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January 23, 2015
In This Issue
New Surge on MLK Day
Ferguson: Young Voices
Anti-Racism and Nebraska
Racism and Climate
Cuba's New Reforms
Upheaval in Yemen
Hillarynomics
US Theocracy
Film: Dark Horse
Books: Labor Education
Jorge Mujica, 25th Ward aldermanic candidate
Chicagos's Jorge Mujica, 25th Ward Aldermanic Candidate

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'They're Bankrupting Us!'
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 "Everyone has the right to work, to free of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948

I. Introduction

The "Great Recession" that began in 2007 has caused the greatest percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is the end of an era of unrestrained 'neo-liberal' capitalism that became public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II.

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Capitalism may well collapse under its own excesses, but what would one propose to replace it? Margaret Thatcher's mantra was TINA...There Is No Alternative. David Schweickart's vision of "Economic Democracy" proposes a serious alternative. Even more fundamentally, it opens the door to thinking about alternatives. His may or may not turn out to be the definitive "successor system," but he is a leader in breaking out of the box.
 
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Most of all, it's urgent that you support a raise for low-wage workers, oppose militarized police and the ongoing 'long wars,' plan for 2016 races now, oppose austerity, support the 'Moral Mondays' in North Carolina and other states, the fight for the Green New Deal, a just immigration policy and the Congressional Progressive Caucus' 'Back to Work Budget'! We're doing more than ever, and have big plans. So pay your dues, make a donation and become a sustainer. Do it Now! Check the link at the bottom...
#ReclaimMLK: Activists Nationwide Follow In MLK's Footsteps To Protest Racial Injustice


Selma to Montgomery march across Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on Jan. 18, 2015.

By Lilly Workneh

Huffington Post

Jan 18, 2015 - Martin Luther King Jr. Day held special significance for many this year, as people across the country came out to volunteer, march and celebrate the civil rights leader's legacy on the first MLK Day since the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.

Activist groups called for the celebrations and demonstrations this year to be tied to recent efforts to draw attention to racial inequality and police brutality. Leaders from groups like Black Lives Matter and Ferguson Action helped organize events for the holiday through a campaign called #ReclaimMLK. Several other hashtags were associated with MLK Day events as well, including #DayOfAction, #WWMLKD, #PledgeOfResistance and #BeLikeKing.

With its #ReclaimMLK events, Ferguson Action, a grassroots civil rights organization birthed out of the heightened racial tension in Ferguson following Brown's death, encouraged activists to resurface the "radical, principled and uncompromising" nonviolent protest tactics King used during the civil rights movement.

"Martin Luther King Jr's life's work was the elevation, honoring, and defense of Black Lives. His tools included non-violent civil disobedience and direct action," reads a statement on FergusonAction.org. "From here on, MLK weekend will be known as a time of national resistance to injustice."

People around the nation took that sentiment to heart:

On early Monday morning, protesters in California gathered outside the home of newly elected Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who spent her first day in office with Oakland police.

Protesters chanted "Wake up Libby!" "No sleeping on the job!" and "You chose to prioritize blue, but today you will hear black," according to SFGate.com.

In a statement emailed to The Huffington Post, Schaaf wrote: "We live in the best and most diverse city in the greatest nation on earth with the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly. As Oakland's Mayor I am committed to connecting our police and our communities to ensure public safety and the protection of our ideals."

And on Sunday night, about 150 people marched through the streets in the Bay Area to protest against racial injustice as part MLK weekend activities.

The cast of the Oscar-nominated film "Selma" also took to the streets Sunday evening to hold their own demonstration in Selma, Alabama, in tribute to King. The film's director, Ava Duvernay, and Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo and Common led a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Meanwhile, across the nation in New York City, hundreds gathered in Harlem and marched downtown as they chanted "No justice, no peace" and held signs saying "Black Lives Matter."

In Philadelphia, thousands of people gathered to march through Center City, calling for police and criminal justice reform.

"[T]his year, King's legacy is being thought of in the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement which has spread like wildfire throughout the United States and around the world. Ignited by the killings of Islan Nettles, Mike Brown, Rekia Boyd, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Aiyana Jones, Jordan Davis and too many more by police and vigilantes, Dr. King's legacy and his work take on a different meaning in today's world," #BlackLivesMatter co-founders Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors-Brignac wrote in a blog post for HuffPost.

