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Why fine teachers are often the best union leaders
Lois Weiner February 18, 2015 |
I’m struck by how many of the skills and understandings good teachers acquire can also make them fine union activists. Though they may not realize it, teachers have already learned a great deal about organizing - through their work as teachers.
Mexico: Landmines Everywhere - A Book Review Essay
Dan La Botz February 13, 2015 |
Robert Joe Stout. Hidden Dangers: Mexico on the Brink of Disaster. Sunbury Press: Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 2014. 209 pages. Notes. Bibliography.
Shannon K. O’Neil. Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead. A council on Foreign Relations Book. Oxford University Press, 2014 [2013]. 239 page. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Map.
“Mexico is undergoing economic and political changes that lie like landmines ready to explode beneath the troubled and often discordant impulses of the two countries to satisfy their divergent social and political needs,” writes Robert Joe Stout in Hidden Dangers: Mexico on the Brink of Disaster.
New York Labor Mural: Censorship or Curatorial Standards?
Dan La Botz February 2, 2015 |
Mike Alewitz, the internationally famous muralist, is fighting for the installation his mural “The City at the Crossroads of History” at the Museum of the City of New York. Commissioned by the Puffin Foundation, the museum has refused to install the piece because of objections to its content. Alewitz calls this a case of censorship, while the museum argues it is a question of “curatorial standards.” There is a petition campaign in support of the installation of the mural. (Find at the foot of this article links to a slideshow of the mural, an interview with Alewitz, and the petition site.)
Black Lives Matter Gathering Points a New Direction for the Movement
Dan La Botz February 1, 2015 |
The Black Lives Matter Movement is alive and well. If it has for the moment—under political attack and facing the winter’s sub-freezing temperatures—withdrawn from the streets, it has done so to plan a new stage in the fight for justice for African American victims of police racism and violence. As many as 400 people, mostly young people of color, attended the eight-hour long Black Lives Matter Gathering at the famous Riverside Church in Manhattan on January 30 where in workshops, trainings, and plenary sessions it seemed that a new direction was being set for the movement.
Philly teachers - the kind of troublemakers who built teachers unions
Lois Weiner January 29, 2015 |
I have a long-time friend who recalls how, as a young teacher, she came to her Brooklyn school on November 7, 1960 to walk the picket line. She was terrified at breaking the law and was only one of a very few teachers in her school to strike. Fearful but also committed, she held hands with a gal pal for mutual support.
Julio Scherer García - 1926-2015 - Mexican Journalist
Dan La Botz January 15, 2015 |
Julio Scherer, who worked as a journalist for 70 years, will be most remembered for founding Proceso, the weekly news magazine that transformed Mexican journalism and helped to contributed to the ongoing struggle for democracy in Mexico.
Mexico - The Year in Review
Dan La Botz January 8, 2015 |
President Enrique Peña Nieto, who had been so successful in advancing his fundamentally conservative economic program during his first year and a half in office, suddenly faced a serious challenge beginning in September 2014 when police apparently cooperating gangsters killed six students, injured at least 25 injured, and kidnapped 43 in the town of Iguala in the state of Guerrero.
As Mexican President Peña Nieto Visits White House, Protestors Demand His Resignation
Dan La Botz January 7, 2015 |
Cuba - A Personal Reflection
Dan La Botz December 22, 2014 |
When in 1959 I was fourteen, my socialist, pacifist father gave me a gift subscription to Liberation, the leftist magazine sponsored by the War Resisters League that was published from 1956-1977. My parents had divorced and I lived with my mother in the town of Imperial Beach, California, on the Pacific Ocean and the Mexican border, while my father lived in Chicago. Liberation was my father’s way of seeing to my political education from a distance. In the pages of Liberation I first read C. Wright Mills’ essay (later a book) “Listen Yankee” as well as other articles about the revolution in Cuba.
Collapse of Oil Prices, Fall in Peso, Exacerbate Mexican Political Crisis
Dan La Botz December 16, 2014 |
A New American Civil Rights Movement is Being Born
Dan La Botz December 14, 2014 |
A new civil rights movement is arising in the United States.
Teachers unions, police, and the real 'new civil rights movement'
Lois Weiner December 14, 2014 |
When Rudy Giuliani blamed the deaths of unarmed Black men on teachers unions in appearances on Geraldo Rivera’s show and Fox News’ “Hannity,” Giuliani relied on the same logic that Rod Paige, Secretary of Education, employed in more
The Mexican Crisis Deepens
Dan La Botz November 29, 2014 |
The Mexican government confronts a major political crisis on two fronts. The first is as a result of the massacre and kidnapping that took place on September 26 when police and other assailants in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero killed six, wounded twenty-five, and kidnapped 43 students. Since the massacre and kidnapping took place, there have been demonstrations in Guerrero, Mexico City, and several other states, some of them massive and some violent.
Özlem Ilyas Tolunay – Socialist, Feminist, Freedom Fighter -1975-2014
Dan La Botz November 21, 2014 |
We at New Politics were saddened to learn and are very sorry to have to inform our readers that our good friend and writer Özlem Ilyas Tolunay, 39, died on Nov. 16 of a heart attack. We are heartsick that this young woman, a fighter for social justice in Turkey, wife and mother of a young child, is no longer with us.