Documenting the World

2006 BCTC Peace and Justice Coalition Speaker Series

2006-03-30T05:08:00.000-08:00

Peace and Justice Coalition
Speaker Series: Spring 2006
Location: BLuegrass Community & Technical College Auditorium (Oswald Building 230)

March 30, 6:30-7:45 p.m.: Dr. Robert Topmiller, Assistant Professor of History, Eastern Kentucky University, on Post-war Vietnam. Dr. Topmiller’s presentation will focus on the long-term impact of the Vietnam War on the Vietnamese and their neighbors, with particular focus on the continuing impact of Agent Orange, the Cambodian Holocaust and the impact of the alliance between the Highland people and the U.S. military during the conflict.

April 5, 5:00-6:15 p.m.: Margaret Davidson, Adjunct Humanities Instructor, BCTC, on China: Bikes, Buses, and BMWs. Using photographs from her 2000 and 2005 trips to China, Ms. Davidson will illustrate how China is experiencing monumental changes in the face of economic development.

Sponsored by Bluegrass Community and Technical College’s Peace & Justice Coalition.

April 6, 6:30-7:45 p.m.: Dr. Catherine Fosl, Assistant Professor of Communication & Women's and Gender Studies, University of Louisville, on White Woman, Black Power: Anne Braden's Life for Racial Justice. Historian and author of Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice, Dr. Fosl will discuss the life of longtime Kentucky civil rights activist Anne Braden as part of a small but vibrant tradition of white antiracist activists who have supported the African American freedom struggle throughout the 20th century and continuing today. Highlighting Anne Braden's contributions to that history in Kentucky and in the southern region, Dr. Fosl's lecture will also trace the development of the civil rights crusade as a genesis for the social movements that followed it in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and beyond. Her remarks will address questions such as "where are we going and where have we been?" in relation to the unfinished business of the civil rights era in US history.

April 11, 3:30-4:45 p.m.: Iddah Otieno and Carol Hunt, Professors at BCTC, on 2005 Summer Faculty Exchange, Maseno University Kenya
The presentation will include slides of Africa from the 2005 Summer Faculty Exchange at Maseno University, Kenya. Some of the issues to be discussed include: education in Africa, the impact of HIV/Aids in rural Africa, global community service opportunities in Africa, Kenyan wildlife, and travel tips from the participants of this inaugural visit to Africa.

April 13, 3:30-4:45 p.m.: Dave Cooper, on Mountaintop Removal. Mr. Cooper, a mechanical engineer turned environmental and social activist will present the “Mountaintop Removal Road Show.” The program includes a 20-minute slide show featuring traditional Appalachian mountain music and aerial photographs of Eastern Kentucky mountains. After discussing the impacts of mountaintop removal on coalfield communities, attention will focus on ways to reduce personal consumption of electricity from coal-fired power plants.

April 18, 6:30-7:45 p.m.: Dr. Richard Olson, Director of Berea College’s Sustainability and Environmental Studies program, Surviving the Perfect Storm: Creating a Sustainable Campus in the Face of Global Change. Dr. Olson will describe a set of environmental, social and economic trends that threaten the sustainability of our communities, and some of the steps – including the construction of its Ecovillage – that Berea College is taking to transform itself into a sustainable campus that can weather these changes.

April 20, 3:30-4:45 p.m.: Dr. Anisa Al-Khatab, Visiting Professor of Education, Eastern Kentucky University, on Iraq. Dr. Al-Khatab is a native of Iraq. Her presentation will focus on her experiences and observations during her recent visit to Baghdad.

David Cromwell: The Curisities of Utopian Thinking; The Corporation

2006-03-28T05:41:00.000-08:00

(I highly recommend the book and documentary The Corporation--Cromwell sets up one of the big problems regarding corporate advertising's affect upon the channels of information, or, as some call it, news.)

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

MEDIA ALERT: CURIOSITIES OF UTOPIAN THINKING

Forbidden Links: Media, Advertising, Corporate Power And Climate Chaos

Sean O’Grady wrote recently in the ad-filled motoring supplement of The Independent: “in answer to the many letters we get criticising some of our coverage, we don't make cars. We just write about them. [...] We try to concentrate on telling our readers about the many many ways you can enjoy motoring without costing the earth (in any sense).” (O’Grady, ‘Sport Utility Vehicles: Don't shoot the messenger. The people who buy SUVs are the problem, not the industry that makes them, or even the motoring press’, The Independent, March 7, 2006)

O’Grady went on:

“Why so defensive? Because so much of the criticism so dangerously [sic] misses the point. Almost every one of us wants to help to save the planet and almost every one of us wants personal transport.”

So who, according to the Independent motoring journalist, is to blame?

“The enemies of the planet, the hypocrites if you will, are not the oil companies that refine the petrol or the car companies that make the vehicles, or the journalists who write about them or the advertising industry that markets them or the bankers who lend us money to buy them. The people to blame are the people who buy cars in the first place, without whom none of the vast industry would exist. Now you know who to write letters to.”

This is a facile argument on many levels. For instance, consider that corporations spend billions annually to promote their products and to create new markets around the globe. As philosopher Mark Kingwell notes:

"From the point of view of the corporation, the ideal citizen is a kind of insanely rapacious consumer [driven by a] kind of psychopathic version of self-interest." (Quoted in Joel Bakan, ‘The Corporation’, Constable, London, 2004, p. 135)

Corporations also ‘externalise’ the environmental and other costs of their products, minimising or avoiding regulation with government connivance - so that society as a whole, and the planet itself, bears the burden.

However, O’Grady’s article is quite a significant piece of journalism in that, until very recently, any discussion linking advertising, the media, corporations and environmental collapse was simply off the media’s agenda. It is a promising sign that the public recognises that those issues are linked +and+ that the media had better take note.

Another example of forbidden connections being made was on BBC Radio 4’s Start The Week programme... before swiftly being given the boot. Jacky Law, author of ‘Big Pharma’ said:

“... the real issues don’t get covered [by the media] and I try to show in my book that when you have a parliamentary committee making decisions it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re adopted by government because the corporate power is just so strong and we need the corporate money”.

Andrew Marr, presenter of the BBC programme, responded:

“But we don’t talk about that. And, of course, they’re very often the people [i.e. the corporations] advertising in the press and in the newspapers in the first place. It’s very interesting, the kind of lack of debate at a time, for instance, about the car industry and the future of the car industry. Then you look at the number of car adverts and you begin to wonder, is there a connection? I shouldn’t say that, probably.” (‘Start The Week’, BBC Radio 4, January 16, 2006)

Indeed, in a well-rewarded media career – including prestigious stints as BBC political editor and editor of the Independent - Marr has learnt not to dwell on such topics.

A similar spark of sanity was quickly snuffed out in the editorial pages of the Independent on Sunday (see our media alert, Climate Change -‘Welcome to Mars (or North Korea!)’, January 31, 2006.

We sent a follow-up email on February 12, 2006 to Michael Williams, the deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday (IoS). The subject line of the email was “IoS silence on the news filters that protect power.” We wrote:

“You recently maligned readers protesting your paper's fossil fuel-related adverts as ‘a curmudgeonly lot of puritans, miseries, killjoys, Stalinists and glooms.’ ('A bottle of bubbly for the best way to fly', Independent on Sunday, January 22, 2006)

“And, in your column today: ‘I thought I'd laid this idea to rest a couple of columns ago‘, referring to your strawman argument that rejecting advertising ‘would almost certainly drive us out of business.’ ('On any measure, let's stick to common sense', February 12, 2006).

“You dismiss too readily certain uncomfortable facts that have not escaped your readers' attention: the heavy reliance of your newspaper - indeed all the 'quality' press - on advertising revenue [around 75%]. Such dependence is only one of a series of news filters protecting the public from unpalatable truths about state-corporate power in society. This propaganda model of mainstream media, presented by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in 'Manufacturing Consent' (1988), has never been mentioned, far less discussed seriously, in the IoS. Why not?

“I look forward to hearing from you.

best wishes,
David Cromwell
Co-editor, Media Lens”

Williams did not respond and has since steered well clear of such uncomfortable topics in his weekly column. In the meantime, full-page colour ads from ‘green giant’ BP continue to fill the pages of the Independent. Coincidentally, or otherwise, Jeremy Warner, the Independent’s business editor, staunchly defended BP when it announced huge £11 billion profits last month:

“From a moral perspective, some would see it as indefensible to be propping up our pensions by polluting the planet. Yet from where I sit, this seems a rather better use of the money than that suggested by the NEF [New Economics Foundation], which proposes a massive windfall tax with the proceeds to be applied first and foremost to developing renewable sources of energy and if there's anything left after that, the monies to go to the special global fund set up to help poor countries adapt to climate change.”

Warner spelled out what he thought from the vantage point of his plush corporate-funded seat:

"It is a continued curiosity of utopian thinking of this type that it hasn't yet grasped that the market provides the best possible hope of eventually achieving these ends. More money is already being thrown at renewables and energy efficient technologies than the system can possibly cope with or is ever likely to produce a return, a state of affairs that will only be accentuated by President George Bush's State of the Union commitment to end America's addiction to oil." (Jeremy Warner, ‘Don't condemn BP's oil gusher. Polluter or not, this is a company for Britain to be proud of’, The Independent, February 8, 2006)

Taking the statements of political leaders at face value is a defining characteristic of the corporate media. So too are the bizarre notions that corporations and ‘free’ markets, heavily skewed to serve the corporate interest, will ‘save humanity’.

Law professor Joel Bakan interjects a note of rationality:

“The ‘best interests of the corporation’ principle, now a fixture in the corporate laws of most countries [compels] corporate decision makers always to act in the best interests of the corporation, and hence its owners. The law forbids any other motivation for their actions, whether to assist workers, improve the environment, or help consumers save money.” (Bakan, op. cit., p.37)

The last despairing hope of blinkered media is that shifting a few chairs around at the top of the establishment will save the planet. Thus, the Independent on Sunday hails ‘green Chancellor’ Gordon Brown’s recent Budget as “moving in the right direction”, indicating that “he is becoming increasingly engaged with climate change.”

The IoS editorial continues in the same vein:

“He [Brown] realises that the period when he hopes to be prime minister - running up to about 2013 - will be the last chance for tackling it, if it is not to run out of control. As his record on world poverty shows, he is tenacious and imaginative when he becomes committed to a cause.”(Editorial, ‘Gordon and the green giant’, Independent on Sunday, March 26, 2006)

We doubt whether any Independent journalist would publicly brand such a deluded flight of fancy from their own editors as “utopian thinking”.

Market ‘sovereignty’, an unhealthy fixation on economic ‘growth’, and the benign intent of corporate and political leaders are unshakeable articles of faith for profit-led media editors and journalists. It is little wonder that such media professionals will forever dispel any critical discussion of present policies, and possible sane alternatives, to the realm of “utopian thinking”.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to Sean O’Grady of the Independent:
Email: s.ogrady@independent.co.uk

Write to Jeremy Warner, business editor of the Independent:
Email: j.warner@independent.co.uk

Write to Michael Williams, deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday:
Email: m.williams@independent.co.uk

Write to Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief of the Independent & Independent on
Sunday:
Email: s.kelner@independent.co.uk

Write to Andrew Marr, BBC presenter:
Email: andrew.marr@bbc.co.uk

Please also send copies of all emails to Media Lens:
Email: editor@medialens.org

The first Media Lens book has now been published: 'Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media' by David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London, 2006). At time of writing (March 27), there have been zero mentions or reviews in any mainstream newspaper. For further details, including reviews, interviews and extracts, please click here:

Guardians of Power

This is a free service. However, financial support is vital. Please consider donating to Media Lens

Visit the Media Lens website

League of Women Voters Reminder-

2006-03-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

League of Women Voters Reminder:

Under-18s can vote in upcoming primary

When 18th birthday is November 6, 2006 or earlier

The League of Women Voters wants to be sure that all parents and students know that anyone who turns 18 years of age on or before Election Day, Tuesday, November 6, 2006, is eligible to vote in the upcoming primary election (Tuesday, May 16, 2006).

Those wishing to register to vote or for further information may call their county Board of Elections office at the following numbers.

Fayette County - 255-VOTE (255-7563)

Scott County - 873-7875

Jessamine County - 885-4161

Woodford County - 873-3421

Fayette County residents can also download and print out the voter registration form by going to Fayette County Clerk and return it by mail to the Board of Elections.

Voter registration cards are also available at the following Fayette County offices: County Clerk, Driver's License, Social Services, Armed Forces Recruitment Centers and the Health Department.

The deadline for voter registration is Monday, April 17, 2006, so register now if you will be 18 on or before Election Day, learn as much as you can about the candidates and be sure to vote in the primary and general elections.

The League of Women Voters is a non-partisan organization of women and men dedicated to the informed participation of citizens in government. The organization does not endorse or oppose political candidates or parties.

Ongoing Linkage of People/Issues/Events/Organizations Mentioned in Nel Noddings Essay

2006-03-27T05:13:00.000-08:00

More About the People/Texts/Institutions/Events Mentioned in Nel Noddings Essay:

"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good"

Thomas Paine

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Friedman, Benjamin M. Globalization: Stiglitz's Case New York Review of Books 49.13 (August 15, 2002)

Stiglitz, Joseph E. Excerpt from Globalization and Its Discontents

Joseph Stiglitz's Social and Economic Policy Papers

Phelan, James L. Renowned Economists Stiglitz and Krugman Denounce Corporate-Led Globalization Third World Traveler (2001)

Dawson, Thomas C. Stiglitz, the IMF and Globalization: A Speech to the MIT Club of Washington International Monetary Fund (2002)

Moberg, David. Inside Out: A Review of Globalization and Its Discontents In These Times (Reposted on Third World Traveler: July 2002)

Harris, Blake. Joseph Stiglitz: Globalization and the Search for Balance Government Technology (July 4, 2004)

World Bank and International Monetary Fund

Official Website of The World Bank

The World Bank Documents and Reports

The Library Network: Serving The World Bank and International Monetary Fund

World Bank Boycott (Organized by the Center for Economic Justice)

50 Years is Enough (Anti-World Bank/IMF)

International Finance Corporation: World Bank Group

Thibodeau, John G. The World Bank's Procurement Myth The Cato Institute (September 4, 1996)

The Bretton Woods Project: Critical Voices on the World Bank and IMF

Youthink! (World Bank Group website aimed at young people)

Knowledge Services for Private Sector Development (Associated with The World Bank)

Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (Part of the World Bank Group)

International Monetary Fund

World Trade Organization (WTO)

Official website of the WTO

International Forum for Globalization: The World Trade Organization

A Guide to GATT (General Agreement to Tariffs and Trade) (Put together by The Center for International Earth Science Information Network [CIESIN] a center within the Earth Institute at Columbia University)

LLRX: WTO/GATT Research Guide

Public Citizen Report: WTO

Global Exchange: WTO

Shah, Anup. WTO Protests in Seattle, 1999 Global Issues (February 18, 2001)

WTO History Project Washington University ongoing project

WTO Protests, Seattle, 1999 and 2000: A Slide Show and Archive History Link (1999/2000)

InfoShop: Archive on the Seatlle Protests (Infoshop is an Anarchist collective)

Image from the documentary This is What Democracy Looks Like:

More Sources on Themes Discussed in the Essay:

"Education for Global Citizenship and Social Responsibility" by Julie Andrzejewski & John Alessio Progressive Perspectives (Spring 1999)

John Dewey Project on Progressive Education

Public Citizen: Protecting Health, Safety and Democracy (Founded by Ralph Nader)

Sojourners: Christians for Faith, Peace and Justice

Adbusters Culturejammers Headquarters

Children's Defense Fund

Corpwatch: Holding Corporations Accountable

Fleischer, Ari. The American way of life is a blessed one (Office of the Press Secretary Briefing: May 7, 2001) The White House: President George W. Bush

People for the American Way

American Way of Life: Designer Clothes

Religion Online: Globalization

Geering, Lloyd. From Christian Past to Global Future Religion Online (1999)

Quelch, John A. How Consumers Value Global Brands Harvard Business School (September 20, 2004)

Schneider, Keith. Land of the Oil Free: Redefining the American Way of Life AlterNet (January 9, 2002: Reposted from Grist Magazine)

Excerpt from Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 hosted by Seven Stories Press

Human Rights Watch: Defending Human Rights Worldwide

Cooper, Marc. Immigration Reform in Living Color AlterNet (March 27, 2006)

AlterNet: Foreign Policy

Global Issues That Affect Everyone

Global Media Monitoring Project

Thinking About Globalization

Thinking about Social Movements

Trainer, Ted. The Simpler Way: Our Global Situation Future Positive (2003)

World Socialist Web Site

Hanson, Victor Davis. The Global Shift: The World Will Soon Better Appreciate the United States National Review (Republished on his personal site: June 6, 2005)

Brown, Paul. Global Warming is Killing Us Too, Say Inuit Guardian Unlimited (December 11, 2003)

Friedman, Benjamin M. Globalization: Stiglitz's Case New York Review of Books 49.13 (August 15, 2002)

Informal Education Encyclopedia and Archives

2006-03-24T11:53:00.000-08:00

I'm usually resistent to using most encyclopedias because of the anonymity of their authors and lack of transparency in regards to their reserach practices, but this is a different case. The Informal Education website is one of my favorite places for learning and thinking outside traditional education's box and the editors/authors are very clear about their mission and method:

Informal Education

Nel Noddings: The Ethics of Care and Education

2006-03-24T11:43:00.000-08:00

An introduction to who Nel Noddings is and a mapping of the development of her "ethics of care":

The Ethics of Care and Education

Ashland Daily Independent Editorial: Another increase - Each double-digit hike in tuition makes college less affordable

2006-03-20T09:30:00.000-08:00

Editorial: Another increase - Each double-digit hike in tuition makes college less affordable
3/17/2006 Ashland Daily Independent

And the trend continues: As state funding for higher education continues to fall far short of what is requested by the state's universities and community and technical colleges, the responsibility for paying for college continues to shift from taxpayers to students and their families.

And as the trend toward annual double-digit increases in tuition continues, a college education becomes less and less affordable for young people from families of modest means.

In a state where the percentage of residents with a college education is among the lowest in the nation, state government should be encouraging young people to go to college, instead of discouraging them with soaring increases in tuition.

The board of regents of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System - which, of course, includes Ashland Community and Technical College - recommended an 11 percent hike in tuition for the coming year. That means full-time Kentucky students will be paying $109 more in tuition next fall than they did last fall. Earlier, the University of Kentucky - the state's flagship university - announced a 12 percent increase in tuition for next fall.

In approving the tuition increase, the KCTCS regents released a report by the Kentucky Council on Higher Education that ranked Kentucky 18th out of 20 "benchmark" states in funding for community and technical colleges. The report concluded that an additional $79 million in state funding was needed to close the Kentucky's gap in state funding relative to other states.

Despite the increase, the state's two-year community and technical colleges remain a bargain compared to the four-year universities. Currently, tuition rates at the four-year schools are between 84 percent and 147 percent higher than at the community and technical colleges. Still, "bargain" is a relative term if one can't afford to pay even the lower tuition rates at community and technical colleges.

Members of the Kentucky General Assembly know exactly what they are doing: By not providing more state funding for higher education, they are shifting the burden to students and their families. In essence, each increase in tuition is a "hidden tax" for families of college students - one that makes going to college more difficult to afford for many.

And without more college graduates, Kentucky simply is not going to compete with other states for the good-paying jobs of the future. We all lose when a talented young person is discouraged by the cost from seeking a college degree.

Hate Crimes Research Network: Bibliography

2006-03-20T06:44:00.000-08:00

Hate Crimes Research Network has an extensive bibliography of works studying current hate group research:

Hate Crimes Research Bibliography

March 20th, Lexington, KY: Observe the 3rd Anniversary of the Iraq War

2006-03-20T05:20:00.000-08:00

(Courtesy of Rebecca Glasscock and Justicelist)

3/20 Observe the 3rd Anniversary of the Iraq War

WHAT:

Observe, mourn, protest
- the Third Anniversary of the Iraq War

WHEN:

4:30 - 6:00 p.m. Monday
March 20

WHERE:

Triangle Park
Corner of Main & Broadway
Lexington
Bring a sign and a flower.

DETAILS:

Honor the dead. Heal the Wounded. End the War.

The first anniversary of the war was observed in 319 U.S. cities. The second anniversary of the war was observed by over double that number of cities, 765 U.S. cities. Lexington and central Kentucky peace activists rallied on each of the first two anniversaries. We expect this year to be joined by many more cities. Maybe the politicians will finally get the word: the people want this war to end.

We must not abandon Iraq - they need neutral peacekeepers and billions of dollars in reconstruction aid. We must not abandon our troops - they need to be safe and out of harm's way. Their blood must not be spilt in an endless war that we cannot win - a war that a continued occupation can only exacerbate.

Join us as we observe, mourn, and protest on the 3rd anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. We want to go beyond statistics. The statistics are numbing: 2,307 U.S. dead, 16,653 U.S. wounded, over 30,000 Iraqi civilians dead, and an unknown number of Iraqi insurgents dead.

From 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. peace activists will be reading the names of U.S. and Iraqis who have died in the award. After the activist reads the name, he or she will place a flower at the foot of a coffin covered with both U.S. and Iraqi flags. While the names are being read, other activists, holding signs and banners, will line the curbs on both sides of the streets that border Triangle Park.

At 5:30 p.m. the group will rally for a brief program. Anita Dennis and Missy Comley Beattie will speak. Dennis is the mother of Darryl Anderson, wounded Iraq veteran who has gone to Canada rather than accept a second tour of duty in Iraq. Beattie is the Aunt of Marine Lance Corporal Chase Comley who died in Iraq on August 6, 2005. Beattie, Chase's father Mark Comley, and several other families are members of Gold Star Families for Peace. On March 6, 2006, Beatty, Cindy Sheehan, also of Gold Star Mothers for Peace, Media Benjamin of Code Pink, and Rev. Patricia Ackerman were arrested at the UN after the U.S. delegation refused to accept a petition containing 100,000 signature calling for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. New York police arrested the women. They were treated very roughly. Sheehan's arm was bruised. The petition can be found at:

Women Say No To War

Women can still sign this petition.

Now is the time to come out. We need to show our political leaders that majorities oppose the war. We need to let them know that if they (finally) oppose the war, the people will back them.

SPONSOR:
Peace Action Task Group
Central Kentucky Council for Peace & Justice

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Richard Mitchell
(859) 327-6277

Feb 21st Bluegrass Film Society: Whale Rider (Niki Caro: New Zealand, 2002)

2006-03-19T09:13:00.000-08:00

(Extra Credit Response Opportunity)

Whale Rider

Also since I'm going to see it today--Underworld: Evolution (Nothing like a cheesy vampire/werewolf film ;)

and through the rest of the semester any film that plays at The Kentucky Theater (I usually post the schedules for their films on Bluegrass Film Society)

Desperately Seeking Sanity; Moments of Excess; Collective Memory

2006-03-18T15:00:00.000-08:00

Desperately Seeking Sanity (Example of social/cultural analysis of a text—in this case a TV show “Desperate Housewives”—in which the author also brings her personal perspective to the forefront of her analysis)

Moments of Excess (Example of definitional analysis of a concept/term—in this essay the authors explore the meaning of “excess” in relation to "moments of resistance" to perceived injustices)

Collective Memory: Remembrance and Representation (a bibliography and links that can help explain “collective memory”)

Various Voices from Around the World

2006-03-18T14:50:00.000-08:00

Abu Ghraib and Images of Abuse and Torture

Blogs: A History

Blogs by Iranians

Commonplace Books

El Oso, El Moreno and El Abogado

Fallujah: Documents the American Destruction of the City of Fallujah

Fixing Shadows: Still Photography

Ghosts of Rwanda

Global Voices

The Great Lakes: An Endangered Legacy (Detroit News Special Series: August 14, 2005)

History of Iranian Blogs: Wikipedia

Introduction to Peruvian Blogs

View From Iran

Resources

2006-03-18T14:46:00.000-08:00

Propaganda Critic

Media Sources

Culture/Collective Memory

Media Links at Poetics of Relation Weblog (see the links on the right hand side--old course website)

Alan Whyte: Hunger in America

2006-03-18T13:59:00.001-08:00

Hunger in America: 25 Million Depend on Emergency Food Aid
by Alan Whyte
World Socialist Web Site

The brutal impact of social polarization and the protracted assault on the living standards of broad masses of working people was reflected in two recent reports documenting the deepening crisis of hunger in America.

