I say this over and over again - among our most important humans in this time of deep crisis are our culture workers, our artists, poets, story-tellers, those with searing, truthful lenses through which to SEE our world, those with the imagination, the vision, the narratives that can help us imagine new ways of living - because we need them so badly now.
A little while ago I turned on the TV looking for news of Nepal and ran into live coverage of the violence in the streets of Baltimore. Rocks, bricks, and other objects have been hurled at police and several are injured, some with broken bones and one described as "unresponsive."
CNN and MSNBC have unfortunately decided to focus on a CVS pharmacy that is being looted, as if that's the point. Now a police car is in flames, and things are getting worse. Now other stores are being looted, more rocks being thrown...
A long legacy here, one I learned something about during the 25 years I lived in the DC area, in Maryland, just down the freeway from Baltimore,
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Monday, April 27, 2015
Thursday, August 28, 2014
We need new stories...
Last night I was sitting on the cushion at my sangha meditating there for the first time since the beginning of August. In the past few weeks, life put in front of me a rich platter overfull with travels to the East, with insights, experiences, input, output (i.e., work) relationships (some new, some decades old), reunions, homecomings, and the raw vulnerability of accompanying a family member intensely dear to me through a profound medical challenge.
In the background was Gaza, and ISIS, and the Ukraine, and Ebola, and climate change tipping points, and Ferguson, and visceral racism, and on and on. When I came home, it was back into this nasty political culture that is my poor State of Wisconsin in an election year with huge stakes and money corrupting the whole process.
Whew! And I think I appreciate more than ever that the work of culture
In the background was Gaza, and ISIS, and the Ukraine, and Ebola, and climate change tipping points, and Ferguson, and visceral racism, and on and on. When I came home, it was back into this nasty political culture that is my poor State of Wisconsin in an election year with huge stakes and money corrupting the whole process.
Whew! And I think I appreciate more than ever that the work of culture
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Racism on my mind
I've got racism on my writer's brain today. Have been reading Michelle Alexander's disturbing, The New Jim Crow - Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, watched part one of the new series about the abolitionists on PBS's American Experience, then all the hoopla around the brilliant film "Lincoln," and the awareness that I live in the nation's most segregated city, and the racist vitriol from some gun rights nuts who cannot believe the "black man" in the White House wants to limit access to assault rifles and huge ammo clips and are preparing for the uprising against the federal government...
yea, and on and on and on... Hard to get away from it these days.
Local writer Barbara J. Miner wrote a long piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Sunday Crossroads section entitled, Segregation and a tragic silence. The connection here between deeply embedded racism and entrenched poverty spreading out from the city's northwest neighborhoods is beyond obvious; it's the plan, the intention, of far too many of our citizens around these parts (is it the Germans? the Slavic descendants? I have that blood in me and I know my people only too well).
yea, and on and on and on... Hard to get away from it these days.
Local writer Barbara J. Miner wrote a long piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Sunday Crossroads section entitled, Segregation and a tragic silence. The connection here between deeply embedded racism and entrenched poverty spreading out from the city's northwest neighborhoods is beyond obvious; it's the plan, the intention, of far too many of our citizens around these parts (is it the Germans? the Slavic descendants? I have that blood in me and I know my people only too well).
Friday, May 18, 2012
Memoir-writing as cultural challenge
by Margaret Swedish
Getting back to work later today on the more-than-memoir I'm writing, chapter six, a bit of a crescendo in the narrative of the book, unlocking the secrets and shame that impacted my parents' generation, and therefore we baby-boomers, in ways that did not serve us well. It's a 'way of being' passed down from ancestors, those who left so much misery, want, and suffering behind to come to America to become something other than who they were back in the old country. And many of them suffered a whole lot when they came here - degrading work and poverty, hallmarks of early immigrant life.
They brought with them strong identity-based cultures that became the roots of strong identity-based neighborhoods, politics, nationalism, religion, and more. But they also buried a whole lot of the suffering, shame, humiliations, exploitation, and fear that shaped them and the lives they created here. That repression left marks on their behaviors and values, on the choices they made, and, whether we descendents like it or not, that impacted who we turned out to be, the choices we, too, have made.
Getting back to work later today on the more-than-memoir I'm writing, chapter six, a bit of a crescendo in the narrative of the book, unlocking the secrets and shame that impacted my parents' generation, and therefore we baby-boomers, in ways that did not serve us well. It's a 'way of being' passed down from ancestors, those who left so much misery, want, and suffering behind to come to America to become something other than who they were back in the old country. And many of them suffered a whole lot when they came here - degrading work and poverty, hallmarks of early immigrant life.
 | |
| Croatian ancestors |
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Writing in the cloud of our uncertainty
I haven't fed this blog for a couple of weeks. Not because I don't want to or don't have time, but because I am so overfull. Sometimes one has to wait for the words to come because what is going on is beyond words. It has to emerge, take on a sharper focus. Some of the worst writing is when it becomes words for words' sake, something we have way too much of in this culture.
When that happens, writing becomes noise. And any good writer knows these days how hard it is for good writing, for writing and art that is urgent and needed, or simply beautiful for its own sake, to find a path through the noise to our awakened consciousness.
There are people I love struggling with cancer. There are people I love struggling with old age and growing vulnerability. There are people (me, too) wrestling with profound economic insecurity in a world that seems to have little use for them.
There is my poor Wisconsin cluttered with angry hateful noise of a political culture in a state of demise,
There are people I love struggling with cancer. There are people I love struggling with old age and growing vulnerability. There are people (me, too) wrestling with profound economic insecurity in a world that seems to have little use for them.
There is my poor Wisconsin cluttered with angry hateful noise of a political culture in a state of demise,
Monday, November 14, 2011
The death of manufacturing and the death of a neighborhood
Everyone who cares about the city of Milwaukee ought to read this entire article from yesterday's front page:
Where city factories, and now babies, die
There is something so very wrong here, even more than what these journalists penetrate as they describe what the death of manufacturing has to do with the shocking levels of poverty, deaths of babies, and abandonment of whole neighborhoods.
This story is about the 30th Street Industrial Corridor, a stretch of toxic wasteland that I had the opportunity to briefly tour in September with the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. There have been other studies and articles written about the link between poverty and the crash of this neighborhood - due in large part to the moving of manufacturing out of the U.S. as corporations chased growing cheap labor pools in other countries.
