Community counter punches cabal’s disestablishment tactics: CHICAGO

Chicago

 EDUCATION meets SOCIETY: workers, community champion public good

Excerpt, editing by Carolyn Bennett

“Rebirth of Chicago Teachers Union, Possibilities for a Counter-Hegemonic Education Movement” by Eric (Rico) Gutstein and Pauline Lipman

Philadelphia, Pa
USA

The authors of this essay are activists and scholars. Lipman writes and teaches about the political economy and racial politics of urban education.  Gutstein writes and teaches about critical pedagogy, education for social justice, and mathematics education policy. Both are active members of the grassroots organization Teachers for Social Justice (TSJ) in Chicago and have participated in education organizing against school closings and education privatization since 2004. Through TSJ, the authors were involved in building support for the Chicago teachers’ strike as part of a broad coalition of parents, community members, and educators. This is an edited excerpt from their essay.

Chicago

Predators at America’s jugular: 

its young, its community, its workers

I

n a version of disaster capitalism reminiscent of post-Katrina New Orleans, the 2008 economic crisis was a golden opportunity to accelerate education privatization at all levels, weaken unions, and further streamline schooling for global competitiveness.

This was the thrust of the Obama administration’s $4.3 billion economic recovery initiative for education, known as ‘Race to the Top.’ The ensuing ‘fiscal crisis’ of the state provides a warrant to close public schools, expand privately run charter schools, and dismantle whole school districts (e.g., Detroit), or replace them with a ‘portfolio’ of education providers (e.g., Philadelphia).

Not educators, profiteers: Gateses, Waltons: Billionaire venture philanthropists, such as the (Bill and Melinda) Gates Foundation and the Walton (Wal-mart) Foundation, are deploying their enormous wealth to steer federal and state policy and local school districts in this direction. At a moment when public schools face severe budget cuts, “in state after state, (mostly) men … with vast personal fortunes invest in campaigns to end teachers’ tenure, end seniority…and clear the way for private takeovers of public schools, where teachers work with no job rights at all.” The focus is urban school districts where African-American communities have borne the brunt of school closings.

This neoliberal class project exemplifies ‘accumulation by dispossession’—commandeering public goods for private accumulation—whether through opening the Amazon rain forest to cattle ranching, privatizing water in Bolivia, or privatizing public housing, roads, bridges, and schools in the United States.

It is in the context of this drive-by investors to appropriate public goods—and the related displacement, dislocation, and robbery of the vast majority—that the global neoliberal assault on teaching, teachers, and their unions needs to be understood.

C

hicago teachers stood up to this agenda (and) …the significance of their strike should be viewed in relation to the global agenda to restructure public education for economic competitiveness and capital accumulation.

In the United States, this agenda ─ a bipartisan agenda ─ began with the Reagan (Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th president of the United States,1981–1989,  born in Tampico, Illinois, died in Los Angeles, California)  administration’s call to hold teachers and schools accountable for results and to run schools like businesses.

In more than twenty-five years various sectors of capital and corporate “education ‘reformers’” have pushed a national system of top-down accountability driven by high-stakes standardized tests, national standards, teacher evaluation tied to test scores, mayoral control of schools, and privatization. In the second decade of the 2000s the public counterpunched.  

Isolationism and regress to possibility and progress

A convergence of social forces and unfolding crises has created an opening for a counter-hegemonic education movement in Chicago.

The economic crisis, the accumulated effects of neoliberal education policies, the acceleration of school closings, the illegitimacy of mayoral control, the persistence and maturation of the education-justice struggles in black and Latina/o communities, and the rebirth of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) created conditions for new alliances and new possibilities to contest the dominant education agenda. This new moment was crystallized in the Chicago teachers’ strike. 

2010 Illinois ‘fiscal crisis’: Chicago Public Schools (CPS) had threatened broad cuts to music and art, increases in class sizes ─ even in affluent neighborhoods; and middle-class parents, a key constituency that Chicago’s mayors had worked to recruit to public schools and whose neighborhoods had experienced no school closings, were alarmed. They formed a new organization to lobby against the cuts.

2011: Newly elected Mayor Emanuel had launched a crusade for a longer school day (same as pre- Emanuel, interminable-day approach to improving schools with no additional resources) as a quick-fix education reform. Parents across the city got angry; white working-class communities were galvanized. Parents previously uninvolved in education struggles began protesting school board policies and in the process encountered black and Latina/o parents who were fighting school closings and charter expansion.

