Latino Civil Rights Group Gives First-Ever Presidential Endorsement to Harris, Rolling Stone, Aug. 9, 2024

So glad to see this endorsement of Vice-President Kamala Harris for U.S. President. This was a great move by former President Domingo Garcia and LULAC, our nation's leading Latino/x/a civil rights organization of which I have been a longtime member. 

As we reflect on the 5th anniversary of the August 3rd Walmart shooting in El Paso where a white supremacist gunman rationalized his actions with Replacement Theory before taking the lives of 23 people and injuring 22 others, I agree that it is an urgent matter that the scapegoating of Mexicans, Latinas/os, and immigrants stop. 

Irresponsible, reckless words lead some people to commit unspeakable crimes and harm innocent people who might have thought otherwise had these broader, Trumpian anti-immigrant discourses and campaigns not been given any oxygen to begin with. Our governor, sadly, is also deeply implicated in this regard.

Sí se puede!

-Angela Valenzuela

LULAC

Latino Civil Rights Group Gives First-Ever Presidential Endorsement to Harris

In endorsing Kamala Harris, LULAC’s former president says “hate-mongering and scapegoating Latinos and immigrants must be stopped”

By Nikki McCann Ramirez August 9, 2024 | Rolling Stone

Left: The crest of the United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Right: Vice President Kamala Harris. AP Photo/John Raoux; Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The nation’s oldest Latin-American civil rights advocacy group has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House — the first endorsement of its kind for the organization. 

In a statement to NBC News, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a civil rights group established in 1929, wrote that they are “proud to endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz because of the real issues facing Latino communities and all Americans across the nation; we can trust them to do what is right for our community and the country.”

Former LULAC President and LULAC Adelante PAC Chairman Domingo Garcia — the author of the statement — added, “The politics of hate-mongering and scapegoating Latinos and immigrants must be stopped.” 

“Latinos understand how much is at stake in this election, for not only our community but our democracy,” he added. 

LULAC has historically shied away from explicit presidential endorsements, a reflection of the wide array of political leanings throughout the various Latin-American diasporic communities within the United States. The organization was founded in the early 20th century as a coalition of smaller advocacy groups that sought to challenge discriminatory laws and policies targeting Mexican-Americans. 

With immigration and border security serving as driving narratives in the 2024 election, LULAC’s break with electoral impartiality to endorse Harris will be a boon to the fledgling campaign. 

“They’ve never backed away from the fight for the communities they represent, and Vice President Harris has never stopped fighting to create opportunities for Latino families,” Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told NBC News. 

Despite the Harris campaign only being in its first weeks of operation, immigration has already become a central focus. On Friday the campaign released an ad touting Harris as a capable prosecutor who will crack down on organized crime and drug trafficking at the border. 

“Fixing the border is tough, so is Kamala Harris,” the ad says. 

Unschooling Is the Parenting Trend That’s Pissing Everyone Off No math. No social studies. Kids set the curriculum. Is this trend in education helping or harming kids?

Friends:

"Unschooling." Put that word into your vocabulary. It overlaps with the concept of "homeschooling," which tends to have an anti-government, individualistic, libertarian bent to it. I can see how this can be a class issue with families requiring sustained, inordinate resources and parental time, which are luxuries that most families do not have. 

I think there are legitimate critiques of education, including many which I share. My concern is what is expressed by Indiana University professor of education Robert Kunzman as follows:

"Perhaps the biggest drawback of an unschooling education, according to Kunzman, is one that is less quantifiable via research. In a world that has become increasingly polarized, where there is far less focus on being civic-minded or community-minded and there has been increasing emphasis on the self, Kunzman is concerned that unschooling in a limited, siloed environment can further contribute to children growing up in an isolated bubble, without exposure to outside ideas or perspectives."

The anti-thesis of this kind of education for me is expansive, meaning interdisciplinary where young people of all ages can learn an array of topics across many fields where they can make connections across them. Children optimally develop the capacity to think analytically, evaluate and synthesize evidence, and become independent thinkers. Empathy and interpersonal skills, especially involving working in and with one's community, help prepare youth to first know and love themselves so that they can know and love others. This has never been more important in our increasingly connected and highly diverse world.

Fostering a sense of personal responsibility and being an active citizen to make the world a better place can't happen in a silo that diminishes not solely children's worlds but as a system, diminishes democracy to that which one can get out of it as opposed to what one can do to perfect the union.

-Angela Valenzuela

Unschooling Is the Parenting Trend 

That’s Pissing Everyone Off

No math. No social studies. Kids set the curriculum. Is this trend in education helping or harming kids?