But for me one of the most shocking things was the abandonment of these workers who once built and assembled the things that we used, that created the base of a broad middle-class. Racism had a lot to do with this, as we all know but hardly ever say out loud (it needs to be said out loud). The tax money of the middle and upper-middle classes poured out of the city as the affluent moved out to suburbs and exurbs. We failed to see the connections between the two, mostly because we didn't want to, and we certainly failed the moral test of the mutual responsibility that comes from living in this world and in a particular community.
For me, one of the shockers was that all these manufacturing companies could just close up and disappear with no sense of responsibility for what they were leaving behind. As our tour guide said, some of them left in the middle of the night - a way to avoid scrutiny and outcry. Left behind were not only abandoned workers and their families, but also a toxic contaminated mess, land so polluted that the city can't even make plans to reclaim this area without having to remove hundreds of thousands of tons of contaminated soil off the top (the guy said 2-3 FEET covers much of the area) and old seeping waste tanks buried underground.
This is among the aspects of capitalism that reveals its voraciousness, selfishness, and greed - that these companies felt and feel no responsibility about leaving in a responsible way - taking their factories apart and cleaning up the mess on their way out. No care for the humans; no care for the land and community.
It's a lot like Walmart and other big box stores. They come; they go; they leave their big box store and paved over land behind for someone else to worry about.
It is not time to rebuild the manufacturing economy of the post- World War II era. It is time to build a new economy altogether, one that puts the well-being of our communities at its heart, one that promotes the health and happiness of the people who live in these neighborhoods, one that does not tear at the fabric of the human community but binds us together.
Where city factories, and now babies, die
There is something so very wrong here, even more than what these journalists penetrate as they describe what the death of manufacturing has to do with the shocking levels of poverty, deaths of babies, and abandonment of whole neighborhoods.
 |
| Just one rotting factory at the 30th St. Industrial Corridor. |
But for me one of the most shocking things was the abandonment of these workers who once built and assembled the things that we used, that created the base of a broad middle-class. Racism had a lot to do with this, as we all know but hardly ever say out loud (it needs to be said out loud). The tax money of the middle and upper-middle classes poured out of the city as the affluent moved out to suburbs and exurbs. We failed to see the connections between the two, mostly because we didn't want to, and we certainly failed the moral test of the mutual responsibility that comes from living in this world and in a particular community.
For me, one of the shockers was that all these manufacturing companies could just close up and disappear with no sense of responsibility for what they were leaving behind. As our tour guide said, some of them left in the middle of the night - a way to avoid scrutiny and outcry. Left behind were not only abandoned workers and their families, but also a toxic contaminated mess, land so polluted that the city can't even make plans to reclaim this area without having to remove hundreds of thousands of tons of contaminated soil off the top (the guy said 2-3 FEET covers much of the area) and old seeping waste tanks buried underground.
This is among the aspects of capitalism that reveals its voraciousness, selfishness, and greed - that these companies felt and feel no responsibility about leaving in a responsible way - taking their factories apart and cleaning up the mess on their way out. No care for the humans; no care for the land and community.
It's a lot like Walmart and other big box stores. They come; they go; they leave their big box store and paved over land behind for someone else to worry about.
It is not time to rebuild the manufacturing economy of the post- World War II era. It is time to build a new economy altogether, one that puts the well-being of our communities at its heart, one that promotes the health and happiness of the people who live in these neighborhoods, one that does not tear at the fabric of the human community but binds us together.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
The tearing of our fragile social fabric
Hi again - I know, it's been a while. I'm trying to figure out what to do with this blog, but so many outrageous things are going on, it's hard not to vent here. If you get something out of these posts, maybe you could share the link with friends and invite them to visit, and then we'll see. For now, I will try to post a couple times a week.
What inspired me to break the silence was today's JS headline: "Bus system may cut routes, fares." If you have read it, then you have a sense of the breadth of the cuts coming for public transportation around here. Walker's 10% cut in state support for transit translates into a $6.8 million loss for the Milwaukee County Transit System - per year!
The guy hated county government when he was our woeful executive, and he hates public services for the non-wealthy, as proven in his budget repair bill and his biennium budget. He also seems to hate anything that gets people out of their individual cars to save on energy, environmentally unfriendly and costly road-building, air pollution, and congestion.
But of course the worst thing is that buses are the main way the not-so-wealthy folks get around - like to jobs or schools. But if you are in the company of the Ayn Rand crowd (like Paul Ryan who makes his staff read her vacuous baloney), the descendents of John Birchers (the Koch brothers certainly come to mind), and the corporate bosses who donate to your campaigns and put mediocre thinkers and ideologues into public office, I guess services for those poor dumb masses is just not your priority.
Really, friends, it feels that bad. I can't write that in a serious journal, but I can write it here - because in my heart of hearts, that is what I think is really going on.
My heart sank reading of the mob attack in the Riverwest neighborhood the night of the fireworks (Flynn's comments being distinctly unhelpful). It is so easy to blame the thugs who sent several people to hospitals to get stitches, but if we don't understand what creates that kind of behavior, especially the disdain in which the attackers appeared to hold those they were attacking, if we don't address what is really tearing our social fabric apart, what it means when people like Walker, the Fitzgeralds, and people like Vos or Darling inflict - with an arrogant attitude, mind you - more suffering and marginalization, more hardship, on populations already reeling from stresses both historic and new (esp. since the 2008 criminally caused financial meltdown), then we can look forward to more signs that that social fabric is indeed unraveling.
Poverty and racism cannot be overcome with more poverty and racism. Really, it's true.
A lot of attention is focused right now on recalls, and that's a fine thing. But let's not leave for later the urgent need to address the attitudes and values that are at the root of these vast inequities, examining them within ourselves and our families, and overcoming them in all our social interactions, in our communities, churches, as a counter-witness to those who believe affluence and privilege, or the power of political offices, or - let's just say it out loud - their white skins, give them a right to enhance their privilege further at the expense of those they do not see as equals and for whom they feel no connection, no responsibility - as if their wealth and privilege is not a direct result of long and deeply-rooted attitudes and injustice.
It's just gotta be said out loud. These people are implementing policies that are going to bring out the worst in us. We have to counter with a commitment to the best in us, an overwhelming assertion of the best in us.
What inspired me to break the silence was today's JS headline: "Bus system may cut routes, fares." If you have read it, then you have a sense of the breadth of the cuts coming for public transportation around here. Walker's 10% cut in state support for transit translates into a $6.8 million loss for the Milwaukee County Transit System - per year!
