i wish for nothing more than the white leftists who are creaming their pants over wanting to arm themselves everywhere to not have as itchy of a trigger finger as they seem like they have. your wet dream about being the next punisher or some shit shouldnt trump the safety of people at higher risk of hate crimes than u

(via FUND PUBLIC SCHOOLS Button or Magnet Public Schools Shirt - Etsy)

This tweet says it all… translation below.

(Repost because I wanted to make it into it’s own post instead of a reblog)

Banning the abaya is not a back-to-school "diversion". It is part of a plan.

Islamophobia is not an epiphenomenon. It is at the heart of a political project.

Racism is not an accident. It's a system.

There are absolutely no surprises in France.

The only "surprise" is that leftists and observers are still surprised by the repeated attacks against Black people, Arabs and Muslims in France.

No "red line has been crossed".

It's been going on like this for decades. It's just that depending on the mood or the privileges it touches, an opportunity arises where you "find out" what your fellow citizens are going through every day. It's there, too obvious for you to ignore, so you give it a tweet, an indignation, a passing concern. Then it goes back in the back of your mind filled with stuff that you don't live, while waiting for the next buzz that will occupy you.

The racist, sequenced, destructive and methodical harassment that targets Muslims in France varies only in its seasonality and its modalities of expression, but it is constant in its objectives as in its structures:

Muslim women are targeted in summer for the burkini, at the start of the school year for long dresses, on sports grounds because they want to play, all the rest of the year for their headscarves or their simple existence in public spaces. .

Muslim children are targeted at school for their beliefs, in the playground for their children's games (1), in the canteen for their "bismiLlah" and their diet.

Muslim men are targeted in their expression, treated as a security risk, criminalized in the public space.

Muslim associations and executives are targeted in their organizational methods, subject to political and ideological control by the prefectures.

And it just gets annoying to have to remind you of this with every controversy targeting Muslims, about twice a month.

The truth is simple:

France is filled by endemic Islamophobia. Racism is structural here. Antisemitism is structural here. Antiblack racism is structural here. The criminalization of migrants is structural here. Police violence is structural here.

And only racists deny racism.

Only those who don't experience it think it's a subject up to debate.

The "attacks on secularism" are as much shame on the French flag as the abusive reports that compose them, from the simple innocuous religious expression to the clothes police that are set up against young Muslim girls, as they are targeted with racial profiling to distinguish, by "use/purpose (2)" (the level of creative hypocrisy of racists) between the proselytizing use of a Zara dress (for Arabs and Blacks) and the admissible Republican use (for the others), while the handful of truly believable incidents are resolved with a simple warning and explanation.

The only attack on secularism is the establishment of a system of registration, denunciation and surveillance of Muslim students on a large scale. This is the count of students absent for Eid (3). It is the progressive decline of an educational institution which, since 2004, has gone from one moral panic to the next, with the same targets and the same results: the deterioration of teaching conditions and the systemic, slow and methodical stigmatization of some of the students. It is the silence that has become the choice of the majority of teachers and unions when their mission of inclusion and benevolent education of all children is ridiculed, that’s when they do not add their voice to the chorus of calls for the exclusion of students, calling for "clear rules" that invariably result in penalties and bans. It is the constant civilizing and post-colonial injunction to be free only according to modalities chosen by others than ourselves.

To people who still care about the fundamental freedoms of everyone (and in particular the young women targeted here for their clothing choices), I say: you are losing more than a battle, not to fight with all your might a fight which is already engaged, is tipping France into an authoritarian, racist and totally assumed oppressive posture.

To those Muslim men and women who minimize what is happening or blame young girls for their treatment, I say: you deserve what is happening to you. If you are humiliated in this way, it is because you allow it. To them their honor and to you your shame. They only wanted to study, without asking for the slightest preferential treatment or exceptional regime, while you found all the reasons in the world to defend their oppressors, out of unconsciousness if not out of cowardice. Those who already accepted the exclusion of young girls in 2004, those who looked elsewhere when imams were criminalized, those who believed in the promise of a state sanctioned Islam that would leave them safe if they remained docile to the exclusion of their brothers, those who allowed the associations which defended them to be dissolved and the mosques which welcomed them to be closed. If not out of modesty, at least for your own salvation, be silent and do not add your voice to those who make our children enemies of a republic which, rather than respecting them for what they do, chose to exclude them for who they are.

