Columbus Day Not for Celebrating

I find it curious that a couple of Chinese language and culture schools with a large population of K-12 students with parents from Taiwan, plan to march in a Columbus Day Parade. Those who grew up in a community dominated by ongoing dialogue about social justice and the inaccuracies of history taught in school about the development of North American society, look upon Columbus Day as a day of mourning, and not celebration. The “settling” by Europeans of this region began the end for American people who had lived and loved this land for a long time before supposedly civilized people arrived to slaughter them by means both subtle and direct and to plunder the once abundant land and resources the indigenous people had been sustained by, and had protected, for as long as their people could remember. read more

Lessig’s Conference About a Constitutional Convention 9/23-25 in Boston

My family is going to be a roving video interview team at Lawrence Lessig’s Conversation About A Constitutional Convention in Boston September 23-25 2011, and we’d love to see our friends there as well. It turns out that the people’s will can actually trump congressional law – given that enough states and individuals come together and vote their will at a constitutional convention. Who would have thought?

Fortunately, as a professor of law at Harvard – Lessig looked into this possibility and he has invited concerned citizens, and the Tea Party leader, to discuss the prospect of such a convention. Lessig says that it’s important to include the opposition in discussions about process for determining social change, and that process is something that can – and should – be agreed upon by all parties even when opposing factions have their own views about what direction it is that society should move in. read more