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Dear , Social class is pretty much missing in action in the traditional school curriculum, as are working class struggles for dignity and better conditions. May 1st, International Workers' Day, is coming up. To help teach about labor issues, we bring you a selection of teaching activities and resources from the Zinn Education Project. Check out the Rethinking Schools page, Teaching About Labor Issues and the Wisconsin Worker Fight Back, filled with resources, articles, and commentary. This is a key time to ensure that students learn about organized labor, both past and present. We also bring you selected highlights from our popular Facebook page.
 This month, thanks to your outreach, we reached the milestone of 10,000 teachers registered for the Zinn Education Project website. We need your help to reach our new goal of 20,000 by the end of 2011. Please promote our website to your friends and colleagues. (You can use the brief announcement on the Support page.)
If you haven't already, vote for the Zinn Education Project on the 2011 CREDO Ballot. Your vote can help us to continue to offer free downloadable people's history teaching activities.
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"History . . . should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, and occasionally win."
--Howard Zinn
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Teaching Against War, For Humanity
 Featured article by Rethinking Schools' editor and Zinn Education Project co-director Bill Bigelow in War Resisters League magazine, Winter 2011.
Excerpt:
. . . As columnist Gary Younge commented in The Nation, "The American people, it seems, are bored with war. Like a reality show that's gone on too long, it ceases to shock, shame, or even interest."
Regrettably, the school curriculum mirrors this lack of curiosity about the impact of U.S. military intervention thousands of miles from home. Read more...
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The Zinn Education Project's goal is to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula.
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More Awards for The Most Dangerous Man
Winner of the 70th Annual Peabody Award. Read more.
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Resources for Labor History
Teaching Activities
Lawrence, 1912:
The Singing Strike
By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. Role play on the 1912 strike in Lawrence, Mass.
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Southern Tenant Farmers' Union: Black and White Unite?
By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. Role play on farm
labor organizing in the 1930s shows how racism had to be challenged to create effective worker alliances.
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Labor Matters
By Teaching Tolerance. Introduces students to the role of the labor movement in securing contemporary benefits such as the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, and workplace safety regulations.
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Fiction for the Classroom
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A Boy from Ireland
By Marie Raphael. Ages 12+. Historical fiction about the life of the Irish in New York City at the beginning of the 20th century.
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Catch a Tiger by the Toe
By Ellen Levine. A historical novel for middle school on McCarthyism. The book triumphantly displays and affirms the use of peaceful resistance to anti-democratic policies.
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Uprisings
By Margaret Peterson Haddix. Three young women march against unfair labor practices in the Shirtwaist Strike of 1909-10, only to find themselves engulfed in the flames consuming the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911.
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Fictional Film Accounts of Labor Campaigns and Strikes
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10,000 Black Men
Named George
By Robert Townsend. Docudrama about The Brotherhood of Sleeping
Car Porters, the first black
union in America.
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The Killing Floor
By Bill Duke. Set during World War I, two African-American men deal with racism in the workplace and the labor union.
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Matewan
Written and directed by John Sayles. Feature film depicts a strike in a mining town in Appalachia.
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 Zinn Education Project on CREDO's 2011 Ballot
The Zinn Education Project was selected as one of 40 organizations for the 2011 Working Assets/CREDO funding ballot. Vote today for the Zinn Education Project. In early 2012, the Zinn Education Project will receive funds based on the percentage of votes that we receive. CREDO members and CREDO Action activists (sign up for free) can vote.
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Recent Highlights from Our Facebook
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 March 12 at 1:33pm · Like · Comment · Share · Promote
Jared Perez, Mayra Romero, Ana Marie Jose, and Jonah Best (11th grade, CCPCS, Washington, D.C.) are creating a film about how textbooks and popular culture represent Columbus for the 2011 National History Day contest. They were inspired by their teacher's use of The People vs. Columbus, et al. and Howard Zinn's A People's History.
"My fifth grade history book says Columbus took natives to Spain on a visit...if that's not misrepresentation I don't know what is!" --Velia Gaytán-Raff | |
March 19 at 8:39am · Like · Comment · Share · Promote
On March 19, 2003, Bush declared war on Iraq, using threats of "terrorism" to rally public opinion. In this lesson by Bill Bigelow, students read a series of real scenarios and determine whether they are examples of terrorism. This leads to a critical understanding of how the term often gets mis-used and selectively applied by politicians, the media, and in textbooks.
"I've used this lesson each of the past two years. It's extremely powerful." --Drew Schoen
| March 21 at 2:02pm · Like · Comment · Share · Promote
"Education becomes more rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world." --Howard Zinn |
March 25 at 2:02pm · Like · Comment · Share · Promote 
The 100th anniversary of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is on Friday, March 25. Here are links to resources about the Triangle Factory Fire, other labor struggles of that era, and a contemporary film about garment workers.
"The PBS special was great, too, raised a lot of awareness." --Philip Fenner
| April 6 at 7:27am · Like · Comment · Share · Promote  On Apr 6, 1917, the U.S. entered World War I. Helen Keller said, "Congress is not preparing to defend the people of the United States. It is planning to protect the capital of American speculators and investors..." This speech and others in protest of WWI are in Ch. 14 of Voices of a People's History. See link to Seven Stories Press teaching guide for the chapter below. "I love this herstory of Helen Keller - so badly needed!" --Helen Gym "Love the way Jim Loewen uses this in Lies My Teacher Told Me..." -- Carol Cummings | |
April 9 at 2:55pm · Like · Comment · Share · Promote
 On April 9, 1939, more than 75,000 people come to the Lincoln Memorial to hear Marian Anderson after she was denied the right to perform at Washington's Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest. This is one of the better known stories about the White House and African Americans. Find this story and many more in the book The Black History of the White House.
"There is also a great kids book called When Marian Sang and some editions include a CD of the actual performance." --Cecelia Danziger
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 April 10 at 10:33am · Like · Comment · Share · Promote
Happy birthday Dolores Huerta, co-founder and first vice-president of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). (For more info, see UFW link below and visit: http://www.doloreshuerta.org/).
Long live Dolores Huerta! A true stalwart soul who continues to inspire at 81!!!" --Annie Cecelia Breault | 
April 4 at 6:20am · Like · Comment · Share · Promote James W. Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me) co-edited this collection of primary documents because the story they tell about the Civil War is not in textbooks. The result is widespread misinformation about the cause of the war. In surveys across the country, Loewen found that the great majority of audiences thought states' rights was the key factor; only 15% named the preservation of slavery. "It's a good thing I had the best history teacher of all time...but I didn't learn it until high school! Oh the twisted truths they tell us. Thank you for this book!" --Ann Marie Giovacchini |
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recommendations, and news. |
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Sincerely,
Lauren Cooper
Zinn Education Project
www.zinnedproject.org
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