News for educational workers.

STUDENT ACTIVISM 

In the wake of the World Trade Center disaster, students across the country organized for peace on September 20, 2001. More than 100 different campuses participated in the September 20 National Day of Action for Peaceful Justice. It started at Wesleyan University when a group of students got together to respond to the danger of war. They reached out to friends and relatives at schools across the country, getting 100 colleges, universities, and high schools to sign on for some form of activity for September 20. (<[e-mail]> September 18, 2001)

A Ralph Nader rally was part of a weekend-long convention of the Campus Greens, the student-based political outgrowth of the 2000 Nader/LaDuke campaign. Coming only two weeks after the Green Parry of the United Stares applied for official national parry status, 420 students from 120 universities gathered at the University of Illinois-Chicago for the founding convention of the Campus Greens, which hopes to become the largest student-based organization working for progressive issues. The organization currently includes more than 100 registered campus chapters. (In These Times, October 1, 2001)

At the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) national conference in Chicago, August 2-5, students were walking the picker line in solidarity with striking Teamsters at the V&V Supremo Foods, Inc. plant on Chicago's South Side. The conference's final speaker, Charlie Eaton, a New York University student and USAS organizer, outlined a broad vision for the movement: "Think of the sheer power of the students who produce ideas and the workers who produce essential goods, in a global society that is connected by information and by technology." Eaton urged USAS affiliates to maintain relationships with campus workers, form coalitions with other progressive student organizations and then work together to force the democratization of their colleges or universities, either through conventional means like running candidates for student government, or through direct actions like sir-ins and strikes. (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=woomer20010809)

TESTING

If you want to assign a comparison/ contrast paper in your writing classes, you might want students to read two contrasting articles on unions and public school reform in USA Today, August 14, 2001. One article, "Teacher unions' backdoor attacks undermine reform," accuses unions of nor being serious about accountability and building antitesting campaigns. The other article, "High-stakes tests miss mark," argues that some states are using tests as a sledgehammer" to deny promotion and graduation and spur a dramatic dropout rate among African-American and Hispanic students.

The new national testing plan, which mandates testing in grades three through eight, and a follow-up test in high school, will nor be the educational savior both the Democrats and Republicans are claiming it will be. Children in public schools, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, will suffer the most. "The Harvard Civil Rights Project has shown that poor and minority children are hurt the most by an excessive reliance on highstakes testing....Exams alone don't motivate struggling students and can even have the opposite effect, according to a Boston College study." (The Nation, July 9, 2001)

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 

A Harvard University study by the university's Civil Rights Project has found that classrooms grew more segregated in the 1990s, this undermining the educational prospects of African-American and Hispanic children. According to the study, "a map of schools attended by the average black or Hispanic student would almost perfectly match a map of high-poverty schools," which have greater health problems among students, more transient student bodies, parents lacking political power, fewer teachers qualified in their subject areas, and lower test scores. (The New York Times, July 20, 2001)

"Leveling the Playing Field, but for Whom?" (The New York Times, July 1, 2001) questions whether university affirmative action is helping African-American students enough.

GLSEN 

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. GLSEN, the largest national organization working to end anti-gay bias in K12 schools, with over 90 chapters working in communities across the country, held its fifth annual Teaching Respect for All conference in Washington, D.C. from September 21-23. For more information, write GLSEN, 121 West 27th St., #804, NY, NY 10001-6207; or go to www.glsen.org.

K-12

The Center for Health, Environment and Justice (150 S. Washington St., #300, Falls Church, VA 22046) is recruiting members in its Child Proofing our Communities: Poisoned School Campaign. CHEJ produced the 79-page "Poisoned Schools: Invisible Threats, Visible Actions," a trail blazing report that communities, school districts, and parents can use to provide precedent-setting guidelines to identify and dean up toxics in schools, manage pests without dangerous chemicals, and evaluate potential sites before a school is actually built.

