Attention Journalism Students: I have posted online assignments on this site:
https://westernmediacenter.educatorpages.com/pages/online-journalism-and-film-studies-page
Please send your response to me: tablescotten@gmail.com
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https://www.pbs.org/video/episode-1-disruption-wwmwuj/
For 16 March 2020
Airlines:
For American Airlines, the nation’s largest airline, the mid to late 2010s were what the Bible calls “years of plenty.”
In 2014, having reduced competition through mergers and raised billions of dollars in new baggage-fee revenue, American began reaching stunning levels of financial success. In 2015, it posted a $7.6 billion profit — compared, for example, to profits of about $500 million in 2007 and less than $250 million in 2006. It would continue to earn billions in profit annually for the rest of the decade. “I don’t think we’re ever going to lose money again,” the company’s chief executive, Doug Parker, said in 2017.
There are plenty of things American could have done with all that money. It could have stored up its cash reserves for a future crisis, knowing that airlines regularly cycle through booms and busts. It might have tried to decisively settle its continuing contract disputes with pilots, flight attendants and mechanics. It might have invested heavily in better service quality to try to repair its longstanding reputation as the worst of the major carriers.
Instead, American blew most of its cash on a stock buyback spree. From 2014 to 2020, in an attempt to increase its earnings per share, American spent more than $15 billion buying back its own stock. It managed, despite the risk of the proverbial rainy day, to shrink its cash reserves. At the same time it was blowing cash on buybacks, American also began to borrow heavily to finance the purchase of new planes and the retrofitting of old planes to pack in more seats. As early as 2017 analysts warned of a risk of default should the economy deteriorate, but American kept borrowing. It has now accumulated a debt of nearly $30 billion, nearly five times the company’s current market value
At no time during its years of plenty did American improve how it treats its customers. Change fees went up to $200 for domestic flights and to $750 for international. Its widely despised baggage fees were hiked to $30 and $40 for first and second bags. These higher fees yielded billions of dollars, yet did not help the airline improve its on-time arrivals, reduce tarmac delays or prevent involuntary bumping. Instead, American’s main “innovations” were the removal of screens from its planes, the reduction of bathroom and seat sizes and the introduction of a “basic economy” class that initially included a ban on carry-on luggage.
In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, which is wreaking havoc on the airline industry, American Airlines has not yet asked for a bailout — at least not in so many words. Yet after a recent meeting with airline leadership, Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, said that “certain sectors of the economy, airlines coming to mind” might require assistance. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that the airlines, including American, would be “on the top of the list” for federal loan relief.
As the government considers what we, the public, should do for the airlines, we should ask, Just what have they done for us?
The United States economy needs an airline industry to function. The industry is in that sense not a “normal” industry, but rather what was once called a common carrier or a public utility: a critical infrastructure on which the rest of the economy relies. The major airlines know that unlike a local restaurant, they will never be allowed, collectively, to fail completely. In practice, the public has subsidized the industry by providing de facto insurance against hard times in the form of bailouts or merger approvals. And now here we go again.
We cannot permit American and other airlines to use federal assistance, whether labeled a bailout or not, to weather the coronavirus crisis and then return to business as usual. Before providing any loan relief, tax breaks or cash transfers, we must demand that the airlines change how they treat their customers and employees and make basic changes in industry ownership structure.
Beginning with passengers, change fees should be capped at $50 and baggage fees tied to some ratio of costs. The change fees don’t just irritate; they are also a drag on the broader economy, making the transport system less flexible and discouraging what would otherwise be efficient changes to travel plans. We should also put an end to the airlines’ pursuit of smaller and smaller seats, which are not only uncomfortable and even physically harmful, but also foster in-flight rage and make the job of flight attendants nigh unbearable. Finally, we have allowed too much common ownership, permitting large shareholders to take a stake in each of the major airlines, creating incentives to collude instead of compete.
The airlines will argue that their ownership structure, cramped seats, high fees and other forms of customer suffering are necessary to keep prices lower. But after the last decade’s mergers, no one should take that argument seriously. As any economist will tell you, in a market with reduced competition, and common ownership, there is limited pressure to reduce prices. Instead, as we’ve seen, the major airlines charge what they can get away with and spend the profit on stock buybacks and other self-serving enterprises.
The question of what the public should demand from an airline bailout raises questions that transcend the business of flying. The next several weeks will leave behind many economic victims, including nearly every provider of in-person services. Many small retailers, restaurants and other businesses, like caterers or fitness instructors, face grim prospects. Yet it is the economy’s big players, like banks and airlines, that are the best at asking for (and getting) government assistance.
During the last economic crisis, we largely let individuals suffer while helping out the big guys, leaving behind deep resentments that still fester. This time around we should start from the bottom instead of the top.
Inadequate Sick Leave
No Paid Sick Leave:
For 12 March 2020
Cnn:
- Pandemic
- Can you work well from home? Can you stay focused on your goal? Can you be more creative working at home?
- R0 is pronounced “R naught.”
- Xenophobia
DeVos and Student Loans
Sick Days and Coronavirus in Michigan
Sick days at restaurants
For 11 March 2020
1. Coronavirus in Michigan:
https://www.freep.com/story/news/health/2020/03/10/coronavirus-michigan-covid-19/4952203002/
2. Primary Results:
3. Bernie Sanders and Hope:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/us/politics/bernie-sanders-voters.html
4. Sanders and Student Debt:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/bernie-sanders-voters.html
5. Russia Interferes with U.S. elections:
6. Weinstein Sentencing:
7. Michigan Man Spies on Democrats:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/politics/erik-prince-project-veritas.html
8. Working Class Life Killing Americans:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/06/opinion/working-class-death-rate.html
1. How many people in Michigan are infected with the Coronavirus? In which counties do they live? What are their approximate ages?
2. Which states did Bernie Sanders win yesterday?
3. Describe the condidtions of the people who see Bernie Sanders as their only hope.
4. Describe why Brian Michelz endoreses Bernie Sanders.
5. How is Russia trying to influence the U.S. elections?
6. When will Weinstein be sentenced? Name two people he called for help.
7. Who is Erik Prince and what is he doing?
8. According to this story, which group of people are dying earlier? Why?
For 9 March 2020
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 8:07 AM
To: dpscd-principals-only
Cc: Leenet Campbell-Williams
Subject: Release of Detroit Dialogue Student Newspaper
Sanders - Ann Arbor https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/08/sanders-makes-plea-university-michigan-students-fight-back/4980944002/
1. "Tell them to stop complaining and fight back," he told the students, most of whom had returned to campus after being off a week for spring break. (Who is "them?")
2. Who said this: "In November, we'll do everything we can to defeat the margin of despair."
3. Which candidate is "for a single-payer, nationalized health care plan known as Medicare for All?"
International Women's Day: https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/ (3:10)
1. Describe conditions in Mexico for many women.
Oil Prices
1. Which two counties are responsible for the drop in oil prices?
6 States Tuesday Primaries
For 5 March 2020
Assignment: email your rough draft to me before the end of the period: tablescotten@gmail.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlo1NklOS7M
Hello everyone.
Mumford’s newspaper staff has written a letter to Dr. Vitti regarding the censorship of the paper. It was emailed today. I’ve attached a copy.
I encourage your students to write to Dr. Vitti. Or they can use use social media to share Mumford’s letter. Or use social media to express their own thoughts about this.
My hope is each school will be given the opportunity to decide what is best for their school community: distribute now, distribute later, distribute never, distribute with a note explaining what happened, distribute with a sticker covering the article, etc. There are options and the students were never given an opportunity to make a decision regarding the work they produced.
The letter is online (and shareable): http://www.detroitdialogue.com/article/2020/03/mumford-detroit-public-schools-censors-student-newspaper
It’s also on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DialogueDetroit/status/1235327150322061314
Joy
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For 4 March 2020
Super Tuesday: https://www.nytimes.com/
For 3 March 2020
Super Tuesday Explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgzfiOMFXlw
(3:40)
Bernie Sanders Interview https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-democratic-presidential-front-runner-anderson-cooper-60-minutes/
- T/F: Berne Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist.
- Name two things Sanders says all Americans should have.
- Sanders says people can have change if they ________________.
- Sanders says the change he envisions resembles what part of the world?
- President Trump calls Sanders a __________.
- Although Trump calls Sanders a communist, he has close relations with Kim Jong-Un and Vladimir Putin, the dictators of which two communist counties?
- T/F: Sanders proposes cancellation of student debt and free college.
- In order to pay for these programs, Sanders says he will tax which segment of the population?
- T/F: Sanders says Trump practices corporate socialism.
- Do you think Sanders will become the democratic candidate for president? Why or why not?
For 2 March 2020
1. DemocracyNow.org - News
- Which democratic candidate won the South Carolina primary?
- Which democratic candidate lead in total delegates?
2. Dialogue
3. Super Tuesday (5 W's): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/super-tuesday.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-2020&variant=show®ion=BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT&context=Guide
1. Write five facts about Super Tuesday.
4. Election Calandar https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/elections/2020-presidential-election-calendar.html
5. Ballot/Voting/Register to Vote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6PEtcIXuno
- Explain how to register to vote in Michigan.
6. Census https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq-FMB4epyw
- When is the 2020 census?
- What is the census?
- T/F: The census is required by the U.S. Constitution?
- How often?
- The census determines the number of seats each state receives the _____ _ _____.
- Give an example of what questions are asked on the census.
- T/F: This information is confidential and will not be shared with police or other agencies.
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For 28 February 2020
Wall Street Can’t Burn Bernie
Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate | Feb 25, 2020
America's plutocrats and their media allies are certain that US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is unelectable, or that, if somehow elected, he would bring about the collapse of the republic. This disdain is both telling and absurd.
NEW YORK – The narcissism and Panglossian cluelessness of the Wall Street elite is a marvel to behold. Sitting on their perches of power, and enjoying tax breaks, easy money, and soaring stock markets, they are certain that all is best in this best of all possible worlds. Critics must be fools or devils.
When I have mentioned my support for US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in their company, it has been to audible gasps, as if I had invoked Lucifer’s name. They are certain that Sanders is unelectable, or that, if somehow elected, he would bring about the collapse of the republic. To varying degrees, the same sentiments can be found even in “liberal” media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
This disdain is both telling and absurd. In Europe, Sanders would be a mainstream social democrat. He wants to restore some basic decency to American life: universal publicly financed health care; above-poverty wages for full-time workers, along with basic benefits such as family leave for infants and paid leave for illness; college education that does not drive young adults into lifelong debt; elections that billionaires cannot buy; and public policy determined by public opinion, not corporate lobbying (which reached $3.47 billion in the United States in 2019).
The US public supports all these positions by large majorities. Americans want government to ensure health care for all. They want higher taxes on the rich. They want a transition to renewable energy. And they want limits on big money in politics. These are all core Sanders positions, and all are commonplace in Europe. Nonetheless, with each Sanders primary victory, the befuddled Wall Street elite and their favorite pundits puzzle over how an “extremist” like Sanders wins the vote.
An insight into Wall Street’s cluelessness is found in a recent Financial Times interview with Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Blankfein, a billionaire who earned tens of millions of dollars each year, argued that he’s merely “well-to-do,” not rich. More bizarrely, he meant it. You see, Blankfein is a low-single-digit billionaire in an era when more than 50 Americans have a net worth of $10 billion or more. How rich one feels depends on one’s peer group.
The result, however, is the elite’s (and the elite media’s) shocking disregard for the lives of most Americans. They either don’t know or don’t care that tens of millions of Americans lack basic health-care coverage and that medical expenses bankrupt around 500,000 each year, or that one in five US households has zero or negative net worth and that nearly 40% struggle to meet basic needs.
And the elite hardly take notice of the 44 million Americans burdened by student debt totaling $1.6 trillion, a phenomenon essentially unknown in other developed countries. And while stock markets have soared, enriching the elites, suicide rates and other “deaths of despair” (such as opioid overdoses) have also soared, as the working class has fallen further into financial and psychological insecurity.
One reason the elites don’t notice these basic facts is that they haven’t been held to account for a long time. US politicians of both parties have been doing their bidding at least since President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and ushered in four decades of tax cuts, union busting, and other perks for the super-rich. The coziness of Wall Street and Washington is well captured in a 2008 photo making the rounds again: Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Clinton are golfing together. It’s one big happy family.
Clinton’s chumminess with Wall Street billionaires is telling. This was the norm for Republicans going back to the start of the twentieth century, but Wall Street’s close links with the Democrats are more recent. As a presidential candidate in 1992, Clinton maneuvered to link the Democratic Party to Goldman Sachs through its then-Co-Chair, Robert Rubin, who later became Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury.
With Wall Street backing, Clinton won the presidency. From then on, both parties have been beholden to Wall Street for campaign financing. Barack Obama followed the Clinton playbook in the 2008 election. Once in office, Obama hired Rubin’s acolytes to staff his economic team.
Wall Street has certainly gotten its money’s worth for its campaign outlays. Clinton deregulated financial markets, enabling the rise of behemoths like Citigroup (where Rubin became a director after leaving the White House). Clinton also ended welfare payments for poor single mothers, with damaging effects on young children, and stepped up mass incarceration of young African-American men. Obama, for his part, largely gave a free pass to the bankers who caused the 2008 crash. They received bailout money and invitations to White House dinners, rather than the jail time that many deserved.
With the mega-hubris of a mega-billionaire, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks he can buy the Democratic nomination by spending $1 billion of his $62 billion fortune on campaign ads, and then defeat fellow billionaire Donald Trump in November. This, too, is most likely a case of cluelessness. Bloomberg’s prospects deflated as soon as he appeared on the debate stage with Sanders and the other Democratic candidates, who reminded viewers of Bloomberg’s Republican past, allegations of a hostile work environment for women in Bloomberg’s business, and of his support for harsh police tactics against young African-American and Latino men.
No one should underestimate the deluge of hysteria that Trump and Wall Street will try to whip up against Sanders. Trump accuses Sanders of trying to turn the US into Venezuela, when Canada or Denmark are the obvious comparisons. In the Nevada debate, Bloomberg ludicrously called Sanders’s support for worker representation on corporate boards, as in Germany’s co-determination policy, “communist.”
But American voters are hearing something different: health care, education, decent wages, paid sick leave, renewable energy, and an end to tax breaks and impunity for the super-rich. It all sounds eminently sensible, indeed mainstream, when one cuts through the rhetoric of Wall Street, which is why Sanders has been winning – and can win again in November.
They Killed Their Husbands
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For 25 February 2020
Weinstein Verdict: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJYAwGqGKTs
Trump in India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVwpRPd-5_w
Jails and the Mentally Ill: https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/
Jail Systems and Rehabilitation
- How many inmates are dealing with mental illness?
- Why does water collect on the floor of the jail?
- The jail needs 200 beds but has only _____.
- Does the jail lack counselors?
- Inmates are treated mostly with a. medication or b. therapy.
- What type of gowns worn by inmates are mentioned?
- During recreation time, what is “inhumane” about how inmates are treated?
