6th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
TEACHER EDUCATION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE:

Reframing Race, Gender, and Teacher-Education Policy

Dates: 5-6 December 2009
Location: University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), U.S.A.

Co-Sponsors:
Center for Anti-Oppressive Education
Department of Educational Policy Studies, UIC
Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, UIC

Conference Overview

What does it mean to prepare teachers to teach toward social justice? Across the United States and around the world, educators face many challenges. Especially troublesome are the economic, social, and political contexts that make difficult our attempts to address differences and oppressions in schools and society. Yet, in the face of these challenges, teacher educators are continuing to produce significant theories, practices, and coalitions. The largest conference to date, the 6th International Conference on Teacher Education and Social Justice will offer rare opportunities to discuss cutting-edge research, develop innovative resources, build networks, and explore possibilities for new directions in teacher preparation. The Conference will draw together over five-hundred educators from around the world with diverse experiences but with shared commitments and priorities, including scholars from Australia, Canada, Chad, Chile, India, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Palestine, Uganda, and across the United States.

** Special Note** The Conference Organizers are pleased to announce that registration is free for the 6th International Conference on Teacher Education and Social Justice. All participants must pre-register for the conference by November 20th. Space is limited, and on-site registration will not be available, so please pre-register early. Participants are responsible for their own transportation, lodging, and meals. CAOE does not issue letters of invitation to participants from outside of the United States.

Conference Theme

Reframing Race, Gender, and Teacher-Education Policy: The Conference will highlight cutting-edge research and theory on race, gender, and teacher-education policy, particularly regarding new and innovative ways to conceptualize policy and politics of teacher preparation at the intersections of race and gender.

Special Features of the Conference

Workshop on Publishing for Emerging Scholars: Designed for emerging scholars (graduate students and recent graduates) in the field of teacher education and social justice, this three-hour workshop offers invaluable tips and unravels the “unspoken rules” for publishing books and journal articles. Facilitated by the Director of CAOE, this popular workshop is free with conference pre-registration and is scheduled to be held at the end of the conference.

Booksale: Bring an extra bag with you to carry home new books and resources that you are sure to want from our impressive booksale and resource tables.

Networking Reception: A highlight of previous conferences, the Networking Reception provides an opportunity to meet other conference participants in an informal setting with light refreshments.

Registration Information
** Pre-Registration is required, and ends on November 20th **

All educators, researchers, and educational leaders and advocates throughout the United States and the world and from all levels and disciplines are invited to attend and participate in this conference. This conference is free and open to the public; however, all participants must pre-register for the conference by November 20th.

To pre-register, please download the Pre-Registration Form either in MSWord or in PDF.

Space is limited, and on-site registration will not be available, so please pre-register early. Refreshments will be provided throughout the conference. Participants are responsible for their own transportation, lodging, and meals. CAOE does not issue letters of invitation to participants from outside of the United States.
Location

The Conference will be held on the campus of the University of Illinois-Chicago in the EPASW (Education, Performing Arts, and Social Work) building, 1040 W. Harrison Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607. Maps of the campus, as well as parking information, can be downloaded at http://www.uic.edu/index.html/maps.shtml.

The University of Illinois at Chicago is conveniently located near downtown Chicago and adjacent to the UIC/Halsted station of Chicago’s rapid transit, the “L”.

Lodging

Conference participants are responsible for their own transportation, lodging, and meals.

The Conference Organizers are once again pleased to announce that the nearby Marriott Chicago Medical District/UIC has a special conference rate of $109/night (single or double) for conference participants. The hotel provides Complimentary Shuttle Service between the hotel and UIC every half hour from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. To take advantage of this special rate, please contact Norma Badal, Senior Sales Manager, at nbadal@marriottchicagomd.com, and mention the “International Conference on Teacher Education and Social Justice.”

TSJ curriculum fair - Association of Raza Educators keynote the meeting - photo by pidge

Chris Drew demonstrates his free speech art silk screening project - photo by pidge

Thanks from the Curriculum Fair and Next Steps – Get involved!
Thanks everyone for coming to the Teaching for Justice Curriculum  Fair and adding to the vibrancy of the TSJ community. The energy, conversation, passion, and commitment were really inspiring. Thank you!!! We are so grateful to all of the event organizers, educators, presenters, youth workers, administrators, cultural workers, activists, parents, students, and young folks who came out. The conference was put on completely by dozens of amazing volunteers with no paid staff or foun

Ron Towns discusses how math can be learned using social justice models - photo by pidge

dation funding. This is a grassroots project and the critical mass of volunteers and activists is truly inspiring. It felt like the education movement we are building.

There were over 700 attendees, 30 Teacher curriculum exhibitors, 38 resource tables, 9 workshops, art, t-shirts, books, and more.

• Keynote speakers, the Association of Raza Educators (ARE) from California emphasized the struggle to remake the world is a collective one, not about individuals. It takes organization, analysis, courage, and humility.
• TSJ delegates to Honduras shared the stories of the Honduran people’s struggle for democracy and the leading role of teachers.
• CORE gave us the lowdown on building a social justice teachers union.
• CYIC inspired and challenged us to stand up with them for education justice.

• The Committee for Safe Passage to School, mothers of Fenger students living in Altgeld Gardens, made us all aware of

their righteous struggle to reclaim their neighborhood school.
• Kevin Coval and Young Chicago Authors closed it out with words and rhymes to move us forward.

Get involved and help bring this energy to your school, community, students and youth, and into the struggles we are waging for education justice in the city.

SPECIAL MEETING  SATURDAY DEC 5
Help evaluate the curriculum fair, ideas for next steps and how everyone can be involved:   4:00-5:30
Honduras Delegation Report Back  5:30-7:00

Decima Musa, 19th & Loomis

REGULAR TSJ MEETING AND POTLUCK LUNCH, SATURDAY  DEC 12
Planning next steps, committees, activities
11:00 – 1:00
UIC College of Education, 1040 W. Harrison (Harrison & Morgan), 3rd floor

STAY  INVOLVED! IT TAKES ALL OF US!
–
*******************************************************************************

Teachers for Social Justice (Chicago)

http://teachersforjustice.org/
teachersforjustice@hotmail.com

HOW CLASS WORKS – 2010
A Conference at SUNY Stony Brook
June 3-5, 2010
CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

The Center for Study of Working Class Life is pleased to announce the How Class Works – 2010 Conference, to be held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, June 3 – 5, 2010. Proposals for papers, presentations, and sessions are welcome until December 14, 2009 according to the guidelines below.

