Buy the Moto X Phone worth $599 from Republic Wireless for $299. And get unlimited talk, text and 5GB data for $25 along with it.
Also, get the chance to win a free Moto X Phone and $120 towards your service.
Make battle for Newark Public Schools visible with #saveNPS hashtag!
These days, every important cause needs a hashtag to be visible in the world of social media, and with the Christie administration announcing its intention to close 15 more schools in Newark as the next step in its attack on public education in urban communities, cause visibility is greatly needed.
A hashtag is the # symbol when it’s used in tweets or Facebook posts. Short hashtags are great because Twitter gives you only 140 characters to express whatever you want to say. #saveNPS is not actively being used for any other campaign, so how grabbing it for the Save Newark Public Schools Campaign?
Wunderground for most reliable weather reports
For the most reliable weather reports use Wunderground.
Why are their weather reports so good? Easy. They download directly from the US National Weather Service and display the information without changing it. Try it, you’ll like it!
Look inside
We need to learn to look inside ourselves for approval and create balance and strength in that sacred space ~ a Kimiism
My favorite rendition of the “Cup Song” is the Irish school version
Coláiste Lurgan in Conamara, Ireland put together this amazing community performance of the Cup Song (Amhrán na gCupán in Gaeilge). 600 students and staff tap out the syncopated rhythm and harmonize the chorus to a beautiful young colleague’s lovely Gaelic lyrics, and they’re joined by guitarists and drummers too. 2.5 minutes of pure pleasure. Treat yourself!
The original is pretty good too. Anna Kendrick performing in Pitch Perfect
WSJ Op-Ed laments the waning of white supremacy
Alternet author Adam Peck does a good job of showing the humour in Joseph Epstein’s massively egotistical and racist WSJ Op-Ed in which Epstein proposes, “we need more rich white men in power, preferably WASPs,” and goes on to say,
There are a lot of problems in Washington, D.C these days, but not many solutions to them. Inefficiency, an allergy to cooperation, and stiff resistance to pragmatism have all ground the federal government to a stand-still. But one op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal knows what the real problem is: not enough rich, white men.
Film: American Violet
Film: American Violet
American Violet is a film that shows us the criminal justice system being used as a tool to disenfranchise target communities from housing, jobs and social services – with no regard for whether detainees have ever committed a crime, or how the arrest of one member will impact the stability of an entire family.
People who are falsely detained and have children or parents at home who rely on them for support, are likely to succumb to coercion and plead guilty to crimes they did not commit in order to get released from jail and back to their families. But afterwards, they will face the consequences of being branded as convicts and the immediate loss of social support services their families rely on, including their family’s home if they live in public – or publicly supported – housing.
Book: Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch
Category: Social Justice, Education
In the days that Diane Ravitch was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education in the administration of George H. W. Bush, she drank lots of Kool Aide and believed strenuously that destroying public education was good for students of color and poor kids. But one day the veil was lifted from her eyes. She understood the error of her previous thinking, and did a complete about face to become the country’s most visible and high-profile champion of public education. I’m a Diane fan and now, you can be too! Read her book and her blog.
Book: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Category: Social Justice
Author Michelle Alexander-West is the wife of a United States federal prosecutor and an attorney in her own right. In this book, she does a truly remarkable job of drilling down through levels of strategy, policy and procedure that form the complex web of injustice that has brought the United States to the terrible point of imprisoning over 1% of our adult population and detaining 25% of all prisoners everywhere in the world … many of whom have been jailed for minor offenses, such as carrying a couple of marijuana cigarettes. Over 3200 non-violent offenders have been jailed for life for non-violent offenses like that, or for stealing an item of clothing worth $150. Unjust imprisonment is part of the intentional destruction of the lives of people of color.
Doc ACLU fought years to see sat @ Library of Congress, visible to all
Mother Jones reports on the strange case of the high-security document sitting in the Library Congress, “where anyone with a library card can read it.”
In a lapse that national security experts call baffling, a high-ranking FBI agent filed a sensitive internal manual detailing the bureau’s secret interrogation procedures with the Library of Congress …
For years, the American Civil Liberties Union fought a legal battle to force the FBI to release a range of documents concerning FBI guidelines, including this one, which covers the practices agents are supposed to employ when questioning suspects. Through all this, unbeknownst to the ACLU and the FBI, the manual sat in a government archive open to the public. When the FBI finally relented and provided the ACLU a version of the interrogation guidebook last year, it was heavily redacted; entire pages were blacked out. But the version available at the Library of Congress, which a Mother Jones reporter reviewed last week, contains no redactions.
All Steve Kardynal wants for Christmas is you!
Steve Kardynal does another take-off on Miley Cyrus, this time swinging to her song All I Want For Christmas Is You! Steve is as funny and outrageous as Richard Pryor back in the day. Gotta watch this charming, singing, bearded comedian and laugh a while. Merry Christmas Steve!
I can do something!
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do ~ Edward Everett Hale
Thought of the day via Ken McDaniels. Thanks Ken!
Join the fight against new Newark Public School Closures
- Attend community organizing meetings. Next one’s a discussion open to the public on proposed school closures and charter incursions. Please come and bring friends:
South Side Malcolm X Shabazz HS Alumni Association
Thurs 19 Dec 2013 @ 7pm
80 Johnson Avenue, Newark NJ
In the School Library - Sign petition for Supt. Cami Anderson to give back to the schools the $50K bonus she got from Christie for taking over $50 million away from Newark students.
- Support Ras Baraka for Newark Mayor in 2014
- Arm yourself with information! Here’s important background information from the Malcolm X Shabazz HS Alumni Association correspondence:
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 12:11 PM
Subject: Urgent: Call out for concerned education leaders and organization representatives
Dear Elected Officials and organization leaders,
Your input is critical to the next steps to be taken in the announced plans by Supt. Cami Anderson to close schools in most areas of our City. We must make strategic plans now to address the privatization of our Newark public schools. And, you certainly have a critical role in making those plans.
Besides closing and colocating schools, all 6 to 8pm programs are closing, including recreation and the evening high school. And beyond belief, services to special needs students will also be “absorbed”. Community input and transparency (are being completely) voided.
Please come prepared to address fellow Newark alumnae, parents, students and all concerned about Newark’s schools on Thursday, December 19 when the South Side Malcolm X Shabazz HS Alumni Association convenes its meeting at 7pm in the school library at 80 Johnson Avenue, Newark, NJ.
We do want all who have pertinent literature to have the opportunity to distribute same. Please bring copies with you.
Saying of the day 131218
Happiness comes from sticking at things that often seem mundane, prosaic, boring, unglamorous ~ Alexander McCall Smith
There will be free wifi for 95 blocks in Harlem, but only outside
In a move seemingly designed to make Harlem more appealing to gentrifiers, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the
The coverage area is 95 blocks: 110 to 138 Streets between Frederick Douglass Blvd & Madison Ave.