Stand Your Ground laws found "incompatible" with the "inherent right to life" by United Nations Human Rights Committee

by Sandra Khalifa

Geneva, Switzerland — Yesterday, multiple members of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UN HRC) found Florida’s Stand Your Ground law and similar laws around the country to be “incompatible” with the “inherent right to life” - Article Six of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (ICCPR). ICCPR is an international human rights treaty that the U.S. ratified in 1992. Long considered customary international law, the treaty includes protections such as the right to life, freedom from discrimination, freedom of speech, and many other civil and political rights. 

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"Tiana’s concept art is so gorgeous. It’s funny that Disney didn’t put more effort into her hair when they were so proud of their work on Rapunzel and Merida’s hair…I’d wonder why but it’s probably the same reason that the one black princess is the princess that’s a frog for 85% of the movie"

On this date in 1876, Zitkala Sa was born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She would go on to write several books, including American Indian Stories, co-write the first Native American opera, and found the National Council of American Indians. She was also a talented musician — before becoming a writer and activist, she played the violin with the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston for two years.

For more information about this pioneering organizer, listen to RWHP founder Shelby Knox’s profile of her over at Chick History: http://bit.ly/11OExwz

The problem with teaching as a profession is that every single adult citizen of this country thinks that they know what teachers do. And they don’t. So they prescribe solutions, and they develop public policy, and they editorialize, and they politicize. And they don’t listen to those who do know. Those who could teach. The teachers.

Sarah Blaine, The Teachers

Pay attention in your classrooms. Semester abroad. Peace Corp. Mission trips. Missions to save the continents still cleaning the mess left behind by people who looked like you. “Liberate Muslim women” “Help Africa” “Like our page.” “Don’t forget. Donate.” You. inherited their blood. Of course the culture of colonization still bleeds in you. I see you Your Discourse on Our Development You say you want to Fight our Hunger Crisis but not your cousins whose corporations Wage wars on our soil Pollute our rivers Loot our resources. Millennium Development Goals? So Uncle Sam sent Monsanto with GMOs Like his father who not long ago Raped our motherlands Reproduced diseases & generations of babies growing up bleaching our skin and our spirits You. are not like them But like them You Reproduce dependency & generations of babies immunized with doses of imperialism that make us immune to ideas of resistance. Courtesy of your church charity We have given up on our goddesses but worship your dreams, The American Dream because even while asleep our aspirations are six shades lighter these days Listen. We became the Third World not because we couldn’t run but because the race was white and so you came first. West You, are still obsessed with us You, are still blessed because of us See us? Not the Underdeveloped. the Over-exploited. Not The Third World. the shoulders that carry your whole world. But here, still here and, We. See. You. -Neha Ray

I will not let you forget (via neharaysays)

…you don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.
… 
Revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the way, saying, ‘I’m going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me,’ No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms….singing ‘We Shall Overcome?’ You don’t do that in a revolution. You don’t do any singing, you’re too busy swinging.

Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots”

We commemorate the legacy of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, also known as Malcolm X, on the day he was assassinated, February 21st, 1965.

Words cannot describe his revolutionary contributions to the struggle for liberation and self-determination. We can only witness the products of his words and actions in the work that goes on to this day by warriors who he inspired to fight and free us all from what Malcolm called, “this miserable condition that exists on this earth.”

We must see in our organizing work that there are thousands upon thousands of potential Malcolm X’s, from the rotten schools to the prisons. There is hope.

He famously said, “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” So we ask you, where do you stand in the face of injustice?

Rest in Power Malcolm. You will never die as long as we fight for the change you hoped to see. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Leadership may not be something that we signed up for when we started taking classes in education. However, it is an unavoidable component of the job and perhaps the most rewarding. Think of yourself as a leader. Recognize the power that you have every time you plan a lesson and greet a child. Appreciate your ability to influence faculty meetings and school agendas, and help parents become the very best parents for their children. Recognize that every day brings new opportunity to engage and inspire, and the tremendous responsibility that comes with such opportunity. Be a leader, today and every day.