Here are more photos from protests that occurred over the MLK holiday and weekend, aimed at continuing the leader's fight for racial justice: ...(Click title for more)
By Riley Winters
People's World

Jan 16 2015 - I met Rasheen Aldridge at an overcrowded Starbucks in the central west end of St. Louis, an area now infamous after a recent tense moment between Ferguson demonstrators and motorists weeks ago. As he walked up wearing a grey winter coat, and a 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' t-shirt, one would never guess that this unassuming young black man is making waves in the sea of Missouri politics as the youngest member of the Ferguson Commission. He also serves as co-chair of Missouri Jobs with Justice.

The commission is an independent group created by Gov. Nixon to study and generate recommendations that can diffuse tensions resulting from the recent police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

Earlier that day over the phone he let me know about the first time he heard the call to activism following the 2008 election of Obama as president of the U.S. This motivated him, he said, to join Show Me 15, the local fast food workers campaign, while working at Jimmy John's sandwich shop and attending community college. His commitment to winning a living wage and union recognition for all fast food workers led him to quickly become a household name among activists and young workers.

As we sat down outside the Starbucks, doing our best to keep warm, I couldn't help but throw out the most obvious question.

Winters: As the youngest member of the commission, do you feel that your voice and ideas will be taken into real consideration by your older colleagues?

Aldridge: I think having a young person who has been out in Ferguson, who has been active in this movement, and who has been working on building relationships with other coalitions is good for the commission. Deeper than that, when the whole selection came together and Nixon decided he wanted a young person; [laughing] I'm not sure how his team went about it -  and don't get it twisted, I'm grateful about this opportunity -  I'm just curious as to why it was me. But, it's always difficult being young and a minority of anything. Because you always end up asking yourself, "will my voice really be heard?"

What I would say is that I need to step up more than ever to really get my voice heard. The other folks on the commission do want to hear what I have to say and I just really need to be assertive and not let their time around the city and city politics prevent me from speaking out. I can't let that situation happen. If I do that would be a failure on my part and a failure to be a voice for the youth out there.

Winters: This last commission meeting it seemed that many residents expressed their frustrations through visible anger. Do you feel that their voices are being heard at these open meetings?

Aldridge: You have to understand that the anger is really based on two things. First that the commission was set up by Governor Nixon. There is a long list of reasons why people feel that he is not on the right side of history and I am one of them. I respect him as our Governor but his decisions have been unbelievable throughout this whole ordeal. We are an independent body that has nothing to do with him (Gov. Nixon) and I know that I would not want to align my decisions with the Governor currently.

Second is racism, the issue that no one wants to talk about. When Michael Brown was murdered it was the youth who said that they would not let it go on. There is a lack of trust in the system, not just the police but the system itself. Someone is gunned down, the police pick up the body, people are angry, and then there is no justice for the community. Justice is never served. The disruption and anger that is there (at these meetings) is normal and needed. The commission is the place for that to happen. It's a place where everyone can come into a room and have their voices heard.

Everything truly needs to be on record. Sam Dotson (St. Louis City Police Chief), who was at this last meeting, which a lot of folks weren't happy about, needs to be there on record to be held accountable just like we (the commission) need to be held accountable. The people need the truth. If we say we are going to do something than people need to know that they can call us out. The community hopefully over time will see that this commission, including myself do want change.

Winters: What happened with Chief Dotson?

Aldridge: He was there because the main point of that meeting was to discuss community improvement, police, and how to ensure trust is rebuilt between residents and police departments. When he got to speaking, it was more of a planned talk about how great the department was and that not every cop is a bad cop instead of talking about how we are going to come together, what they are going to change and what the community can do. The talks are done, we need to hear both sides of the story and the youth started to speak out and then he started to get snarky and very dismissive of their concerns . . . His comments and rude behavior was not what the community needed right then....(Click title for more)
Nebraskans Get Fed Up with
Bigotry, Declare: 'Words Matter'



A Minden, Nebraska man sparked outrage from his neighbors when he posted an anti-obama sign


By Matthew Hansen
Omaha World-Herald Columnist

Patrick Jones was doing some work in an Omaha coffee shop last Monday afternoon, preparing for a UNL class he's teaching this semester, when he flipped to Facebook and saw a post highlighting a political blog run by a new member of the Nebraska State Board of Education.

The politician's name is Pat McPherson. The blog is called the Objective Conservative. And the phrase highlighted by the Facebook post Jones noticed - a phrase repeatedly used on McPherson's blog over the years - made the UNL professor's stomach turn.

Half breed.

Patrick Jones is a historian who specializes in 20th century African-American history. He is the author of an award-winning book on the civil rights movement in Milwaukee. He doesn't need anyone to tell him that "half breed" is a racist slur that has long been used to demean Native Americans and people of mixed race or ethnicity. That, at its most base level, it's a way to compare a human being to an animal, to place a man or a woman on the same level as a dog.

