In a video posted on X (formerly Twitter), the professor, Steve Tamari, can be seen moving closer to the chaos, trying to capture the scene on camera, when a police officer grabs his arm and pushes him back. A few other officers joined in restraining Tamari, grabbing the man, slamming him to the ground and later dragging his limp body to a police van.
You can also see history professor, Dr. Steve Tamari, being beaten, dragged, and dumped behind a police van like a sack of potatoes.
Last updated May 2, 2024
In a final mention of the growing number of campus protests against the murderous war on Palestinians, CBS featured Bill Whitaker in the "Final Minute" segment. CBS seemingly thinks that the student and faculty protests can be resolved by more Dartmouth U programs that bring together both Jewish and Arab students to share their disagreements in the collegial space of a classroom.
If the growing protests were about disagreements among Arab and Jewish students, I would agree. But it's not, and methinks CBS knows that.
In case CBS doesn't know, the civil disobedience spreading across American universities is aimed to put pressure on politicians here and abroad to end Netanyahu's genocidal war machine and the occupation of Gaza. The source of the protests is not Jewish and Arab disagreements on campus.
So when a smarmy Bill Whitaker closes with "American education could benefit from a few more Dartmouths," the effort to place blame for campus disruptions on the colleges, themselves, is clear. Were CBS not such an intricate cog of the military-industrial complex, perhaps we would have more CBS investigations into how and why our own government continues to enable the strategic slaughter of innocents. Instead, we have CBS's misleading and bad-tasting pablum offered as a closing bit of wisdom.
Postscript:
It seems that talk works pretty well in the classroom, but police rot remains police rot--even at Dartmouth. From WaPo:
At Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, police said they arrested 90 protesters. A Dartmouth professor said in an interview it had been “a peaceful, inclusive protest” and that the police response was disproportionate.
If politicians and campus bureaucrats were to learn anything from the 1960s campus uprisings that could help them today deal with the rising tide of student and faculty indignation at Netanyahu's continuing murderous war against Palestinians, it should be that expulsions, riot gear, and jail will not restore the culturally-isolated academic order and the myopic careerist environment of the modern corporate university. Alas, "something's happening here."
Just as the Free Speech Movement born at Berkeley embodied a desire by students to involve themselves in off-campus issues, i.e., the emerging Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, the student rumblings on today's campuses from New York to Gainesville to Austin to Los Angeles echo the same commitment to humane values, the same righteous anger, and the same determination to have their universities embrace policies that are are consistent with universities' traditional humanistic values grounded in celebrating life on Earth and the rights of all people to live free.
Today's students are no longer satisfied with lip service to free speech and the right to protest from pompous administrators like Vanderbilt's chancellor, Daniel Diermeier, who refers to Vanderbilt as "my campus." And especially when the right to protest is conditioned by rules against the disruption of any university operation. As Amna Nawaz pointed out in her interview with Diermeier, "many would say the purpose of protests is to disrupt."
The students who are participating in this new protest movement agree. From Columbia student, Sofia Ongele:
She said the university’s response feels contradictory.
“The university wants us to learn about protests and social movements — people like MLK did participate in civil disobedience — but not to take that knowledge and apply it to something that really, really matters,” she said.
But the growing wave of demonstrations sparked by the Columbia protests has made her hopeful for college students around the country, who she said now share a common sense of purpose.
“It’s been beautiful to see,” she said.
So exactly 60 years after the first mass acts of civil disobedience on American campuses in support of free speech, don't be surprised to see civil disobedience on campus once again lighting the torch of freedom for human rights, both here and abroad.
Two days after a stunning repudiation of the Governor by production workers who voted 3-1 for unionization at the VW plant in Chattanooga, Bill Lee has surrendered once again to the reality that parents, school boards, teachers, and students do not want taxpayer money going to fund private schools, de-fund public schools, breach the separation of church and state, and rebuild the apartheid system of education in Tennessee.
It seems that Lee's failure this year could be due to his plan to keep the voucher scheme details secret, even from the Republican legislature, until the last minute, thus avoiding scrutiny from the public. With the Senate and the House in the dark about Lee's Christian Nationalist scheme, each chamber moved forward with its own version of school coupons, thus making it impossible for all parties to come together at the last minute to shove through the Koch Bro scheme:
While Lee announced his vision for the program in November, he delayed releasing specific details on the plan until well into 2024. By that time, House and Senate Republicans had devised vastly different versions of the plan, and each chamber appeared entrenched in their positions.
