Sept. 13, 2022

August 26, 2022

 

Back to School, Back to Fighting Far-Right Attacks on Education

By Ben Jealous

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Just when you thought far-right attacks on public education couldn’t get any more absurd, we hear about something new.

 

For the first time in almost 15 years, Sarasota schools this fall are turning down hundreds of free dictionaries from the local Rotary Club. Why? Because the district is afraid of violating a radical new law that’s part of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s crackdown on inclusive curricula. The district can’t buy or accept any new books until it hires someone to make sure they comply with the state’s draconian censorship regulations. So, the dictionaries sit on the shelf.

The idea that dictionaries might be hazardous to kids would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. This new school year is starting as more states are passing laws to make it easier to ban books. States are also passing laws to stop teachers from talking about topics like racism; according to Education Week, 42 states have now enacted limits on what teachers can say about racism or sexism in the classroom.

 

These same political forces want to make schools teach a whitewashed version of our history and our current reality in the name of “patriotic” education. They’re trying to take over school boards to impose their political ideology on teachers and students. That’s bad for our kids. And it’s bad for our country.

The freedom to learn is at risk.

This fall, it’s more important than ever to stand for the rights of teachers to teach, and students to learn, about the full spectrum of the American experience. That means lessons that include and celebrate diverse communities. It means history that doesn’t erase the experiences of Black people, brown people, LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, people with disabilities, and other communities that have been historically marginalized. The director of the nonprofit EveryLibrary warns that the current wave of book bans amounts to “the silencing of stories and the suppressing of information” that will make “the next generation less able to function in society.”

Children learn better when they can see themselves in others and see their communities as part of the great American story. At the same time, science tells us that learning how to understand and empathize with people across differences is essential to children’s healthy development. Looking honestly at our past helps students develop critical thinking skills that are desperately needed when every smart phone is a gateway to disinformation.

Democracy, too, depends on informed citizens to function. It’s no coincidence that the crowd that stormed the Capitol in 2021, was acting on lies and misinformation.

Authoritarianism feasts on ignorance. Election deniers and censors of history are in the same camp, and should get nowhere near our schools.

 

We cannot begin to heal our divisions until we acknowledge and teach our whole history—good and bad. And we know that standing up for the freedom to learn will be a challenging task. This school year follows one in which reports of book bans and censorship reached record levels according to the American Library Association. Far-right groups and politicians are offering rewards and setting up tip lines to “report” teachers who cover “divisive” topics. School board members are receiving death threats.

 

But we don’t shy away from these challenges when we act from a place of love. Loving our children means being advocates for them when political extremists want to limit what they can learn. It means showing up to school board meetings and organizing to make ourselves heard. It means running for the school board.

 

It means rejecting one of the censors’ most harmful assumptions: that students are too fragile to hear the history our people have lived.

Millions of families are getting ready to send their kids back to school. Let's also get ready to defend the freedom to learn. Before the dictionary ends up on your district’s banned-books list.

Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way and Professor of the Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. A New York Times best-selling author, his next book "Never Forget Our People Were Always Free" will be published by Harper Collins in December 2022.

Feb. 6, 2020

The NFLPA Has Taken an Important Stand When It Comes to Amazon
By Barrington M. Salmon

 

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - National Football League is capping off its most challenging season yet, from games with no spectators to what is hoped is a sustained and honest focus on racial justice issues. Despite these challenges, the league has made efforts to ensure the fan experience remained intact for those unable to watch their favorite team play in person, meaning streaming service providers — such as Amazon — have taken on a much larger role.

But against the backdrop of the league’s apparent commitment to social justice, the NFL Players Association (NFLPA)’s decision to endorse a landmark unionization effort at Amazon stands in stark contrast to Amazon’s troubling treatment of its workers. With all eyes on the league for a Super Bowl unlike any other, the NFLPA is demonstrating that it will use its platform and considerable voice to speak out when companies like Amazon profit off of the league but are unwilling to treat their workers with dignity and respect. For that we commend the NFLPA.

Sports streaming marks Amazon’s latest industry disruption, as the e-commerce giant attempts to become the exclusive platform for NFL games. With full stadium capacity unlikely to be allowed any time soon because of the coronavirus global pandemic, the company appears set on tightening its grip on the $100 billion market that will only grow more lucrative in the coming years.