Purpose and orientation: The conference seeks to explore ways in which an explicit recognition of class helps to understand the social world in which we live, and ways in which analysis of society can deepen our understanding of class as a social relationship. Presentations should take as their point of reference the lived experience of class; proposed theoretical contributions should be rooted in and illuminate social realities. Presentations are welcome from people outside academic life when they sum up social experience in a way that contributes to the themes of the conference.  Formal papers will be welcome but are not required. All presentations should be accessible to an interdisciplinary audience.

Conference themes: The conference welcomes proposals for presentations that advance our understanding of any of the following themes.

The mosaic of class, race, and gender. To explore how class shapes racial, gender, and ethnic experience and how different racial, gender, and ethnic experiences within various classes shape the meaning of class.

Class, power, and social structure. To explore the social content of working, middle, and capitalist classes in terms of various aspects of power; to explore ways in which class and structures of power interact, at the workplace and in the broader society.

Class and community. To explore ways in which class operates outside the workplace in the communities where people of various classes live.

Class in a global economy. To explore how class identity and class dynamics are influenced by globalization, including experience of cross-border organizing, capitalist class dynamics, international labor standards.

Middle class? Working class? What’s the difference and why does it matter? To explore the claim that the U.S. is a middle class society and contrast it with the notion that the working class is the majority; to explore the relationships between the middle class and the working class, and between the middle class and the capitalist class.

Class, public policy, and electoral politics. To explore how class affects public policy, with special attention to health care, the criminal justice system, labor law, poverty, tax and other economic policy, housing, and education; to explore the place of electoral politics in the arrangement of class forces on policy matters.

Class and culture: To explore ways in which culture transmits and transforms class dynamics.

Pedagogy of class. To explore techniques and materials useful for teaching about class, at K-12 levels, in college and university courses, and in labor studies and adult education courses.

How to submit proposals for How Class Works – 2010 Conference

Proposals for presentations must include the following information: a) title; b) which of the eight conference themes will be addressed; c) a maximum 250 word summary of the main points, methodology, and slice of experience that will be summed up; d) relevant personal information indicating institutional affiliation (if any) and what training or experience the presenter brings to the proposal; e) presenter’s name, address, telephone, fax, and e-mail address. A person may present in at most two conference sessions. To allow time for discussion, sessions will be limited to three twenty-minute or four fifteen-minute principal presentations. Sessions will not include official discussants.  Proposals for poster sessions are welcome.  Presentations may be assigned to a poster session.

Proposals for sessions are welcome. A single session proposal must include proposal information for all presentations expected to be part of it, as detailed above, with some indication of willingness to participate from each proposed session member.

Submit proposals as hard copy by mail to the How Class Works  - 2010 Conference, Center for Study of Working Class Life, Department of Economics, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384 or as an e-mail attachment to <michael.zweig@stonybrook.edu>.

Timetable:  Proposals must be received by December 14, 2009. Notifications will be mailed on January 19, 2010. The conference will be at SUNY Stony Brook June 3- 5, 2010.  Conference registration and housing reservations will be possible after February 15, 2010. Details and updates will be posted at <http://www.workingclass.sunysb.edu/>http://www.workingclass.sunysb.edu.

Conference coordinator:
Michael Zweig
Director, Center for Study of Working Class Life
Department of Economics
State University of New York
Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384
631.632.7536
michael.zweig@stonybrook.edu

The following interview is reprinted from Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/376.Barbara_Kingsolver?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Nov_newsletter

10 Questions with Barbara Kingsolver

November, 2009

Barbara Kingsolver
As a master’s student in evolutionary biology, Barbara Kingsolver struggled to complete her thesis on the social life of termites. Thankfully, Kingsolver dropped the bugs and took up the pen—writing books with strong political motifs. The Poisonwood Bible, her best-known work, analyzes post-colonial inequity in Africa, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an autobiographical tome about planting and eating locally grown food. Her latest book, The Lacuna, follows the son of a Mexican mother and American father. Harrison Shepherd stumbles into Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Leon Trotsky as he witnesses history take shape in the United States and Mexico, from pre-World War II turmoil to McCarthyism. We asked Kingsolver why she believes that literature will always be political.

Goodreads: It has been nine years since your last work of fiction, Prodigal Summer. When did you begin work on The Lacuna and what inspired you to canvas midcentury Mexico and the United States?

Barbara Kingsolver: I’ve always wondered about the uneasy relationship between art and politics in the U.S. In most other places I’ve been, the two are completely intertwined. Mexico, particularly, has historically celebrated its most political artists as national heroes.

I began writing The Lacuna in February 2002. The previous autumn, after the terrorist attacks on the U.S., I had expected that we might use that challenging time to examine our role in the world. But that was not the national mood. Patriotism is strongly identified with the notion of our country as a perfect finished product—as in, “love it or leave it.” Mexico is so different; their revolution is always a work in progress. I wanted to write about that.

I went poking into history, hoping to find a formative era when these modern political identities took shape, soon after World War II. And what a surprise, I found a thrilling seven-year project.

GR: The story is told through protagonist Harrison Shepherd’s diaries and letters, but also through other devices, such as newspaper clippings. What kind of research did you conduct, and how much historical source material did you incorporate?

BK: The research was daunting: It felt, in the beginning, that I was undertaking to move a mountain with a teaspoon. But I like doing research, I told myself, spoon in hand. Beyond the historical and political sleuthing, a novel is made of details. Characters have to wear clothes, use transportation, cook, listen to radio programs, and speak in the particular jargon of an era. In this case, “the era” involved dozens of different locations in two countries, crossing nearly thirty years. I traveled in Mexico, of course, visiting settings from the coastal jungles to Mexico City’s art museums, the homes of Rivera and Kahlo, Trotsky’s personal archives, the amazing pyramids at Teotihuacán, every place I would have to translate for the reader using all my senses. I also studied the U.S. settings, particularly Asheville, North Carolina.