- How did the warden of the Norwegian prison describe the punishment of his prisoners?
- The idea of “no cruel and unusual punishment” came from which country?
- T/F: The recidivism rate in prisons is higher in the U.S.
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For 24 February 2020
1. Makeup
2. Great Divide https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/americas-great-divide-from-obama-to-trump/
3. Choose new story
For 14 February 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJMeRqQKicQ
Do Your Friends Actually Like You?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opinion/sunday/do-your-friends-actually-like-you.html
- How many friendships are mutual?
- What is egocentrism?
- Of a study of 84 subjects, what percentage chose their friends accurately?
- T/F: This study found that friendship was easy to define.
- What has become a “lost art?”
- Name one factor that limits the number of friendships you can have.
- This article suggests _____ as the maximum number of true friendships one can expect.
- Name one physical effect that can result from a lack of true friendships.
You're Not Listening
- Describe the “closeness-communication bias.”
- T/F: We are the same people over time.
- Give an example of “closeness-communication bias” from your life.
- The closeness-communication bias not only keeps us from listening to those we love, it can also ______________________________________.
- Why, according to one study, did half the people reveal personal information to relative strangers?
- What is suggested as a way to maintain personal relationships?
- What is cited as a primary contributor of loneliness?
- What role does technology play in “closeness-communication bias?”
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For 12 February 2020
News Quiz
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/11/learning/11News-Quiz-for-Students.html
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The Role of Memes in Teen Culture
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/well/family/memes-teens-coronavirus-wwiii-parents.html
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Do you ever get your news from memes? Do humorous memes have a place in the news, or should the two things be kept separate? Is it O.K. to laugh at serious news?
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Do you ever find that humor helps you to process scary or hurtful information? Is it ever not O.K. to use humor when talking about painful or tragic events? The article suggests that using humor in difficult moments can be a coping strategy. Do you agree or disagree with that statement? What are other ways that you process intense emotions or fears about the world?
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Have you ever seen someone post a meme that you felt crossed a line? How did you know it had gone too far? Memes often try to make a point using very few words and mostly images. What are the advantages and possible dangers with that format? Do you ever see memes that use stereotypes or hurtful beliefs about an individual or groups to make a point?
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The featured article was intended for parents of teenagers and offers the following advice:
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For 11 February 2020
Young Person's Guide to Investing
For 10 February 2020
Facial Recognition Moves Into a New Front: Schools
1. Review questions 1-7.
2. Read article (link is below).
3. Answer questions 1-7. Write answers only, not the questions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/business/facial-recognition-schools.html
1. Should facial recognition be used in schools? If so, why? If not, what limits should be placed on its use?
2. Have you ever used any kind of facial recognition technology — say, to verify your identity at the airport, unlock your smartphone, sort and tag photos online, or anything else?
3. What are some of the potential benefits of schools using facial recognition technology? Robert LiPuma, the Lockport City School District’s director of technology, believes that if the technology had been in place, the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., may never have happened. Do you agree?
4. What are the potential dangers of facial recognition in schools? Jim Shultz, a parent, argues that the Lockport City School District’s decision to use facial recognition has “turned our kids into lab rats in a high-tech experiment in privacy invasion.” How persuasive are his arguments against the district’s decision?
5. Studies have shown that some of the most popular surveillance systems exhibited bias, falsely identifying African-American and Asian faces 10 to 100 times more than Caucasian faces and exhibiting a higher rate of mistaken matches among children. How worried should we be about bias and what Jason Nance calls the unintended consequences of facial recognition in schools?
6. How safe do you feel in your school? What safety procedures are currently in place? Assemblywoman Monica Wallace says:
“We all want to keep our children safe in school, but there are more effective, proven ways to do so that are less costly.”
She said school districts could, for instance, take smaller steps like upgrading entrances and exits, hiring school resource officers, and investing in counselors and social workers.
Do you agree? If yes, what safety alternatives would you propose for your school?
7. Finally, would you recommend that your school use facial recognition technology? If it were used in your school, do you think you would feel safer? Why or why not?
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Surveillance
Map: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html
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For 4-7 February 2020
Edit and complete stories.
Each story must:
1. 12 point, Times New Roman, double spaced.
2. Have paragraphs.
3. Have quotations.
4. Have a photo and photo captions.
5. Be spell-checked and grammar checked.
tablescotten@gmail.com
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For 27 January 2020
Midterm
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/12/us/texas-vs-california-history-textbooks.html
1. Ms. Goldstein writes that textbooks are “shaded by politics.” What does she mean by this? Give one example from the article and explain how it helps illustrate this point.
2. What ideas about American history have conservatives pushed schools to teach? What ideas has the left pushed? How might these ideas help to “shape a generation of future voters”?
3. In your own words, summarize how textbooks are produced. How does knowing about this process influence your view of textbooks?
4. How do California and Texas textbooks cover white resistance to black progress differently? How do each of these teachings affect students’ understanding of the roles of race and racism in American history?
5. California textbooks include history on gender and sexuality that Texas editions do not. In what ways might the inclusion or omission of women and L.G.B.T.Q. people and issues shape students’ beliefs about gender and sexuality?
6. In what ways do California and Texas textbooks portray immigration differently? What message does each curriculum send about immigrants in the United States? How might these messages be influenced by politics?
7. Textbooks in California and Texas both emphasize the role of big business in American history, but they view it very differently. What information do the books from each state include or exclude to support their views? How might this information shape students’ ideas about the American economy?
8. Did anything you read in this article surprise you? If so, what? What is one key insight about textbooks that you will take away?
The textbooks cover the same sweeping story, from the brutality of slavery to the struggle for civil rights. The self-evident truths of the founding documents to the waves of immigration that reshaped the nation.
The books have the same publisher. They credit the same authors. But they are customized for students in different states, and their contents sometimes diverge in ways that reflect the nation’s deepest partisan divides.
Hundreds of differences — some subtle, others extensive — emerged in a New York Times analysis of eight commonly used American history textbooks in California and Texas, two of the nation’s largest markets.
In a country that cannot come to a consensus on fundamental questions — how restricted capitalism should be, whether immigrants are a burden or a boon, to what extent the legacy of slavery continues to shape American life — textbook publishers are caught in the middle. On these questions and others, classroom materials are not only shaded by politics, but are also helping to shape a generation of future voters.
Conservatives have fought for schools to promote patriotism, highlight the influence of Christianity and celebrate the founding fathers. In a September speech, President Trump warned against a “radical left” that wants to “erase American history, crush religious liberty, indoctrinate our students with left-wing ideology.”
The left has pushed for students to encounter history more from the ground up than from the top down, with a focus on the experiences of marginalized groups such as enslaved people, women and Native Americans.
The books The Times analyzed were published in 2016 or later and have been widely adopted for eighth and 11th graders, though publishers declined to share sales figures. Each text has editions for Texas and California, among other states, customized to satisfy policymakers with different priorities.
“At the end of the day, it’s a political process,” said Jesús F. de la Teja, an emeritus professor of history at Texas State University who has worked for the state of Texas and for publishers in reviewing standards and textbooks.
[Thousands of readers have responded to this article. Here is what they had to say.]
The differences between state editions can be traced back to several sources: state social studies standards; state laws; and feedback from panels of appointees that huddle, in Sacramento and Austin hotel conference rooms, to review drafts.
Requests from textbook review panels, submitted in painstaking detail to publishers, show the sometimes granular ways that ideology can influence the writing of history.
A California panel asked the publisher McGraw-Hill to avoid the use of the word “massacre” when describing 19th-century Native American attacks on white people. A Texas panel asked Pearson to point out the number of clergy who signed the Declaration of Independence, and to state that the nation’s founders were inspired by the Protestant Great Awakening.
All the members of the California panel were educators selected by the State Board of Education, whose members were appointed by former Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat. The Texas panel, appointed by the Republican-dominated State Board of Education, was made up of educators, parents, business representatives and a Christian pastor and politician.
[In California Today: Dana Goldstein talks about why she picked California and Texas. Read the newsletter here.]
McGraw-Hill, the publisher whose annotated Bill of Rights appears differently in the two states, said it had created the additional wording on the Second Amendment and gun control for the California textbook. A national version of the pages is similar to the Texas edition, which does not call attention to gun rights, the company said in a written statement.
Pearson, the publisher whose Texas textbook raises questions about the quality of Harlem Renaissance literature, said such language “adds more depth and nuance.”
Critical language about nonwhite cultural movements also appears in a Texas book from McGraw-Hill. It is partly a result of debates, in 2010, between conservative and liberal members of the Texas Board of Education over whether state standards should mention cultural movements like hip-hop and country music. Their compromise was to ask teachers and textbook publishers to address “both the positive and negative impacts” of artistic movements.
Texas struck that requirement in 2018, but its most recent textbooks, published in 2016, will reflect it for years to come.
Publishers are eager to please state policymakers of both parties, during a challenging time for the business. Schools are transitioning to digital materials. And with the ease of internet research, many teachers say they prefer to curate their own primary-source materials online.
Still, recent textbooks have come a long way from what was published in past decades. Both Texas and California volumes deal more bluntly with the cruelty of the slave trade, eschewing several myths that were common in textbooks for generations: that some slave owners treated enslaved people kindly and that African-Americans were better off enslaved than free. The books also devote more space to the women’s movement and balance the narrative of European immigration with stories of Latino and Asian immigrants.
“American history is not anymore the story of great white men,” said Albert S. Broussard, a history professor at Texas A&M University and an author of both the Texas and California editions of McGraw-Hill’s textbooks.
Here is how the politics of American history play out in California and Texas textbooks, on subjects like race, immigration, gender, sexuality and the economy.
Nevertheless, Kerry Green, a high school social studies teacher in Sunnyvale, Tex., a small town east of Dallas, said she discussed redlining with her 11th graders, adding it as a counterpoint to lessons about postwar prosperity — the optimistic story of consumerism, television and the Baby Boom that is emphasized by her state’s standards.
Ms. Green said she preferred to assign primary sources that “encourage students to explore history on their own.” But she said she would welcome textbooks that contain more historical documents and a greater diversity of voices and themes from the past.
“The textbook companies are not gearing their textbooks toward teachers; they’re gearing their textbooks toward states,” she said.
In Texas textbooks, mentions of L.G.B.T.Q. issues tend to be restricted to coverage of events in recent decades, such as the Stonewall uprising, the AIDS crisis and debates over marriage rights.
But for recent California editions, publishers wrote thousands of words of new text in response to the FAIR Education Act, a law signed by Governor Brown in 2011. It requires schools to teach the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and disabled Americans.
Peppered throughout California books are passages on topics like same-sex families under slavery and early sex reassignment surgery in the 1950s — text that does not appear in Texas versions.
Stephanie Kugler, an eighth-grade history teacher in West Sacramento, Calif., said she had expanded an idea mentioned briefly in her classroom’s textbook, about women who dressed as men to fight in the Civil War and continued to live as men, into an entire lesson on troops who today would be considered transgender. The students read accounts of those soldiers’ lives alongside more traditional sources, such as letters written by a black Union soldier and a Confederate soldier.
Her goal, Ms. Kugler said, was to “make it really authentic” to talk about diversity in the context of each historical period.
While both states devote many pages to the women’s movement, Texas books, in general, avoid discussions of sex or sexuality.
Michael Teague, a Border Patrol agent, is featured in the Texas edition of McGraw-Hill’s 11th grade textbook. He discusses his concerns about drug trafficking and says, “if you open the border wide up, you’re going to invite political and social upheaval.”
Mr. Teague’s story is featured at the end of a chapter on recent immigration, alongside accounts from a Vietnamese immigrant and a second-generation Mexican-American.
That section in the California edition of the same book is devoted to a long excerpt from the novel “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents,” by Julia Alvarez. It deals with intergenerational tensions in a Dominican-American family.
In a written statement, McGraw-Hill said the full-page Border Patrol narrative was not included in the California edition because it would not fit beside the literary excerpt. And at the time the Texas edition was produced, six years ago, state standards called for students to analyze both “legal and illegal immigration to the United States.”
In contrast, California textbooks are more likely to note when a historical figure was an immigrant. And they include more detail on the role immigrants such as Japanese and Filipino farmworkers played in labor movements.
California is one of many states to ask teachers and textbooks in recent years to cover the contributions of specific immigrant groups, including Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders, European-Americans and Mexican-Americans.
These additions are part of the reason California books are almost always longer than their Texas counterparts.
California’s Board of Education adopted an expansive 842-page social studies framework in 2016. Two years later, Texas’ school board streamlined its social studies standards, which are now laid out in 78 tightly compressed pages.
Critics of California’s approach say that making state standards and textbooks longer and more inclusive can be overwhelming to teachers trying to move quickly through hundreds of years of material.
Texas policymakers feel strongly about giving students a positive view of the American economy; since 1995, state law has required that high school economics courses offer an “emphasis on the free enterprise system and its benefits.” That emphasis seems to have made its way into the history curriculum as well.
California’s curriculum materials, by contrast, sometimes read like a brief from a Bernie Sanders rally. “The yawning gap between the haves and have-nots and what is to be done about it is one of the great questions of this time,” says the state’s 2016 social studies framework.
As a result, California textbooks are more likely to celebrate unionism, critique the concentration of wealth and focus on how industry pollutes the environment.
Both the California and Texas 11th-grade textbooks from Pearson state, “The main argument against environmental legislation is that it hurts the economy and the nation’s industries.”
The Texas edition goes further to highlight criticism of federal efforts to subsidize the green energy industry: “Republicans accuse the government of wasting taxpayers’ money, for example by supporting the failed solar manufacturer Solyndra.” The Solyndra controversy was a fixation for conservatives in 2011, when the company went bankrupt after accepting half a billion dollars in federally guaranteed loans.
The Texas book also states that American action on global warming may not make a difference if China, India, Russia and Brazil do not also act.
The California edition does not mention Solyndra or the other nations. However, it does include a section on the threat to American states and cities from rising sea levels, noting that the impact on tourism in Florida could hurt that state’s economy, and that transportation networks and buildings could be threatened.
Pearson said in a written statement that the differences between the books could be attributed mostly to the fact that the California book was published several years later, and that concerns over coastal flooding have become “more heightened in recent years.”
For 16 January 2020
________________________________________________________
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-UFcNrFcM0&feature=youtu.be
For 15 January 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOW4Ju6bTtQ&feature=youtu.be
http://www.detroitdialogue.com/section/western-international
For 8 January 2020
A Strategy for the Mideast That Has Even Trump’s Allies Scratching Their Heads
____________________________________________________________
For 7 January 2020
The Detroit News, in cooperation with the Michigan Department of Education and professional educational organizations, is searching for the best high school seniors in the state. For 34 years, The Detroit News has recognized the state's outstanding high school graduates. Beginning in 2003, The Detroit News and CATCH, Sparky Anderson's Charity for Children, teamed up to enhance the program, adding $1,000 scholarship money for the winning students and contributions to charity.