To my sisters, in skirts, dresses, jeans, sweatshirts or abayas, I want to (re)tell how proud we are of you. I don't know how to express the hope and sincere admiration I have for you when, in a toxic period like the one we are going through, I see the good you are doing, the projects you are planning, the enthusiasm and commitment that you display, in class, at home, on the soccer field or in associations, to respond to offenses with dignified words and smiles, to hold firm when we give up, to give us comfort in a world upside down, to pay the price for what is going wrong in our society and which should nevertheless concern us all. Rock in everything you do. Do not let yourself be locked into the image that some want to give of you, because you are not defined by any other voice than yours and by any other choice than yours. Please hold on tight. Be happy, make your plans and let others talk.

Maybe what angers them so much is to see you shine...

Notes:

1: Children love to see lay pretend and imitate adults. Some Muslim children (all below 10) pretended to pray at school. Some white kids eventually joined and instead of explaining to the kids to not play that way the teachers made a report. It ended on national news, they started acting as if it was super common and as if kids were forcing their non Muslim classmate to convert to Islam. It was a mess. To the point where the parents of the Muslim kids were so scared they pulled out their kids of all activities outside of schools… Some of the white parents actually had to get involved to ask people to calm the fuck down that it was just kids playing pretend. The end of the year school party was even canceled so no child would get attacked…

2: Teachers and schools were reporting and expelling Black and Arab girls for wearing long skirt or headbands. Those are obviously not religious clothes. People rightfully complained and said that it was racial profiling. Instead of telling schools and teachers to calm down the government changed the 2004 in 2022. Now clothes can become religious “par destination” so by purpose or use. Basically it means that depending on who (white or people of color) wears them clothes can become religious. If a white girl wears headbands very often that’s okay if a Black or North African girl does it then her headband is a symbolic hijab and she must remove it.

3: In the south west of France and in other regions the police asked schools to provide a list of all the children who did not come at school on Eid. For the record children are ALLOWED to miss school for religious holidays.

Purple For Parents

The National Education Association is the LARGEST teacher’s union!

THIS is the NEA and they want to destroy our

parental rights to education CHOICES. They prioritize and propose a radical leftist agenda and social justice issues instead of focusing on education.

Not trying to be confrontational, but not all communists believe in a state? Certainly not all Marxists support China either. As an anarcho-communist I don't believe in a state myself but I also know that many of my Marxist comrades don't uphold a state in the modern political sense, only in an organizational/distributive sense, which feels rational to me at least on a transitionary basis. After all, organizational hierarchy doesn't necessarily mean centralization of power, as I would still expect to defer to my journeyman teachers at my apprenticeship job, for example - not because they have power and I don't but because I'm granting them the responsibility guiding my education as the more experienced welder, if that makes sense.

I'm not gonna do this on my blog, sorry not sorry. I reject all leftist infighting. Go join a union or organize something about it 🤧 humoring this discussion isn't going to be a valuable way for either of us to reach liberation. Like okay let's say you're right.

And?

“One funny fact about America is that right wingers are significantly less educated than left wingers.”

Yet when I talked to left wingers as a black person, it’s PAINFULLY obvious they only know black people from what their college courses tell them.

Also like these policies https://youtu.be/jhelfB2SQTo?si=L9zzoB009Cob7UJf

What could caused blacks aka black BOYS falling behind in math? Could it be

1. How it been exposed that public education systems have been altered to mainly cater to nuertypical girls since the 90’s?

2. The huge corruption in teacher unions?

3. Black Americans demonized the living shit out of intelligence where it better to be seen as a thug rather than a a scientist?