According to the February 23 report, “Hunger in America 2006,” a study commissioned by America’s Second Harvest Network, an organization representing some 200 food banks and food rescue groups, more than 25 million people, or about 9 percent of all Americans, receive food assistance on an emergency basis. This growing army of poor and hungry includes nearly 9 million children and 3 million seniors The overall number of those seeking help at food banks and soup lines has swelled by 8 percent since 2001, and 18 percent since 1997. The study was based on 52,000 interviews with people requiring emergency food and on a survey of 30,000 local emergency hunger-relief agencies.

The report found that about 66 percent of those needing food are living below the official poverty line—$15,670 per year for a family of three. The average annual household income of those individuals and families seeking food assistance is only $10,320. However, 10 percent of all adults had no income at all, which is a 37 percent increase in this category since 2001.

Another large share of those seeking assistance is drawn from what is commonly referred to as the working poor. About one third of the adults between the ages of 18 and 65 needing emergency food aid are employed. Thirty-six percent of all families seeking assistance reported that at least one family member was working. One fourth of all households reported that a job was their primary source of income, followed by 20 percent who reported that Social Security was their primary source of income. Half of all the households reported annual incomes of less than $10,000.

The report examined the lack of resources for those seeking emergency food. Twelve percent are homeless, which is a 28 percent increase over 2001. Almost one half do not have access to a car, and about one third obtain food stamps, which on average last only 2.5 weeks per month.

Seventy percent of those seeking assistance are classified as food insecure—that is, not knowing when they will get their next meal—while 30 percent are experiencing hunger because they have no way of obtaining food. The individuals who seek emergency food are constantly making choices between buying food or paying for utilities or heat (41 percent), buying food and paying their rent or mortgage (35 percent), or buying food and paying medical bills (32 percent).

Children and seniors are the two most vulnerable groups among those facing hunger. Many studies have demonstrated that children suffering from malnutrition experience stunted physical growth and brain development. There are 13 million children, or almost 18 percent of all Americans, who are poor. The elderly, who are less mobile, are also vulnerable to serious health problems stemming from hunger. With fixed and low incomes, 3.4 million seniors, or about 10 percent of that population, are poor. In addition, 46 percent of all the adults interviewed described their health as fair to poor.

To Read the Rest of the Report

Plagiarism, Intellectual Property, and Documenting Your Research

2006-03-18T13:26:00.000-08:00

Plagiarism, Intellectual Property, and Documenting Your Research

1) We all have a wide range of influences that shape our decision making, thinking, and writing. Some of these influences include our friends, family, teachers, mentors, preachers, politicians, TV/movies, newspapers, books, the Internet, and so on.

An easy example of how individuals are influenced can be demonstrated through a story of my own development. When I was young, my friends would argue about what was the best line of trucks. This was in the late 1970s/early 1980s and our options usually boiled down to the choice between Chevrolet and Ford. None of us had ever owned a truck, none of us had ever fixed a truck (other than handing the odd tool to our fathers), and few of us did any research past the latest magazine on the hottest customized trucks (trucks that few of us could conceive of owning). Where did we get our information about what was the best truck? What shaped our preconceived notions? Why were our decisions limited to just Chevy and Ford trucks, when there were so many other trucks?

1) What was at stake in our presentation to our peers about our authority in regards to what was the best truck?

2) What shaped our preconceived notions of what was the best truck?

3) Why were our decisions limited to just Chevy and Ford trucks?

2) In academic writing we also develop a position of authority on wide-ranging issues that are complex and debatable. We often present ourselves as authorities on issues that we may not have first-hand experience of, or have not done detailed first-hand research into (actual observation and interaction with the subject, as opposed to reading about the subject), so, how do we build a case about a subject in a way that our audience will trust what we have to say?

1) Why is it important in academia to cite the sources that you use in the development of your paper? How does the careful documentation of sources help to lend credibility and strength to your argument?

2) Why is plagiarism such a big issue in colleges today?

3) What are the consequences of plagiarism?

Some quick definitions:

Plagiarism: Essentially, plagiarism is the “use of someone’s ideas or words without giving credit for their work” (Glenn, et al, 75). The North Carolina State University’s “Plagiarism Tutorial” breaks it down even more to include:

Reproducing someone else's work without quotation marks and/or attribution
Paraphrasing or summarizing another's work without attribution
Failing to cite a source for ideas or information not commonly known
Failing to cite a source for ideas or information that is widely known
Misquoting someone else's work
Using another student's work as your own.

Common Knowledge and Specialized Sources: Common knowledge is facts that most people know and that you are not required to cite in your paper. For instance, most of the students in this class know the name of the first president of the United States. Thus, when writing about George Washington it would not be necessary to cite this fact. On the other hand, if you were to describe George Washington’s reflections on crossing Valley Forge in a surprise attack on the British, it would be assumed that you have accessed specialized sources that have informed your own opinion in regards to Washington’s reflections.

I will use another example here to differentiate between common knowledge and specialized information. If you are writing a paper on the Columbine school shooting and its influence on societal perceptions of school safety, you could cite as common knowledge the date of the shootings, the location of the shootings, the perpetrators of the shootings, and the general media coverage of the shootings. These are all commonly known facts, but if you were to begin a discussion of the fact that Eric Harris was taking the prescribed drug Lovoc and that this may have contributed to his violent rage, then you would need to cite the source for this specialized knowledge. If you were to discuss the psychological after-effects of the shootings upon specific victims, unless you had completed first-hand field research in which you interviewed the victims, you would be required to cite your sources for this specialized information. Remember this is a method of backing up your research, a careful presentation of your sources, a demonstration of the work involved in building your case. You are citing sources that influenced your work, but just as importantly, you are citing your own labor in researching and determining the best sources available for your paper.

When you are unsure whether a fact or idea is common knowledge or specialized information, it is best to cite the source to save you from any problems. Remember, I encourage you to discuss this process with me and that with all work involved in writing your essays, the earlier you start, the easier it will be to deal with problems that arise. Always document your sources as you write the essay, this is the safest method and will save you from losing your sources or incorrectly documenting specialized information. Do not wait until the essay is done to slip in your sources, this is lazy writing and will lead to problems.

Citing Visual Sources: If you use a photograph, a graph/diagram, or an image from another source, you need to document the original source in your essay. If you build a graph or diagram that uses someone else’s research, facts, or definitions, then you need to cite those sources.

Your Own Field Research and Interviews: If you conduct observations or surveys, present the information as your own. However, when discussing individuals who are part of this research, make sure to cite them as “individual” interviews (we will discuss this more in the “community” research section). If you take photographs present them as your own, but for the reader you should put a line or two under the photograph explaining what it is or its importance to the essay.

Sources That Must Be Cited In Your Essays

Direct Quotations: Whenever you use someone’s words directly you must credit the source at the end of the quote.

Fact That Are Not Widely Known or Claims That Are Arguable: If the information is not common knowledge and you are not an expert in the field then you must cite your source. If you are presenting information or ideas that are contestable or controversial then you must cite your source/s in order to strengthen your case and to demonstrate the foundations for your argument. Likewise, you cannot simply state “some people” or “some scientists” or “they always” when presenting specialized information—you need to introduce who these people, or experts, or groups are and why their position/information is relevant to your paper (explain their relevance in order to enhance the power of their statement in your paper). Similarly, you cannot simply dismiss those that you disagree with in your paper, take the same time to carefully present and document their positions, even if you disagree with them. Once again, this is strengthening your paper/presentation and developing a trust between you and your audience; who will respect your efforts in presenting a fair representation of opposing viewpoints.

Judgments and Opinions of Others: Whenever you summarize or paraphrase someone else’s ideas or opinions you must supply the source for that summary or paraphrase. Even when the wording is completely your own, you still must cite the sources that led to your conclusions, especially if they involve/utilize specialized information.

Help provided by friends, instructors, and others. If you use information learned from another professor’s lectures—cite the professor and the course. If you develop ideas based upon the suggestions of a peer during workshops give them credit for inspiring you.

Whether at a university, in the business world, or when working with other organizations/groups always familiarize your self with the “codes of conduct.”
This is a basic step in being a responsible member of any group/community/organization. The student “code of conduct” for Anoka Ramsey Community College defines “academic dishonesty” as:

1. Academic Dishonesty—Cheating, plagiarizing, or aiding and abetting another person in cheating or plagiarism.

o Cheating includes, but is not limited to, the use of any unauthorized assistance in taking quizzes, tests or examinations, the dependence upon the aid of sources beyond those authorized by the instructor in writing papers, preparing reports, solving problems, or carrying out other assignments, or the acquisition, without permission, of tests or other academic materials belonging to a member of the college faculty or staff.

o Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, the use, by paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished work of another person without full and clear acknowledgment or the unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another person or agency engaged in the selling of term papers or other academic materials.

This Lesson Was Inspired and Directly Influenced by the Following Source:
Glenn, Cheryl, Melissa A Goldthwaite, and Robert Connors. The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
Websites Consulted:

North Carolina State University’s “Plagiarism Tutorial”

Washington State University “Introduction to Plagiarism”

Plagiarism by Paraphrase Risk Quiz

University of California-Davis “Avoiding Plagiarism”

Indiana University “Plagiarism”

Hamilton College “Using Sources”

Earl Babbie on “Plagiarism”

Penn State University “Cyber-Plagiarism and Detection”

Natalie Gummer: Writing as Process/

2006-03-18T12:45:00.001-08:00

Writing as Process

Words for the Wise

Preparing a Close Reading

Reading Critically

How to Evaluate Website Sources

2006-03-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

Tutorial on Evaluating Website Sources

3rd Unit Essay: Creative Collective Memory Options

2006-03-18T12:12:00.000-08:00

(These are just some of the possibilities for the 3rd unit essay)

UNIT 3 ESSAY, ENG 101/102, Spring 2006, Instructor: Michael Benton

The basic requirements for this essay: 6-8 pages (8-10 pages for 102 students)—at least four academic/print sources. I will look for the development of an authorial voice, successful communication of a statement/argument about your subject, and an awareness of your intended audience. Most important in my assessment will be the student’s overall effort in presenting their statement/evidence of research through successful integration of outside sources into the body of the essay, evidence of reflection on key concepts/terms, awareness of one’s own position, and attempt to communicate a perspective. The final draft will also include—attached to the front—a “statement of sources” which will detail what outside sources where used, why they were chosen and how they fit into the body of your essay. All sources must be documented both in the text and in the works cited page at the end of the essay—consult your St. Martin’s Handbook for a refresher on MLA documentation.

I AM OPEN TO CREATIVE PROJECTS—APPROACH ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND WE CAN NEGOTIATE AN AGREEMENT ON WHAT WILL BE EXPECTED.

PAPER OPTIONS:

1) RESPOND TO A WRITTEN OR VISUAL TEXT (BOOK, FILM, DOCUMENTARY OR ESSAY) THAT PRESENTS A HISTORICAL NARRATIVE (implicit or explicit):

EXAMPLES:

Review Essay of The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the
Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic By Michael Benton

2) RESPOND TO A PERFORMANCE, MONUMENT OR EXHIBITION THAT CRITIQUES OR CONFIRMS A COLLECTIVE MEMORY OR CULTURAL REPRESENTATION:

EXAMPLE—Visit this site Reconstruction
Go to the far right, on top, there is a button that says Archives , click on it now look at the middle of the screen and click on the link Number 4, Fall 2002 scroll down till you see Michael Benton on “Guillermo Gomez Pena s El Mexterminator and Cyber Vato” click on it and read the essay.

ZoneZero Exhibitions
There are multiple pages of exhibits (over a hundred exhibits)—to access more than the first page of exhibits go to the bottom of the page where there are a sequence of round buttons—click on them to visit other exhibit pages. WARNING: Some of these sites contain images of violence, sexuality, complex political and philosophical statements or critiques of belief-systems. These are all personal artistic statements. These are intended be used as examples/models for how this assignment could be approached.

3) DEVELOP YOUR OWN INTEPRETATION OF A KEY TERM OR QUESTION FROM OUR COURSE AND CREATE A DEFINITIONAL STATEMENT. USE OTHER SOURCES AND DRAW FROM YOUR OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. This "must" involve a clear argument of your perspective on the concept, how it fits into other understandings of the concept, and the possible uniqueness/importance of your position in regards to this concept.

EXAMPLES—

Collective Memory

SEEING AS BELIEVING—JUDITH BELZER (MULTIMEDIA)

WHAT IS CULTURE?

Visit Reconstruction
Go to the far right, on top, there is a button that says Archives , click on it now look at the middle of the screen and click on the link Number 1, Winter 2003 locate the essay title “What we write and why?” click on that link and read the essay.

ZoneZero Exhibitions
There are multiple pages of exhibits (over a hundred exhibits)—to access more than the first page of exhibits go to the bottom of the page where there are a sequence of round buttons—click on them to visit other exhibit pages. WARNING: Some of these sites contain images of violence, sexuality, complex political and philosophical statements or critiques of belief-systems. These are all personal artistic statements. These are intended be used as examples/models for how this assignment could be approached.

4) DEVELOP A GENERATIONAL STATEMENT IN WHICH YOU CRITIQUE THE WAY IN WHICH YOUR PARTICULAR GROUP, COMMUNITY, SUBCULTURE, ETHNICITY, CLASS, GENDER, REGION, OR FAITH IS REPRESENTED BY THE MEDIA.

Watch Spike Lee’s movies, especially Bamboozled, for examples of this method.

“MTV Generation or Generation X” by Kristina Ross

5) CREATE A “COMMON-PLACE BOOK” IN WHICH YOU USE VARIOUS SOURCES TO DEVELOP YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE PRODUCTION/REPRESENTATION OF A COLLECTIVE MEMORY OR BELIEF: (a common-place book is a scrapbook that is used to aid personal reflection on one's own views/perspective, an event, community, or belief-system)

EXAMPLES--

“The Human Ecology of Memory: A ‘Common-Place Book’”

SEEING AS BELIEVING—JUDITH BELZER (MULTIMEDIA)

ZoneZero Exhibitions
There are multiple pages of exhibits (over a hundred exhibits)—to access more than the first page of exhibits go to the bottom of the page where there are a sequence of round buttons—click on them to visit other exhibit pages.

WARNING: Some of these sites contain images of violence, sexuality, complex political and philosophical statements or critiques of belief-systems. These are all personal artistic statements. These are intended be used as examples/models for how this assignment could be approached.

7) PRODUCE AN ETHNOGRAPHY OR HISTORY OF A LOCAL CULTURE OR A SUBCULTURE.

Talk to me about ways of doing this project and possible models—this can be tailored to fit your proposal.

WHAT IS CULTURE?

8) RESEARCH A CONTESTED HISTORICAL EVENT, CULTURE, OR COMMUNITY.

Talk to me about ways of doing this project and possible models—this can be tailored to fit your proposal.

Writing a College History Paper

A Student’s Guide to the Study of History

9) CREATE YOUR OWN ARTISTIC, POLITICAL OR REPRESENTATIONAL METHOD FOR APPROACHING THE CONCEPTS OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY, LOCAL CULTURE, OR HISTORY—AS WITH ALL OF THESE PROJECTS YOU MUST GET APPROVAL FROM THE INSTRUCTOR.

Five Basic Criteria for a Research Paper

2006-03-18T11:57:00.000-08:00

Five Basic Criteria for a Research Paper

1. Concept addresses the strength and clarity of the paper overall. Is the paper's topic clearly laid out? Have you introduced your reader to the questions about that topic that the paper is trying to answer? Are your answers to those questions also clear? Is the argument that drives the paper worth making, or does it seem simplistic? (That is, are you arguing that the sky is blue, or that water is wet?)

2. Analysis addresses how well you've developed and supported your paper. Does the paper make the reader feel that you really know your topic and your sources? Have you followed your analysis of the topic as far as it could go, or have you left your reader saying, "Well, that's true, but what about this?" Have you shown your readers how you arrived at your position, or have you simply told them? Are your assertions backed up with references (in the form of quotes, paraphrases or summaries) to your sources? When you quote a source, do you then interpret the quotation -- or do you leave it sitting there, hoping it will speak for itself?

3. Structure addresses how well you've led the reader through your paper. Does your paper follow a clear and logical progression from idea to idea? Have you prepared your reader early in the paper for the arguments you are going to make? Do you make logical transitions from idea to idea, or do your peer reviewers often ask you, "How did you get from this paragraph to THIS paragraph?" Does your paper address all the issues you bring up in its introduction? Does your paper conclude, or does it just stop?

4. Style addresses how the paper sounds. Does the paper's introduction really introduce the paper, or does it just spin its wheels? Do parts of the paper strike the reader as superfluous, as "dead wood?" Does the paper often rely on the passive voice? Does the paper use the right words at the right time, or does it seem "thesaurusized?" Does the paper seem wordy, or its tone overly weighty, to its readers?

5. Presentation and Documentation (P&D) addresses how the paper looks and reads. Does the paper exhibit consistent grammatical or mechanical mistakes (i.e., sentence fragments, clumsy syntax, shifts in tense, incorrect punctuation or spelling)? Are your readers stopped by sentences they either don't understand or have to spend time figuring out? Are your sources clearly and accurately documented in both the footnotes and the bibliography? Does the paper make the reader feel that you are paying attention to details, or that you've rushed to print without reading the paper yourself?

Background Lecture: Context and Community

2006-03-17T10:11:00.000-08:00

Background Lecture: “Context and Community”
Introduction to Argument Lectures
Instructor: Michael Benton

Teachers often present arguments removed from any social context. Courses are often designed around textbooks that present a series of arguments and subjects lined up like zoo animals removed from their native habitats. Consequently, many students fail to recognize the importance of the subjects that they are studying and how they relate to their daily life. Through a contextual understanding of arguments we can begin to understand how the knowledge that we are creating in the classroom relates to how we live, work, study, and play every day.

Whenever we are engaged with ideas and reasons, we are arguing. Whenever someone else makes a claim on our opinions, beliefs, and values, we are arguing. Arguing, though, is much more than the shouting down of other opinions (no matter what examples we learn from the spectacle of televised talk shows). Constructive and effective arguing involves the development of listening skills, self-reflective understanding of our own rhetorical positions/situations, and the willingness to engage in the dialogical production of meanings. The context for arguing also includes the time (historical moment), place (spatial relationships), and circumstances (political conflicts) of arguing. When you understand the complete context for an argument, you will be better able to make sense of the argument and respond more effectively. Writing that matters, including arguing, responds to the needs of actual people in real situations. When you argue, you are part of a conversation made up of the members of a community who care about the issues you are discussing.

Writing teachers often refer to the interaction between readers and writers in a particular context as a “rhetorical situation.” “Rhetoric” is the art of arguing (persuading) effectively for a particular audience, occasion, and purpose. Throughout this course I have been trying to get you to recognize the importance of constructing your arguments with an understanding of the contexts that shape them—reading and writing an argument within the broader conversation(s) and knowledge(s) that shape it. This broader conversation, along with the beliefs, values, and assumptions identified with those who participate in the conversation forms the “context” for an argument. This context includes the “rhetorical situation.” A rhetorical situation identifies the interaction between writers and readers or speakers and listeners in relation to a particular issue, and refers to the set of elements involved in any act of communication: the writer or speaker, the audience, the purpose, the occasion, and the topic. Rhetorical situations must be understood in the context of “discourse communities”—which means that they should be studied in relationship to other rhetorical situations and to the broader life of a community of which these situations are a part. A rhetorical situation brings members of a community together to discuss a particular issue, but the issue and the relationships among the participants in the conversation make sense only if you can identify the communal discourse that these participants operate in.

The word “community” comes from a Latin word that means “common” or “shared.” In its broadest sense, “community” describes a group of people who have something in common. Communities may be defined by geographical location or may consist of people sharing a common history, language, or culture. Communities may be formed by those who share the same social or business interests, or political or religious beliefs. In academia, discourse communities are referred to as “disciplines”. Disciplines within a college or university, academic departments, and scholarly organizations often define themselves according to a common body of knowledge, method of inquiry, or domain of study. Quite often discourse communities overlap and intersect in a lot of interesting ways. Communities formed by common interests or beliefs may transcend geographical boundaries, and a geographical (or national) community may contain many smaller communities based on language or culture. People usually claim membership in a lot of different communities. For example, a student may be a member of a sorority and involved in one of the progressive student groups on campus. She may be a Buddhist, a Christian, or a Wiccan. She may be a student of a more radical philosophy, such as, existentialism or socialism, or she may be a believer in the market-system as the most productive social reality. These various community memberships shape our understanding of the world and we read every bit of information through the contextual lenses of our discourse communities. This is why it is so important that we learn to recognize, name, and define our own particular positions. Additionally, often, the most powerful and productive understanding develop when we recognize the contradictions of our membership in different discourse communities. What happens when a student attempts to resolve the conflicts between her membership in a patriarchal religious community and her increasing activism as a feminist. What happens when a student attempts to resolve the conflicts between environmental concern and the business need to maximize profits at all costs. Once again, although arguing is often the seeking of victory over other positions, I am not attempting to develop skills that will help you to enforce dogmatic victory in either/or conflicts, instead, it is my hope that you can learn to develop an understanding of the potential of both/and... arguments. The most sensitive, developed, and complicated arguments are those that recognize the multiplicity of positions and seek a rapproachment (an open space in which we can present and discuss our positions) for dialogical production of meaning(s).

Robert Grudin in his book “On Dialogue” (1996) states that dialogical argument skills are necessary to the development of active democratic citizens:
This challenging interplay of opposed principles complicates the idea of liberty and defies all simple and conventional definitions of its character. Liberty is not a guaranteed privilege; it is not a condition that citizens are born into. Liberty is more aptly construed as an art, or rather a network of arts: arts by which individuals and groups can gain awareness of their own condition, preserve it and improve it. (2)

There is a vast world of ideas out there and you are perched at an amazing point in your intellectual development in which you can develop your “own” perspective. Up until now everyone has been telling you what to think (including myself), now is the time to create your own understanding of the world.

The engaged public intellectuals are those that are able to interact and effect the discourses of everyday life. Often, sadly, those who show up win by default and shape the world in which we live in. Are you going to sit on the sidelines?

Bill Moyers: Media That Sets Us Free

2006-03-17T10:01:00.000-08:00

Media That Sets Us Free
by Bill Moyers
Yes! Magazine

There’s a reason journalism is the only occupation protected by the U.S. Constitution. To govern ourselves, we the people need the truth, not what is politically expedient

To Read the Article

Thinking About "Media?"

2006-03-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

Main Entry: 1me•dia
Pronunciation: 'mE-dE-&
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural me•di•ae /-dE-"E/
1 [Late Latin, from Latin, feminine of medius; from the voiced stops' being regarded as intermediate between the tenues and the aspirates] : a voiced stop
2 [New Latin, from Latin] : the middle coat of the wall of a blood or lymph vessel consisting chiefly of circular muscle fibers

Main Entry: 2media
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural me•di•as
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: plural of medium
1 : a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression; especially : MEDIUM 2b

Main Entry: media event
Function: noun
: a publicity event staged for coverage by the news media

Main Entry: mul•ti•me•dia
Pronunciation: -'mE-dE-&
Function: adjective
: using, involving, or encompassing several media {a multimedia approach to learning}
- multimedia noun

Some Good sources for thinking about the media and generating ideas:

Jahsonic: A Vocabulary of [Media] Culture

Media Culture

Wikipedia on the term “Mass Media”

Media Channel

Center for Media and Democracy

PopMatters

What is Culture?

About-Face and Subliminal Advertising

2006-03-17T09:44:00.000-08:00

Group studying contemporary images of women--sections on positive and negative examples--essays and links:

About Face

Subliminal Advertising

Photographic Truth in the Digital Age

2006-03-17T09:36:00.000-08:00

Photographic Truth in the Digital Era - Teachable Moment

Greg's Digital Retouching Portfolio

Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography

Fake or Photo?

Digital Truth?

Doctored Picture of John Kerry During 2004 Elections

Doctored Images of George Bush: Political Satire

Doctored Images of Osama Bin Laden: Political Satire

Designing Ananove: World's First Virtual Newscaster

Alix Spiegel: Freud's Nephew and The Origins of Public Relations

2006-03-17T09:16:00.000-08:00

Spiegel, Alix. "Freud's Nephew and the Origins of Public Relations." NPR
(April 22, 2005)

Viral Ads

What is Impropaganda?