That was the fun, adventurous part. But the lion’s share of the work happened here in my study. I sat and read for years. Everything written by Trotsky, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo, and everything written about them. Thousands of newspaper and magazine articles documenting everyday life in the U.S. during World War II, and then the postwar freeze-up. Old photo collections. Many newspapers now have electronic archives, but the best material is not online. I had to get my nose into a lot of dusty places. But I loved the surprises. For example, I learned that contrary to popular belief, the continental U.S. was attacked during WWII. The New York Times ran photos of the aftermath. The Japanese sent a submarine up the Columbia River and deployed a floatplane bomber, with the goal of setting the Oregon forests on fire and throwing the country into a panic. But the plan was rained out. History hinges on things like this, events that get forgotten—this is the soul of the story I wanted to tell. First I had to learn it myself. My heart was in my throat more or less the whole time.

GR: You are noted for your skill with dialogue, often using vernacular speech. This book includes many historical figures, such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Is it more difficult to find the voice of these real characters compared to your own fictional characters?

BK: Dialogue is my favorite thing to write. It can be an elegant way to package some of a novel’s most crucial information. But you do have to work hard to keep it vernacular and well paced. I construct the fictional conversations in my head and listen carefully. It might seem easier to put words in the mouths of my own invented characters than the historical figures who also appear in the story—Frida and Diego, for example. But really there was little difference. By the time I’d read their personal diaries and everything else, their voices were coming through loud and clear. Sometimes their words came straight from the record. The conversations with my protagonist, Harrison Shepherd, are all invented, of course, but it was engaging to fit everything together.

When I went into the studio to record the audio book, I realized I was hearing these characters plainly in my mind, so I did my best to replicate those accents and intonations. This meant acting out conversations between characters who were Mexican, Russian, French, Mexican American, Ashevillean, and so forth, in various combinations. If I thought too much about it, my brain might blow a fuse. So I just channeled the voices as I heard them.

GR: You are the founder of the biennial Bellwether Prize, which celebrates socially responsible literature by awarding (and guaranteeing publication of) a work of fiction that includes an element of social change. Over the ten years of the prize’s history, the United States has witnessed the 9/11 attacks, a country at war on multiple fronts, a sea change in political power, and now the economic recession. Have you observed any trends in the sociopolitical topics being tackled by authors? What role will literature play in the political landscape as we move further into the 21st century? (Readers: Vote here for your favorite books that include an element of social change!)

BK: It’s an interesting question, which I can’t answer. We get hundreds of submissions for each cycle of the Bellwether Prize, and I don’t see any manuscripts until our energetic panels of readers and judges winnow the pile down to a few finalists. So I don’t know whether the submissions reflect any trends in the political landscape. But I have noticed that new writers are often tackling the novel form rather bravely, both in terms of craft and content. Twenty years ago the cool thing in writing workshops was minimalism: a conversation between a cashier and a bored lady buying cigarettes, posited as a story, heaven forbid it should have any noticeable beginning or end. Now you see more writing in the “maximalist” line, with extremely unusual devices and thematic material. I love the courage of these efforts, and sometimes they succeed.

Literature will always be political: It cultivates empathy for a theoretical stranger by putting you inside his head, allowing you to experience life from his point of view. It can broaden your view of gender, ethnicity, place and time, power and vulnerability, all the elements that influence social interaction. What could be more political than that?

GR: We asked for questions from your readers, got a huge response, and selected a few for you. Goodreads member Elizabeth says, “In the preface of The Poisonwood Bible you wrote that you waited nearly 30 years for the wisdom and maturity to write that book. As an active writer with that sort of ethic, do you ever find it difficult to have enough material for which you feel ready to write? What else do you do, when the wisdom and maturity are still cooking?”

BK: Excellent question, Elizabeth. When a project feels compelling but too scary, for practical or moral reasons, I keep it on the back burner but don’t give up on it. I pondered The Poisonwood Bible for ten years before I felt ready to tackle it. During that time I collected clippings, books, and jotted down thoughts I hoped would someday help me frame the big questions I wanted to ask. In the meantime, I wrote novels and nonfiction books that were more modest in scope, with more familiar settings and fairly linear, manageable story arcs. The most important part of this paragraph is: “but don’t give up on it.” The most daunting ideas turn into the best books.

Backing up a few more years, I can tell you that long before I felt ready to write my first whole book, at around age 30, I wrote short stories, poems, articles, reviews, anything. Writing is writing, it all adds up. Freelance journalism was the best training for becoming a novelist. Every day I had to pull on my boots and go make myself an “expert” in whatever an editor had assigned me to write about. The essential ingredient of authorship is authority. You hunt it out in a library, you chase it down the street, or you knit it from the fiber of your own will. From somewhere, you get it. You begin.

GR: In reference to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Goodreads member Amy asks, “I’d love to know if you are still gardening and eating all local foods. Did the experiment stick?”

BK: Yes, we’re still eating locally. Our garden expands every year, and our local farmers’ market also keeps growing. How could we turn our backs on that bounty? It feels great to be an active part of one’s own food chain. Given the worrisome state of globalized, fossil-fueled infrastructures, we all seem to be headed in a more localized direction, and I recommend embracing the change. Where food is concerned, it’s overwhelmingly a change for the better.

GR: What are you reading now? What are some of your favorite books and authors?

BK: Now that I’ve finished reading hundreds of arcane books about the Mexican Revolution, Life magazines from the 1940s, et cetera, I’m thrilled to be digging into my backed-up personal-reading pile that has been waiting. My last five books devoured and loved: Milan Kundera’s The Joke, Margot Livesey’s The House on Fortune Street, Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray, and Eaarth by Bill McKibben.

[The following letter went to the new U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Velenzuela, on Wednesday from a group of 55 Central America scholars.]

Dr. Arturo Valenzuela
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs
United States Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Arturo:

As a group of scholars of Central America we ask that you seek to change the ill advised position taken by Mr. Thomas Shannon that would recognize the results of the Honduran election even though Pres Zelaya is not restored to office. This sets a terrible precedent that undermines the wave of democratization that has swept the region because it in essence legitimizes a coup. It is at odds with the other Latin American nations.

We ask also that the Department of State not fund election observation missions by the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, as announced by Senator Richard Lugar. This would legitimize a patently illegitimate poll. The secretary general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, said he would not send observers to monitor the November 29th elections, while many of the OAS’s member countries said they would not recognize the election winner unless Zelaya was reinstated. Will you push for reconsideration of the decision to send U.S. observers?