4. No child left behind policy?

And much more, but being more educated don’t mean your better

I was talking to a female mutual in India and she also pointed out that rednecks will treat minorities better than college educated leftists

Also how math is racist? Okay you’re a nasa fan, but remember that black astronaut who sadly didn’t make it to space but he had to deal with systemic racism as a child when trying to get a book from the library? There a kid’s book about it

But strange how black people who grew up during actual systematic oppression and discrimination. Was qualified enough to help during the space race. Yet 21st century black kids are too dumb to do it?

Kipling racist mindset never died, it just merge with Marxism. I also have a black scientist ancestor so…

Hadn't heard about point #1, wouldn't put it past anyone though.

Ronald McNair thing, ya. He did make it to space BTW. Other fun story about him.

You'll probably like this.

Fucking Uhura recruited him, so he did 2 missions both on Challenger, anniversary is coming up on the 28th for his 2nd one.

(Not gonna make a thing about 'diversity hires' for NASA if you're on the list you're absolutely cream of the crop qualified for astronaut duty)

Guy was a physicist, people aren't challenging student anymore was a piece about that I'd read recently with college prof's railing on raising test scores or dummbing down classes students weren't doing well at, which is the same with the places pulling graduation requirements.

and folk get mad that a high school diploma isn't good for much of anything anymore.

I know this post will get me death threats but after growing up in an actual surveillance state where saying the word "Qatar" on facebook would get federal agents outside your house i find it very hard to sympathize with people who act like social media sites selling your browsing data to advertising companies is the equivalent of NSA surveillance.

Kathy you are a bisexual 15 year old who watches centaurworld for 7 hours a day who needs to blacklist donald duck because he reminds you of your ex who liked ducktales and you didnt know the difference between discomfort and being triggered when your english teacher asked you to defend your position that 1984 was problematic rape apologism with textual evidence instead of telling you how woke you were like what makes you think tumblr knowing you have an iiluminaughtii video open in the other tab to try to sell you a new age pagan keychain is just as bad as the CIA having your social security number and a list of known leftists and unionizers. Relax.

Why Has the Left Deprioritized COVID?

“Left failures to incorporate an analysis of disability and ableism are detrimental to our vision and organizing capacity. Capitalism itself is fundamentally ableist, awarding the food and shelter necessary for survival on the basis of an individual’s ability to work for pay. Capitalism ensures its own survival by turning disabled people unable to work, along with other unemployed people, into a surplus population whose existence disciplines employed workers into accepting poor working conditions and little pay, lest they fall into the abject poverty and exclusion experienced by many disabled and unemployed people. Work under capitalism is a disabling process, as workers become debilitated through unsafe jobsites, injuries from accidents or repetitive stress, and the mental and psychological tolls of a work culture that is almost universally unsustainable …

“In 1970, the Young Lords, an organization that fought for self-determination for Puerto Ricans and all colonized people, occupied Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx to demand better healthcare. In 1977, disability rights activists occupied a federal building in San Francisco for 26 days, demanding the right to access any service that receives federal funding: hospitals, universities, schools, public transportation, government buildings, libraries, and more. That sit-in wouldn’t have succeeded without the support of the Black Panther Party, Gay Men’s Butterfly Brigade, and United Farm Workers, who provided the occupation with food, security, and personal attendant care. These groups understood that their members had a stake in disability rights, whether or not they were disabled themselves.

“The left needs to unite against pandemic ableism, not out of goodwill or charity towards disabled leftists, but for our movement’s survival. Organizations limit their potential membership when they romanticize pre-pandemic organizing practices, where everything happened in person and those who couldn’t attend due to disability or illness, lack of transportation, a work conflict, or family caregiving duties simply couldn’t participate. When unions fail to understand – or act on the understanding – that scarce, poverty-level disability benefits and the end of pandemic unemployment supports are political attacks on all workers, whose exploitation happens in relation to the parallel misery of unemployment, they miss an important opportunity to help build power for the working class as a whole …