BY EJ DICKSON JUNE 24, 2024 | THE ROLLING STONE 

“WE DON’T TEACH our children anything,” the spiritual influencer Mami Onami proclaims in a TikTok. “Anything that they learn is in response to either their interest or their questions.” She has near-translucent 

“WE DON’T TEACH our children anything,” the spiritual influencer Mami Onami proclaims in a TikTok. “Anything that they learn is in response to either their interest or their questions.” She has near-translucent blue eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones, with tattoos snaking across her neck, arms, and taut abdominal muscles; one of them is the word “gentleness” on her forehead, in neat cursive. She then flips open to a page of her six-year-old son Rainer’s notebook, where he has scrawled the words “egg,” “lamp,” “jar,” and “lion.” “This is him doing it by himself,” she says, adding, “If you do not like this idea of sending your kids away for 40 hours a week, if you are not into your kids conforming, trust that you can follow their interests and they will learn everything they need to learn, not what other people need them to learn.”

There are 4,075 comments on the video, almost all of which are vitriolic. “You’re crippling your children,” one top comment sniffs. “It’s fine if you want to keep them ignorant forever….I personally want better for my kids.” Many call her “lazy,” accusing her of shirking her responsibilities in educating her children. Some of the most vicious comments are directed not at Onami, but at her son, mocking him for being developmentally “behind.”

@mami.onami

The best part is that my son LOVES learning, LOVES beginning something new, and is experienced with practicing things until he improves. They do this school because they want to, and when you want to know something; your retention is 💯. Learn more about what we teach our kids at the story highlight “we teach them” #freeschool #unschool @Your Natural Learner

♬ original sound – Mami Onami

Onami is no stranger to controversy: A spiritual influencer and teacher with more than 250,000 followers on TikTok, she has advocated for such practices as “free birth,” or pregnancy and labor without medical intervention, and drinking her own menstrual blood. But she says she was shocked by the venomous reaction. “I wasn’t expecting that video to blow up,” she tells Rolling Stone. “If I had, my hair wouldn’t have been looking like that.” She says she posted it because she was genuinely proud of her son’s achievements. She had been concerned about his prior lack of engagement in reading or writing, and she was thrilled to see him starting to express interest in words of his own volition.

The Human Toll of Greg Abbott’s War at the Border: A dispatch from Eagle Pass, Rolling Stone Magazine

Friends and all who care about the humanitarian crisis occurring along the U.S.-Mexico border. Do remember that people coming into our country have multiple and significant challenges in coming into a new culture, learning a language that's foreign to them, and dealing with trauma that emanates from the places they have left and oftentimes, from the journey itself.

Glad to see the Rolling Stone magazine giving this a lot of ink.  They care. We should all care about Abbott's lethal, macabre, and necropolitical ambitions. It's a feeling for many of us here in Texas of having gotten taken over by a foreign, cruel, and atrocious political power. One wonders how our state officials sleep well at night. Only a heart of metal can walk away from this.

-Angela Valenzuela

DEADLY AMBITION

The Human Toll of Greg Abbott’s War at the Border

A dispatch from Eagle Pass, where the Texas governor has amped up the cruelty toward migrants to boost his profile

National Guard stands behind Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Feb. 4, 2024 in Eagle Pass. RAQUEL NATALICCHIO/HOUSTON CHRONICLE/GETTY IMAGES

EAGLE PASS, Texas — The video is 13 seconds long. In the foreground is an orderly green lawn, lit and safe. In the background, there are the lights of Mexico, Coahuila state. In the middle is the river. It’s a void, darker than the night sky. 

Amid crickets, a woman’s voice echoes from the void, or maybe a child’s. Then a man’s. They’re crying out for help.

The lawn belongs to former state Rep. Poncho Nevárez (D), who represented Eagle Pass in the Texas Legislature for eight years. Some time back, the state of Texas installed rows of concertina wire, the razor-bladed coiled fencing first invented to control cattle and then to mangle soldiers in the First World War. The wire hadn’t stopped anyone from crossing. Sometimes migrants injured themselves trying to cross. Sometimes it trapped them in the river. It is more dangerous than it looks, especially if you’re hungry and tired, and even more so at night.

Nevárez does that night what anyone with a conscience would do: He tries to help. The wire means he can’t easily reach the river. With difficulty, he makes his way into the void, but he can’t locate the source echoing cries with his flashlight. He calls the Border Patrol, but he knows they don’t do water rescues. The cries die out. In the morning, there is no trace of them.