But it wasn't his academic training that made it impossible for Patrick to refocus on the work he was doing at the coffee shop that afternoon. It wasn't his years of researching and teaching that compelled him to stare at McPherson's blog for hours, scour it for racist language, get angrier and angrier and vow to do something about it.

See, Patrick Jones happens to be the husband of a biracial woman in the last year of her medical residency at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. And Patrick Jones also happens to be the father of a biracial daughter, Zora, who is 3�.

Zora is soon to be a student in a Nebraska public school. She's soon to be part of an education system that McPherson helps govern.

"These words matter, these ideas matter," Jones says. "They aren't some abstraction. They matter in real, concrete ways. They affect real people. They affect my family."

It is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and so it seems like a particularly depressing day to point out that in 2015, we have a democratically elected education official who has long run a blog peppered with overtly racist language.

But because it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it's also an important day to highlight the fact that Jones, a young woman named Tunette Powell and a small group of helpers started a grass-roots campaign to force McPherson to resign. And by Thursday - 72 short hours later - Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts was calling for McPherson's resignation, too.

While McPherson has thus far refused to quit, it's undeniable that the campaign quickly placed a shocking amount of pressure on the new board member to do just that. Jones and Powell organized in a particularly 21st century way: a Facebook petition that caught fire, as well as other social networking.

They also have also their voices heard in a way that MLK himself would recognize: letters. Phone calls. Good, old-fashioned, face-to-face activism.

"No one wants a headache, right?" Powell says. "So we had to become a headache. We are going to bother you until you hear us. We aren't going away until this changes. We are your headache. We are your migraine."

McPherson has claimed that he didn't write the posts with the term and also somehow didn't realize that the term had appeared at least five times on his blog, despite the fact that he's well-known for publicizing that same blog. His denial sounds suspiciously like the grown-up equivalent of "The dog ate my homework."

It's also worth noting that Pat McPherson may be the only politician in our state's history to be asked to resign by two different governors who belong to his political party. (Then-Gov. Mike Johanns called for and received his resignation as a Douglas County election commissioner in 2003 after McPherson was charged with third-degree sexual assault for allegedly groping a 17-year-old girl in a Red Robin mascot costume. McPherson was later found not guilty.)

But the problem goes far beyond McPherson, Jones says. It goes far beyond politics.

It is there in his UNL classroom, when students of color tell stories about feeling degraded, harassed, unwelcome in the city and state. Many of these students grew up in Nebraska. Many choose to leave the state after graduation, Jones says.

It is there in the reaction to every race-related controversy, like the Norfolk Fourth of July float depicting a zombie President Barack Obama in front of an outhouse labeled "Presidential Library" and a Minden sign that blamed "Africa" for Ebola, AIDS and the sitting president of the United States.

There's a tendency to minimize the incidents, paint them as the actions of isolated extremists who have no bearing on our wider culture. That view is convenient, both Jones and Powell think, and it stops us from having to grapple with a bigger question: Why does this sort of thing keep happening?

"It is a hard question, which is: Does everybody have access to the 'Good Life' in Nebraska?" Jones says. "And there's a real reason to think that's not always the case. Not if you are different."...(Click title for more)

Rosebud Sioux, together with farmers, defending their land against XL pipeline

The reality of an economic order built on white supremacy is the whispered subtext of our entire response to the climate crisis, and it badly needs to be dragged into the light.


By Naomi Klein
Clinateandcapitalism.com via The Nation

Dec 14, 2014 - The annual United Nations climate summit is wrapping up in in Lima, Peru, and on its penultimate day, something historic happened. No, not the empty promises from powerful governments to finally get serious about climate action-starting in 2020 or 2030 or any time other than right now. The historic event was the decision of the climate-justice movement to symbolically join the increasingly global #BlackLivesMatter uprising, staging a "die-in" outside the convention center much like the ones that have brought shopping malls and busy intersections to a standstill, from the US to the UK.

"For us it is either death or climate justice," said Gerry Arances, national coordinator for the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice.

What does #BlackLivesMatter, and the unshakable moral principle that it represents, have to do with climate change? Everything. Because we can be quite sure that if wealthy white Americans had been the ones left without food and water for days in a giant sports stadium after Hurricane Katrina, even George W. Bush would have gotten serious about climate change. Similarly, if Australia were at risk of disappearing, and not large parts of Bangladesh, Prime Minister Tony Abbott would be a lot less likely to publicly celebrate the burning of coal as "good for humanity," as he did on the occasion of the opening of a vast new coal mine. And if my own city of Toronto were being battered, year after year, by historic typhoons demanding mass evacuations, and not Tacloban in the Philippines, we can also be sure that Canada would not have made building tar sands pipelines the centerpiece of its foreign policy.