The issue is not whether technical election procedures are carried out, or if the ballots are counted accurately, but rather the effects on the election of the coup. Several candidates have withdrawn because they do not wish to legitimize an election sponsored by a coup government, including Carlos H. Reyes of the Independent Party and leader of the resistance movement against the coup. It is highly unlikely that the forces behind the coup would have allowed him to take office were he to win. The broad-based national resistance movement has called for a total boycott of the elections and a number of candidates have withdrawn. Press reports note that as many as 110 mayoral and 55 congressional candidates have withdrawn because they do not believe the elections will be free and fair.

We are concerned that there appear to be powerful forces (beyond the individual efforts of Senator Jim DeMint) pushing the United States in the direction of acceptance of efforts to roll back the democratic gains in Latin America because of the election of some or all candidates of the left. Could you tell us if you perceive these rollback efforts as a threat and, if so, what your plans are to minimize them?

Human rights violations continue. The Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH) notes, in its second report since the coup, that the de facto government relies on:

“the use of excessive force on the part of military and police, control of the media and closure of media outlets that are not allies of the regime, use of paramilitaries to intimidate, threaten and kidnap those opposed to the coup, and the emission of illegal decrees that suspend the exercise of fundamental rights…. It is clear that a repressive apparatus is being mounted to intimidate and annihilate resistance to the coup. In the 115 days since the coup, thousands of human rights violations have been registered that reflect the evolution of state violence and the rupture of institutionality.”

The United States should forcefully condemn these human rights violations. We ask that it announce that the U.S. will not fund observers to the Nov. 29 elections, and that it not recognize the election results, and that we will work with other members of the Inter-American community to resolve this crisis in a way that reflects democratic processes and respects human rights.

Sincerely,

Jack Spence, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Aaron Schneider, Tulane University

David Close, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Marc Zimmerman, University of Houston

Nora Hamilton, University of Southern California

Francisco J. Barbosa, University of Colorado, Boulder

Karen Kampwirth, Knox College

Ellen Moodie, University of Illinois

Gary Prevost, St. John’s University

Thomas W. Walker, Ohio University

Irene B. Hodgson, Xavier University

Julie Stewart, University of Utah, Salt Lake City

Marc Edelman, Hunter College, CUNY

Lisa Kowalchuk, University of Guelph, Ontario

Sylvia Tesh, University of Arizona

Eliza Willis, Grinnell College

Lena Mortensen, University of Toronto Scarborough

Abigail E. Adams, Central Connecticut State University

Robin Maria DeLugan, University of California-Merced

Susanne Jonas, University of California, Santa Cruz

Mary Finley-Brook, University of Richmond

Aviva Chomsky, Salem State College

Mayo C. Toruño, California State University, San Bernardino
Miguel Gonzalez, York University

Richard Grossman, Northeastern Illinois University

Carol A. Smith, University of California, Davis

William S. Stewart, California State University, Chico

Katherine Borland, The Ohio State University

Hector Perla, University of California, Santa Cruz

Jefferson Boyer, Appalachian State University

Rose Spalding, De Paul University

Bruce Calder, University of Illinois, Chicago

Sheila R. Tully, San Francisco State University

LaDawn Haglund, Arizona State University

Suyapa Portillo, Pomona College

Arturo Arias, University of Texas

Laura Enriquez, University of California, Berkeley
Chris Chiappari, St. Olaf College

Dana Frank, University of California, Santa Cruz

Katherine Hoyt, Nicaragua Network

Gilbert G. Gonzalez, University of California, Irvine

Celia Simonds, California State University Northridge
Beatriz Cortez, California State University, Northridge

Ana Patricia Rodriguez, University of Maryland, College Park

Justin Wolfe, Tulane Univesrity

Gloria Rudolf, University of Pittsburgh

Elizabeth Dore, University of Southampton, UK

Richard Stahler-Sholk, Eastern Michigan University

Leisy Abrego, University of California, Irvine

Craig Auchter, Butler University

Bill Barnes, City College of San Francisco

Linda J. Craft, North Park University, Chicago

Lois Ann Lorentzen, University of San Francisco

Juliana Martinez Franzoni, University of Costa Rica

Breny Mendoza, California State University, Northridge

[THIS PROGRAM WAS POSTPONED BECAUSE THE SPEAKER HAD A FAMILY EMERGENCY; IT WILL BE RESCHEDULED AT A LATER DATE]

************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The context of the fight for public education is the growing militarization and corporatization of public services.  How do we understand the world we are in and the ways to achieve the goal of quality education for all?  Please join the Chicago LRNA Education Committee and the Rally Comrades editor Brooke Heaggerty when we look at how corporate developments influence

Teaching for a New America

In a number of social spheres we are seeing services long considered the right of the public turned over to private investors.  Prisons and schools are prime examples, two of the largest employers in the country.  At the same time, large industries long considered the foundation of the private sector are seeing large amounts of government investment that is sometimes called “government ownership” or even “socialism.”  These issues, that seem to express contradictory motions, have raised  questions about what appears to be a crossroads in our history.

We’ve asked the editor of Rally Comrades to discuss with us this crossroads in the light of two articles that recently appeared in the journal (links below):  What do fascism and socialism look like in the perspective of 21st century US experience?

Brooke Heagerty, Ph.D. is co-author of Moving Onward: From Racial Division to Class Unity. She is working on a new book on Celia, the slave, that will look at how the history of slavery affects us today. She writes and speaks on women, racism, the police state, global repression and the new poverty. She is a founding member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, and editor of it’s newspaper, Rally Comrades!

