Category Archives: Viva!

Ebola cases spike as WHO warns of possible reintroduction

PPE for Ebola decontamination
Stephanie Soucheray | News Reporter | CIDRAP News
Dec 06, 2018

Officials confirm 13 new cases, bringing the outbreak total to 471 cases and 273 deaths.

Organize the Charters

Via Sophia not the Loren “One of the few things about American politics making me happy in the last couple of years is that the charter scam has been fully exposed for the union-busting, profit-taking, public institution-destroying scam that it is. And thus, I am extremely happy to see the nation’s first charter school strike.” Educators with Acero charter schools strike outside Chicago Public Schools headquarters, 42 W. Madison St., before the start of the Chicago Board of Education monthly meeting, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

One of the few things about American politics making me happy in the last couple of years is that the charter scam has been fully exposed for the union-busting, profit-taking, public institution-destroying scam that it is. And thus, I am extremely happy to see the nation’s first charter school strike.

Over 500 educators in Chicago began the nation’s first strike at a charter school network on Tuesday, shutting down 15 schools serving more than 7,000 children. Teachers for the Acero Schools network rallied at local schools to call for higher pay and smaller class sizes, among other demands.

The action is the latest mass teacher protest in a year when educators have closed ranks in places where organized labor has historically been weak — first in six conservative or swing states where teachers walked out of classrooms, and now in the charter school sector, where unionization is sparse.

All of the picket lines have formed out of a dispute over public dollars — whether education funding is adequate, and what percentage of the money should go toward educator pay and classroom resources versus other costs.

“Everyone is feeding off each other and hearing this rallying cry,” said Martha Baumgarten, a fifth-grade teacher at Carlos Fuentes Elementary School in the Acero network and a member of her union’s bargaining committee. “A lot of this comes down to lack of funding. But teachers across the country are seeing each other stand up and say that’s not O.K. We’re not going to support budgets and politics as usual.”

Charters are funded by taxpayers but independently managed by nonprofit organizations, like Acero, or by for-profit companies. Educators at Acero earn up to $13,000 less than their counterparts at traditional public schools in Chicago and cannot afford to live comfortably in an increasingly expensive city, according to the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents the striking workers.

The chief executive of Acero, Richard L. Rodriguez, earns about $260,000 annually to manage 15 schools, a similar salary to that of Janice K. Jackson, the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools system, which includes over 500 schools.

Oh yeah, there’s that honest charter school leadership I love. If you want education run like a business, profit-taking by the 1% is what you get!

And of course, one of the great things about teacher strikes is that they are striking not only for their own pocketbooks, which is certainly a legitimate enough reason to strike, but also for the education of our children:

In addition to higher pay for teachers and support staff, the union is asking that more money be spent on special education services for students and on a program that allows classroom assistants to continue their education and become lead teachers. The union also argues that Acero’s class sizes — up to 32 students at every grade level — are too high.

Acero says the comparatively large class sizes allow it to serve more families, noting that many of the network’s schools have wait lists. It acknowledges that its teachers, who earn an average salary of $65,000 per year, are making less than their peers in traditional schools, but says that is because of inadequate funding from the state. Mr. Rodriguez earns a salary that is competitive given his duties managing the network’s facilities and real estate, it added.

Uh huh.

More teachers strikes is what this nation needs, repealing the decades of neoliberal policies that have emphasized market solutions and privatization for public problems, using our children as an experiment in capitalism. Good funding for schools, well-trained and well-paid teachers who don’t need to work second jobs, and poverty-fighting programs. That’s how you create a better education system.

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Campaign calling for New Zealand to protect China expert gathers pace

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Anne-Marie Brady became a target after the release of a paper on Chinese foreign influence last year

More than 150 global China experts have added their voices to demands that the New Zealand government protect Professor Anne-Marie Brady, a China scholar who has been the victim of a year-long harassment campaign.

Brady, an expert in Chinese politics at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, had her home and office burgled in February, and her car sabotaged last month.

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DPIC PODCAST: The New Catholic Teaching on the Death Penalty and Human Dignity

In August 2018, Pope Francis promulgated a new Catholic Catechism that deemed the death penalty “inadmissible” in all cases and committed the Church to working to abolish capital punishment worldwide. Cardinal Blase Cupich, the ninth Bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago, joined DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham on the latest episode of the podcast Discussions with DPIC, to explore the implications of the new teachings and how they fit into the Church’s broader message on social justice and the sanctity of life. Saying “human dignity is at center of all we say and do,” Cardinal Cupich stressed that church leaders working to end capital punishment “have to make the case for human dignity just as forcefully as we do in other areas,” for the poor, for refugees, for the marginalized, and for the unborn. “All of the advocacy that we do for all of these people has to have a social or civic or political dimension to it,” the Cardinal explained. The continued use of the death penalty is “a stain on our country,” he said. “Let’s be honest. No life that was taken away can ever be replaced by taking away another life. We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing.”

(Discussions With DPIC, The New Catholic Teaching on the Death Penalty and Human Dignity: A Conversation with Cardinal Blase Cupich, December 1, 2018.) See Podcasts and Religion.

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Congress has tried more than 200 times to pass an anti-lynching law. This year, it could fail again

It was nearly a century ago that Rep. Leonidas C. Dyer, a Republican from Missouri, introduced a bill to make lynching a federal crime. With vigilante slayings of African Americans rampant, it promised to force the federal government to prosecute lynch mobs for murder.

The bill wasn’t the first…