Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....
I see he teaches in English. The single most complex language in the world. I know so many people, by default Texans, who scream like a cougar being eviscerated using nail clippers about English Only! but they can't actually speak or especially read and write English.
True story, Ft Worth (for yankees and other foreigners who haven't gone There, it's the next county to the west of Dallas, and home to the richest (but only in two of the 42 municipalities in Tarrant County) school districts in the country, Southlake/Carroll) is a super rich and super poor municipality. It's the place where Lee Harvey Oswald grew up and is buried.In between there and the Dallas County Line is Arlington, where the Dallas Cowboys play. Ah, recognition dawns.
The county, despite the vast wealth, and proximity to other wealth pockets, like the Park Cities, University, Highland and Fair Parks, (Fair Park is where the Cowboys started, God it's shameful that the only way to really describe the local political boundaries... and University Park is where George W Bush has his blasphemous Temple To Himself on Southern Methodist Univ., and Southern Methodists up until 1974 had been, like the Southern Baptists who have their main seminary in Ft Worth, separated from the General Assembly over the issue of whether Slave Owners could be Missionaries (!) and further Take Their Slaves On Their Missions (!!!!!!!!!) Despite that wealth and history Tarrant County has a 50% rate of adult literacy. Meaning half of all adults can't be eligible for military service because they don't have reading, comprehension and vocabulary at a 6th grade level.
Fans of the Beverly Hillbillies show might find this a bit dated, but in the 60s one of the selling points of the Great Society package, THE selling point, was with the poor nutrition, health care, dental care and education, most rural Southerners and a lot of inner city kids couldn't be drafted, due to scurvy, rickets, not enough teeth, and Not Reading On A (as Jethro Bodine said often on the show) Genuine 6th Grade Graduate level. I have to split this into two comments.
Damn Google, won't let you finish a comment with their character count limit.
It was what the State Department and Pentagon now call "an Emergent Situation". Strangely, 70% of the Tarrant County vote went to Trump.
That statistic is repetitive, it's almost a standard, in any election Tarrant Co.goes Republican.
Another new word in the american vocabulary is "weaponize" as in "the Military Industrial Complex have weaponized the english language"
Literacy is considered a weapon of war. Has been for some time but maybe The People, everywhere, might suddenly why the poorest are systematically denied Education. And why the Richest keep campaigning to destroy labor laws, public education, Health Care (can't learn well with an empty belly) and now the New President has surrounded himself with people who preach that Truancy and Child Labor restrictions, the Poor Children are being somehow deprived of opportunity.
Yes, they sho' does love us po' folks, want to protect us from too much fancy book larnin'. It's the reason the Slave Codes forbade literacy and the Klan attacked schools more than any other institutions.
Hitler Speaks, a book by his private physician, records der Fuhrer as saying "Universal Public Education is the most corrosive poison Liberalism can inflict on itself, the Masses need only enough education to be efficient coolies for our industries and soldiers for our army, beyond that it stirs unrest and discontent with their status"
Which the Wall Street Elite say is a fake. That would be a marketable asset, you know, belief that Hitler never said anything at all like that. Countries like Pakistan, oh my, it's not possible they would be held down by lack of public education on behalf of the Capitalist Empire.
But the Elitists make absolutely certain their own spawn have educational opportunity. Some, like GW Bush, well, ... you know...
But as a matter of course Bush would be an anomaly. How much would you like to wager that our friend the fireman will be investigated as a 'terrorist'? But the education has, to quote another modern phrase, already gone viral.
I see he teaches in English. The single most complex language in the world. I know so many people, by default Texans, who scream like a cougar being eviscerated using nail clippers about English Only! but they can't actually speak or especially read and write English.
ReplyDeleteTrue story, Ft Worth (for yankees and other foreigners who haven't gone There, it's the next county to the west of Dallas, and home to the richest (but only in two of the 42 municipalities in Tarrant County) school districts in the country, Southlake/Carroll) is a super rich and super poor municipality. It's the place where Lee Harvey Oswald grew up and is buried.In between there and the Dallas County Line is Arlington, where the Dallas Cowboys play. Ah, recognition dawns.
The county, despite the vast wealth, and proximity to other wealth pockets, like the Park Cities, University, Highland and Fair Parks, (Fair Park is where the Cowboys started, God it's shameful that the only way to really describe the local political boundaries... and University Park is where George W Bush has his blasphemous Temple To Himself on Southern Methodist Univ., and Southern Methodists up until 1974 had been, like the Southern Baptists who have their main seminary in Ft Worth, separated from the General Assembly over the issue of whether Slave Owners could be Missionaries (!) and further Take Their Slaves On Their Missions (!!!!!!!!!) Despite that wealth and history Tarrant County has a 50% rate of adult literacy. Meaning half of all adults can't be eligible for military service because they don't have reading, comprehension and vocabulary at a 6th grade level.
Fans of the Beverly Hillbillies show might find this a bit dated, but in the 60s one of the selling points of the Great Society package, THE selling point, was with the poor nutrition, health care, dental care and education, most rural Southerners and a lot of inner city kids couldn't be drafted, due to scurvy, rickets, not enough teeth, and Not Reading On A (as Jethro Bodine said often on the show) Genuine 6th Grade Graduate level. I have to split this into two comments.
Damn Google, won't let you finish a comment with their character count limit.
ReplyDeleteIt was what the State Department and Pentagon now call "an Emergent Situation". Strangely, 70% of the Tarrant County vote went to Trump.
That statistic is repetitive, it's almost a standard, in any election Tarrant Co.goes Republican.
Another new word in the american vocabulary is "weaponize" as in "the Military Industrial Complex have weaponized the english language"
Literacy is considered a weapon of war. Has been for some time but maybe The People, everywhere, might suddenly why the poorest are systematically denied Education. And why the Richest keep campaigning to destroy labor laws, public education, Health Care (can't learn well with an empty belly) and now the New President has surrounded himself with people who preach that Truancy and Child Labor restrictions, the Poor Children are being somehow deprived of opportunity.
Yes, they sho' does love us po' folks, want to protect us from too much fancy book larnin'. It's the reason the Slave Codes forbade literacy and the Klan attacked schools more than any other institutions.
Hitler Speaks, a book by his private physician, records der Fuhrer as saying "Universal Public Education is the most corrosive poison Liberalism can inflict on itself, the Masses need only enough education to be efficient coolies for our industries and soldiers for our army, beyond that it stirs unrest and discontent with their status"
Which the Wall Street Elite say is a fake. That would be a marketable asset, you know, belief that Hitler never said anything at all like that. Countries like Pakistan, oh my, it's not possible they would be held down by lack of public education on behalf of the Capitalist Empire.
But the Elitists make absolutely certain their own spawn have educational opportunity. Some, like GW Bush, well, ... you know...
But as a matter of course Bush would be an anomaly. How much would you like to wager that our friend the fireman will be investigated as a 'terrorist'? But the education has, to quote another modern phrase, already gone viral.