But of course the worst thing is that buses are the main way the not-so-wealthy folks get around - like to jobs or schools. But if you are in the company of the Ayn Rand crowd (like Paul Ryan who makes his staff read her vacuous baloney), the descendents of John Birchers (the Koch brothers certainly come to mind), and the corporate bosses who donate to your campaigns and put mediocre thinkers and ideologues into public office, I guess services for those poor dumb masses is just not your priority.
Really, friends, it feels that bad. I can't write that in a serious journal, but I can write it here - because in my heart of hearts, that is what I think is really going on.
My heart sank reading of the mob attack in the Riverwest neighborhood the night of the fireworks (Flynn's comments being distinctly unhelpful). It is so easy to blame the thugs who sent several people to hospitals to get stitches, but if we don't understand what creates that kind of behavior, especially the disdain in which the attackers appeared to hold those they were attacking, if we don't address what is really tearing our social fabric apart, what it means when people like Walker, the Fitzgeralds, and people like Vos or Darling inflict - with an arrogant attitude, mind you - more suffering and marginalization, more hardship, on populations already reeling from stresses both historic and new (esp. since the 2008 criminally caused financial meltdown), then we can look forward to more signs that that social fabric is indeed unraveling.
Poverty and racism cannot be overcome with more poverty and racism. Really, it's true.
A lot of attention is focused right now on recalls, and that's a fine thing. But let's not leave for later the urgent need to address the attitudes and values that are at the root of these vast inequities, examining them within ourselves and our families, and overcoming them in all our social interactions, in our communities, churches, as a counter-witness to those who believe affluence and privilege, or the power of political offices, or - let's just say it out loud - their white skins, give them a right to enhance their privilege further at the expense of those they do not see as equals and for whom they feel no connection, no responsibility - as if their wealth and privilege is not a direct result of long and deeply-rooted attitudes and injustice.
It's just gotta be said out loud. These people are implementing policies that are going to bring out the worst in us. We have to counter with a commitment to the best in us, an overwhelming assertion of the best in us.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Repubs continue war on the poor
Wisconsin Repubs continue their assault on the poor, assigning them more blame for their fate and more responsibility for carrying the burden of our fiscal challenges.
It fits very nicely with the Ayn Rand approach to life as exemplified by Paul Ryan - the superior shall rule over all others at their expense - or the crass power grab of those making off with our economy, the corporate state personified in people like the Koch brothers, the CEOs of big manufacturing firms (Bucyrus, Harley Davidson, Kohler, Mercury Marine, Georgia-Pacific, Harley-Davidson, etc.), and the bastions of the nation's ideological right, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth, Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, Murdoch and Fox faux-news, and then their minions that do their bidding.
Of course, there is a lot of crossover among all these folks. Government is for the rich, or to free the rich to become richer. By their belief system, the poor are just slackers, laggards or lazy, responsible for their own fate. Of course, any black kid growing up in the inner city with lousy schools and fragile families torn apart by the daily struggle for survival facing racism all around and the expectation of failure should be able to be just as successful as the multi-billionaire Kochs, right?
Okay, once more we have news that reveals as clearly as ever the moral bankruptcy of this Repub class - the new GOP assault on the already woeful W-2 program. At a time of high unemployment, growing poverty, the demise of the middle class, slashing of wages and benefits even if you have a job - the Repubs are preparing to implement measures to shrink W-2 client roles.
Well, if you read this blog, you probably read the paper, so here's the story for all the gory details.
We are becoming a cruel society, cold, heartless. The worst in us is rising to the top now - all these latent attitudes of racism and derision towards those for whom life is a struggle. It is easier to defend your privilege if you demonize those who pay the price for it. Meanwhile, politicians representing your defense and your scapegoating make policy right out of those attitudes and make them popular on Fox or Charlie Sykes and Rush Limbaugh shows. Feeding the worst in us, that's the politics of the right these days.
The big headline, of course, had to do with the expansion of the school voucher program: income level raised, vouchers that can be used to go anywhere, even if that means public money for religious education (good people disagree on that question, of course), even if that means tax-payer money to families that can afford to pay for private schools. Because the intention here is clear: step-by-step, the rightist Repubs are bent on undermining and eventually throwing public education under the bus (well, except that the buses won't be running in and out of poor neighborhoods anymore either).
Look, MPS is a mess, lacking vision and a clear sense of mission, lacking effective leadership, lacking the zeal required to address the poverty and racism, and the structural issues, that ensure that many Milwaukee kids get a mediocre-at-best education. And the whole national approach is a mess, focused as it is on standardized testing and competition and race to the top b.s. and preparing kids to compete in the global economy and blah, blah, blah... But abandoning public education as a basic right for all kids is not the path toward revolutionizing a woeful, failing system being strangled by bureaucracy and politicization, and collapsing under the weight of long-neglected realities of social injustice and economic disparities.
Here's a truth about capitalism, a sort of economics 101. Capitalism requires a poor class; it requires a certain level of unemployment. It is part of its unjust structural nature. This belief that everyone has a chance to succeed if they just work hard enough contradicts capitalism itself since, if everyone did that, it would be the end of the system. Can we all be Koch brothers or Scott Walker? Who then would do the dirty work in their factories, or cut Walker's lawn, or be the security people that have to sit outside his house all day keeping him safe? And who in the world would want to go into the office buildings overnight to clean the toilets of the CEOs and their staffs?
Because of this basic truth of the structural injustice in the system, different societies make different decisions about how to compensate - or not - for that injustice. We deride Western European countries for their broad, generous social safety nets, but you don't see more affluent people out in the streets about the high taxes they pay for their superior publicly financed health care systems or public schools or generous unemployment benefits - because they all know that these programs benefit everyone in the end in part by creating a certain stability in the society. Gaps between rich and poor may still be wide, but nothing like here where the gap is widening as the corporate right and their minions no longer want their lavish wealth to be taxed to ease the burdens of this great injustice.
Look what happened to the centrist Barack Obama when he dared to once use the phrase "spread the wealth." Accused of being a socialist (as if that is the worst thing you can call anyone), some of his right-wing evangelical opponents might take a moment to read the Gospel of Luke.
We have arrived at the mean season, very, very mean. Nasty. Ugly. The rich are turning on the poor and selfish individualism is being made our state religion. Politics is now being dominated by those who don't think a society's people need care for one another, see the connections between one person's or one community's suffering and the enrichment of someone else - though these connections are obvious, and become more obvious with each measure passed in our state legislature this year.