The leader in you (via gjmueller)

The Gates Foundation is a prime example of how the capitalistic mindset is ruining this world.

Having financed the creation of the standards, the Gates Foundation has entered into a partnership with Pearson to produce a full set of K–12 courses aligned with the Common Core that will be marketed to schools across the country. Nearly every educational product now comes wrapped in the Common Core brand name. The curriculum and assessments our schools and students need will not emerge from this process. Instead, the top-down, bureaucratic rollout of the Common Core has put schools in the middle of a multilayered political struggle over who will control education policy—corporate power and private wealth or public institutions managed, however imperfectly, by citizens in a democratic process. The web-based news service Politico recently described what it called 'the Common Core money war', reporting that 'tens of millions of dollars are pouring into the battle over the Common Core'. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation already has pumped more than $160 million into developing and promoting the Common Core, including $10 million just in the past few months, and it's getting set to announce up to $4 million in new grants to keep the advocacy cranking. Corporate sponsors are pitching in, too. Dozens of the nation's top CEOs will meet to set the plans for a national advertising blitz that may include TV, radio, and print.'

Stan Karp, The Problems with the Common Core

The substance of the standards themselves is also, in a sense, top down. To arrive at 'college- and career-ready standards,' the Common Core developers began by defining the 'skills and abilities' they claim are needed to succeed in a four-year college. The CCSS tests being developed by two federally funded multi-state consortia, at a cost of about $350 million, are designed to assess these skills. One of these consortia, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, claims that students who earn a 'college ready' designation by scoring a level 4 on these still-under-construction tests will have a 75 percent chance of getting a C or better in their freshman composition course. But there is no actual evidence connecting scores on any of these new experimental tests with future college success. And it will take far more than standards and tests to make college affordable, accessible, and attainable for all. When I went to college many years ago, 'college for all' meant open admissions, free tuition, and race, class, and gender studies. Today, it means cutthroat competition to get in, mountains of debt to stay, and often bleak prospects when you leave. Yet 'college readiness' is about to become the new AYP (adequate yearly progress) by which schools will be ranked.

Stan Karp, The Problems with the Common Core

Interiors of Topkapi Palace - Istanbul - August 2013

CHICANO MOVEMENT // U.S. HISTORY SERIES

…I have a lot of trouble with the word “reform” being attached to what’s happening right now. That’s why I call it the privatization movement. So if the privatization movement continues unchecked, then yes, it will destroy public education. There’ll be public education here and there in relatively affluent communities that are untouched, but it’ll be dead in the cities, and it’ll be dead in the inner suburbs. It won’t be completely privatized, but there’ll be a dual system. That’s what I say in the book. We thought that with the Brown v.Board of Education decision we’d gotten away from dual schools, but the rise of this privatization movement says, “Here’s a chance for your children to get out of the public schools and just be with kids like themselves, and if there are any kids who are trouble, we kick them out.” And lots of parents say, “Wow, that sounds like a great deal, I’ll go for that.” What’s going on right now is an effort to turn what is a public responsibility into a free market exercise. We’ve already seen the privatization movement take hold in the prison system, we’ve seen it take hold in the hospital system, and there are lots of other areas of public life where people are looking for an opportunity to make big bucks. And now their focus is on education as being a moneymaker and a place to invest and turn a profit.

Diane Ravitch (via azspot)

Why not start teaching children from the very beginning that they are beautiful just the way they are?

BACKED THIS. DEFINITELY GOTTA SUPPORT!

Teacher turnover is incredibly high for [Teach for America] teachers. A report from the Great Lakes Center, a group that researches education, found that more than 50 percent left the profession after two years and more than 80 percent left after three years. This may be good for schools who are looking for cheap and transient labor, but not so for students who would benefit from having a higher proportion of experienced teachers. There is also something uncomfortable about an organization that sends mostly white (about 61 percent, according to TFA’s website), energetic and under-qualified teachers into high-need schools with the belief that they are going to change lives.

Teach for America not best option for future educators