The Fiscal Cliff is a fiscal scam

Reject the Fiscal Cliff, Tax the Rich, Invest in Infrastructure and Services

 DSA rejects the “fiscal cliff” hysteria of the corporate establishment and the pressure for a “Grand Bargain” that would cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. While unemployment remains high and economic growth slow, the government should not impose austerity measures that reduce essential programs that benefit the middle and working classes and that further shred the safety net for the most vulnerable. Rather, government policy should prioritize investments in job creation, public education and healthcare reform, while raising essential revenues by taxing the large corporations and wealthiest citizens who can afford to pay.

Those who will suffer.  Photo. D. Bacon

Immediately after the election, Wall Street-backed foundations such as Third Way and the Concord Coalition organized a “Campaign to Fix the Debt” to spin the election results as a mandate for a “bi-partisan” focus on reducing the deficit as the highest national priority. For decades the billionaire Pete Peterson has funded groups that claim that the universal entitlement programs Social Security and Medicare are bankrupting the nation and that their future growth must thus be drastically trimmed.  These neoliberals scored an initial success in 2011 when the Simpson-Bowles Congressional Commission put to a vote a long-term “budget compromise” that would have instituted three times as much in budget cuts than in tax increases.

   If your tax bill goes up $2,200 a year, or you're one of the millions who would stop receiving unemployment benefits, the cause of your economic pain is not some a natural disaster, or a major structural flaw in the economy. The cause is Republican fear of being beaten in a primary by people like Sarah Palin, Sharon Angel or Richard Mourdock - funded by far Right Wing oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers. It's that simple.

Fight for $15, cuz we can't survive on $8.25!

Downtown Chicago retail and restaurant workers are organizing to fight for a living wage of $15 per hour through their new union, the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC). On December 22, 2012 WOCC led a march through Chicago’s upscale Magnificent Mile shopping district to press their cause. It ended with a sit-in and 24 arrests next to the Michigan Ave Macy’s.

Mexico to ‘Reform’ Education, Too | Labor Notes

Mexico to ‘Reform’ Education, Too | Labor Notes

Stop Deporting Parents

Stop Deporting Parents - Record Number of Deportations in Last Two Years of Parents of U.S. Citizens Nearly 205K Deportations of Parents of U.S. Citizens in Just Over Two Years

by Seth Freed Wessler

The federal government conducted more than 200,000

deportations of parents who said their children are U.S.

citizens in a timespan of just over two years, according to

new data obtained by Colorlines.com. The figures represent the

longest view to date of the scale of parental deportation.

Between July 1, 2010, and Sept. 31, 2012, nearly 23 percent of

all deportations - or, 204,810 deportations - were issued for

parents with citizen children, according to federal data

unearthed through a Freedom of Information Act request.

December 17, 2012 ,  ColorLines

http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/12/us_deports_more_than_200k_parents.html

Choosing Democracy: First Nations - Hunger Strike for justice

Choosing Democracy: First Nations - Hunger Strike for justice: Chief Theresa Spence on 14th day of hunger strike - Craig Brown, staff writer http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/24-1 The 'Idle N...

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: El Paso, Austin, seek to secede from Texas

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: El Paso, Austin, seek to secede from Texas: El Paso, a city in Texas joined the city of Austin, by also filing a petition requesting to secede from the State of Texas, should Texas ...

Killing Spree on the Border

Killing Spree on the Border

Chicano/Mexican American Digital History project

A new, revised Mexican American Digital History has been created on line.  Our goal is to create an on-line history collection of Chicano / Mexican American/Latino history in the Sacramento region. You can find the project at MexicanAmericanDigitalHistory.org

  We encourage participation and contributions by others based upon the model established by the Farmworker Movement documentation project.  See example. http://www.farmworkermovement.us/

The project has begun to assemble and to create a digital history of  Chicano and Mexican American history and activism in the Sacramento region 1940 to the present. We will collect, write, and post this history so that it is not lost nor discarded.  We will make this history available to teachers to balance the lack of Chicano history in the public schools and universities.

La Jornada en Internet: Atenta reforma educativa contra la estabilidad de maestros: Morena

La Jornada en Internet: Atenta reforma educativa contra la estabilidad de maestros: Morena

http://mexico.cnn.com/nacional/2012/12/10/el-gobierno-presenta-una-reforma-educativa-para-vigilar-al-magisterio

Choosing Democracy: School to Prison Pipeline

Choosing Democracy: School to Prison Pipeline: Susan Feriss, The so-called “school to prison pipeline” — which has been the subject of several Center for Public Integri...

Latino Leaders on immigration

Latino Groups Warn Congress to Fix Immigration, or Else

By JULIA PRESTON. NY Times.  Dec.13, 2012,

WASHINGTON — The nation’s largest Latino organizations warned Congress on Wednesday that they will keep a report card during the immigration debate next year, with plans to mobilize their voters against lawmakers who do not support a comprehensive immigration bill.

At a news conference here, seven Latino groups and one labor union were showing their muscle, after the record turnout of Hispanic voters in the November elections played a pivotal role in President Obama’s re-election victory.