What bothers me is that I just don't see any real effective pushback. I mean, a lot of angry people got arrested at the Capitol yesterday disrupting the vote on the voucher stuff, but where is the discourse that really speaks to the growing selfishness and isolation of the wealthy? Where is the discourse on the economy that puts what is happening in its real context? Where is the counter to this philosophy of rugged individualism that is pervasive and represents nothing real in this world?
Because none of us - not a single one of us - is an isolated individual, and everything we do has cause and effect. And right now, the things being done in Madison will certainly have effect - they will deepen the suffering all around us, further deteriorate the quality of life in our state, widen the chasms among us, and make for one difficult future in this beautiful state.
It's disheartening. To see politicians appealing to the worst in us, to see the ugly discourse rise to the surface like this - it's disheartening. Hard to win back what you lose. We have to start thinking about how we are going to live here in a fundamentally new way. Those of us who care about these things have got to come together in a broader and deeper solidarity with a different vision to guide us than the one guiding the Repubs in Madison right now.
It fits very nicely with the Ayn Rand approach to life as exemplified by Paul Ryan - the superior shall rule over all others at their expense - or the crass power grab of those making off with our economy, the corporate state personified in people like the Koch brothers, the CEOs of big manufacturing firms (Bucyrus, Harley Davidson, Kohler, Mercury Marine, Georgia-Pacific, Harley-Davidson, etc.), and the bastions of the nation's ideological right, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth, Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, Murdoch and Fox faux-news, and then their minions that do their bidding.
 |
| Photo: Margaret Swedish |
Okay, once more we have news that reveals as clearly as ever the moral bankruptcy of this Repub class - the new GOP assault on the already woeful W-2 program. At a time of high unemployment, growing poverty, the demise of the middle class, slashing of wages and benefits even if you have a job - the Repubs are preparing to implement measures to shrink W-2 client roles.
Well, if you read this blog, you probably read the paper, so here's the story for all the gory details.
We are becoming a cruel society, cold, heartless. The worst in us is rising to the top now - all these latent attitudes of racism and derision towards those for whom life is a struggle. It is easier to defend your privilege if you demonize those who pay the price for it. Meanwhile, politicians representing your defense and your scapegoating make policy right out of those attitudes and make them popular on Fox or Charlie Sykes and Rush Limbaugh shows. Feeding the worst in us, that's the politics of the right these days.
The big headline, of course, had to do with the expansion of the school voucher program: income level raised, vouchers that can be used to go anywhere, even if that means public money for religious education (good people disagree on that question, of course), even if that means tax-payer money to families that can afford to pay for private schools. Because the intention here is clear: step-by-step, the rightist Repubs are bent on undermining and eventually throwing public education under the bus (well, except that the buses won't be running in and out of poor neighborhoods anymore either).
Look, MPS is a mess, lacking vision and a clear sense of mission, lacking effective leadership, lacking the zeal required to address the poverty and racism, and the structural issues, that ensure that many Milwaukee kids get a mediocre-at-best education. And the whole national approach is a mess, focused as it is on standardized testing and competition and race to the top b.s. and preparing kids to compete in the global economy and blah, blah, blah... But abandoning public education as a basic right for all kids is not the path toward revolutionizing a woeful, failing system being strangled by bureaucracy and politicization, and collapsing under the weight of long-neglected realities of social injustice and economic disparities.
Here's a truth about capitalism, a sort of economics 101. Capitalism requires a poor class; it requires a certain level of unemployment. It is part of its unjust structural nature. This belief that everyone has a chance to succeed if they just work hard enough contradicts capitalism itself since, if everyone did that, it would be the end of the system. Can we all be Koch brothers or Scott Walker? Who then would do the dirty work in their factories, or cut Walker's lawn, or be the security people that have to sit outside his house all day keeping him safe? And who in the world would want to go into the office buildings overnight to clean the toilets of the CEOs and their staffs?
Because of this basic truth of the structural injustice in the system, different societies make different decisions about how to compensate - or not - for that injustice. We deride Western European countries for their broad, generous social safety nets, but you don't see more affluent people out in the streets about the high taxes they pay for their superior publicly financed health care systems or public schools or generous unemployment benefits - because they all know that these programs benefit everyone in the end in part by creating a certain stability in the society. Gaps between rich and poor may still be wide, but nothing like here where the gap is widening as the corporate right and their minions no longer want their lavish wealth to be taxed to ease the burdens of this great injustice.
Look what happened to the centrist Barack Obama when he dared to once use the phrase "spread the wealth." Accused of being a socialist (as if that is the worst thing you can call anyone), some of his right-wing evangelical opponents might take a moment to read the Gospel of Luke.
 |
| Photo: Margaret Swedish |
What bothers me is that I just don't see any real effective pushback. I mean, a lot of angry people got arrested at the Capitol yesterday disrupting the vote on the voucher stuff, but where is the discourse that really speaks to the growing selfishness and isolation of the wealthy? Where is the discourse on the economy that puts what is happening in its real context? Where is the counter to this philosophy of rugged individualism that is pervasive and represents nothing real in this world?
Because none of us - not a single one of us - is an isolated individual, and everything we do has cause and effect. And right now, the things being done in Madison will certainly have effect - they will deepen the suffering all around us, further deteriorate the quality of life in our state, widen the chasms among us, and make for one difficult future in this beautiful state.
It's disheartening. To see politicians appealing to the worst in us, to see the ugly discourse rise to the surface like this - it's disheartening. Hard to win back what you lose. We have to start thinking about how we are going to live here in a fundamentally new way. Those of us who care about these things have got to come together in a broader and deeper solidarity with a different vision to guide us than the one guiding the Repubs in Madison right now.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Losing our democracy
Wisconsin's democracy was significantly eroded last night with the passing of the Voter I.D. law in the assembly (note to opponents of the bill: 2 Democrats voted with the Repubs. All assembly members who voted for this need to hear from constituents, but especially Peggy Krusick of Milwaukee and Tony Staskunas of West Allis).
Here's what I want to say about this: rightist racists in this country, some of them very powerful corporate political actors (yes, I do mean you among them, Koch brothers), some of them politicians in state and federal government, are stunned that we have an African-American president, that he remains popular no matter how much they try to demean or discredit him (the reaction to the appearance of Common at the White House is beyond revealing of the racist undertones of much of the opposition).