Selected students will be honored as part of the 35th annual Detroit News Outstanding High School Graduate program. The top two students in each category will be featured in stories and photographs in The Detroit News this spring and will be honored at an awards dinner. Four students in each category will be selected as runners-up, and their names will be published in The News. All nominated students will receive certificates.
We invite you and your teachers to nominate qualifying students. Entry forms may obtained at:
http://content-static.detroitnews.com/pdf/2020/2019_2020grads.pdf
The form may be duplicated (limit two students per category). Applications must
be completed and returned in duplicate by March 1, 2020, to be eligible.
Criteria were developed in consultation with academic specialists at the Michigan Department of Education. Grades, test scores, honors, and community involvement are key criteria. The most important criterion, however, will be a demonstrated ability in athletics, health, journalism, language arts, performing arts, science, mathematics, visual arts, vocational-technical or world studies.
The "against all odds" category was added to the recognition program in 1989. In past years, we have
honored blind students, physically impaired students, a student who was maintaining a home and raising her younger brother, and a student who overcame substance abuse problems and a bout with cancer. We seek your nomination of students who have overcome and prevailed in the face of extreme adversity.
Thank you for your help. If you have any questions, please contact Audra Erby-Leake at
313-222-2245 or 1-800-678-4115.
Sincerely,
Gary Miles
Editor and Publisher
Note: To clarify, teachers you don’t have to fill out the form for students. We send it to you so can nominate the students as you are limited for students per category. Once you pick the student, give them the link and have them fill out entry form. They will then print out the application, sign it and return to you. At which time, an administrator will make sure all attachments (letters of recommendation, transcript, etc.) are attached and sign. Please note all entry forms are to be mailed in duplicate. We keep one here and the other is sent to the judges.
OUTSTANDING HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE PROGRAM
The Detroit News and CATCH, Sparky Anderson's Charity for Children, are seeking to identify and recognize the outstanding graduating high school seniors in Michigan. This program places a premium on demonstrated ability in one of the seven core curriculum areas, in athletics, in vocational-technical education, in journalism and in a special category which recognizes extraordinary achievement in the face of extreme adversity. Each public or non-public high school may submit two candidates in each of the following categories:
ATHLETICS Nominees may come from any sport sanctioned and given varsity status by the Michigan High School Athletic Association. Prime consideration will be given to candidates who: 1) exhibit a high level of athletic skill and participation throughout their high school career, 2) display leadership and sportsmanship on the field and off, and 3) have exhibited strong academic skills.
HEALTH EDUCATION Nominees may be outstanding students in physical education, health education or may be leaders in substance abuse programs in their schools or communities. Prime consideration will be given to students who: 1) exemplify the highest standards of personal health, fitness and leadership, 2) have been recognized through a specific accomplishment, competition or project, and 3) have demonstrated strong academic ability in their academic studies.
JOURNALISM Nominees may be involved in any aspect of journalism, including newspapers, yearbooks and broadcast news. Prime consideration will be given to students who: 1) have demonstrated a commitment to the profession through professional work at work or school, or 2) have made a contribution to furthering the goals of a free press or free speech.
LANGUAGE ARTS EDUCATION Nominees may be from any school program in writing, speaking, literature, or any other commonly recognized language arts area, other than journalism. Prime consideration will be given to students who: 1) have published poetry, prose or other forms of written expression at the regional, state or national level, or 2) have demonstrated exceptional ability in debate or other competitive forms for speaking, or 3) have distinguished themselves in the study of literature.
MATHEMATICS EDUCATION Nominees may be from any area of mathematics. Prime consideration will be given to candidates who: 1) have been recognized in regional, state or national competitions or tests, or 2) have independently demonstrated a superior mathematical ability through the development of a mathematical concept, theorem or exploration of a complex mathematical relationship presented at a conference or in a published article.
PERFORMING ARTS EDUCATION Nominees may be from music, dance and theater. Prime consideration will be given to candidates who: 1) have demonstrated extraordinary performing talent and poise through adjudicated processes, 2) have been recognized through a specific accomplishment, competition or public performance, and 3) have demonstrated strong academic ability.
SCIENCE EDUCATION Nominees may be from any area of science. Prime consideration will be given to candidates who: 1) have been recognized in regional, state or national competitions or tests, or 2) have completed a scientific project which creates new information in a scientific field and has been documented and confirmed by recognized experts in the field.
VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION Nominees may be from any of the visual arts, interdisciplinary work in multiple art forms or any other recognized art form. Prime consideration will be given to candidates who: 1) have demonstrated extraordinary talent and creativity through adjudicated processes, 2) have been recognized through a specific accomplishment, competition or public showing, and 3) have demonstrated strong academic ability.
VOCATIONAL-TECHNICAL EDUCATION Nominees may be from any vocational-technical education program. Prime consideration will be given to students who: 1) have demonstrated outstanding performance and leadership abilities related to their chosen occupational field, and 2) extraordinary achievement in academic work, job-related experience, lab training or related projects.
WORLD STUDIES EDUCATION Nominees may be from any social science, history, geography, foreign language or government/civics areas of instruction. Prime consideration will be given to students who: 1) have demonstrated extraordinary achievement through competitions or tests, or 2) have completed and been recognized for special projects in the community such as historical research or community service, or 3) have advanced global or multi-cultural understanding through the personal creation of a particular activity or projects.
SPECIAL DISTINCTION Against all odds nominees may be from any field of study or school program. Prime consideration will be given to students who: 1) have overcome extreme adversity due to economic, social, cultural, physical or mental hardship, 2) have prevailed with strength and dignity, exhibiting extraordinary accomplishments and achievement in their chosen field of endeavor, and 3) have demonstrated great potential. In this category, the special circumstances will be taken into consideration when weighing responses in the review criteria.
Winners will be selected by review panels selected by professional educational organizations. Review criteria are listed on the application form, with the points indicating the relative weighing of each response. The essay response will be used to determine the top students from those selected as finalists.
Return completed application (in duplicate) by March 1, 2020 (postmark.)
Outstanding Graduates
The Detroit News
160 W. Fort St.
Detroit, MI 48226
____________________________________________________________________________________
For 6 January 2020
Grammar Crammers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk5Merfsq2o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub0i-VepXxk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdurPgp-Nd8
https://cpj.org/reports/2019/12/journalists-killed-murdered-syria-mexico-impunity.php
For 20 December 2019
Smart Phone Tracking
Generational Wealth
Time For Payback https://www.timeforpayback.com/
Scenario 2: You are 30, single and engaged to get married. You make $45,000 a year. You own your own home, and your monthly house note (loan principle, interest, house insurance and taxes) is $1,000.
Amortization Calculator https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/amortization-calculator.aspx
Credit card calculator https://www.calculator.net/credit-card-calculator.html
You own a car, but make a monthly car payment of $250 – this is a 4-year loan).
How much can you save to pay for your $5,000 wedding?
Financial Literacy Assignment
https://www.timeforpayback.com/
1. Please link to the site above and play. Record your responses with pen and paper. We will discuss your responses.
Scenario 3: You are 35 years old and married. Your combined annual income is $80,000. You and your spouse have one child and are expecting another. Your house payment is now $1,300 (your taxes and insurance have increased). You want to start saving for your children’s education.
House payment:
$700: principle and interest (interest: $500; principle: $200)
Insurance: $50
Taxes: $200
Total mortgage payment: $950
Avoidance of debt:
No credit card
Do not spend more than you have.
For 19 December 2019
Trump Impeached
CNN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDhcnNfNwR0&feature=youtu.be
Michigan Rally
Case Study in Jobs
Latina Artist Rina Lazo
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/arts/rina-lazo-dead.html
The Year in Pictures
__________________________________________________________________
For 18 December 2019
Debbie Dingell
The Year in Pictures https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/world/year-in-pictures.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Cost of Pet Ownership https://www.moneyunder30.com/the-true-cost-of-pet-ownership
How to Save
Savings: How to save: (inflation is 2%)
- bank
- Financial products: mutual funds stocks and bonds)
What is a stock? (more risky income, but potentially higher returns)
What is a bond? (safer, more steady income)
Mr. Bowles says: “If you have a 10th grade reading level, you can understand almost anything”
Scenario 1: You are 25 and single. You make $35,000 a year.
Your expenses include a monthly student loan payment of $150.
You own a car outright.
Your job offers health insurance, but you must pay a monthly premium of $150. You do not have dental coverage, but your dentist recommends that you see her three times a year.
You rent an apartment, but you are trying to save money to buy a house.
Monthly Expenses
Food (groceries, dining out, etc.):$
Clothing (jeans, shoes, jewelry, etc.):$
Shelter (mortgage, rent, taxes, etc.):$
Household (utilities, cell phone, cable, maintenance, etc.):$
Transportation (public transportation, parking, gas, etc.):$
Health (insurance, medications, doctor visits, etc.):$
Student Loans (interest/principal payments, etc.):$
Personal (gifts, charity, entertainment, hobbies, etc.):$
Miscellaneous (magazines, child care, etc.):$
Total Monthly Expenses:
Monthly Pay:
Taxes: (deduct 25 percent from your gross pay)
Total Monthly Income
_________________________________________________________
For 17 December 2019
Cowboy Nation News https://vimeo.com/379895156
Car and Home Loan Calculator:
https://www.amortization-calc.com/auto-car-loan-calculator/
Child care (review child rearing costs): $233,610
Adding a child represents a major financial stress: The cost of raising a childtoday is $233,610 – excluding the cost of college – for a middle-income family, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Feb 26, 2018
Raising a child costs $233,610. Are you financially prepared ...
____________________________________________________________________
For 16 December 2019
Your strategy:
1. Get college or job training with a scholarship (Detroit Promise and others). Try to avoid attending a private college (Baker).
Video (15:03) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvQR93C6n2E
2. Avoid going into debt, especially credit card debt (film: "Maxed Out") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk7gPypWP3Y&t=3881s a) Live cheaply (share an apartment or house). b) Do not spend above your income. c) Stay on your parents' health insurance policy (age 26 is the limit).
Activity
-Choose a career/profession. Google: a) Opportunity Outlook Handbook b) A-Z index. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/a-z-index.htm
Choose a career and determine your future annual income.
- Determine your taxes https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#jSeeyVjrTP
- Determine how much you can pay for housing https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2018/07/25/heres-how-much-an-average-detroit-apartment-costs-by-neighborhood
- Compare rent in Detroit with other cities https://detroit.curbed.com/2017/7/12/15960756/detroit-salary-apartment-report
-Using the 50/20/30 Budget Rule, determine your monthly budget using the budget calculator. http://www.youcandealwithit.com/borrowers/calculators-and-resources/calculators/budget-calculator.shtml
Scenario 1: You are 25 and single. You make $35,000 a year.
Your expenses include a monthly student loan payment of $150.
You own a car.
Your job offers health insurance, but you must pay a monthly premium of $150. You do not have dental coverage, but your dentist recommends that you see her three times a year.
You rent an apartment, but you are trying to save money to buy a house.
Scenario 2: You are 30, single and engaged to get married. You make $45,000 a year. You own your own home, and your monthly house note (loan principle, interest, house insurance and taxes) is $1,000.
You own a car, but make a monthly car payment of $250 – this is a 4-year loan).
How much can you save to pay for your $5,000 wedding?
Scenario 3: You are 35 years old and married. Your combined annual income is $80,000. You and your spouse have one child and are expecting another. Your house payment is now $1,300 (your taxes and insurance have increased). You want to start saving for your children’s education.
House payment:
$700: principle and interest (interest: $500; principle: $200)
Insurance: $50
Taxes: $200
Total mortgage payment: $950
Avoidance of debt:
No credit card
Do not spend more than you have.
_____________________________________________________________________
For 12 December 2019
Financial Literacy
1. Review "How to Buy a Car."
https://www.incharge.org/financial-literacy/budgeting-saving/how-to-buy-a-car/
a. You need a car. Will you buy or lease? Explain the financial reasons for your choice.
2. What is the total cost of owning a car? Use the Car Cost Calculator to determine your answer.
Fill in the fields and calculate.
https://financialmentor.com/calculator/car-cost-calculator
3. You wanted to purchase a new car, but now that you know how expensive it is to own and operate a car, you have changed your mind. You will buy a used car instead. Read "The Best Used Cars for Teens," and select a used car to buy. Explain your choice based on price, safety and reliability.
https://www.consumerreports.org/used-cars/best-used-cars-for-teens/
4. After reviewing and calculating the cost of purchasing or leasing, licensing, registering, insuring, repairing and maintaining and operating a car, examine these alternatives to car ownership.
a. List and explain at least two that might work for you. Explain
__________________________________________________________________________________
Financial Literacy/Assignment
1. Using the link below, figure how much you would save over a period of time of your choice.
https://web.extension.illinois.edu/money/saving_twentyperweek.cfm
Financial Literacy Assignment
https://www.timeforpayback.com/
1. Please link to the site above and play. Record your responses with pen and paper. We will discuss your responses.
2. Link to the site below and take the Money Quiz. Record your responses with pen and paper. We will discuss your responses.
https://www.channelone.com/interact_post/the-money-master-quiz/
____________________________________________________________
For 11 December 2019
The Year in Pictures https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/world/year-in-pictures.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
1. Quizzlet Trump Impeachment
2. December Story edit.
3.. Biographical Interview and article
1. You MUST interview someone you do not know.
2. Ask questions of your own or use some of these:
a. Who was your favorite teacher in grade school or middle school and why?
b. If you could travel anywhere in the world free for two weeks where would you go and why?
c. If you could invite anyone to a fancy dinner for free, who would you invite and why?
d. If you were the supervisor of an organization, what type of supervisor would you be? How would your employees relate to you?
2. Write up your story and turn in at the end of the period.
______________________________________________________________________________
For 10 December 2019
Read each story below and write a one-paragragh summary on it. Turn in one page with four paragraphs.
Wrtie in your own words. Use quotations and attribution.
1) Transportation - A bike? https://www.velometro.com/veemo/
2) Cheerleader takes a knee and gets punished https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/us/kennesaw-cheerleader-lawsuit-anthem.html
3) Sleeping in the cold for the homeless https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/nyregion/homelessness-sleepout-times-square.html
4) Hong Kong update https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-us-chamber-commerce.html
____________________________________________________________________________________
For 9 December 2019
College Newspapers
The State News (Michigan State) https://statenews.com/
The Michigan Daily (U-M) https://www.michigandaily.com/
The South End (Wayne State) https://www.thesouthend.wayne.edu/
Western Herald (Western Michigan) https://www.westernherald.com/
The Eastern Echo (Eastern Michigan) http://www.easternecho.com/
The Hilltop (Howard University) https://thehilltoponline.com/
__________________________________________________________________________
For 3-6 December 2019
Hours 2 and 3 - Journalism: All students will revise and then submit their final news stories for the December issue of The Western Express. They know exactly what they are doing. They may work on computers, Chromebooks and a laptop (on my desk) or type on their phones. They will submit their assignments to: tablescotten@gmail.com
They know this routine very well. They also know that this assignment is the most important this quarter.
