Re: theory, strategy and tactics

["Kathy Emery" <mke4think@hotmail.com>]

I think we need to fight at every level simultaneously.  I give kudos to 
anyone willing to do anything at this point to oppose the creeping fascism 
that is going on in this country.

freedom is a constant struggle.  many battles to be fought, we fight the 
ones that suit our temperment and abilities.  above all, we need to form 
coalitions among us all.

I just finished reading Juan William's biography of thurgood marshall.  He 
was an arrogant sob who cheated horribly on his wife and stabbed his 
colleagues in the back in order to get ahead.   He was a rabid anti "commie" 
who secretly nourished a relationship with herbert hoover by turning on the 
people who got him where he got.  and yet. . . . .. he risked his life many 
times to go on long fact finding missions throughout the south and midwest 
that allowed the NAACP Ink fund to lay the groundwork for Brown v Board and 
an equally important 1946 supreme court decision (segregation on interstate 
travel was illegal) that gave the direct action folk the strategies they 
used to liberate an entire generation from being terrorized by the white 
power structure.

If the NAACP, CORE, SNCC, and SCLC would find a way to work together for a 
moment in history, maybe we can too?

the system needs to be attacked on every front but we all need to keep our 
eyes on the prize.

thanks to everyone on this list for your efforts.  we need you all.

kathy

Kathy Emery, Ph. D.
San Francisco Freedom School
www.educationanddemocracy.org
mke4think@hotmail.com


----Original Message Follows----
From: Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com>
Reply-To: ca-resisters@interversity.org
To: ca-resisters@interversity.org, ARN state 
<ARN-state@egroups.com>,arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com,CA Resisters 
<ca-resisters@interversity.org>,LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com, 
eddra@yahoogroups.com,North Dakota Study Group <ndsgroup@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [ca-resisters] not-Miller meeting
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 17:58:03 -0800

A clip from the closing sentence below:

"Still, we will persist!"

Why would you do that when every message from the real world is that this is 
a monumental waste of time, a diversion, and it will do nothing at all to 
increase the kind of powerful pressure against the regimentation of the 
curricula and high stakes standardized testing that is necessary to make 
social and educational change?

Has the resistance movement, what there is of it, abandoned the effort to 
organize mass boycotts of the tests (which have happened, and will continue 
to happen, but which could spread)?

Why spend time with people who are so clearly on the other side, so clearly 
aligned with a government that is without question nothing but a weapon of 
the rich (from Iraq to Afghanistan to San Diego to Detroit to New York to 
Beijing and all in between).

NCLB was always a bipartisan, Republican and Democrat, maneuver, as were all 
the regulations of education that popped up since the seventies. Those 
politicians speak as a united class, their class, against us, against our 
class. They do so, now, because they must, because they are cornered, just 
as they are cornered in Iraq, where they MUST have those oil fields and 
control over the geo-politics of the region. They also MUST have more 
control over what people know, and how they come to know it, in schools, in 
order to turn teachers into missionaries for imperialism, and children into 
warriors for the empire, fighting the enemies of their real enemies.

You are not going to out-lobby Bill Gates. It will not happen. He has a 
million dollars for your ten, and that gap is going to grow, not close. That 
gap in dollars is how DC works. But that is not merely a practical matter, 
easily demonstrated by the endless examples of official corruption. It is 
also a theoretical and hence profoundly strategic matter.

The reason this government exists is to enforce inequality and exploitation, 
to coddle racism and imperialism, not to enlighten people through equality 
won in government schools. These are, after all, their schools, not ours, 
though like on any job, struggles and resistance do occur.

What can grind down NCLB (parallel to the imperial oil wars) is not 
lobbying, not even marching, but direct action by people on the job, or in 
the military. Shutting down the tests, or troop mutinies, is a form of power 
that can be sustained. Lobbying cannot, as you can always be out-bribed.

While I have the deepest respect for Susan Harman, the work she has done and 
continues to do (caresist, calcare, probably would not exist without her, 
her courage in sustaining an equitable school for several years against 
incredible odds is exemplary), I have to really disagree with this tactic, 
and suggest that serious strategic planning about what to do, as people who 
stand for reason, in the emergence of fascism, is in order, and urgent.

Strategic planning would need to address why things are as they are, why 
schooling within a capitalist society exists, who holds power, what are the 
potential choke points for resistance, and from questions like that, we 
could judge whether or not our tactics work.

Here is a tangential link.
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/12/190730.php

Happy Holidays

best

r
www.rougeforum.org




At 03:14 PM 12/22/2006 -0800, Susan Harman wrote:
> I forgot my comments.
> I was very upset by her apparent lack of any sense that this law is 
> disastrous. She just kept saying that Bush cut $50 billion from the budget. 
> We said money would be nice, but $50 isnt enough to cure poverty, and money 
> within the confines of NCLB goes to corporations, not schools.
> She was not encouraging about another meeting with Miller himself, given 
> the new M-F work week which starts right away in Jan. Tough to get home to 
> CA over a weekend. Still, we will persist!
> Susan

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