In the U.S. there is a lot of debate reforming education — and a story like this cuts into that important discussion from a startling angle. It raises the possibility of a radically new society, and the role of education in THAT process. Not “preparing” kids better for “success” in this one — but making them conscious and critical actors in a great historic transformation.
The following is part of the series of reports made by members of the World Peoples Resistance Movement from Britain and Ireland currently who are visiting Nepal. The full series is available both here on Kasama (where we are posting articles as they arrive) and on the WPRM-Britain’s own site.
Educating Revolutionary Successors: A Maoist Model School in Jiri
Our journey started, as many do in Nepal, with a five hour bus trip where the only available free space was the roof. Although the journey was long it was only just over 100km, following narrow, windy mountain roads which were bumpy and at times treacherous. The roof however provided stunning views of the scenery and the opportunity to meet many local people, including a family of seven brothers and two sisters who found us a great source of amusement but were eager for us to visit their village and stay with their family. They were very friendly and not reserved at all, especially the girls unlike in many parts of Nepal and Asia in general, but we politely told them of our need to get to the town of Jiri in Dolakha district, east of Kathmandu.
Jiri is quite a remote town, of average size and the start of the popular trek to the Everest base camp. For this reason we were straight away accosted by hotel managers looking for business in the off-peak season. As with many tourist hotels in Nepal the managers are supporters of Nepali Congress and, indeed, the deposed royal family. In these areas images of the Dalia Lama are numerous. Our first port of call in Jiri was the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) office, a hive of activity compared to the cemetery stillness of the Nepali Congress office opposite. There we met the Area Secretary Comrade Kulbindra, various Young Communist League (YCL) activists and a teacher from the Sahid (Martyrs) Memorial Boarding School. After a brief chat over Nepali tea, we were asked whether we wanted to walk up the easy of the difficult route to the school, which was high up a mountain. Doubting that the school could be on the very top of the mountain we chose the difficult route, a choice that would soon come back to haunt us.
Often creationists demand to know “where are the transitional fossils?” But they appear all the time. Here is the discovery of a possible ancestor for the well-known T-Rex — and (typical of scientific work) this new find has shaken old ideas.
There is a revealing subplot here:
This discovery was secretly excavated in northern China and rushed (not to scientific scrutiny) but to the hands of a wealthy dealer in stolen goods (graciously called a “collector” here). In this case, the find was made public, and will be returned to China. But we get a glimpse of how the precious remains of the earth’s past are being converted into commodities for the rich, whisked away from the country of origin, secreted away under the radar, to be pawed and displayed for the aggrandisement of the privileged.
The proposal that “the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation should endorse the principle of cultural and academic boycotts” passed by a landslide with one abstention and not a single objection. The quasi-unanimous vote, and the deep collective breath of relief that followed, will go down in history as the moment US-based Palestine solidarity activists overcame tactical differences that had long hindered us, to finally come together to confront Israeli apartheid.
The history of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, independence and human rights is sadly one of missed opportunities. Historically, Palestinian aspirations have not been achieved due to a corrupt and feckless leadership and petty internal divisions.
But we have also learned that change will not come from above. It will and must come from the grassroots, the people, those who have nothing to lose but their prison walls, the daily humiliation of life as a refugee, a second- or third-class citizen, or a non-citizen. Representing the broadest coalition of Palestinian society, from various parts of historic Palestine as well as the global Diaspora, these Palestinians are the ones who jointly issued the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), modeled off of the same call that helped bring apartheid in South Africa to an end, giving direction to a global movement in support of this boycott call.
Mirroring the limits of the Palestinian leadership, the history of solidarity activism is blemished by opportunities missed because of fragmentation and discord, where there should have been a shared vision for the good of the Palestinian people. However, as the participants of this weekend’s conference voted in favor of heeding the Palestinian call to join the global BDS movement, they finally set this country on the path to justice. Citizens, organizations and even government officials the world over, from Bangladesh to South Africa to Norway, have already responded to this Palestinian-led movement.
It is hard to capture how much Peter, Paul and Mary were part of the very atmosphere — in the New York left subculture as the civil rights movement rumbled in the South, and the soul stirrings of the 60s were just starting.