_________________________________________________________________
Detroit Promise: FREE COLLEGE OR VOCATIONAL TRAINING http://www.detroitchamber.com/econdev/education-and-talent/detroit-promise/
Scholarship: https://www.detroitrotary.org/yc1
Revision of Rough Draft Due at End of Period.
Must be shared/sent by email to: tablescotten@gmail.com
__________________________________________________________________
For 2-6 December 2019
Revise December deadline stories.
Must include your NAME AND HOUR.
1. Quotes
2. Sources
3. May not quote without naming your source.
4. Photo/s (must be taken by you or another journalism student).
5. All writing mechanics will be graded (spelling, grammar, etc.).
6. Must be submitted by deadline of Thursday, December 5, at the end of class to: tablescotten@gmail.com
7. Must adhere to this format: 12 point, Times New Roman, double spaced. No exceptions.
8. No copying and pasting. This is plagiarism and will not be accepted.
______________________________________________________________________
For Tuesday, 26 November 2019
Please email your rough draft to Mr. Bowles:
tablescotten@gmail.com
More story ideas:
Detroit Churches
Street names
Western HS history
__________________________________________________________________________________
For Monday, 25 November 2019
1. Hong Kong Elections: (Democratic candidates elected. Opposition makes progress) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/world/asia/hong-kong-election-results.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
2. Egypt and Iraq crack down on journalists https://www.npr.org/2019/11/25/782537003/egyptian-government-raids-independent-news-outlet
3. Warren and Sanders endorse student loan forgiveness: (Economists say it would boost economy, i.e. buying a house).
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/25/782070151/forgiving-student-debt-would-boost-economy
4. Small Business/Capitalism: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opinion/sunday/small-business-economy.html
5. First-year college students struggle: https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2019/11/24/first-year-college-students-detroit-msu/4259083002/
_____________________________________________________________________________________
For Friday, 22 November 2019
- Turn in 1-page minimum of rough draft of your story #2. Must be printed.
- 12-point, Times New Roman, double spaced.
- Spelling and grammar are not graded on this rough draft.
- It may or may not contain quotes.
- Point value: 30 points.
Wednesday Night Debate - 9 PM
Tyler Perry Studio - Atlanta http://tylerperry.com/tag/studio/
Congresswomen: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/magazine/ayanna-pressley-abigail-spanberger-democratic-women-congress.html
Diversity Among TV directors: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/arts/television/tv-directors-diversity-report.html
Trump Impeachment:
Real Estate and Racism: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/nyregion/fair-housing-discrimination-long-island.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
Racism Agaisnt Latinos: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/us/politics/yakima-washington-racial-differences-2020-elections.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
Transgender Women of Color: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/opinion/philanthropy-black-women.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
China's Repression of Muslims: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/opinion/china-muslims.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Homeless Students: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/19/nyregion/student-homelessness-nyc.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Journalism 19 November
CNN:
1. Nuclear arms - Iran
a. Nuclear Agreement
b. Centrifuges and creation of Isotope 235. (each of two or more forms of the same element that contain equal numbers of protons but different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei, and hence differ in relative atomic mass but not in chemical properties; in particular, a radioactive form of an element).
2. Insects and pollination
3. Stephen Miller and Immigration
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/us/politics/stephen-miller-white-nationalism.html
4. Michigan/Transgender/IDs
https://www.michiganradio.org/post/new-policy-makes-it-simpler-transgender-people-change-gender-ids
5. World Toilet Day
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-50406148
___________________________________________________________________________
Journalism 18 November
Postal Banking and Payday Lenders:
https://www.calculator.net/loan-calculator.html
Buttigieg is front runner among Democrats:
Hong Kong: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-university.html
China Represson of Muslims: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html?module=inline
Vaping Trump Rollback: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/health/trump-vaping-ban.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Trial in Tucson: aid volunteer migrants: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2019/06/11/scott-warren-verdict-aiding-undocumented-immigrants-on-us-mexico-border-no-more-deaths/1387036001/
Topics on journalism quiz for Friday, 15 November
1. DACA
2. Trump Impeachment
3. Postal Banking
Postal Banking: http://www.campaignforpostalbanking.org/know-the-facts/
How the Other Half Banks - Meshar Baradaran: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYdNKMkBYuQ&t=153s
Which Democratic Candidates Support Postal Banking?
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDGf39NkZe0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TpbFZ69YS4
Third Parties in US
https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-political-third-parties-currently-active-in-the-united-states.php
Stories Ideas for December 2019 issue of The Western Express
1. No library at Western? Why not?
2. Teachers and students who are immigrants (Mr. Ilewemore. Speaks at least 4 languages).
3. Science news/projects (Mr. McMillan and computer science students).
4. buildOn and school building treks around the world.
5. Black Student Union.
6. National Honor Society.
7. Senior Readiness - Ms. Thompson, Ms. Henry, Mr. Vargas, others.
8. Spoken Word Club (Thur. Ms. Soinski's room - 3rd floor).
9. Community Events (i.e. quinceanera).
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/style/quinceaera-genz-millennial.html
10. School securtiy.
11. Dance, music, art events and projects.
12. Opinoins (check first with Mr. Bowles).
13. Fashion (Robin Armstrong), others, fashion trends: photo story.
http://Paris Black Woman style https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/55175
14. Robotics club
15. Self harm and Teens
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/health/self-harm-injury-cutting-psychology.html
16. Rapper T.I. Daughter Virginity Test
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/health/ti-daughter-virginity-test.html
17. Teen Wants to Stop Monthly Period
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/well/for-the-teen-who-no-longer-wants-a-period.html
18. Texting and Walking
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/technology/personaltech/distracted-walking-twalking.html
19. Teens and Sleep https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/technology/cvs-health-insomnia-app.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
20. Bottled water depleting aquifers
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/opinion/bottled-water-is-sucking-florida-dry.html
21. Michigan wetlands
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2019/09/12/trump-clean-water/2299396001/
22. Facial Recognition Technology https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/technology/britain-surveillance-privacy.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
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13 November 2019
1. DACCA( Deferreed Action for Childhood Arrivals) and the Supreme Court: 5 W's https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/daca-supreme-court.html
Children of undocumented arrivals to stay in US if they arrived before age 16.
800,000 people have avoided deportation
Trump Administration ordered it shut down.
Supreme Court justices said what?
What will the Supreme Court decide?
a. NBC News (3:55) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0da3cj97d4
End DACCA? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/supreme-court-dreamers.html
Typical Dreamer https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/05/us/politics/who-are-the-dreamers.html
2. Trump Impeachment Hearings (5 W's)
Quid Pro Quo: a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something
Common Latin phrases: carpe diem (seize the day), cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), caveat emptor (buyer beware), e pluribus unum (out of many, one).
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/13/politics/trump-impeachment-hearing-today/index.html
3. Vaping: Michigan teen vaper first in nation to get double lung transplant (Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit) (17.00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0da3cj97d4
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/health/vaping-double-lung-transplant.html
4. Hong Kong Protests and Violence Continue https://www.cnn.com/cnn10
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Sources:
1. The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/2020-presidential-candidates.html
2. CNN: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/politics/2020-democratic-candidates-issue-guide/#/
4. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_the_2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primary_candidate
5. Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/2020-democrat-candidates-771735/
6. Third Parties: https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-political-third-parties-currently-active-in-the-united-states.php
Week of 11 November 2019
The Western Express: http://www.detroitdialogue.com/section/western-international
Mercury crosses the Sun https://www.nytimes.com/section/science
Dylan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0
What is the Hyde Amendment?
1. When are the Michigan Democratic Primary elections?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Michigan_Democratic_primary
2. According to polling data. which candidate is in the lead?
3. T/F: Michigan's primary election falls on "Super Tuesday."
4. T/F: If Julián Castro does poorly on Super Tuesday, he would still have a good chance of winning the Democratic nomination. Explain your response.
5. When is the Iowa Caucus and why is it important?
6. When, where and at what event will the democratic nominee for president nominated?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_National_Convention
7. Paraphrase what Julián Castro said about the Green New Deal?
8. What major issue does the Green New Deal address?
9. What is Corry Booker's stance on affirmative action?
10. What did Wayne Messam say about debt relief for student loans?
11, What is Pete Buttigieg's positon on Universal Child Care?
12. Which of these candidates supports tuition-free public college? Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris?
13. T/F: Corry Booker supports a carbon tax. This stance suggestions that he would support or deny the Green New Deal?
14. What is the stance of most democratic candidates on raising the minimum wage?
15. What is postal banking? Do Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang support it? Do you support it?
Please watch the first few minutes of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYdNKMkBYuQ&t=61s
16. Which two candidates endorse universal background checks for buying guns, want to ban assault weapons and want gun buy backs?
17. Does Bernie Sanders favor a weath tax?
18. Does Julian Castro favor paid sick leave? What is paid sick leave?
19. Does Pete Buttigieg favor paid family leave?
20: T/F: Almost no country requires its workers to have paid family leave.
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Week of 4-8 November 2019
Candidates
Politcal positions of democratic candidates
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/2020-presidential-candidates.html
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/politics/2020-democratic-candidates-issue-guide/#/
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/2020-democrat-candidates-771735/
The 1619 Project
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
Nikole Hannah-Jones
My dad always flew an American flag in our front yard. The blue paint on our two-story house was perennially (define)1. chipping; the fence, or the rail by the stairs, or the front door, existed in a perpetual state of disrepair, but that flag always flew pristine ( define)2. Our corner lot, which had been redlined by the federal government (define)3., was along the river that divided the black side from the white side of our Iowa town. At the edge of our lawn, high on an aluminum pole, soared the flag, which my dad would replace as soon as it showed the slightest tatter.
My dad was born into a family of sharecroppers (define)4. on a white plantation in Greenwood, Miss., where black people bent over cotton from can’t-see-in-the-morning to can’t-see-at-night, just as their enslaved ancestors had done not long before. The Mississippi of my dad’s youth was an apartheid state (define)5. that subjugated (define) 6.its near-majority black population through breathtaking acts of violence. White residents in Mississippi lynched 
more black people than those in any other state in the country, and the white people in my dad’s home county lynched more black residents than those in any other county in Mississippi, often for such “crimes” as entering a room occupied by white women, bumping into a white girl or trying to start a sharecroppers union. My dad’s mother, like all the black people in Greenwood, could not vote, use the public library or find work other than toiling in the cotton fields or toiling in white people’s houses. So in the 1940s, she packed up her few belongings and her three small children and joined the flood of black Southerners fleeing North. She got off the Illinois Central Railroad in Waterloo, Iowa, only to have her hopes of the mythical Promised Land(what is meant by this phrase?)7. shattered when she learned that Jim Crow (define)8. did not end at the Mason-Dixon line. 
Grandmama, as we called her, found a house in a segregated black neighborhood on the city’s east side and then found the work that was considered black women’s work no matter where black women lived — cleaning white people’s houses. Dad, too, struggled to find promise in this land. In 1962, at age 17, he signed up for the Army. Like many young men, he joined in hopes of escaping poverty. But he went into the military for another reason as well, a reason common to black men: Dad hoped that if he served his country, his country might finally treat him as an American.
The Army did not end up being his way out. He was passed over for opportunities, his ambition stunted. He would be discharged under murky circumstances and then labor in a series of service jobs for the rest of his life. Like all the black men and women in my family, he believed in hard work, but like all the black men and women in my family, no matter how hard he worked, he never got ahead.
So when I was young, that flag outside our home never made sense to me. How could this black man, having seen firsthand the way his country abused black Americans, how it refused to treat us as full citizens, proudly fly its banner? I didn’t understand his patriotism. It deeply embarrassed me.
I had been taught, in school, through cultural osmosis, (explain this phrase)9. that the flag wasn’t really ours, that our history as a people began with enslavement and that we had contributed little to this great nation. It seemed that the closest thing black Americans could have to cultural pride was to be found in our vague connection to Africa, a place we had never been. That my dad felt so much honor in being an American felt like a marker of his degradation, his acceptance of our subordination.
Like most young people, I thought I understood so much, when in fact I understood so little. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag. He knew that our people’s contributions to building the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible, that the United States simply would not exist without us.
In August 1619, just 12 years after the English settled Jamestown, Va.,
one year before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock and some 157 years before the English colonists even decided they wanted to form their own country, the Jamestown colonists bought 20 to 30 enslaved Africans from English pirates. The pirates had stolen them from a Portuguese slave ship that had forcibly taken them from what is now the country of Angola.
Those men and women who came ashore on that August day were the beginning of American slavery. They were among the 12.5 million Africans who would be kidnapped from their homes and brought in chains across the Atlantic Ocean in the largest forced migration in human history 
until the Second World War. Almost two million did not survive the grueling journey, known as the Middle Passage.
(According to the map above, to which country were more African slaves taken than any other?)10.
Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire. 
Through backbreaking labor, they cleared the land across the Southeast. They taught the colonists to grow rice. They grew and picked the cotton that at the height of slavery was the nation’s most valuable commodity, accounting for half of all American exports and 66 percent of the world’s supply. (How important was cotton to the American economy?) 11 They built the plantations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, sprawling properties that today attract thousands of visitors from across the globe captivated by the history of the world’s greatest democracy. They laid the foundations of the White House and the Capitol, even placing with their unfree hands the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome.
They lugged the heavy wooden tracks of the railroads that crisscrossed the South and that helped take the cotton they picked to the Northern textile mills, fueling the Industrial Revolution. They built vast fortunes for white people North and South — at one time, the second-richest man in the nation was a Rhode Island “slave trader.” Profits from black people’s stolen labor helped the young nation pay off its war debts and financed some of our most prestigious universities.
It was the relentless buying, selling, insuring and financing of their bodies and the products of their labor that made Wall Street a thriving banking, insurance and trading sector and New York City the financial capital of the world.
But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.
The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie (describe the meaning of this phrase) 12. Our Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4, 1776, proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country.Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed (define) 13. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.
Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all.
The very first person to die for this country in the American Revolution was a black man who himself was not free. Crispus Attucks was a fugitive from slavery, yet he gave his life for a new nation in which his own people would not enjoy the liberties laid out in the Declaration for another century. In every war this nation has waged since that first one, black Americans have fought — today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military.
My father, one of those many black Americans who answered the call, knew what it would take me years to understand: that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776. That black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true “founding fathers.” And that no people has a greater claim to that flag than us.
In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson sat at his portable writing desk in a rented room in Philadelphia and penned these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For the last 243 years, this fierce assertion of the fundamental and natural rights of humankind to freedom and self-governance has defined our global reputation as a land of liberty. As Jefferson composed his inspiring words, however, a teenage boy who would enjoy none of those rights and liberties waited nearby to serve at his master’s beck and call. His name was Robert Hemings, and he was the half brother of Jefferson’s wife, born to Martha Jefferson’s father and a woman he owned. It was common for white enslavers to keep their half-black children in slavery. Jefferson had chosen Hemings, from among about 130 enslaved people that worked on the forced-labor camp he called Monticello, to accompany him to Philadelphia and ensure his every comfort as he drafted the text making the case for a new democratic republic based on the individual rights of men.
