5 posts tagged “politics”
Oh, boy, am I proud to be an American today. Not so proud to be a Californian, but so proud of my country for electing Barack Obama in dare I say a LANDSLIDE. (Or it will be when NC's votes finally come in. ) Look at that beautiful blue map, folks.
Eric and I spent Election Night at Silicon Valley for Obama's big party at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, which was pretty fantastic. I know most of those people put in WAY more time and effort than I did in getting Obama elected, but besides a few bucks sent to Howard Dean in 2003, I've never been remotely involved in anything political besides casting my ballot. So for me, knocking on doors before the primary, going to house parties before the convention, calling swing states this past month (with my MOM, no less!), putting up my Obama and No on 8 signs in our window ... it feels like the height of civic engagement. And with Obama's election, it feels like the dream of grassroots movements isn't dead, that unlikely dreams can prevail with enough people caring and doing just a little bit more.
I bet it feels that way for a lot of people today.
(Here's the tenuous book-related content): I read
Maybe he won't be able to achieve everything we've asked of him. Maybe we won't be able to do everything I hope he asks of us. But I think it's possible that the movement is bigger than the one person, and that how I feel -- that my contribution can make a difference, that my vote is important, that I'm not just a taxpayer or a constituent but a CITIZEN and that I too can bring about change -- is not my feeling alone but a feeling shared by millions of others who never dreamed that a day like this would happen in their lifetimes, if ever. So many wounds are beginning to heal today. So many wrongs are beginning to be rectified.
And then California has to go and harsh the vibe by stripping away basic human rights from fellow citizens. It's sad that the exultation about Obama's election is so tempered and tainted with the deep sorrow and outrage I feel about Prop 8 passing.
Let's hope the courts do the right thing again.
I'm thinking a lot about the upcoming election. And by "a lot", I mean EVERY WAKING MOMENT. Apart from trying to do what I can for Barack Obama in $20 increments and hour-slot phonebanking, my colleague and I are putting together a mock election at our school, complete with 8th-grade-led "town hall" meetings presenting the candidates' positions, amid Much Political Sniping and Griping.
There are apparently a handful of high-rolling, sensitive-type Republicans who are feeling oppressed by the largely Democratic community of my Jewish Day School. One has even questioned whether I am providing "equal time" to the Republican candidate in our library collection (an "activist librarian"!). I am professionally offended!
So I've not been trumpeting my politics at school, so much. But I am tired of lurking in the dark, people! I don't need no stinkin' secret ballot! Here are my ENDORSEMENTS for all y'all:
PRESIDENT: Barack Obama. Why: Time for change!
US REP (Dist. 15): Mike Honda. Why: No time for change!
STATE SENATE (Dist. 11): Joe Simitian. Why: Sounded good on the smart voter website!
STATE ASSEMBLY: Jim Beall, Jr. Why: Seems to not be stinking it up?
SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE: Diane Ritchie. Why: Need some women judges!
WEST VALLEY-MISSION COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT: Okay, these I am actually leaving blank. They are not exactly blanketing me with information about my choices.
CAMPBELL-UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT: Lizandro Carrasco and Rick Costanzo. Why: ZZ's in their names! (not only that, but who can resist?)
CAMBRIAN SCHOOL DISTRICT: Randy J. Scofield and Susan Pyne. Why: Like the incumbents! Cambiran School District seems to be doing OK!
PROP 1A: No. Why: Hate trains. Hate LA. No need to get there quickly or really at all.
PROP 2: Yes. Why: If I lived my life in a box, I would also like to turn around occasionally. It doesn't seem that much to ask.
PROP 3: Weak Yes. Why: How can you vote against children's hospitals? BUT, why do they need more money when still have money left? Conclusion: bad karma to vote against sick kids.
PROP 4: No. Why: Pretty sure pregnant minors seeking abortions need care and compassion. Pretty sure if they could get it from their parents, that's the first place they would go. QUIT TRYING TO MAKE IT HARD FOR YOUNG VULNERABLE KIDS.
PROP 5: No. Why: Doesn't really change too much.
PROP 6: No Why: Sick of spending money on prisons. Bet there are lots of things we could be doing when kids are three to keep them out of prison when they come of age.
PROP 7: No Why: Don't really understand it. All the green and conservation groups are recommending "no". So, no.