What I want to say is that this voter I.D. law and others like it around the country are intended to make sure something like this does not happen again. Two of Prez Obama's biggest constituencies are African-Americans and students. In our state, in part because of our long history of racism (I grew up with this, so I know what I am talking about), poverty has affected African-Americans most especially in this city of Milwaukee.
So, voter I.D. - make it harder for people who are poor to vote, and make it harder for students to vote.
And, really, this is about stopping voter fraud, that nearly nonexistent problem?
What do I say to my poll volunteers when I go to the same table with the same people and they have to ask for an I.D. and none of us believe in this violation of our voting rights?
I hear these Repubs say that it will make us all feel more confident in the voting process. Really, guys who are trying to weaken and limit democracy, you guys who try to pass laws by bypassing rules, quick votes when you hope no one is noticing or can create a ruckus, you who right now walk right around the overwhelming opposition to many of your policies now that people know what they are - and you care neither for this opposition or even for creating the spaces for it to be expressed - you're going to lecture us on trust in the democratic process?
I'm going to say this because it is true - certainly there are people who sincerely believe in this agenda thinking it might make a better world, but that is not what Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are about. To understand what they are about, all one need to is a little reading and research on the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Cato Institute (another Koch-funded group), Americans for Prosperity, Heartland Institute - the list is long - rightist corporate backed groups who are trying to steal our public money, eliminate government, and undermine democracy itself in the cause of a global market running rampant and free for their benefit.
For a one-stop website to look at the background of these and other such groups, visit SourceWatch. You will find plenty here to unnerve and alarm you.
The first step in exercising one's demoratic rights is to be well-informed, well-armed, if you will, with information. The first step is to know what's really going on so that we aren't manipulated by media messages of the same people behind these rightist groups and their anti-democratic agenda.
The rally on Saturday needs to get to the heart of the matter. The assault on collective bargaining rights is symptom, not the fundamental cause. The fundamental cause is the attack on democracy itself so that the corporate right can have its way with the national and global economy - and trust me, friends, not for the betterment of the common good or the good of the commons.
Here's what I want to say about this: rightist racists in this country, some of them very powerful corporate political actors (yes, I do mean you among them, Koch brothers), some of them politicians in state and federal government, are stunned that we have an African-American president, that he remains popular no matter how much they try to demean or discredit him (the reaction to the appearance of Common at the White House is beyond revealing of the racist undertones of much of the opposition).
What I want to say is that this voter I.D. law and others like it around the country are intended to make sure something like this does not happen again. Two of Prez Obama's biggest constituencies are African-Americans and students. In our state, in part because of our long history of racism (I grew up with this, so I know what I am talking about), poverty has affected African-Americans most especially in this city of Milwaukee.
So, voter I.D. - make it harder for people who are poor to vote, and make it harder for students to vote.
And, really, this is about stopping voter fraud, that nearly nonexistent problem?
What do I say to my poll volunteers when I go to the same table with the same people and they have to ask for an I.D. and none of us believe in this violation of our voting rights?
I hear these Repubs say that it will make us all feel more confident in the voting process. Really, guys who are trying to weaken and limit democracy, you guys who try to pass laws by bypassing rules, quick votes when you hope no one is noticing or can create a ruckus, you who right now walk right around the overwhelming opposition to many of your policies now that people know what they are - and you care neither for this opposition or even for creating the spaces for it to be expressed - you're going to lecture us on trust in the democratic process?
I'm going to say this because it is true - certainly there are people who sincerely believe in this agenda thinking it might make a better world, but that is not what Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are about. To understand what they are about, all one need to is a little reading and research on the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Cato Institute (another Koch-funded group), Americans for Prosperity, Heartland Institute - the list is long - rightist corporate backed groups who are trying to steal our public money, eliminate government, and undermine democracy itself in the cause of a global market running rampant and free for their benefit.
For a one-stop website to look at the background of these and other such groups, visit SourceWatch. You will find plenty here to unnerve and alarm you.
The first step in exercising one's demoratic rights is to be well-informed, well-armed, if you will, with information. The first step is to know what's really going on so that we aren't manipulated by media messages of the same people behind these rightist groups and their anti-democratic agenda.
The rally on Saturday needs to get to the heart of the matter. The assault on collective bargaining rights is symptom, not the fundamental cause. The fundamental cause is the attack on democracy itself so that the corporate right can have its way with the national and global economy - and trust me, friends, not for the betterment of the common good or the good of the commons.
Monday, May 9, 2011
The assault on our public life goes on - comes down to what kind of world we want, and for whom
It's hard to keep up. They come at us fast and furious, as if trying to overwhelm by the sheer volume of the assaults on our Wisconsin democracy and culture, such as it is in these days of the great polarizing divide. I believe that divide has been beautifully manufactured and manipulated by those with enormous financial resources and rightist courts that allow them to use those resources to purchase our political system - those who stand to benefit from the great divide.
We have family members, friends, neighbors that don't talk to each other anymore, while these guys continue to make off with our wealth, the wealth of the common good and the good of the commons. Trust me, people like Hannity, Beck, and Karl Rove love it when we don't get along. Political paralysis and unraveling of democracy suits them fine.
Anyway, a couple of stories raise these basic questions again of what kind of society we want. Competing visions are at work here, and one of them has a fierce hatred of the 'masses,' the 'common,' workers, the poor, the vulnerable and marginalized. And many of them don't like African-American presidents either, if we are honest about it.
Revealing, this unnecessary anti-Obama rant from one of Scott Walker's campaign donors, the now-infamous David Koch, who supports the gov on things like dismantling union rights and environmental protections in our state. Sarah Owen of New York magazine approached Koch at a fundraiser in Manhattan and he said he didn't understand why Prez Obama was getting so much credit for the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
Okay, that's my long aside. The real issue of this post has to do with the Wisconsin we want. On a smaller but culturally significant scale is Walker's assault on the arts. His budget calls for a 66% cut in the Wisconsin Arts Board budget. I leave it you to read the details and consequences of this, well spelled out in a column today by the Journal Sentinel's art critic, Mary Louise Schumacher.
I want to emphasize one of her key points: "Can you think of any great nation or civilization that did not support the arts in some way?" But, sadly, there are people who don't think of art and culture as public 'goods' to be fostered and developed for the good of all.
Again, what kind of society do we want?