They commercialized the folk current, and started the breakthrough from a small cafe-and-summer-camp underground to a much wider audience… just as the left politics they embodied was starting to break through as well. It was a time when Kumbaya was a heartfelt anthem, not a mocking rightwing punchline.
Their music and politics (so heavily influenced by the Communist Party milieu) were soon both over-shadowed by far more radical and hard-driving currents — by the emergence of defiant revolutionary politics, by the creative explosion of new Black music, and by the rebel drumbeats of rock-and-roll.
But Peter, Paul and Mary played their role — helping bringing leftism out of the closet where it had cowered, trembling, for so much of the 50s. By donning the moral righteousness of the civil rights movement, and by presenting a claim to a popular authenticity (through the questionably authentic form of folk) — Pete, Paul and Mary found the courage (and audience!) to sing their hearts out, and help wake many of us up.
I was a boy in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1960. I remember well those days, those circles, that music, the Bitter End, the Cafe Wha? and all those new hopes rising suddenly.
Let’s not share moment of silence for Mary, but instead a remembrance in song. Her songs are designed for singing along together.
“Mafia with diplomas keep us in a coma…revolving door,insanity every floor..empty traditions, reaching social positions, teaching ambition to support the family superstition?…The standard is thief…counterfeit wisdom creating the illusion o…f freedom…TURNING ME ILL..”
Sept. 15, 1963, a racist bombing killed Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson.
Four Little Girls and the Fight For Freedom
by Mike Ely
It was 1963. One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of slavery, Birmingham was still a stronghold of racism and Jim Crow segregation. The city was a modern industrial powerhouse of coal and steel. It was run on behalf of the largest monopoly corporations by a hateful, narrow-minded white-racist powerstructure. Thirty-eight percent of the population was Black–living under infuriating conditions of discrimination and poverty.In the downtown department stores, Black people were free to buy whatever their paychecks could afford–but they were forbidden to use the restrooms, or order a grilled cheese at the lunch counters, or get a job behind one of the cash registers. Signs everywhere said “Whites Only.”
In Birmingham, like in most of the South, many white people still insultingly called adult Black people by their first names–and Black men were often casually called “boy.” Schools were segregated –and the education for Black children was starkly inferior and underfunded.
This unjust setup was enforced by a brutal and racist police department and by the Ku Klux Klan movement, the semi-official terror arm of the powerstructure. Birmingham was already known for nighttime bombing attacks on the Black community by white supremacists.
This article was posted on Indian Vanguard.Thanks to Ka Frank for pointing this out.
Gujarat: Dalit students protest against manual scavenging
September 13, 2009 Ahmedabad : A huge number of Dalit students marched through the city roads on Monday. They were protesting against manual scavenging which is still practised in Gujarat.
The rally started from Vadaj and ended at Gandhi Ashram, where a public hearing was held. The students, who study in government schools are still being forced to clean toilets in their schools.
Bhagwati Parmar, 13, a resident of Paliyad village in Botad taluka of Bhavnagar said,
“I dropped out of school in 2004 when I was in class III and would go along with my father to dump garbage. But, now I live with my mother after my father died of kidney ailment. We live in utter poor conditions and so I have to go to clean or sweep when someone asks me to do so. I still go to Darbargadh for cleaning work, 2 to 3 times a month and also collect trash from the roads with other girls. For this, I get Rs 5 to Rs 15 with which we buy milk to make tea. It is necessary to make ends meet.”
Gautam Dodiya, 15, who lives in Dhoda village in Umrala taluka of Bhavnagar district said,
“I stay with my mother after my father’s death, he was an alcoholic. I studied till class V and then left school because I was asked to clean urinals and toilets there. But, to earn a living I still go once a month to clean soak pit and I get Rs 200.”
Here is the message released by Van Jones — which is politically revealing in both style and content. By that we mean: revealing of what Van Jones now stands for (or, more precisely, wants to now stand for) and what he doesn’t want to stand for (or defend).