Building Quote Files

2006-03-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

Example of How to Build a “Quote” File for Research Resources

As you research, read and analyze your sources begin to gather quotes that can serve as mnemonic devices that will allow you to remember the argument of the text. Later we will work on outlining and sketching an argument. In the third unit we will also begin to develop our own annotated bibliographies.
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Research Project: “An Ecological Understanding of Education”

Now, more than ever, the graduates of our schools and colleges will live in worlds different from those in which they were born and went to school. A discipline called English must help them prepare for unknown conditions. The best preparation we can give our students will be the highest level of competence as readers and writers, producers and consumers of the various texts they will encounter. (154)

Scholes, Robert. The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1998.

The disease of modern culture is specialization. (19)

Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. NY: Avon Books, 1977.

We must … reject the concept of specialization. We need the contrary, a diversified economy, for only such an economy will allow for populations to participate fully in our society. Specialization inevitably leads to chronic unemployment and to lower wages. (179)

Goldsmith, James. “The Winners and the Losers.” The Case Against the Global Economy. eds. J. Mander and E. Goldsmith. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1996.

… for some years now the activity of the artist in our society has been trending more toward the function of the ecologist: one who deals with environmental relationships. Ecology is defined as the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their environment. Thus the act of creation for the new artist is not so much the invention of new objects as the revelation of previously unrecognized relationships between existing phenomena, both physical and metaphysical. So we find that ecology is art in the most fundamental and pragmatic sense, expanding our apprehension of reality. (346)

Youngblood, Eugene. Expanded Cinema. NY: Dutton, 1970.

The great ecological issues of our time have to do in one way or another with our failure to see things in their entirety. That failure occurs when minds are taught to think in boxes and not taught how to transcend those boxes or to question overly much how they fit with other boxes. We educate lots of in-the-box thinkers who perform within their various specialties rather like a dog kept in the yard by an electronic barrier. And there is a connection between knowledge organized in boxes, minds that stay in those boxes, and degraded ecologies and global imbalances. (94-95)

Orr, David. Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect. Washington D.C.: Island, 1994.

Stephen Greenblatt: On Culture

2006-03-17T08:42:00.000-08:00

A Critical Summary of

Greenblatt, Stephen. "Culture." Critical Terms for Literature Study. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. 225-32. Rpt. in Contexts for Criticism. Ed. Donald Keesey. 3rd ed. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1998. 477-92.

The term "culture" commonly refers to a society's beliefs, customs, morals, art, and laws. However, according to Stephen Greenblatt, because the term is used so frequently, it often doesn't mean much, pointing only vaguely to a variety of "capabilities and habits" adopted by human beings (478). However, the concept can still be useful to students of literature if defined and applied more carefully. In his essay "Culture," Greenblatt redefines the concept of culture in a fashion he believes can do more work for the literary scholar. This refined understanding of the concept, he believes, must begin with the acknowledgement that culture ironically "gestures toward what appear to be opposite things: constraint and mobility (478).

In asserting that culture signifies or indicates social forces of constraint, Greenblatt points out that every culture is formed by an "ensemble of beliefs and practices" (478). These beliefs and practices set up standards that "function as a pervasive technology of control" to structure and delimit the behavior the members of a society. For example, such standards may articulate certain ideals of appearance or behaviors in public. If people do something unacceptable, something counter to these ideals, then they suffer the consequences: everything from stares, sarcasm, contempt, or laughter to legal sanctions like imprisonment. The beliefs and values of a culture discourage people from going outside what is "appropriate" for that society; they are constrained by what society's expectations. At the same time, "a culture's boundaries are enforced more positively as well" (478). People are rewarded for conforming to the constraints of culture with praise from others, an admiring look, a pat on the back, a promotion, etc.

Refining a consciousness of culture on these forces of constraint can assist in understanding the cultural significance of a piece of literature. Greenblatt notes two genres of literature, satire and panegyric, as obvious examples demonstrating the constraints of a culture. A satire shows explicitly the reaction to someone who does not conform, while a panegyric praises someone who does. However, satires or panegyrics written years ago do not have the same power or emphasis today because the cultural customs, values, and beliefs upon which they were based are no longer in force for modern readers. As a result, the only way to fully appreciate these works is to examine the culture that they reflect and are embedded in. An important task of literary criticism, then, is "to reconstruct the boundaries upon whose existence the works were predicated" (478).

But for Greenblatt understanding "culture as a complex whole" and illuminating the cultural significance of literature involves more than reconstructing these boundaries. Culture may be a web of constraint, but at the same time it "functions as the regulator and guarantor of movement" (480). Although limitations must be present in a culture, these must also have enough elasticity to allow movement and adaptation. This elasticity allows a culture to change over a period of time. Furthermore, cultures survive only because of the experimentation and improvisation of societies. A society must tolerate and even encourage mobility to determine what attitudes, activities and aspirations fulfill its needs and foster its success. For instance, a culture may need to experiment with tyranny to realize it needs democracy. A culture may need to improvise and mediate or modify its constraints to accommodate the diversity of people needed for its work.

The cultural mobility Greenblatt speaks of is not random, nor is it a conscious exploration and pursuit of a social destiny. Rather it is an expression of a crucial social process that Greenblatt terms "exchange" (480). Culture acts as a "network of negotiations" for the exchange of goods, ideas, attitudes, and even people (480-81). In the negotiations of this exchange, the direction and destiny of a society emerges -- its conflicts and its goals. Cultural exchange also permits concepts to be traded and shared by different societies. From this, one society can adopt and apply ideas from other societies. Through its cultural forces of constraint, a society seeks to preserve itself, but through the cultural mobility of exchange, a society moves to modify itself.

Just as literature reflects cultural forces of constraint, so it reflects the cultural exchange that fosters mobility. For Greenblatt, "a culture's narratives . . . are crucial indices of the prevailing codes governing human mobility and constraint" (481). Great writers in fact are "masters of these codes"; consciously or unconsciously they are "specialists in cultural exchange" (481). Their writing captures not just one aspect of a particular culture or one over-riding system of constraint; rather it captures the many divisions within a society that contributes to its cultural exchange. A society is both articulated and transformed by literary texts. The study of literature, then, should focus on discovering in the text "structures for the accumulation, transformation, representation, and communication of social energies and practices" (481). Thus, the cultural exchange of literature is not limited to the record of exchanges that have taken place in the represented culture, for there is also an exchange that takes place between the reader and the text. This exchange between the reader and the text can invoke an even deeper level to culture.

Greenblatt offers a set of cultural questions about a piece of literature that can nurture this critical exchange of culture:

What kinds of behavior, what models of practice does this work seem to enforce?

Why might readers at a particular time and place find this work compelling?

Are there differences between my values and the values implicit in the work I am reading?

Upon what social understandings does the work depend?

Whose freedom of thought or movement might be constrained implicity or explicitly by this work?

What are the larger social structures with which these particular acts of praise or blame might be connected? (478-79)

By exploring literature through such questions, the reader may discover how the texts have absorbed so many components comprising a culture. If these components are brought together and their relationships with one another are understood, then literature can be a strong representation of a society's "'cultivation'" (479). The reader can examine the varying components, and determine how each contributes to the growth and alterations of a culture. This insight can only be achieved, though, by focusing critical discourse on a reconstruction of a complex culture.

More Viewpoints on "What is Culture?"

Ninfa Floyd: Life's Fragility Gives Us Balance

2006-03-17T05:32:00.000-08:00

KENTUCKY VOICES: Life's fragility gives us balance
by Ninfa Floyd
Lexington Herald-Leader

There comes a time in life in which you think you have it all figured out: career, relationships, spirituality, passions, you name it. It all seems to fit neatly into the space we have set aside for the storage of "everything is fine with my life, thank you very much."

And then you are hit with the unexpected, the unplanned, things that are by their very nature outside of our ability to understand.

When bad things happen, they do not usually come with any warning; they either sneak in unnoticed or just suddenly appear. Bang!

Last year, I found out something inside of me was broken, and for a moment, I had no idea what to do about it. All I wanted was assurance that everything would turn out OK. And it did, but not without my kicking and screaming, crying and asking what's next, and how the hell is it all going to work out.

Why me? I had plans, I had things to do last summer, and nowhere in that linear direction of my life was there room for an aggressive cluster of cells to threaten my very existence. Yet it was so.

After cycles of denial, pity, anger, courage and acceptance, I would find myself inevitably again in this foggy time, where nothing made sense. I refused to listen to what life was telling me; maybe I could not hear myself amid the noise I was making.

Before it happened, I was the grand master of self-delusion. For the most part, my life was mine to control. I knew I was important to some and insignificant to many. Time was on my side. And I liked it that way.

Then suddenly, I found myself off center, threatened with a shorter life than I had planned. I no longer seemed to be operating from my core; external circumstances were controlling me. I was in full transition mode and I did not know how to deal with the changes that were taking place in my world.

Family and friends, all known forces in my life at some time or another, rallied to my rescue. They gave me a present: love and humor in the face of adversity. One April night at the home of a friend, more that 60 relatives and friends came together, all dressed in casual, everyday clothing, except for one curious detail: They wore outrageous wigs.

Imagine a room full of people seemingly trying to carry on normal conversations while wearing wigs that could not possibly be ignored. Laughter filled that beautiful April night. Through humor, we made lemonade out of the lemons life had given me.

The prospect of chemotherapy and its side effects was part of the transition and of the changes that I was not quite ready to accept, and yet after that "Wig-Out" night I sensed that I was ready to move forward, to embrace the changes that were to come and to continue learning from them.

It was like evolution in action. Life was telling me something, and I was finally listening: It does not come neatly and beautifully wrapped. As we grow older, the familiar -- family and close friends -- is life.

Life's fragility and the awareness that our time is finite should help us balance ambition and achievement with more personal goals of fostering warm relationships and being more in the moment.

The good things are not good forever. The bad things are not quite as bad. Keep your sense of humor; make lots of lemonade.

Ninfa Floyd of Lexington is an associate professor of Spanish at Bluegrass Community and Technical College.

Sources for Student Papers

2006-03-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

For a Student Researching the Holocaust and a Student Researching the War on Terror

Leslie Heywood, Pioneer in Study of Women and Sports, on UK Campus, March 27-31

2006-03-16T05:56:00.000-08:00

(Extra Credit Opportunities)

Leslie Heywood, Pioneer in Women and Sports, to be College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Visiting Professor, March 27-31st at University of Kentucky

The Women’s Studies Program at the University of Kentucky is pleased to announce a weeklong series of events with Leslie Heywood, Professor of English and Creative Writing at SUNY Binghamton, and pioneer in the field of women and sports. Professor Heywood’s brilliant and moving memoir Pretty Good for A Girl, based on her years as a star runner in high school, has been an inspiration for girls dealing with body image and health issues of all kinds. In addition to her acclaimed memoir, Heywood’s groundbreaking books on women, sport, and health include Bodymakers: A Cultural Anatomy of Women’s Bodybuilding (Rutgers, 1998), and Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon (Minnesota, 2003). She has been a consultant on film projects related to women and sport, including Girl Wrestler, The Battle of the Sexes, and Synch or Swim, and is a nationally respected activist/consultant in the area of women and sports, who has worked alongside figures such as Billy Jean King. Professor Heywood is also a distinguished and innovative feminist scholar who has just edited The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism, a monumental 1200 page, 2-volume set devoted to presenting third wave feminism in comprehensive form for the first time, and a published poet, with two recent books of poetry, The Proving Grounds and Natural Selection.

Events that will be held in conjunction with Leslie Heywood’s visit:

“Immanence, Transcendence, and Immersive Practices: Female Athletes in U.S. Neoliberalism”

Monday, March 27, 2006
7:00 pm
Center Theatre, Old Student Center
Reception to follow in Rm. 214

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Karyotypes: The Myths and Mutations of Third Wave Feminism”

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
4:00 pm
Young Library Auditorium

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Commentary and discussion leader for the WS Film Series film, Girl Wrestler (Diane Zander; 2004; 53 minutes)

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
7:00 p.m.
Gaines Center’s Bingham-Davis House, 218 E. Maxwell Street

Professor Heywood served as a consultant for this documentary.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poetry Reading

Friday, March 31, 2006
7:30 pm
230 New Student Center
Book signing and reception to follow
All events are free and open to the public. For information, please call 257-1388

Six Week Study of The Great Gatsby

2006-03-16T05:12:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone --
I am a part-timer in Developmental Studies, but I also work in Outreach Services at the Lexington Public Library, where a co-worker and I are hosting an ESL Book Discussion Group that might be of interest to your students, friends, neighbors :-)

The book we will discuss over a six-week period is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is part of the Library's 2006 "One Book/One Lexington" project.

We will provide all the materials (including t-shirts!), and the program is free of charge, of course. Meetings will be held at the Central Library, 140 East Main Street, in Conference Room B on the 3rd floor. Free parking is available in the garage attached to the library.

Here's the schedule:

Tuesday, March 21, 6-7:30 PM,

Tuesday, April 4, 6-7:30 PM

Tuesday, April 18, 6-7:30 PM

Please have anyone interested call

Ruthie Maslin 231-5594

or Jennifer Hubbard-Sanchez 231-5514

Thanks for all your help in letting folks know about this project!

-- Ruthie Maslin

1st Annual Lexington Peace Fair (May 20th) and Peace Expressions/Futures (A Contest)

2006-03-16T04:15:00.000-08:00

(Extra Credit Opportunity--Anyone who gets involved with these projects or the BCTC Peace and Justice Coalition--ask me if you need more info on helping out/joining)

Our Little World: The First Annual Lexington Peace Fair (May 20, 2006)

Peace Expressions and Peace Futures

Jon Swartz: Google, Justice Department Face Off on Search/Privacy Issue

2006-03-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

Google, Justice Dept. face off on search/privacy issue
by Jon Swartz
USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google (GOOG) and the Justice Department will square off in federal court Tuesday in a seminal Internet privacy case that could touch millions of Americans.

The Bush administration is demanding the results of millions of searches on Google during a random week to buttress an online child-protection law blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. Its reasoning: Internet filters don't properly shield kids from viewing pornography.

Google has resisted, citing competitive and privacy concerns, in a dispute that has escalated in a series of legal maneuvers since January. The American Civil Liberties Union says it will urge the court to reject the government's bid at a hearing in San Jose, Calif. A ruling could come on Tuesday.

Privacy advocates are worried Internet search engines could become tools for government snooping and spawn a wave of subpoenas by individuals against search engine companies.

More significantly, the case undercuts the basic Internet tenet of anonymity, says Evan Hendricks, editor of newsletter Privacy Times. If the government has its way, he says, the Internet could be used as a digital microscope to seek out people. A Justice Department spokesman had no comment.

In an 18-page court filing Feb. 24, Justice lawyers argued privacy rights would not be trampled because the information requested would not identify individuals or be traceable.

The brief includes a declaration by Philip Stark, a researcher and statistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who says the government specifically asked that Google remove any identifying information from the search requests.

AOL, Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) MSN are cooperating with the government. They say that their assistance is limited and that the privacy of their users has not been violated.

But as the largest and most influential search engine, Google has significantly more at stake. "This case will make it clear how much information is collected and stored on Google searches," says Paul Schiff Berman, an expert in cyberlaw at the University of Connecticut School of Law.

Berman and other legal experts say the consequences could be far-reaching for U.S. residents on several levels. The government might delve into the vast stores of Web-browsing data to look for individuals who are national security risks or engaged in criminal activity. Divorce lawyers also could subpoena search-engine providers for e-mail and browsing records to investigate the fidelity of a spouse.

"It creates a logistical problem for Google by putting it in the position of being an extension of law enforcement," Berman says. "Of course, because Google is mining data for commercial purposes, it could put an end to its troubles if it stopped collecting data."

Telling Their Stories

2006-03-14T06:51:00.000-08:00

Website Introduction:

High school students at the Urban School of San Francisco conduct and film interviews with Bay Area Holocaust survivors in their homes. Students then transcribe each 2-plus hour interview, create hundreds of movie files associated with each transcript, and then post the full-text, full-video interviews on this public website as a service to a world-wide audience interested in Holocaust studies. See Project Descriptions for a more detailed overview of the course and project.

This is an ongoing, ever-changing, and constantly evolving project involving dozens of students, teachers, and community volunteers. The majority of efforts thus far have been applied to the actual interview process as well as posting interviews on this website. We will continue developing this "About The Project" area as a source to encourage schools, non-profits, museums, libraries, and other interested organizations to adopt and adapt the models from Telling Their Stories. Our current strategy here is to simply provide information on our model. Organizations interested in duplicating this project concept will need to re-work many of the directions to fit their own projects.

Telling Their Stories

University History

2006-03-14T06:33:00.000-08:00

A new website devoted to top quality digital links for teachers and students. The aim of the website is to provide a single web portal where people involved in history as a discipline can be sure they'll find the best online material available.

University History

Double Digit Tuition Increase For KCTCS College Students

2006-03-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

11% increase in tuition proposed
3/10/2006 Business First Louisville

The board of regents of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System voted today to recommend an in-state tuition rate increase of 11 percent for the 2006-2007 academic year.

That would boost the rate per credit hour (including fees) to $109 from $98.

The board said the increase is needed to continue to meet mandates under the 1997 Post-secondary Education Improvement Act, and noted that according to a new set of benchmark states that was established by the Council on Post-Secondary Education, the Kentucky system ranks 18th out of 20 in public funding. The ranking, it added, indicates a $79 million gap in state appropriation relative to other states.

The board also recommended a $131 per credit hour tuition rate for out-of-state students from contiguous counties, and a $327 per credit hour rate for all other out-of-state students.

The statewide system consists of 16 colleges and 65 campuses.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2006-07 tuition for KCTCS rises - Board approves 11% boost for in-state students
Writer: Art Jester
3/11/2006 Lexington Herald-Leader

VERSAILLES - In-state students will pay 11.2 percent more to attend Kentucky's community and technical colleges in the fall.

Tuition per credit hour for in-state students will be $109 in 2006-07, up from $98 in the current academic year.
The average student in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System takes 12 or 13 credit hours, said Ken Walker, KCTCS vice president for finance, facilities and human resources.

KCTCS has 81,082 in-state students out of a total enrollment of 84,931.

The KCTCS Board of Regents approved the increase yesterday in a meeting at KCTCS headquarters in Versailles.

Under reciprocal agreements with five states, KCTCS also charges in-state tuition at some of its community and technical colleges for students from some counties in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee and West Virginia. There are currently 2,219 students in this category.

There will be bigger increases for out-of-state students not covered by reciprocal agreements:

* Out-of-state students from counties contiguous to Kentucky will pay $131 per credit hour in 2006-2007, up from the current $118.

* All other out-of-state students will pay $327 per credit hour next academic year, in contrast with $294 this year.

The board's vice chairman, Joe Wise of Louisville, cast the only dissenting vote on the tuition increase.

Wise said he voted "no" to "send a message to our legislators" that they need to appropriate more money for KCTCS and the state universities so they can avoid double-digit increases in tuition.

Christine Buckner, a student regent from Gateway Community and Technical College in Northern Kentucky, agreed with Wise, saying, "Somewhere, it has got to stop."

Students see that higher tuition pays for faculty and staff raises, she said, but some students question whether more tuition improves the quality of what they get in the classrooms.

"We all wish we didn't have to do this," said KCTCS board chairman Richard Bean of Louisville. "The reason we have to do it is, the state does not want to fund higher education."

"I hope there's a hue and cry not only from KCTCS students" but also from students at the state universities, Bean said.

Financial aid is provided to 52,000 KCTCS students of 71,000 who are eligible, Walker said. The average amount of financial aid is $2,085.

KCTCS in-state students experienced a 6.5 percent tuition increase for 2005-2006.

Last week, the University of Kentucky approved a 12 percent tuition increase for in-state entering freshmen and sophomores.

The University of Louisville is considering raising in-state tuition by 13 percent

What would you show in a film festival about "Calls to Conscience and Action"

2006-03-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

(Courtesy of Long Pauses)

What would you show in a film festival about "Calls to Conscience and Action"

Thinking About Radical Democracy: Pt. 4

2006-03-10T18:08:00.000-08:00

(Radical in reflective reworking involving going back to the origins of the concept and pushing our supposed democracy to live up to its founding concepts. For my students working on social/collective memory projects--the links are all updated. Suggestions for this list are appreciated and needed--please help me to keep up-to-date and to catch up on newly uncovered/ignored histories.)

U.S. Section of Women's International League for Peace

Orion: Environmental Discourse and Dissent

Green Social Thought

Radical Democracy: A Contested Terrain

Rules for Radicals

The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy

Fast Food Nation and McDonaldization

History of Radicalism in the U.S.

Abolitionist Movement

Civil Rights Movement

Marxist Internet Archive

Eugene Debs, Labor Organizer

Feminist Movement

Marcus Garvey, Black Nationalist Leader

Labor Movement

Abbie Hoffman

Populism

Socialism

Utopian Communities

The Student as Nigger

John Taylor Gatto: Challenging the Myths of Modern Schooling

Raoul Vaneigem: The Revolution of Everyday Life

Resources for Studying Propaganda

The Memory Hole: Freeing of Information in Action

On the Poverty of Student Life

Language of the War on Terror

Independent Media in a Time of War

Indy Media

Nancy Snow: Rebranding of America

Poet/Performer Saul Williams

Politics of University Teaching in Post 9/11 America

Socialist Equality Party Presidential Candidate Bill Van Auken: "An American Tragedy"

Douglas Rushkoff's Open Source Democracy

Chris Hedges: The Meaning of War

Stonewall Riot and Its Aftermath

Wikipedia: Stonewall Riots

Stonewall Riots, 1969

Nickle and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich

Crucial Texts of Radical Democracy

Thomas Frank: Architecture of a New Consensus

Culture-Trafficking for the 21st Century

Terry Tempest Williams: Open Spaces of Democracy

Terry Tempest Williams: Ground Truthing

BBC Documentary: The Power of Nightmares

Paul Kivel: Are You Mentoring For Social Justice

Skidmark Bob, Musical Activist

Stokely Carmichael: Architect of Black Power

George Soros: The Bubble of American Supremacy

Race and Collective Memory Bibliography

Without Sanctuary: America's Dark History of Racialized Violence (caution)

Ron Strickland's Marxist Cultural Theory

Tony Kushner: Radical Pragmatist

Race: The Power of an Illusion

Ubu Web: Freedom as Creativity

Martin Luther King's Radical Message

Michael Moore: White Frights

Remembering Johnny Cash

U.S. Prison Boom

How the Other Half Banks

Hakim Bey: Poetic Terrorism

Situationist International: Resisting the Society of the Spectacle

Bureau of Publis Secrets

Howard Zinn: Our War on Terrorism

The Nation: Our Debt to Bill Moyers

Arundhati Roy: Instant Mix, Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free)

Project Censored Annual Reports of Year's Top Censored News Stories

Guy Debord: Society of the Spectacle

Slavoj Zizek: The Passion

Raymond Federman: The Real Begins Where the Spectacle Ends

Emma Goldman: Minorities vs. Majorities

Emma Goldman Archives

Anarchist Archives

Mary Wolstoncraft: Vindication of the Rights of Women

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: The Solitude of Self

National Women's History Project

Gloria Steinem

Angela Davis: Radical Activist/Black Feminist

Combahee River Collective Statement: Genesis of Black Feminism

Feminist Writing Space

bell hooks: writing and resistance

The Beautiful Enigma of Radical Democracy

Women's International League for Peace

Peace Women

Extreme Democracy

American Indian Movement

Alcatraz Is Not an Island: Reclaiming Native Land

Alice Paul

Iron Jawed Angels (Katjia von Garnier) Warner, 2004: 125 minutes.

Alice Paul

We discussed the Seneca Falls 1848 Convention as a landmark event in the women's movement.

Seneca Falls Declaration

I mentioned Ida B. Wells the African American activist in the movie who refuses to get in the back of the parade--for more on this important democratic civil rights activist:

Ida B. Wells

Wikipedia: Ida B. Wells

Think about Ida B. Wells argument in the film and then read this important statement from Black Feminists:

Excerpts from the Combahee River Collective Statement

Other women activists of the time that are not featured in the movie, but are very important to know (they are often ignored because they fought for the rights of workers--something a capitalist society rarely honors). These women were as courageous and passionate as Alice Paul and Lucy Burns (have you heard of them?):

Mother Jones: the Angel of the Mines

Wikipedia: Mother Jones

Emma Goldman

Wikipedia: Emma Goldman

Helen Keller is also mentioned many times during the movie. How many of you knew that Helen Keller was an civil rights activist who was pursued by the FBI?