So its back to the heifer barn for Bill Lee, where he will stand by for new voucher plans to be devised by his brain trust at Backwards U.
Updated April 21, 2024
In 2014 when Volkswagen plant workers in Chattanooga held their first vote on joining the UAW, Senator Bob Corker (R) and Gov. Bill Haslam stuck their sharp dirty noses into workers' business ahead of the vote. That vote failed.
Then in 2019 during the lead-up to a second vote, Gov. Bill Lee actively campaigned for international corporate interests and against the interests of workers in his own state. Workers lost that vote by 57 ballots.
So it was nothing new this month when Lee once against chose the side of the corporate elite against the workers of Tennessee. On April 8, he publicly warned that a vote to join the UAW would be "a big mistake." This time, however, workers ignored the Republican fearmongering and voted in the best economic interests of their families.
A preliminary tally released by the company showed workers favored union representation by a count of 2,628 to 985, a nearly 3-1 margin. The landslide win gives the union a crucial toehold in the anti-union South.
And so VW Chattanooga becomes the first auto plant in the South to unionize by election since the 1940s.
Congratulations, workers!
As parents, students, and teachers lined the gallery with signs calling for gun regulations in a state where are none, a bill sailed through the State Senate to arm teachers.
The best reaction so far belongs to Senate Democrat, Jeff Yarbro, who posted this on X:
The legislature doesn’t trust teachers to pick out books for their classroom or teach basic history—things they’re actually trained to do, but is authorizing them to carry & use firearms in active shooter situations?!?
This place has lost its damn mind.
Even though Tennessee's unqualified Education Commissioner collects over $21,000 per month to wreck the State's public schools with Bill Lee's proposed school voucher scheme, she, nonethless, chose to lie on an official state document about her length of service in order to receive a tuition waiver from UT Martin, where she is now enrolled in order to gain certification as a teacher. Reynolds became a state employee on July 1, 2023, and on August 14 she swore that she had been a state employee for six months.
You see, Bill Lee made history by being the first Tennessee governor ignore and, thus, break state law by appointing someone as education commission who has no teaching experience, school admin experience, and who lacks certification in either:
According to the century-old law, the education commissioner “shall be a person of literary and scientific attainments and of skill and experience in school administration,” and “qualified to teach in the school of the highest standing over which the commissioner has authority.”
WaPo has a great piece today contrasting the two most recent medical reports issued on the two presidential candidates running this year. Essentially, Joe's report, written by a real doctor, is 6 pages and includes lots of data, both quantitative and qualitative.
Don's report is written by an osteopath, Bruce Aronwald, who hangs out at the Bedminster, NJ swimming pool looking to ingratiate himself to rich clients who don't know quackery when they see it.
Dr. Bruce's report is a three-paragraph gloss on Trump's "excellent" condition, with no test results and no numbers.
You can check out some numbers on Dr. Bruce, himself, here. Spoiler alert: his reputation is much like all the other "best people" that Trump hires to help him maintain the delusion he calls reality.
There are many qualities measured in this little assessment, but Dr. Bruce scores highest of all among patient loyalty. Hmm.
As reality begins to set in about the public expense of using taxpayer money to fund private schools (see here and here), the brain trust for Republican House members have come up with a plan to cheat teachers out their promised raises so that there will be enough money to fund their school privatization plan.
Instead of providing the teacher raises that Gov. Bill Lee has promised, Republicans plan to forego the raises for a cheap scheme to increase the State's portion of health insurance premiums for teachers from 45 percent to 60 percent.
And what if you are one of the thousands of teachers who are on your spouse's insurance plan, rather than the State-sponsored plan? Well, sorry.
From The Tennessean:
As lawmakers continue to hash out parameters for a proposed statewide school choice program, House leadership is proposing to pay for some of their proposal with a pot of money that funds teacher raises.
House leadership said Thursday their plan will fund teacher insurance at a higher level, leaving more "take-home" pay for teachers. . .
. . . . House leadership confirmed they intend to pay for the difference with the $261.3 million in the governor's budget that right now is allocated toward TISA increases for public schools ― and also includes teacher salary raises ― "through a reallocation of the funding proposed by the Governor," Sexton spokesperson Connor Grady told The Tennessean in a text message.
