Poor People Are Now America's Most Important Cash Crop

Poor people have now become America's most important cash crop. The tens of millions of people who have become poor since our agriculture became mechanized, our factories closed and our unions broke are now the basis of huge industries, creating millions of jobs, that are engaged with confining them, intimidating them, policing them and incarcerating them. Whole regions (much of upstate New York) depend on a steady supply of poor people to fill the prisons that are now their most important engine of economic growth, and a whole array of institutions have arisen from giving their children a narrow scripted curriculum, filled with tests, that is perfect to train them for low wage work in the service sector, or if they are lucky, in the military or the police. The system works so beautifully because it creates jobs for the near poor on the misery of the poor while the elite keeps its monopoly of the nation's wealth unchallenged. And the system perpetuates itself because the supply of poor people continues to grow as more sectors of the economy are privatized, globalized and deprived of union protection. Who needs cotton? Who needs steel? We have the largest growing population of poor people in the advanced world to use as a basis to create jobs and generate corporate profits! God Bless America!

The Genius of Barack Obama- And Why We Must Organize Independently to keep Hope of Change Alive

This week, Barack Obama took two actions which dramatized the different faces of his Presidency-declaring his support for charter schools as centers of innovation, and announcing his support of same-sex marriage. It was hardly accidental these took place in the same week. The first, which enraged public school teachers and their supporters around the nation, appealed to President’s longtime funding base among wealthy supporters in Wall Street and Silicon Valley who not only support privatization of public schools, but stand to benefit from such policies; and the second re-energized the grass roots constituency- labor, young people, women and communities of color- that had helped catapult the President into office in 2008. They also left the Republicans boxed into a corner. The first announcement “stole their thunder” by appropriating and rebranding their own attacks on “big government” and public workers (something Bill Clinton had also been expert in); the second placed Republicans in the unenviable position of becoming typecast as exponents of bigotry, and losing the vote of independents, if they attacked the President’s position and appealed to their deeply religious core constituency. Together, the President’s actions cemented my conviction that he was one of the most brilliant politicians I have seen in my lifetime, equaled only by Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, and surpassing even his sometime rival Bill Clinton. Simultaneously assuring himself of support from some of the wealthiest people in the nation, while energizing a broad coalition of labor, people of color and globally minded , environmentally conscious youth, has been the hallmark of Barack Obama’s political genius since he first ran for the State legislature in Illinois. This strategy has not only left Republicans confused- it has encouraged them to appeal to the worst instincts of their core constituent, their racism and homophobia, thereby transforming Barack Obama into a symbol of human rights and civic decency who liberals and moderates have to support to be true to their core values As one of those progressives who supported Barack Obama in 2008 and who rallies to his defense every times he is attacked by bigots, I have a deep ambivalence toward the President’s program and real doubts about his legacy. Yes, he has successfully kept racist and xenophobic elements in the Republican party at bay, and has prevented them from imposing austerity policies that would have plunged the nation into a deep Depression ( just look at Ireland, Greece and Spain to see what “austerity” has accomplished), but he has also continued the foreign policy of his Republican predecessors, deported more immigrants than George W Bush did in either term, launched a campaign to privatize public education that was developed and vetted by his wealthiest supporters, and has failed to launch any initiatives to combat steadily growing poverty or shrink the prison industrial complex. The result- two of his core constituencies, organized labor and the Black community, are actually in a weaker position than they were when his presidency began and a disproportionate share of wealth and income continues to accrue to the top 1 Percent of the population while the middle class shrinks and more people are driven into poverty. This leaves progressives between a rock and a hard place. Given the bigotry. xenophobia, and Depression-creating austerity policies emanating from the Republican party, many of us may find ourselves voting for President Obama as a way of staving off economic catastrophe and standing up for the rights and dignity of all people. But we will do so with little hope that our actions in the voting booth will stop the relentless privatization of public resources, the lowering of wages, the shrinking of the middle class, the erosion of our civil liberties or the continuation of the police repression, unjust drug war, and racial profiling that fuels the growth of the prison industrial complex. The battle against growing inequality and the rule of the one percent must take place, primarily, in our streets, our schools, and our workplaces, in grass roots movement that build popular democracy one community, and one institution at a time. Voting is an important part of that struggle, but without huge grassroots mobilizations, politicians, the President among them, will have their actions held in check by their wealthy contributors We can have no illusions about the scenario we face. The onus for creating “Change we can believe in” is now squarely upon us May 11, 2012