Helen Keller and the FBI

Helen Keller

I mentioned stereotypes about "feminism" and just wanted to post other opinions on the issue:

North Carolina College Student: Stereotypes About Feminism Are Unfounded and Damaging (also click on the only comment at the end of the essay)

The Guerilla Girls a performative activist group has long been fighting stereotypes of women and for equal representation in the arts (if you have taken an art history class you will understand the disparity between the representation of male and female artists):

University of North Texas website on feminism:

What is Feminism?

Public displays, marches and protests are an effective non-violent method for bringing attention to political issues (that are being ignored by mainstream society):

NOW: History of Marches and Mass Actions

Wikipedia: Social Movements

Wikipedia: Protests

Also check out the imagistic critiques of the conceptual artist Barbara Krueger--who questions how stereotypes and behaviors are reproduced through visual media:

Barbara Krueger

And courtesy of Melissa Purdue, an English Studies and Women Studies instructor at the University of Kentucky, an outline of the three waves of feminism (I added the links):

First Wave Feminism-

This term refers to the first concerted movement working for the reform of women's social and legal inequalities in the nineteenth century. Although individual feminist such as Mary Wollstonecraft had already argued against the injustices suffered by women, it was not until the 1850's that something like an organized feminist movement evolved in Britain. Its headquarters was at Langham Place in London, where a group of middle-class women, led by Barbara Bodichon (1827-91) and Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829-1925), met to discuss topical issues and publish the English Woman's Journal (1858-64).

The key concerns of First Wave Feminists were education, employment, the marriage laws, and the plight of intelligent middle-class single women. They were not primarily concerned with the problems of working-class women, nor did they necessarily see themselves as feminists in the modern sense (the term was not coined until 1895). First Wave Feminists largely responded to specific injustices they had themselves experienced.

Their major achievements were the opening of higher education for women; reform of the girls' secondary-school system, including participation in formal national examinations: the widening of access to the professions, especially medicine; married women's property rights, recognized in the Married Women's Property Act of 1870; and some improvement in divorced and separated women's child custody rights.

Second Wave Feminism-

The term 'Second Wave' was coined by Marsha Lear, and refers to the increase in feminist activity which occurred in America, Britain, and Europe from the late sixties onwards. In America, second wave feminism rose out of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in which women, disillusioned with their second-class status even in the activist environment of student politics, began to band together to contend against discrimination. The second wave was concerned with reproductive rights and the fight against sexual and domestic violence.

The tactics employed by Second Wave Feminists varied from highly-published activism, such as the protest against the Miss America beauty contest in 1968, to the establishment of small consciousness-raising groups. However, it was obvious early on that the movement was not a unified one, with differences emerging between black feminism, lesbian feminism, liberal feminism, and social feminism.

Second Wave Feminism in Britain was similarly multiple in focus, although it was based more strongly in working-class socialism, as demonstrated by the strike of women workers at the Ford car plant for equal pay in 1968. The slogan 'the personal is political' sums up the way in which Second Wave Feminism did not just strive to extend the range of social opportunities open to women, but also, through intervention within the spheres of reproduction, sexuality and cultural representation, to change their domestic and private lives. Second Wave Feminism did not just make an impact upon western societies, but has also continued to inspire the struggle for women's rights across the world.

Third Wave Feminism -

Loosely defined movement starting around late 1990’s with texts like Manifesta, Listen Up, To Be Real, and Body Outlaws. Third Wave Feminism, the movement of feminism beyond the sexual revolution of the 1960's, is focused on young women and men perpetuating and improving upon those rights gained in the past. It is hard to define because the Third Wave is characterized by individualism and a lack of desire to conform to a definition. Third Wavers have never lived in a world without the women's movement.

The front page of the Third Wave Foundation web site explains that the organization strives to combat inequalities that [women] face as a result of [their] age, gender, race, sexual orientation, economic status or level of education. By empowering young women, Third Wave is building a lasting foundation for social activism around the country.

Wikipedia: Feminism

Wikipedia: Suffrage Movement

Wikipedia: Alice Paul

Wikipedia: Lucy Burns

Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action

2006-03-10T17:04:00.000-08:00

Website intro:

Project Censored is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media.

Between 700 and 1000 stories are submitted to Project Censored each year from journalists, scholars, librarians, and concerned citizens around the world. With the help of more than 200 Sonoma State University faculty, students, and community members, Project Censored reviews the story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources and national significance. The university community selects 25 stories to submit to the Project Censored panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. Current or previous national judges include: Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, George Gerbner, Sut Jhally , Frances Moore Lappe, Norman Solomon, Michael Parenti, Herbert I. Schiller, Barbara Seaman, Erna Smith, Mike Wallace and Howard Zinn. All 25 stories are featured in the yearbook, Censored: The News That Didn't Make the News.

In 1996 and 1997, the yearbook won the Firecracker Alternative Book Award, celebrating the best in alternative publishing. The release of Project Censored's yearbook has developed into a national alternative press event. In 2003, along with several independent national magazines, over 40 alternative newsweeklies carried the Top 10 Censored stories in metropolitan areas throughout the country, and Project Censored was featured on more than 125 independent talk radio and television shows. Throughout the next year and into the next decade, Project Censored will continue to inform the public, advocate for independent journalism, and strive to spark debate on current issues involving media monopoly.

Project Censored is a national research effort launched in 1976 by Dr. Carl Jensen, professor emeritus of Communications Studies at Sonoma State University . Upon Jensen's retirement in 1996, leadership of the project was passed to associate professor of sociology and media research specialist, Dr. Peter Phillips.

Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2006

Archive of Top 25 Censored News Stories from Past Years

Real News Wire

Check out their amazing resources links

Visit the homepage of Project Censored for important reports you never see in mainstream media, including dangerous problems regarding the increasing consolidation of the mainstream media giants.

Boston Research Center for the 21st Center

2006-03-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

I came across the BRC through their publication of the Nel Noddings edited Educating Citizens for Global Awareness. They have many more resources for teachers and students on their website:

Boston Research Center for the 21st Century

The Kentucky Theater: 3/10 - 3/16

2006-03-10T11:33:00.000-08:00

(Any of this weeks films at the Kentucky Theater can be used to write a response for extra credit--post your response on this website)

Here`s the schedule for the upcoming week of 3/10-16:

(2nd week!) NIGHT WATCH (R)
Fri. 3/10 - 5:25; 7:35; 9:45; 12 midnite
Sat. 3/11 - 1:00; 3:15; 5:25; 7:35; 9:45; 12 midnite
Sun. 3/12 - 1:00; 3:15; 5:25; 7:35; 9:45
Mon. thru Thurs. 3/13-16 - 5:25; 7:35; 9:45

Academy Award Winner; Best Actor! CAPOTE (R) -- Ends Sunday!!
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman
Fri. 3/10 - 7:25
Sat. & Sun. 3/11-12 - 1:40; 7:25

New Print! Michelangelo Antonioni\'s THE PASSENGER (PG-13) -- Ends Sunday!!
starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider
Fri. thru Sun. 3/10-12 - 5:00; 9:40

MIRRORMASK (PG-13)
Fri. & Sat. 3/10-11 at Midnite

WAGING A LIVING (NR)
Tue. 3/14 - 3:00; 5:30; 7:15

ASK YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TO SIGN LETTER SUPPORTING PERKINS FUNDING

2006-03-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

ASK YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TO SIGN LETTER SUPPORTING PERKINS FUNDING

WHAT: We have another opportunity to encourage Members of Congress to demonstrate their support for career and technical education (CTE). Reps. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), and John Spratt (D-SC) are circulating a bi-partisan “Dear Colleague” letter to their fellow Representatives urging their colleagues to join them on a letter in support of preserving funds for Perkins programs. This letter will be sent to Representatives Ralph Regula (R-OH) and David Obey (D-WI) who are Chairman and Ranking Member, respectively, of the House Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee.

The deadline for signatures is the end of the day on Tuesday, March 14th.

A copy of the “Dear Colleague” letter to the Appropriations Committee can be viewed in this PDF copy

The Congressional budget and appropriations process is underway, and FY 2007 promises to be a tight budget year for discretionary programs like Perkins. With the President’s proposed elimination of the program, it is more important than ever that this kind of bi-partisan support for Perkins be demonstrated by Congress.

ACTION NEEDED: Call your Representative starting TODAY, and Urge him or her to sign the Velazquez/Boehlert/Spratt “Dear Colleague” letter supporting funding for Perkins. Let them know that Perkins is working well in your community, and that CTE makes positive investments in America’s future by providing relevant learning experiences for students at both the secondary and postsecondary levels, effective and proven links to skills-building and enhanced academic opportunities and improved employment outcomes; and that employers in your local area continue to need well-trained workers with good skills to compete in the 21st century economy.
If your Representative wishes to sign on to the letter, have him or her contact the legislative assistant handling education issues in Rep. Velazquez’s office or Rep. Boehlert’s office.

To find contact information for your Representative, please visit ACTE’s Legislative Action Center

Please note that members of the Appropriations Committee often will not sign on to letters that are addressed to the Appropriations Committee. Therefore, if your Representative sits on the committee and is not willing to sign on, it does not necessarily mean they do not support funding for CTE. Encourage them to support funding for Perkins as the appropriations bill moves through their committee. The letter is addressed to Representatives Regula (R-OH) and Obey (D-WI), so they will be unlikely to sign on, but if you live in Ohio or Wisconsin, we encourage you to continue to work with these Representatives to demonstrate the value of CTE in your states and to thank them for their continued support. To view a list of members of the House Appropriations Committee, please visit This Website

We encourage you to also forward this alert to others who are concerned about funding for CTE.

For more information on federal funding for CTE, and on the recent Senate “Dear Colleague” please visit This Website

Michel Foucault: On Fascism

2006-03-09T09:20:00.000-08:00

(Courtesy of Salvation Inc.)

Anne Lamont: On God

2006-03-09T09:03:00.000-08:00

(Courtesy of Brainwise at Prophet or Madman)

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

--Anne Lamott, writer (1954- )

Extra Credit Opportunity: Lexington Mayoral Race Debate

2006-03-09T07:51:00.000-08:00

Lexington Mayoral Forum

Bluegrass Community &Technical College will sponsor a forum for candidates for mayor who will appear on the ballot for the May 17 primary election.
The forum will be held on
Monday, March 13
at 7:00 p.m.
on the Leestown campus, 164 Opportunity Way
The public is invited to attend

Candidates will be given an opportunity to introduce themselves and then respond to questions submitted by the audience in writing. Each candidate will be given time for closing remarks. The League of Women Voters of Lexington will moderate this forum.

Bluegrass Community & Technical College is sponsoring this forum to provide citizens the opportunity to meet the candidates and learn more about their positions and plans for Lexington/Fayette County should they be elected as mayor before casting their votes in the primary and general elections.

Extra Credit Opportunity: The Passenger

2006-03-07T06:08:00.000-08:00

(Announcement courtesy of Rob Sica We have been waiting for this for a long time--I will be there!)

For three days only – 3/10-3/12 – the Kentucky Theatre is screening the restored version of Michelangelo Antonioni’s little-seen 1975 film The Passenger starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider (“Last Tango in Paris”). Nicholson has for many years jealously protected the distribution rights to the film for a proper release. Don Delillo presented it at last year’s Telluride Film Festival. It ends with a famous seven minute-long tracking shot which required a crane because the camera moves from the interior of a hotel room, through the bars of a window, meanders in a courtyard, and returns to the room.

Though Antonioni’s influence is scarcely discernable in American films (Todd Haynes’ “Safe," Eric Mendelsohn’s “Judy Berlin,” and Jon Jost's films are notable exceptions), his influence pervades the work of many leading contemporary international film-makers -- such as Wong Kar Wai (Hong Kong), Tsai Ming Liang (Taiwan), Bruno Dumont (France), Lucretia Martel (Argentina), Jia Zhanke (China), Michael Haneke (Austria), Abbas Kiarostami (Iran), Hong Sang-soo (Korea), Nuri Ceylan (Turkey), and Carlos Reygadas (Mexico).

My hope is that if enough folks show up to see this film, it might encourage the Kentucky Theatre to be more ambitious in its selection of international fare.

Reviews

Cinemascope Article

Howard Karger: Throwing Consumers to the Wolves

2006-03-07T05:39:00.000-08:00

Throwing Consumers to the Wolves
By Howard Karger
AlterNet

Frank Monroe is one pissed-off federal bankruptcy judge. Just before Christmas, Judge Monroe was forced to deny Guillermo Sosa, an Austin, Texas, house painter, and his wife, Melba Nelly Sosa, emergency bankruptcy protection to avoid foreclosure on their mobile home. While sympathetic to the Sosas, Judge Monroe's hands were tied by the new bankruptcy law. The so-called Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) required that the Sosas receive consumer credit counseling before filing for bankruptcy. Unaware of this stipulation, they had failed to do so, making them ineligible.

In his angry ruling [PDF], Monroe wrote that "the parties pushing the passage of the Act had their own agenda … to make more money off the backs of the consumers in this country. … To call BAPCPA a 'consumer protection' act is the grossest of misnomers."

The BAPCPA went into effect on Oct. 17, 2005. Banks and other lenders promised it would stop deadbeats from abusing the bankruptcy system, save billions, and lower interest rates for responsible borrowers. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., predicted the bill would recoup "billions … in losses associated with profligate and abusive bankruptcy filings."

That did not happen. On the contrary, Bankrate data found that the average credit card interest rate actually rose 1 percent in the six months following the passage of the Bankruptcy Act.

Panicked debtors trying to beat the Oct. 17 deadline filed more than 2 million bankruptcy petitions in 2005, 32 percent more than in 2004. Some 500,000 people filed for bankruptcy in the two weeks alone before the Act took effect. This uptick in filings cost Bank of America $320 million, JP Morgan Chase predicted their credit card defaults would top $2.3 billion and Discover Card lost $180 million. On the other hand, credit card companies will undoubtedly make up this loss, and more, in the long run.

Who are the "deadbeats" Congress is trying to weed out?

Leslie Linfield of the Institute for Financial Literacy says, "Almost half [of bankruptcy filers] have incomes below $20,000 a year, and almost 40 percent indicate that their indebtedness is due to illness or injury." The other half may be workers pushed into an economic corner. A 2006 Federal Reserve study found that real median income dropped 6 percent from 2001 to 2004, while average family income fell by 2.3 percent. The gap between stagnant or declining wages and the rising cost of living is partly being made up by debt. For example, Americans who roll over credit card balances owe anywhere from $5,100 to $14,000, depending upon whose numbers are used. High debt levels are fueled by easy credit that helps lessen the pressures on business to increase wages.

To Read the Rest of the Article

Ricia: Double Expresso #2 - State concern for Women

2006-03-06T16:04:00.000-08:00

Ricia, of Impetus Java House, our passionate neighbor to the North, has posted one of the best commentaries I have seen on the new South Dakota law stripping women of the right to an abortion (my phrasing is intentional, a result of my viewpoint that women's basic rights are being denied by an unjust governor and state). As a critical thinker I appreciate her insights into the gender politics of this decision (I recommend everyone check out the original post as it is loaded with important insights and sources)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Excerpt from Double Expresso #2 - State concern for Women

Interesting that economics and social status, do not entire the fray when speaking to the "interests of the pregnant mother". Men and father are not mentioned either. It is the duty of the state to protect a woman's fundamental role as a Mother, is what they mean. But men are on their own I guess. Family and parenthood and all that women-stuff.

The assumption that the state has insight on any individual's relationship with potential parenthood, is absurd. The state is a political thing & concept. Soon to be parents are individual people. The typical focus on womens role as Mother (not as a Person) surrounding reproductive rights, is deliberate and in keeping with the popularized anti-abortionist profile. This particular strain of 'Mother' has a desirable moral status in society, a Woman does not. Therefore women need someone elses moral compass to keep them properly informed and gallantly protected from making their own choices.

As for the duty of the state? As usual, there is no mention of replacing current options and creating more options. No mention of state support, programs, community initiatives. Let alone that of repairing social-economic potholes, pay equity, implementing paternity and maternity leave policies, improving childcare or health services. And, how will this dutiful state manage the stark increase in orphans (that already crowd into foster homes and adoption agencies), how will they deal with the resulting maternal deaths, suicides, etc ...?

No. The explicit focus here is only upon revoking what choice there is for women whom are already pregnant, to ensure that they remain pregnant (regardless of their circumstances). Not before they are pregnant, not after they give birth. Just upon conception. And the state wants the j-u-s-t-i-c-e system to rule on their behalf (not on the behalf of individual women).

Isn't it possible to assess the needs and possible solutions surrounding reproductive rights and issues that isn't about how-to-control women? Is the state willing to force men into parenthood too? Let us imagine them speaking to men of their reproductive rights and responsibilities... Or, is that just too messy...?

Barry Lopez: American Geographies and A Literature of Place

2006-03-06T15:44:00.000-08:00

(Lopez is an environmentalist who writes fiction, memoirs and essays. I have always admired his sense of place as an axis of individual/communal meaning, and, just as importantly, broader social/national meanings)

Lopez, Barry. “The American Geographies.” About This Life. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998

---. “A Literature of Place.” Portland Magazine (Summer 1997: reposted at Envirolink)

University of Kentucky Women's Place: Stories of Victimization

2006-03-06T14:52:00.000-08:00

(Too much attention by our lawmakers on controlling women's bodies and too little focus on how they are victimized--Michael)

UK Women's Place is seeking individuals to share their stories of victimization, abuse, and/or violence at the 2006 Take Back the Night event. 36.5% of female students are victims of sexual assault, physical assault, and/or stalking while attending the University of Kentucky. Similarly, 1 in 3 women in Kentucky experience some form of violence in their lifetime. UK Women’s Place is organizing Take Back the Night 2006 on March 29th beginning at 6 pm at Memorial Coliseum. Take Back the Night will include a campus wide march that will conclude with a speak out to shine light on victims of violence and a vigil to raise awareness about the issue of violence against women at Memorial Hall.

If you know an individual who may be interested in speaking out about their personal experience with violence against women, please forward them this information and encourage her or him to contact Dorothy Edwards at Women's Place to discuss the opportunity. We anticipate each individual to speak for 2-5 minutes with the use of a microphone.

Dorothy J. Edwards, Ph.D.
UK Women's Place, Director
153 Bowman Hall
email: dedwa3@email.uky.edu

V-Day UK 2006

2006-02-28T08:14:00.000-08:00

(Extra credit opportunity--go and write a two page response)

V-DAY UK 2006 IS COMING!

V-Day UK 2006 is a benefit production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” as part of the V-Day College Campaign

· · · ·

THREE PERFORMANCES ONLY!

at the Worsham Theatre in the Student Center

on March 3rd , 4th, and 5th 2006

· · · ·

Come support raising awareness and funds to end violence against women on UK’s campus!

Also be sure to check out events during “Women’s Week” leading up to the first performance!

Who: V-Day UK

What: V-Day UK 2006, a benefit production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues”, raising funds for The Kentucky Women Writers Conference and UK’s Women’s Studies Department

Where: Worsham Theatre in the Student Center

When: Friday March 3rd 8pm, Saturday March 4th 8pm, Sunday March 4th 6pm

Admission: $5 students, faculty, and staff with ID, $10 general

Contact: Ashley Rouster, vdayuk@gmail.com, 859-630-3157

Goal: To raise awareness and funds to stop violence against women and girls on UK’s campus and in the global community!

Sponsored by: V-Day UK

Please contact Ashley Rouster or the V-Day UK email address for more information about the shows or how you can become a part of this very important movement on campus!

___________________________________________________

What is V-Day? V-Day is a global movement to end violence against women and girls that raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of Playwright/Founder Eve Ensler’s award-winning play “The Vagina Monologues.” In 2005, more than 2500 V-Day events took place in the U.S. and around the world. To date, V-Day has raised over $30 million and educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it; crafted international educational, media and PSA campaigns; reopened shelters; funded safe houses in Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq, and over 5000 community-based anti-violence programs. The 'V' in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina. www.vday.org

What is the College Campaign? The V-Day College Campaign strives to empower women to find their collective voices and demand an end to the epidemic levels of violence and abuse on their campuses, in their communities and around the world. Through benefit productions of “The Vagina Monologues” on or around V-Day (February 14th) they raise money and awareness to stop violence against women and girls. The proceeds from these events are donated directly to local organizations in the community that are working to stop this violence.

BCTC: Standing Strong

2006-02-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

MEDIA CONTACT: Laura Lynch (859) 246-6583 OR Karen Marcum (859) 246-6573
Vernal Kennedy (859) 246-6507, cell (859) 797-4176

“Standing Strong” Women’s History Month Celebration

LEXINGTON, KY -Bluegrass Community and Technical College will hold “Standing Strong” a Women’s History Month Celebration on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 from 11:00-4:00 p. m. in the Academic Technical Lobby, Cooper Campus, 470 Cooper Drive, Lexington. The public is invited and encourage to attend any or all of the sessions.

11:00-12:00 “Self Defense: A Safety Net of Empowerment”
Presentation by Grandmaster Hiang Kwang Thè

An interactive demonstration using students and audience volunteers to educate on personal self-defense techniques. Grandmaster Hiang Kwang Thè is a Tenth degree Black Belt in Central Shaolin Martial Arts and currently teaches for the YMCA of Central Kentucky. He will be accompanied by his wife Jeannie Thè, Program Director for the YMCA Beaumont Area. YMCA prizes and week’s memberships will be awarded during the program.

12:00-12:45 “Breaking the Silence: Domestic Violence and What You Can Do About It”
Presentation by Teri Faragher, Executive Director of the Domestic Violence Prevention Board for Fayette County. Teri was a Women’s History Month guest speaker last year and was so informative and engaging, we asked if she would be willing to offer two similar sessions this year.

An important presentation on what domestic violence is, locating resources for help, and an interactive question and answer session following the presentation.

1:00-1:45 “Breaking the Silence: Domestic Violence and What You Can Do About It”
(Same as above)

2:00-3:00 “Goddess Culture”
Presentation by Jaqui Linder Artist and former English and Women’s Studies Professor
The Goddess Culture thrived in 5500-9000 years ago along the Mediterranean, Adriatic, Aegean and Black Seas, a culture in which power was equated with responsibility and love rather than our present day culture that equates power with oppression, obedience, and fear.

Sources for this lecture are The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler, scholar, futurist, and activist, and The Civilization of the Goddess by Marija Gimbuta, acclaimed archaeologist.

3:00 - 4:00 "The Process of Success: A Woman Forms a National Corporation and Finds Herself."
Presentation by Jenny Gray, Greg Spurlock’s (editor of BCTC Courier) mother, who will be speaking to us on her experiences in moving from a stay-at-home mom to the successful owner of a market research firm.

For more information contact Nancy Dixon (859) 246-6367 or Lori Estes-Houghton
(859) 246- 6592.

James Allen: Without Sanctuary

2006-02-18T14:38:00.000-08:00

(This is extremely disturbing, painful and traumatic. I have put it hear b/c in the third section we will be exploring marginalized/silenced histories. Is it important we remember these histories?)

Wtihout Sanctuary: Artifacts of Lynching in America

Danielle Sacks: Fear of the Millennial Generation

2006-02-18T14:27:00.000-08:00

Fear of the Millennial Generation

Wal-Mart: An Interdisciplinary College Curriculum

2006-02-18T07:18:00.000-08:00

Wal-Mart: An Interdisciplinary College Curriculum

Wal-Mart Watch

Thinking About Social Movements and Organized Dissent

2006-02-18T04:02:00.000-08:00

Social Movements and Organized Dissent

Global Tryst

2006-02-18T00:06:00.000-08:00

Global Tryst is based in Washington D.C, U.S.A.

We believe in the oneness of humanity and global peace. The world is our home, but often it is apparent that war and strife result from closed societies, lack of freedom, and the due process of law. Be it small communities or great nations, open communication can overcome differences and divisions and enable greater understanding and cooperation.

Global Tryst is an endeavor to provide such a platform for open communication.

By enabling frontline workers and grassroots level workers to speak up on various issues they are familiar with, we offer a unique perspective on global issues ranging from global free trade to European integration, space travel to social strife and the global environment. In general, we solicit fact-based analyses of global events and occurrences. In doing so, we believe that Global Tryst serves as forum for world statesmanship.