PROP 8: No no no. Why: Because I love marriage. And I love being a family. And I BELIEVE KIDS DO BETTER WITH TWO PARENTS. So let's GIVE them two parents. Let's STRENGTHEN marriage. Let's GIVE SIMPLE BASIC CIVIL RIGHTS TO ALL AMERICANS. Jesus Christ, I can't believe there is even debate about this. And what I laugh at most is this: "Traditional" marriage. Let us take a look at the Judeo-Christian patriarchs, yes?
ABRAHAM: Two wives (or a wife and a concubine -- open to interpretation)
ISAAC: Don't know. Leasha, help a gentile out.
JACOB: Four wives, or two wives and two concubines.
MOSES: I think only one, but I like her, because she's a shiksa
SOLOMON: Like, a thousand.
DAVID: What, eight or something? Plus killing off the inconvenient husband?
So it's very clear that this tradition of marriage is really worth venerating, and that two same-sex adults who want to marry would be an abomination, right? There's just nothing to the argument in favor except bigotry and fear and intolerance.
PROP 9: No. Why: Already exists, pretty much.
PROP 10: I think No. Why: Because, from the wording of the propostion, it sounds suspiciously like it will be used mostly to incentivize people to buy Priuses. Check it out -- Priuses don't need any incentives. What we need is incentives to drive everything less, Priuses included. Also, it seems like VC firms and such are already getting into alternative energy, again without state incentives.
PROP 11: No Why: Because it doesn't affect federal districts. Otherwise, I'd be all over this. Put it up again next year and make it determine our US Representatives.
PROP 12: Yes. Why: See Prop 3. Bad karma to vote against disabled veterans.
MEASURE B: Yes. Why: Because BART should go to San Jose. Now, I spent a goodly time commuting to a job in SF and living in Oakland, and let me tell you, BART sucks. And then, when you move to the South Bay or Peninsula and you get to experience the pleasure cruise that is CalTrain, only then do you realize what a prison barge BART really is. But, nonetheless. Let's have a viable regional rail and quit being so backward with our pubic transit.
Don't forget to vote on November 4th.
Hey, everyone! Looking for an antidote to all this doom-and-gloom market news? Need a little feel-good pick-me-up?
This ain't it:
But really, who hasn't needed help in their lives? Who hasn't made some bad decisions and needed to be bailed out? That's where your reliable friends and family come in. I speak from the position of ineffable privilege, since I had NONE of these poverty risk factors (totally stable, affluent upbringing), and managed to make absolutely NO stupid teenage decisions to derail my march to the Ivy League. In fact, my entire pre-adult experience can be summed up in this brief, completely true episode, circa 1992:
ME: What are we doing tonight?
Non-sexually-threatening, possible gay high school boyfriend: Let's go to this party.
(We arrive at the party. There is beer.)
NSTPGHSB: Are you going to drink?
ME: No, I have to drive (thanks, DARE!)
NSTPGHSB: Me neither. Let's go to a movie.
ME: Sure, but I should call my mom and tell her my plans have changed.
(We both responsibly call our parents.)
MOMS: Your plans have changed? You are leaving the beer party to go to a movie? You must have secret teenage ulterior sex-and-drug-related motives. Come home right now!
Damn.
But I digress. Even I, with advantages a-plenty -- personal, parental, educational, societal -- made some stupid decisions as a young independent and needed to be Bailed Out by my parents with cash. Had I no safely net, no one to help me out, these silly, easily-made errors would likely be dogging me and my credit rating still. Stupid, easily fixed, and yet somehow we let families be crushed by this for generations.
This book took a much different tone than Nickel and Dimed, although it covers a lot of the same ground. It did a much better job, I think, in examining the many factors that contribute to entrenched poverty, and doesn't canonize any of the people it pictures, the way Barbara Ehrenreich's book did a little. Not a quick read, and not uplifting -- it left me more disheartened with the problem than Fired Up, Ready To Go -- but still, compelling.
Another thing this book taught me: I am the only middle-class American that cleans my own house. Even my robot slave Scooba went all SkyNet on me and I mop my own floor. Seriously, a chapter of this book was devoted to the unhealthy stressors of poverty, which included cleaning one's own house. Once people claw their way above the poverty line, apparently their first call is to the Merry Maids.
I came to teaching through a program called San Jose Teaching Fellows, which was a "highly selective [and unsurprisingly defunct now, I believe -- AZB] program that is mobilizing talented young and mid-career professionals" to teach in the pretty dismal San Jose Unified School District. Not nearly as selective as Teach For America, and not nearly as demanding, it seems, from reading this book. But pretty darn demanding and exhausting as it was.