See: “The Changing Form of the State” : http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed4art5.html

“Fascist Movement Gaining Force” : http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v19ed3art5.html

Join us in conversation

Sunday, November 15

1628 N. California (just north of North Ave.)

11 AM to 1 PM

Bagels and Cream Cheese Brunch

hosted by

Chicago Education Committee of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America

Liesl Orenic and Bob Bruno, who co-chair the Chicago Center for Working Class Studies, invite you to this event.
Dear Friends of CCWCS,
We’d like to let you know about an upcoming book event with Steve Early, the labor journalist.  Steve will be in Chicago November 9th to talk about his new book, Embedded with Organized Labor.  We hope you can attend.
In solidarity,
Bob Bruno and Liesl Orenic
Steering committee co-chairs, CCWCS

Embedded with Organized Labor: Steve Early Book Party in Chicago
Monday, November 9, 7:00 PM
No Exit Cafe, 6970 N Glenwood Ave, Chicago, IL

Labor journalist, lawyer and former Communications Workers of America organizer Steve Early will sign and discuss his new book Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home (Monthly Review Press), on November 9 at No Exit Cafe in Chicago, Il. The event, co-sponsored byInterfaith Worker Justice, In These Times, and many other groups and individuals, will take place from 7 to 9 p.m.
Early, a contributor to Working In These Times <http://www.inthesetimes.com/working>, In These Times workers rights blog, will discuss an array of labor-related subjects, including thoughts on the economic crisis, the fight for healthcare reform, the fate of the Employee Free Choice Act, and current struggles for union democracy.
For more information about Earlys national book tour events in October, November and December, go to <http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/event_steveearly.php>, or visit <http://embeddedwol.blogspot.com/>, the blog for Earlys book.

The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council sends us this notice:

War & Peace Exhibit
Opening Receptions & Informal Conversations
Thursday, November 12th and Friday November 13th
5:00 pm – 9:00 pm (both days)
TH!NKART SALON
1530 North Paulina Street, Suite F
Chicago

The War and Peace Exhibit is free and open to the public. To RSVP, or to receive more information, email thinkartsalon@gmail.com or call 773.252.2294 x305.

Join us for the opening receptions and conversations for TH!NKArt’s latest exhibition, War & Peace. This exhibit features new paintings and works on paper by David Gista, Dave Sheehan, and Todd Narbey.

The dance between Sheehan’s brilliantly colored and textured canvasses of toy soldiers surrounding boxers juxtaposed with the ambiguous imagery of writings and icons in Gista’s papers and Narbey’s underlying vision of war and peace provide us a platform to consider whether or not we will ever give peace a chance.

In addition to the opening receptions and conversations, there will be a poetry reading by Emily Calvo and Stella Vinitchi Radulescu on Thursday.

The exhibit runs through Thursday, December 31, 2009.

More about this event:  https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/Link.asp?link=408272

Presented by:

TH!NKART International Art Gallery and Policy Salon,<https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/Link.asp?link=408273>

The Public Square, <https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/Link.asp?link=408274>

Groupe Professionnel Francophone,  <https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/Link.asp?link=408275>

French Embassy in the U.S. Chicago Cultural Services, <https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/Link.asp?link=408276>

Chicago Sisters Cities International,<https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/Link.asp?link=408277>

Tony Zaragoza at Evergreen State U provides us with a newsletter that gives us information, all in one place, on labor replacing technology.   He provides a glimpse into the growing redundance of labor world wide — in so doing he contradicts the usual interpretation that job loss is solely due to outsourcing.  While some jobs are being exported, the automation of jobs in the lesser developed countries accelerates.  Thanks to professor Zaragoza for an extremely important resource.

Automation and Robotics News–Nov 11, 2009

All previous issues are now archived at: http://academic.evergreen.edu/z/zaragozt/arnews.htm

Highlights: Automation in Nigeria, Good Third Quarter for Automation Companies, Robot Soldiers, Robot Elk, impacts of automation on pilots, a push to automate air traffic control in India, fastest robot, smallest robot, green automation, and drones.

GOOGLE NEWS

# Nigeria: American Firm Unveils Manufacturing Solutions AllAfrica.com - Oct 21, 2009

Lagos — A private company with headquarters in Weston, WI, U.S.A, AJ Excel Automation, LLC, is currently setting up offices in Nigeria to provide manufacturing solutions to manufacturing concerns in the country. The company, which offers automation solutions, manufacturing intelligence implementation, continuous improvement and project management consulting services, is to unveil the manufacturing solutions at a breakfast seminar in Ikeja, Lagos, on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 , in an effort to introduce the software to manufacturers in Nigeria. Details and demonstration on this technology, will be unveiled at the event by technical experts from the U.S.A, including the C.E.O of AJ Excel, Mr. Samuel Tayo Ajayi and the Technical Director, Mr. David Slivinski.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200910210378.html

# Automation Companies have a good third quarter:

ABB Sees 3Q Net Pft Of $1B; Provisions Smooth

Wall Street Journal - Katharina Bart - Oct 19, 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091019-702636.html

Honeywell Automation vaults after good Q3 results

India Infoline.com - Oct 23, 2009

http://www.indiainfoline.com/Market/News/News.aspx?NewsId=347527

Rockwell Automation Up 29.9% Since SmarTrend’s Buy Recommendation Trading Markets (press release) - Oct 21, 2009

Since then, Rockwell Automation has returned 29.9% as of today’s recent price of $43.76.

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2593352/

Brooks Automation Up 75% Since SmarTrend’s Buy Recommendation Trading Markets (press release) - Oct 19, 2009

Since then, Brooks Automation has returned 75% as of today’s recent price of $9.02.

# Baxa Corporation Signs Exclusive Distribution Agreement With Leading Pharmaceutical Corporation in People’s Republic of China

Mon Oct 19, 2009 9:01am EDT ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ — Baxa Corporation, a US-based medical device company in Englewood, Colorado, has signed an exclusive four-year distribution agreement with SINOPHARM, a China National Pharmaceutical Foreign Trade Corporation, to promote sales of its products in China. While the agreement covers all Baxa products, the ExactaMix(TM) 2400 Automated Compounder and the Repeater(TM) Pharmacy Pump have been recognized as ones that will increase efficiency for the hospitals targeted by Baxa and SINOPHARM in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Due to their existing practice of manual preparation, the companies expect that more than 250 hospitals could benefit from the Baxa pharmacy automation equipment.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS106081+19-Oct-2009+PRN20091019

# For fashion-forward Gilt Groupe, robots help get the orders shipped on time Thursday, October 22, 2009

Gilt Groupe Inc., a web-only retailer of fashion apparel and home furnishings that it offers in timed sales, has found that a robot-supported fulfillment warehouse is four times as productive as its traditional warehouse, chief operating officer Jennifer Carr-Smith says.

http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=32218

# Expert: Wayward Flight Shows Risks Of Automation

October 29, 2009

The recent instance of a Northwest airliner flying past its destination because of the pilots’ preoccupation with their computers raises new questions about how airline crews communicate — and the risks of automation.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114262744

# After PBN, airport to go for air traffic control automation

V Ayyappan, TNN 27 October 2009

CHENNAI: After defining air routes for landing and take-off under the Performance Based Navigation (PBN) sytem, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has taken steps to introduce automation of air traffic control at the Chennai airport. A meeting with representatives of US-based Raytheon, which bagged the Rs 42 crore contract to automate ATC, is scheduled in the coming days to discuss the details. “They will have to study the procedures used here and then design a system that can match ours,” said a senior AAI official. Like PBN, automation is crucial for the airport here because the traffic has crossed 400 aircraft a day. In Mumbai, PBN was installed when traffic touched 350 aircraft a day. So, an automated ATC system will ease the workload of controllers, improve air safety and make handling of aircraft in the congested air space easy.