A student in a Connecticut high school was punished for criticizing McDonald's. The student, a vegetarian who also hates large corporations, was supported by other students, who want alternate voices on campus to oppose corporate advertising like McDonald's. (In These Times, July 23, 2001)

Seventeen members of the Little Village community, a Mexican neighborhood in southwest Chicago, went on a hunger strike for 19 days to protest what they felt were stolen funds from the building of a high school in Little Village. In 1998, the Board of Education agreed to build three new schools in the city, but only two magnet schools were built, leaving the Mexican parents to feel that the failure to build their school was another example of the needs of low-income immigrant children being ignored. After a series of protest actions, the hunger strikers went to the state capitol in Springfield to lobby for money for the school. The next day, the state allocated $48 million dollars more than expected. The hunger strikers attributed the extra money to their protest efforts. (In These Times, July 9, 2001)

The Pinkerton Service Group (yes, the offspring or the Pinkerton Detective Agency that union-busted, kidnapped, and killed striking workers throughout American labor history), in conjunction with the Center for the Prevention of School Violence, initiated the "Working Against Violence Everywhere America" program in North Carolina, and is trying to expand across the country. WAVE America combines a public awareness campaign, "student-led" initiatives designed by the Pinkertons, and an anonymous tip line for students to tattle on each other, all to combat school violence. (In These Times, October 1, 2001)

A judge in Canada awarded $1 million to four natives for school abuse suffered while they were students in Anglican residential schools. With this latest court decision, a total of eight former students have now successfully sued the Anglican Church and the federal government, which financed Canada's more than 100 native residential schools. The Anglican Church's national office has warned that it may need to declare bankruptcy. (Vancouver Sun, August 11, 2001 <http://www.vancouversun.com>)

The newest statistics on child obesity from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that teenagers now are almost three times as likely to be overweight as they were 20 years ago. Schools across a growing number of states are trying to curb the rise of childhood obesity by strictly limiting the sale of soft drinks, fatty snacks, and candy in school cafeterias and snack rooms. The legislative bills proposed to create these limitations have angered both the food industry ("children need more exercise, not fewer choices") and educators ("vending machines have become a principal source of extra money for districts across the nation, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars for extracurricular activities"). (The New York Times, September 1, 2001)

SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS

Twenty-six School of the Americas opponents were sentenced to a collective total of nearly 12 years in jail. The group was charged with violating a ban and bar letter for crossing the line to SOA in November, 2000. For more information or to offer assistance, contact:

SOA Watch

PO Box 4566

Washington DC 20017

202-234-3440

www.soaw.org

[e-mail]

For an article on the 26 arrested, see The Nonviolent Activist, July-August, 2001.

RESOURCES

Global Response: Environmental Action & Education Network is an international network for effective environmental action and education. Global Response receives requests from communities around the world that are struggling to prevent environmental destruction. Global Response issues "Actions" to its members. Each "Action" gives accurate information about the environmental threat and local efforts to resolve it. The "Action" asks Global Response members to use this information to write personal letters to specific officials, asking them to make environmentally sound decisions. Adults and college students receive well-researched Global Response Actions by mail and/or e-email. Action Status Reports provide information about the impacts of letter campaigns. Children, grades 3-8, and teachers receive Young Environmentalist's Actions (YEAs) to learn about environmental issues and practice writing effective letters. High School students receive Eco-Club Actions (ECAs). In addition, Global Response offers a free inq uiry packet and teachers' guide. For these materials, or to join Global Response: phone: [phone]; email: action@global response.org or visit http://www.globalresponse.org.

Labor History, under new editorial direction, alms to be the pre-eminent site for scholarship in the history of work and its representations, labor systems, social reproduction of labor, social class, occupational culture and folklore, and worker migration, as well as a source to go to for new research and argument in the history of the labor movement, labor politics, and industrial conflict. Although rooted in United States studies, LH seeks to encompass transnational and global history. To that end, LH particularly welcomes contributions in Canadian and Latin American/Caribbean history. Seeking historical perspective, LH invites submissions not only from academic historians but also from other scholars, journalists, labor educators, and writer-activists. Research articles, interpretive essays, and classroom-related materials such as a document or specific exercise are equally welcomed. Send manuscript submissions to Leon Fink and Lisa May Wichowski, Department of History, University of Illinois at Chicago, 913 University Hall, Chicago, IL 60607 [e-mail].u.