“We need to organize collective action that builds bridges between our individual workplaces, issues, or identities. We need to work together as teachers, nurses, school staff, retail workers, seniors, and disabled people whose lives are increasingly dangerous and isolated, to shut down production and consumption to demand a public health response that puts life over profit. To get there, we need to call the pandemic what it is: an exercise in eugenics, a mass disabling event, and an escalation of racialized class warfare. The left’s job is not to accept the narrative of events that corporate media and government officials give us – ‘the pandemic’s over’ – but to craft our own, showing each other how many more people could be kept alive with policies such as universal free healthcare and housing; abolition of prisons, borders, and nursing homes; and broad mask requirements, ventilation upgrades, and widespread, accessible testing. We don’t need to accept mass infection. To survive this pandemic and the next one, we need to recognize that we all have a stake in transforming this extractive system, and together we have the power to shut it down.”

On this International Workers' Day we remember Isavel Vilà i Pujol, known as "Isabel Cinc Hores" ("Isabel Five Hours" in the Catalan language), fighter for children's rights.

Born in Calonge in 1843, she came from a working class family who worked in the cork stopper industry. In that time, the stopper industrial areas showed huge social inequalities. While the working class had a life expectancy of 48, the priests and other Church members lived on average to 64 years old. The workers' reduced life was a result of abusive work conditions and long hours (12 to 13 hours of work each day). They were not recognised a right to strike nor to unionize, and the owners fired anyone they wanted at any moment without giving explanations nor payments for it. Women were paid half as much as men for the same job, and children started working in the cork stopper factories at 6 years old for very little pay. The factories were humid and workers often dealt with toxic materials, which added to their insufficient diet, often caused illnesses and workplace accidents.

Isavel started working at a young age, and though she could barely read and write she was decided that she wanted to study and learn. In her free time, she studied and visited the ill. She took part in the republican uprisings against the Savoia Spanish monarchy and Spanish centralism, which were widespread protests in Catalonia, and joined the AIT (International Workers' Association) anarchist union. She decided to become a teacher, and while studying criticized the difficult spelling rules, which she considered too strict just like social rules in life (she simplified her name, from "Isabel Vila" to "Isavel Vila", since in her and most dialects of Catalan, b and v are pronounced the same).

She organized the workers of Llagostera (the town where she lived) and nearby Sant Feliu, and worked together with other women to protest for the abolition of the military draft, the separation of Church and state and freedom of religion.

She was most well-known for her fight for children's rights. The government passed a law limiting children's labour to 5 hours for boys under 13 and girls under 14 and to 8 hours for boys under 15 and girls under 17, but this law was not applied. She confronted local authorities demanding this law be respected, insisting that children need to grow healthy and that child labour perpetuates illiteracy. She was ridiculed for it both by the local bourgeoisie and by fellow trade unionists, who did not understand that children shouldn't be at work.

The coup in 1874 and the restoration of the Bourbonic monarchy illegalized the International and workers' associations. The government issued an arrest order for Isavel, who crossed the border with France and went on exile in Carcassona (Occitania). A rich Freemason family (the Muntada family) hosted her at their home, and during her exile Isavel could study to become a teacher.

She could come back to Catalonia 7 years later, when there was some political change. For the rest of her life, she worked as a teacher and created non-religious schools for working class children with new pedagogic methods. She quickly gained recognition as a great professional, but was excluded by other leftist school organizations. She spent her last years teaching in a free school for girls that she had founded in Sabadell, until she died in 1896.

The American who killed the panamenian protesters and other reasons why I dislike American culture

This Tuesday, November 7 some teacher unions and indigenous collectives were protesting closing of the railroads because of the mining contract and the corruption, a man called Kenneth Darlington killed 2 of the protesters who were unarmed. This man had trouble with the law years prior. In 2005, he was detained for the illegal possession of arms. Of course, because anything can be bought in Panama he was pardoned from all charges.

