Jan 19A Movement Veteran SpeaksA review of The Movement Made Us by David Dennis Jr. and David Dennis Sr. For the younger generation, and even for elders, “the Civil Rights Movement” gets reduced to gauzy images and simple generalizations. There was a bus boycott, freedom riders, some demonstrators got beaten, voter registration campaigns spread…Mississippi4 min readMississippi4 min read
Aug 4, 2022The wages of exile — American war resisters in CanadaI turned in my draft card and sent it back to my draft board in October of 1967. The anti-war movement was large and growing — our protests escalating and our militancy escalating — but nothing we did stopped our government’s genocidal aggression against the people of Vietnam. On this…Anti War6 min readAnti War6 min read
Jul 8, 2022A Life-changing PoemUpon being asked what was my favorite poem, I wrote this: My relationship with poetry has been fraught and complicated. In high school, William Butler Yeats was an awakening for me. My method of approaching poetry is piecemeal, a jittery chicken pecking a bit here and a bit there. I’ve…Poetry6 min readPoetry6 min read
Feb 4, 2022The times they are a’changing: Abolitionist teaching under attackIt would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. All these manly men of the right whimpering about books their kids are reading, whining about their free speech being violated while they cancel history, literature, and the arts. The McMinn County school board in Tennessee bans Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Texas…Book Banning3 min readBook Banning3 min read
Oct 4, 2021Reading Freire in San QuentinDuring the doctoral class on Social and Critical Foundations of Education, we are digging into the work of Paolo Freire. For me, it is a visit to an old friend. For many, it is their first introduction to his great work and the revolutionary period that gave rise to…Freire11 min readFreire11 min read
Sep 17, 2021Recall fever: All these recalls decrease democracyNow that the spurious project to recall Governor Newsom has been defeated, we can step back and review the whole bizarre episode and the lessons we might draw from it. Let’s remember that the vote, foisted on us by billionaire donors, cost the state $276 million to conduct and threatened…Recall Elections4 min readRecall Elections4 min read
May 1, 2021Capitalism is killing us — the COVID case(Photo credit: Channi Anand/AP) Greed is killing hundreds of thousands of people around the world, an avoidable catastrophe, fueling surges and viral variants, and ensuring that COVID will linger, mutate, and strike back, killing many more people inside the US. As COVID ravages India — three hundred and sixty thousand…Covid 194 min readCovid 194 min read
Apr 20, 2021Educators in the Freedom StruggleA review of Teacher Unions and Social Justice: Organizing for the Schools and Communities our Students Deserve When the history of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic is written, one of the most searing stories will be the transformative accomplishments of millions of teachers across the country. With no warning, teachers were…Teachers7 min readTeachers7 min read
Feb 23, 2021Everyone shouts “Black Lives Matter!” — but heaven forbid we change anythingLast summer was a heady time. Historic, truly epic, protests and even uprisings took place in response to the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many more. But they were not just a response to that — they were the motion unleashed of decades, centuries of…BlackLivesMatter5 min readBlackLivesMatter5 min read
Published in The Shadow·Feb 5, 2021The Undocumented Speak–a book review of We are not dreamers: Undocumented scholars theorize undocumented life in the United States by Leisy Abrego and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales American schooling reflects and contains all the contradictions, all the inequities that characterize the broader society. And the condition of immigrants, the designation of some people as…DACA4 min readDACA4 min read
