New York, NY – “President-elect Trump in his determination to get one Negro in his cabinet has handed down the outrageous appointment of Ben Carson as the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development – a position he would assume with zero qualifications.
“In New York City and in urban areas across the country, black and brown citizens are constantly battling an affordable housing crisis. What does Mr. Carson know about housing laws, the development of affordable housing, regulations or housing safety? Trump’s appointment of the unqualified Carson shows us how seriously he will take these issues in Washington. Mr. Carson himself expressed his inexperience in running an agency when he rejected the position of Health and Human Services Secretary – a position his resume actually supports.
“In school we learned that the essentials to life were food, clothing and shelter. The selection of Mr. Carson is a disregard for one of the essentials to human life. It appears as though the appointment of a loyalist is more important than finding a qualified individual. The Senate must reject this confirmation at the earliest opportunity and the President-elect should withdraw this nomination NOW,” said Bertha Lewis, President and Founder, The Black Institute.
President Donald Trump with Ms. Betsy DeVos, his choice to head the US Department of Education.
By Sam Anderson
The Complete elimination of a federal oversight of public education is about to begin. This was a campaign promise of President-Elect Donald Trump… and he has started the first phase of shutting down the US Dept. of Education with the selection of Ms. Betsy DeVos- a multibillionaire with absolutely no education experience (because the job of dismantling public education does not require it!).
The ultra-rich Americans who are now represented in the highest office by their fellow ultra-rich cohort- are about to feed deeper and wider into the trillion-dollar public education trough. During the campaign, Trump had vowed to shut down the US Dept. of Education using the rationale that it was a waste of money and that states should control their public schools without a “massive governmental bureaucracy of political correctness.”
Who is Ms Betsy DeVos?
“Betsy DeVos heads the American Federation for Children, an organization that promotes charter school education. Previously, she served on the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a group led by Bush. She and her husband have given millions of dollars every year to organizations that promote Christian and conservative values, such as the Focus on the Family and the Washington, D.C.-based think tank American Enterprise Institute….
Betsy and Dick DeVos come from a family with a $5.1 billion net worth. Dick’s father, Richard, is the co-founder of Amway and considered the 88th richest man in the United States by Forbes. In 2014, Mother Jones called the DeVos clan “the new Kochs,” as they have sought to ‘defund the left and bring down labor in Michigan.'” (from mic.com)
So, as Trump tries to mend the real deep divide within the Republican Party and start to fulfill his dismantling promises, he chooses Ms. Betsy DeVos. As you can see, she is a longtime advocate of charter schools and vouchers (vouchers are a way to directly transfer your tax dollars into private schools under the guise of “choice”). Left up to her, every public school would become a corporate-backed charter school with some students taking their public school money to a local private school. Ms. DeVos’s model is the all charter school system of New Orleans and the evolving all charter school system of Philadelphia that pump hundreds of millions of tax dollars into their corporate backers and administration.
Racist high stakes testing will be on steroids with Ms. DeVos’s staunch support of the Common Core Curriculum even though Trump has claimed to NOT be a supporter of the Common Core. However, three things are very clear with Trumpism when it comes to education:
In the heads of these emboldened racist education policy makers, the school-to-prison-pipeline must not only continue but become an even stronger central component to “innercity” education to help make it a less crime ridden ghetto… making it even safer for the mainly white gentrifiers trying to return to the cities of America.
Ms. Devos and her cohorts are absolutely clueless (and really don’t care) about the erasure of cultural excellence within public education’s curriculum and pedagogy. The multibillion dollar white supremacist textbook and testing industry will have a friend in the US Dept. of Education who will further marginalize not only Black & Latino History and Culture, but will also accelerate the removal of Black and Latino educators (NYC has already lost 40% of its Black educators under Bloomberg-de Blasio’s Mayoral Control and Chicago has lost 45% of its Black educators under Mayor Rahm Israel Emanuel and his predecessor).
Teachers’ unions will lose even more of what little power they have at the bargaining table because Ms. Devos will bring in the highly funded and politically backed union busters and her administration will use the policy of strictly tying students’ test scores to teacher evaluation. In addition, Under Devos’s rule, charter schools will dominate and their teachers don’t have to be unionized even states where the AFT and the NEA operate!
We have spent the last 30-35 years being dependent upon liberal Democrats to bring equity to public education and all they have done was to lay the groundwork for the white supremacist Republicans – and some Democrats- to privatize every aspect of public education while enhancing its devastating “prison prep” policies for Black & Brown children.
With Ms Devos as Education Czar, those very same Democrats will try to seek a middle-ground where there’s none. They will also try to use moral suasion with these amoral and immoral so-called education leaders.
Parents, educators and students: we have only one choice to make as we enter the Age of Trumpism. That choice is to build power within us and our communities. And that means, for education, we need to take control of our schools. And for New York City, that means not only seizing our local schools, but taking the entire Board of Education out of the hands of the mayor and placing it within the control of a democratic collaboration of parents, educators, students and community rights-holders. Amongst Black and Latino Folk, we have the education expertise and experience to create local public schools of cultural and civic excellence that will be devoted to the highest intellectual, emotional and physical development of our children.