The man is a zonian American. And what is a zonian? Well, zonians were the Americans who grew up inside the canal zone. Which meant they lived inside the American settlement that managed the Panama Canal. Most of the Americans who lived there were from the south of the US, and only spoke english. Most of them grew up isolated from Panamanian society and disconnected from all the problems Panama was dealing with their precedence on Panamanian land.

They even implemented some of their ways, like segregation of blacks and whites in some of their canal zone areas. They loved how they lived in Panama because they had so many benefits that the common Americans living in the US didn't had. Like, free taxes, good housing, good salary, and long vacations.

Some of those Zonians got back to the US and most of them mourned the life they had in Panama. So, as you can imagine, now being American retirees some came back to live in Panama. Some of them never left and stayed in the Albrook area, trying to adapt to the changes while also holding some of those old American ideals from the South.

As you know from my older posts, Panama is currently dealing with a corruption crisis that has to do more than just random people fighting for nature preservation. This crisis that started in October made some far-leftist unions manifest, some taking advantage of the situation and others with other concerns regarding their community. Some people support their methods of protests of closing railroads and some people criticize it because of how it's leaving some provinces without access to resources.

Regardless of the anger of being trapped in traffic because of the protests no one absolutely no one has the right to kill another individual.

Now, going to the title of this post it may look like someone who hates Americans in general which is not entirely like that. But, on my end, from what I have seen on how Americans live, with college/university debt, a health system with absurd prices and their individualistic culture. As someone who has interacted with all kinds of Americans visiting Panama, I always felt some disdain for how they think their ways of living apply the same in a different country, in this case, them visiting Panama. Don't get me wrong, I have met nice Americans as well, but also someone's who come across as entitled.

It was a surprise of mine to see today, Wednesday 8 a post from the New York Post talking about the event and to my surprise, the amount of American accounts commenting distasteful things without even asking a Panamanian about the issue or doing some research. It just confirms a bit more of my judgment of how they live in a bubble, thinking their ways apply to the rest of the world. Then again I know some Americans don't think in such ways, but sadly I have seen some of this kind of behaviour in both extremes of the left and the right. Trying to relate to an issue by applying some of their American mindset to it. And what I mean by that is just their society rules, what is ok and not ok in their culture and even their societal issues.

I don't think you need to be from another country to understand why killing is bad, especially if a group is unarmed and not actively attacking you. And celebrating it just tells me the lack of character and ethics of that individual.

"Unions exist to pimp labor to capital." - Commune Against Civilization

The desire to organize a union is the desire of the dominant ideology, for a specific sequence of economic events, none of which liberate workers from work, class, etc. Nor does it prevent exploitation by the holders of capital, or move those that labor and produce towards autonomy.

The biggest and most successful unions demonstrate the opposite qualities; they aspire to expand the urban liberal middle class of laborer-consumer, to strengthen the industry you work for and gain political favor, and to 'come to the bargaining table', which is to surrender, and instead of engaging in insurrection/class war, legislate and partition away to capital most of your freedom (your free time and more importantly your will and energy to develop yourself in all other ways beyond work) at v little cost to them.

At best unions contrive some strongly worded suggestions about worker's protections and rights that government and capitalists are to recognize, but all of which must continually be policed internally by overworked underpaid members and "representatives" who are for the most part strangers to one another.

Every leftist that thinks unions and organzied labor need to make a comeback, that cheerlead the starbucks, bandcamp, teacher's unions etc, that want "democracy in the workplace" : hope you're familiar with Robert's rules of order! Bc if you're not, or if you find it embarrassing or dangerous to publicly go against the white majority (the exact demographic these unions were designed to protect from the beginning), or if you can't make every meeting, after working and driving in traffic for 12 hours, there is no democracy to be had!