# Honeywell’s Ready for the Recovery

By David Lee Smith, October 26, 2009

Honeywell (NYSE: HON) is clearly one of the more diversified companies operating in the U.S. today. From aerospace systems, to specialty materials (primarily chemicals), and on to automation and control solutions, the company ranges far and wide. Perhaps that diversity helped the company turn in results that were better than both what the dart-throwers on Wall Street had forecast and what most business scribes seemed willing to admit.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/10/26/honeywells-ready-for-the-recovery.aspx

# From Automation to Precision: Closing the Productivity Gap

By Marcus Ryu, Guidewir, Oct 30, 200912:47 PM ET

Observers of the insurance industry rightly identify inefficiency as one of the insurance industry’s greatest challenges. Complex, stove-piped organizations replete with manual processes call out for the benefits of automation. They also invite comparisons to the manufacturing industry and advocacy for a more “industrial” approach to insurance processing. No one would dispute that the insurance industry could gain greater benefit from automation. However, it may be worthwhile to ask how much insurers can ultimately gain through greater efficiency and what precisely they can learn from manufacturing.

http://www.insurancetech.com/blog/archives/2009/10/from_automation.html

# Automation Systems Help Asphalt Producers Focus on the Quality

By Lisa Cleaver, October 28th, 2009 09:31 AM EDT

Jerry McCauley, a plant superintendent with Plote Construction, has seen a lot of changes over his nearly 36 years in the asphalt industry. Probably the greatest innovation McCauley has witnessed is automation technology for asphalt production.

http://www.forconstructionpros.com/print/Asphalt-Contractor/Plant-Matters/Automation-Systems-Help-Asphalt-Producers-Focus-on-the-Quality/2FCP14247

# Nigeria: Firm Introduces Automation Technology to Local Manufacturers

Tunbosun Ogundare, 26 October 2009 Worried by the continued closure and relocation abroad of many manufacturing firms in the country, AJ Excel Automation Incorporation has concluded plan to reverse the trend. The company said the current situation in the country’s manufacturing sector was not only counter-productive to the Federal Government’s seven- point agenda, but inimical to well-being of the citizenry, noting that technology is a major recipe to achieving economic prosperity.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200910270226.html

# New Military Robot Walks Like Flesh-and-Blood Person

October 28, 2009 (ChattahBox)—The robot creators at Boston Dynamics have come up with a replica of a military solider robot, which can walk on its own and even crawl. The amazingly lifelike robot, dubbed Petman will be used to test chemical protection clothing used by the U.S. Army. Petman is a continuation of military robots manufactured by Boston Dynamics that most recently created BigDog, a robot with four legs, the size of a large dog, which walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads for soldiers in the field. Petman is described, as BigDog’s big brother .

http://chattahbox.com/science/2009/10/28/new-military-robot-walks-like-flesh-and-blood-person/

# Robot soldiers By Amanda Wong, Oct 29, 2009

WITH clockwork precision, the robots screen the container for weapons of mass destruction. After the all-clear signal, it breaks open the door of the container and then moves in to take samples from the shipment, which will be sent to the laboratory for further investigation. All this is done without actual humans. Singapore is the only one of four countries in Exercise Deep Sabre II to use robots to perform such dangerous tasks. Held at Changi Naval Base, the exercise also included officers from Australia, Japan and USA. The exercise is to enhance security measures against the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Some 2000 personnel from 19 countries are involved in this year’s exercise.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_448063.html

# Robot armies ‘will explore alien worlds’, Oct 31, 2009

Alien worlds may be explored by armies of flying, driving and sailing robots, say scientists. Robotic airships and satellites will fly above the surface of the distant world, commanding squadrons of wheeled rovers and floating robot boats, according to Wolfgang Fink of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The systems will transform planetary exploration, says Prof Fink, who envisages the cybernetic adventurers mapping the land and seascapes of Saturn’s moon, Titan – believed to have lakes of standing liquid – as well as closer planetary neighbors like Mars. At the moment robotic exploration relies on single robots controlled from Earth. That will change, according to Prof Fink, director of Caltech’s Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=206794

# Elk robot to help Ore. officials catch poachers

Associated Press – October 27, 2009 12:15 AM ET

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – Oregon wildlife officials will use a donated robotic elk to help catch poachers. The decoy donated by the Humane Society Wildlife Land Trust will help fish and wildlife agents target nighttime or closed-season poachers. Officials say many poachers are wary of possible decoys and check for movement before shooting, making the robot a valuable resource. The anti-poaching decoy program already has some robotic deer.

http://www.ktvz.com/Global/story.asp?S=11388305

# Adept Technology Announces Adept Quattro Robot Breaks 300 Cycle Per Minute Barrier

Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:32am EDT

PLEASANTON, Calif., Oct. 28, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Adept Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:ADEP), a leading provider of intelligent vision-guided robotics and global robotics services, today announced its Adept Quattro Robot has broken the 300 cycle per minute barrier. The record robotic performance threshold was set using the 25mm x 300mm x 25mm standard cycle. The industry has long benchmarked speeds using this quantifier and Adept has once again raised the bar. “The Quattro robot is the fastest robot in the world and its advantages over conventional robots not only include faster cycles and settling times but increased payload and more consistent performance throughout the workspace,” said Rush LaSelle, director of global sales and marketing for Adept Technology, Inc. “As Adept continues driving technology to higher levels of performance our clients benefit by realizing throughput previously only offered by conventional equipment combined with the flexibility of manual labor. We are pleased to increasingly offer manufacturers and processors means of achieving high levels of productivity and quality while enabling them to address the pressures of reduced product and packaging life cycles.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS140792+28-Oct-2009+GNW20091028 RIA