2012 Solidarity: groups of mainly white parents and African-American and Latina/o organizations fighting school closings and education-justice organizations formed a cross-city campaign for an elected representative school board in Chicago.

 

T

he CTU strike, the elected school-board campaign, and growing alliances demonstrate new possibilities.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike changed the education landscape, locally and nationally.

It showed that teachers’ unions in partnership with the community can stand up to the neoliberal assault on public education.

It showed the power of social movement unionism born in part of community education struggles also enlivens those struggles.

It demonstrated the possibility of imagining a counter-hegemonic formation that pushes forward an agenda for education justice that spreads beyond schools to stake a claim for the right to the city.

 

Broad Public Solidarity: community, workers, public interest conjoined

“The significance of the Chicago teachers’, strike, the educators write, “has to be understood in relation to the broad attack on the public sector.

Local governments insist that there is no alternative to address the ‘fiscal crisis’ and press for austerity budgets that cut deep into what remains of the social-safety net and decent public-sector jobs. 

City governments are cutting police and firefighters, slashing public employees’ wages and benefits, closing libraries and schools, foregoing infrastructure repairs and maintenance, and selling off public infrastructure to consortia of transnational investors.

Chicago

This is a class strategy to shift the cost of the crises of financialization, speculative real estate investment, and corporate profiteering run amuck onto working class and poor people, especially people of color and middle-income earners; and to support capital accumulation in the context of lack of ‘profitable’ outlets for investment.

T

Public Sector rally
Civil Servants
Greece

eachers and other public-sector workers are ultimately responsible to the families and communities they serve and their working conditions are tied to the funding and quality of public institutions. This calls on unions to emphasize the connection between the well-being of workers and the well-being of communities and to build principled union-community alliances.

 

The broad-based attacks on teachers and teachers’ unions create conditions for a new teachers’ union politics that breaks with the business unionism that has failed miserably to defend workers and the public interest.

Sources and notes

“The Rebirth of the Chicago Teachers Union and Possibilities for a Counter-Hegemonic Education Movement” by Eric (Rico) Gutstein and Pauline Lipman (Introduction), http://monthlyreview.org/2013/06/01/the-rebirth-of-the-chicago-teachers-union-and-possibilities-for-a-counter-hegemonic-education-movement

Article examining interrelationship of community education struggles and the emergence of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) as a social movement union; and concluding with possibilities for a counter-hegemonic education movement in Chicago:

“For nine days in September, Chicago belonged to the teachers, school paraprofessionals, and clinicians. On September 10, 2012, 26,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) went on strike. It was the first teachers’ strike in Chicago in twenty-five years. While public and private sector unions have taken concessions and capitulated to cuts in wages, benefits, seniority rights, job protections, and much of what was won by the labor movement in the twentieth century, the CTU stood up to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Commercial Club of Chicago, and the billionaire hedge-fund managers who have set out to break teachers’ unions and dismantle public education. Chicago was a sea of CTU red.

“Teachers—and their parent, student, and community supporters—picketed at schools across the city, marched through neighborhood streets, and brought downtown Chicago to a standstill with mass rallies of thousands, day after day. There was no need to defend school entrances against scabs—there were none!”

Authors of essay

Eric (Rico) Gutstein is a professor in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois-Chicago and is active in the movement against education privatization. He is author of Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics: Toward a Pedagogy for Social Justice (2006), and co-editor of Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers, 2nd ed. (2013).

Pauline Lipman is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at University of Illinois-Chicago, Director of the Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education, and an education activist in Chicago. She is author of The New Political Economy of Urban Education: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Right to the City.

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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150 years on, America’s promise squandered by corrupt powerful

Post-Gettysburg Americans fail to seize progressive opportunity

Editing, added emphasis, comment by 

Carolyn Bennett

We cannot dedicate …

It is for us to dedicate ourselves to the great task before us

At the time of Gettysburg, says historian Allen Guelzo, “‘The entire future of democracy was hanging in the balance.’”

What of this Union 150 years from the Battle of Gettysburg? 

… We cannot consecrate

World Socialist Web Site reports on the third day commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg that tens of thousands of visitors toured the battlefield along Cemetery Ridge where Confederate forces were defeated on July 3, 1863. Jerry White spoke with some of the visitors about contemporary U.S. democracy, slavery, and the state of the Union. This is some of what they had to say.

Lloyd Cavanaugh

Resident of Hartford City, Indiana

Veteran of 26 years U.S. military service

‘I came to Gettysburg because so many people died here fighting for basic rights.

