Mark Naison: The straw that broke the camel’s back, after many disappointments, was the image of the President regaling a $2,500 a plate dinner in San Francisco while Occupy Oakland was being attacked by an army of police.
Will Occupy Fade Away?
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Mark Naison: If the Occupy movement’s showed us, in words and deeds, “This Is What Democracy Looks Like” those attacking the Occupations showed the world, albeit unintentionally “This Is What a Police State Looks Like.”
Useful Examples for Occupy from the Great Depression
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Mark Naison: The “grunt work” of organizing Depression Era protests — at least until 1936 — was done by radicals who for the most part eschewed, or de emphasized electoral politics.
Occupy Should Stay Unattached to Political Parties
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Mark Nathan: We need grassroots social movements of such force that it will reinvent what is possible in mainstream American politics. The Occupy movements have started such a process.
How to Support the Occupations
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Mark Naison: If you part of a large and growing number of Americans who support the Occupy movement, but may or may not be able to “Occupy” yourself, you might want to form a 99 Percent Club at your school, your workplace or in your neighborhood.
What Occupy Wall Street Has Accomplished in Two Short Months
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Mark Naison: While Occupy Wall Street and its spinoffs around the nation have certainly not developed “leaders” who articulate its goals to the media or negotiate with public officials, it has already registered a formidable list of accomplishments for a movement this young.
Why Teachers Must Become Community Organizers and Justice Fighters
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Mark Naison: Teacher Activists must put forth a vision of Radical Democracy which envisions an education which empowers students as critical thinkers and agents of historical change, not just as obedient test takers and which envisions schools playing a central role in neighborhoods united and mobilized to get a fair share of the nation’s resources.
The Occupy Movements and the Universities
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Mark Naison: I have never seen students on my campus so excited about anything political or artistic as they have about these Occupation movements.
Occupy Wall Street Heralds a Global Counterculture
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Mark Naison: The longer I stayed at Liberty Plaza, the more it felt like the countercultural communities of the 1960s, where discontent with war and a corrupt social system had bred a communal spirit marked by incredible generosity and openness to strangers.
Bringing Teach for America Back to Its Roots
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Mark Naison: It behooves us, as progressive organizers and justice fighters, to keep the lines of communication open to people in these organizations, and be there to work with them if they join us in resistance to policies that concentrate economic sacrifice amongst America’s poor.
Why Teach For America Is Not Welcome in My Classroom
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Mark Naison: Every spring, without fail, a Teach for America recruiter approaches me and asks if they can come to my classes and recruit students for TFA, and every year, without fail, I give them the same answer: “Sorry.”
Charter Schools Are Missing in Action
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Mark Naison: Both directly and indirectly, Charter Schools send the message that all that is of value exists outside of your community, brought in by missionary teachers and administrators.
Why Obama Must Replace Arne Duncan
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Mark Naison: Today, America’s teachers are so disillusioned with the Obama administration that their participation in the 2012 is a big question mark.
Money Trail in Education Reform Leads to Everyone But Those Who Need It Most
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Mark Naison: While people are losing their homes, jobs, and medical coverage, new school professionals are flooding communities with programs that have offer little to the people they were allegedly designed to benefit.
Testing and Poverty
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Mark Naison: Hearing that the governor of New York plans to raise student test scores from twenty percent to forty percent of teacher ratings just reinforces my perception that a species of insanity has overtaken those in charge of public education in the United States.
Public School Budget Cuts Herald End of Equality
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Mark Naison: If the only schools that can function well are in communities where parents have the resources to compensate for the budget cuts, then we are basically creating a social order where children will remain in the social position of their parents into the next generation, and where poor and working-class children are doomed by inferior training to be a servant class for the rich, if they are lucky enough to find jobs at all.
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
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Mark Naison: When my working-class white friends and fellow coaches attacked affirmative action—which they did vociferously and often—it was about preferential treatment that they saw blacks and Latinos getting on the job, especially in the civil service.
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