Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Detroit”
The great shrinking of the middle class that has captured the attention of the nation is not only playing out in troubled regions like the Rust Belt, Appalachia and the Deep South, but in just about every metropolitan area in America, according to a major new analysis by the Pew Research Center. Pew reported in December that a clear majority of American adults no longer live in the …
Last week’s teacher sickout in Detroit shut down its public school system for three days and put the national spotlight once again on the beleaguered city’s budget woes. The teachers’ action came after they were told that their salaries could not be guaranteed beyond June 30, when emergency funds allocated by the state would run out.
Detroit’s schools long have been the poster child for the many ills that plague the nation’s public schools, especially in high-density, predominantly people-of-color urban areas across America. Now, the city and just about everything associated with it are widely viewed as being beyond fixing.
Detroit’s school system didn’t just develop “problems;” it was targeted for oblivion long before the rest of the city, says Dr. Thomas Pedroni, an associate professor of curriculum studies and policy sociology at Wayne State University and Director of the Detroit Data and Democracy Project. Raced-based policies engineered the demise of the city to make way for a “re-imagined” Detroit, he says, and key to hastening that transition was a wholesale attack on its public schools. Further, Dr. Pedroni says, the model is being replicated all across “urban” America.
Leid Stories continues yesterday’s discussion about developing alternatives to the political “inevitabilities” we face in this presidential election year.
Also, we look to Detroit, where, in the face of awesome challenges to community-controlled education and just about everything governing daily life, there is organized resistance, and it is gaining ground. Dr. Thomas Pedroni, associate professor of curriculum studies and policy sociology at Wayne State University, discusses ways in which the community is mobilizing to assure a quality education for Detroit’s schoolchildren.
Welcome, to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective with your host Glen Ford and co-host, Nellie Bailey.
– Thousands of teachers went on sick-out in Detroit, last Monday and Tuesday, shutting down the city’s public schools. The sick-out was led by Steve Conn, who was elected president of the local teachers union but deposed at the urging of the national American Federation of Teachers. Steve Conn and activists from the BAMN organization, By Any Means Necessary, have been holding teacher sick-outs since November, to protest Governor Rick Snyder’s efforts to privatize the public schools, which are already more than half charter.
– The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations plans events in a number of cities, to put together a National Black Political Agenda. The project came out of a Black Is Back Coalition national conference, in Harlem, last month. Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela, explains.
– In Seattle, Washington, city councilwoman Kshama Sawant, head of the Socialist Alternative Party, has launched a petition calling on Bernie Sanders to run as an Independent candidate for president, after he fails to win the Democratic presidential nomination, in Philadelphia, this summer. Sawant says the nation needs a third party, to represent the 99 percent. But, what about the Green Party, which is already on the ballot – or will be – in a majority of states in November?
– Paul Street is an historian, an activist and author, who wrote early on that Barack Obama was a corporate politician who, as president, would side with Wall Street and the Pentagon. Paul Street’s latest book is titled, “They Rule: The One Percent Versus Democracy.” Street says Hillary Clinton will pull the Democratic Party even further to the Right, packing it with Republicans who prefer her to Donald Trump.
Almost all (94) of Detroit’s 97 public schools are closed today—the result of a sickout by teachers reacting to news over the weekend that the state won’t be able to pay them after June 30, when emergency aid to the bankrupted city runs out. Elena Herrada, an elected member of the school board whose authority over local education was overridden during the imposed bankruptcy, says the sickout protest is a publicity stunt to cover up the union’s complicity in the main objective: destroying the public education system in Detroit.
Presidential candidate was the keynote speaker at the Detroit NAACP’s Freedom Fund Dinner last night. Leid Stories discusses the main item on the menu: total contempt for the very people chiefly responsible for her viability as a political candidate.
As the economy again started off the year on a sour note, the glass-half-full crowd pointed to the strength of the U.S. jobs market as a reason not to worry. As long as payrolls are racking up monthly gains of 200,000 or more, the economy remains in fine fettle, or so the optimists would have it. Take a peek below …
Calling out around the world; time to put on your made in Ecuador Panama hat and frantically start dancing to the ultimate limited hangout leak. And if you believe in the purity of intentions of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) at the center of the leak, I’ve got a made-in-Shenzhen Panama hat to sell you (disclosure: I never …
Billed as a major populist economic address, Hillary Clinton recently put forth her jobs program in Michigan. Wall Street is smiling. Her program fits perfectly within the neoliberal framework as she focuses on how to use public funds and policies to promote private sector gain. There are tax incentives to urge large and small corporations to create more jobs in …
Welcome, to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective with host Glen Ford and his co-host, Nellie Bailey.
