Politics
Entries related to things political.
Recent coverage of the Avery Doninger Case
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/08/2007 - 16:43Apollos Academy says School Officials Fail Constitution 101 and quips that they “must have missed the "Caution: You Are Entering A Constitution-Free Zone" signs.”
The Bristol Press writes about Avery receiving nationwide support for her free-speech case.
Over at Cool Justice, there is Frank Douskey has a great Douchebag Retrospective.
The Boston Globe has a short piece about Avery returning to school.
Yankee Cow Girl writes about students not being allowed freedom of speech.
The Region 19 BOE Gazette has a very interesting take on the case.
The agenda of these new politically greased courts seems to be to deny students any right to speak out. This has little to do with freedom of speech or cyber-bullying or any such nonsense. This is about growing a docile citizenry that will not protest its own growing subjugation to forces that no American should ever genuflect to.
Then to tie it all together, be sure to check on the Channel 61 segment of Beyond the Headlines about the case.
Now, for the action items: If you haven’t contributed to the Avery Doninger Appeal Fund, please do so today. You can also contribute by clicking on the widget to the right.
Also, for any of you who have not yet registered to vote and are eligible to do so, please do. I’ve just added a new widget brought to you by the folks from Rock the Vote. Please click on the widget to the right to register to vote.
Second Life Machinima, social change and other media links
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/08/2007 - 11:18An education mailing list pointed out the Favorite Poem Project. It looks like an interesting site. The Favorite Poem Project is “A partnership among Boston University, the Library of Congress and other organizations with major funding from the National Endowment from the Arts and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.”
For the more open source folks, I pointed out the Poetry section of Librivox. At Librivox, volunteers read books in the public domain and share the audio files online.
Steve Clift, a great edemocracy activist, announces the arrival A new e-citizen! Annika Jo Clift. Everyone looks very happy.
From a Second Life Educators mailing list, Anthony Fontana of the Polychronic Classroom notes a Reuters Second Life article about HBO buying a machinima film created in Second Life. He goes on to suggest SL Machinima will save YouTube.
This fits nicely with a visitor I had today via MyBlogLog. Amy Jussel of Shaping Youth stopped by. Her most recent blog post asks What The Heck IS Machinima, Anyway?. On MyBlogLog, she describes Shaping Youth as
Who is Shaping Youth? We all are. And that’s what this nonprofit, nonpartisan, non-religious based organization is about.
As media and marketing producers and consumers (that covers just about all of us!) we’re responsible for deconstructing the messages out there.
Children are being defined by media and marketing, before they've even had a chance to define themselves, as healthier behavioral cues get lost in the loud, brash noise.
I look forward to finding out more about Shaping Youth. It provided an interesting to contrast to two other recent visitors from MyBlogLog. One is focused on helping people make money from Google Adsense, and the other is promoting a site where. “You don’t have to ask someone to chat with you and risk possible rejection... you can type in your age and gender and select the age range and gender you wish to talk with and push the button.”
Amy’s efforts at shaping youth sounds much more compelling. To get the full effect of the contrast of how kids can be shaped, check out a video project done using Second Life Machinima by Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative. Their project is about the situation of child soldiers in Uganda. The children soldiers are being shaped in horrifying ways. Yet the youth leaders in Queens are being shaped in very powerful ways to use media for good.
Moving towards more traditional documentaries, the whole discussion about Miss South Carolina has brought up questions about the state of education in South Carolina and around our country. As I’ve noted elsewhere, I think the person asking the question exhibited problems of our educational system by presenting false information. That said, I was pointed to Corridor of Shame.
“CORRIDOR OF SHAME: the neglect of South Carolina's rural schools" is a 58 minute documentary that tells the story of the challenges faced in funding an adequate education in South Carolina's rural school districts.
The documentary, supported by many of South Carolina's leading foundations and community leaders, tracks the evidence presented on behalf of eight school districts in Abbeville County School District v. The State of South Carolina.
The final link for the day is to The Disaster Accountability Project. On Thursday, I received a press release from them saying “Congressional Time Would Be Better Spent Listening To Whistleblowers In Homeland Security and FEMA About Agencies’ Disaster Preparedness Deficiencies”.
Insurance and Building Contracts in Connecticut
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 13:53News reports out of New Jersey are talking about twelve people arrested for taking bribes “from companies that offered insurance and roofing services to school districts and municipalities”. The arrests included the chair of the Pleasantville school board, another school board member and three former school board members.