# KUKA Systems Offers North American Solar Producers Best of Two Worlds

KUKA Robotics Corporation Posted 10/26/2009

Anaheim | Detroit | Augsburg – KUKA Systems offers North American solar manufacturers two world-class businesses in one: a major global supplier of advanced solar production technologies and a US-based integrator with demon-strated expertise in adapting those technologies for local use. KUKA Systems’ product lineup covers almost every aspect of photovoltaic manufacturing – from the most sophisticated wire saw machines for slicing ingots into wafers to robotic cells to perform every task associated with assembling and testing PV panels. KUKA Systems also is a major integrator of robotic and other automation technologies for automakers, solar manufacturers, aerospace and logistics companies and can design and install partial or complete turnkey manufacturing lines.

http://www.robotics.org/content-detail.cfm/Industrial-Robotics-News/KUKA-Systems-Offers-North-American-Solar-Producers-Best-of-Two-Worlds/content_id/1811 # ABB Introduces its Smallest Ever Robot, Designed for Cost-effective Material Handling and Assembly of Smaller Parts

ABB Inc. Posted 10/20/2009

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – ABB Robotics, a leading supplier of industrial robots, has introduced its smallest ever multipurpose robot, the IRB 120. The new six-axis robot has all the functionality and advanced design features of ABB’s larger robots in an economical, lightweight model that will provide agility, accuracy and speed to a broad range of applications where a smaller footprint and profile are required. Weighing just 25kg (55 lbs), the IRB 120 has a standard payload of 3kg (6.6 lbs), a vertical wrist payload of 4kg (8.8 lbs), a reach of 580mm, a best-in-class stroke of 411mm and the ability to reach 112mm below its base. The IRB 120 is available with a new compact version of the industry-leading IRC5 controller, making it easy to program and control for a variety of tasks. The Compact IRC-5 is fully compatible with the standard and panel mount IRC-5 controllers.

http://www.robotics.org/content-detail.cfm/Industrial-Robotics-News/ABB-Introduces-its-Smallest-Ever-Robot-Designed-for-Cost-effective-Material-Handling-and-Assembly-of-Smaller-Parts/content_id/1801

# A Little Green in Every Robot by Brian Huse , Director, Marketing & PR Robotic Industries Association Posted 10/19/2009

Robots are among the most efficient machines available to manufacturers and can be part of any company’s strategy for green manufacturing. Faster cycle times, improved quality and less scrap contribute directly to a greener footprint, and robots are well known for these advantages. If you use robots you have a green manufacturing story already. When green manufacturing surfaced as a corporate strategy there were many who believed there was little or no payback. Isn’t it cheaper to pump waste out of the factory than it is to recycle it? And who can really afford to cultivate an eco-roof on top of their factory? Despite the skeptics, more companies now do such things and are able to show there is a return on investment.

http://www.robotics.org/content-detail.cfm/Industrial-Robotics-Feature-Article/A-Little-Green-in-Every-Robot/content_id/1796

IEEE AUTOMATON BLOG

# iRobot Launches Healthcare Robotics Division

POSTED BY: Mikell Taylor // Thu, October 29, 2009

During the TEDMED conference taking place in San Diego this week, iRobot announced the creation of a new product unit: healthcare robots. CEO Colin Angle said the overall goal is to add “one million hours of independent living” to seniors’ lives. This is not at all a surprising move. Eldercare robots development has lagged in the US. Japan and South Korea have dedicated many more resources – including government dollars – to that development. So iRobot is well-positioned to take advantage of the relatively empty US market.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/robotics/robotics-software/automaton

ROBOTS.NET

# Introduction to Swarm Intelligence

Posted 22 Oct 2009 at 17:46 UTC by steve

Sabu M. Thampi has posted a very short introduction to Swarm Intelligence (PDF format). In his paper, he describes the biological origins of swarm intelligence in flocks of birds, schools of fish, and swarms of bees. He goes on to describe the importance of swarm intelligence to robotics, using the computational models of ant colony optimization (ACO) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). Pseudo code for the ACO algorithm is included. CC licensed image of swarming grackles by flickr user AlphaTangoBravo

http://robots.net/article/2936.html

WIRED

# 30 Days, No Landing: Darpa Aims for Drone Endurance Record

By Noah Shachtman, October 28, 2009

The idea, ultimately, is to build a drone that will stay in the sky for five years or more. But in the meantime, Pentagon wild research arm Darpa will just have to settle for a solar-powered robotic aircraft that flies for a month a time. Not bad, considering that’s nearly 10 times the current drone endurance record of 3 days, 10 hours. Darpa just launched the $155 million second phase of the project, dubbed “Vulture.” The idea is to build a drone that can carry a thousand-pound payload for at least thirty days.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/30-days-no-landing-darpa-aims-for-drone-endurance-record/

# U.S. Drones Back Pak Offensive Against Taliban

By Noah Shachtman, October 23, 2009

The Pakistani Army is getting help from U.S. spy drones, in its offensive against Taliban militants in South Waziristan. “For months the United States and Pakistan have been sharing information from Predator flights in the volatile border regions” between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the L.A. Times’ Julian Barnes and Greg Miller report. “but until now the Pakistanis had not accepted help for their major military operations.” These flights aren’t the same as the killer drone attacks, under the CIA’s operational control, which have left slain up to 1,000 people, including several top leaders of the Pakistani Taliban.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/us-drones-back-pak-offensive-against-taliban/

still a Mad as Hell Doc for Single Payer Health Care

Marc Sapir in 1968: He's still a mad as hell doc

I guess I haven’t held up my end of the bargain with the readers of the Berkeley Planet.  A few Planet readers have approached me to ask why I didn’t finish writing my cross-country travelogue. So what happened, they wanted to know, when you got to Washington, DC?   Aye yay yay.  Please accept my apology.