Or this, about job creation. Now, creating jobs is not a project that submits itself to a single recipe, for instance: lower taxes on business, allow them freedom to use and exploit labor and resources free of government constraint, focus on projects that build roads and use of lots of fossil fuels, things that wreak havoc on nature, and, according to the gospel of these industries and Scott Walker, you carve a sure path to lower unemployment and greater prosperity. And if you don't do these things, we will not create jobs.
Really? Actually, creating work opportunities is another way of envisioning the world we want. You can create jobs that jeopardize the future, enrich the few, do more damage to the earth, guarantee lower wages, consign more people to low-wage work (like the 62,000 MacDonalds jobs that we are supposed to be celebrating as 'progress'), and in that process create one kind of society.
Or you can begin to create new work opportunities by addressing some of our key challenges. For example - how to move people around in a world growing more congested and more addicted to oil with every passing day. You can grow the congestion, you can pave over more of our Wisconsin countryside, or you can move to other cleaner forms of transportation.
So, here you go - just announced this morning: thanks to Walker's hostility towards federal money for high-speed rail, we have just been cut out of funds to upgrade the Milwaukee-Chicago Hiawatha.
We can create jobs making Highway 41 into a freeway, building more roads to satisfy the road-building lobby that backs Walker, or we can create jobs that will develop clean high speed rail. Jobs are also about the vision of the world we want. One path is sustainable and the other is not.
Another example: the headline in today's local section: Walker, GOP reversing green initiatives. You can create jobs by making the world dirtier, adding more and more toxic chemicals and other poisons into our air, water, and soil, make more of us sick (which helps grow the private health care systems), and jeopardize the future of our kids and their kids. Or, you can create jobs by building the new clean more locally based sustainable economies. You can create jobs in the effort to clean up the environment, to create the technologies for clean renewable fuels, for greater efficiency in how we use energy, etc., etc. Lots of dynamism in that kind of economy, as other nations have already experienced - and we used to, or at least had hoped to.
This state and the current regime are bent on old technologies and economic development models that will be dying out this century as the world moves through this tumultuous time, the era in which the whole industrial/technological project begins to reach its limits. Sadly, this state is moving in a direction that will leave us ill-prepared.
What kind of world do we want? I don't like the direction this current state government is turning towards. It's getting uglier, less empowering, less human, less creative, more toxic physically and spiritually. It is bringing out the worst in us, not the best - racist sentiments on the surface, folks eager to carry more guns around, unwarranted fears being stirred up to set us against one another.
Or we can try something else, set a different course with a different vision of what our world could look like - if we could lay down the fears and realize that we are all in this together. Together in animosity and resentment in a diminished environment bent on our fierce individualism - that is one possibility.
I am looking for ways to create another...
We have family members, friends, neighbors that don't talk to each other anymore, while these guys continue to make off with our wealth, the wealth of the common good and the good of the commons. Trust me, people like Hannity, Beck, and Karl Rove love it when we don't get along. Political paralysis and unraveling of democracy suits them fine.
Anyway, a couple of stories raise these basic questions again of what kind of society we want. Competing visions are at work here, and one of them has a fierce hatred of the 'masses,' the 'common,' workers, the poor, the vulnerable and marginalized. And many of them don't like African-American presidents either, if we are honest about it.
Revealing, this unnecessary anti-Obama rant from one of Scott Walker's campaign donors, the now-infamous David Koch, who supports the gov on things like dismantling union rights and environmental protections in our state. Sarah Owen of New York magazine approached Koch at a fundraiser in Manhattan and he said he didn't understand why Prez Obama was getting so much credit for the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
"He just made the decision, it was obvious where the guy is...The real hard work was done by the intelligence and the SEALs."Um, David, that's what presidents do. They set policy goals, in this case catching up with the 9/11 guy. They are given the options presented by the professionals who work for them and then they weigh those options and make a decision. Then they live with the consequences of those decisions. Takes a lot of guts, something you may not appreciate, protected as you are by your billions, your walled mansions, your many minions.
But the real attitude is barely hidden in this outburst. From New York magazine:
Scary, scary Obama. 'Uppity' of him to take so much credit, right? C'mon, we all know what's going on here. The Koch family background with its roots in the John Birch Society, their funding of rightist, anti-democratic groups with clear racist tendencies (like the Tea Party birthers), makes this obvious.Obama is "a hardcore socialist," Koch told us, "and he’s marvelous at pretending to be something other than that, but that is what I believe he truly is, a hardcore socialist. He’s scary to me."
Okay, that's my long aside. The real issue of this post has to do with the Wisconsin we want. On a smaller but culturally significant scale is Walker's assault on the arts. His budget calls for a 66% cut in the Wisconsin Arts Board budget. I leave it you to read the details and consequences of this, well spelled out in a column today by the Journal Sentinel's art critic, Mary Louise Schumacher.
I want to emphasize one of her key points: "Can you think of any great nation or civilization that did not support the arts in some way?" But, sadly, there are people who don't think of art and culture as public 'goods' to be fostered and developed for the good of all.
Again, what kind of society do we want?
Or this, about job creation. Now, creating jobs is not a project that submits itself to a single recipe, for instance: lower taxes on business, allow them freedom to use and exploit labor and resources free of government constraint, focus on projects that build roads and use of lots of fossil fuels, things that wreak havoc on nature, and, according to the gospel of these industries and Scott Walker, you carve a sure path to lower unemployment and greater prosperity. And if you don't do these things, we will not create jobs.
Really? Actually, creating work opportunities is another way of envisioning the world we want. You can create jobs that jeopardize the future, enrich the few, do more damage to the earth, guarantee lower wages, consign more people to low-wage work (like the 62,000 MacDonalds jobs that we are supposed to be celebrating as 'progress'), and in that process create one kind of society.
Or you can begin to create new work opportunities by addressing some of our key challenges. For example - how to move people around in a world growing more congested and more addicted to oil with every passing day. You can grow the congestion, you can pave over more of our Wisconsin countryside, or you can move to other cleaner forms of transportation.
So, here you go - just announced this morning: thanks to Walker's hostility towards federal money for high-speed rail, we have just been cut out of funds to upgrade the Milwaukee-Chicago Hiawatha.
We can create jobs making Highway 41 into a freeway, building more roads to satisfy the road-building lobby that backs Walker, or we can create jobs that will develop clean high speed rail. Jobs are also about the vision of the world we want. One path is sustainable and the other is not.