In the Avery Doninger case, people have been quick to point out that some of the costs of defending Superintendent Schwartz and Principal Niehoff have been picked up by the insurance company, Massamont Insurance. Regular readers will recall that on August 23rd I sent this letter to Massamont Insurance. I have not received a reply from them.
As I look at the coming Board of Education elections in Burlington, I note that two of the Republican candidates, Phillip Penn, and Jeanne Doerr work in the insurance industry.
While Region 10 Superintendent Paula Schwartz came to Burlington from being Principal at Summit High School in New Jersey, which saw a “$22 million capital improvement project for the high school” while she was there, I have seen no evidence of corruption regarding insurance or building contracts in Region 10. Afterall, Region 10 as well as Summit High School are in wealthy communities. Pleasantville is a poorer community just outside of Atlantic City.
However, my father-in-law, a retired special agent for the U.S. Treasury Department was part of the Tri-Town Amity Investigation Committee back in 2001. I have not yet read the report of that committee, but it does seem that wealthy communities in Connecticut also are worth investigating.
So, if I were a taxpayer in Burlington, CT, I would be asking a lot of very serious questions about building and insurance contracts of all the Board of Education candidates for this November’s election.
A celebration of local politics
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 09:53Last night, the Shoreline League of Democratic Women (SLDW) sponsored a "Democratic Campaign Mall”. It was a celebration of local politics, with a special emphasis on women entering local politics.
The first hour of the event was provided attendees to mingle and find out about people running for local office as well as visit tables set up supporting five of the Presidential candidates. At least three Board of Education candidates were there, including Joan Johanson of Clinton, David A. Stevenson of Bethel and Matt Cooper of Essex. Matt’s wife is due any moment and I didn’t get a chance to speak with him. However, I did get a brief chance to speak with both Joan and David.
Neither had been following the Avery Doninger case closely, but they had both heard of it and knew the general issues. As such they didn’t have any specific comments about the case other than generally upholding freedom of speech, particularly when the speech takes place away from school grounds.
In other discussions during this period, one educator commented about how school superintendents around the state spend inordinate amounts of time speaking with their lawyers and another person noted that schools, particular at the high school view any contact from parents as disruptive. Perhaps if they viewed contact with parents as an important part of their job they would need to spend less taxpayer money on lawyers.
A weird confluence of ripples of hope
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 09/05/2007 - 09:31It is not uncommon for certain Connecticut politicians to boast of being bipartisan. Yet too often they use this as a justification for ill thought out policies. Because of this, bipartisanism has a pretty bad name around these parts and I’ve been on mailing lists where people are encouraged not to link to conservatives.
Yet recently, because of my interest in the Avery Doninger case, I’ve found myself in strange company. You see, there are a lot of good conservatives who are fierce defenders of our constitutional rights.
Recently, Greg from Rhymes with Right and I exchanged emails and links. Greg lists himself as a ‘Proud member of The Conservative Blog Network’ and has a ‘Blogs for Bush Blogroll’ and a ‘GOP Bloggers Blogroll’. In an email, he describes himself as a GOP precinct chair who is married to a Democrat. While we may differ on parties and politicians that we support, we both have a commitment to using our freedom of speech to help our country be what we believe it should be.
Judy Aron of Consent Of The Governed left a comment on Greg’s blog saying, “Schools regulating what you can say and do off campus or on the Internet? Well, looks to me as another really good reason to homeschool.” She quotes Ronald Reagan on her website and includes the John Birch Society in her list of “Other Websites of Interest”. There may be a lot of things we disagree on, but her comment, “As far as I am concerned we are in this together fighting abuse of authority,” sums up the sort of bipartisanship that I am glad to be part of.
Perhaps the most interesting connection I’ve through this, however is with Leslie Graves, a libertarian from Wisconsin. Her blog, State Sunshine and Open Records has provided great coverage of the Doninger case and has named Andy Thibault of Cool Justice the Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week for his work in uncovering information related to the Doninger case. She also has WikiFOIA, a valuable site to help “people understand and use the Freedom of Information Act at the state and local level”.
This morning, I visited her website and found that one of the next candidates for Troublemaker of the Week is Charlie Grapski. Charlie is an old friend of mine, who has been battling corruption in Alachua for several years now. For more about Charlie, read this post.
All of this takes me back to the Doninger case. In one email, Lauren Doninger wrote, "I realize that the affront to Avery's civil liberties was miniscule". Compared to the affront to Charlie’s civil liberties, it is miniscule. I responded to Lauren with a quote that ties it all together, and why I am glad to link to conservatives and libertarians that are “fighting abuse of authority”.
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
- Robert F. Kennedy