Janet Murguía, the president of N.C.L.R., also known as the National Council of La Raza, said the Eliseo Medina.    This  election had been a “game-changer” that conclusively “made the political case for a bipartisan solution” on immigration.

L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa taking heat from Democratic left

by Marta Evry 

In a sign that progressive push-back against Los Angeles Mayor Villariagosa's membership in the right-wing "Fix The Debt" lobbying group isn't abating, activists from MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered over 21,000 signatures to LA City Hall this afternoon demanding Villariagosa resign from the group's steering committee.

"They call themselves bipartisan because they're able to buy members of both parties," said Richard Eskow, a blogger for the Campaign for America's Future.

"The primary agenda for these folks is to lower taxes for millionaires, billionaires and corporations," he said.

In a scathing Huffington Post article about the Campaign To Fix the Debt's agenda, Eskow was even more blunt, "Let's be clear: This crowd doesn't really care about deficits. It never has. It's an anti-tax group which pursues its goals by fighting to downsize government programs and "reform" the Internal Revenue code. Its natural allies are the Republican Party, the nation's mega-corporations, and billionaires."

Besides MoveOn.org and the PCCC, the Calfornia-based Courage Campaign has also called on Villaraigosa to resign from the group.

"The so-called 'Campaign to Fix the Debt' is nothing more than a front group to protect tax cuts for the wealthy while balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and elderly," said founder Rick Jacobs.  "The fact that Mayor Villaragosa, or any other Democrat that claims to want to protect Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, would join this effort is nothing short of shameful....Mayor Villaragosa should resign immediately."

From Calitics. 

Debate: Is Arizona's ethnic studies ban racist?

Debate: Is Arizona's ethnic studies ban racist?

Penn State Students for a Democratic Society and Young Democratic Socialist  is a collective of the student left committed to challenging systems of oppression on our campus and in our community by means of direct action and participatory democracy.

We are contacting you today to address a photo that has surfaced in our community recently. The photo features sisters of the Chi Omega Nu Gamma chapter. These Penn State students are wearing sombreros and fake black moustaches, donning multi-colored serapes, and holding maracas. Additionally, the students are seen holding two signs: one reads “Will mow lawn for weed and beer” and the other, “I don’t cut grass I smoke it.” This display is absolutely racist and it perpetuates stereotypes about Mexicans, Latinos and Hispanics that are untrue.

We believe that sororities are an example of the student community and at all times should be committed to social responsibility. Our university must be presented in the most positive light. As with previous issues of controversy, SDS and YDS believes the Penn State administration has done a poor job of properly addressing the situation. When our university is already in a vulnerable position after the Sandusky child rape scandal that broke last Fall, it is even more reprehensible that a respected sorority on campus would allow it’s sisters to display such an irrefutable display of racism. The photo in question has been circulated widely on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr where it received over 700 notes within less than 24 hours.

The Chicano Movement from 1960's to Today

Chicana/o history

Over 100,000 Texans sign petition to secede from U.S.

A petition seeking Texas' secession from the United States that's been signed by tens of thousands of residents is gaining attention.

While the Texas petition does not explicitly name the re-election of President Obama as the reason to secede, it claimed the nation continues to suffer because of the "federal government's neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending."

As of Tuesday afternoon the Texas secession petition had more than 81,000 signatures, which would require a response from the White House.

Mark Jones, Rice University's Political Science Department Chair, said he does not think Texas will ever secede from the Union.

"It's fun for parlor conversations to talk about what if Texas became its own country, but it's not going to happen," said Jones. "It would create a lot of chaos and problems for Texas, because we're so intertwined with the rest of the nation from commerce, trade, rules and regulations. It would have a negative impact on the Texas economy."

Editors note;

Please do so.  Que les vayan bien!

BMED Graduate - Principal Turns School Around

dlambert@sacbee.com

PUBLISHED SUNDAY, DEC. 02, 2012

This is the third in an occasional series on principals who are turning around local schools.

Maria Lewis spends much of her day on bent knee. The 44-year-old principal bends down to give direction to bigger kids and to soothe the smallest. But mostly she bends down to listen.

It's clear that kids come first on the T.L. Whitehead Elementary campus in Woodland.

"Every child can learn," Lewis said. "They may be lacking some skills. So what? Let's try to build on prior knowledge."

She must be right. The school's Academic Performance Index has grown from 704 to 793 in the two years since she took the reins of the school. On a scale of 200 to 1,000, the statewide benchmark is 800 for each school.

The increase was enough to make Whitehead Elementary the only traditional school in the four-county region to come out of program improvement this year, a designation Title 1 schools receive if state officials don't think they are improving their scores quickly enough.

"We are really proud" of Whitehead Elementary, Debra Calvin, an associate superintendent at Woodland Unified, told The Bee in October. "It's an incredibly difficult thing to do to pull a school out of Program Improvement."

Mrs. Lewis is a graduate of the Sac State BMED program. Like hundreds of other graduates she has done a great job.  The program has now been terminated.  For details see, The Chicano / Mexican American Digital History project. https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/history-of-bilingual-education-dept-at-sac-state

read the entire piece on Mrs. Lewis at the Bee. http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/02/v-print/5024345/principal-put-struggling-school.html