The reality of an economic order built on white supremacy is the whispered subtext of our entire response to the climate crisis, and it badly needs to be dragged into the light. I recently had occasion to meet a leading Belgian meteorologist who makes a point of speaking about climate change in her weather reports. But, she told me, her viewers remain unmoved. "People here think that with global warming, the weather in Brussels will be more like Bordeaux-and they are happy about that." On one level, that's understandable, particularly as temperatures drop in northern countries. But global warming won't just make Brussels more like Bordeaux, it will make Haiti more like Hades. And it's not possible to be cheerful about the former without, at the very least, being actively indifferent to the latter.

The grossly unequal distribution of climate impacts is not some little-understood consequence of the failure to control carbon emissions. It is the result of a series of policy decisions the governments of wealthy countries have made-and continue to make-with full knowledge of the facts and in the face of strenuous objections....(Click title for more)
Interviews From Havana on Economic Reforms
Interviews From Havana: Cuba's Economic Reforms
Cuba's Economic Reforms

How Al Qaeda's Biggest Enemy Took Over Yemen (and Why the US Is Unlikely to Support Them)



By Casey L. Coombs and Jeremy Scahill

The Intercept

Jam 22, 2015, Sanaa, Yemen - Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, his prime minister and entire government cabinet resigned en masse today, just 24 hours after Houthi rebels occupied the presidential compound in Sanaa. The resignations give unprecedented power to the Houthis, a Shiite minority from the country's isolated northern highlands.

The political crisis also opens the door to an all-out war over control of the Yemeni capital, involving Sunni political factions and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. The conflict could also draw in Saudi Arabia, the United States and Iran.

The streets in Yemen's capital are now a maze of checkpoints, a few still manned by government forces wearing military uniforms, but most these days are controlled by Houthis. Unlike government forces, the Houthis are typically dressed in tribal garb-a shawl wrapped around their face and a skirt known as a ma'awaz.

Armed with AK-47s, the Houthis are primarily looking for members of AQAP.

The Houthis, however, are quickly proving that the old adage, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," is not always true. While they are bitter enemies of AQAP, the Houthis manning the checkpoints often adorn their AK-47s with stickers bearing the group's motto: "Death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam."

For the West, this labyrinth of Yemeni politics underscores the complexity of trying to find a reliable ally to fight Al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate, which claimed credit for the deadly attack earlier this month against the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. While the U.S. government had continued to back Hadi as a close partner in the war on terror, it's the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, who have been battling AQAP on the streets of Sanaa.

AQAP launched a series of car bomb and suicide attacks against the Houthis starting in late September. At checkpoints around Sanaa, the Houthis are mostly searching for AQAP members trying to smuggle bombs and bomb-making materials into the city. It's often a losing battle, since smuggling explosives can be as simple as placing a Houthi placard-which have the same motto as the stickers on the AK-47s-on a car dashboard to slip through checkpoints.

In a recent AQAP video, which The Intercept translated from Arabic to English, Nasser bin Ali al Ansi, a senior AQAP official, said the group was making steady progress against the Houthis and asserted that AQAP was working on "expanding the geographical area" of its attacks against the Houthis. The AQAP official said that group depends on "booty" it seizes from its enemies, because it lacks sufficient funds to effectively take on the Houthis. He also called on "Muslims to support those Jihadists" fighting the Houthis.

But the Houthis oppose American involvement in Yemen-even to fight al Qaeda-and this helps explain why the Obama administration is unlikely to embrace the new power structure anytime soon. Another reason is that they are seen as aligned with Iran....(Click title for more)


By Matthew Yglesias

Vox.com

Jan 23, 2015 - Hillary Clinton's years-long 2016 presidential un-campaign has created a curious informational void. Over her several decades in the public eye, she's become perhaps the most-covered figure in the political scene. But her lack of meaningful opposition for the 2016 Democratic nomination, combined with the general exhaustion of the party's agenda in the waning days of the Obama administration, leaves us with little idea of how she would actually govern as president. Until now, that is.

A 160-page white paper from a think tank titled "Report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity" is not exactly designed to set the world ablaze. But the timing and circumstance of its authorship make it the best guide to what Hillarynomics is likely to look like.

