Social Justice Magazine
Applying Input-Output Logic Heuristically to Detail a Program Responsive to President Obama’s Assertion—“Education is THE Economic Issue of Our Time”—and to Develop Public Enthusiasm for Implementing Such a Program In the few weeks since President Obama so emphatically linked his education program to his effort to revive the US political economy, the President has not been pressed to … [Read more...]
STEM Programs - Technology as a System When public officials speak to the citizenry about “technology”—which isn’t often—they tend to speak primarily in amorphous terms of programmatic benefits of one or another technology cast-as-a-program—with claims of prosperity’s being “just around the corner” thrown in to interest the technologically-challenged among us (a seemingly large … [Read more...]
I send my thanks to Doral Chenoweth III, the camera guy from The Columbus Dispatch. His videoing of me at last month’s healthcare rally in Columbus helped to allow me to feel safe enough to risk sitting down in front of what felt like a boisterous bunch of T-people. Plus, it was his videoing of me for those 31 tumultuous seconds that—quite unexpectedly—brought my “15 minutes of fame”, … [Read more...]
Ten reactions to T-people, in the form of questions I’ve gleaned from reading through hundreds and hundreds of comments critical of my sitting down with my sign…First, how would you feel about having your integrity challenged over whether you do or do not suffer from a nasty, debilitating, incurable, deadly disease?Second, duh! What else would a person go to a demonstration FOR, other … [Read more...]
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by them, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted by the past…” --Gramsci’s “founder of the theory of praxis”The subject of “visioning” keeps coming up at meetings of already “right-thinking” group of people—which is to say … [Read more...]
Those who make the rules, make rules that help them get more of the goldThis essay brings together key elements of arguments I made in my three most recent essays: counting CO2 Emission’s, counting medals, and promoting national healthcare. The common aspect of the two essays on “counting” was my claim that counting inevitably entails convention. That is to say: counting presupposes … [Read more...]
I'm the person you all are writing about. Let me tell you a bit about me. First of all, my actions were NOT about me, NOT for me either. My parents raised me to think about other people; like:"Whatsoever you do to the least of us..." "He's not heavy, he's my brother." "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you."; and, especially in our large family, "Share, and share … [Read more...]
In a recent essay, I described how “convention” applies to the relatively unimportant matter of “counting medals” toward the relatively unimportant matter of answering the relatively unimportant question, who is leading the Olympics? In that essay, I argued that the conventions advanced for answering this question tended to both reflect and reproduce the interests of countries that had … [Read more...]
“The long memory is the most radical idea in America.” Utah Phillips, as recalled by Amy GoodmanI was reminded of Utah Phillips’ observation as I sat down to write this essay on how we approach public policy for dealing with unemployment during a time of mass unemployment. I intended to start off the essay by recalling Thomas P. Hoerr’s 1988 book , which bore the enticing title, And … [Read more...]
Convention is unusual in that people can often practice it without realizing that they are doing so. When that occurs, it becomes difficult to discern whether people are practicing the convention, or the convention is practicing them.To illustrate: while answering the question, “How tall are you?” probably appears to be completely straightforward, the conventional part of this practice … [Read more...]
LA-LA-LA-LA: If we say it like we really believe it maybe we’ll end up back in Kansas, instead of in the dustbin of history“It [an i-Phone] blows my mind everyday… there’s nothing it can’t do!” a person identified as being of “the millennium generation” PBS’s Newshour, 24 February 2010Notwithstanding the apparent millennialism evidenced by the subject in the … [Read more...]
"You have to keep on going, not because you know it will work, but because you hope it will work." --Donald N. Michael, author of On Learning to Plan—and Planning to Learn, Private Communication, 6 October 1995Change is the order of the universe. The way things are is always only temporary. As Martin Luther King said, “The arc of history is long, but I believe it bends toward … [Read more...]
For my friend, Scott Remembering my mentor, DonMost of my writing has focused primarily on applying the insights on social learning developed by my long-time mentor, Don Michael, to contemporary political challenges, especially the challenge of getting Obama elected. Meanwhile, my even longer-time friend, Scott, who almost 40 years ago—and perhaps not coincidentally—introduced me to … [Read more...]
“One hundred thirteen people were killed in the disaster…” BBC reporting ten-year anniversary of a Concorde crash. Reported over-the-air on 2 FEB 2010, 9:30 AMAs the world nears the one-month anniversary of the disaster that might have killed ten-thousand times as many Haitians as died in the Concorde “disaster," I found myself wondering, “How does a situation come to be referred … [Read more...]
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