****

GenZ on the Rise: The GOP Is Pushing to Steal Students’ Votes, Rolling Stone, 11.28.23

This Nov. 28th Rolling Stone piece by Tessa Stuart made me think of this quote out of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Doesn't this resonate for the moment we're all experiencing right now? I know it does for me.

GenZ youth are a clear force in state and national politics. Born sometime around 1996-2012, they are between the ages of 10 and 27. Many of these are our students in our classes in high school or college. They're the younger ones in our graduate, especially master's, programs. 

They're unlike any previous generation. They are, for example, the most generationally diverse age-generational cohort in U.S. history (e.g., as compared to Boomers, Gen X, or Millennials). The generation following them, "Gen Alpha," will be even more diverse. Key quote:

“Young people are the reason why Biden won in 2020 and Democrats up and down the ballot won in 2022 and 2023,” says Abhi Rahman, national communications director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “If Gen Z continues to vote, we’re on the cusp of the most progressive era in our country’s history. Republicans know this as well, and that’s why they’re doing everything they can to stop young people from voting, including the fight for restrictions that we’re seeing play out in states like Wisconsin today.”

Yes, they are progressive and within GenZ, this attribute applies more strongly to females than males (Twenge, 2023). I can't help but think about reproduction rights and resistance to macho, misogynist culture playing into this. GenZ youth are also "digital natives." At least in developed countries, they only know this digital, online world that we have created for them—for better and for worse. 

To their credit, Gen Z has normalized greater openness on mental health and illness. That's also a good thing so that folks don't suffer from stigma or fail to get the mental health services and supports they need.

The pandemic, curiously, gave not only a bump to Boomers and Gen X-ers with expanded computer skills like Zoom conference calls, but GenZ did, too, albeit from a different, more skillful starting point. 

We also got pronouns from GenZ. The right, and some on the left, decry this, but it's probably because this generation, more than any other one prior, has simply shown more of themselves and who they are by virtue of social media. I've been studying this for awhile. I find it all so fascinating. Pronouns are not at all about political correctness, but about inclusion in being one's full self and that's a great thing.

What works for GenZ is the one-on-one. They pay attention to people they know and trust and who are authentic with them. So they take in information not just differently, but, I think, with a modicum of healthy skepticism. Tik Tok, specifically, I hear, is also huge for information sharing within this generation and for younger millennials—and for strategizing their next moves, too. Incidentally, older Millennials prefer Instagram and Facebook. I got this specific information from a friend who works at the UT library.

My message to GenZ and younger Millennials is the following: 

First, you are genuinely feared. This Rolling Stone article attests to this.

Second, no matter what, do not let the GOP or anybody or anything try and keep you from voting. Your vote is precious, now more than ever. If all of you vote, you WILL get the outcomes you seek and you WILL position the planet for its most progressive era in human history.

Third, yes, we need world peace and I'm with you on prioritizing the environment.

Fourth, your best resistance to oppression is to resist anyone or anything that seeks to take away your right to an abundant, fulfilling life—even as you always seek justice so that all may share in this abundance.

Fifth, get grounded in community and build ethical relationships that nurture your sense of self and that speak to the value you add just by being exactly who you are. 

Finally, always be ethical and responsible in your uses of power, considering always a role that caring adults, family members and elders play, or can play, in your life as mentors, advisers, and role models. Your thriving depends on your being in community. It's great for your health!

Much love and cariño to all of you in these worst and best of times.

Peace/paz,

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Twenge, J. M. (2023). Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future. Simon and Schuster.

The GOP Is Pushing to Steal Students’ Votes

Instead, they're seeing increased turnout and lawsuits challenging new restrictions

Instead, they're seeing increased turnout and lawsuits challenging new restrictions

LAST WEEK IN Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could invalidate the state’s comically, ludicrously, preposterously gerrymandered maps. If the court strikes those maps down, it will likely mean the end of the GOP’s decadeslong domination of the statehouse — and it will be because of what happened in Dane County in April.

Almost a quarter million voters turned out in Dane, home of University of Wisconsin, for a spring special election — several thousand more voters than turned out in Milwaukee, a county with almost double Dane’s population. A staggering 82 percent of Dane voters cast ballots to elevate liberal Judge Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court. Protasiewicz — whose vote could decide the gerrymandering case — ended up winning by 11 points.

Coming on the heels of the 2022 midterms — when Wisconsin led the nation in youth turnout in the country — the GOP judicial candidate’s April humiliation stunned the party. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker put it plainly: “Young people are the issue.”