At the time, one-fifth of the population within the 13 colonies struggled under a brutal system of slavery unlike anything that had existed in the world before. Chattel slavery was not conditional but racial. It was heritable and permanent, not temporary, meaning generations of black people were born into it and passed their enslaved status onto their children. Enslaved people were not recognized as human beings but as property that could be mortgaged, traded, bought, sold, used as collateral, given as a gift and disposed of violently. Jefferson’s fellow white colonists knew that black people were human beings, but they created a network of laws and customs, astounding for both their precision and cruelty, that ensured that enslaved people would never be treated as such. As the abolitionist William Goodell wrote in 1853, “If any thing founded on falsehood might be called a science, we might add the system of American slavery to the list of the strict sciences.”
[To get updates on The 1619 Project, and for more on race from The New York Times, sign up for our weekly Race/Related newsletter.]
Enslaved people could not legally marry. They were barred from learning to read and restricted from meeting privately in groups. They had no claim to their own children, who could be bought, sold and traded away from them on auction blocks alongside furniture and cattle or behind storefronts that advertised “Negroes for Sale.” Enslavers and the courts did not honor kinship ties to mothers, siblings, cousins. In most courts, they had no legal standing. Enslavers could rape or murder their property without legal consequence. Enslaved people could own nothing, will nothing and inherit nothing. They were legally tortured, including by those working for Jefferson himself. They could be worked to death, and often were, in order to produce the highest profits for the white people who owned them.
(List 4 restrictions on slaves' rights) 14.
Yet in making the argument against Britain’s tyranny, one of the colonists’ favorite rhetorical devices was to claim that they were the slaves — to Britain. For this duplicity, they faced burning criticism both at home and abroad. As Samuel Johnson, an English writer and Tory opposed to American independence, quipped, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”
Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery (15) What was one of the primary reasons colonists declaired their independence from Britian?). By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. In London, there were growing calls to abolish the slave trade. This would have upended the economy of the colonies, in both the North and the South. The wealth and prominence that allowed Jefferson, at just 33, and the other founding fathers to believe they could successfully break off from one of the mightiest empires in the world came from the dizzying profits generated by chattel slavery. In other words, we may never have revolted against Britain if the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue (16) What was required in order for slavery to continue in the U.S.?). It is not incidental that 10 of this nation’s first 12 presidents were enslavers, and some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy (define "slaveocracy" - no need to look it up) (17).
Jefferson and the other founders were keenly aware of this hypocrisy. And so in Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence, he tried to argue that it wasn’t the colonists’ fault. Instead, he blamed the king of England for forcing the institution of slavery on the unwilling colonists and called the trafficking in human beings a crime. Yet neither Jefferson nor most of the founders intended to abolish slavery, and in the end, they struck the passage.
There is no mention of slavery in the final Declaration of Independence. Similarly, 11 years later, when it came time to draft the Constitution, the framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word. In the texts in which they were making the case for freedom to the world, they did not want to explicitly enshrine their hypocrisy, so they sought to hide it. The Constitution contains 84 clauses. Six deal directly with the enslaved and their enslavement, as the historian David Waldstreicher has written, and five more hold implications for slavery. The Constitution protected the “property” of those who enslaved black people, prohibited the federal government from intervening to end the importation of enslaved Africans for a term of 20 years, allowed Congress to mobilize the militia to put down insurrections by the enslaved and forced states that had outlawed slavery to turn over enslaved people who had run away seeking refuge. Like many others, the writer and abolitionist Samuel Bryan called out the deceit, saying of the Constitution, “The words are dark and ambiguous; such as no plain man of common sense would have used, [and] are evidently chosen to conceal from Europe, that in this enlightened country, the practice of slavery has its advocates among men in the highest stations.” (How did the framers of the Constitution address slavery in this document?) (18).
With independence, the founding fathers could no longer blame slavery on Britain. The sin became this nation’s own, and so, too, the need to cleanse it. The shameful paradox of continuing chattel slavery in a nation founded on individual freedom, scholars today assert, led to a hardening of the racial caste system. This ideology, reinforced not just by laws but by racist science and literature, maintained that black people were subhuman, a belief that allowed white Americans to live with their betrayal. By the early 1800s, according to the legal historians Leland B. Ware, Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, white Americans, whether they engaged in slavery or not, “had a considerable psychological as well as economic investment in the doctrine of black inferiority.” While liberty was the inalienable right of the people who would be considered white, enslavement and subjugation became the natural station of people who had any discernible drop of “black” blood.
The Supreme Court enshrined this thinking in the law in its 1857 Dred Scott decision, ruling that black people, whether enslaved or free, came from a “slave” race. This made them inferior to white people and, therefore, incompatible with American democracy. Democracy was for citizens, and the “Negro race,” the court ruled, was “a separate class of persons,” which the founders had “not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government” and had “no rights which a white man was bound to respect.” This belief, that black people were not merely enslaved but were a slave race, became the root of the endemic racism that we still cannot purge from this nation to this day. If black people could not ever be citizens, if they were a caste apart from all other humans, then they did not require the rights bestowed by the Constitution, and the “we” in the “We the People” was not a lie. (Which Supreme Court decision said that black people came from a slave race?) (19).
On Aug. 14, 1862, a mere five years after the nation’s highest courts declared that no black person could be an American citizen, President Abraham Lincoln called a group of five esteemed free black men to the White House for a meeting. It was one of the few times that black people had ever been invited to the White House as guests. The Civil War had been raging for more than a year, and black abolitionists, who had been increasingly pressuring Lincoln to end slavery, must have felt a sense of great anticipation and pride.
The war was not going well for Lincoln. Britain was contemplating whether to intervene on the Confederacy’s behalf, and Lincoln, unable to draw enough new white volunteers for the war, was forced to reconsider his opposition to allowing black Americans to fight for their own liberation. The president was weighing a proclamation that threatened to emancipate all enslaved people in the states that had seceded from the Union if the states did not end the rebellion. The proclamation would also allow the formerly enslaved to join the Union army and fight against their former “masters.” But Lincoln worried about what the consequences of this radical step would be. Like many white Americans, he opposed slavery as a cruel system at odds with American ideals, but he also opposed black equality. He believed that free black people were a “troublesome presence” incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people. “Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals?” he had said four years earlier. “My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.”
That August day, as the men arrived at the White House, they were greeted by the towering Lincoln and a man named James Mitchell, who eight days before had been given the title of a newly created position called the commissioner of emigration. This was to be his first assignment. After exchanging a few niceties, Lincoln got right to it. He informed his guests that he had gotten Congress to appropriate funds to ship black people, once freed, to another country.
“Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration,” Lincoln told them. “You and we are different races. ... Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side.”
You can imagine the heavy silence in that room, as the weight of what the president said momentarily stole the breath of these five black men. It was 243 years to the month since the first of their ancestors had arrived on these shores, before Lincoln’s family, long before most of the white people insisting that this was not their country. The Union had not entered the war to end slavery but to keep the South from splitting off, yet black men had signed up to fight. Enslaved people were fleeing their forced-labor camps, which we like to call plantations, trying to join the effort, serving as spies, sabotaging confederates, taking up arms for his cause as well as their own. And now Lincoln was blaming them for the war. “Although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other ... without the institution of slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence,” the president told them. “It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.” (What was Lincoln's solution to racial violence that he offered his black guests in 1862?) (20).
As Lincoln closed the remarks, Edward Thomas, the delegation’s chairman, informed the president, perhaps curtly, that they would consult on his proposition. “Take your full time,” Lincoln said. “No hurry at all.”
Nearly three years after that White House meeting, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. By summer, the Civil War was over, and four million black Americans were suddenly free. Contrary to Lincoln’s view, most were not inclined to leave, agreeing with the sentiment of a resolution against black colonization put forward at a convention of black leaders in New York some decades before: “This is our home, and this our country. Beneath its sod lie the bones of our fathers. ... Here we were born, and here we will die.”
That the formerly enslaved did not take up Lincoln’s offer to abandon these lands is an astounding testament to their belief in this nation’s founding ideals. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “Few men ever worshiped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.” Black Americans had long called for universal equality and believed, as the abolitionist Martin Delany said, “that God has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth.” Liberated by war, then, they did not seek vengeance on their oppressors as Lincoln and so many other white Americans feared. They did the opposite. During this nation’s brief period of Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, formerly enslaved people zealously engaged with the democratic process. With federal troops tempering widespread white violence, black Southerners started branches of the Equal Rights League — one of the nation’s first human rights organizations — to fight discrimination and organize voters; they headed in droves to the polls, where they placed other formerly enslaved people into seats that their enslavers had once held. The South, for the first time in the history of this country, began to resemble a democracy, with black Americans elected to local, state and federal offices. Some 16 black men served in Congress — including Hiram Revels of Mississippi, who became the first black man elected to the Senate. (Demonstrating just how brief this period would be, Revels, along with Blanche Bruce, would go from being the first black man elected to the last for nearly a hundred years, until Edward Brooke of Massachusetts took office in 1967.) More than 600 black men served in Southern state legislatures and hundreds more in local positions. (The period of 1865-1877 during which black people had many freedoms was called what? (18) What national force made this advancement possible? (21).
These black officials joined with white Republicans, some of whom came down from the North, to write the most egalitarian state constitutions the South had ever seen. They helped pass more equitable tax legislation and laws that prohibited discrimination in public transportation, accommodation and housing. Perhaps their biggest achievement was the establishment of that most democratic of American institutions: the public school. Public education effectively did not exist in the South before Reconstruction. The white elite sent their children to private schools, while poor white children went without an education. But newly freed black people, who had been prohibited from learning to read and write during slavery, were desperate for an education. So black legislators successfully pushed for a universal, state-funded system of schools — not just for their own children but for white children, too. Black legislators also helped pass the first compulsory education laws in the region. Southern children, black and white, were now required to attend schools like their Northern counterparts. Just five years into Reconstruction, every Southern state had enshrined the right to a public education for all children into its constitution. In some states, like Louisiana and South Carolina, small numbers of black and white children, briefly, attended schools together.
(Describe education for African-Americans during reconstruction) (22).
Led by black activists and a Republican Party pushed left by the blatant recalcitrance of white Southerners, the years directly after slavery saw the greatest expansion of human and civil rights this nation would ever see. In 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, making the United States one of the last nations in the Americas to outlaw slavery. The following year, black Americans, exerting their new political power, pushed white legislators to pass the Civil Rights Act, the nation’s first such law and one of the most expansive pieces of civil rights legislation Congress has ever passed. It codified black American citizenship for the first time, prohibited housing discrimination and gave all Americans the right to buy and inherit property, make and enforce contracts and seek redress from courts. In 1868, Congress ratified the 14th Amendment, ensuring citizenship to any person born in the United States. Today, thanks to this amendment, every child born here to a European, Asian, African, Latin American or Middle Eastern immigrant gains automatic citizenship. The 14th Amendment also, for the first time, constitutionally guaranteed equal protection under the law. Ever since, nearly all other marginalized groups have used the 14th Amendment in their fights for equality (including the recent successful arguments before the Supreme Court on behalf of same-sex marriage). Finally, in 1870, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the most critical aspect of democracy and citizenship — the right to vote — to all men regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
For this fleeting moment known as Reconstruction, the majority in Congress seemed to embrace the idea that out of the ashes of the Civil War, we could create the multiracial democracy that black Americans envisioned even if our founding fathers did not.
But it would not last.
Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA 
of this country, as does the belief, so well articulated by Lincoln, that black people are the obstacle to national unity. The many gains of Reconstruction were met with fierce white resistance throughout the South, including unthinkable violence against the formerly enslaved, wide-scale voter suppression, electoral fraud and even, in some extreme cases, the overthrow of democratically elected biracial governments. Faced with this unrest, the federal government decided that black people were the cause of the problem and that for unity’s sake, it would leave the white South to its own devices. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes, in order to secure a compromise with Southern Democrats that would grant him the presidency in a contested election, agreed to pull federal troops from the South. With the troops gone, white Southerners quickly went about eradicating the gains of Reconstruction. The systemic white suppression of black life was so severe that this period between the 1880s and the 1920 and ’30s became known as the Great Nadir (define "nadir") (23), or the second slavery. Democracy would not return to the South for nearly a century.
White Southerners of all economic classes, on the other hand, thanks in significant part to the progressive policies and laws black people had championed, experienced substantial improvement in their lives even as they forced black people back into a quasi slavery. As Waters McIntosh, who had been enslaved in South Carolina, lamented, “It was the poor white man who was freed by the war, not the Negroes.”
Georgia pines flew past the windows of the Greyhound bus carrying Isaac Woodard 
home to Winnsboro, S.C. After serving four years in the Army in World War II, where Woodard had earned a battle star, he was given an honorable discharge earlier that day at Camp Gordon and was headed home to meet his wife. When the bus stopped at a small drugstore an hour outside Atlanta, Woodard got into a brief argument with the white driver after asking if he could use the restroom. About half an hour later, the driver stopped again and told Woodard to get off the bus. Crisp in his uniform, Woodard stepped from the stairs and saw the police waiting for him. Before he could speak, one of the officers struck him in his head with a billy club, beating him so badly that he fell unconscious. The blows to Woodard’s head were so severe that when he woke in a jail cell the next day, he could not see. The beating occurred just 4½ hours after his military discharge. At 26, Woodard would never see again.
There was nothing unusual about Woodard’s horrific maiming. It was part of a wave of systemic violence deployed against black Americans after Reconstruction, in both the North and the South. As the egalitarian spirit of post-Civil War America evaporated under the desire for national reunification, black Americans, simply by existing, served as a problematic reminder of this nation’s failings. White America dealt with this inconvenience by constructing a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid that excluded black people almost entirely from mainstream American life — a system so grotesque that Nazi Germany would later take inspiration from it for its own racist policies. (Which minority group was targeted and killed my Nazis?) (22)
Despite the guarantees of equality in the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court’s landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 declared that the racial segregation of black Americans was constitutional. With the blessing of the nation’s highest court and no federal will to vindicate black rights, starting in the late 1800s, Southern states passed a series of laws and codes meant to make slavery’s racial caste system permanent by denying black people political power, social equality and basic dignity. They passed literacy tests to keep black people from voting and created all-white primaries for elections. Black people were prohibited from serving on juries or testifying in court against a white person. South Carolina prohibited white and black textile workers from using the same doors. Oklahoma forced phone companies to segregate phone booths. Memphis had separate parking spaces for black and white drivers. Baltimore passed an ordinance outlawing black people from moving onto a block more than half white and white people from moving onto a block more than half black. Georgia made it illegal for black and white people to be buried next to one another in the same cemetery. Alabama barred black people from using public libraries that their own tax dollars were paying for. Black people were expected to jump off the sidewalk to let white people pass and call all white people by an honorific, though they received none no matter how old they were. In the North, white politicians implemented policies that segregated black people into slum neighborhoods and into inferior all-black schools, operated whites-only public pools and held white and “colored” days at the country fair, and white businesses regularly denied black people service, placing “Whites Only” signs in their windows. States like California joined Southern states in barring black people from marrying white people, while local school boards in Illinois and New Jersey mandated segregated schools for black and white children.