Another example: the headline in today's local section: Walker, GOP reversing green initiatives. You can create jobs by making the world dirtier, adding more and more toxic chemicals and other poisons into our air, water, and soil, make more of us sick (which helps grow the private health care systems), and jeopardize the future of our kids and their kids. Or, you can create jobs by building the new clean more locally based sustainable economies. You can create jobs in the effort to clean up the environment, to create the technologies for clean renewable fuels, for greater efficiency in how we use energy, etc., etc. Lots of dynamism in that kind of economy, as other nations have already experienced - and we used to, or at least had hoped to.
This state and the current regime are bent on old technologies and economic development models that will be dying out this century as the world moves through this tumultuous time, the era in which the whole industrial/technological project begins to reach its limits. Sadly, this state is moving in a direction that will leave us ill-prepared.
What kind of world do we want? I don't like the direction this current state government is turning towards. It's getting uglier, less empowering, less human, less creative, more toxic physically and spiritually. It is bringing out the worst in us, not the best - racist sentiments on the surface, folks eager to carry more guns around, unwarranted fears being stirred up to set us against one another.
Or we can try something else, set a different course with a different vision of what our world could look like - if we could lay down the fears and realize that we are all in this together. Together in animosity and resentment in a diminished environment bent on our fierce individualism - that is one possibility.
I am looking for ways to create another...
Friday, March 11, 2011
Let's name what this really is - racism and plutocracy
Okay, let's start with Jon Stewart's 'Moment of Zen' from last night's show:
That's for starters. Be careful who you claim to emulate - can come back to bite you. If Ronald Reagan is your hero, gov, how' bout you quote this? Guess you prefer what he did to PATCO. Sad history, really. Still reverbates.
So let's move on to this article from the Journal Sentinel local section today:
Bus system, county services threatened
If you want to destroy the city of Milwaukee, if you want to erode it's life, send it further into poverty, this is certainly the path to take - and Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers certainly do seem to want to do that.
The times are too urgent to try to avoid the blunt reality of what is going on here. 82% of kids in Milwaukee's public schools live in poverty. They are also overwhelmingly African-American kids.
Another way to accelerate the city's demise - get rid of residency rules for cops, firefighters, and teachers, also on the Walker/Fitzgerald legislative wish-list. This one got a big boost from Republican State Senator Leah Vukmir whose district includes Wauwatosa, the suburb where Walker lives (the one in which I also grew up, so I know of what I write here). As city life deteriorates amidst poverty and gutting of public services, losing more of the middle class to the suburbs will cost the city more in its tax base and a considerable constituency with a stake in the city's welfare.
The urgency of the times means naming this for what it is. Here's a big part of that story:
I know it well. White flight has been going on in my town for a very long time.
And as life in the city deteriorates, what commitment will middle class folks have to rebuild hope in this community?
Let's name it for what it is: the father of the Koch brothers, that would be Fred, was on the governing board of the far, far, far, anti-communist fascist, anti-democratic John Birch Society. Frank Rich described the Koch family background in a column last year. Even if you are not a Rich fan, his facts are, well, facts.
Read more. Learn more - because we must if we are to save our democracy, not just here in Wisconsin, but in our nation. These guys are trying to buy it and bend it to their will. I try not to be extreme. On the other hand, check out this blog post by a journalist in Florida:
http://blog.reidreport.com/2010/08/the-koch-brothers-the-2010-election-and-the-return-of-the-john-birch-society/
Why is Scott Walker prepared to abandon the state's public schools? Okay, he's being bankrolled in part by the Koch brothers, and as we reported earlier, once he was inaugurated, Koch Industries opened a lobbying office in downtown Madison. Now read this, from the link above to a blog called, The Reid Report:
For those who don't know what the John Birch Society is, check out this link. You will learn here that the Society opposes income taxes and wants to repeal civil rights legislation (in case you still aren't sure what this is really about). I am sad to say that the Society's home is in my state, home of both Joe McCarthy and progressive populist, Fighting Bob Lafollette. That is our cultural bifurcation - been there a long, long time.
We used to be slightly more civil about it - but it always seethed under the surface. The Kochs, Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are now trying to rule this state. And, friends, that is why the stakes here are so high.
As we just witnessed in the past 48 hours, they will use whatever means they think they can get away with to do to this state what they want to do. They are banking on our becoming riven, demoralized, frustrated, violent - they will try as they can to discredit us. We have only one weapon that can defeat this kind of power grab -
...democracy, our government taken back by the people - of them and for them. This will take great maturity and strength, a refusal to fall for their propaganda, trying to set private sector workers against public, unemployed v. employed, the poor against one another - as they continue to enrich themselves at our expense.
I have a proposal for balancing our budget, keeping government services at a high level, maintaining an experienced public work force, and supporting creation of jobs in local communities for local communities - tax these people who want to steal our state from us - tax them exorbitantly. And if that means they decide to leave, wave good bye.
That's for starters. Be careful who you claim to emulate - can come back to bite you. If Ronald Reagan is your hero, gov, how' bout you quote this? Guess you prefer what he did to PATCO. Sad history, really. Still reverbates.
So let's move on to this article from the Journal Sentinel local section today:
Bus system, county services threatened
If you want to destroy the city of Milwaukee, if you want to erode it's life, send it further into poverty, this is certainly the path to take - and Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers certainly do seem to want to do that.
The times are too urgent to try to avoid the blunt reality of what is going on here. 82% of kids in Milwaukee's public schools live in poverty. They are also overwhelmingly African-American kids.
Another way to accelerate the city's demise - get rid of residency rules for cops, firefighters, and teachers, also on the Walker/Fitzgerald legislative wish-list. This one got a big boost from Republican State Senator Leah Vukmir whose district includes Wauwatosa, the suburb where Walker lives (the one in which I also grew up, so I know of what I write here). As city life deteriorates amidst poverty and gutting of public services, losing more of the middle class to the suburbs will cost the city more in its tax base and a considerable constituency with a stake in the city's welfare.
The urgency of the times means naming this for what it is. Here's a big part of that story:
From this article in the morning paper: "...for the first time in the city of Milwaukee, blacks now outnumber whites, and minorities outnumber whites by roughly 2 to 1."This is my hometown, friends. I know it really, really well. I grew up on Joe McCarthy and Martin Luther King being a scary communist and, when a mixed family dared look at a house for sale across the alley (man from the short-lived nation of Biafra, wife US Caucasian Montessori school teacher, kids beautifully brown), neighbors whispering in the backyards about what they could do to stop them from buying it. (They failed, and for a long time my Mother was one of the few on the block who talked to them).