Why Corporate Ed Reformers Might Not Ultimately Prevail in NYC

While the Corporate Education Reformers may have enough money to buy off politicians, the press and some civil rights leaders, they don't have enough money to provide jobs, healthcare, decent housing, youth recreation, senior programs to the city's working class and shrinking middle class, especially in the outer boroughs. Although the elite is going full steam ahead with its program of school privatization, the wheels are falling off the neo-liberal bus, and protests are emerging around the stop and frisk and racial profiling tactics of the NYPD, cuts in transportation and senior services, evictions and foreclosures, and, in the education sphere, against school closings and charter co-locations, excessive testing, and police repression of student in high schools and the city university. None of these will stop DOE policies in the short run, but by the time Christine Quinn ( God help us) becomes our next Mayor, the level of political turmoil in the city will be of late 60's proportions and we will be able to stop some of these policies in their tracks and eventually reverse some of them. That's my scenario for where we are heading. And as someone who has been involved in protests around housing issues, civil liberties issues and racial profiling issues, I can assure you that a storm is brewing in the outer boroughs that the media haven't quite picked up on Hold on to your hats.

Quotable Quotes on Education Reform from Notorious Phd

‎"Having Teacher Appreciation Week in the United States of America, at this historic moment, is liking having Deer Appreciation Week during hunting season." "Charter schools are a substitute for public schools the same way Wal-mart and prisons were a substitute for steel mills and auto plants” “The only way MSNBC is going to speak out against privatization and excessive testing in America's schools is if Mitt Romney is elected and they become HIS policies” “Education Reform is the single most misguided and ineffective policy initiative in the United States since Prohibition.”

Police Everywhere: The National Security State as a Daily Presence in Our Streets, Schools and Universities