This caste system (define) (24) was maintained through wanton racial terrorism. And black veterans like Woodard, especially those with the audacity to wear their uniform, had since the Civil War been the target of a particular violence. This intensified during the two world wars because white people understood that once black men had gone abroad and experienced life outside the suffocating racial oppression of America, they were unlikely to quietly return to their subjugation at home. As Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi said on the Senate floor during World War I, black servicemen returning to the South would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Giving a black man “military airs” and sending him to defend the flag would bring him “to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.”
Many white Americans saw black men in the uniforms of America’s armed services not as patriotic but as exhibiting a dangerous pride. Hundreds of black veterans were beaten, maimed, shot and lynched. We like to call those who lived during World War II the Greatest Generation, but that allows us to ignore the fact that many of this generation fought for democracy abroad while brutally suppressing democracy for millions of American citizens. During the height of racial terror in this country, black Americans were not merely killed but castrated, burned alive and dismembered with their body parts displayed in storefronts. This violence was meant to terrify and control black people, but perhaps just as important, it served as a psychological balm for white supremacy: You would not treat human beings this way. The extremity of the violence was a symptom of the psychological mechanism necessary to absolve white Americans of their country’s original sin. To answer the question of how they could prize liberty abroad while simultaneously denying liberty to an entire race back home, white Americans resorted to the same racist ideology that Jefferson and the framers had used at the nation’s founding.
This ideology — that black people belonged to an inferior, subhuman race — did not simply disappear once slavery ended. If the formerly enslaved and their descendants became educated, if we thrived in the jobs white people did, if we excelled in the sciences and arts, then the entire justification for how this nation allowed slavery would collapse. Free black people posed a danger to the country’s idea of itself as exceptional; we held up the mirror in which the nation preferred not to peer. And so the inhumanity visited on black people by every generation of white America justified the inhumanity of the past.
Just as white Americans feared, World War II ignited what became black Americans’ second sustained effort to make democracy real. As the editorial board of the black newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier wrote, “We wage a two-pronged attack against our enslavers at home and those abroad who will enslave us.” Woodard’s blinding is largely seen as one of the catalysts for the decades-long rebellion we have come to call the civil rights movement. But it is useful to pause and remember that this was the second mass movement for black civil rights, the first being Reconstruction. As the centennial of slavery’s end neared, black people were still seeking the rights they had fought for and won after the Civil War: the right to be treated equally by public institutions, which was guaranteed in 1866 with the Civil Rights Act; the right to be treated as full citizens before the law, which was guaranteed in 1868 by the 14th Amendment; and the right to vote, which was guaranteed in 1870 by the 15th Amendment. In response to black demands for these rights, white Americans strung them from trees, beat them and dumped their bodies in muddy rivers, assassinated them in their front yards, firebombed them on buses, mauled them with dogs, peeled back their skin with fire hoses and murdered their children with explosives set off inside a church.
For the most part, black Americans fought back alone. Yet we never fought only for ourselves. The bloody freedom struggles of the civil rights movement laid the foundation for every other modern rights struggle. This nation’s white founders set up a decidedly undemocratic Constitution that excluded women, Native Americans and black people, and did not provide the vote or equality for most Americans. (How was the Constitution undemocratic?) (25) But the laws born out of black resistance guarantee the franchise for all and ban discrimination based not just on race but on gender, nationality, religion and ability. It was the civil rights movement that led to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which upended the racist immigration quota system intended to keep this country white. Because of black Americans, black and brown immigrants from across the globe are able to come to the United States and live in a country in which legal discrimination is no longer allowed. It is a truly American irony that some Asian-Americans, among the groups able to immigrate to the United States because of the black civil rights struggle, are now suing universities to end programs designed to help the descendants of the enslaved.
No one cherishes freedom more than those who have not had it. And to this day, black Americans, more than any other group, embrace the democratic ideals of a common good. We are the most likely to support programs like universal health care and a higher minimum wage, and to oppose programs that harm the most vulnerable. For instance, black Americans suffer the most from violent crime, yet we are the most opposed to capital punishment. Our unemployment rate is nearly twice that of white Americans, yet we are still the most likely of all groups to say this nation should take in refugees.
The truth is that as much democracy as this nation has today, it has been borne on the backs of black resistance. Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused, but black people did. As one scholar, Joe R. Feagin, put it, “Enslaved African-Americans have been among the foremost freedom-fighters this country has produced.” For generations, we have believed in this country with a faith it did not deserve. Black people have seen the worst of America, yet, somehow, we still believe in its best.
They say our people were born on the water.
When it occurred, no one can say for certain. Perhaps it was in the second week, or the third, but surely by the fourth, when they had not seen their land or any land for so many days that they lost count. It was after fear had turned to despair, and despair to resignation, and resignation to an abiding understanding. The teal eternity of the Atlantic Ocean had severed them so completely from what had once been their home that it was as if nothing had ever existed before, as if everything and everyone they cherished had simply vanished from the earth. They were no longer Mbundu or Akan or Fulani. These men and women from many different nations, all shackled together in the suffocating hull of the ship, they were one people now.
Just a few months earlier, they had families, and farms, and lives and dreams. They were free. They had names, of course, but their enslavers did not bother to record them. They had been made black by those people who believed that they were white, and where they were heading, black equaled “slave,” and slavery in America required turning human beings into property by stripping them of every element that made them individuals. This process was called seasoning, in which people stolen from western and central Africa were forced, often through torture, to stop speaking their native tongues and practicing their native religions.
But as the sociologist Glenn Bracey wrote, “Out of the ashes of white denigration, we gave birth to ourselves.” For as much as white people tried to pretend, black people were not chattel. And so the process of seasoning, instead of erasing identity, served an opposite purpose: In the void, we forged a new culture all our own.
Today, our very manner of speaking recalls the Creole languages that enslaved people innovated in order to communicate both with Africans speaking various dialects and the English-speaking people who enslaved them. Our style of dress, the extra flair, stems back to the desires of enslaved people — shorn of all individuality — to exert their own identity. Enslaved people would wear their hat in a jaunty manner or knot their head scarves intricately. Today’s avant-garde nature of black hairstyles and fashion displays a vibrant reflection of enslaved people’s determination to feel fully human through self-expression. The improvisational quality of black art and music comes from a culture that because of constant disruption could not cling to convention. Black naming practices, so often impugned by mainstream society, are themselves an act of resistance. Our last names belong to the white people who once owned us. That is why the insistence of many black Americans, particularly those most marginalized, to give our children names that we create, that are neither European nor from Africa, a place we have never been, is an act of self-determination. When the world listens to quintessential American music, it is our voice they hear. The sorrow songs we sang in the fields to soothe our physical pain and find hope in a freedom we did not expect to know until we died became American gospel. Amid the devastating violence and poverty of the Mississippi Delta, we birthed jazz and blues. And it was in the deeply impoverished and segregated neighborhoods where white Americans forced the descendants of the enslaved to live that teenagers too poor to buy instruments used old records to create a new music known as hip-hop.
Our speech and fashion and the drum of our music echoes Africa but is not African. Out of our unique isolation, both from our native cultures and from white America, we forged this nation’s most significant original culture. In turn, “mainstream” society has coveted our style, our slang and our song, seeking to appropriate the one truly American culture as its own. As Langston Hughes wrote in 1926, “They’ll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed —/I, too, am America.”
For centuries, white Americans have been trying to solve the “Negro problem.” They have dedicated thousands of pages to this endeavor. It is common, still, to point to rates of black poverty, out-of-wedlock births, crime and college attendance, as if these conditions in a country built on a racial caste system are not utterly predictable. But crucially, you cannot view those statistics while ignoring another: that black people were enslaved here longer than we have been free.
At 43, I am part of the first generation of black Americans in the history of the United States to be born into a society in which black people had full rights of citizenship. Black people suffered under slavery for 250 years; we have been legally “free” for just 50. Yet in that briefest of spans, despite continuing to face rampant discrimination, and despite there never having been a genuine effort to redress the wrongs of slavery and the century of racial apartheid that followed, black Americans have made astounding progress, not only for ourselves but also for all Americans.
What if America understood, finally, in this 400th year, that we have never been the problem but the solution? (Describe two ways the author says black people have been "the solution" to a democratic society). (26)
When I was a child — I must have been in fifth or sixth grade — a teacher gave our class an assignment intended to celebrate the diversity of the great American melting pot. She instructed each of us to write a short report on our ancestral land and then draw that nation’s flag. As she turned to write the assignment on the board, the other black girl in class locked eyes with me. Slavery had erased any connection we had to an African country, and even if we tried to claim the whole continent, there was no “African” flag. It was hard enough being one of two black kids in the class, and this assignment would just be another reminder of the distance between the white kids and us. In the end, I walked over to the globe near my teacher’s desk, picked a random African country and claimed it as my own.
I wish, now, that I could go back to the younger me and tell her that her people’s ancestry started here, on these lands, and to boldly, proudly, draw the stars and those stripes of the American flag.
We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American. But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all.
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Film Assignment for Tuesday-Friday 29 Oct.- 1 November 2019
How Europeans See America
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/opinion/europeans-view-americans.html
Tuesday and Wednesday:
1. With a partner, choose a news story and complete a 5-slide PowerPoint presentation.
a. The presentation MUST include the following items:
- Who, what, when, where, why, how.
- images
- bullet points
- no copying and pasting
- keep it short and concise
b. Create a 5-question quizzlet on your presentation.
Thur. and Friday:
- Present your presentation and quizzlet.
Sources:
under "Reading Room" click on "Newspapers."
Click on "Headlinespot.com"
Select a Newspaper
Select a story
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Film Assignment for Monday, 28 Oct. 2019
1. Write one sentence that mentions three things you did last weekend. Two are true, one is not true.
Try to fool your reader.
Michaela DePrince (from war orphan to star ballerina)
A. Watch the 12-minute video on the amazing story of Michaela DePrince and respond to the following questions.
1. What country does Michaela come from?
2. What skin condition does she suffer from?
3. What explanation did the adults at her original home offer for her skin condition?
4. Describe her relationship with her sister.
5. Describe her living situation when the film begins.
6. What number ranking did Michaela have at the orphanage.
7. What is the name of the European city where Michaela is based.
8. What was Michaela's lowest point?
9. Name two character traits that helped Michaela succeed.
10. Describe two character traits of Michaela's mother (Elaine).
11. Mia did not study dance. What did she study?
12. What event helped Michaela overcome her skin condition?
13. Describe what Michaela faced as a ballerina of color.
14. Name two characteristics that make Michaela a successful dancer, according to her instructor.
15. Write one or two paragraphs of your impressions of this amazing story.
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Assignmet for 22 Oct. 2019
Hong Kong: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/20/world/asia/hong-kong-protesters-letters.html
U.S. Endless Wars: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/world/middleeast/american-military-global-deployments.html
Haiti Crisis: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/20/world/americas/Haiti-crisis-violence.html
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Assignmet for 18 Oct. 2019
Send your story and photo to Mr. Bowles at tablescotten@gmail.com
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Assignmet for 17 Oct. 2019
Assignment: Choose one of these stories and write the 5W's. You have 10 minutes.
Chicago Teachers Strike
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/us/chicago-schools-teachers-strike.html
Michigan Radio: Michigan Stories
https://www.michiganradio.org/
The President who wants to Kill Journalism
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Assignmet for 15 Oct. 2019
Revise stories
tablescotten@gmail.com
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Assignmet for 14 Oct. 2019
1. Biles
2. Indigenous Peoples' Day (Columbus Day)
3. Atatiana Jefferson, Fort Worth, Texas, shot dead in home Sat. 2:23 a.m. Officer did not announce his presence. Jefferson was playing with her 8-year-old nephew. Jefferson went to window and was shot dead.
4. Trump impeachment
5. Turkey killing Kurds and innocent people.
6. Protests continue in Hong Kong
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Assignmet for 11 Oct. 2019
Choose one of the items below.
- Describe the significance of one of the cases before the supreme court this season.
- Describe the significance of the lithium-ion battery and explain why it is in the news this week.
- Who is Simone Biles and what is her relationship with Dr. Larry Nassar?
- Who is Katelyn Ohashi and why is she in the news this week?
- Describe what went on this week at the Student Health Care Summit in Lansing?
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Assignmet for 10 Oct. 2019
Supreme Court LGBTQ (Michigan): https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/9/supreme_court_lgbtq_sex_discrimination_cases
Sexual Harassment: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/business/media/matt-lauer-ronan-farrow-book.html
Trump Impeachment:
Corruption by Washinton insiders:
College Athlete did not get paid:
Your State Senator: Sen. Stephanie Chang
Her Newsletter:
Student Mental Health Summit
wdetfm.org
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California Surgeon General, The Impact of Childhood Adversity
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Lithium-ion Scientists)
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49962133
What is the Nobel Prize?
The will of the Swedish chemist, engineer and industrialist Alfred Nobel established the five Nobel prizes in 1895. The prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901.[1][3][4] The prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards available in their respective fields.
List of Nobel Laureates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates
Abused Girls:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/health/copperman-sexual-abuse.html
Larry Nassar, Michigan State, USA Gymnastics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Nassar
Simone Biles: World Champion American Gymnast:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/sports/simone-biles-gymnastics.html
Floor Routine ("triple double"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hPYtc9XW3A
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Assignmet for 8 Oct. 2019:
Send your finished stories to Mr. Bowles at:
tablescotten@gmail.com
LGBTQ:
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/7/trans_rights_us_supreme_court_hearings
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/7/laverne_cox_violence_trans_women_of
Assignmet for 7 Oct. 2019:
Jessie Norman:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/obituaries/jessye-norman-dead.html
Donavan Brazier from Grand Rapids, Mich. World champion in 800 meters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POfOlzGVG2w
Supreme Court Cases this fall:
The U.S., Turkey and the Kurds
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/7/syria_us_troops_withdrawal_turkey_invasion
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Assignmet for 4 Oct. 2019:
Me Too: Weinstein
2. Story Checklist:
a. Topic
b. Interview that includes as least one direct quote. (For example: "Our game against Cass Tech was our toughest, but was our best effort," said Western offensive lineman, Darius Walker."
c. Factual information attributed to a reliable source. (For example: "According to the Center for Disease Control, 15 percent of teens said they experienced stress this school year."
d. Identify subjects to be photographed. (With your phone, one of Mr. Bowles' cameras, or your own camera).
