Tragedy in Japan

I have been following the unfolding tragedy in Japan after the recent earthquake and tsunami. At times like these it is on my mind about what can one do to make a difference. Perhaps donations to an organization providing relief? News organizations have been recommending the Red Cross (you can text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 from your phone) or the International Medical Corps. Google has even created a list of organizations you can support.

Regardless, keep these folks in your minds and hearts.

It's Pink Slip Time!

These days, every spring, it seems teachers in public schools face the possibility of losing their jobs. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, a "record number" of teachers will be laid off in the face of budget challenges that schools districts are facing. Perhaps one of the problems is a nearly 40 year old system used to calculate funding for schools. That system, implemented it seems after California voters passed (what I think was) the seriously flawed Prop 13 anti-tax initiative which, as some analysts insist is one of the root causes of our current financial melt-down and needs to be reconsidered, producing what one researcher calls the "roller coaster" budgeting process we see today. Since this system limited the ability of local governments to raise revenue using property taxes, it made education funding more susceptible to the roller coaster of the state's budget process. Here's a short history of Prop 13 from a San Diego PBS Station:

And, Prop 13 continues to enjoy support among California voters, though some polls suggest that support is declining as public services crumble (like cuts to schools).

Here's the rub, however. Why is it that California's want all their public services but don't want to pay for them? They want good schools but don't want to pay taxes to support them. They want the state to be responsive to their particular needs (fire, police, public parks, libraries) but don't seem to make a connection between access and financing them. Perhaps, as the news about the continued attacks on public sector unions continues, voters just think there is a lot of fat to go around and all we need do is cut it out (that of course, would include pensions, affordable health care for state workers and their families etc.). I think there is a deeper cause as well.

It seems to me that this is all part of a wider restructuring of the relationship of government to citizens that has been happening since the 1970s in fits and starts. As historian Julian Zelizer has suggested recently, these specific attacks on public sector unions are symptomatic of a wider assault on the liberal tradition represented by the New Deal (social security, unemployment insurance, collective bargaining among others) that promotes the idea that government does have a role in making our lives better. Zelizer suggests that Franklin D. Roosevelt and others, on the heels of the Great Depression, believed that government "was needed to provide a floor of security to all Americans and to reduce some of the extreme risks that citizens faced in a market-based economy."

So I ask you. What do you think the role of government should be in your life? What services and support do you expect? Do you want excellent schools? Access to affordable public colleges and universities? Fire and police protections when you need them? Books and other resources that a public library can provide? State parks?

And what are you willing to pay? Or, to put it another way, are you willing to support all of these things to ensure that all Californians--especially those with limited means--can enjoy them too?

This is what democracy looks like

If you have not been following the news, thousands are protesting the Governor of Wisconsin, the recently elected Republican Scott Walker, and his proposed "budget repair bill" (a summary here) which would essentially eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees (that is, limit contract bargaining to wages and only permit year long contracts). There have been protests for several days in the capital (Madison) and all kinds of folks are turning out in support--teachers, firefighters, students, more students, and other sympathetic members of the public and union members. Support for the protesters is also coming from around the U.S. and the world. As protesters chanted in the Wisconsin State house, "this is what democracy looks like." Glad to see Wisconsin's progressive history is still being made!

Protests and exercise of free speech aside, what I find very interesting is how this seems to be, in part, fallout from a bad economy for working and middle class folks, a right-wing attack on unionized workers, and special contempt for public sector workers (like professors at state universities like me) which has been a long time coming. Critics suggest public employees need to "share the pain." The argument goes something like this: If private sector workers have lost jobs. lost benefits, don't have pension plans, or health care, then pubic employees should not either.

Now, this "race to the bottom" argument seems misplaced to me. Rather than talking about why it is that Wall Street seems to be doing fine, how tax cuts are increasing budget deficits, and working people have not "recovered" that many good permanent jobs, critics of public employees (and their unions) are targeted as the problem. In other words, these kinds of attacks are a sham, distracting us from the real dialogue that has to happen or the real issues at stake with budgets. What is perhaps indicative of the illusory nature of this targeting is the Wisconsin example. News reports suggest that workers are more than willing to come to the table (perhaps willing to give up more than they should to retain collective bargaining rights). Maybe the Governor is using this budget crisis as an excuse to break the unions (not a surprise). There are definitely many complex issues to negotiate. Seems to be that bargaining--which brings all the parties to the table--is the way to go. Not some top down imposed budget "solution" which is actually not one.

Poetry as Free Speech

Starting a new thread.... thinking about the arts and free speech.

Taking Free Speech Seriously

Now that Hosni Mubarak has resigned as President of Egypt, all those activists who have been struggling for years as well as the throngs of crowds that have taken to the streets, the real work now begins to try to assemble a new government (perhaps) with an eye toward meeting some of the demands that forced Mubarek's hand. Among these is is freedom of speech, which has taken a beating in years past (literally sometimes) against those expressing dissenting points of view.

Teaching a free speech class this unfolding of events has really forced me to think about just how seriously we take the issue of free speech. On the surface, we argue a lot about this, claim our free speech rights at the drop of a hat when someone tries to silence us, but do we really understand the complex history of free speech in the United States? Do we really want to know?