I know it well. White flight has been going on in my town for a very long time.
And as life in the city deteriorates, what commitment will middle class folks have to rebuild hope in this community?
Let's name it for what it is: the father of the Koch brothers, that would be Fred, was on the governing board of the far, far, far, anti-communist fascist, anti-democratic John Birch Society. Frank Rich described the Koch family background in a column last year. Even if you are not a Rich fan, his facts are, well, facts.
Read more. Learn more - because we must if we are to save our democracy, not just here in Wisconsin, but in our nation. These guys are trying to buy it and bend it to their will. I try not to be extreme. On the other hand, check out this blog post by a journalist in Florida:
http://blog.reidreport.com/2010/08/the-koch-brothers-the-2010-election-and-the-return-of-the-john-birch-society/
Why is Scott Walker prepared to abandon the state's public schools? Okay, he's being bankrolled in part by the Koch brothers, and as we reported earlier, once he was inaugurated, Koch Industries opened a lobbying office in downtown Madison. Now read this, from the link above to a blog called, The Reid Report:
When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes.Where does the Walker/Fitzgerald agenda come from? Follow the research on the Koch brothers.
For those who don't know what the John Birch Society is, check out this link. You will learn here that the Society opposes income taxes and wants to repeal civil rights legislation (in case you still aren't sure what this is really about). I am sad to say that the Society's home is in my state, home of both Joe McCarthy and progressive populist, Fighting Bob Lafollette. That is our cultural bifurcation - been there a long, long time.
We used to be slightly more civil about it - but it always seethed under the surface. The Kochs, Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are now trying to rule this state. And, friends, that is why the stakes here are so high.
As we just witnessed in the past 48 hours, they will use whatever means they think they can get away with to do to this state what they want to do. They are banking on our becoming riven, demoralized, frustrated, violent - they will try as they can to discredit us. We have only one weapon that can defeat this kind of power grab -
...democracy, our government taken back by the people - of them and for them. This will take great maturity and strength, a refusal to fall for their propaganda, trying to set private sector workers against public, unemployed v. employed, the poor against one another - as they continue to enrich themselves at our expense.
I have a proposal for balancing our budget, keeping government services at a high level, maintaining an experienced public work force, and supporting creation of jobs in local communities for local communities - tax these people who want to steal our state from us - tax them exorbitantly. And if that means they decide to leave, wave good bye.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
WEAC, MTEA, school board, MPS, local politicians - avoiding the heart of the matter
It is just so tired by now, this idea that if we just improve student test scores, if we can just get teachers to improve those scores, if we try racing to the top, competing for funds, create more incentives for performing well on standardized tests - everything will turn out okay!
Here's what a friend who is a social worker in the MPS system tells me she deals with every day - kids with brain damage from lead poisoning, kids suffering from malnutrition because of poverty, kids who didn't have breakfast and are hungry because there's no food in the house, kids traumatized by violence in their neighborhoods or because maybe their mom or other caretaker was beaten up the night before.
Now they're supposed to sit quietly in school and memorize for testing, learn for performance on tests, absorb lessons in math and science so that they can compete favorably on tests with folks in countries in Asia.
Who are we kidding? A lot of teachers whose students have problems with testing, and therefore can't show improvement in 'performance,' are dealing every day with the problems of gross neglect in this community that has put Milwaukee among the highest in poverty, in de facto racial segregation (racism - deep roots here), in income disparities between whites and blacks, between rich and poor, in health indicators among children, of any city in the United States.
And then we get mad at teachers when their students don't perform well.
Not all teachers are heroic or even compassionate, of course. I hear of teachers who actually don't like their kids, are uninspired, just going through the motions, who are also demoralized. But teacher 'performance' based on improved test scores will continue to get us nowhere. Neither will all these grand schemes for 'reform' or restructuring the system if the focus remains there alone.
But what this focus does do is continue to deflect our attention from the real issue - the deep roots of poverty, violence, trauma, racism, and neglect of city neighborhoods over decades. Until those things are addressed, and WE address them as a community that ought to care about one another and about the quality of life throughout our city, we will continue to be frustrated and demoralized that our kids in the MPS system don't do better.
Easy to shove it off on the shoulders of teachers, but teachers, the school board, churches, affluent folks, businesses, community groups, and political leaders all need to shoulder this responsibility. We need to change an entire culture that surrounds the MPS system.
You can't learn unless there is an atmosphere for learning, unless kids feel good about themselves, have stable relationships, a sense of dignity, worth and purpose. Test all you want, without this, our schools will continue to fail our kids.
Here's what a friend who is a social worker in the MPS system tells me she deals with every day - kids with brain damage from lead poisoning, kids suffering from malnutrition because of poverty, kids who didn't have breakfast and are hungry because there's no food in the house, kids traumatized by violence in their neighborhoods or because maybe their mom or other caretaker was beaten up the night before.
Now they're supposed to sit quietly in school and memorize for testing, learn for performance on tests, absorb lessons in math and science so that they can compete favorably on tests with folks in countries in Asia.
Who are we kidding? A lot of teachers whose students have problems with testing, and therefore can't show improvement in 'performance,' are dealing every day with the problems of gross neglect in this community that has put Milwaukee among the highest in poverty, in de facto racial segregation (racism - deep roots here), in income disparities between whites and blacks, between rich and poor, in health indicators among children, of any city in the United States.
And then we get mad at teachers when their students don't perform well.
Not all teachers are heroic or even compassionate, of course. I hear of teachers who actually don't like their kids, are uninspired, just going through the motions, who are also demoralized. But teacher 'performance' based on improved test scores will continue to get us nowhere. Neither will all these grand schemes for 'reform' or restructuring the system if the focus remains there alone.
But what this focus does do is continue to deflect our attention from the real issue - the deep roots of poverty, violence, trauma, racism, and neglect of city neighborhoods over decades. Until those things are addressed, and WE address them as a community that ought to care about one another and about the quality of life throughout our city, we will continue to be frustrated and demoralized that our kids in the MPS system don't do better.
Easy to shove it off on the shoulders of teachers, but teachers, the school board, churches, affluent folks, businesses, community groups, and political leaders all need to shoulder this responsibility. We need to change an entire culture that surrounds the MPS system.
You can't learn unless there is an atmosphere for learning, unless kids feel good about themselves, have stable relationships, a sense of dignity, worth and purpose. Test all you want, without this, our schools will continue to fail our kids.
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