Make sure to write the correct spelling of the subject's name!!!!!
e. A 2-3 paragraph beginning to your story.
f. A "lead" to your story. (For example: "Going to college could sink you into thousands of dollars of debt. But it doesn’t have to be that way."
https://online.pointpark.edu/public-relations-and-advertising/how-to-write-a-lead/
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Assignmet for 3 Oct. 2019:
#MeToo movement
The movement began to spread virally in October 2017 as a hashtag on social media in an attempt to demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.[4][5][6] It followed sexual-abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/weinstein/
Assignmet for 2 Oct. 2019:
College Athletes to be paid in California
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/sports/college-athletes-paid-california.html
Deadlines and Dates:
1. Oct. 23: First story with photo(s) due.
2. Oct. 31: MIPA Fall Conference, Lansing. 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
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Assignmet for 1 Oct. 2019:
1. Go to: www.mel.org
2. Click on ""eResources" at top
3. On "Go to eResource by Letter" click letter "O"
4. Click "Opposing Viewpoints in Context"
5. Click "Browse Issues" (light bulb icon)
6. Browse issues relevant to your topic
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Assignmet for Mon. 30 Sept. 2019:
- How does Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, see the mission of his paper and of journalism in general (in your own words)?
- What does he mean by “nationalism is leading people to retreat inward?”
- What explains the deaths and targeting of many journalists throughout the world? (Explain why they are targeted).
- Why is the first amendment to the Constitution widely admired and considered essential to a free and functioning society?
- The Rohingya and Uighurs are minority groups in Bangladesh and China, respectively. Why are minority groups selected for discrimination in many societies?
- Which businesses does Sulzberger cite as “delivering misinformation?”
- Is President Trump a strong defender of press freedom? Explain.
- Name one authoritarian leader we’ve studied this semester.
- What is President Trump’s most effective method of voicing his opinion?
- Which two-word phrase has Mr. Trump popularized and been adopted by dictators in nondemocratic countries?
- Has Mr. Trump’s tweeting convinced many of his supporters of his views? Explain.
- Which expression used by Mr. Trump is associated with Hitler, Lenin and Stalin?
- Which three former U.S. presidents are cited as having strongly endorsed press freedom?
- What is the “true power of a free press?”
Hong Kong Update
Personal Essay Contest
MacArthur Genius Grants
Assignmet for Tue. 25 Sept. 2019:
Dinner Around the World
Male Sexual Abuse in the Military
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/us/men-military-sexual-assault.html
Press Freedom
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/opinion/press-freedom-arthur-sulzberger.html
College Inequality
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/college-inequality.html
Assignmet for Tue. 24 Sept. 2019:
Chanel Miller
Was there anything unfair about the judicial process?
How did Brock Turner and his defense attorney “create a narrative” in his favor?
How did the media play a role in this case?
How did Brock’s Turner’s privilege work in his favor?
How did Chanel deal with her pain, shame and embarrassment?
How did Chanel’s fellow citizens react to Brock Turner’s light sentencing?
What role was played by Buzzfeed?
What laws were changed as a result of Chanel’s witness statement?
60 Minutes
#MeToo Movement (Sexual Assault)
Your topic:
Who will you interview?
List your questions:
Assignmet for Mon. 23 Sept. 2019:
Are we in a 6th era of extinction? The Anthropocene or the Holocene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVML3vNajr0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WpaLt_Blr4
http://https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49773869
http://https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-49767747
Earth's 5 Mass Extinctions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOuZiJKXxAQ
Topic Ideas for your first story
- Sports
- Neighborhood
- School issues: academics, lunch, uniforms, college prep, clubs, social life, more . . .
- Local, state, national and international issues
- Opinion
- Student/Teacher/individual profile
- LGBTQ
- https://youtu.be/t9D0RbYBEvQ
- College Issues
- Career Issues
- Anxiety/Teen stuggles (low self-esteem, being insecure)
- Hunger and housing deficiencies
- Sexuality/sex education
- Financial concerns
- Racism
- Immigration
- Family life
- Positive role modeling
- Sharing a favorite memory
william.bowles@detroitk12.org
Assignmet for Thur. and Friday, 19-20 Sept. 2019:
Amanda Gorman: "Earthrise" https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=xwOvBv8RLmo
Birds Lost: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/science/bird-populations-america-canada.html
Air Travel Emissions: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/climate/air-travel-emissions.html
Youth Court Case: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/climate/climate-lawsuit-juliana.html?module=inline
Trump Administration Rolls Back Environmental Regulations: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html
- Create a 5-Slide PowerPoint presentation on an aspect of climate change
- Focus on solutions
- https://www.un.org/en/actnow/index.shtml
- https://www.greenamerica.org/climate-change-100-reasons-hope/top-10-solutions-reverse-climate-change
- https://theyearsproject.com/learn/news/individual-solutions-climate-change/
- Geothermal (IHM House – Monroe, Mich.)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fILpcLPhUU#action=share
- Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/10-solutions-for-climate-change/
- cities https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/09/1046662
- Tidal
- Solar
- Fuel cell
- Nuclear fusion
- buildings’ and homes’ contribution to global warming (explain and demonstrate) (insulation, smart thermostats), etc.
- recycling medication – report affects on water
- recycling cosmetic products – toxins get into the water, composting . . .
- water conservation: where in the world is water in short supply?
- Water: describe which industries in the U.S. use the most water.
- Plastics and micro plastics: dangers and prevention
- Plastic bags and stores. Which cities and countries have banned plastic bags or charge customers for them.
- Have less children
- Relationship between our waming planet and severe weather events
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Assignmet for Wed. 18 Sept. 2019:
New York City Schools: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/nyregion/youth-climate-strike-nyc.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
Detroit: https://www.miclimateaction.org/detroit_mi_climate_strike
Climate
News Items 17 Sept. 2019
Mon., Oct. 21 - articles finished.
Mon., Oct. 28 - Final edit deadline
Nov. 7 - Print issue published
Two photos per story
Thur., Oct. 31 - Journalism conference in Lansing
https://mipamsu.org/mipa-conferences/fall-conference/
"Elephant in the room" story/issue: immigration
Assignmet for Tue. 17 Sept. 2019:
Individually or in your group describe:
1. How the climate is warming
a. Consider the use of fossil fuels.
2. What can we do as individuals and as a society to slow down and eventually reverse climate change?
a. Consider choices in lifestyle, including what we eat, our transporation and our waste products.
3. List three ways to combat climate change.
Greta Thunberg, 15, Addressing UN, Calls for Global School Strike
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/12/13/you_are_stealing_our_future_greta
Plastic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrPBYS5zzF8
Climate Nytimes
https://www.nytimes.com/section/climate
Harper's Findings:
New studies confirmed that the current warming period is without precedent in the past two thousand years. Permafrost in the Canadian Arctic is thawing seventy years ahead of schedule, nitrous-oxide emissions from Arctic permafrost are twelve times higher than expected, and it was feared that existing models may underestimate underwater glacial melt by two orders of magnitude. Wildfires ravaged the Arctic, a meltwater lake appeared at the North Pole, and a European heat wave caused the loss of 12.5 billion tons of Greenlandic ice in a single day, as well as record-high temperatures for several countries, including Britain, where the warming climate has enabled the arrival of the black bee fly (Anthrax anthrax), the Jersey tiger moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria), and the purple heron (Ardea purpurea). Only 38 percent of remaining tropical forests have a sufficiently wide latitudinal range to allow animals to move to cooler regions as the earth warms. A U.S.–Russian team found that even a mild warming scenario will increase the habitable area of Siberia several times over. The “early warming” period, from 1915 to 1945, was caused by external factors and not, as previously thought, by natural changes in ocean temperatures. Climate change was expected to make staple crops less nutritious and to lower the global availability of protein by a fifth, and may alter the mating calls of male weakfish. The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is now a recurring feature of the ocean.
Michigan Climate: https://www.miclimateaction.org
Climate Change
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/12/11/meet_the_15_year_old_swedish
Climate Change
“We are not prepared to die.” Those are the words that Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the low-lying island country of Maldives, delivered at the U.N. climate summit in Katowice, Poland, this week. In an impassioned plea for nations to overcome their differences, he urged world leaders to take decisive action to tackle climate change.
Cabinet Meeting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKoch_iEos8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EyaTqezSzs
Greta Thunberg, 15, Addressing UN, Calls for Global School Strike
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/12/13/you_are_stealing_our_future_greta
Delegates from nearly 200 countries have agreed to a United Nations deal on climate change that seeks to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius—or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
Coal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-aW538oOik
Clean Energy: hydro, wind, geothermal, solar
Leonardo DiCaprio - UN Ambassador of Peace
- What did Mohamed Nasheed, as president of the Maldives, do to call attention to climate change? Why did he do this?
- Describe the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
- What can you do to prevent plastic from entering our ecosystem?
- In which country did the UN Climate Summit recently take place?
- Name three fossil fuels.
- Which is used for transportation?
- Which is used for generating electricity?
- Name one type of coal mining.
- Name one method of extracting natural gas.
- Name one type of oil drilling.
- Name the most expensive and destructive method of producing oil.
- Name one site in the US where we find rising sea levels.
- T/F: Some big businesses and their media outlets deny the existence of climate change.
- Name two large Asian countries that have a significant carbon footprint.
- How many people rely on fishing to survive?
- What gas do rain forests absorb that helps stabilize the earth’s atmosphere?
- Name one dietary change you can make today to help reduce the carbon in our atmosphere.
- Name three types of “clean” energy.
- Name one form of “clean” transportation.
- What will you do with your empty plastic bottle?
News Items 16 Sept. 2019
Follow-up question from European Welfare system: it started in German in the 1800s as a means to consolodate different groups with different interests in society. It then spread gradually to other European countries. Main idea: a more satisfied population leads to less civil strife (protests, strikes, extreme poverty).
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2001/06/2001b_bpea_alesina.pdf
Saudi drone strike oil refinery https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/09/15/world/15iran/merlin_160801668_bb0a88aa-734d-43a2-afe8-53010924667a-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=web
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Girl swimmer bathing suit: Breckyn Willis
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyCD5JUlzqw
Obscenity
Oversexualizing
reinstated
discriminatory
romanticizes
salacious:
having or conveying undue or inappropriate interest in sexual matters.
"salacious stories"
paranoia
the ire of women: anger
getting leered at:
look or gaze in an unpleasant, malicious, or lascivious way.
"bystanders were leering at the nude painting"
lurid distraction:
very vivid in color, especially so as to create an unpleasantly harsh or unnatural effect.
"lurid food colorings"
|
synonyms: |
brightly colored, bright, overbright, brilliant, glaring, fluorescent, flaming, dazzling, vivid, intense; More |
"the more lurid details of the massacre were too frightening for the children"(of a description) presented in vividly shocking or sensational terms, especially giving explicit details of crimes or sexual matters.
|
synonyms: |
sensational, sensationalist, melodramatic, exaggerated, overdramatized, extravagant, colorful, trashy, rubbishy, cheap, pulp, tasteless, kitschy; |
de-weaponize my body
mundane:
lacking interest or excitement; dull.
"seeking a way out of his mundane, humdrum existence"
|
synonyms: |
humdrum, dull, boring, tedious, monotonous, tiresome, wearisome, prosaic, unexciting, uninteresting, uneventful, unvarying, unvaried, unremarkable, repetitive, repetitious, routine, ordinary, everyday, day-to-day, quotidian, run-of-the-mill, commonplace, common, workaday, usual, pedestrian, customary, regular, normal; |
tantamount to a scarlet letter: equivalent in seriousness to; virtually the same as.
The definition of a scarlet letter is an identifying mark or brand placed on someone who has committed adultery. An example of a scarlet letter is the Puritan woman in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 book The Scarlet Letter who cheated on her husband and had to wear a red A.
you are cast as a harlot: a prostitute
loose cardigans: a knitted sweater fastening down the front, typically with long sleeves.
the virality of Breckyn Willis’s story
she was objectified by adults on the basis of her figure: degrade to the status of a mere object.
"a deeply sexist attitude that objectifies women"
the stigma toward the female body:
a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.
"the stigma of having gone to prison will always be with me"
|
synonyms: |
shame, disgrace, dishonor; |
ostracizing:
exclude (someone) from a society or group.
"a group of people who have been ridiculed, ostracized, and persecuted for centuries"
|
synonyms: |
exclude, shun, spurn, cold-shoulder, give someone the cold shoulder, reject, repudiate, boycott, blackball, blacklist, cast off, cast out, shut out, avoid, ignore, snub, cut dead, keep at arm's length, leave out in the cold, bar, ban, debar, banish, exile
1. Imagine Breckyn Willis is a student at Western. She is a campion swimmer and you have known her for three years. Her victory is taken away because of the "swim suit issue." Write a letter to your principal ask her/him to reinstate Breckyn. (Minimum 2 paragraphs). Give specific reasons in your argument. You must use a minimum of 10 of the vocabulary words from the list above. Circle the words in your paper. |
Assignment for Mon., 16 Sept. 2019
Assignment for Fri., 13 Sept. 2019
___________________________________________________________________________
In the United States, a red flag law is a gun control law that permits police or family members to petition a state court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person who may present a danger to others or themselves.
___________________________________________________________________________
Quiz Review:
1. Flavored e-cigarettes were sanctioned by two governments in the past few days. Which two?
2. Inequality is accelerating in the U.S. through which type of economy?
3. Which state will pass laws requiring gig companies to treat their contract workers as company employees?
4.Which important segment of U.S. society called this week for gun regulation?
5. Which Michigan school district is considering arming teachers with guns?
6. Which amendment to the constitution do gun rights advocates cite most often?
7. Italy provides mothers of newborns with what?
8. Describe the attitude of German pencil factory workers toward their jobs.
9. Describe the differences between school lunches in France and those here.
10. What accounts for the differences in work, school, vacation, health and society in general in Europe and the U.S.?
____________________________________________________________________________
Assignment for Thur. 12 Sept. 2019
1. Trump Bans e-flavored cigarettes
2. Businesses call for gun regulation
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/business/dealbook/gun-background-checks-business.html
The Gig Economy (Rising Inequality)
List of gig companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_on-demand_companies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQfTJy0sRVs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d07OjplX-jg
California Law - Gig Economy
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/opinion/california-gig-economy-bill-ab5.html
Opinion on Law: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/technology/california-gig-economy-bill.html
Contrast with European social systems
M. Moore: Where to Invade Next
1. Italy
2. Germany
Social Welfare Systems
1. How many months of maternity leave do Italians get?
2. What is the relationship in Italy between business owners and workers?
3. Describe the philosopy toward their workers of the owners of the Italian clothing factory and the owner of the Ducati Motorcycle Company.
4. What is the relationship in Italy between work, stress and longevity?
5. What aspect of Italian society surprises you most? Why?
_____________________________________________________________________________
Assignment for Wed. 11 Sept. 2019
Interviewing Skills:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEdbKoY4wVs
1. Name
2. Age
3. "Do you think teachers should be armed with guns?"
4. Why or why not?
5. What is your general opinion about guns in our society?
6. What ideas do you have to keep school safe?
7. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Bowling for Columbine
Guns, violence and fear in Canada vs. the Unites States
____________________________________________________________________________
Assignment for Tue. 10 Sept. 2019
Addison School District
https://www.wxyz.com/news/addison-community-schools-considering-arming-teachers-employees
Emma Gonzalez - Parkland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxD3o-9H1lY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u46HzTGVQhg
Naomi Wadler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIEmXC33I0I
Michael Moore - Bowling for Columbine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY2PzzjO3zo
Second Amendment
https://gun-control.procon.org/
Assignment: Review alone or in your group these 14 arguments for and against gun control.
