The house from which I took this photograph belongs to an ancient pal I used to play music with at Notre Dame. There are things like size limits on buildings to preserve the views everyone has from the mountainsides.
See you next week!
I could get used to this.
Love, David
David In Costa Rica 1
Hello to everyone from 90-degree surf, pelicans, leisure. But . . . to get here was sixty miles of dirt roads and confusion. It's worth it.
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