“The 2022 midterm elections offered many snapshots of the contemporary school wars,” Jessica Winter writes, about races across the country targeted by right-wing activists who have “turned public schools into the national stage of a manufactured culture war over critical race theory, L.G.B.T.Q. classroom materials, the sexual ‘grooming’ of children, and other vehicles of ‘woke leftist’ indoctrination.” In South Carolina, which is experiencing a major teacher shortage, two candidates for state superintendent—one with twenty-two years of teaching experience and a platform focussed on raising teacher pay, and another with no teaching experience, who leads a conservative think tank that advocates for “education freedom”—faced off on Tuesday. “Education freedom,” as it turns out, involves funnelling public funding into private schools and charter schools. “In short, the two people vying to run South Carolina’s public schools were an advocate for public schools, and . . . an opponent of public schools,” Winter writes. Maybe you can guess who won—handily. Winter examines several other races, and points out why rival factions in the school battles, increasingly polarized and infused with vitriol, should actually be working toward similar goals.

—Jessie Li, newsletter editor

The 2022 midterm elections offered many snapshots of the contemporary school wars, but one might start with the race for Superintendent of Education in South Carolina, a state that languishes near the bottom of national education rankings and that’s suffering from a major teacher shortage. Lisa Ellis, the Democratic candidate, has twenty-two years of teaching experience and is the founder of a nonprofit organization that focusses on raising teacher pay, lowering classroom sizes, and increasing mental-health resources in schools. Her Republican opponent, Ellen Weaver, who has no teaching experience, is the leader of a conservative think tank that advocates for “education freedom” in the form of more public funding for charter schools, private-school vouchers, homeschooling, and micro-schools. “Choice is truly, as Condi Rice says, the great civil-rights issue of our time,” Weaver stated in a debate with Ellis last week. In the same debate, Ellis argued that South Carolina does not have a teacher shortage, per se; rather, it has an understandable lack of qualified teachers who are willing to work for low pay in overcrowded classrooms, in an increasingly divisive political environment—a dilemma that is depressingly familiar across the country. Ellis also stressed that South Carolina has fallen short of its own public-school-funding formula since 2008, leaving schools billions of dollars in the hole. Weaver countered that the state could easily persuade non-teachers to teach, so long as they had some relevant “subject-matter expertise,” and warned against “throwing money at problems.” The salary floor for a public-school teacher in South Carolina is forty thousand dollars.

In short, the two people vying to run South Carolina’s public schools were an advocate for public schools, and—in her policy positions, if not in her overt messaging—an opponent of public schools. The latter won, and it wasn’t even close: as of this writing, Weaver has fifty-five per cent of the vote to Ellis’s forty-three. Weaver didn’t win on her own, of course—her supporters included Cleta Mitchell, the conservative activist and attorney who aided Donald Trump in his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results; the founding chairman of Palmetto Promise, Jim DeMint, a former South Carolina senator who once opined that gay people and single mothers should not be permitted to teach in public schools; and Jeff Yass, a powerful donator to education PACs—at least one of which has funnelled money to Weaver’s campaign—and the richest man in Pennsylvania. (Yass, as ProPublica has reported, is also “a longtime financial patron” of a Pennsylvania state senator, Anthony Williams, who helped create “a pair of tax credits that allow companies to slash their state tax bills if they give money to private and charter schools.”)

Weaver borrowed the sloganeering and buzzwords of right-wing activist groups, such as the 1776 Project and Moms for Liberty—which, as my colleague Paige Williams recently reported, have turned public schools into the national stage of a manufactured culture war over critical race theory (C.R.T.), L.G.B.T.Q. classroom materials, the sexual “grooming” of children, and other vehicles of “woke leftist” indoctrination, as well as lingering resentment over COVID-19 lockdowns. During the debate, Weaver railed against C.R.T. and the “pornography” supposedly proliferating in schools, and associated Ellis with a “far-left, union-driven agenda.” (Incidentally, South Carolina’s public employees are prohibited from engaging in collective bargaining.) “They believe in pronoun politics. They believe parents are domestic terrorists, much like Merrick Garland,” Weaver said. (Weaver may have been referring to an incident in May, 2021, when Ellis’s nonprofit cancelled a protest after it “received harassing and threatening messages from groups with extreme views about masking,” including death threats.) “These are people,” Weaver went on, “who are out of touch with the mainstream of South Carolina values, and these are the people who my opponent calls friends.” Ellis maintained that those who profess to be hunting down proponents of C.R.T. in schools are “chasing ghosts.”