However, Amazon also has its eyes on Bessemer, Ala., where its warehouse workers are engaged in a historic fight for unionization. The upcoming vote is the closest that Amazon employees have ever gotten to forming a union, and organizers have been working around the clock to ensure that its workers have their voices heard on such a vital and important issue.

The NFLPA, which has long been a champion for worker issues, has been one of the most notable groups to come out in support of the workers in Bessemer. In a video posted to Twitter, current and former NFL players discussed the importance of union representation and the valuable benefits that come with it — benefits that they have access to, unlike Amazon employees nationwide.

Mail-in balloting begins on Monday, Feb. 8. According to the Washington Post, 5,805 workers will receive ballots via the mail from the National Labor Relations Board. Workers will have seven weeks to decide if they want the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union to represent them. A yes vote would make the Bessemer facility the first Amazon warehouse in the United States to unionize. This is a struggle for better working conditions, higher wages and addressing other issues such as tough and uncompromising performance targets for workers, the lack of adequate bathroom breaks and overheated facilities.

 

Amazon’s actions in Bessemer are only its latest attempt to crush the desire and efforts of employees organizing for better wages and conditions. Amazon is not shy about playing hardball. For example, its intelligence analysts have monitored the labor and union-organizing activity of workers across Europe, while doing the same with the social media content of Amazon environmental and social justice groups. Amazon has even hired Pinkerton spies to keep a close eye on its warehouse employees. We can’t legislate morality or compassion, but this type of behavior is unconscionable and deserves to be exposed and Amazon sanctioned or punished in ways that will get its attention.

It should come as no surprise that the company pursued such an aggressive campaign against this recent push from organized labor. Amazon has flooded its workers with anti-union messaging, from carpet-bombing warehouse bathrooms with fliers to launching a glossy website that urges employees to “get the facts about joining a union.” In addition, the company opposed a mail-in unionization vote in the middle of a deadly pandemic, signaling it is willing to put its own employees in danger to keep them from organizing.

The unionization efforts in Alabama are illustrative of Amazon’s longstanding, horrific and sickening treatment of its workers, which has been seen most clearly as we contend with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Whether it was Whole Foods cashiers, warehouse employees, or hardware engineers, all evidence points to the same stark conclusion: Amazon does not care about its workers.

Feb. 3, 2021

It’s Time for Action on a Stimulus Package
By Jesse Jackson

Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has continued to threaten to filibuster against Biden's $1.9 trillion.

President Joe Biden 

NEWS ANALYSIS

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In his first 10 days in office, Joe Biden has launched an intense effort to address the “cascading crises” that America faces. In addition to issuing executive orders to reverse several of Trump’s most poisonous acts — ending federal contracting with private prisons, reviving enforcement of discrimination laws, ending the Muslim ban, reentering the Paris Climate Accord, and much more — Biden has put forth a bold rescue plan to deal with the human and economic costs of the pandemic.

He has declared climate change an existential threat and a national security priority and has promised a renewed effort to address systemic racism and other forms of discrimination. The question now is whether he will continue to push forward against the resistance of Republicans in the House and Senate and the timidity of the establishment.

The first test is on the pandemic rescue plan. Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan is constructed to meet specific needs: a major public health drive to get Americans vaccinated and to ramp up testing and tracking and treatment; aid to Americans to counter the continuing economic distress caused by the pandemic with millions facing the end of federal support for unemployment; and emergency assistance to states and cities now facing devastating service cuts to deal with deficits that have exploded as their economies shut down and their revenues collapsed. Republicans have denounced the Biden plan from the get-go.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised to filibuster against the plan, forcing it to pass with a super majority of 60 votes, or through budget reconciliation by a majority vote. Republicans warn against using reconciliation, saying that it would torpedo all efforts at bipartisan cooperation. Bipartisan cooperation? Are they totally without memory or shame?

These are the same Republican senators who used reconciliation to pass the Trump tax cuts that larded billions in tax breaks on the richest Americans. These are the same Republicans who went along with Trump’s lies, refusing to recognize that Biden won the election for weeks, and then voted against even holding a trial for Trump in the Senate after he was impeached for instigating the rioters who broke into the Capitol. Now suddenly, they have the nerve to question Biden’s commitment to working across the aisle. Ten Republicans — only three of whom voted to support a Senate trial on Trump’s impeachment — have put forth what is billed as an alternative plan that would cost $600 billion. It isn’t designed to address what’s needed; it’s designed only to be less.

