Something to remind and inspire us for the battles ahead... 'Chicago Teacher' by Rebel Diaz, a video that was created during the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012, and in honor of our struggle
Rebel Diaz's art is worth supporting.As my family and I prepare to go to the next stage of our 2014 vacation, we will be off the grid until August 13. That means there will be few new postings here at substancenews.net, even as all that we have all worked for explodes, again. This is of course thanks to the growing number of reporters and others who insist that the history we are making not be tricked out to look and sound like the nonsense of the "one percent" as recycled through The New York Times, Fox News, and National Propaganda Radio on behalf of today's status quo.
After being re-inspired watching Norm Scott's video of part of the debate over so-called "standards" at the AFT convention last month, I was reminded of what we from Chicago discussed after we "lost" the vote. That "loss" was following all the maneuvers that corporate power can bring, hiding behind the veil of our national union leadership -- and the stupidities that some macho versions of that can rant out. But we reminded one another that we had "lost the vote but won the debate." And even though we "lost" one small battle, we can remind ourselves that you can lose a lot of battles and still win the war. As Norm Scott and others now say, Common Core is dead, no matter how many testosterone-laced rantings emerge from the leadership of the unions that received millions and millions of dollars from, among others, Bill Gates.
But we do need to get perspective on our histories.
So I went back to back issues of Substance from September 2012 just to read the facts as they unfolded then. Substance has been on the Web since 2002 (first as substancenews.com), and in our current iteration (as substancenews.net) since 2007. Because we report by and for the working class, we haven't had the subsidies to put all of our back issues (we began in 1975) up on the Web as well. After all, we were sued for a million dollars (in 1999) by Paul Vallas and those who own and run Chicago, and we survived. But it set us back a bit financially. As we tell people, the struggle against the testocracy and resistance to high stakes testing did not begin during the past couple of years, when a new generation of teachers and others joined the struggle. It's a long history, and a proud one. And one that should not be lied about.
Reviewing all the work we did to bring Common Core before the AFT this year, I could be nothing but proud.
And once again I was reminded how powerful all the media can be when combined and reporting from the side of the working people. Norm's video once again shows that power.
And... If you do nothing else this week, you might want to spend twelve minutes with Norm's video of the AFT "debate" on "Standards."
And then spend five minutes with Rebel Diaz's "Chicago Teacher," which was created during the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yN7cRZP58k&feature=youtu.be
By: John Kierig
Chicago Teacher
Downloaded it and played it many times on the sound system we brought to our picket line at McNair.