The ghost chasers bagged plenty of votes on Tuesday. A clown-car school-board race in Charleston, South Carolina, ended with five out of nine seats going to Moms for Liberty-backed candidates. Governor Ron DeSantis—the maestro of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation and a home-state hero to Moms for Liberty—endorsed six school-board candidates, all of whom won their races; Moms for Liberty endorsed a total of twelve in Florida, winning nine. In Texas, ten out of fifteen spots on the state school board appeared to be going to Republicans, ​​including three seats in which G.O.P. incumbents either lost or dropped out of their primary when facing opponents who took a harder line against C.R.T.

Another C.R.T.-haunted race, for education superintendent in Arizona, was as striking in its bizarre contrasts as the one in South Carolina. (As of this writing, the outcome is still a tossup.) The Republican challenger, a seventy-seven-year-old named Tom Horne, was banned for life by the S.E.C. in a past career as an investor; violated campaign-finance laws when he was the state’s attorney general; and was cited half a dozen times for speeding, including in a school zone, during a previous stint as education superintendent—a busy time when he also tried to outlaw bilingual education in public schools and to eliminate the Mexican American studies program in the Tucson Unified School District. His big thing now is—wait for it—banning critical race theory in the classroom. He also wants a greater law-enforcement presence in Arizona’s schools, because, as he has said, “the police are what make civilization possible.” Horne’s opponent is the Democratic incumbent, a thirty-six-year-old speech-language therapist and onetime preschool teacher named Kathy Hoffman who wants to—wait for it!—raise school budgets and teacher salaries, and lower class sizes. (The signature achievement of her first term as superintendent was to lower the counsellor-to-student ratio in public schools by twenty per cent.) Hoffman has a baby daughter and took her oath of office in 2019 on a copy of “Too Many Moose!,” one of her students’ favorite books. It’s as if Miss Binney from “Ramona the Pest” were running against Spiro Agnew.

The precise logical relation between the conservative-libertarian axis of billionaires who wish to privatize public education—notably among them Betsy DeVos, who was Secretary of Education under Trump—and the rank-and-file right-wing moms who back “Don’t Say Gay” is as yet unclear. For the moment, at least, their desires match—as Tuesday night’s election results have demonstrated—and nowhere is their bond stronger than in their shared antipathy for teachers’ unions, even in states where much of the meaningful work that unions do has been outlawed. On the eve of Election Day, one of Moms for Liberty’s founders, Tina Descovich, tweeted, “Teachers unions do not care about kids. Period.” The vision of “educational freedom” espoused by Ellen Weaver and her ideological comrades is one in which teachers are servants of parents and public money pours into private pockets, where any space can be a school and anybody can lead a classroom, and where whatever compact remains between parents and teachers—whatever sense of a community collaborating in a public good—dissolves.

The tragedy of the post-pandemic schools crisis, crystallized in Descovich’s tweet and in many of Tuesday’s election results, lies in how it has heightened the adversarial relationship between two groups whose interests should be closely aligned. (Or, indeed, one and the same: many teachers are parents.) As beleaguered as they are, most public-school systems are not yet splintering along DeVosian lines into a privatized mix of living-room salons and strip-mall micro-schools. Until then, public-school parents will continue to hand their children off to public employees in a public building for six hours per day, or eight, or nine. A degree of trust in these educators’ qualifications, their good faith, and even their state of mind is nonnegotiable. Poor working conditions for teachers are necessarily synonymous with poor learning conditions for students; overcrowded, under-ventilated classrooms are at once a political issue, a labor-rights issue, and a children’s-rights issue. Something the members of Moms for Liberty say a lot is “We don’t co-parent with the government.” Don’t we, though? ♦

On the 18th of September, 2010, Aragon lost José Antonio Labordeta. He was a teacher, poet, writer, singer-songwriter, and politician. He is also considered one of the most important singer-songwriters from the Aragonese nueva canción. He, along with others, founded Andalán, an Aragonese-centered leftist newspaper in the 70s, at a time where leftist and independentist ideas in Spain were still punishable with prison.

