Arundhati Roy on the culture of inequality and the response it has engendered. From the heart of empire, love and solidarity. We are aware and we do not forget.
Source YouTube
Tag Archives: Education
Headlines
How People of Color Occupy Wall Street
In this plastic, anarchic stage of the Occupy movement, these almost painfully conscious protesters, who have nicknamed themselves POCcupiers, are determined to forge a new paradigm that eschews the divide-and-conquer pitfalls of the past. At the same time, the 33,000 square-foot plot that delineates the Occupation remains connected to the entrenched racial, ethnic and gender patterns of society as a whole. Issues that Occupy Wall Street has championed as a matter of principle manifest more concretely as day-to-day struggles for POCcupiers. For example, Occupiers have held aloft signs demanding the repeal of the PATRIOT Act, the effects of which Muslim and Arab POCcupiers have experienced first hand when profiled at airports. Indeed, people of color are over-represented in prisons, public housing, public education and crackdowns on undocumented immigrants.
Reverend Rosemary McNatt, a Unitarian Universalist minister, underscores the paradoxical centrality of the POCcupiers’ concerns. “It’s clear that the Occupy Wall Street folks really have excellent points…But they’re no different—they can’t be any different—from the society they come from.” According to McNatt, protesters who truly seek to create the broad reforms they’re demanding need to acquire “an understanding of the role that gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnic status, immigration status all play in keeping the system the way it is.” She is eager to avoid “the negative narrative” ascribing separatist motives to the POCcupiers. McNatt, who joined Martin Luther King’s demonstration against the Chicago school board at age ten, sees the Occupation as going a step further than the Civil Rights Movement. “All of us exist simultaneously in positions of marginalization and privilege…How do we help people move beyond positions of privilege and marginalization into this space of community and equality and justice? That’s what I love about this movement. Because at its core, that’s what they’re after.”
Source The Nation Continue reading
The Crowds Are Gathering
We have been patient. We have been waiting for so long and the future we envisioned is finally here.
They no longer speak for us, for we have found our voice.
Headlines
America’s ‘Primal Scream’
There is mounting evidence that inequality leads to bankruptcies and to financial panics.
“The recent global economic crisis, with its roots in U.S. financial markets, may have resulted, in part at least, from the increase in inequality,” Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry of the International Monetary Fund wrote last month. They argued that “equality appears to be an important ingredient in promoting and sustaining growth.”
Inequality also leads to early deaths and more divorces — a reminder that we’re talking not about data sets here, but about human beings.
Some critics think that Occupy Wall Street is simply tapping into the public’s resentment and covetousness, nurturing class warfare. Sure, there’s a dollop of envy. But inequality is also a cancer on our national well-being.
Source The New York Times Continue reading
Values
At the top of the city
in a glass-chromed room
an attorney assures the board of directors
that the corporation is the person
against which any or all action may be taken,
not against each and every director joint or several.
The multi-headed person exhales dry-iced victory
as counsel backs out the door
descending floor after floor
to wait for a cab in the cold.
Nearby, a breathing bundle of rags
sits on a grate of steam
and waits, just waits,
wondering where warmth went.
—Ruth Knight, “Persons”
As she often does, Naomi Klein cuts to the core of an essential issue. The Occupy protests comprise people of many races, religious affiliations, socioeconomic statuses, and nationalities. The protestors have a variety of grievances they would like addressed, but I believe, as does Ms. Klein, that the fundamental issue is one of values.
Most of the critical aspects of our lives have been commodified. Nothing is sacred and everything is for sale. Science, education, healthcare, war, and many other areas historically associated with either lofty ideals or primal needs have been co-opted by the ethos of big business.
At the same time, human beings have been marginalized and dehumanized, while, ironically, inhuman entities have been aggrandized and granted person-hood. The world is upside down and many are now prepared to begin addressing the issues required to restore balance to our lives.
Our values are the foundation of our society. They define the types of citizens we produce and shape the characteristics of the systems that ultimately uphold and regulate our civilization. Corruption of our values will necessarily result in the development of corrupt systems. This is the fundamental issue that lies at the heart of our discontent.
Change will require us to ask ourselves difficult questions. Who are we? What do we truly care about? What kind of world do we want to see for ourselves and our children? It’s not too late for real change to occur, but it will require patience, tolerance, open-mindedness and the will to sacrifice.
Headlines
OccupyWallStreet & the failure of institutions
We don’t trust institutions anymore. Name a bank or financial institution you can trust today. That industry was built entirely on trust — we entrusted our money to their cloud — and they failed us. Government? The other day, I heard a cabinet member from a prior administration call Washington “paralyzed and poisonous” — and he’s an insider. Media? Pew released a study last week saying that three-quarters of Americans don’t believe journalists get their facts straight (which is their only job). Education? Built for a prior, institutional era. Religion? Various of its outlets are abusing children or espousing bigotry or encouraging violence. The #OccupyWallStreet troops are demonizing practically all of corporate America and with it, capitalism. What institutions are left? I can’t name one.
Source BuzzMachine Continue reading
Lost
In August of 2011, The Atlantic, a preeminent editorial magazine, began publishing a series of articles chronicling the experiences of its readers as they attempted to find gainful employment. After an overwhelming response, they decided to publish a second round of some of the most poignant, eloquent responses.
These are the hearts and minds of the future, and make no mistake, these experiences will leave their mark. Let’s hope that once they emerge on the other side of their crucible, they will have attained some of the admirable characteristics of their grandparent’s generation.
I have selected some choice excerpts, but I recommend clicking through the link at the bottom of the post to fully appreciate the weight of these replies.
“I want to blame the universities and grown-ups who should have known better. Instead, like my me-first generation, I blame myself.”
Much of my rage is reserved for a predatory system of higher education and the failures of a generation that came before. I’m angry that a “state” university costs as much as it does. That many, if not most of the students who attend, treat the experience like a 4-year version of MTV’s Spring Break. Massive grade inflation means one less standard deviation between myself and those who don’t try. Lax entrance standards means that even in smaller classes, half of the students do as little as possible, have nothing to contribute, and see learning as a necessary evil, if even that. These “state” universities are more interested in funding nice football stadiums than maintaining up-to-date libraries or modern classrooms. They are more interested in your tuition than your education. Continue reading
The Youth
Clinical psychologist and author, Bruce Levine, offers another cogent analysis of the American psyche, this time focusing on its youth and why, in spite of everything they have experienced economically, psychologically and culturally, they seem to lack any sign of the will to resist:
Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination. Continue reading
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