But this is by no means all: In an effort to cultivate awareness of global cultures, Global Tryst offers a lot more beyond socio-political and economic issues through features on global cultures, customs, cuisine, art & theatre.

Our Little World: The First Annual Lexington Peace Fair (May 20, 2006)

2006-02-17T20:24:00.000-08:00

(Let me know if you are interested in participating or if you need more info.)

Our Little World: The First Annual Lexington Peace Fair
May 20, 2006 from 11:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m.
The Red Mile, Lexington, Kentucky

Mission statement: We are seeking to model a joyful alternative to exploitation, corporatization, and consumerism. For our festival, we will bring together the global with the local through music, art, locally grown food, workshops, and the raising of awareness of the peaceful possibilities for a socially, ecologically, and economically sustainable future.

Sponsors: Bluegrass Community and Technical College’s Peace and Justice Coalition and Office of Multicultural Affairs, Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and Community Farm Alliance

Description: Movement toward positive peace – or Earth Democracy – is the goal of our project. The “our” is Bluegrass Community and Technical College’s Peace and Justice Coalition, a student organization that has been very active since the fall of 2002. This organization has conducted a number of fundraisers to benefit other organizations (both local and global) that are doing good works. We host a speaker series every semester, as well as occasional teach-ins and other events. We have earned a good reputation at our college and in the peace/environmental community for promoting peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability.

Americans have never really known positive peace. We have either been at war, or we have been involved in the build-up for war. Because of how deeply war and the threat of war have penetrated our economy and our psyche, we think that many people are not able to conceptualize what it would really mean to live in an era of positive peace – or earth democracy. Our project is aimed at helping our citizens see the possibilities.

The aspects of our event are:

· Local food: Kentucky currently has the fourth most farms of any state but the number of farms is likely to decline as the tobacco quotas are now a thing of the past. Kentucky has an excellent environment for food production, however, and we need to better support our local farmers and farm economy. We will host a mini-farmers’ markets as well as have local vendors selling prepared local foods. We are working to avoid paper/plastic waste by using durable dishes and having dishwashing facilities.

· Local music: Kentucky is noted for its music and for its musicians. A student member, who is a musician herself (she recently received funding from the Commonwealth of Kentucky to pursue her art) will be arranging for the performances. The beauty of Kentucky music will be showcased alongside regional and global music.

· Outreach/publicity: A Kentucky artist has designed a logo for the event. Union-made T-shirts will be printed with the poster design. The logo will be integrated into all publicity for the event. A succinct publication will be produced (for distribution at the event), with the names, contact information, and brief descriptions of participants in the festival.

· Local art: We will highlight local artists and their artwork (including painting, sculpture, pottery-making and other art forms) at the event. The art will be drawn primarily from students at the University of Kentucky, with anticipated participation from other area colleges. We hope to create a “peace wall,” with pictures, biographies and other information about people who have advanced the cause of peace.

· Fair trade and socially responsible goods: Organizations such as PeaceCraft (a Berea, Kentucky company that sells fair trade items) will participate. We hope to have a local bookseller, a local/organic foods store, and other ecologically/socially responsible businesses participate.

· Workshops and educational/informational booths: In addition to the music stage, there will be an area for workshops. The workshop topics will include: the peaceful practice of yoga, sustainable living, preserving the Kentucky environment while saving energy, living a fair trade life, moving away from consumerism, composting, growing a vegetable garden, eating local and organic foods on a budget, installing a solar hot water heater. A variety of socially and ecologically-oriented non-profit organizations will be asked to set up booths, with practical information about creating a climate conducive to positive peace.

· Children for Peace: We are inviting K-12 students to answer the following question: How can you spread peace from your backyard to our little world? Under the major headings of PeaceExpressions and PeaceFutures, students will be encouraged to write an essay, poem, play, or song; make a drawing or use other media; or do some sort of science project. The entries will be due the week before the event and will be displayed at the festival. Children will have an opportunity to perform their plays or read their essays/poems to an audience.

· Getting there: We will work with local organizations to encourage people to come to the event via bicycle, or by walking.

We envision a day of fun and possibilities, where attendees will begin to see the myriad opportunities for living sanely and well in a future of our choosing. We hope that this event will become an annual one, with more and more people being exposed to – and adopting – new ways of living. We hope to play a role in reducing Lexington’s ecological footprint.

Why We Fight: New Film Takes a Hard Look at the American War Machine From World War II to Iraq

2006-02-13T03:06:00.000-08:00

(Won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.)

Why We Fight: New Film Takes a Hard Look at the American War Machine From World War II to Iraq
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now

Introduction:

A new film opening in theaters nationwide Friday takes a look at the American war machine over the past half century. "Why We Fight" looks at conflicts from World War II right up to the current war in Iraq to examine the political, economic and ideological reasons that drive American war policy. We play excerpts from the film and speak with award-winning director Eugene Jarecki.

To Watch, Listen, or Read the Report

Also:

BBC 4 Profile of Director Eugene Jarecki

Sony Site for the Film That Includes Previews/Trailers

Martin Luther King, Jr.: When Silence is Betrayal

2006-02-13T02:40:00.000-08:00

(Courtesy of Rethinking Schools)

Excerpt from a speech on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his murder:

...

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. …

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. …

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain." …

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate... .

Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world.

Albert Camus: The Rebel; Hero of the Absurd

2006-02-13T00:43:00.000-08:00

"On the stage as in reality, the monologue precedes death."

--Albert Camus, The Rebel

Camus' Hero of the Absurd

Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Choice Between Truth and Repose

2006-02-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

(Courtesy of The Happy Feminist)

Every human being has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, you cannot have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets-- most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door on truth. He in whom a love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism and recognize all the opposite negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of being.

---Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another Concept Reflection: Context and Community

2006-02-12T13:29:00.000-08:00

Background Lecture: “Context and Community”
Introduction to Argument Lectures
Instructor: Michael Benton

Teachers often present arguments removed from any social context. Courses are often designed around textbooks that present a series of arguments and subjects lined up like zoo animals removed from their native habitats. Consequently, many students fail to recognize the importance of the subjects that they are studying and how they relate to their daily life. Through a contextual understanding of arguments we can begin to understand how the knowledge that we are creating in the classroom relates to how we live, work, study, and play every day.

Whenever we are engaged with ideas and reasons, we are arguing. Whenever someone else makes a claim on our opinions, beliefs, and values, we are arguing. Arguing, though, is much more than the shouting down of other opinions (no matter what examples we learn from the spectacle of televised talk shows). Constructive and effective arguing involves the development of listening skills, self-reflective understanding of our own rhetorical positions/situations, and the willingness to engage in the dialogical production of understanding(s). The context for arguing also includes the time (historical moment), place (spatial relationships), and circumstances (political conflicts) of arguing. When you understand the complete context for an argument, you will be better able to make sense of the argument and respond more effectively. Writing that matters, including arguing, responds to the needs of actual people in real situations. When you argue, you are part of a conversation made up of the members of a community who care about the issues you are discussing.

Writing teachers often refer to the interaction between readers and writers in a particular context as a “rhetorical situation.” “Rhetoric” is the art of arguing (persuading) effectively for a particular audience, occasion, and purpose. Throughout this course I have been trying to get you to recognize the importance of constructing your arguments with an understanding of the contexts that shape them—reading and writing an argument within the broader conversation(s) and knowledge(s) that shape it. This broader conversation, along with the beliefs, values, and assumptions identified with those who participate in the conversation forms the “context” for an argument. This context includes the “rhetorical situation.” A rhetorical situation identifies the interaction between writers and readers or speakers and listeners in relation to a particular issue, and refers to the set of elements involved in any act of communication: the writer or speaker, the audience, the purpose, the occasion, and the topic. Rhetorical situations must be understood in the context of “discourse communities”—which means that they should be studied in relationship to other rhetorical situations and to the broader life of a community of which these situations are a part. A rhetorical situation brings members of a community together to discuss a particular issue, but the issue and the relationships among the participants in the conversation make sense only if you can identify the communal discourse that these participants operate in.

The word “community” comes from a Latin word that means “common” or “shared.” In its broadest sense, “community” describes a group of people who have something in common. Communities may be defined by geographical location or may consist of people sharing a common history, language, or culture. Communities may be formed by those who share the same social or business interests, or political or religious beliefs. In academia, discourse communities are referred to as “disciplines”. Disciplines within a college or university, academic departments, and scholarly organizations often define themselves according to a common body of knowledge, method of inquiry, or domain of study. Quite often discourse communities overlap and intersect in a lot of interesting ways. Communities formed by common interests or beliefs may transcend geographical boundaries, and a geographical (or national) community may contain many smaller communities based on language or culture. People usually claim membership in a lot of different communities. For example, a student may be a member of a sorority and involved in one of the progressive student groups on campus. She may be a Buddhist, a Christian, or a Wiccan. She may be a student of a more radical philosophy, such as, existentialism or socialism, or she may be a believer in the market-system as the most productive social reality. These various community memberships shape our understanding of the world and we read every bit of information through the contextual lenses of our discourse communities. This is why it is so important that we learn to recognize, name, and define our own particular positions. Additionally, often, the most powerful and productive understanding develop when we recognize the contradictions of our membership in different discourse communities. What happens when a student attempts to resolve the conflicts between her membership in a patriarchal religious community and her increasing activism as a feminist. What happens when a student attempts to resolve the conflicts between environmental concern and the business need to maximize profits at all costs. Once again, although arguing is often the seeking of victory over other positions, I am not attempting to develop skills that will help you to enforce dogmatic victory in either/or conflicts, instead, it is my hope that you can learn to develop an understanding of the potential of both/and... arguments. The most sensitive, developed, and complicated arguments are those that recognize the multiplicity of positions and seek a rapproachment (an open space in which we can present and discuss our positions) for dialogical production of meaning(s).

Robert Grudin in his book “On Dialogue” (1996) states that dialogical argument skills are necessary to the development of active democratic citizens:

This challenging interplay of opposed principles complicates the idea of liberty and defies all simple and conventional definitions of its character. Liberty is not a guaranteed privilege; it is not a condition that citizens are born into. Liberty is more aptly construed as an art, or rather a network of arts: arts by which individuals and groups can gain awareness of their own condition, preserve it and improve it. (2)

There is a vast world of ideas out there and you are perched at an amazing point in your intellectual development in which you can develop your “own” perspective. Up until now everyone has been telling you what to think (including myself), now is the time to create your own understanding of the world.

The engaged public intellectuals are those that are able to interact and affect the discourses of everyday life. Often, sadly, those who show up win by default and shape the world in which we live in. Are you going to sit on the sidelines?

Orwell Rolls in His Grave (Robert Kane Pappas: 2004)

2006-02-12T13:19:00.000-08:00

Our newest addition to the BFS library:

Why We Need a Strong Public Media

Frontline: A Class Divided

2006-02-12T05:08:00.000-08:00

(Hysterical Blackness reminded me of this documentary. I've used it in my courses and it always provokes interesting discussions.)

This is one of the most requested programs in FRONTLINE's history. It is about an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination. This is the story of what she taught the children, and the impact that lesson had on their lives.

A Class Divided

Darbyshire Scholarship

2006-02-12T04:01:00.000-08:00

KENTUCKY CAREER DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION
DARBYSHIRE SCHOLARSHIP

The Darbyshire Scholarship was established in 1993 by the Kentucky Career Development Association to honor David Darbyshire, a counselor and financial aide officer who lost his life in a tragic accident. This is a $500 scholarship award for the Fall 2006 semester to be applied toward tuition costs. The recipient of the award must meet the following criteria: enrolled at a KCTCS College in a career or technical program (AAS Degree or Diploma – not AA Degree or AS Degree), completed at least 25 credit hours at a KCTCS College by the end of the Spring 2006 semester, minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA, and proven unmet financial need verified by the financial aid office at the KCTCS College.
This scholarship application packet must be submitted by Friday, March 31st, 2006 to Beverly Martin, KCDA Secretary & Treasurer, Big Sandy Community and Technical College, One Bert Combs Drive, Prestonsburg, KY 41653 or fax to 1-606-886-6943.

SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION PACKET must include the following from the student:
_____ Completed Scholarship Application
_____ Unofficial transcript of all college classes (both KCTCS college and other colleges)
_____ One Reference Letter from Advisor or Faculty Member to verify enrollment in a career or technical program and anticipated graduation date
_____ One Reference Letter from another Faculty Member
_____ Short Essay (up to 250 words) which includes student’s career plan, financial situation, family situation, and work situation

Student’s Name:_____________________________ Student (PeopleSoft) ID #:__________________

Address:_________________________________________ Home Phone #:_____________________

City:____________________________________________ School Phone #:____________________

State & Zip Code:__________________________________

College Attending:____________________________________

Program / Major:______________________________________

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Wong Kar Wai: 2046

2006-02-10T13:57:00.000-08:00

Any student who goes to see this film and writes a two page response, can turn it in for extra credit in my classes.

(Courtesy of Rob)

Michael,

It might be worth mentioning to your blog readers that -- by, obviously, some wonderfully bizarre mistake that will undoubtedly last no longer than a single week -- the Carmike 10 is apparently showing 2046, Wong Kar Wai's latest film (which is about the closest this town has come to showing a first-class international film in quite a while!).

Best, ~Rob
--------------------------------------------------------------------

They are probably testing the market, please, please, if you are going to see a film this weekend demonstrate that we want films like this (I include, of course, The Kentucky Theater's offerings)... from what I have heard though this is a uniquely visual film that would be best seen on the big screen.

Michael

Dissent! Films: Louisville 2/9-2/12

2006-02-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

(Extra Credit if you go to any of these events and write a response)

At Floyd Theatre, free and open to the public:

Farenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore-2003) 122m
Thurs. 2/9 (6:00 pm) Fri. 2/10 (8:30 pm) Sat. 2/11(6:00 pm)
Sun 2/12 (7:00 pm)

FahrenHYPE 9/11 (Alan Peterson-2004) 80m
Thurs. 2/9 (8:30 pm) Sat. 2/11 (8:30 pm) Sun. 2/12 (9:30
pm)

This Divided State (Greenstreet-2005) 88m

Thurs. 2/9 (4:00 pm) Fri. 2/10 (7:00 pm) Sat. 2/11 (10:00 pm)
Sun. 2/12 (5:00 pm)

MORE! For more on the film series, and for full info on the entire
Dissent! project, including a full calendar of events, full list of
sponsors, opportunities to participate, maps with parking tips and links
to educational materials, visit

Dissent! Project

Tom Byers
Professor of English and
Director, Commonwealth Center for the Humanities and Society
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292

Chapter 2: What is an Argument? What is a Good Argument

2006-02-07T11:49:00.000-08:00

"... the meaning of argumentation in responsible speaking or writing is not simply the expression of an opinion or an attitude--though many people are confused on this point--but reasoned support for an opinion. To put it another way, when someone expresses a controversial opinion or assertion of truth, the critical citizen asks 'Why is that true? How do you know that? What reasons or evidence do you have to support it?' If the person expressing the opinion can answers these questions with supporting reasons, she will be making an argument."

Propaganda Critic on the practice of Name-Calling and examples from a Republican campaign to discredit opponents

PopMatters Michael Abernathy on conservative critic Ann Coulter's book Treason as an example of name-calling.

A Michigan government website has an interesting lesson plan on the historical practice of name-calling that focuses around Senator McCarthy's "red scare" communist hunts of the 1950s.

Wait, we haven't defined propaganda yet? The Educators for Social Responsibility ask What is propaganda?

Ruth Ozeki: Novel Life Forms

2006-02-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

"I think that if you take this idea of 'you are what you eat' seriously, then food is our fundamental identity. The act of eating has changed, radically, in the last 100 years. Eating is now primarily a commercial, economic act. As a result, the significance has changed. If you grow what you eat, your relationship to food is very different. However, if you buy what you eat, the implications are quite profound. When you trace the chain of production of something as simple as a potato, you start to realize that in every bite, every mouthful you chew and swallow, you are taking into your body a series of decisions that you really have no idea about. You think you’re simply eating a french fry, but in fact, that fry is the result of a series of decisions that have been made by the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, by corporations and scientists, by marketing agencies and PR firms, and it’s hugely complicated. So this idea that the political is the personal, and the personal is political becomes very real. "

--Ruth Ozeki (from the interview linked below)
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I've read Ruth Ozeki's second novel All Over Creation and taught her first novel My Year of Meats in my Business Writing courses last year. Ozeki is a powerful writer of progressive novels, with amazing characters and strong narratives... her stories also examine important issues through the development of characters across the political spectrum refusing to fall into easy stereotypes--these are real people, with real problems, and like real people, they can't just be easily dismissed, or sloppily slotted into static categories. Her characters grow and change--some for the better and some for the worse--but none of them can easily be dismissed.

Thivai

------------------------------------------------------------------

Ozeki, Ruth. All Over Creation. NY: Penguin, 2004.

"Go back to language for a moment, Frankie, and think about this: Genetic engineering is changing the semantics, the meaning of life itself. We're trying to usurp the plant's choice. To force alien words into the plant's poem, but we got a problem. We barely know the root language. Genetic grammar's a mystery, and our engineers are just one click up the evolutionary ladder from a roomful of monkeys, typing random sonnets on a bank of typewriters. We've learned a lot about letters--maybe our ability to read and spell words now sits halfway between accident and design--but our syntax is still haphazard. Scrambled. It's a semiotic nightmare." (124-125)

"Diversity is inconvenient to mechanized farming. This is what happens when agriculture becomes agribusiness. When engineers replace poets, and corporations gain total domination over all our food and all our poems." Geek cocked his head. "Monoculture," he said. "Has a sad and hollow ring to it, no?" (125)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Creating Novel Life Forms—Literally
The Satya Interview with Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki made a big splash in 1998 with her first novel, My Year of Meats, a humorous exploration of the meat industry and the great American obsession—and growing Japanese fascination with—beef [see review in Satya, September 1998]. Four years later, Ozeki presents us with All Over Creation (Viking Press), a playful romp through such heavy issues as the diminishing of American family farms and their conflicts with genetically engineered crops; and the clashes between the biotech industry’s PR machines and the activist subculture trying to counter their slick promotional campaigns. All this is cleverly done through the prism of a dysfunctional inter-racial family on a potato farm in Idaho.

Satya's Ruth Ozeki Interview

Another excerpt from the interview:

Stereotyping is rampant as it always is in situations like this. Our propaganda machine is very powerful. [sighs] You know, so much of this comes out of fear. And we should be scared—really scared. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we should meet our fears with a reductive racist ranting. If we can learn to tolerate our fear, maybe we can use it as an excuse to open up instead of close down, to act in a counter-intuitive way—become more curious instead of less curious; become more generous instead of less generous. When we get scared, we decide: “Okay, I’m scared; I’m going to learn more.” Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Advanced Concept Mapping

2006-02-07T02:35:00.000-08:00

Concept Mapping

"Concept-Mapping" is a tool for assisting and enhancing many of the types of thinking and learning that we are required to do at university. To do a Map, write the main idea in the centre of the page -- it may be a word, a phrase, or a couple of juxtaposed ideas, for example -- then place related ideas on branches that radiate from this central idea.

How to do a Map

• Print in capitals, for ease of reading. This will also encourage you to keep the points brief.
• Use unlined paper, since the presence of lines on paper may hinder the non-linear process of Mapping. If you must use lined paper, turn it so the lines are vertical.
• Use paper with no previous writing on it.
• Connect all words or phrases or lists with lines, to the centre or to other "branches." When you get a new idea, start again with a new "spoke" from the centre.
• Go quickly, without pausing -- try to keep up with the flow of ideas. Do not stop to decide where something should goi.e. to order or organize material -- just get it down. Ordering and analyzing are "linear" activities and will disrupt the Mapping process.
• Write down everything you can think of without judging or editing -- these activites will also disrupt the Mapping process.
• If you come to a standstill, look over what you have done to see if you have left anything out.
• You may want to use color-coding, to group sections of the Map.

Some Organizational Patterns That May Appear in a Concept-Map
• Branches. An idea may branch many times to include both closely and distantly related ideas.
• Arrows. You may want to use arrows to join ideas from different branches.
• Groupings. If a number of branches contain related ideas, you may want to draw a circle around the whole area.
• Lists.
• Explanatory/Exploratory notes. You may want to write a few sentences in the Map itself, to explain, question, or comment on some aspect of your Map -- for example, the relationship between some of the ideas.

Advantages Of Mapping

Mapping may be seen as a type of brainstorming. Both Mapping and brainstorming may be used to encourage the generation of new material, such as different interpretations and viewpoints: however, Mapping relies less on intentionally random input, whereas, during brainstorming, one may try to think up wild, zany, off-the-wall ideas and connections. Brainstorming attempts to encourage highly divergent "lateral" thinking, whereas Mapping, by its structure, provides opportunity for convergent thinking, fitting ideas together, as well as thinking up new ideas, since it requires all ideas to be connected to the centre, and possibly to one another. Paradoxically, the results of brainstorming usually appear on paper as lists or grids -- both unavoidably linear structures: top to bottom, left to right. Mapping is less constrictive -- no idea takes precedence arbitrarily (eg. by being at the "top" of the list).

Here are some advantages of Mapping, which will become more apparent to you after you have practiced this technique a few times:
• It clearly defines the central idea, by positioning it in the centre of the page.
• It allows you to indicate clearly the relative importance of each idea.
• It allows you to figure out the links among the key ideas more easily. This is particularly important for creative work such as essay writing.
• It allows you to see all your basic information on one page.
• As a result of the above, and because each Map will look different, it makes recall and review more efficient.
• It allows you to add in new information without messy scratching out or squeezing in.
• It makes it easier for you to see information in different ways, from different viewpoints, because it does not lock it into specific positions.
• It allows you to see complex relationships among ideas, such as self-perpetuating systems with feedback loops, rather than forcing you to fit non-linear relationships to linear formats, before you have finished thinking about them.
• It allows you to see contradictions, paradoxes, and gaps in the material -- or in your own interpretation of it -- more easily, and in this way provides a foundation for questioning, which in turn encourages discovery and creativity.

Uses Of Mapping

Summarizing Readings

(See also the Handout on How to Read University Texts).
Summarizing is important for at least two reasons: 1. it aids memory, and; 2. it encourages high-level, critical thinking, which is so important in university work.

Use Mapping in the following ways, to summarize an article, or a chapter in a book:

1. Read the introduction and conclusion of the article, and skim it, looking at sub-headings, graphs, and diagrams.

2. Read the article in one sitting. For longer material, "chunk" it -- into chapters, for example -- and follow this procedure for each chunk.

3. Go back over the article until you are quite familiar with its content. (This is assuming that it will be useful and relevant to your work -- one would not wish to spend this amount of work on peripheral material).

4. Do a Map as described above, from memory. Do not refer to the article or lecture notes while you are doing the Map if you do, you will disrupt the process.

5. Look over what you have done. It should be apparent if you do not understand, or have forgotten, anything. Refer back to the source material to fill in the gaps, but only after you have tried to recall it without looking.

6. Up to this point, the Map is made up of information derived from what you have read. If you want to add your own comments, you can differentiate them by using a different colored pen -- or you could make a whole new Map. This is useful if you want to go more deeply into the material -- to help to remember or apply it, or to work on an essay. (See the section on "Working on an Essay," below.)

7. Now, ask questions about the material on the Concept-Map:
– How do the parts fit together?
– Does it all make sense? why, or why not?
– Is there anything missing, unclear, or problematic about it?
– How does it fit with other course material? How does it fit with your personal experience? Are there parts that do not fit? Why not?
– What are the implications of the material?
– Could there be other ways of looking at it?
– Is the material true in all cases?
– How far does its usefulness extend?
– What more do you need to find out?
Of course, not all of these questions will apply to every Map; however, the more closely you look at the material, the more questions will come to you. Try to think of the central, most important question about the material: if something does not make sense, or seems unresolved, try to state explicitly why, in what way, there is a problem. This may be difficult to do, but it is worth the effort, because it will make it easier for you to find an answer.

Summarizing Lectures

Some people use Mapping to take lecture notes. If you find that this works for you, by all means do it: however, if it does not work, you can certainly take lecture notes as you normally would, and summarize them later (as soon as possible after the lecture) in the way described above. Be sure to do this first from memory -- then check it over for accuracy. If possible, give yourself adequate time to do this -- the more time you spend, the better your retention will be. However, even a brief summary will have very beneficial effects for your memory, and your overall understanding of the material -- its salient points and how they fit together.

