I've been thinking a lot recently about this book, Swastika Night, by Katherine Burdekin, which I originally read a couple of years ago.

I've been thinking recently about Trump's obvious difficulty with the democratic process.

I did a data visualization project on refugees and asylum seekers last year (I will not display it here because the visualization aspect was not great), and in the process I learned that I had a lot of misconceptions about what those terms mean and how the system operates.

I just finished reading a pretty wild book, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, by Timothy Snyder.

I find this fascinating (although of course also horrifying), and I haven't seen anyone on any of the mainstream media outlets paying attention to it.

You probably already know about the Warming Pan Scandal if you either a-are British, b-study British history, or c-like BBC documentaries. I fall into category C.

I just went to Barnes and Nobles to pick up last minute Christmas presents for my girlfriend (I had something already--I didn't totally forget, just needed one more thing). It's crowded today, as I guess you might expect.

Hey, y'all. It's been a while since I wrote anything here.

For the past few days I've been meaning to sit down and write about the current fractious triangle between Black Lives Matter, progressive Jews, and the word "genocide." But last night I sat down to do some research, and it turns out I don't have to write much of anything at all--someone eminently m

For your general information, it turns out that there's some other stuff going on right now in US policing that for some reason isn't being brought into the current discussion of policing practices:

New Video Shows Off-Duty Cop Fatally Shooting Black Man Delrawn Smalls, from Democracy Now! This is

With all the insanity right now surrounding the "North Carolina bathroom bill," especially given McCrory's decision to wait until after 5 pm on the day of the federal deadline and then decide to sue the federal government, it seems like a good time to write about what this bill does to those of us w

For all 5 of you (and that's an optimistic estimate!) who are still following this blog, I don't want to leave anyone with the impression that I think Hillary is a bad person. I don't. I do, however, think she's a product of her own bubble, as we all are.

So I've been following with interest, as I'm sure other Bernie supporters have, the brou-ha-ha surrounding Hillary's campaign withholding debates based on Bernie's "tone." In particular, I've been kind of surprised at how the issue of gender is playing out in online discussions--I mean, I expected t

So apparently in the recent Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders was asked why he never talks about being Jewish. According to the Huffington Post, this is what he said:

I am very proud to be Jewish.

I know I am overdue for a post here to talk about how race and class come to intersect--I put it off not because I don't think it's important, but because I think it is important, and I've been having a hard time thinking about how to write about it in a way that's clearer than what's already out th

OK, so I've been reading about the water situation in Flint, and with all that there is about that incredibly unjust situation to be furious about, here's one thing that's really pissing me off about how people (white people in particular) are responding to this story.

I am a person who is often infuriated, but probably one of the things that infuriates me most is the use of mythologized history in an inaccurate way which (almost always) supports people in acting out of moral blindness.

I've noticed that a lot of people on Facebook are, quite properly, acknowledging that today is the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks sitting down on the bus as a stand against segregation.

I provide you here with a link to an article about how Donald Trump thinks we should treat Muslim refugees, as opposed to Christians.

For those who have been following my somewhat irregular posting this summer, this will be the last of my posts on Communal Luxury, by Kristen Ross. This post is related to my last post on communal luxury, and also related to some other things I've been reading.

I just finished reading a really insightful book, Communal Luxury, by Kristin Ross. It kind of blew my mind. It's about the Commune in Paris in 1871, an event about which I knew essentially nothing, and which is considered by many to have been the first genuine socialist working class uprising.

A recent opinion poll has shown that there's a huge gap between the way white Americans are viewing events in Ferguson and the way black Americans are viewing them.

I'm not sure what to say about the ongoing events in Ferguson, MO, the murder of Michael Brown by the police for jaywalking, the SWAT teams responding to what one would think were very understandable protests with tear gas and rubber bullets.

It is now the third week of the Israeli assault on Gaza, and I'm faced with the vastly less important fact that I've been trying to write this post for two weeks.

So I've been sort of on hiatus from this blog for a few weeks, largely because I felt like I had to write about the Holocaust, and I didn't know how to start.

During probably my second year living and teaching in the South, I explained to my African American GED students that I had not celebrated Halloween as a child because I was Jewish.

It turns out not to be necessary for me to write about the Federal Housing Authority, redlining, and housing discrimination, since Ta-Nahisi Coates, who is far more articulate than I am, already wrote extensively about those things last week.

Not to belabor the point (or perhaps to belabor it, because I think it needs belaboring), but I have to return to the post WWII GI Bill this week, to talk about what is probably its second-most-famous part, the guarantee of veterans' home mortgages.

Tal Fortgang is not the only American Jew to believe that his ancestors made it on the strength of their "hard work" and "good values," although he may be the most well publicized right now. Nor is Paul Ryan the only American to believe this about his almost certainly Irish Catholic ancestors.

Since the publication of Princeton freshman Tal Fortgang's essay on checking (or not checking) his privilege last week, the internet has seen a firestorm of responses. Reading them (and the original essay) makes me heartsick. So I can't claim to have read them or digested them all.

2

Unlike a lot of people, I don't like to listen to music very much. So, since my current job is one you do by sitting at a computer all day, I spend a lot of time looking for talk-show type things to listen to; podcasts, books on tape, whatever. Sometimes I listen to classes on iTunes U.

I've recently been playing this game on my Kindle-it's one of those games where you have to serve all your customers before they leave the restaurant, give them the right kind of food, make money, etc. Like quite a few other "game" apps, it's free in that you don't have to pay to download it.

4

I've been really grappling with my students' reading difficulties recently. We've been getting more students with genuine learning disabilities (there's some evidence that as area graduation rates have gone up, dropout rates for students with disabilities have gone up too.

As I was being checked out at my local grocery store today, I overheard the cashier talking to a friend waiting in another line. This is a cashier who's checked me out a couple of times before-turns out she's the music teacher at a low income school during the year.

I had a conversation with a student of mine about a month ago that really set me thinking. I am fairly open, when I teach, about tending towards socialism in my beliefs--I don't apologize for it, although I do say that many people don't feel the way I do.

Having recently combined households with my girlfriend, I've recently had the experience of helping my 9 yr old stepson with his homework.

1

Had a conversation with a colleague today about a new student, who she was setting up in our Pre-GED program. She said the student had chosen a book that might be a bit below her reading level, but they decided that was OK for a first book, as the student gets used to reading every day.

1

I'm sure this isn't on the radar of anyone who's not an adult educator, but a new GED is being unveiled in 2014. The reason? Essentially that a new company has purchased the right to provide it (I think it's Pearson).

2

A new conundrum-most of my students, like many low income folks (and probably teens especially), access the internet through their cell phones.

I haven't felt like posting here in a long time-maybe because I haven't been feeling great about the job I'm doing as a teacher. Maybe because of my mixed feelings of hopefulness/hopelessness about the Occupy movement, and myself as an activist, and what good activism is in an oligarchy anyway.

1

My students and I are looking at/for brand names that are actually words in not-directly-related-to-their-products ways.

2

One of my students got arrested. Based on what they're alleging he did, there's a good chance he won't be coming back any time soon.

One of my students had to go to the hospital for an emergency operation two days ago. It was the kind of thing that if you had insurance, you would have gotten checked out before it got bad, but he doesn't and he didn't.

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I'm a Jewish progressive who is really angry about racism and the uses and misuses of American history. I have a Ph.D and am currently in a Masters program for Library Science. I read a lot.
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