He also co-founded the Partido Socialista Aragonés (Aragonese Social Party), and was on the list to Senate for Izquierda Unida (United Left) in 1999. The next year he was elected to Senate for Chunta Aragonesista (Aragonese Union), and from 2000 to 2008 was also a deputy in Congress for the Chunta. From his work in Congress, he is well known for his "A la mierda!" speech, where he replies to the right-wing PP, reproaching how they've always had power in the Spanish State.

On top of all of this, he also presented the TV program "Un país en la mochila" (A country in your backpack), where he traveled throughout rural Spain and talked with people, showing their lives. This program ran from 1995 to 2000.

He is also very famously known for his "Canto a la Libertad" (Chant to Liberty), which is a song that is now traditionally sung after the Fiestas del Pilar in Zaragoza, Aragon's capital.

He died, 12 years ago today, of prostate cancer. To honor him, the biggest park in Zaragoza had its name changed from Parque Grande Primo de Rivera (Yes, 2010 and we still had a park named after a dictator...) to Parque Grande José Antonio Labordeta. There have also been multiple attempts to have Canto a la Libertad officially be Aragon's anthem, but none of them have been approved.

Habrá un día en que todos

al levantar la vista,

veremos una tierra

que ponga libertad.

also, re: this post. because about the deepest analysis tumblr leftists have to offer about public education is that it’s a form of indoctrination to prepare children to become perfect wage slaves, of course when they criticize the lack of leniency with deadlines and the inability to correct and resubmit your work in school, it’s with this analogy to the workplace. that, when you’re being trained for an actual trades, there are opportunities to self correct because the goal is actual proper learning. and, if you’re a worker in a white collar field, you should not be a slave to your company, and so if your personal life or mental health requires you to need an extension, this should be very normal to accommodate. all this is perfectly fine to point out. kids who are denied leniency with the focus being grades, numbers, markers of progress imported from the corporate world—are being groomed to accept this same kind of mistreatment in the workplace.

where tumblr leftists then fail is that, because in this analogy children are the proles, who is the teacher? a stand in for The Man. and fuck The Man, right? what they forget is, while some individual teachers may have an authoritarian attitude, and even the most liberal teachers may be participating in a school system that prepares students for compliance in the workplace… teachers are workers! they are working class! they’re not in any real position of power (i say as someone who was truly, relentlessly bullied as a kid by multiple teachers who relished their position of authority over children). ultimately though, they’re ALL being fucking overworked and exploited for their labor.

i think, to some people, the ideal teacher is the one who views their job as a calling, in civil service to their students. (this is the antithesis to the bitter, burnt out teacher, the old hag teacher, the one for whom teaching is simply a paycheck, and who probably shouldn’t be around kids anymore.) the problem is, in order to be this ideal teacher, there is this increasing demand to sacrifice all work-life boundaries, with no compensation. imo part of the reason why funding public schools and supporting teacher’s unions is such an often-mocked, unpopular opinion (and something even leftists don’t put enough focus on the importance of), is because teaching is a feminized profession. for too many people, class analysis flies out the door when there is a woman they can point to who isn’t selfless enough, isn’t nurturing enough.

just look at how teachers are portrayed in popular media, even in the kindest portrayals that are about how impactful and important a good teacher can be. it’s all the miss honey vs. miss trunchbull dichotomy. i know part of the reason so many people have a hard time identifying with teachers’ labor struggles is because we were all once students, almost all of us students with negative experiences in school, and then many people go on to have kids of their own who they want to get good educations, and so that’s where many peoples’ identification will lie. but i can’t help but wonder, if the image of an average teacher in the public’s eye were a male, would they more easily be able to recognize his humanity?