Making Notes in a Seminar or Workshop

A seminar differs from a lecture in that it lays more emphasis on process: in a more-or-less open-ended discussion among all members of the group, there is a less linear progression of ideas than there is in a lecture. A Map can be useful for keeping track of the flow of ideas in such a context, and for tying them together and commenting on them.

Reviewing for an Exam

Mapping can be a productive way to study for an exam, particularly if the emphasis of the course is on understanding and applying abstract, theoretical material, rather than on simply reproducing memorized information. Doing a Map of the course content can point out the most important concepts and principles, and allow you to see the ways in which they fit together. This may also help you to see your weak areas, and help you to focus your studying.

Working on an Essay

Mapping is a particularly powerful tool to use during the early stages of writing an essay, before you write the first rough draft. When you start out exploring material that may be useful for your essay, you can summarize your readings -- using Mapping, as described above -- to help discover fruitful areas of research. Finding a suitable thesis is a process of exploration and approximation, and later on, insight. You may want to look for something that you find interesting and somehow problematical, with implications beyond itself that you can explore.
It is often difficult to find a powerful thesis for an essay; hence, there is an inevitable, often unpleasant, and occasionally lengthy, period of confusion. During this period, to progress toward a resolution, it is necessary to know where you stand:
– what you know;
– what your specific questions are;
– what your own opinions or interpretations of the material are;
– whether own opinions are applicable or should be questioned.

Remember, try not to refer to notes or other source material when you are doing your Map. Ask questions such as those listed above (#7, "Summarizing Notes").

Organizing the material is another common problem that people have when they are writing essays. Mapping will allow you to see the major categories of your essay, but will not impose an order on them. This will allow you to place your ideas in a sequence most applicable to your purposes.

Aside from summarizing readings, always feel free to use Mapping to help you think, when you are working on an essay. Use this technique as often as you like, particularly when you are stuck, and as you become familiar with it, you will find it more and more useful and flexible.

An additional incentive: Tony Buzan notes that "Using these techniques at Oxford University, students were able to complete essays in one third of the previous time, while receiving higher marks." (Use Your Head, p.102).

When you are mapping for an essay, emphasize arguments, explanations, definitions, and abstract categories and relationships. An example of this sort of Map occurs in the essay entitled "Essay Writing as Play," (Ed. B-425: Anthropology and Education), in the Student Essay Library, at Counselling Services.

Creative Writing

While you are working on an essay, you may experience a particularly important insight as you are Mapping: of course, you cannot predict what this "creative spark" will be about or when it will occur--however, if you are serious about writing orthinking, you should become familiar with the process that precedes insight. One very effective way to do this is to use Mapping for creative writing. An excellent book on the use of this technique for such literary (and even "therapeutic") purposes is Writing the Natural Way, by Gabriele Lusser Rico, who refers to her version of Mapping as "Clustering."

Learning Goals/Purposes

There are a number of purposes to which teachers and students might put concept mapping.

Maps could be used as a way for students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept, as an assessment tool.

From a more process standpoint, maps could be used in the learning process itself. As a way to take notes or otherwise organize content to be learned.

The kind of mapping this presentation focuses on, though, is mapping designed to help students organize their own thinking (individual or group) by helping them in the brainstorming and idea development process.

Here's kind of a sneaky way to think about concept mapping: Kids don't like to write multiple drafts of papers. Concept mapping may represent a way to get kids to do more than one version of a piece of work.

Supports

The kind of support you create for students is determined by what your educational goals are. If you want students to be able to articulate a factual concept that you want all students to thoroughly understand in the same way, you may want to provide a different kind of structure than if you wanted students to be individualized and creative.

One type of support you can offer is to give students most or all of the structure of a map. This could take the form of providing a blank map as a template file on the computer or a sheet of paper with a blank map structure on it.
Another decision to make is whether and how many terms you want to use. If part of the aim of the mapping activity is to have students use certain vocabulary, you might provide those terms as concept bubbles, allowing students to arrange them and create links.

You might also want to consider what types of and how many links to provide students with. Again, if you're looking for a common understanding, you might put a lot of the links in place in large group, then have students make individual or small group modifications.

So why would you want to use this?

Concept mapping offers some interesting advantages to word processing. One of these is fluency--students commonly create more "stuff" on a map than they would in print.
Another advantage is that concept mapping takes advantage of students' spatial intelligence, without necessarily requiring that students be artistically gifted.
And of course, concept mapping makes students organize their thinking, either individually or in groups. In large groups, a shared concept map can be a consensus building tool.

If you use concept maps, whether on paper or computer, you'll be rewarded with a very different kind of thinking than you normally see. Due to its fluency and organizing nature, it's a natural for pre-writing activities.

For the Theory of Concept Mapping

Angela Davis: Arts, Education, Activism (EKU, February 7th)

2006-02-07T02:14:00.000-08:00

(Extra Credit Opportunity: I saw Angela Davis in dialogue with Patricia Hill Collins a couple of years back--it was an inspiring and educational dialogue that left me wanting to find out more about what they discussed and wanting to get actively involved in the issues they discussed. A simple investigation into her life will reveal a courageous, honest woman who put her life and career on the line to speak truth to power--a role model that is much needed these days.)

WHAT:
Angela Davis To Speak

TOPIC:
"Angela Davis: Arts, Education, Activism: Beyond Rhetoric to Action"

WHEN:
7:30 p.m. Tuesday
February 7

WHERE:
Student Services Building Auditorium
Eastern Kentucky University
Richmond

DETAILS:
As part of the EKU Chautauqua Lecture Series, Angela Davis will speak about her life of activism including her most recent work on exposing racism in the U.S. prison system. A book signing and reception will follow her speech.

Davis is known for her activism in the areas of racial and gender equality during the 1960s and 1970s. The Birmingham, Ala., native grew up in a place and time where she was directly affected by the "humiliations of racial segregation."

She is a former member of the U.S. Communist Party and ran for vice president twice representing the party. She is also associated with the Black Panther Party, which was formed in 1966 "to protect local communities from police brutality and racism."

Davis appeared on the FBI's Most Wanted List in 1970 "after a gun legally registered to her was used in an attempted courtroom escape in which a judge and three others were killed."

After running from police for two months, she was captured, tried and acquitted of all charges of conspiracy, kidnapping and homicide.

She was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1979 and is the co-founder of the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression. She is also the author of several books, including an upcoming publication, "Punishment and Democracy: Essays on the Prison Industrial Complex."

Davis is Presidential Chair and professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She now focuses her activism on the state of U.S. prisons and the death penalty.

"She's a voice that students should hear because she will say things that they will not be accustomed to hearing," said Dr. Bruce MacLaren, program director of the Chautauqua series. "She represents the theme of the series of lectures this year because she's questing for social justice, prison reform, equality of treatment of all people and to create a world that is kinder and gentler."

SPONSORS:
EKU Chautauqua Lecture Series

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC): Special Showing of the Documentary Democracy's Ghosts

2006-02-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

(Extra Credit Opportunity)

WHAT:
Democracy’s Ghosts - MOVIE
Restoration of Voting Rights for Former Felons

WHEN:
Tomorrow!
Tuesday
February 7th
7pm

WHERE:
Theater
Downtown Public Library
140 E. Main St
Lexington

DETAILS:
This 34-minute film spends time with people who are living their lives as legal ghosts and have lost the right to vote because of felony convictions.

We’ll watch the film, then have a discussion about our campaign to restore voting rights to former felons who have served their debt to society in Kentucky.

Kentucky is one of just three states that permanently prevents all former-felons from voting unless they get a pardon from the Governor. We are trying to pass a
Constitutional Amendment to allow for automatic restoration of voting rights upon
completion of prison time, probation, and parole.

For more information about the film, visit Democracy's Ghosts

ACTION ALERT:
Whether you'll be able to come to the movie or not, we hope you decide to contact legislators to encourage them to vote yest to support Restoration of Voting Rights.

ACTION: Please contact Representatives on the Constitutional Amendments Committee and urge support of HB 480 as soon as possible.

Legislative message line— 1-800-372-7181
(You can leave a message for THREE of the below legislators each time you call this number)

Rep. Adrian Arnold (D), Chair – co-sponsor of HB 480
Rep. Joseph Fischer (R), Vice Chair
Rep. Joe Barrows (D)
Rep. Kevin Bratcher (R)
Rep. Jim Bruce (D)
Rep. J. R. Gray (D)
Rep. Mike Harmon (R)
Rep. Melvin Henley (R)
Rep. Gross Lindsay (D)
Rep. Mary Lou Marzian (D) – co-sponsor of HB 480
Rep. Jon David Reinhardt (R)
Rep. Kathy Stein (D) – co-sponsor of HB 480

For the full text of the bill, visit the Legislative Research Commission website

Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC) is a grassroots citizens organization that believes in the power of citizens, working together, to challenge injustices, right wrongs and improve the a quality of life for all Kentuckians.

We meet locally on the 3rd Thursday of the month at 7pm at the Episcopal Diocese Mission House on the corner of 4th St. and Martin Luther King Blvd. Come join us!

To join our Central KY email listserv, send a blank email to KFTC-CKY-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

To become a KFTC Member and substantially support all of the work that we do, visit their website

Allan Luke and Peter Freebody: Literacy Education

2006-02-06T09:16:00.000-08:00

Reading the Word means:
to decode/encode those words;
to bring ourselves to those pages;
to make meaning of those pages as they relate to our experiences, our possibilities; our cultures; and our knowledges.

Reading the World means:
to decode/encode the people around us;
to decode/encode the community that surrounds us;
to decode/encode the visible and invisible messages of the world.

Literacy education is ultimately about the kind of society and the kind of citizens/subjects that could and should be constructed. Teaching and learning just isn't a matter of skill acquisition or knowledge transmission or natural growth. It's about building identities and cultures, communities and institutions.

-Allan Luke and Peter Freebody, 1999

Michael Pollan: Food Chains, Dead Zones, and Licensed Journalism

2006-02-05T21:35:00.000-08:00

I'm using Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire in my ENG 101 courses and so I'm doing a little background reading.

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Food Chains, Dead Zones, and Licensed Journalism
Michael Pollan, Interviewed by Russell Schoch
Mother Jones

Excerpt from the interview:

You've taken a critical look at what you've called "the cornification of America." What do you mean?

It appears I have a kind of corn obsession. I'm like that character in Middlemarch, Professor Causabon, who thought he had the key to the universe, the key to all mythologies. In corn, I think I've found the key to the American food chain.

How so?

If you look at a fast-food meal, a McDonald's meal, virtually all the carbon in it -- and what we eat is mostly carbon -- comes from corn. A Chicken McNugget is corn upon corn upon corn, beginning with corn-fed chicken all the way through the obscure food additives and the corn starch that holds it together. All the meat at McDonald's is really corn. Chickens have become machines for converting two pounds of corn into one pound of chicken. The beef, too, is from cattle fed corn on feedlots. The main ingredient in the soda is corn -- high-fructose corn syrup. Go down the list. Even the dressing on the new salads at McDonald's is full of corn.

I recently spent some time on an Iowa corn farm. These cornfields are basically providing the building blocks for the fast-food nation. In my new book, I want to show people how this process works, and how this monoculture in the field leads to a different kind of monoculture on the plate.

What does this do to the land?

Corn is a greedy crop, as farmers will tell you. When you're growing corn in that kind of intensive monoculture, it requires more pesticide and more fertilizer than any other crop. It's very hard on the land. You need to put down immense amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, the run-off of which is a pollutant. The farmers I was visiting were putting down 200 pounds per acre, in the full knowledge that corn could only use maybe 100 or 125 pounds per acre; they considered it crop insurance to put on an extra 75 to 100 pounds.

Where does that extra nitrogen go?

It goes into the roadside ditches and, in the case of the farms I visited, drains into the Raccoon River, which empties into the Des Moines River. The city of Des Moines has a big problem with nitrogen pollution. In the spring, the city issues "blue baby alerts," telling mothers not to let their children use the tap water because of the nitrates in it. The Des Moines River eventually finds its way to the Gulf of Mexico, where the excess nitrogen has created a dead zone the size of New Jersey.

What is a dead zone?

It's a place where the nitrogen has stimulated such growth of algae and phytoplankton that it starves that area of oxygen, and fish cannot live in it. The dead zone hasn't gotten much attention, compared to carbon pollution; but, in terms of the sheer scale of human interference in one of the crucial natural cycles, it's arguably even more dramatic. Fully half of the terrestrial nitrogen in the world today is manmade, from fertilizers.

Our dependence on corn for a "cheap meal" is a fundamental absurdity. Seventy percent of the grain we grow in this country goes to feed livestock. Most of this livestock is cattle, which are uniquely suited to eating grass, not corn. To help them tolerate corn, we have to pump antibiotics into the cattle; and because the corn diet leads to pathogens, we then need to irradiate their meat to make it safe to eat. Feeding so much corn to cattle thus creates new and entirely preventable public health problems.

In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel--it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn. What that means is that one of the things we're defending in the Persian Gulf is the cornfields and the Big Mac. Another cost is the subsidies: For corn alone, it's four or five billion dollars a year in public money to support the corn farmers that make possible our cheap hamburger. Then you've got the problem of obesity because these cheap calories happen to be some of the most fattening.

We're paying for a 99-cent burger in our health-care bills, in our environmental cleanup bills, in our military budget, and in the disappearance of the family farm. So it really isn't cheap at all.

Entire Interview

Excerpt from THE BOTANY OF DESIRE by Michael Pollan:

Sweetness is a desire that starts on the tongue with a sense of taste, but it doesn’t end there...

Also:

An NPR interview: A Plant's Eye View of the World

Even an unrepentent republican digs Botany of Desire

Science Daily has an interview with him about the book and Diabetes

Michael Pollen interviewed for the Modern Meat documentary (highly recommended--I have a copy if anyone is interested): Frontline: Modern Meat Interview

An excerpt from his book A Place of My Own (not surprisingly Michael is an avid gardener)

His New York Times article Behind the Organic-Industrial Complex

His New York Times essay Power Steer (Courtesy of Mindfully)

The Organic Consumers Association has this essay from the New York Times: An Animal's Place

A Christian Science Monitor article: When Corn is King

A Sierra Club interview: The Cheapest Calories Make You the Fattest

Tom Dispatch has this profile Followingthe Food Chain with Michael Pollan
(Courtesy of a link at Treehugger who has a recent post for you environmental lovers on 50 Ways to Please Your Lover [Organically/Environmentally] just in time for Valentine's Day)

2006 Tuition Hearing

2006-01-31T14:01:00.000-08:00

STUDENTS, FACULTY & STAFF

You are invited to attend the Kentucky Community & Technical College System

2006 Tuition Hearing

Monday, February 6

9:30 a.m.

Lobby of the AT Building

Cooper Campus

We want your comments regarding KCTCS tuition.

Guerrila Girls Exhibition at the Venice Biennial 2005

2006-01-31T03:28:00.000-08:00

Guerrilla Girls: Reinventing the "F" Word

The Freedom to Blog

2005-11-15T21:59:00.000-08:00

Not everyone enjoys the freedom to blog without fear of retribution and so there is the Committee to Protect Bloggers

Reporters Without Borders recently recognized the 2005 Best Blogs Defending Freedom

Leah Caldwell: Censorship in the Big House

2005-11-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

Censorship in the Big House: Death of the Jailhouse Press
By LEAH CALDWELL
Counterpunch

It was a melee, a riot, a simmering dispute. Despite the nomenclature, coverage of the August 9 prisoner "incident" at San Quentin prison was hardly diversified. 39 prisoners were injured in one of the largest riots since 1982 at California's oldest prison, with newspapers citing tensions between Latino and white prisoners as the root cause.
There were a few differences, though, between this riot and the last demonstrating the changing nature of America's prison system. In 1982, guards fired shotguns in the air to quell the disturbance; in 2005, tear gas was the agent of choice. In the 80s, the prisoner newspaper, the San Quentin News would've covered the riots; in 2005, this newspaper no longer exists.

One of the most dramatic changes within American prisons is the near extinction of the penal press. Award-winning prison newspapers that once reached thousands- even outside of prison walls-no longer exist, and their underground counterparts are few and far between. The situation has become so dire that, according to the author of Jailhouse Journalism James McGrath Morris, "If you talked to a prisoner today, they wouldn't even know these things existed."

The death of the prison press can't be attributed to one law or one warden; instead, it can be traced through shifting attitudes on prisons and their function in society. "There was a period in American history when we really thought we could send somebody to [prison] and make a new person out of them," Morris said. "That's gone." In a country that imprisons over 2 million people-despite a decade-long drop in crime-rehabilitation is an outmoded concept.

The prison newspaper was once seen as a practical tool for rehabilitation. It was viewed as a way for prisoners to occupy themselves on the inside, but more importantly, to gain marketable skills for use on the outside. This led to prison newspaper booms in the 30s and 50s, when over 250 prisoner-run publications flourished.

The prison press also thrived in the 70s when, according to Jim Danky, Librarian of the Wisconsin Historical Society, which is home to the nation's largest collection of prison newspapers, highly politicized prisoners brought "the ethos of the 60s inside with them" and cranked out enough radical rags to fill a library. Among these were The Iced Pig edited by Weatherman and Attica prisoner Sam Melville and the San Quentin News, known for its censored report on bird excrement in the prison cafeteria. The most notable paper of this decade, and perhaps the entire history of the prison press, was The Angolite. Under Wilbert Rideau's editorship, the paper won a Polk award for its intensive coverage of prison rape. Unlike other papers, The Angolite skirted official censorship by obtaining the support of the warden, who hoped that the presence of an independent prison newspaper would bring prestige and stability to the Louisiana prison.

But this hands-off approach was unique to Angola. As The Angolite was publishing groundbreaking pieces, prisoner-journalists throughout the country were encountering the "Son of Sam" laws which were designed to keep them from publishing their work in outside publications. A central provision states that, "The inmate may not act as reporter or publish under a byline." Though the law did not directly affect prison newspapers, it sent a message to officials that contrarian prisoner opinions needed to be heavily censored.

H. Bruce Franklin, Rutgers professor and author of Prison Writings in 20th-Century America, believes this sudden crackdown on prison journalism was a reaction to the success of newspapers in unifying prisoners and engaging outsiders. Ultimately, the goal was (and still is) information control, according to Franklin: "The worse the conditions in prison, the more necessary it is to keep people from knowing how bad the conditions are." Franklin believes that prison officials take measures to prevent prison newspapers from covering routine abuses and, in some cases, torture. "They will do everything in their power to make sure people are unaware of this," he says.

Link to Read the Entire Essay

Josh Hartigan: The End of Social Construction?; Culture Against Race

2005-11-15T09:21:00.000-08:00

(Extra Credit Opportunities)

THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY: COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL THEORY presents the 2005 Distinguished Visiting Author, Professor John Hartigan, Jr.
Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin

The End of Social Construction?: Critically Engaging Recent Claims Relating Race to Genetics

Thursday, November 17th
4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
West End Room, 18th Floor
Patterson Office Tower

Culture Against Race: Reworking the Basis for Racial Analysis

Friday, November 18th
2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
West End Room, 18th Floor
Patterson Office Tower

A reception will be held following Thursday’s talk at the Gaines Center’s Commonwealth House from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Dr. John Hartigan, Jr., is in the Americo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies, Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas-Austin. He is the author of Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People(Duke, 2005) and Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit (Princeton, 1999).

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From Frontlist Bookstore (a theory junky's best friend) I have copped some descriptions of his book to give an example of what he is doing:

Odd Tribes: A Cultural Analysis of White People
by John Hartigan Jr.

Duke University Press

Due/Published November 2005, 392 pages, paper

ISBN 0822335972

Odd Tribes challenges theories of whiteness and critical race studies by examining the tangles of privilege, debasement, power, and stigma that constitute white identity. Considering the relation of phantasmatic cultural forms such as the racial stereotype "white trash" to the actual social conditions of poor whites, John Hartigan Jr. generates new insights into the ways that race, class, and gender are fundamentally interconnected. By tracing the historical interplay of stereotypes, popular cultural representations, and the social sciences' objectifications of poverty, Hartigan demonstrates how constructions of whiteness continually depend on the vigilant maintenance of class and gender decorums.

Odd Tribes engages debates in history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies over how race matters. Hartigan tracks the spread of "white trash" from an epithet used only in the South prior to the Civil War to one invoked throughout the country by the early twentieth century. He also recounts how the cultural figure of "white trash" influenced academic and popular writings on the urban poor from the 1880s through the 1990s. Hartigan's critical reading of the historical uses of degrading images of poor whites to ratify lines of color in this country culminates in an analysis of how contemporary performers such as Eminem and Roseanne Barr challenge stereotypical representations of "white trash" by claiming the identity as their own. Odd Tribes presents a vision of what cultural studies can be when diverse research methodologies and conceptual frameworks are brought to bear on pressing social issues.

"Beautifully written, theoretically sophisticated, and passionately iconoclastic, Odd Tribes should be required reading for anyone interested in the study of race and social inequalities. Its difficult lessons--for both liberal academics and antiracist practitioners--need to be absorbed and understood."--Matt Wray, coeditor of The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness

"For John Hartigan Jr., race is not a fixed, abstract social fact but a fluid, heterogeneous, situated field of racializing practices. Odd Tribes deftly develops this approach through a series of lively accounts of how lower-class whites have been racialized in ways that simultaneously normalize whiteness. An elegant, fresh, provocative, often surprising, and ultimately hopeful work that argues forcefully for a cultural perspective on racial matters."--Susan Harding, author of The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics
---------------------------

by John Hartigan Jr.

Princeton University Press

Due/Published November 1999, 360 pages, paper

ISBN 0691028850

"John Hartigan's distinctive ethnography will propel white readers across boundaries that they might prefer not to acknowledge. He effects a crucial move, long hoped for in 'whiteness studies'-a critical examination of liberal notions of race through a confrontation with whites' own despised 'others.'"--George Marcus, Rice University

Hartigan challenges perspectives on race that rely upon oft-repeated claims that race is culturally constructed and, hence, simply false and distorting. He asserts, instead, that we need to explain how race is experienced by people as a daily reality. His starting point is the lives of white people in Detroit. As a distinct minority, whites in this city can rarely assume they are racially unmarked and normative--privileges generally associated with whiteness. Hartigan conveys their attempts to make sense of how race matters in their lives and in Detroit generally. Rather than compiling a generic sampling of white views, Hartigan develops an ethnographic account of whites in three distinct neighborhoods--an inner city, underclass area; an adjacent, debatably gentrifying community; and a working-class neighborhood bordering one of the city's wealthy suburbs. In tracking how racial tensions develop or become defused in each of these sites, Hartigan argues that whites do not articulate their racial identity strictly in relation to a symbolic figure of black Otherness. He demonstrates, instead, that intraracial class distinctions are critical in whites' determinations of when and how race matters.

In each community, the author charts a series of names--"hillbilly," "gentrifier," and "racist"--which whites use to make distinctions among themselves. He shows how these terms function in everyday discourses that reflect the racial consciousness of the communities and establish boundaries of status and privilege among whites in these areas. "Racial Situations is an innovative and theoretically sophisticated study of the process of racial formation among white residents of urban Detroit. Hartigan's ethnographic material is vivid and compelling and yields an uncompromisingly complex view of how whiteness is lived in American society. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the dynamic interplay of race, class, and culture in the everyday lives of urban residents."--Steven Gregory, New York University

"John Hartigan is a terrific listener and an insightful thinker, and this book shows why both are important. In an era of seemingly inescapable racial thinking in this country, Hartigan asks us to notice how and when 'race' matters, and to be open to the possibility that some situations will surprise us. Richly nuanced and wonderfully peopled, this book is also courageous. It conveys compassion and understanding even when we might just expect criticism. Compelling, at times even gripping, this is a book I am very glad to have read."--Virginia Domínguez

Plans to Dispose of 523-ton Stockpile of Nerve and Blister Agents in Bluegrass Region

2005-11-15T09:18:00.000-08:00

I had a friend who worked for the Kentucky laborers union and was told how they were going to get rid of nuclear stockpiles in Kentucky, they were going to dilute the nuclear waste with water until it was safe and reintroduce the mixture into Kentucky streams. Ridiculous... I wonder if this is the same method they are planning on using to dispose of the "523-ton stockpile of nerve and blister agents."
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Study positive on weapons disposal plan: PROGRAM FOR DEPOT SAFE AND EFFECTIVE, STUDY SUGGESTS
By Peter Mathews
CENTRAL KENTUCKY BUREAU

RICHMOND - A new study by a panel of prominent scientists says the Army and contractor Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass appear to have developed a safe and effective plan to destroy chemical weapons at Blue Grass Army Depot.