Now, don't take this the wrong way, but I am sometimes struck by students who really don't care to know how this all came about. Some tell me, "I just don't like history" or "this is too complicated" or "this history is boring." But, when I look at faces of protesters in Egypt on the news, and see people who are really, perhaps for the first time, seeking what it feels like to express oneself freely, in public, through speeches, poetry, art, music, calling leaders to account, and then seeing the result unfold, I cannot but think that these folks know this history of repression intimately and now see change happening. Perhaps we in the United States are just too complacent about our "rights," or we figure someone else can worry about them. Or we don't care. I am not sure.

I would urge that to really understand what free speech means today requires the perspective that history can give us--warts and all. That history is essential for us to understand. For, as I hope students will learn in my class, many people faced enormous struggles to gain such freedom in the face of oppression, served jail time for speaking out, suffered violent deaths, or confronted government officials in non-violent ways to assert their right to speak, be heard, and state their grievances. Just like in Egypt. Not the same, of course, but human struggles to be heard have a kind of shared eloquence to me. All we have to do is listen (and take those stories seriously).

Photos: CM Coexistencemag.com (from The Terry Project blog); This Week in History from Peacebuttons

Consuming Human Rights Stories

So, one of the classes I am teaching this semester is a senior capstone course focusing on human rights. Today, we had a really interesting conversation about how stories about human rights--short stories, novels, testimonios, films, etc. are one way we learn about human rights issues around the world. While that may be true, it is also the case that these stories sell. A lot. So, one of the questions I came away from the discussion has to do with who controls these stories and who benefits from them. So, for example, if someone makes a film about human rights abuses in another part of the world, I go to my local theater or a film festival to watch it, and then go home, who benefits? So, if the filmmaker is an outsider--not telling their own story--don't they have a vested interest in making a dramatic, marketable story? The owner of the production company, I assume, wants to make money on this story. Is human suffering something that others should profit from? And what about me--the person who pays to see the film? What do I "get" from this, especially if I can't (or don't want to) do something about it?

Here's an example of how art/film can be used as a way to share human rights stories:

What do you think? What do such narratives accomplish? Do they really benefit the communities that are represented? Something to think about...

Here's more information about the full film from the above trailer.

Protest

After our class yesterday--where we looked at the protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention--I was thinking a lot about the protests that have erupted in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere the last few weeks. In particular, this raw footage from the AP about Friday's military and police response in Egypt caught my attention.

On the one hand, from the point of view of the United States, one might look at these violent responses to street protest and say, "I am thankful that does not happen here!" On the other hand, one need only study U.S. history to come across plenty of examples of suppression of protest--especially in the streets--whether it was attacks on the labor movement or the African-American civil rights movement of the 1960s. So, there needs to be some perspective here about timing, degree, and context.

I guess I would look for what these various examples have in common--taking to the streets to protest when formal political channels are not open to you OR are not responsive to your grievances. In the U.S., we do have a constitutional system (and the First Amendment) to claim as our mantle to justify such protest, regardless of how police (or the state) responds. And, as we will study this semester, the meaning of "free speech" and how people can exercise it has changed over time. Moreover, the policing practices at the RNC in 2004 suggests that those legal structures may, in the end, protect you, but in the moment, perhaps not, in terms of getting your point across without harassment. Besides, the historian in me also knows that what really happened may take some time to unravel. Still, using pens to contain protesters and making illegal arrests are one thing. Bullets and tanks in the street another.

UPDATE: Really interesting to watch the coverage from Al Jazeera English, streaming here.

Getting started

The new semester is almost here and I am about to begin teaching this free speech and responsibility course again. This is one of my favorite courses, which I teach every spring, and as ever it presents me and my students a great opportunity to think about the legal, political, ethical and social dimensions of "freedom of expression," particularly in the United States. Because I teach this course every year, I am able to revisit issues which, a few years back, might have been a glimmer in the future of free speech controversies. For example, this term I am especially interested in campaign finance and the impact of the Citizens United case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last term, around this time. It was too late for me to really engage deeply with the issue last spring and I had attempted to introduce the issue several semesters back, but have not revisited it recently. So, I am glad I get to work through my own thinking about the impact of the case with my students.

As ever, in a cash-strapped public university, the class is larger than I would like. While some of my colleagues might balk at the idea that 45 students is a large class, for my own pedagogy and that this is an ethics course as much as a history, law and politics course, always gives me pause. I always struggle with the question of how to provide students the opportunity for developing their ideas about interpersonal communication ethics when the numbers seem to defy the possibilities. So, as I have been doing for several semesters, students will work in small seminars as well as a large cohort, giving them a chance to think about what it means to deliberate, in both small and larger settings, issues of pressing concern where we may disagree, in a way that is productive and ethical. Now, despite that gridlock and inability to communicate across differences seems to be the "new normal" in politics today, I still maintain that these kinds of deliberative spaces are possible, and I owe it to my students to help them think about what it takes to create them.

So, as I begin to chronicle this semester's free speech adventure, I am as ever optimistic and hopeful.

Image courtesy of Mellowbox