With the selection of Multibillionaire noneducator Ms. Betsy DeVos, for us Black and Latino Folk, Trump is continuing down the road of “Education Genocide”.
Our power and victory over the impending white supremacist education and privatization policies of Trumpism will become a real force if we, parents, educators and children embrace the simple but powerful words of Frederick Douglass: “We struggle to learn to learn to struggle.”
Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence and the Coalition for Public Education are here to help towards that Victory! Join Us in the fight against the privatization and white supremacist education policies that Ms. Devos and her allies will try to impose upon us!
Sam Anderson is a retired Math and Black History Professor and a member of Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence) and the Coalition for Public Education
By Isaac Saney, Co-Chair & Spokesperson, Canadian Network on Cuba – November 14, 2014
The Canadian Network On Cuba (CNC) is launching the Cuba For West Africa Campaign to raise funds to assist the ongoing Cuban medical missions in the West African nations of Guinea-Conakry, Liberia & Sierra Leone that are engaged in fighting the Ebola epidemic. The Cuban medical mission is by far the largest sent by any country. Standing side-by-side with the peoples of West Africa, 461 Cuban doctors and nurses – chosen from more than 15,000 volunteers – have gone to West Africa and joined the struggle against Ebola. Jose Luis Di Fabio, a representative of the World Health Organization, underscored that “there are more human resources from Cuba than from many, many NGOs put together.”
Such is the magnitude of Cuba’s solidarity with Africa that even the corporate media, usually unduly harsh in their views concerning Cuba, had to give the Caribbean nation plaudits for its actions. For example, the New York Times, recognizing at last Cuba’s virtue, has been moved to editorialize its position that the U.S. economic embargo against the island should end and the three Cubans still imprisoned in the U.S. as fighters against terrorism should be freed. Also, on October 9th, the Wall Street Journal stated: “Few have heeded the call, but one country has responded in strength: Cuba.” As Jorge Lefebre Nicolas, Cuba’s ambassador to Liberia, declared: “We cannot see our brothers from Africa in difficult times and remain there with our arms folded.” Havana’s contribution is to be contrasted with that of Washington, which dispatched thousands of soldiers, instead of more desperately needed healthcare personnel and resources.
The Cuban doctors serving in West Africa are motivated not by financial gain but by the profound internationalist values of solidarity inculcated since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Since 1959, more than 300,000 Cuban medical workers have served in 158 countries. Currently, 50,000 Cuban doctors and nurses are serving in 66 countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia. Indeed, before the Ebola epidemic there were more than 4,000 Cuban healthcare personnel treating people in 32 African countries. As Dr. Jorge Perez Avila, the director of the Pedro Kouri Institute for Tropical Medicine in Havana – where those going to fight Ebola get three weeks of intensive specialized training before going overseas – noted: “Our principle has been to share what we have.”
In 2010 Cuba rose to the immense challenge of helping the heroic people of Haiti after the earthquake that inflicted such horrendous suffering. In response, the CNC launched the Cuba For Haiti Campaign as the best way by which Canadians could help Haiti. The success of the Cuba For Haiti Campaign demonstrates the confidence and respect that Canadians have for the people for Cuba. The respect and confidence increase the better we know Cuba.
In 2014, as it has always done, Cuba is taking up the cause of humanity in Guinea-Conakry, Liberia & Sierra Leone. Africa has called and Cuba has answered.
At the September 16, 2014 meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Cuban representative Abelardo Moreno declared: “Humanity has a debt to African people. We cannot let them down.”
The reports on the death of the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro have described him as dictator who was a cause of suffering for his people.
His death has been met with the cheering of white Cubans and the media pushing the message of tyrant, dictator and violator of human rights.The history that is being put forth abut Fidel Castro, is only a reminder of how much of the history of freedom and liberation movements has been twisted by the storytelling of the ruling elite.Nations are complicated and you have to be careful when you judge them.For example, I know as an African-American living in the United States, that this country has to be careful about throwing stones about human rights.With political prisoners such as journalist Mumia Abu Jamal in jail for decades, a long history of street executions by security forces that only now being caught on camera, an incarceration rate that ranks only withChina and Russia, a legal system that from the street corner to congress is designed to incarcerate people of color, voter suppression, economic disenfranchisement, and now with the election of Donald Trump, the U.S. is in no position to lecture about Fidel Castro over his human rights record.
We know that while African-Americans in the States were fighting COINTELPRO and dealing with the murder and incarceration of Black Panthers, Fidel Castro was sending combat troops to Angola to help fight the army of the U.S.-supported apartheid South African regime and helping to free the region.We remember a different Fidel Castro we know this:When Africa called, Cuba answered.
The below three essays that tell a different story.