It contains no money for states and localities. That would lead to massive layoffs of police, firefighters, teachers, transit workers and drastic cuts in services in the midst of the pandemic. Their plan would reduce the amount of support for Americans and reduce the number of Americans eligible for relief, despite the fact that Trump supported Biden’s $1,400 stimulus check figure and Democrats won the election campaigning on it. Their plan would lower federal unemployment benefits and limit their extension to June. With a million people a week still filing for unemployment, and the bill unlikely to be passed until March, this will put at risk the millions still unable to find work because of the shutdowns caused by the coronavirus.

Their plan would drastically reduce the funds available for reopening schools safely, and for sustaining public transport in the midst of the crisis. They offer no reason for these cuts other than complaining that the Biden plan is too expensive. Somehow for “moderate Republicans” it costs too much to aid working and poor people but never costs too much to lavish billions in tax benefits to fellow millionaires and billionaires. The country is in crisis. Millions of children go hungry. Tens of millions face eviction or the loss of their homes. A million a week are still filing for unemployment insurance. We are headed toward 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus, with new, more contagious variants now just beginning to spread. This is not a time for timidity or for posturing. It is a time for action.

Feb. 1, 2021

 

 

“There’s a Lot Left to Be Done”

By Ben Jealous

 

 

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - February is Black History Month – and Black people just made a whole lot of history.

 

Joe Biden is our president and Donald Trump is not because Black organizers and voters decided that they would not be denied their right as American citizens to be heard at the ballot box.

 

 

Kamala Harris is our history-making vice president, a Black and Southeast Asian woman and the daughter of immigrants, thanks to the millions of Black people who encouraged family, friends, and neighbors to vote.

 

 

Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are senators because Black people and their allies in Georgia turned out in November, and again in January, to signal a new day in the heart of the Old South.

 

 

All this makes me grateful that Black History Month comes in February. It encourages us to think about those who made these historic moments possible.

 

I’m thinking about the freedom fighters and voting rights activists – and the courageous ordinary people whose names don’t show up in history books, but who showed up to fight against injustice. They often faced violence and brutality that was fueled by the racist power structure’s desire to maintain power at all costs.

 

 

Does that sound familiar? Just a few weeks ago, we saw our democracy challenged by that same kind of poison. We watched a president incite his supporters to violence by denying the legitimacy of Black people’s votes. The rage among Trump’s followers was stoked by endless repetitions of the lie that so-called real Americans had reelected him in a landslide, and that the election was stolen from them by corrupt big-city machines—read Black officials and voters—and their communist allies.

 

 

Black History Month is a good time to remember that Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement he led were also smeared as communists out to destroy America.

 

 

And you don’t have to be a historian to have noticed the Confederate flags and the lynching noose brought to the Capitol on January 6 by the mob that claimed they were taking back the election and the country.

 

 

In 2013, conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which has long been considered the crown jewel of the civil rights movement.

 

 

Immediately, state legislators, especially in the old Confederate states, took advantage of the federal government’s forced retreat from justice. They passed all kinds of new restrictions on voting. People in the civil rights and voting rights movements did not give up in despair after that devastating setback. They knew that every bit of progress is met with resistance. And the greater the progress, the greater the backlash.

 

 

Right-wing politicians are already responding to Black voters’ turnout and the victories they made possible by preparing new plans to restrict voting. Some Pennsylvania Republicans who were supporters of voting by mail just a couple years ago are now trying to end it. We must defeat these efforts.

 

 

As we welcome the Biden-Harris administration and encourage them to govern boldly to advance equality, justice, and opportunity, I think back to 2009, when Barack Obama made history as our first Black president. That year, I participated in a Story Corps conversation with my mother and grandmother about their own histories of civil rights activism. My grandmother—who is still with us today at age 104—sent me off with a message that is just as true today: “There’s a lot left to be done.”

 

 

There are many ways to think about the stubborn resistance to the full inclusion of Black people in this country. Right now, I want to focus on this: The civil rights movement’s victories were especially amazing given the intensity of the opposition. Our recent election wins are even more impressive when you consider that they were won in the face of powerful political forces working to make it harder for people to vote.

 

 

Our optimism and hope are grounded in our history of overcoming.

 

 

Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation. Jealous has decades of experience as a leader, coalition builder, campaigner for social justice and seasoned nonprofit executive. In 2008, he was chosen as the youngest-ever president and CEO of the NAACP. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and he has taught at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.