“We’ve got to turn it around if we’re going to win again,” Walker, now the president of a conservative youth organization called Young America’s Foundation, told Fox News. The power that young voters wield was not exactly a revelation to Walker; as governor 12 years earlier, he signed a law making it harder to use a student ID to vote, prompting universities in Wisconsin to offer IDs that met the state’s new standards for free.

Student engagement has only soared in Wisconsin in the years since, but that hasn’t stopped the GOP from pulling pages from the same playbook. Across the country this year, targeted efforts to disenfranchise student voters have ramped up as election after election proved just how critical the bloc is to guarantee Democratic victories. With encouragement from influential GOP operatives, those efforts — which met with middling success in ‘23 — are poised to escalate in 2024. And they speak to a growing fear with which Republican officials and strategists regard young voters.

In Wisconsin, the GOP-controlled legislature has seized every opportunity to try and block students from voting. “We’ve seen really strong student engagement in our last couple of elections,” Morgan Hess, executive director of the Wisconsin Assembly Democrats, tells Rolling Stone. “And suddenly, we’re seeing new legislation that would prohibit student’s ability to vote.”

Hess points to GOP efforts over the past several years to make it harder to register, eliminate drop boxes, shorten early voting, increase residency requirements, and reduce polling locations — mostly in Madison and Milwaukee. “These are very targeted operations that serve to further entrench the power that they already have,” says Hess.

Months after their April routing, party functionaries at the Wisconsin GOP’s convention mulled a resolution demanding college students to vote absentee in their hometowns; one supporter of the resolution declared students had “hijacked” his city. The resolution failed to advance after another official raised the possibility that attacking students’ right to vote could backfire — an argument that seems prophetic in retrospect, as a growing number of polls show Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, outpolling Joe Biden with young voters.

Nevertheless, Republicans in state legislatures across the country this year have proposed laws targeting the student vote. In New Hampshire, House Republicans introduced a bill that would have prohibited any college students who pay out-of-state tuition from voting, and require the state’s colleges to provide the secretary of state with a list of eligible voters. Lawmakers “want the elections to be the reflection of those who reside in New Hampshire towns and who ultimately bear the consequences of the election results,” said Republican Rep. Sandra Panek, who introduced the measure in committee. (The bill was eventually killed.)

The same month, a GOP lawmaker in Texas introduced a bill that would ban polling places at colleges and universities. (That bill has not advanced out of committee.) In Virginia, there was a failed effort to repeal a law that allows anyone 16 or older to register to vote if they will be 18 by the next major election. And, according to the Voting Rights Lab, legislation seeking to change the rules around student IDs was introduced or enacted in at least 15 states this year.

It’s all part of a concerted strategy advanced by GOP operatives like Cleta Mitchell — one of the central figures behind Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. At a summit a few weeks after Wisconsin’s April special election, Mitchell told Republican donors that the party must do more to limit campus voting in swing states like Wisconsin “for any candidate other than a leftist to have a chance to WIN in 2024.”

Students and their advocates are pushing back against these efforts. In Wisconsin, leaflets distributed on campus ahead of April’s special election included information educating voters about the state’s ID requirements. In Idaho — the state that saw the largest increase in voter registrations from 18- and 19-year-olds ahead the 2022 midterms — a law set to go into effect Jan. 1, which bans the use of student IDs to register to vote or cast a ballot, is being challenged in lawsuits by the organization Babe Vote, the League of Women Voters and March for Our Lives Idaho. The groups claim that the law violates constitutional protections against age discrimination in voting.

“Young people are the reason why Biden won in 2020 and Democrats up and down the ballot won in 2022 and 2023,” says Abhi Rahman, national communications director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “If Gen Z continues to vote, we’re on the cusp of the most progressive era in our country’s history. Republicans know this as well, and that’s why they’re doing everything they can to stop young people from voting, including the fight for restrictions that we’re seeing play out in states like Wisconsin today.”

The Climate Apartheid: How Global Warming Affects the Rich and Poor

As per this sobering Rolling Stones piece, climate change is indeed remaking our world.  Quote from within:

But economic losses are only one way of thinking about the consequences of sea-level rise. The number of people who may be displaced – in other words, potential climate refugees – is another. When you factor in future population growth, Lagos is near the top of the list of places to worry about. By 2050, the city is projected to have 30 million people. How many of those will be swamped by rising seas and forced to flee? Various studies have come up with numbers ranging from 3 million to 8 million. Whatever the number, you only have to spend a few hours in Lagos to understand that sea-level rise will displace a lot of people, and those people are going to have to go somewhere.

