Newark Students’ May 22 walkout and protest over 2000 strong
On May 22 2015, over 2000 students and supporters shut downtown Newark NJ down for several hours to create visibility and bring awareness to the horrors Newark students have experienced at the hands of Chris Christie, Cory Booker and Cami Anderson, who jointly created a plan to break the back of public education in this city.
Anderson’s “One Newark” plan has young children from a single family barred from attending the school local to their home and instead, being sent far outside their neighborhood to 4 different schools in different corners of the city. Each child must take 2-3 bus rides and spend an hour of commuting time each way to reach school. Throughout the city, public school students are denied books and sanitary food; the principals and administrative staff of the city’s most successful schools are fired; and police charges were filed against a PTA president for hanging flyers announcing the PTA’s next meeting.
A short list of remarkable truth-telling journalists
After reporting on Colbert’s public attack on David Koch at a Time Magazine Gala, journalist David Harris Gershon shares his list of truth-telling US journalists we should honor and pay close attention to.
Honor, because they are ‘swimming upstream’ in an era of cowardly and self-interested reporting. He starts off with, “Stewart. Colbert. Maher (at times),” and expands his list to include:
As According to Fish and kovie point out, it’s important to recognize those journalists and political commentators who swim upstream in their efforts to serve as truth-tellers, such as (to name just a few of my favorites) Amy Goodman, Bill Moyers, Robert Scheer, Paul Krugman, Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald.
Facebook also blocks mention of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders
Facebook is 0 for 2 today. Doing a great job suppressing the progressive voice, which is not surprising given its founder is a great friend of conservative darling @corybooker and heavily supports the conservative agenda.
A few minutes ago I reported that Facebook wouldn’t let me share news about Newark’s new civilian police review board. Now they won’t let me share a Bernie Sanders quote either…
Most Americans, their reality is that they’re working longer hours and for lower wages ~ Bernie Sanders
Facebook blocks news about Newark’s new civilian police review board
Facebook wouldn’t let me share a NJ.com article about Mayor Ras Baraka signing into law Newark’s new civilian police review board. This is what I wrote them:
Racists who rejoice in black and brown men being killed want to block this news from being shared. It’s completely legitimate content posted in a major newspaper about the signing into law of a Newark police review board.
German mom tells Israeli HS students at Auschwitz “You are not alone”
A German mom says to Israeli HS students visiting Auschwitz “I want you to know you are not alone,” & hands out to each of them, heart stickers to symbolically replace the yellow stars that Nazis used to identify Jews for restricting their movements in Europe and to tag them for murder.
Auschwitz was one of the detention camps where Jews were made to live in isolation from the rest of European society during the Nazi Holocaust without adequate food, shelter, clothing or healthcare. Jews not able to serve Hitler as laborers – women, children, the elderly and infirm – were immediately put to death. At least 6 million Jews and as many as 20 million civilians overall were killed by Hitler during the Holocaust.
Want to make sure you’re still registered to vote?
Craig Newmark (Craigslist) wants to make sure you can vote and reminds us, “In 2008, 6 million Americans didn’t vote because they missed a registration deadline or didn’t know how to register!
Do you know that if you did not vote in two consecutive federal elections, your name is removed from the voter registration roll? Thousands of voters are not registered and don’t even know it. But learning your voter registration status is this simple: Visit CanIVote.org and select ‘Am I Registered?’
Why America needs Elizabeth Warren to run for president
I love Bernie Sanders Bernie Sanders, but the politician that completely awes me is Elizabeth Warren. These progressives both speak powerful truths that America needs to hear, so maybe it’s a style thing – Warren is a bit more polished than Sanders – or, maybe it’s Warren being a woman. All I can tell you is that this lady has become very special to me. And I have a dream … that this outspoken advocate who believes in and champions decent values, dignity and living wages for working Americans, honesty and integrity in the business community; truth in politics and the media and students not being forced into a lifetime of debt in order to get college educated and protection of social security and other social safety nets … will run for president in the 2016 Election and win.
Wisconsin may be 1st US state to completely end justice
Monied interests in Wisconsin have been systematically working to eradicate justice in their courts in order to make it legal for court decisions to be bought by the mighty and the monied. By pushing through a change in this spring’s election to the way the state’s Supreme Court Chief Justice is selected, Wisconsin conservatives may have finally reached the tipping point they’ve been working towards for several years.
They’ve made it legal for money to buy court decisions and for court oversight to be removed – accomplishments they were able to make law because America is not voting, and we don’t seem to know what democracy means.
Democratic citizens have obligations, not just rights
I don’t know why this important US Department of State document is housed on a Taiwanese website. but I like how it lays out the Citizen Responsibilities in a Democracy. Some of the juicier exerpts are:
Citizenship in a democracy requires participation, civility, and even patience.
Democratic citizens recognize that they not only have rights, they have responsibilities. They recognize that democracy requires an investment of time and hard work — a government of the people demands constant vigilance and support by the people.
Politico’s attempt to make fun of Baraka is an utter #fail
Matt Bonamo tried pretty hard to discredit Ras Baraka in his March 19 Politico Magazine article. He failed, because Ras is good at being good – but not for lack of trying.
First, look at the photo Mark chose as his lead: why is Baraka’s face contorted, and his finger laid alongside his nose? Only one logical answer: the photo is meant to be demeaning. In the article’s wrap-up, Bonamo quotes Ras using syntactically regional language. Again, why? Why list every one of Booker’s impressive educational credentials and then contrast that with a quote showing Baraka being loose with his grammar? Again, the reason is clear: Bonamo obviously meant to discredit Mayor Baraka.
Much more about Christie than he wants you to know
WNYC Radio is keeping an eye on Christie. If you’d like to know if the governor is in New Jersey or the latest and greatest update on Bridgate (that rhymes), head over to their Christie Tracker project and find out.
Of particular interest to anyone who wants to see Christie go down, is all the juicy information just posted in the WNYC article on March 12 Bridgegate Fall Guy Was Inside Man.
Only people outside of New Jersey could like Christie
My friend Dee Dameron frames Christie’s betrayal of New Jersey residents so well:
What have you done for New Jerseyans lately? Absolutely nothing. There are 15,000 Hurricane Sandy families who remain without a home, 624 bridges that need to be repaired, property taxes are the highest in the nation, unemployment is still on the rise, education for children has been put to sleep, Bridgegate is still pending. These are just a few issues and concerns. there are countless. Yes, its time for you to come home and do your job which you were elected to do and put the people first…not your fantasy to become president.
OK John Oliver, I made my comment to the FCC on net neutrality. Happy now?
I’ve made comments to the FCC about net neutrality in previous comment periods but not this one. Enter John Oliver, who made such a convincing argument about the need to take advantage of our bloody rights as US citizen to make a positive difference in this matter, that I felt shamed enough to submit another comment today.
If you too wish to be motivated to get off YouTube, Facebook or whatever you’re on for a while and use your computer for the God-given purpose it was clearly designed for (that is: the protection and furtherance of global democracy) then you too NEED to watch John Oliver’s segment on Last Week Tonight about Net Neutrality. Go on, I dare you to watch and come away uninspired.
Michael Jackson’s banned 1995 song about racism “They Don’t Care About Us”
D.B. Anderson tells us about the suppression and history of “They Don’t Care About Us”, the anti-racism song Michael Jackson wrote and recorded two years after being strip-searched by police in 1993.
“They Don’t Care About Us” was denounced by The New York Times even before its release, and did not reach much of its intended audience because the controversy caused by the New York Times article would go on to overshadow the song itself. Radio stations were reluctant to play it and one of the short films Jackson created for the song was banned in the US