… We cannot hallow this ground

‘Today the government is only for the rich, not the people.

‘It shouldn’t be that way.

‘The rich have to give up some but all they are doing is taking and taking.

‘It started with Reagan when he broke the unions. I lost my job then.

‘Something is going to give; things are going to break loose in this country.’

Aleixo Gomes

The brave who struggled here
have consecrated it… 

Leader of Civil War Club

Grand Valley State University

Near Grand Rapids, Michigan

‘It used to be a rich man’s war, a poor man’s fight;

‘Now war is a rich man’s hobby

‘Sometimes it is claimed that the South (in the 1800s) was fighting only for state’s rights — but it was the right to have slaves. Several states seceded, giving one of their reasons as the threat to slavery.’

Debt example of 21st century slavery: ‘The immense economic and political power slaveholders had in the 1860s has parallels to the power of the banks today.’

Instead of directly controlling humans as private property, banks control ‘financial property [and], for all practical purposes, [people are] enslaved when … indebted to them.’

… far above our poor power
to add or detract

Tyranny, shroud of secrecy: ‘…Slavery used to be defended by the law. What happens when the government breaks the law? The law doesn’t define our morality.’

Dave Gamble

Worker at the Homer Laughlin China Company

Resident of Newell, West Virginia

‘What Snowden did is great.

‘People have the right to know and nothing the government does should be kept secret.

‘When documents are released (e.g., those released by Snowden), there are usually blacked out parts.

‘This isn’t a free country.

‘People fought the South because they wanted rights for everyone.

‘They didn’t want anybody to be someone else’s property.’

 

Jim and Andy

Service workers

Gettysburg

‘We are not fans of the government.

Illusion of liberty: ‘They’re supposed to be for the people but they are for a few rich men.

‘They give us the illusion of freedom.

Battle of Gettysburg Map

‘… Both political parties are controlled by Wall Street and the stock market. A few years ago Harley Davidson [maker of millions] told workers the company had no money to pay decent wages and cut the majority of jobs.

Indifference, dissent rising: ‘There are huge protests and revolutions in Egypt and other countries but we let the government get away with everything. … It’s coming here though. You can see it with the Occupy Wall Street movement but it got bought off and petered out.

‘The government is supposed to govern with the consent of the people—well, we’re going to have to have a different kind of government.’

  

I

n his New York Times opinion piece “What Gettysburg proved,” American historian Allen Guelzo wrote of what was essential to Lincoln.

Union Flag
Stars and Stripes

Uppermost in Lincoln’s mind, Guelzo said, was that in 1863 “the American republic was … a dangerously isolated democratic flower in a garden full of aristocratic weeds, and if the Civil War succeeded in sundering the United States into two separate pieces ─

…it would be the final confirmation that democracies were unstable and unworkable pipe dreams.

In Lincoln’s view, expressed in 1861, the “central idea pervading this struggle,” Guelzo interpreted, “[was] the necessity … of proving that popular government is not an absurdity

…for ‘if we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.’

“That ‘proving’ was what Gettysburg – and its roll of dead – provided,” he said.

Confederate Flag
Stars and Bars

“In November, when Lincoln came to dedicate a national cemetery for over 3,500 of the battle’s Union dead, it seemed to him that the willingness to lay down life in such numbers simply to preserve a democracy was all the evidence needed to illustrate democracy’s transcendent value.

“In their sacrifice, ‘the brave men, living and dead, who struggled here’ ─

…had shown that democracy was something more than opportunities for self-interest and self-aggrandizement,

…something that spoke to the fundamental nature of human being itself,

…something that arched like a rainbow in the political sky.

Lincoln Memorial
Washington, D.C.

 Professor Guelzo suggests that, if there is a Gettysburg legacy, it reaches “beyond even the limits of the Civil War.” 

It is “a legacy for democracy itself [a war yet to be won]:  a ‘new birth of freedom.’”

May she forever wave

Incorruptible 

with honor and honesty
with justice for all

Excerpt LINCOLN’S words: “…The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here … It is rather for us to be …  dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation …  shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

America’s

founding settler-leaders and presidents did indeed leave a legacy of papers and principles, promise and potential. It is a shame that later Americans and the unchecked powerful and corrupt, in private and public sectors, are squandering America’s promise and potential.