Jones is Obama’s “green jobs tsar” who was forced out of the administration because of his history of past radical activism (including association with the revolutionary group STORM) and because he signed a 911 Truther petition calling for investigations into the Bush administration role in the collapse of the two towers.
My family and I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and support that we have received over the past week or so. I resigned from the White House on September 6, and I have remained silent since then – in keeping with my promise not to be a distraction during a key moment in the Obama Presidency.
WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there’s a firm place to stand — if only it weren’t so broiling hot.
As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can’t be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.
“Saying “no homo” might have started as a way for rappers to acknowledge and distance themselves from the down-low phenomenon. As the phrase has spread, many have decried no homo as depressingly retrograde, a pigheaded “That’s what she said” for homophobes. But the term functions in a more complicated way than a simple slur. As society becomes increasingly gay-tolerant, hip-hop is reassessing its relationship to homosexuality and, albeit in a hedged and roundabout way, it’s possible that no homo is helping to make hip-hop a gayer place.”
Does This Purple Mink Make Me Look Gay?
The rise of no homo and the changing face of hip-hop homophobia.
By Jonah Weiner
In August, 2005, three weeks before his nationally televised declaration that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” Kanye West made a statement he’d later describe as braver and more difficult than his attack on the White House. Hip-hop, he told MTV, was supposed to be about “speaking your mind and about breaking down barriers, but everyone in hip-hop discriminates against gay people … I wanna just come on TV and just tell my rappers, tell my friends, ‘Yo, stop it.’ ” Taking on Bush was a perfectly hip-hop move, but taking on homophobia, West feared, could be career suicide. Undeterred, he revisited the subject in a November 2005 interview, discussing his love for his openly gay cousin, not to mention his conflicted but evolving attitude toward his interior decorator. West’s call for tolerance remains the highest-profile rebuke of gay-bashing that hip-hop has seen.
The following is a Turkish translation of The UCPN(M)’s Paris Height Meeting, a victory of the proletariat by Basanta, central committee member, Unified Communist Party Nepal (Maoist). The English version originally appeared on the re-opened Red Star website. (Special thanks to the Turkish translator team.)
Indra Mohan Sigdel (Basanta)
BNKP(Maoist) Merkez Komite Üyesi
Partimiz, Birleşik Nepal Komünist Partisi(Maoist)’in Katmandu’da yapılan Merkez Komite Toplantısı bir süre önce sonuçlandı. Bu toplantı, Nepal devrimi bir dönüm noktasındayken organize edildi. Bu nedenle, tüm dünya halkları bu toplantının sonuçlarıyla yakından ilgilendiler. Emperyalistler, yayılmacılar ve dünya üzerindeki her türlü gericiler, partimizin bir bütün olarak reformist bir rotayı kabul etmesini, bu gerçekleşmezse en azından bölünmesini istediler. Büyük medya kuruluşları tasarımlarının gerçekleşmesi için bir sürü para harcadılar. Öte yandan, uluslararası işçi sınıfı ve dünya üzerindeki tüm ezilen kitleler, partimizin doğru bir ideolojik ve siyasi çizgi geliştirmesini ve aynı zamanda emperyalizm ve uşaklarına karşı savaşmak için öncekinden daha birleşik ve güçlü kalmasını istediler.
Uluslararası proletaryanın arzuladığı gibi, aynı anda doğru bir ideolojik-politik hat oluşturmak ve parti birliği bozulmadan tümüyle korumak, bu toplantı için çok kolay bir iş değildi. Bu tabii ki genel olarak, düşünme tarzında bariz farklar olan Merkez Komite üyelerine özel olarak ise başlıca liderlere verilen çetin bir görevdi. Öncesinden farklı olarak, üst düzey liderler de dahil olmak üzere pek çok Merkez Komite üyesi, partinin devrimci bir hat oluşturup aynı zamanda birliği koruması konusunda şüpheliydiler. Sonuç olarak, bu toplantıdaki tüm Merkez Komite üyeleri iki ağır sorumluluk yüklenmişlerdi. İlk olarak doğru bir çizgi inşa etmek ve ikinci olarak parti birliğini eskisinden daha sağlam olacak şekilde geliştirmek.
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