Excerpt, June 28, 2020 – Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/the-black-radical-tradition-can-help-us-imagine-a-more-just-world/ (see below that for article on history and links regarding the Reconstruction) The educational theory of the enslaved cannot be detached from the origins of the Black radical tradition, one that was forged in resistance, providing the empirical basis for freedom struggle. As Cedric Robinson suggests, the Black radical tradition was birthed from the …
Studies continue to prove that systemic racism is very real
By Lee Camp, Counterpunch. June 27, 2020 | EDUCATE! Racism is like sewage. Whether we’re currently engaging in a national dialogue about it or not, it’s still there. It runs under our streets, our buildings, our society. Millions of tons of shit. Rarely is racism truly visible to the naked eye. More often, it trickles along beneath our collective consciousness, quietly infecting everything. …
Just a few (incomplete) benefits from replacing existing diesel buses with electric school buses
This report summarizes analysis conducted by VEIC on Denver Public School’s bus fleet and the suitability of replacing existing diesel buses with electric school buses. Colorado is undertaking efforts to reduce harmful emissions from diesel engines as part of a legal settlement with Volkswagen Group of America. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (DPHE) is administering over $68.7 …
One in five White Americans don’t have high-speed internet at home, that ratio is roughly one in three for Black Americans, and one in 2.5 for Latinx Americans
MAY 19, 2020 We Should Own the Internet—Not Silicon Valley Oligarchs It’s time to stop treating high-speed internet as a luxury commodity and instead place it under democratic and public control.BY THOMAS M. HANNA AND ISAIAH J. POOLE http://inthesetimes.com/article/22536/internet-silicon-valley-broadband-covid-19-democracy excerpt One in five White Americans don’t have high-speed internet at home, that ratio is roughly one in three for Black Americans, and one …
Getting the most out of your online course
In the video below, MIT Professor and co-founder of the inter-university Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School Lawrence Susskind discusses the differences between in-person and online teaching, and how this impacts his online negotiation course: So, how can you apply what experts know about teaching online to optimize your own online learning experience? With insights from MIT experts, we discuss the …
Fueled by protests, school districts across the country cut ties with police
By Moriah Balingit, Valerie Strauss and Kim Bellware June 12, 2020, Washington Post For years, civil rights activists have worked to remove police officers from the nation’s public schools, arguing that they pose a greater risk to students of color than the intruders they’re supposed to guard against. But in the wake of George Floyd’s death, a shift that seemed impossible only a few weeks …
How can we best educate children for the important roles they will play to ensure we have functioning democracies, equitable societies, and a healthy planet?
How can we best educate children for the important roles they will play to ensure we have functioning democracies, equitable societies, and a healthy planet? Such changes in education, should they come, will mean that students learn to be solutionaries – people who provide ideas and blueprints for positively transforming societal institutions and structures? Meaning: because their learning and actions make a difference Confidence: …
Tackling fossil fuels in building – the source and impact of direct building emissions across the country, from RMI
Mike Henchen, RMI, Jan 6, 2020 Tackling fossil fuels in buildings has become a hot topic in climate policy, and not a moment too soon. Given the global imperative to slash carbon emissions across all sectors in the next decade, local leaders are realizing they need to address the prevalence of fossil fuels, primarily gas, used for heating and cooking …
‘Prisoners—especially Blacks, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans—are increasingly advancing the proposition that they are political prisoners. They contend that they are political prisoners in the sense that they are largely the victims of an oppressive politico-economic order’
Though that definition of political prisoner is unorthodox, it illustrates the political and economic nature of criminalization. This is why observers of Black August connect the fight to free “revolutionary” political prisoners to the broader struggle against US prisons. Mass incarceration is a symptom of the same system that political prisoners have dedicated their lives towards fighting. According to a new …
Investing in tuition-free college pays has high rates of return for society
By David Deming, Tuition-Free College Could Cost Less Than You Think, NYTimes, July 21, 2019 “The long-term payoff of these policies could be enormous. Considerable research shows that public and private benefits greatly exceed the costs when students are nudged toward obtaining a college degree. Yet at the moment, only 37 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 …