Donna Foote does a pretty good job of balanced reporting as she follows several TFA "corps members" through their first year in an LA high school. She represents their passion and energy, their disillusionment and "reillusionment", and their successes without completely endorsing The Program. As a "career teacher" (kinda) and an employee
of a wealthy private school (totally), I am deeply conflicted about TFA and this book did nothing to bring me down on either side of the fence. These teachers are passionate, but utterly unpracticed (and untested); they are not yet burned out (and yet they almost ALL LEAVE when their two years are up, if they make it that long); they are only assigned to schools that ALREADY have gigantic turnover -- but they do seem to make a difference in their short tenure.
Two things that were somewhat compelling -- the principal of the school in question described his conversion from anti- to pro-TFA as coming to see them as soldiers. We have a volunteer army in which people enlist for brief, finite amounts of time (at least, we used to before GWB's endless war kicked in), they receive brief but intense training, and then they learn on the job, so to speak. (Although, as I write this, don't you think we might be doing a bit better in Iraq if our soldiers needed to take a tyear-long credentialling program, pass a Middle East proficiency exam and spend a year observing a "master soldier"? Hmm.)
The other was a quote from Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA, who said that part of the goal of TFA was not only to provide excellent teachers for underserved areas, but to grow a network of Leaders who would have first-hand experience of educational inequity. So that, once they leave TFA, and go to law school, and then run for office, the Crisis in Education will be seared into their personal values and commitments.
That actually makes a lot of sense, copout though it is in terms of address the "teach-for-awhile" stigma.
My personal feeling is ... I was such a shitty teacher in my first year, and I'm so much better now. It has nothing to do with the ridiculously stupid and worthless credentialing program I went through, and everything to do with experience, confidence and SEEING OTHER TEACHERS DO THEIR THING (even the bad ones!). What we ought to have is apprenticeships, where you pass a few tests to weed out the total idiots, then spend a year or two being an OBSERVATIONAL AIDE in a classroom in the field where you want to work. You get paid, the teacher gets some assistance, you get to see how to do it or not do it, and then you've got experience to draw on before you ever enter a classroom. Fit some student teaching in there somewhere. Maybe some of the methods classes. Who knows?
And -- go year-round. There, I've said it. 4 days a week of regular curriculum, 1 day of enrichment or remedial instruction for the kids, 1 day of planning for the teacher. ALL YEAR ROUND. And all those teachers who took the job simply so they could veg by the pool in July and August (and because the coursework is sooo easy) can go work in fast food.
Oh, it was like Hanukkah and Purim all wrapped together in a matzah ball at work this week when FIVE HUGE BOXES arrived from Baker & Taylor, my library distributor. Among many other gems, I received Book Four of not one, but TWO reasonably decent fantasy series -- Septimus Heap and Ranger's Apprentice. (I also killed Books 2 and 3 of KUNG FU PRINCESS, which completely lived up to its billing. Slays the demons, gets the cute kung fu boy -- what's not to love?)
The Septimus Heap series is a strange breed ... deeply loved by kids, fun to read, but just not that compelling. I open them only because I have to, then I really enjoy myself while reading them, but then I'm completely underwhelmed as soon as I close the book again. Queste was no different. All the characters have little tics or "things" that I guess stand in for character development -- like, she's cluttered! That's her thing! She's the cluttered one! -- but you don't really care that much what happens to most of them or feel like their actions are real. The Puppet
Ranger's Apprentice is all about the well-placed Ominous Tone and Mood. It just doesn't let up.This series I think is better encountered when you can read them all in rapid succession -- there are some intricate plot lines and foreshadowing that I've just forgotten in the previous books. But a good adventure!
(I am reading this at the exact same time as my neighbor, who is going into fourth grade in the fall and is a smoking fast reader -- I recommended probably 40 books to him at the beginning of the summer and he's killed, oh, half? maybe more? Actually, I think he finished The Battle for Skandia and is re-reading the series. You know, to give me a chance to catch up.)
But by far the most impressive read this week was Sunrise over Fallujah, by Walter Dean Myers, who is a formidable author with much less formidable subject matter than Iraq. It's YA fiction that reads with the same compelling first-person-memoir feel as Jarhead, but without the English-major, I'll-be-a-writer-someday self-consciousness. It felt real -- like an 18-year-old kid tossed in over his head, trying to be tough, liking some of it, hating more of it, and fearing what he's becoming, not to mention gradually growing to believe that those in charge are not necessarily the good guys, at least not all the time. Another book I'm going to press on every kid I see. Well, maybe not my neighbor. Not quite yet.