The report from the National Research Council notes that many technical issues remain unresolved. But some of those issues have been addressed since the information was gathered.

"I see it as a very positive report," said Craig Williams, co-chairman of the local citizens' advisory board. "There were no real surprises and no show-stoppers. It's basically what I would have expected."

Plans call for a $2 billion plant to be built at the depot to chemically neutralize its 523-ton stockpile of nerve and blister agents.

The study noted that the processes involved never have been used together, so a prolonged period of testing is needed.

And the operating schedule is "probably unrealistic" for a first-of-its-kind plant, it said.

The United States faces an April 2012 deadline for disposing of its chemical weapons. Local officials have said delays in funding have put them about a year behind schedule.

The report also called for a change in the way rockets containing chemical agent would be cut open. However, fires at other chemical weapons disposal sites prompted officials to begin studying a change months ago.

Katherine DeWeese, a spokeswoman for the federal agency overseeing the destruction of munitions at the Richmond depot and in Pueblo, Colo., said project leaders would meet soon with council members to discuss the recommendations.

Thinking About Radical Democracy

2005-11-14T15:31:00.000-08:00

(Radical in the sense of a reflective reworking/rethinking that involves going back to the origins of the concept and pushing our supposed democracy to live up to its founding concepts. For my students working on social/collective memory projects--the links are all updated. Suggestions for this list are appreciated and needed--please help me to keep up-to-date and to catch up on newly uncovered/ignored histories.)

U.S. Section of Women's International League for Peace

Orion: Environmental Discourse and Dissent

Green Social Thought

Radical Democracy: A Contested Terrain

Rules for Radicals

The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy

Fast Food Nation and McDonaldization

History of Radicalism in the U.S.

Abolitionist Movement

Civil Rights Movement

Marxist Internet Archive

Eugene Debs, Labor Organizer

Feminist Movement

Marcus Garvey, Black Nationalist Leader

Labor Movement

Abbie Hoffman

Populism

Socialism

Utopian Communities

The Student as Nigger

John Taylor Gatto: Challenging the Myths of Modern Schooling

Raoul Vaneigem: The Revolution of Everyday Life

Resources for Studying Propaganda

The Memory Hole: Freeing of Information in Action

On the Poverty of Student Life

Language of the War on Terror

Independent Media in a Time of War

Indy Media

Nancy Snow: Rebranding of America

Poet/Performer Saul Williams

Politics of University Teaching in Post 9/11 America

Socialist Equality Party Presidential Candidate Bill Van Auken: "An American Tragedy"

Douglas Rushkoff's Open Source Democracy

Chris Hedges: The Meaning of War

Stonewall Riot and Its Aftermath

Wikipedia: Stonewall Riots

Stonewall Riots, 1969

Nickle and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich

Crucial Texts of Radical Democracy

Thomas Frank: Architecture of a New Consensus

Culture-Trafficking for the 21st Century

Terry Tempest Williams: Open Spaces of Democracy

Terry Tempest Williams: Ground Truthing

BBC Documentary: The Power of Nightmares

Paul Kivel: Are You Mentoring For Social Justice

Skidmark Bob, Musical Activist

Stokely Carmichael: Architect of Black Power

George Soros: The Bubble of American Supremacy

Race and Collective Memory Bibliography

Without Sanctuary: America's Dark History of Racialized Violence (caution)

Ron Strickland's Marxist Cultural Theory

Tony Kushner: Radical Pragmatist

Race: The Power of an Illusion

Ubu Web: Freedom as Creativity

Martin Luther King's Radical Message

Michael Moore: White Frights

Remembering Johnny Cash

U.S. Prison Boom

How the Other Half Banks

Hakim Bey: Poetic Terrorism

Situationist International: Resisting the Society of the Spectacle

Bureau of Publis Secrets

Howard Zinn: Our War on Terrorism

The Nation: Our Debt to Bill Moyers

Arundhati Roy: Instant Mix, Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free)

Project Censored Annual Reports of Year's Top Censored News Stories

Guy Debord: Society of the Spectacle

Slavoj Zizek: The Passion

Raymond Federman: The Real Begins Where the Spectacle Ends

Emma Goldman: Minorities vs. Majorities

Emma Goldman Archives

Anarchist Archives

Mary Wolstoncraft: Vindication of the Rights of Women

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: The Solitude of Self

National Women's History Project

Gloria Steinem

Angela Davis: Radical Activist/Black Feminist

Combahee River Collective Statement: Genesis of Black Feminism

Feminist Writing Space

bell hooks: writing and resistance

The Beautiful Enigma of Radical Democracy

Women's International League for Peace

Peace Women

Extreme Democracy

American Indian Movement

Alcatraz Is Not an Island: Reclaiming Native Land

Alice Paul

Iron Jawed Angels (Katjia von Garnier) Warner, 2004: 125 minutes.

Alice Paul

We discussed the Seneca Falls 1848 Convention as a landmark event in the women's movement.

Seneca Falls Declaration

I mentioned Ida B. Wells the African American activist in the movie who refuses to get in the back of the parade--for more on this important democratic civil rights activist:

Ida B. Wells

Wikipedia: Ida B. Wells

Think about Ida B. Wells argument in the film and then read this important statement from Black Feminists:

Excerpts from the Combahee River Collective Statement

Other women activists of the time that are not featured in the movie, but are very important to know (they are often ignored because they fought for the rights of workers--something a capitalist society rarely honors). These women were as courageous and passionate as Alice Paul and Lucy Burns (have you heard of them?):

Mother Jones: the Angel of the Mines

Wikipedia: Mother Jones

Emma Goldman

Wikipedia: Emma Goldman

Helen Keller is also mentioned many times during the movie. How many of you knew that Helen Keller was an civil rights activist who was pursued by the FBI?

Helen Keller and the FBI

Helen Keller

I mentioned stereotypes about "feminism" and just wanted to post other opinions on the issue:

North Carolina College Student: Stereotypes About Feminism Are Unfounded and Damaging (also click on the only comment at the end of the essay)

The Guerilla Girls a performative activist group has long been fighting stereotypes of women and for equal representation in the arts (if you have taken an art history class you will understand the disparity between the representation of male and female artists):

University of North Texas website on feminism:

What is Feminism?

Public displays, marches and protests are an effective non-violent method for bringing attention to political issues (that are being ignored by mainstream society):

NOW: History of Marches and Mass Actions

Wikipedia: Social Movements

Wikipedia: Protests

Also check out the imagistic critiques of the conceptual artist Barbara Krueger--who questions how stereotypes and behaviors are reproduced through visual media:

Barbara Krueger

And courtesy of Melissa Purdue, an English Studies and Women Studies instructor at the University of Kentucky, an outline of the three waves of feminism (I added the links):

First Wave Feminism-

This term refers to the first concerted movement working for the reform of women's social and legal inequalities in the nineteenth century. Although individual feminist such as Mary Wollstonecraft had already argued against the injustices suffered by women, it was not until the 1850's that something like an organized feminist movement evolved in Britain. Its headquarters was at Langham Place in London, where a group of middle-class women, led by Barbara Bodichon (1827-91) and Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829-1925), met to discuss topical issues and publish the English Woman's Journal (1858-64).

The key concerns of First Wave Feminists were education, employment, the marriage laws, and the plight of intelligent middle-class single women. They were not primarily concerned with the problems of working-class women, nor did they necessarily see themselves as feminists in the modern sense (the term was not coined until 1895). First Wave Feminists largely responded to specific injustices they had themselves experienced.

Their major achievements were the opening of higher education for women; reform of the girls' secondary-school system, including participation in formal national examinations: the widening of access to the professions, especially medicine; married women's property rights, recognized in the Married Women's Property Act of 1870; and some improvement in divorced and separated women's child custody rights.

Second Wave Feminism-

The term 'Second Wave' was coined by Marsha Lear, and refers to the increase in feminist activity which occurred in America, Britain, and Europe from the late sixties onwards. In America, second wave feminism rose out of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in which women, disillusioned with their second-class status even in the activist environment of student politics, began to band together to contend against discrimination. The second wave was concerned with reproductive rights and the fight against sexual and domestic violence.

The tactics employed by Second Wave Feminists varied from highly-published activism, such as the protest against the Miss America beauty contest in 1968, to the establishment of small consciousness-raising groups. However, it was obvious early on that the movement was not a unified one, with differences emerging between black feminism, lesbian feminism, liberal feminism, and social feminism.

Second Wave Feminism in Britain was similarly multiple in focus, although it was based more strongly in working-class socialism, as demonstrated by the strike of women workers at the Ford car plant for equal pay in 1968. The slogan 'the personal is political' sums up the way in which Second Wave Feminism did not just strive to extend the range of social opportunities open to women, but also, through intervention within the spheres of reproduction, sexuality and cultural representation, to change their domestic and private lives. Second Wave Feminism did not just make an impact upon western societies, but has also continued to inspire the struggle for women's rights across the world.

Third Wave Feminism -

Loosely defined movement starting around late 1990’s with texts like Manifesta, Listen Up, To Be Real, and Body Outlaws. Third Wave Feminism, the movement of feminism beyond the sexual revolution of the 1960's, is focused on young women and men perpetuating and improving upon those rights gained in the past. It is hard to define because the Third Wave is characterized by individualism and a lack of desire to conform to a definition. Third Wavers have never lived in a world without the women's movement.

The front page of the Third Wave Foundation web site explains that the organization strives to combat inequalities that [women] face as a result of [their] age, gender, race, sexual orientation, economic status or level of education. By empowering young women, Third Wave is building a lasting foundation for social activism around the country.

Wikipedia: Feminism

Wikipedia: Suffrage Movement

Wikipedia: Alice Paul

Wikipedia: Lucy Burns

Stokely Carmichael: Architects of Black Power

2005-11-14T15:22:00.000-08:00

(for my students researching black power movements)

Memoirs from the "Architect of Black Power"

A review of:
Ready for Revolution
by Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)
by Mark Engler and Paul Engler

Late in 2003, a collection of Martin Luther King's papers scheduled for auction was opened for public viewing in New York City. Among the most interesting items in the exhibit was a telegram sent from Malcolm X in June of 1964. Malcolm and Martin have long been considered to embody two impulses within the civil rights movement, and the telegram put the split on sharp display: "We have been witnessing with great concern the vicious attacks of the white races against our poor defenseless people there in St. Augustine, [Florida,]" Malcolm X wrote to Dr. King. "If the Federal Government will not send troops to your aid, just say the word and we will immediately dispatch some of our brothers... The day of turning the other cheek to those brute beasts is over."

Many would dispute the idea that nonviolence had been exhausted in 1964. But within a few years, a new generation of civil rights activists would move to the forefront, advocating a distinctly un-Gandhian brand of militancy. Chief among them was Stokely Carmichael, whose autobiography, Ready for Revolution, was just published--five years after his death--with the help of his friend, the writer Michael Thelwell. The book shows several reasons why Carmichael is a leading figure in the movement's transition. He braved some of the most dramatic and resolutely nonviolent actions of the early 1960s, yet later ushered in a new era of "Black Power." Ready for Revolution makes a significant contribution to the U.S. civil rights literature by providing inside perspectives on how the movement's organizing changed dramatically in only a few years. But ultimately it does little to account for how "Black Power" affected the collapse of Carmichael's own organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Understanding Carmichael's significance in the movement first requires clearing up several misconceptions. The mainstream media used the activist as a convenient peg on which to hang everything that suburban white America had to fear about African-American militancy. Critics blamed his inflammatory statements ("When you talk about black power, you talk about bringing this country to its knees... of building a movement that will smash everything that Western civilization has created") for the riots that shook cities from Watts to Detroit to Newark--uprisings that clearly reflected deep social tensions, not the speech-making of a single individual.

Even the stories that have defined his image within activist circles are often off-base. On the organizer's behalf, Thelwell convincingly argues that Carmichael's infamous sexist remark (answering "prone" to a question about the place of women in the movement) was a joke taken out of context. Mary King and Casey Hayden, the supposed targets of the quip, defend Carmichael as being one of the men in SNCC most sympathetic to their criticisms of patriarchy within the organization. Similarly, mention of how white organizers were kicked out of SNCC during Carmichael's leadership should not overlook the fact that he opposed the move, and that he was consistently critical of the extreme black nationalist staffers in SNCC's Atlanta office, who, he argued, could not effectively mobilize their communities.

Ready for Revolution devotes some 800 pages to the task of debunking popular misconceptions and giving a picture of who Carmichael actually was. Given the bombast that characterized his most famous speeches, the book is surprisingly measured and conversational. Made up largely of Carmichael's recorded oral recollections, edited by Thelwell, it provides a detailed context for his evolution as an activist.

Carmichael spent the earliest years of his life in Trinidad, surrounded by his aunts and matriarchal grandmother. At age eleven, however, he was brought by his parents to New York City. As a student at the prestigious Bronx Science High School, Carmichael was influenced by watching the Garveyite soap-box speakers in Harlem, and he befriended Gene Dennis, son of a well-known Communist Party USA figure. But his real political formation came when he attended Howard University. There he quickly rose to the leadership of the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG). As he writes of the civil rights activists, "It was a lot like finding a long-lost family that you hadn't previously known about, but with whom you instantly recognized your kinship." Impassioned discussions about politics frequently kept students up through the night ("NAG folk would argue with a sign post," Carmichael says) and forged deep ties.

In 1961, as an affiliate of SNCC, Howard's NAG sent activists to join the Congress on Racial Equality's (CORE) 1961 Freedom Rides to integrate interstate bussing. At 19 years of age, Carmichael was one of the two youngest riders to be jailed in Mississippi's infamous Parchment Penitentiary. Veteran activists would later recall the horror and pride they felt when seeing Carmichael writhing on the ground and singing "I'm Gonna Tell God How You Treat Me" as punitive prison wardens used metal vises on his wrists to force him to give up a mattress, one of his jail cell's few amenities. At the same time, SNCC chairman John Lewis would write in his own autobiography that Carmichael showed "not much interest in Gandhi or the principles of nonviolence or even the Bible." In contrast to many others in the community, Carmichael viewed the actions tactically, rather than through a religious lens. "For me and most of my friends," he writes of nonviolence, "it was merely a valuable if limited strategy."

In the early years after its 1960 founding, SNCC, like Howard's NAG, was a tight-knit, interracial group of young activists. As scholar Clayborne Carson relates, SNCC quickly gained the reputation of being the "shock troops" of the civil rights movement, willing to work in the most dangerous areas of Mississippi, and pioneering new forms of nonviolent protest. Committed to on-going organizing, SNCC criticized Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) for creating "massive, temporary mobilization and press agentry as opposed to creating powerful organized communities capable of sustaining political struggle." Carmichael writes: "Here comes SCLC talking about mobilizing another two-week campaign, using our base and the magic of Dr. King's name. They are going to bring in the cameras, the media, prominent people, politicians... turn the place upside down, and split."

Carmichael graduated Howard and moved south to become a full-time SNCC staffer in 1964, shortly before Bob Moses launched the historic Freedom Summer campaign. Freedom Summer was different from previous efforts because it imported hundreds of young activists from the North to work on dangerous voter registration drives. Moses picked Carmichael to lead the mobilization in the crucial Mississippi Delta. "It's not just political sophistication" that was required, Moses relates in a quote that Thelwell includes in the book. It was "a feel for the common person which allows you to... really be accepted by them... But you could have that and not have the ability to work with the white northerners.... Stokely was able to move back and forth among all those levels."

While Freedom Summer was a great success--culminating in the dramatic appearance of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City--it also created organizational problems for SNCC. Carmichael writes, "SNCC now had a heightened presence and visibility nationally. As a result, the organization would soon be confronting unfamiliar problems of growth and affluence... Overnight the staff--which means the organization--was fixing to double in size." He adds, "SNCC could never go back to being the organization/family it had once been or perceived itself to be."

The growth in the organization also created an ideological opening. Many of the newer staff members, most vocally represented by SNCC's Atlanta Project, did not share the organization's earlier commitment to disciplined nonviolence and questioned the goal of integration. In 1966 the growing tension led to the first-ever contested battle for SNCC's leadership positions. After a prolonged dispute, John Lewis, a religiously oriented activist who led the organization's participation in the White House Conference on Civil Rights, was ousted as SNCC's chairman. Carmichael took power. Although he personally opposed the Atlanta group, his candidacy was bolstered by the fact that he had organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama in 1965, an all-black political party that later became the inspiration for California's Black Panthers.

Carmichael himself is critical of civil rights histories that suggest a sharp divide between the early "beloved community" period of SNCC activism, and the later "Black Power" phase. He contends that "the new direction was simply a necessary response to current political realities." For Carmichael, the transition may well have appeared natural and inevitable, in large part because he had long argued for a move away from "the pain-and-suffering school" of nonviolence. But lack of reflection in Ready for Revolution about Carmichael's own choices, given the particular circumstances of the time, has two consequences: One the one hand, the organizer likely does not give himself enough credit for his insight and influence as a leader. On the other, the book lacks an honest defense of his most controversial political decisions.

It was during Carmichael's leadership of SNCC that Ebony editor Lerone Bennett, Jr. would dub him "the architect of Black Power." Carmichael states that after publicly championing the use of the phrase, he "spent his entire term as chairman doing little else but defining" it. He contends, both here and in earlier books, that Black Power is not a call for separatism. Rather, he explains, "this was simply about the power to affirm our black humanity... and to collectively organize the political and economic power to control and develop our communities... Being pro-black didn't mean you're anti-white."

Carmichael brought several significant insights to his analysis of the concept, including the need for the civil rights movement to shift its focus from the rural South to the ghettos of the urban North. Along with this geographical move, he worked to popularize the concept of institutional racism. "When unknown racists bomb a church and kill four children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society," he wrote. But when "five hundred Negro babies die each year because of a lack of proper food, shelter, and medical facilities... [society] pretends it doesn't know of this situation." Finally, he struck a powerful cultural chord. Carson quotes Bennett writing, "it was the genius of Stokely Carmichael to sense the mood gestating in the depths of the black psyche and give tongue to it."

However, Black Power also caused serious problems for SNCC. Many mainstream civil rights leaders condemned the use of the phrase. Although Martin Luther King would not join them in denouncing SNCC, he immediately saw the organizational consequences that would come from the rhetorical positioning. He pointed to the political limitations of organizing only in majority-black communities and he also contended that, no matter how much explaining Carmichael did, Black Power would always carry a charged connotation. Unlike "black consciousness" or "black equality," King argued, it would bring overwhelming media condemnation, alienate liberal funders, and fracture alliances with unions and other supporters.

In Ready for Revolution Carmichael admits that "Dr. King's judgement about the 'unfortunate choice of language' proved to be prescient and, if anything, understated." But at the same time, he does not take responsibility for his choices, opting instead to blame the media for its predictable overreaction. Similarly, he expresses shock in his autobiography that mainstream civil rights organizations distanced themselves from SNCC. But at the time he fashioned his politics to alienate those very organizations in order to reorient the movement in a more radical direction.

A key example of this contradiction is in Ready for Revolution's description of the planning for the 1966 Meredith March in Tennessee. "The notion of 'taking over' or even 'leading' the march wasn't in our thinking," Carmichael states in the autobiography. "All we wanted was to give it direction. I honestly couldn't think of any valid... reason why all the organizations couldn't participate amicably." However, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Bearing the Cross, civil rights historian David Garrow cites several earlier interviews in which the activist claimed to have purposefully driven out moderate representatives of the NAACP and the Urban League. "We wanted to pull [Martin Luther King] to the left," Carmichael argues in this earlier account. "Once we got rid of the right wing completely, King would have to come to the left." The moderates "fell completely into the trap and stormed out of there."

It is disingenuous for Ready for Revolution not even to acknowledge the changed position. By neither defending nor rebuking his earlier strategies, Carmichael leaves a less useful guide for present-day activists. Under his leadership, SNCC abandoned militant nonviolence and failed to consolidate its organizing program. It would collapse completely within a few years. It is impossible to say in hindsight what decisions might have altered this fate. However, it is possible to compare SNCC with other models of the time. While Carmichael is right to argue that some change in civil rights strategy was inevitable, SCLC was also pushing for a shift to the North. Furthering their role as the "shock troops" of nonviolence, SNCC activists might have used dynamic urban direct action to highlight economic injustice and institutional racism. Instead, such creative actions were largely missing in the new stage of the movement, especially with SCLC weakened after Dr. King's death.

Carmichael briefly served as a spokesperson for the Black Panther Party, but he observes that the organization's lack of organizing experience and institutional memory limited their ability to form lasting structures. This weakness was exacerbated by the media firestorm and the government repression that followed the Panther's highly visible promotion of armed self defense. Lacking effective organization, in SNCC or in the Panthers, those radicalized by the rhetoric of Black Power were largely unable to carry forward the momentum of the earlier civil rights movement.

While Carmichael was only SNCC Chairman for one year, he remained a popular speaker and media personality throughout the late 1960s. By the time the press spotlight faded, he had moved to Africa. There he took the name Kwame Ture and devoted the rest of his life to organizing for a form of Pan-African socialism. Most of the African revolutions that he supported collapsed under the pressure of foreign intervention and neo-colonialism. Ready for Revolution does not provide a very useful perspective on these events. The book's view of fallen martyrs in Ghana and Guinea lacks any critical distance, leaving the reader wishing that Ture had applied the same level of constructive scrutiny to African leaders as he had to SCLC.

Kwame Ture always considered himself first and foremost an organizer. While finally succumbing to cancer in 1998, he maintained an admirable lifelong commitment to anti-racist politics. Documenting this dedication, Ready for Revolution will stand as a significant historical resource. But in failing to fully reckon with Ture's own role at a pivotal movement in civil rights history, it leaves a key story untold. Organizers of the future will miss having a more probing reflection on critical times.

-- Mark Engler is a writer and activist based in New York City. Paul Engler is an organizer with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), Local 681, in Anaheim, California. They can be reached at engler@democracyuprising.com.

For more articles visit Democracy Uprising

What is Freedom?

2005-11-14T04:31:00.000-08:00

What is Freedom?

Oxfam America

2005-11-14T04:27:00.000-08:00

Oxfam America is a Boston-based international development and relief agency and an affiliate of Oxfam International. Working with local partners, Oxfam delivers development programs and emergency relief services, and campaigns for change in global practices and policies that keep people in poverty.

Edwin Black: Final Solutions

2005-11-14T04:16:00.000-08:00

Final Solutions: How IBM Helped Automate the Nazi Death Machine in Poland
by Edwin Black
Village Voice, March 27 - April 2, 2002

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, most of the world saw a menace to humanity. But IBM saw Nazi Germany as a lucrative trading partner. Its president, Thomas J. Watson, engineered a strategic business alliance between IBM and the Reich, beginning in the first days of the Hitler regime and continuing right through World War II. This alliance catapulted Nazi Germany to become IBM's most important customer outside the U.S. IBM and the Nazis jointly designed, and IBM exclusively
produced, technological solutions that enabled Hitler to accelerate and in many ways automate key aspects of his persecution of Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others the Nazis considered enemies. Custom-designed, IBM-produced punch cards, sorted by IBM machines leased to the Nazis, helped organize and manage the initial
identification and social expulsion of Jews and others, the confiscation of their property, their ghettoization, their deportation, and, ultimately, even their extermination.

Recently discovered Nazi documents and Polish eyewitness testimony make clear that IBM's alliance with the Third Reich went far beyond its German subsidiary. A key factor in the Holocaust in Poland was IBM technology provided directly through a special wartime Polish subsidiary reporting to IBM New York, mainly to its headquarters at 590 Madison Avenue.

And that's how the trains to Auschwitz ran on time.

Thousands of IBM documents reviewed for the first edition of my book 'IBM and the Holocaust,' published early last year and focused mainly on IBM's German subsidiary, revealed vigorous efforts to preserve IBM's monopoly in the Nazi market and increase contracts to meet wartime sales quotas.

Since then, continued research and interviews have uncovered details, described here for the first time, of IBM's work for the Nazis in Poland through the separate subsidiary and of the Polish subsidiary's direct contact with IBM officials on Madison Avenue.

Documents were obtained from IBM files shipped to NYU for processing and from scores of other archival sources here and abroad. Not a single sentence written by IBM personnel has been discovered in any of the documents questioning the morality of automating the Third Reich, even when headlines proclaimed the mass murder of Jews.