Write down the two strongest arguments in favor of your position and the two strongest arguments against your position.
___________________________________________________________________
Assignment for Mon. 9 Sept. 2019
Issue: Arming teachers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BawIaafTlO0
NRA (National Rifle Association): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJzTz4rxcdI
1. Read this story alone or with a partner.
2. Interview a partner about this issue.
3. Write a one-paragraph summary describing your partner's opinion of this issue.
LANSING – Teachers could be armed with guns in schools under legislation being developed by two Republicans in the Michigan House of Representatives.
The legislation is coming in the wake of yet another mass shooting, this time at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead two weeks ago, sparking protests across the nation from students, teachers and parents who want more gun control.
State Rep. Jim Runestad, R-White Lake, will schedule hearings this spring on a bill that he’s drafting that will allow school districts to provide access to guns in locked, undisclosed locations in school buildings to teachers who volunteer and who are trained in firearm use.
The teachers would have to go through 80 hours of training on how to shoot a gun, gun safety, how to engage with an active shooter and tactics to de-escalate a dangerous situation. The guns would be hidden in locked compartments that would only be accessible through the thumbprint of approved school employees.
ADVERTISING
Mike Thompson: Do you want teachers packing heat in your kids' classrooms?
Rochelle Riley: Parkland shooting should have spurred more political disobedience
More: Lockdown mode becoming the new normal at Michigan schools
“There are some teachers who I wouldn’t feel safe around if they had a butter knife,” Runestad said. “But this is something that will make a difference.”
Two other bills that are being developed by Rep. Gary Glenn, R-Williams Township, take two approaches to guns in schools: One would let local school districts allow employees with concealed carry weapons permits and extra training to carry guns in schools, the other would have the state mandate that school employees with CCWs be allowed to bring their guns to schools.
Both bills would require monthly training for teachers who decide to carry their weapons at work.
“On the gun issue, the two sides simply can’t comprehend those on the other side,” Glenn said. “So, I can’t comprehend when we secure other places like banks and the state Capitol with armed security, that we leave completely undefended the buildings that house our most precious commodity.”
Brian Dickerson: Young voters should scare incumbents. Here's why they don't.
More: Wayne-Westland classes canceled Tuesday because of social media threats
But schools and some Democratic lawmakers said teachers should be educating children, not becoming armed guards.
“My mom’s a teacher and I still have lunch with some of my former teachers. I talked with my school superintendents and I haven’t heard from a single one who has said we need to arm our teachers,” said state Rep. Robert Wittenberg, D-Oak Park. “The only person who should be in a school with a weapon is a licensed, trained uniform-wearing officer.”
Doug Pratt, spokesman for the Michigan Education Association, said teachers need to be armed with real solutions, such as smaller class sizes, more counselors and better security, rather than guns.
“It’s not something that makes sense,” he said. “What happens when a SWAT team member meets an armed teacher? What happens when a first-grader brings a gun to school? Does the teacher fire on her first-grader?”
More: Gov. Rick Snyder: 'I don’t think having more guns is a good thing'
More: Teachers to Trump: Arm us, but not with guns
Some school districts are already taking action to ensure that teachers don’t become the armed security at their schools. The East Lansing School District Board unanimously approved a resolution Monday night reiterating its opposition to open or concealed carry of guns in schools and calling on the state Board of Education to oppose all guns in schools except for those carried by trained law enforcement.
“Students cannot be safe unless and until all guns — other than those carried by trained law enforcement officers — are banned from our schools,” the resolution read.
About 100 people gathered on the steps of the state Capitol last week to call for more restrictive gun controls, including stricter background checks, a ban on high-capacity magazines, mandatory waiting periods before firearm purchases and increased funding for mental health care.
But the Legislature has been at an impasse on both expanding or restricting access to guns. The Senate has passed legislation that would allow concealed carry of weapons in gun-free zones, such as schools, bars, stadiums and churches, if the permit holder gets additional training. That bill has been stalled without a hearing or a vote in the House of Representatives.
The House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow concealed carry of guns without a permit for most Michiganders and that legislation has stalled in the Senate.
“We’re at that point now that we need to do something,” said Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive. “Safety and security of our schools and children and mental health issues can work in tandem.”
He suggested the possibility of using the state’s rainy day fund, along with school bonding issues, to help beef up security measures in schools.
But a speed bump on the gun issue is Gov. Rick Snyder, who vetoed legislation just days after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, that would have allowed concealed carry in schools for people with extra training. And he said last week that he doesn’t think that having more guns available is a good thing.
He added that so-called “red flag” legislation, which would allow authorities to take guns away from unstable individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others and restricting access to assault rifles, are issues worth examining.
Democrats have offered many bills that would restrict, but not ban, access to weapons, but none has gotten a hearing in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Meekhof and Runestad said that the red flag legislation, which was introduced by Wittenberg earlier this month, was not something they were particularly interested in pursuing.
“Without some type of due process, you may not be doing it properly,” Meekhof said. “It can’t just be willy nilly, saying I don’t like this person and their gun gets confiscated. That’s not OK."
Both Glenn and Runestad said they hope their bills will be ready to introduce within the next couple of weeks and taken up before the Legislature breaks for the summer in June.
Contact Kathleen Gray: 313-223-4430, kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal.
______________________________________________________________________________
Assignment for Friday 6 Sept. 2019
Michigan Bans Flavored e-cigarettes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWBzMORCJU8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ9-VIWIO-Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q947f3ZPShE
Quiz
- Who is the governor of Michigan?
- Dorian House
- Gretchen Whitmer
- Rick Snyder
- What did Michigan’s governor ban this week?
- gas taxes
- road funding
- flavored vaping devices
- What health issues have been associated with vaping?
- respiratory illnesses
- nicotine addiction
- a and b
- Vaping companies are associated with:
- Using candy flavors to hook young people.
- Claiming that vaping is less harmful than tobacco smoking.
- a. and b.
- Retailers must comply with the smoking ban in:
- 60 days
- 20 days
- 30 days
- “The state of Michigan faces a vaping crisis.” This statement was issued by:
- The Michigan Dept. of Health and Human Services
- The office of the Attorney General
- The Michigan State Library
- The vaping industry argues that:
- vaping is healthy
- vaping can help smokers of tobacco cigarettes to quit smoking.
- Vaping promotes good decision making.
- The president of the American Vaping Association says that the vaping ban will not discourage people from vaping, but force them to:
a. Buy vaping products on the black market
b. Vape at casinos
c. Train for triathlon events
9. Michigan is the ______ state to ban vaping.
- tenth
- third
- the first state, and San Francisco was the first city to ban vaping.
10. A popular vaping brand is
a. Stool
b. Kool
c. Juul
- 11. Russia has free and fair elections.
-
- True b. False
-
- Who is the chief executive of Hong Kong?
-
- Mary Lam
- Carrie Spam
- Hammy Lam
- Carrie Lam
-
- The government of Russia is:
a. a democracy
b. an autocracy
-
- The protesters in Hong Kong achieved an important victory when the chief executive announced the withdrawal of the extradition bill.
-
- True b. False
________________________________________________________
Homework for Thur. 5 Sept. 2019:
1. Identify a news story of your choice from a source of your choice.
2. Write down the following about the news story:
a. The source (the Internet is NOT a source).
b. The topic of your story.
c. The 5 W's of your story: who, what, when, where, why.
Moscow Students Speak https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49446736
http://www.libraryspot.com/features/currentevents.htm
https://www.npr.org/sections/news/
__________________________________________________________
Russia (Wed., 4 Sept. 2019)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftr5BovHt_g
Democracy: from Greek dēmokratia "popular government," from dēmos "common people," originally "district" (see demotic), + kratos "rule, strength" (see -cracy).
Autocracy: Greek autokrateia "absolute rule, rule by oneself," abstract noun from autokrates "ruling by oneself," from autos "self" (see auto-) + kratia "rule" (see -cracy). Meaning "absolute government, unlimited political power invested in a single person" is recorded from 1855.
By Michael Khodarkovsky
Professor Khodarkovsky is the author, most recently, of “Russia’s 20th Century: A Journey in 100 Histories.”
Sept. 3, 2019
Putin’s Nightmare: The Ballot Box
On the eve of regional elections, the Kremlin has turned to tricks, threats and shows of force to get past the shadows of protests and falling approval ratings for Russia’s
president.
- On Sept. 8, Russians will vote in municipal and regional elections, and the authorities are afraid. Not of any foreign power’s interference in Russia’s elections — there have been no fair elections in decades — but of Russia’s own people and opposition candidates, who are far more popular than the official nominees.
- Moscow’s old bag of electoral tricks survives — for example, moving elections from December to early September so that summer vacations would leave challengers little time to organize. The authorities have resorted to new tricks too, like clogging the electoral system with fake candidates and putting party loyalists on the ballot as independent candidates.
- This year’s election will also see a new mobile digital voting system that allows people to vote online from any location. Critics say it is yet another trick to help the authorities.
- Leaving nothing to chance, Moscow’s electoral commission found bogus reasons to disqualify all unapproved candidates from running in the elections. And to intimidate those would-be candidates, their homes were raided and many of them were detained, brought to Police Headquarters and interrogated in the middle of the night
Yet none of that worked: Thousands of people took to the streets, beginning on July 28, to protest the election committee’s decisions. In response, the authorities deployed an overwhelming force of local and federal police who detained most opposition leaders and nearly 1,400 demonstrators.
Two weeks later, when Moscow’s authorities permitted an organized meeting, some 60,000 people gathered in the streets despite government warnings and intimidation. Even though the meeting was officially sanctioned, the police used force to disperse the demonstrators and arrested hundreds. Since then, all opposition requests to allow meetings have been rejected.
The Kremlin has been sending a clear message: There will be no Hong Kong here, with its huge protests, nor any Istanbul, with its fair election that led to the opposition’s victory. And to achieve this, the Kremlin is determined to use violence on a large scale. It should surprise nobody. This is the natural evolution of an autocracy — when its public slowly turns against the regime, brute force remains the only means to stay in power.
By any measure, the decline of Putinism is indisputable. It was best captured by a poll conducted in May by the government-run Public Opinion Center, which showed that public trust in President Vladimir Putin had fallen to 25 percent. The Kremlin, which uses the center to gauge public opinion and rarely makes the results public, was furious and called for another poll. Several days later, a new poll showed that 72 percent of Russians had trust in the president. The Kremlin was happy, and the center promised “to improve its methodology.”
Then in June, after Mr. Putin’s annual Direct Line TV appearance — a question-and-answer marathon staged to present an all-knowing leader in direct communication with citizens — the channel’s YouTube site registered 12,000 likes and 170,000 dislikes. Some experts calculated Mr. Putin’s support among this audience at about 7 percent.
With the examples of Hong Kong and Istanbul perhaps on their minds, Mr. Putin and his cronies surely remember how, 30 years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev experimented with a limited free election. Previous Soviet national and regional elections had been shams, with Communist Party candidates invariably winning their posts because they faced no competitors.
Mr. Gorbachev wanted to invigorate the Soviet system by making it more competitive and allowing some nonparty members into its legislative body.
To do so, he created a new legislative body: the Congress of People’s Deputies, consisting of 2,250 delegates. One-third of the seats were reserved for Communist Party members, leaving the other two-thirds open to contest. Of course, even in the openly elected seats, the party-endorsed candidates had numerous advantages. And yet, when the election took place in March 1989, there were big surprises: 300 candidates, or about 16 percent of the new legislative body, had defeated party-endorsed candidates. Among those who lost were five Central Committee members, one member of the Politburo, and 35 regional party bosses.
Mr. Gorbachev touted the new election as a victory for his reforms and a successful effort to democratize the Soviet political system. The hard-liners, unnerved by new freedoms and unaccustomed to any political opposition, were not amused then, as they are not amused now.
One longtime Kremlin insider and an architect of Mr. Putin’s regime, Vladislav Surkov, recently declared that Russia could be maintained only as a military-police state, and that Mr. Putin was the only leader whom the Russian people could trust. Putinism, he maintained, was a new political system, and like Marxism or Leninism, would last for centuries.
Despite such wishful thinking — or posturing — at the top, Putinism has been steadily falling apart: Government-controlled media are struggling to sustain the president’s falling ratings; Russia’s regions are impoverished; the oil- and gas-dependent economy is anemic; Russia’s elites are consumed by infighting for pieces of a shrinking pie; and the young generation is less susceptible than their forebears to government propaganda.
Putinism appears destined to last a far shorter time than either Marxism or Leninism. It was conceived as a hybrid autocracy in which a ruling elite controls most of the economy and media in the name of the state, but tolerates a limited number of independent but closely watched businesses and media outlets. Unlike the Chinese Communist Party, with its total control of society, Mr. Putin’s Kremlin has chosen to leave an escape valve for dissenting opinions — as long as they remain marginal and pose no threat to those in power.
A
But this model may have now reached its end. The opposition proved to be less marginal than the Kremlin hoped and, as dissatisfaction with the regime grew, the Kremlin decided there was no longer any usefulness in pretending that democracy ruled. The irony is that despite Moscow’s new willingness to move toward a stricter Chinese mode, it is the seriousness with which Russians took those previous grants of limited liberties that now make harsh repression necessary.
In truth, Russia has already reverted to a military-police state, keeping Mr. Putin and his regime in power mainly by force and intimidation. Not relying on police alone, the Kremlin in 2016 created a special force of 340,000 strong Russian Guards, whose mission is primarily “protecting public order.” The government has also been steadily dismantling what is left of a market economy, moving assets into the state coffers and investing in a rapidly expanding military-industrial complex.
Most of the recent mass arrests, and the brutal treatment of protesters and members of the opposition, are a clear indication that the regime is fully prepared to use violence to stay in power.
The Kremlin understands that genuine democracy would mean the end of Putinism, and so it leaves those who desire change through democratic means with no options. But does Mr. Putin really want to turn Red Square into a Russian Tiananmen Square?
Michael Khodarkovsky is a professor of history at Loyola University Chicago.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
- When are Russia’s municipal elections?
- Russia has free and fair elections.
- Who is more popular: official candidates or members of the opposition?
- Name one “electoral trick” used by the government to defeat the opposition.
- Whose homes were raided by the police.
- How did many citizens react to these tactics?
- What did the police do to protestors?
- What is meant by “there will be no Hong Kong here?”
- How does an autocracy stay in power?
- What dishonest tactics were used by the Public Opinion Center?
- Describe one difference between the Chinese Communist Party and Putin’s Russia.
- Tiananmen Square in China. What happened there in 1989?
___________________________________________________________
Hong Kong Protests (Tue., 3 Sept. 2019)
- Why are residents of Hong Kong protesting?
- Where is Hong Kong?
- Who is the governor of Hong Kong?
- What is the special status of Hong Kong?
- What is it that residents fear the most?
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_RdnVtfZPY
https://www.britannica.com/place/Hong-Kong