From the St. Louis/Southern Illiois Labor Tribune:
By TIM ROWDEN
Editor-in-ChiefSt. Louis – Still fighting for a first contract, educators from KIPP St. Louis High School, represented by American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 420, attempted to deliver a petition Feb. 22 to district leaders outlining their key concerns as contract negotiations drag on.
Officials at the district headquarters at 1310 Papin St. in downtown St. Louis refused to accept the petition but did agree, earlier in the day, to return to the bargaining table with union members.
Teachers and staff at KIPP High School organized in December of 2022. It took KIPP administrators seven months to come to the bargaining table, but after five months of on-and-off negotiations, bargaining had all but ground to a halt.
Now teachers and staff are calling on administrators to work collaboratively to improve the educational experience for students.
“We are dedicated to providing our students with the high-quality education they deserve,” said Nate Gibson, a KIPP history teacher and member of the bargaining team. “However, we face significant challenges in achieving this goal without a stable and empowered staff. We believe that by working together with district leaders, we can find solutions that address our concerns and create a thriving learning environment for all.”
THE PETITION
The petition, signed by a majority of the school’s teachers, emphasizes three main areas of concern:
- A Safe and Stable Learning Environment. The petition highlights the importance of a consistent and structured learning environment for students. It emphasizes the challenges created by high staff turnover at the charter high school and calls for solutions that ensure stability and continuity for students.
- Educator Voice and Decision-Making. Educators seek greater involvement in shaping the school environment, including curriculum, programming, safety protocols and professional development opportunities. They believe that their expertise and insights are essential for creating and effective and thriving school community.
- Compensation and Working Conditions. The petition calls out the disparities in compensation and working-hours between KIPP and other schools in the area. Educators believe that addressing these disparities is crucial for attracting and recruiting qualified staff, ultimately benefitting students.
HIGH TURNOVER
“The school is suffering a 50 percent turnover rate that prevents the teachers from meeting the students’ needs,” said AFT Organizer Ben Harmon.
“A lot of times people look at this as just the teachers issues, but teachers didn’t become teachers to become wealthy. They care about what they do, and students needs are teachers’ needs. If the teachers needs can’t be met how do we meet the students’ needs?”
A REASON FOR TEACHERS TO STAY
“We need a contract,” said Kurt Johnson, an English teacher at KIPP. “Too many teachers and staff members are leaving. It’s creating a situation that’s unsafe, because it’s creating too much teacher turnover. That’s unsafe for teachers and students. It’s not allowing us to do what we want to do, which is to create an environment where all of our students learn. We need to see movement on this contract.”Johnson said teachers and prospective employees need a reason to stay, Johnson said and that starts with being competitive with the school districts surrounding the high school.
“At the beginning of the year we had multiple people leave for St. Louis Public Schools because they could make more money. We just don’t have anything to counter that and it’s creating a situation where the students don’t have enough certified teachers.
“For the first semester, I think there were two 10th grade certified teachers that made it through the whole semester. That’s only two subjects where students are getting certified teachers. They have seven periods a day. They’re taking these online classes for essential courses like math and science because there’s no teacher. To me, the problem is really about our students. It’s about being able to provide an education and make sure that we have a competitive offer for teachers to stay.”
AN UNSAFE ENVIRONMENT
Adelina Blood, who teaches English as a second language, started at KIPP in August of last year.“Since then, in a semester and a half, there’s already been 10 teachers leave,” she said “That’s really unstable for not only the school but the education of the students. It creates an unsafe environment to have that many new teachers come in who don’t know the students and how the school works. What we’re trying to do is stabilize everything. We’re trying to make sure that we also have a voice and we can be listened to. We’re trying to make sure that we get heard and that the students get the best education that they can.”
NOT BARGAINING IN GOOD FAITH
Leonette White-Hilliard, a member of the teachers’ bargaining committee, said KIPP administrators are not bargaining in good faith.“We’ve tried to meet in good faith,” she said “But they’re not really, honestly trying to come to a conclusion with the bargaining. Some things I thought would be fairly common sense, like a third party arbitrator deciding any disputes. We’re still at loggerheads after a year over even something that simple. That would be a protection for both the school as well as the teachers. That would be something that protects everybody.
“It makes me as an individual question is this really good faith or are they hoping this problem with go away?”