IBM's German subsidiary was Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, known by the acronym Dehomag. (Herman Hollerith was the German American who first automated U.S. census information in the late 19th century and founded the company which became IBM. Hollerith's name became synonymous with the machines and the Nazi "departments" that operated them.)

Link To Read the Entire Essay

Also:

The IBM Link to Auschwitz

How the U.S. 'Master Race' Helped Breed Selective Science: War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

For a Student Researching the Holocaust

Christian Alliance for Progress

2005-11-14T03:27:00.000-08:00

(An interesting example of how groups are portrayed as being of one mind/voice is the current neo-conservative politicians in the U.S. who believe that they are speaking for all Christians, or, even, most Christians. New progressive Christian movements are speaking-out to let people know that there are viable alternatives for Christians.)

Christian Alliance for Progress

About the Alliance

The success of the Religious Right in appropriating the language of Christianity has led many people to become generally wary of religion in the public sphere and of Christianity in particular. The Religious Right has used the language of Christianity to promote an extreme and divisive political agenda that has helped polarize our nation. But foundational Christian values like compassion, justice and peace are largely absent from our political discussion. And there are millions of Christian Americans who share progressive views, or, at a minimum, are increasingly turned off by the extreme rhetoric and political agenda of the Religious Right.

The Christian Alliance for Progress is a national movement that started in Jacksonville, Florida among ordinary Americans who want to reclaim Christianity and change this current political picture. Members in the movement want to restore core values of Christianity while honoring diverse views about religion and Christian life. Many Americans, especially people of faith, are ready to hear from Christians who are tolerant, and who understand the many ways that our faiths impact our views of public life. The Christian Alliance advances a renewed, progressive vision of Gospel values and seeks to help Americans express this moral vision in our lives and in our politics.

We believe we have an obligation to speak out about politics from our deep beliefs; but we do so in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr, we speak to the government as conscience. We do not seek to be the master of the government. We affirm a well-established American commitment to a clear separation of church and state.

Richard Heinberg: Prepare for Peak Oil Now

2005-11-14T03:17:00.000-08:00

Prepare for Peak Oil Now
By Richard Heinberg
AlterNet

Editor’s Note: This paper, exclusively available to AlterNet, was presented at a Reception with Their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, at the California Leaders Round Table Dialogue on Peak Oil, Climate Change and Business Action; November 7, 2005 in San Francisco.

The subject I teach -- human ecology -- is a discipline that largely concerns population and resources. Over the past few years I have chosen to study oil, because it is the most important energy resource of the modern world.

Only 150 years ago, 85 percent of all work being accomplished in the U.S. economy was done by muscle power -- most of that by animal muscle, about a quarter of it by human muscle. Today, that percentage is effectively zero; virtually all of the physical work supporting our economy is done by fuel-fed machines. What caused this transformation? Quite simply, it was oil's comparative cheapness and versatility. Perhaps you have had the experience of running out of gas and having to push your car a few feet to get it off the road. That's hard work. Now imagine pushing your car 20 or 30 miles. That is the service performed for us by a single gallon of gasoline, for which we currently pay $2.65. That gallon of fuel is the energy equivalent of roughly six weeks of hard human labor.

It was inevitable that we would become addicted to this stuff, once we had developed a few tools for using it and for extracting it. Today petroleum provides 97 percent of our transportation fuel, and is also a feedstock for chemicals and plastics.

It is no exaggeration to say that we live in a world that runs on oil.

However, oil is a finite resource. Therefore the peaking and decline of world oil production are inevitable events -- and on that there is scarcely any debate; only the timing is uncertain. Forecast dates for the peak range from this year to 2035.

The peaking phenomenon itself has been observed again and again in individual oil fields and in entire producing nations. One of the first countries to hit its peak was the U.S.. During the 1930s and '40s, half the world’s production of petroleum came from Texas and Oklahoma. However, U.S. production reached its all-time maximum in 1970 and has been declining ever since. Currently the U.S. imports 60 percent of its oil.

Concern over the likelihood of an impending world peak has increased markedly in recent months as global spare production capacity has dwindled and as prices have achieved what seems to be a new baseline of over $50 per barrel.

Evidence that we are approaching peak includes the following:

ExxonMobil documents that global oil discoveries peaked in 1964. Declining rates of discovery are therefore a long-established trend.

Chevron notes in recent advertisements that 33 of 48 nations are in decline. We have thus seen the peaking of production in a majority of individual nations, including some important producers such as Indonesia, Norway, Great Britain, and Venezuela. Mexico will reach its peak within the next two years.

As noted by the International Energy Agency, there is evidence that a substantial amount of "proven reserves" in OPEC countries are illusory, the result of a scramble for market share within a cartel that allocates export quotas based on stated reserves.

With regard to this last point it should be noted that reserves figures, even when accurate, have historically given little warning of peaking. The U.S. instance is once again emblematic: in 1970, U.S. oil reserves were higher than ever; so were production rates. But only a year later, American production began its terminal decline. The study of discovery rates and depletion rates gives us a much better idea of when the global peak is likely to occur.

To Read the Entire Essay

What is a Thesis Statement?

2005-11-12T10:02:00.000-08:00

What is a thesis statement?

Indiana University Definition

St Cloud State University Definition

Another Guide

November 13th: Rev. Ignacio Castuera--Sexuality and Spirituality

2005-11-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

(Extra credit opportunity)

On Sunday afternoon, November 13, Rev. Ignacio Castuera, a United Methodist minister and the national chaplain for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, will be in Lexington to address issues of faith and sexuality in an address entitled "Sexuality and Spirituality." Rev. Castuera will speak at 2 pm at Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church, and a question-and-answer period will follow.

Rev. Castuera has worked for the past 25 years, addressing sexuality issues from his position as a church pastor. He came to the position of PPFA chaplain while serving as Senior Pastor of St. John's United Methodist Church in the Watts community of Los Angeles. He holds degrees from Compton College; California State University, Long Beach; and a Doctor of Religion degree from the Claremont School of Theology.

Rev.Castuera has served churches in Mexico, Hawaii, and California. In 1980, he became the first Latino District Superintendent of the Los Angeles District of the California Pacific Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Castuera has participated in ecumenical and interfaith organizations throughout his ministry and has been a staunch supporter of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, participating in clinic defense and serving on the Board of Directors.

Rev. Castuera has authored many articles in professional journals and newspapers. In 1992, he edited Dreams on Fire, Embers of Hope, a collection of sermons preached in Los Angeles after that year's riots. The book was one of the top ten religious books of that year.

52 Frontline Documentaries Available Online with Extensive Website Extras

2005-11-10T08:55:00.000-08:00

Since January 1983, FRONTLINE has served as American public television's - PBS - flagship public affairs series. Hailed upon its television broadcast debut as "the last best hope for broadcast documentaries," FRONTLINE's stature over 20 seasons is reaffirmed each week through incisive documentaries covering the scope and complexity of the human experience.

When FRONTLINE was born, however, the prospects for television news documentaries looked grim. Pressure was on the network news departments to become profitable, and the spirit of outspoken journalistic inquiry established by programs like Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" and "Harvest of Shame" had given way to entertainment values and feature-filled magazine shows. Therefore, it fell to public television to pick up the torch of public affairs and continue this well-established broadcast news tradition.

Since its inception, FRONTLINE has never shied away from tough, controversial issues or complex stories. In an age of anchor celebrities and snappy sound bites, FRONTLINE remains committed to providing a primetime venue for engaging documentaries that fully explore and illuminate the critical issues of our times. FRONTLINE remains the only regularly scheduled long-form public-affairs documentary series on American television, producing more hours of documentary programming than all the commercial networks combined.

"Television's last fully serious bastion of journalism."
NewsdayFrom producer Ofra Bikel's seven-year investigation of the Little Rascals sexual abuse case to Martin Smith and Lowell Bergman's sweeping chronicle of America's drug wars; from Helen Whitney's probing biography of Pope John Paul II to Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin's "Lost Children of Rockdale County," FRONTLINE gives top-notch journalists the time needed to thoroughly research a story and the time on-air to tell their story in a compelling way.

Credible, thoughtful reporting combined with powerful narrative -- a good story, well-told. That is the heart of FRONTLINE's commitment to its viewers.

Carrie McClaren: Advertising's Chemical Imbalance

2005-11-10T08:51:00.000-08:00

Advertising's Chemical Imbalance
by Carrie McClaren
Stay Free

I couldn't help but notice Lilly's new "depression hurts" ad in a recent New York Times Magazine. A little infograph off to the side says, "Serotonin and norepinephrine may play a role in depression."

Aha! I thought, upon noticing the “may.” Could the FDA finally be going after pharmaceutical companies for falsely advertising that a lack of serotonin causes depression?

For years, as a recent essay in PLoS Medicine explains, advertising has pitched the causes of depression as a lack of certain brain chemicals--particularly serotonin--though evidence is sorely lacking. In fact, the PLoS writer provides a handy collection of quotes illustrating the divide between what the drug ads say verses the scientists.

Link to Read the Rest of the Article

Public Library of Science

2005-11-10T08:49:00.000-08:00

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.

The internet and electronic publishing enable the creation of public libraries of science containing the full text and data of any published research article, available free of charge to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Immediate unrestricted access to scientific ideas, methods, results, and conclusions will speed the progress of science and medicine, and will more directly bring the benefits of research to the public.

To realize this potential, a new business model for scientific publishing is required that treats the costs of publication as the final integral step of the funding of a research project. To demonstrate that this publishing model will be successful for the publication of the very best research, PLoS has published its own journals, including our two flagship journals, PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine, and a suite of community-focused journals including PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Pathogens, and the upcoming PLoS Clinical Trials journals.

PLoS is working with scientists, their societies, funding agencies, and other publishers to pursue our broader goal of ensuring an open-access home for every published article and to develop tools to make the literature useful to scientists and the public.

PLoS Journals

Public Library of Science: Medicine

2005-11-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

PLoS Medicine (eISSN 1549-1676; ISSN-1549-1277) is an open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal published monthly, online and in print, by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit organization. The inaugural issue was launched on 19 October 2004.

Apstate Windbag: 'L'Intifada Française' - Between Ramallah '00 and Paris '68

2005-11-09T21:23:00.000-08:00

Victor S. (Apostate Windbag) from Belgium provides a good summary and background (with plenty of links to other sources) for the recent riots in France:

'L'Intifada Française' - Between Ramallah '00 and Paris '68

Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur: A Critical Analysis

2005-11-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur: A critical analysis (Part I)

Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur: A critical analysis (Part II)

The Truth About Helen Keller

2005-11-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

(An option for this third unit would be to research and write about a "silenced" or marginalized or censored history--something that helps us to understand something about our past, and, thus our present. I'm constantly amazed how people remember Helen Keller based upon the children's books that ignored most of her adult life--think about what you know of her life and then read this article.)

The Truth About Helen Keller

Notes on Parker Palmer's "Community of Truths"

2005-11-08T22:33:00.000-08:00

(These notes are designed to help think about the reading from last week--they include notes from discussions in my ENG 101/102 courses--I included them because they are relevant to some of the concepts we have been discussing in relation to truth, knowledge, communication and history. Please ask questions about this reading or Zerubavel's reading.)

“Community of Truths” by Parker Palmer (From the book Courage to Teach)
Notes by Michael Benton

Community

Truth

1) Why is Truth “not a word much spoken in educational circles these days.” And why would it signify an earlier “naïve era when people were confident they could know the truth”? (99) Explain the difference between Truth (universal and absolute) and truth/s (provisional, relational and mutable).

2) What is the mythical objectivist model of truth? (99) Discuss the two visual models that Palmer supplies in the essay (100 and 102). Refer to the belief of some that the “objectivist knowledge” is the only method to “uncover” the truth. This is a belief that “Truth” is out there waiting for us to discover it in its unaltered and eternal form. The Dangerous Myth of Objectivity (unbiased objectivity) insists that facts can be separated from values, and that the proper role of the expert (media, journalist, scientist, historian, teacher, leader, conqueror) is to sort, verify, and deliver those "unbiased" facts to readers. A critical function of the ideology of objectivity is to render invisible (or as Palmer states “unconscious”) the expert’s power to shape and reinforce public opinion and cultural standards. Furthermore, the objectivist model relies upon the production of passive consumers who absorb knowledge without questioning instead of active citizens who search out their own meanings and understandings of the truth/s. For Palmer and others the notion of an objective “Truth” waiting to be discovered is a “myth.” This is because they realize that we produce our subjective understandings of truth/s through a dialogical/dialectical process of interaction, comparison, discussion and conflict between: knower <--> subject, subject <--> community, community <--> knower, knower <--> subject <--> time/space, and so on…

3) What does Palmer mean when he says “The community of truth is, in fact, many communities, far-flung across space and ever-changing through time” (101).

4) Why is this distinction so important: “a subject is available for relationship; an object is not” (102).

5) Key quote: “As we try to understand the subject in the community of truth, we enter into complex patterns of communication—sharing observations and interpretations, correcting and complementing each other, torn by conflict in this moment and joined by consensus in the next. The community of truth, far from being linear and static and hierarchical, is circular, interactive, and dynamic. At its best, the community of truth advances our knowledge through conflict, not competition. … Competition is the antithesis of community, an acid that can dissolve the fabric of relationships. Conflict is the dynamic by which we test ideas in the open, in a communal effort to stretch each other and make better sense of the world. (103)

6) Now at this point someone will probably ask “isn’t this just a slide into extreme relativism in which there is the impossibility of knowing the Truth?” Now we know that there will always be Truth in the sense that if you cut my arm off with a sword there is no denying that my arm has been cut off, BUT, what I am saying here, is that your “reason” for cutting off my arm is debatable and our understanding of the “truth” of your motivations/reasons for the act depends on the interpretative community that resolves the situation. This is why in our society if someone did cut my arm off in front of witnesses, there may still be a trial to decide guilt or innocence (or degrees of guilt).

7) This brings us to another key quote: “This communal dynamic is governed by rules of observation and interpretation that help define us as a community by bringing focus and discipline to our discourse. To be in the community of truth, we must abide by its norms and procedures, which differ from one field to another… . These standards are strong but not chiseled in stone: they evolve even as our understanding of a subject evolves. We can challenge and change the norms, but we must be able to justify any deviation from them in a public and compelling way” (103-104)

8) Why is it important to Parker Palmer that we recognize and participate in the production of truth/s. Is this important to a democratic society?

9) Why does Palmer state that: “truth is an eternal conversation about things that matter, conducted with passion and discipline” (104).

10) Another key quote: “We need to know the current conclusions in order to get in on the conversation. But it is not our knowledge of conclusions that keeps us in the truth. It is our commitment to the conversation itself, our willingness to put forward our observations and interpretations for testing by the community and to return the favor to others. To be in the truth, we must know how to observe and reflect and speak and listen, with passion and with discipline, in the circle gathered around a given subject.” (104)

"Why did [Parker Palmer] compare himself to the Third Reich, why would you want to be compare[d] to what we look at as evil?"

The way that I read this passage:

"The history of the Third Reich speaks a voice of evil that if I listen carefully to it, will find echoes in my soul."

My reading and subjective answer: The passage is reminding us that it is not only great works (in whatever way we want to distinguish what is "great"--good/moral/beneficial) that can teach us lessons about life and the world, but also works/acts/events that are frightening/disturbing/incomprehensible/evil that we can learn from if we allow them the opportunity to speak to us. Instead of just counting on experts to tell us what they "are" we need to begin to think for ourselves. So Parker Palmer is asking us what lessons can be learned from the story of the Third Reich, a democracy that descended into fascism, a society that was manipulated through artful use of media messages and sound-bite propaganda, and that worshipped the power of martial discipline and social order? What do we lose (and in doing so what dangers do we face) in simply dismissing the Third Reich as an anomaly of evil that erupted in time and then was defeated by the "goodness" of the allies and disappeared. Instead, can we benefit from a study of the evil of the Third Reich? Would a careful listening to this society help us to understand the historical root causes of anti-semitism; the processes of exclusion in the building of community; the manipulations of popular belief through fear of the demonized Other; how new technologies can produce new ways of relating to other beings; the dangers of bureaucratic/corporate classifications of beings as numbers/products; how new techniques of meat production/slaughter played a role in imagining ways to dispose of unwanted populations; the dangers of unchecked patriarchal myths that glorify total control and domination; and how all of these processes all played a role in the rise of the Third Reich and the incomprehenisble acts (incomprehensible if we refuse the courage to look at the causes--more comprehensible if we are courageous to recognize the humanity of the Third Reich) of the Holocaust? In this Palmer may be saying that we do no good to dismiss these actions as simply acts of "evil" committed by "monsters," who once properly "destroyed" and disposed of, we will no longer have to worry about... instead he is attempting to recognize in himself, as a human, what could lead another human to carry out the orders of Death Camps, or to sit passively by as their neighbors were rounded up, or even worse design these processes... We must have the courage of our convictions to know the truth and gaze into the mirror of history and seek out why humans would do these things (instead of dismissing it as simply good/evil):

The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future

and how do these lessons reflect on our understandings of the War on Terror:

Language of the War on Terror

Or in approaching the abuses of Abu Ghraib:

Abu Ghraib

Or what is a "terrorist" and who is a "terrorist" and what causes "terrorism" and how can we stop "terrorism":

Who is a Terrorist?

Zimbardo, Philip G. “Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University.” Visual/Textual Slide Show Articles on the Experiments

Many of you asked if Palmer believes in "truth":

He does believe in truth and he vehemently rejects the notion that there are no "truths" (which is another form of absolute truth)... what is important is that we recognize the basis for the truths that we hold and that any truth worth having should be risked in open-conflict through comparison and questions in the "community of truth." As biased, imperfect beings, we need to compare notes, discuss, debate, revise, re-conceive and reflect on our truth/s.

A student asked about the meaning of Ontological:

Ontology: is a the philosophy of "being." It can also refer to questions of "existence." Here is wikipedia's definition of ontology

A student pointed out this passage:

"In the community of truth, the connective core of all of our relationships is the significant subject itself--not intimacy, not civility, not accountability, but the power of the living subject."

I understand Palmer to be saying that we should understand the relationship of learning to be an active, continuous process and that our subjects of study are live subjects that have something to say to us about their "state of being". We have to open up to the world to allow it to speak to us--not just humans, but objects, animals, places, etc... now I know this may seem mystical to some and thus suspect, but is there something to be sad for the spiritual, the religious, the mystical connection to learning and "knowing"... the Old Testament prophet going out in the desert to gain spiritual wisdom, the Buddha meditating (opening-up to the world), the shaman opening-up and communicating with the non-human world ... are these really so different from the scientist studying particles, Black Holes, invisible processes (to the naked eye) and projecting answers on assumptions/educated-guesses? In this we might ask is our faith in science and technolgy a form or religion/mysticism? Evelyn Fox Keller, a brilliant scientist and theorist of knowledge-production, asks what happens when during the process of "looking" at something and how does that object change and should we care about how that alters our information. This applies to the microbes that has been separated from its environment and placed under a microscope, but also applies to broader issues of society and culture when cameras are operating or in the judgments of researchers when making field observations. Likewise we can see these questions in the work of the scientist Michael Polyani

We also discussed theories of paradigm production in science (and other disciplines/fields-of-expertise). Here is some more background on a main theorist of scientific paradigms--Thomas Kuhn and his theory of Paradigm Shifts

Also see:

Teaching in the Face of Fear

Thinking About Globalization

2005-11-08T09:38:00.000-08:00

Rethinking Globalization

A Quick Guide to the World History of Globalization

Globalization Guide

Mark Weisbrot: Globalization--A Primer

Mark Weisbrot: One Year After Seattle--Globalization Revisited

Landscapes of Global Capital

Alternet: Globalization Coverage

Globalization: Key Concepts

Manfred Steger's Seminar on Globalization

PIPA Introduction to Globalization

Radical Teacher: What is Globalization

UNESCO: 25 Questions About Culture, Trade and Globalization

A Christian Perspective on Sustainability and Globalization

Global Policy Forum's Intro to Globalization

Guide to Understanding World Music Industry

Access Newspapers/Magazines of the World

Global Voices Online: Weblogs From Around the World

20 Globalization Must Reads (and some great links)

Emory University's Sociology Department's Guide to Globalization

Parallax: The Journal of Globalization and Ethics

Global Envision

Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium

Funders Network on Trade and Globalization

A World Connected

Global Citizenship Annotated Bibliography (PDF File)

Globalization: A Postcolonial Definition

Third World Traveler: Globalization Watch

Globalization From Below

New Formulations: Theory of the Anti-Globalization Movement

-------------------------------------------------------------

The Continental Op recommends these books:

Lechnyr & Boli, The Globalization Reader -- a decent collection of
pieces from both "cheerleading" and critical perspectives

Malcolm Waters, Globalization -- a decent overview/introduction to the subject

Jeremy Brecher, et al, Globalization from Below -- exactly what you'd
expect from South End Press

Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance & Firing Back -- the liberationist
manifesto from My Favorite Frenchman

The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Five

2005-11-08T09:37:00.000-08:00

The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Five
By The Editors, Fatal Harvest.
AlterNet

Excerpt:

The loss of diversity

A seldom-mentioned impact of industrial agriculture is that it deprives consumers of real choice by favoring only a few varieties of crops that allow efficient harvesting, processing, and packaging. Consider the apple. It is true that without industrial processes we might not be able to eat a "fresh" Red Delicious apple 365 days a year. However, we would be able to enjoy many of the thousands of varieties grown in this country during the last century that have now all but disappeared. Because of the industrial agriculture system, the majority of those varieties are extinct today; two varieties alone account for more than 50 percent of the current apple market. Similarly, in 2000, 73 percent of all the lettuce grown in the United States was iceberg. This relatively bland variety is often the only choice consumers have. Meanwhile, we have lost hundreds of varieties of lettuce with flavors ranging from bitter to sweet and colors from dark purple to light green. The monoculture of industrial agriculture has similarly reduced the natural diversity of nearly every major food crop in terms of varieties grown, color, size, and flavor.

By growing all of our crops in monocultures, industrial agriculture not only limits what we can eat today, but also reduces the choices of future generations. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates more than three-quarters of agricultural genetic diversity was lost in this past century. As agribusiness utilizes only high-yield, high-profit varieties, we fail to save the seed stock of thousands of other varieties. The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) conducted a study of seed stock readily available in 1903 versus the inventory of the U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory (NSSL) in 1983. RAFI found an astounding decline in diversity: we have lost nearly 93 percent of lettuce, over 96 percent of sweet corn, about 91 percent of field corn, more than 95 percent of tomato, and almost 98 percent of asparagus varieties. This represents not only an environmental disaster but also a staggering reduction in food choices available to us and future generations.

Unlabeled and untested

Even as we are robbed of our right to choose many desirable, diverse foods, we are also deprived of the right to reject those we do not wish to eat. Food labels often do not provide enough information to allow consumers to know what is in our food and how and where it is produced. The government, bending under pressure from agribusiness, has never required labels that inform consumers about the pesticides and other chemicals used on crops or the residues still left on those foods at time of purchase. Similarly there is no mandatory labeling of the geographic origin of foods, despite the wishes of a growing number of consumers who prefer to choose local produce.

The use of potentially hazardous nuclear and genetic technologies on foods is also hidden from consumers. While a major consumer lobbying effort forced the government to mandate labeling of irradiated whole foods, similarly "nuked" processed foods are not labeled. Food processors and distributors are now fighting to repeal the label requirement for irradiated whole foods. In a similar vein, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), under pressure from the biotechnology industry, has decided not to require genetically engineered foods to be independently safety tested or labeled. This decision represents a particularly egregious affront to food choice, as up to 60 percent of processed foods already have some genetically engineered ingredients that many consumers would like to avoid. The FDA's no labeling and no testing policy was made even though the agency was aware that the genetic engineering of foods can make safe foods toxic, create new allergens, lower food nutrition, and create antibiotic resistance.

Agribusiness not only uses its political muscle to prevent food labeling, it also has pushed through laws to stop critics from getting important information about foods to consumers. The industry has pressured 13 states to pass "food disparagement" legislation -- laws that can be used against those trying to expose any of the harmful effects of the industrial food system. While many believe these laws are clearly unconstitutional, until they are struck down, they serve to intimidate people and groups who want to provide truthful information on food safety. These laws also may stop potential whistle-blowers from coming forward with crucial information that the public needs to make informed food choices.

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