So let me start back at the tour itself.  I’ve reviewed the compendium of the individual TV appearances we made in local venues from Seattle to Washington.  The amount of dust we kicked up—over a million citings on Google, many dozens of radio and TV appearances and interviews and print media articles—is not to be sneezed at.  We made a splash all across the US. When I told a nurse at work that, unfortunately, we only got local news coverage in all those cities and did not get national media attention, she claimed I was wrong.  That she saw us on a national Fox News feed out in front of the White House.  Fox?

Here’s my final report on the tour.  Despite many thousands of e-mails and phone calls the White House did not invite us in.  Not only weren’t we invited to share with the President what thousands of people asked us to report about their crying need for a national health insurance program–Medicare for All–but we weren’t invited to sit down with Health Secretary Sibelius either.  Too, we weren’t invited to some secret rendezvous (like the Health Insurance and Pharma people).  Not even with the most inconsequential of underlings.  The only interaction that I remember with the White House went like this:

After our energized rally in front of the White House on September 30 at 4-6 p.m. (where our usual Mad as Hell show was supplemented by the Regional Director of the AFL-CIO, by the Raging Grannies, by a grassroots African American DC leader and by the foot stomping charisma of Dennis Kucinich who seemed to appear on stage out of the sky) had run its course, a group of 20 or so docs and others walked over by the White House fence and did some Single Payer chanting and singing.  After about 30 minutes, the rally crowd having dispersed, this small group began to head out for the evening and a woman, whom I didn’t know, put one of the single payer symbolic white ribbons on top of the fence.  A military guard 30 yards off within the White House grounds saw this brazen act of rebellion and shouted “take that down.”  And that was the extent of the Mad as Hell Doctors interaction with the Obama White House—at least this time around.

The next morning Congressman Kucinich sponsored a press conference with us at the House Office Building and after that read into the Congressional Record a personal commendation for our efforts and he did a little rant for single payer and HR 676 on the House floor with only one or two other Congresspeople in attendance at 10 a.m.  Maybe this is anticlimactic?  So here’s more.

As we went across the country, at each of 40 stops and right there in front of the White House, we, the docs, each gave our 3 minutes of why I’m Mad as Hell.  And this was a very moving presentation (as well as one full of meaty facts) no matter how many times I heard it and participated in it because after us, after some music and a question period, the last 20 minutes or so involved the testimony from audience members of why they are mad as hell and getting screwed to the wall or driven to destitution, suffering or death by the non-health care system.  These stories were  moving, riveting, sometimes amusing and more often heart wrenching as we traveled from town to town.  (They were all posted on You Tube via the <http://www.madashelldoctors.com/>www.madashelldoctors.com web site).

My own 3 doc minutes, which at first focused on the fact that we spend twice as much as any other country on health care to rank 37th on the World Health Organization’s composite ranking of health outcomes so that Wall street profits can stay high, fairly soon transformed itself into something more when  I mentioned the Martin Luther King Jr. quote about health care, which I first saw on the back of the Single Payer Now SF t-shirt: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”  I was urged to always make this my main point and was placed last speaker among the docs.

And so I did, saying that King recognized this was a civil rights issue and that Health Care and health (as stated also in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the UN Charter) are human rights.  And that we all recognize that the Congress is in the pocket of those who place their profits before our health and so we can not rely upon pressuring and petitioning Congress with e-mails, phone calls and petitions but we will have to heed King’s unfulfilled dream of equal quality health care.  We have to rebuild a civil rights movement from coast to coast that will not take no for an answer and will utilize the same tactics that won civil rights for African Americans in the 60s.  And when I said those things, each time, the docs and the crowds cheered louder.  I never failed to see people in these audiences—granted they were not huge throngs but they were audiences of varied types, ages, classes and hues and averaged about 200 people—rise to their feet and start shouting and cheering in affirmation of these words.

Shakespeare began Richard III with the famous words: “Now is the winter of our discontent.”  And I think this applies presently.  There is huge anger and discontent throughout the land.  It’s about health care, but obviously also so much more.  I don’t know how we will rebuild a national civil rights movement in this country out of that discontent and under present conditions of crisis and decay and corruption.  I don’t know how we learn to meld the civil right to health care to other civil rights–of the undocumented who are sustaining such serious attacks, to the people being driven from their homes, the 2.3 million people in prison who are deprived of an opportunity for real re-integration and education, to the right to a job for those tens of millions of “requisite” unemployed and underemployed deprived sustenance by a finance system whose wealth accumulation continues,  based upon vulturism, cheating, speculation and human suffering (and no longer even on industrial production), or to the rights of people denied because of their sexual identity, to the right to end a pregnancy, to the right to clean air, water, to food and a sustainable habitat for our species and others.   I don’t know how we build a movement upon the foundational ideas of democracy in an environment which attacks those rights, changing the idea of democracy into a uniquely socialist principle (and the Right is not wrong when they imply that justice and democracy are now a socialist plot, because democracy and finance capitalism seem daily less and less compatible even as artifice).  And yet, I don’t think we are going to see much positive change in our nation without all this coming together into a social movement.  Without class being discussed and the working class being valued and trained to lead itself out of this morass.

Even though I have no satisfying answers, the Mad as Hell Docs tour for Single Payer provided me with more hope than I expected.  It fortified my belief that the grassroots surge that helped Obama win the White House is just waiting out there to be reconstituted as an independent largely non-electoral civil rights movement to achieve justice for all.   And I’ll let a goodbye note that a young woman, perhaps 30 years old, left on a kitchen table for Dr. Gene Uphoff and myself after we spent the night at her family’s home in Chicago (her dad is an internist in practice and a Single Payer supporter) explain why I am more hopeful.  She wrote regarding the Mad as Hell Tour, “…It is so important for your message and spirit to be heard at this time, especially by the younger generations who grew up in the cynical 70s, 80s and 90s.  Your stories, songs, insight and compassion teach me, and can teach many others, that social movement is not copyrighted by the Obama Campaign—or any other specific movement in time.  And that it is, rather, an expression of our intrinsic human spirit when we believe in and strive for freedom, peace, equality and justice.  Best of wishes and safe travels……….”   Like Corey suggests, I think it’s up to all of us to collectivize our own power.  So what do you think?

Marc Sapir MD, MPH
510-848-3826
<mailto:marcsapir@gmail.com>marcsapir@gmail.com

marc sapir is a Berkeley Mad as Hell doctor for Single Payer Health Care.

Marc Sapir