– There is turmoil this presidential primacy season, in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Dubois Scholar and veteran activist who helped put together a national conference on the Black Radical Tradition, this January, in Philadelphia, says the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump campaigns reveal a crisis in the duopoly political system.
– Students, teachers, parents and community members in Detroit are gearing up for a city-wide strike to defend the public schools, which have been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy after 17 years of management by the state. Among the leaders of the protests is Steven Conn, the elected president of the Detroit teachers’ union, who was deprived of his seat by the union’s national leadership. Conn says Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his appointed emergency financial managers are hell-bent on destroying public education. Their current plan is to divide the Detroit school system in two.
– A new study shows that Teach for America, or TFA, which has been a leading force in the charterization of the nation’s public schools, enjoys a special relationship with school systems in Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans and New York. The lead researcher for the study is Jameson Brewer. He says Teach for America collects finders fees to provide school systems with novice teachers, and protects them against lay-offs, while traditional teachers are pushed out of the profession.
– The Alliance for a Just Society has released a new report titled “Jobs After Jail.” The problem is, there AREN’T many employment opportunities for ex-offenders, partly because former prison inmates are prohibited by law from working at literally hundreds of jobs. Allyson Fredericksen was one of the authors of the report.
– As a lifelong activist, and a veteran journalist and educator, Dr. Charles Simmons takes the long view. Simmons spoke last week to a meeting on Black Men in Unions, at the Institute for Labor and Community Studies, in Detroit.
Welcome, to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective with Glen Ford and his co-host, Nellie Bailey.
– Dr. Gerald Horne, the prolific author and professor of political science at the University of Houston, has another book out. It’s titled, “Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary.” Paul Robeson was an NFL-class athlete, spoke 12 languages, a movie star who was one of the biggest draws in the American musical theater, and was probably the best-known American in the world at the height of his popularity, in the early 1940s. Yet, no more than 20 years later, the crusading artist and social activists’ name had been all but erased from public discourse in the United States. How could that happen? We asked Dr. Horne.
– An analysis of employment statistics shows the Black jobless rate in Virginia, the state with the lowest Black unemployment rate in the nation, is the same as the white jobless rate in West Virginia, the state with the highest white unemployment rate, at 6.7 percent. What does this tell us about the so-called economic recovery? We spoke with Dr. Valerie Wilson, of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.
– Turkey is threatening to invade neighboring Syria, creating a direct confrontation with Russian military forces. Political analyst Eric Draitser, founder of StopImperialism.com, appeared recently on Russia Today’s “Cross Talk” program. Draitser says Turkish President Erdogan is playing with fire.
– Hillary Clinton is one step closer to becoming Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, with her victory in Nevada. That’s a scary thought, as far as Dr. Stephen Zunes, is concerned. Zunes is Professor of Politics and International Studies, at San Francisco University. He says Hillary Clinton stoked the flames of war while Secretary of State.
– Ticket sales are soaring for Beyonce’s world tour. The Superstar seems to have profited from the controversy over her Black Panther-flavored performance at the Superbowl. Black Agenda Report editor Ajama Baraka, a co-founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network, says there’s nothing oppositional, much less revolutionary, about Beyonce’s “Formation” album. He also maintains that neither Bernie Sanders nor Ta-Nehisi Coates represents a challenge to the U.S. imperial order.
– Public television last week showed the acclaimed Stanley Nelson film, “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” which previously had been playing in selected theaters. Former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver was honored at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, in Detroit. Cleaver recounted how she became involved with the Black Panther Party.
– The nation’s best-known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, is also a renowned author. Abu Jamal gives a boost to a former political prisoner’s latest book.
– Khalil Bennet is also imprisoned in Pennsylvania. Bennet is what inmates call “a child-lifer” – a person given a life sentence for a crime committed while he was a juvenile. The Supreme Court recently ruled that such sentences are cruel and unusual, setting the stage for the release of thousands of prisoners. Khalil Bennet says, when these former child-lifers are let loose, they can become the cadre of a new movement.