Thanks to American civil rights attorney, Judith Browne-Dianis, for sharing.  All of this is so troubling and terrifying. She herself, a brilliant national leader, is co-director of the Advancement Project, a progressive, nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.  

We were together to honor both John H. Jackson and Barbara Madeloni as this year's "Deborah W. Meier - Heroes in Education Award" in a wonderful program that recognizes the contributions by major, national leaders in education, including their championing of the fight against high-stakes testing. You can check out the FairTest Staff and Board here. FairTest  always puts on such a beautiful program.  

Here are this year's awardee's bios:

Dr. John H. Jackson is President and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. Dr. Jackson leads the Foundation’s efforts to ensure a high quality public education for all students regardless of race or gender. He joined Schott after seven years at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Dr. Jackson also served on the Obama-Biden Education Policy transition team and was Senior Policy Advisor in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education in the Clinton Administration. He holds a J.D. from the University of Illinois and a Doctorate in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Barbara Madeloni is President of the 110,000-member Massachusetts Teachers Association and a staunch advocate for students and educators in public schools and higher education. She is committed to racial and economic justice and to building effective unions in alliance with parents, students and communities. She was a key leader in the successful 2016 Massachusetts campaign to block the expansion of charter schools. Madeloni is senior lecturer (on leave) in the Labor Studies Department at UMass-Amherst, where she previously worked at the School of Education. She also has taught high school and worked as a psychotherapist.

Thank you, FairTest, for doing all that you do in leading the nation in the fight against high-stakes testing.  Your work has made a tremendous difference in the struggle that has evolved into an opt-out movement that I am hoping will merge with other movements. These consist of the bilingual education, Ethnic Studies, place-based education, authentic assessment, and grow-your-own, critically conscious teacher agendas in order to forge a culturally sustaining, fair, and equitably-oriented approaches to educational reform that are rooted in the cultures, languages, histories, stories, and lived experiences of our communities.  

We must develop and nurture partnerships between community-based organizations, non-profits, civil rights groups, and higher education institutions, districts and cities.  Together, we can accomplish this great task of re-envisioning public schools, working in an interlocking way with our resource-rich communities and local organizations.

We're going green in other places.  No reasons why we can't or shouldn't go green in education by getting close to the ground in our communities.  Plus, we are all the better for it.  This is grassroots democracy at its best! 

And let's keep fighting against these tests that for far too many a student, render the schooling experience a punishing one.  We need less schooling and more education.  

Why must education be a punishing one for any child? Why must education be a punishing one for any teacher or administrator?  It doesn't have to be this way.  But our communities must organize in  and with our most democratic institution in our history in this country, namely, the public schools.  Yes, more people of conscience need to run for public office, but this is but only one component.  We need to work to bring the late education philosopher, psychologist and education reformer, John Dewey's, words to life in his characterization of public schools as "laboratories for democracy."

These standardized, high-stakes tests are handmaiden to the pursuit of the corporate sector's complete ownership and control of public education—a dystopia, with only a few  public school "outposts," vestiges of an earlier era, located here and there. 

No matter how nicely dressed it looks—which these corporate folks happen to be very good at when you see that they put so much of our taxpayer money into marketing and not teachers who do not have to be certified to teach in their schools—this anti-democratic approach equates to a diminishing of democracy, meaning a loss of democratic control over public education. 

No more elected school boards or elections. This is a contract society where you as a consumer get the best education you can buy and beholden to a corporation.  How alienating.  How meaningless.  And how, as a consequence, dangerous, or potentially so.

John and Barbara, thank you for doing all that you do in the world to help our children, parents, teachers, and communities.  And Judith, may you keep up the good fight!  So wonderful to see you and everybody at FairTest.  

Those of us that have been involved in the struggle against high-stakes testing have been well served by FairTest over the years.  

My friends, do consider making a donation to FairTest HERE so that they can keep on doing great work.

And do read this very concerning piece below. Our nations are, for the most part, not having the conversations that we need to be having on climate change and its current impacts, and how these are circumscribed by class, race, economics, and power—including the making of a "climate apartheid," as this piece so clearly shows.

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

The Climate Apartheid: How Global Warming Affects the Rich and Poor

A trip to Lagos, Nigeria to investigate the social consequences of climate change 

A young boy swims through the Makoko slum in Lagos Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty

By Jeff Goodell