Every morning before 6 AM, to beat the traffic, I drive from my home in Park Slope Brooklyn to Fordham’s Bronx campus, and even at that hour, I am hit with the realization that we are a lot more “policed” than we were thirty years ago. As my route takes me to the BQE via Vanderbilt and Willoughby Avenues, I will always see a police car parked right outside Pratt, lights off, to catch motorists speeding. Sometimes I will also see a car on Vanderbilt. Then when I get to the Fordham campus, I am not only checked by security to make sure I have a valid parking permit, I notice a security vehicle driving up and down the rows of the parking garage, and at least two security cars driving up and down the roads of the campus as I walk the half mile to my office. These Fordham security people are all in uniform. Should there be a fire drill or demonstration that day, I get to see the “:white shirts”- Fordham security supervisors- coordinating the University’s actions at the event, just as I would see the NYPD “white shirts” if there was a protest outside the University’s gates. The same thing would prevail should I visit one of the Bronx schools I work with on my community history projects. At all elementary schools, I have to sign in with a security guard who sits at the main entrance to the school; in most high schools, I have to go through metal detectors manned by at least two security personnel, sometimes aided by someone from the NYPD who is carrying a gun. Should I pass through Morrisania, the Bronx neighborhood where my research has been focused, I am likely to see a white police surveillance tower set up on one of that neighborhood’s blocks, including the historic block Lymon Place, where the great community activist Hetty Fox lives, and which was often home to Sunday jam sessions in the 50’s bringing together the great jazz pianists Thelonious Monk and Elmo Hope Some of you may respond to these observations by saying “ so what”, as this level of police and private surveillance has been your reality your entire life- but as a lifelong New Yorker, aged 65, there is still something jarring about feeling you are under surveillance in your neighborhood, in your workplace, and in any school that you visit. Having had numerous disturbing encounters with police- including being beaten up by NYPD in a station house in 1969- the prospect of having police looking over my shoulder wherever I go makes me nervous. It is a gut reaction. And if I feel that, I can only imagine how young people of color feel about this smothering police presence, especially as they are the ones this presence is often placed there for. When you have this many police and security, the temptation to use them for purposes of intimidation is well nigh overwhelming. In the streets of the city, over 900,00 stop and frisk incidents took place last year, the overwhelming number of them targeting young people of color, the vast majority of them revealing no illegal activity. Most of those were done by police in twos and threes. But what has also been taking place, at least in the Bronx, is police sweeps in groups of 15 or 20 on Bronx blocks where there has been drug activity, often resulting in mass searches of young people thrown on the ground or pushed against the wall, and with adults daring to intervene being targeted as well. Here, the police quite literally assume the character of an occupying army a phenomenon hardly surprising under the auspices of a mayor who brags that the NYPD at his disposal is “:the eighth largest army in the world.” And as for schools, the security presence, as Kathleen Nolan’s book Police in the Schools reveals, and my own student’s research confirms, has taken the form of “zero tolerance” policies which see students suspended and sometimes arrested for minor acts of defiance that previously would have been ignored or handled by teachers and administrators. And the situation is not much better at Universities. At the City University, students have been repeatedly manhandled at protests by the combined presence of campus security and NYPD in numbers unimaginable thirty years ago, or for that matter any time before 9/11. While we haven’t yet had protests at Fordham as militant as those at CUNY, the security presence at student marches and rallies is far larger than it has ever been in the past Anyone who thinks this level of policing and surveillance is consistent with democratic traditions hasn’t been paying attention to what policies have accompanied this enlargement of a police presence. The overwhelming concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, the shrinking of the middle class, the compression of wages for the working class, the transformation of our great universities, and our great cities, into centers of privilege for global elites, have created levels of economic inequality unimaginable in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, and has shattered hopes of economic mobility for a growing percentage of the American population. As more and more people in this country see the wealth of others paraded in their face, with little hope of attaining it, their response, whether it be individual or collective, illegal enterprise or political action, has to be contained lest the smooth operation of the economic and educational system that concentrates wealth at the top be disturbedd. The result- a police surveillance state that regularly intimidates, terrorizes and incarcerates the children of the working class and the poor, and is now fully prepared to apply its full force against the displaced children of the middle class if they decide to protests against their impending marginalization. May 6, 2012

Resistance Is Possible in the Spaces the 1 Percent Have Abandoned

As the 1 Percent consolidates its control of public life, with the housing market and public educational system as two of its chosen spheres, the path of resistance may have to take the form of creating alternative institutions. As a result of intensive discussions I have had with activists and my students this semester, I am now pushing for two such alternative institutions- Residential Communes , where groups of people, especially young people without decent paying work opportunities, occupy or rent out abandoned or forcelosed private houses which dot the landscape of urban, suburban and small town America, and share living expenses and tasks; and Freedom Schools, where teachers, students, and parents create alternatives to the test driven, heavily policed public schools and charter schools which are now the norm in Urban America, and are becoming the chosen model for the entire nation. The 1 Percent has the money and the power, but as they continue to drive more and more people into poverty through union busting, wage compression and crushing of small businesses, they have left in their wake hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of abandoned and foreclosed homes, apartment buildings, office buildings and shopping centers. It is in those spaces that we can create the basis of resistance by generating alternative ways of living, teaching and learning, and developing and sharing resources ranging from food to technology. Remember, there are not enough police to control us if enough of us act. We have the power in our hands to make a new world, especially since the old one is collapsing before our eyes May 2, 2011