Sources and notes

“Historian Allen Guelzo speaks on the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg … ‘The entire future of democracy was hanging in the balance’” (interview by Andre Damon: In an interview with World Socialist Web Site reporter Andre Damon, Dr. Guelzo contrasts the popular interest in the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg with the scant attention paid to it by establishment politicians and the media. He places the battle in its world historical context, explaining that the victory of the North was crucial for the success of democratic forms of rule in the United States and internationally,” July 4, 2013, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/04/vide-j04.html

See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9eK1YJqodQ&feature=player_embedded#at=13

“Third day of Gettysburg anniversary: Discussions on Snowden and the decay of democracy” (by Jerry White in Gettysburg), July 4, 2013, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/04/gett-j04.html

“What Gettysburg Proved,” (by ALLEN C. GUELZO), Disunion July 1, 2013 ([published July 3), http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/what-gettysburg-proved/

Allen C. Guelzo is a professor of history at Gettysburg College and the author of Gettysburg: The Last Invasion.

The Gettysburg Address is a world-famous speech delivered by President Abraham Lincoln at the dedication (November. 19, 1863) of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of one of the decisive battles of the American Civil War (July 1–3, 1863).

Excerpt: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation … shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” American Rhetoric, Online Speech Bank, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gettysburgaddress.htm

See also: Gettysburg Address.  (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Inalienable RIGHTS not wedges: 1776, 1948 Declarations

13 Colonies' 
Declaration of Independence
Founding drafters
Circa 1776

Abortion and marriage DO NOT RISE to “inalienable rights”

Editing, excerpting, commentary by 

Carolyn Bennett

Universal Declaration of
Human Rights
1948

Peoples of the United Nations (now 192 countries) in the Charter in 1948 reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of all human beings and in the equal rights of men and women; and determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom [Universal Declaration of Human Rights]. 

A hundred and seventy-two years earlier a smaller group of people comprising thirteen colonies declared “We hold these truths to be self-evident:

…all [people] are created equal, endowed with certain unalienable rights; among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

…to secure these rights, governments are instituted … deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

…Whenever any Form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effectuate the people’s safety and happiness.

Beyond personal wedge issues

Actual rights, liberty historically documented

…for common good

…for everyone everywhere

“Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family,” reads the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” [human family, society, not this or that person]

Reflecting on the era of the Second World War, the Declaration continues, “Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of [humankind]” and impelled urgent arrival of a

world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people

If human beings are not to be compelled to have recourse as a last resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, their human rights must be protected by the rule of law

[Too] It is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations. 

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

1948

excerpt

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of [equality among equals].

Article 2: (1) Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. (2) No distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 23: (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment; (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work; (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for self and family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection; (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

 

Article 24: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. 

Article 25: (1). Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of self and of family including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26: (1) Everyone has the right to [quality] education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and ─

 

…to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms

It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

Article 29: (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (2) In the exercise of rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Declaration of 13 American colonies 

July 4, 1776

excerpt

Reflecting on long-standing abuses of power, war against the people, the Declaration of Independence reads:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that [human beings] are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism ─ it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

The head of state is accused of ─

…refusing Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good

…obstructing the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers

…erecting a multitude of New Offices, and sending swarms of officers to harass our people and [devour] their substance

…depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury

…transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences

…taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the form of our government

…suspending [balance of powers and advice and consent of legislative branch] and declaring the executive invested with power to legislate in all cases whatsoever

…abdicating domestic governance by declaring [the people] outside government protection and waging war against [them]

…transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and (deceit) ─ scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

“

In every stage of oppression, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms but our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

“A [leader] whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

“W

e hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, … endowed … with certain unalienable Rights ─ that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

… To secure these rights, Governments are instituted … deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed 

 Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to (effectuate) their Safety and Happiness. 

In my view

happiness is a shallow and overused construct. In contemporary times “marriage” and “abortion” (one or the other or both,  pro or con) might fall within the scope of someone’s notion of or in aid of one’s “happiness.” But these are individual and destructively-limiting wedge issues that drive fissures into society. They do not rise to the level of “inalienable rights” but instead constitute a trivializing of rights and liberty; and are often a denial of human rights and liberty. Narrowing leaves out far more.

I think our founding documents set out by the settlers, the founders, contain great promise and potential. But they were not the end-all or be-all any more than was the later Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Particularly because the United States of America ─ in 237 years since the Colonies’ Declaration (65 years since the UN UDHR) ─ has become an inordinately powerful and hostile nation, the people of America must establish for the first time a continuous and substantive  movement beyond tribal politics evidenced in  ─

…if “my” politician does it, it is okay;

…if “The President” does it, it’s legal;

…“my” personal issues take priority over issues for the public good: e.g., marriage, whether narrowed or broadened, v. abolition of human slavery or human rights for all people to shelter, work, education, security, speech

The American character often is oblivious to or deliberately ignorant of broader human contexts, even of the history of the United States and historical documents which have defined or sought to define the country and its character. Americans must develop an ethos and attitude intent continuously on advancing the public good.

1776-2013

To realize its promise and potential, I believe this country that I love needs a substantive progressivism ─ one that critically considers and incorporates elements of what are today Left-Right-Center ideological dichotomies.

Sources and notes

Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1948] Preamble

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, Declaration of Independence United States [1776] In Congress, July 4, 1776

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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European “friends” react to U.S. government’s unfriendly fire

With “friends” like these ─ who needs…?

Edited excerpt, commentary by Carolyn Bennett

The U.S. government for the longest time has been using electronic hacking measures to infiltrate the personal, professional, business and international affairs of individual and nations ─ from the United States to Europe to Asia to Africa; and that is only as much as we know today.

Under the regime holding unchecked power in Washington:

Anybody is subject to attack. Anyone can be a victim. Anybody can be a convenient “terrorist”; anybody an “enemy” ─ including peoples and nations traditionally believed to be actual friends of the United States of America.

Corrupt, inept politics makes expedient friends and expedient enemies. Such leadership of a single nation ─ let alone a presumptive or self-proclaimed leader of the world, even of the Western world ─ is worst than outrageous. In my view, it is criminal and, in order to end the lawlessness and the insidious breakdown of human rights conventions, these leaders must be called to account before an independent court of justice.

Some leaders in Europe seem also to be outraged, as indicated by today’s article in Spiegel Online: “‘No Longer in the Cold War’ ─ (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel Infuriated by U.S. Spying”

Dr. Angela Merkel
Chancellor, Germany

 German Chancellor Angela Merkel (through her representative):  

‘We are no longer in the Cold War’ [Merkel had already communicated her displeasure to the U.S]….

‘The monitoring of friends … is unacceptable [and] can’t be tolerated.…

‘Trust has to be the basis of our cooperation.… When it comes to this affair, trust has to be re-established.’

Chancellor Angela Merkel

German Economy Minister Philipp Rösler (vice chancellor to Merkel): 

‘The energetic collection of data [by] … our partners in [the] European [Union] and abroad is outrageous.

‘We have understanding for combating terrorism’ … but not for ‘aimless, indiscriminate and unrestrained spying on citizens.’

German Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner:

‘We need better protection of private data; not more state surveillance. Otherwise, a free trade agreement makes no sense.’

European Parliament President Martin Schulz

‘As a European and a representative of a European institution, I feel treated like the representative of the enemy.

‘Is this the basis for a constructive relationship ...? I think not.’

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso (his representative)

‘We expect rapid clarification from our American partners. … Of course we are worried because, if the allegations are true, it would create a great deal of unrest.’

EU diplomats with involvement of German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and in consultative agreement with EU Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton (statement from the Foreign Ministry in Berlin):

‘…Such activity among partners and friends is unacceptable.’

President François Hollande (France):

‘We cannot accept this kind of behavior between partners and allies. …We ask that this stop immediately. [U.S. surveillance and spying activities also targeted Paris]

President Giorgio Napolitano (Italy):

‘This is a touchy issue that requires satisfactory answers.’

  

U.S. carnage on human rights

─ from Seoul to Damascus, Tripoli to Paris, Islamabad to Berlin; and one after another but really the same ole regime keeps up a mantra to the people: “They” just don’t like us because we’re so wonderful, with our “freedoms” and all. Well, you can believe this if you choose or you can vote them out or recall them or haul the whole lot of them before an independent tribunal (or do all of these).

Politics and government officials as rotten as these, as inept, as arrogant can be neither retrofitted nor rehabilitated. In my opinion, they must be uprooted, all of them, without exception or fear or favor. Americans’ romantic affair with partisans and tribes, mere color and political and or ideological spectrum must be ended; or this nation will come undone, entirely. Instead of progressing, it will continue its downward spiral, its regress, its BREAKDOWN.

Source

“‘No Longer in the Cold War’ ─ Merkel Infuriated by U.S. Spying,” July 1, 2013 [© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013  All Rights Reserved

 Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH], 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/merkel-furious-at-us-spying-and-eu-to-check-offices-for-bugs-a-908859.html

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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