In some ways, it defies stereotypes of the Clintons as standard-bearers for neoliberal centrism by endorsing fiscal stimulus and a strong pro-labor union agenda while downplaying the strong education-reform streak of the Obama administration. But it's also notable for the Obama-era liberal ambitions it pushes aside. In the main recommendations for the United States, there's no cap-and-trade or carbon tax in here, no public option for health care, and no effort to break up or shrink the largest banks. Nor is there an ambitious agenda to tackle poverty.

Instead, you get a multi-pronged push to boost middle-class incomes. After an extended period in which Democratic Party politics has been dominated by health care for the poor, environmental regulation, and internecine fights about Wall Street, Hillarynomics looks like back-to-basics middle-class populism. It should in many ways further infuriate Clinton's left-wing intellectual critics - and then further infuriate them by turning out to be an agenda that makes the party's voting base perfectly happy....(Click title for more)


By Frank Schaeffer
Salon via Alternet

Jan 20, 2015 - As someone who participated in the rise of the religious right [3] in the 1970s and 1980s, I can tell you that you can't understand the modern Republican Party and its hatred of government unless you understand the evangelical home-school movement. Nor can the Democrats hope to defeat the GOP in 2016 unless they grasp what I'll be explaining here: religious war carried on by other means.

The Christian home-school movement drove the Evangelical school movement to the ever-harsher world-rejecting far right. The movement saw itself as separating from evil "secular" America. Therein lies the heart of the Tea Party, GOP and religious right's paranoid view of the rest of us. And since my late father and evangelist Francis Schaeffer  [4]and I were instrumental in starting the religious right - I have since left the movement and recently wrote a book titled "Why I Am an Atheist who Believes in God:  [5]How to Give Love, Create Beauty and Find Peace [5]" - believe me when I tell you that the evangelical schools and home school movement were, by design, founded to undermine a secular and free vision of America and replace it by stealth with a form of theocracy.

This happened because Evangelical home-schoolers were demanding ever-greater levels of "separation" from what they regarded as the Evil Secular World. It wasn't enough just to reject the public schools. How could the Christian parent be sure that even the Evangelical schools were sufficiently pure? And so the Christian schools radicalized in order to not appear to be "compromising" with the world in the eyes of increasingly frightened and angry parents. (My account here of the rise of the home school movement is not aimed at home-schooling, per se, but at parents who want to indoctrinate, rather than educate.)

The Evangelical home school movement was really founded by two people: Rousas Rushdoony [6], the extremist theologian, and Mary Pride [7], the "mother" of fundamentalist home-schoolers. I knew them both well.

Until Rushdoony, founder and late president of the Chalcedon Foundation [8], began writing in the 1960s, most American fundamentalists (including my parents) didn't try to apply biblical laws about capital punishment for homosexuality to the United States. Even the most conservative Evangelicals said they were "New Testament Christians." In other words, they believed that after the coming of Jesus, the harsher bits of the Bible had been (at least to some extent) transformed by the "New Covenant" of Jesus' "Law of Love."

By contrast, the leaders of Reconstructionism [9] believed that Old Testament teachings-on everything from capital punishment for gays to the virtues of child beating-were still valid because they were the inerrant Word and Will of God and therefore should be enforced. Not only that, they said that biblical law should be imposed even on nonbelievers. This theology was the American version of the attempt in some Muslim countries to impose Shariah (Islamic law) on all citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

I was Pride's agent and sold her first huge seller "The Way Home." What, Pride asked, was the point of having all those children and then turning them over to secular public schools to be made into secular humanists and Jesus-hating pagans? The irony was that Pride preached a dogmatic, stay-at-home, follow-your man philosophy for other women while turning her lucrative home-schooling empire into a one-woman industry. And Pride's successor in the Patriarchy Movement, the wealthy author/guru Nancy Leigh DeMoss, was also one of those do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do best-selling career women doing high-paid speaking gigs while encouraging other women to stay home and submit to their men.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss  [10]happened to be the daughter of a former friend of my mother's, Nancy DeMos [11]s, who was instrumental in my parents' rise to Evangelical superstardom. Nancy DeMoss was also pivotal in the role of facilitator and financier when it came to seamlessly merging Reconstructionist ideology with the "respectable" mainstream Evangelical community. I worked closely with Nancy on several projects. She generously supported my various Schaeffer-related antiabortion movies, books and seminar tours. She also took "our" message much further on her own by underwriting a massive multimillion-dollar well-produced antiabortion TV and print media ad campaign inspired by our work.

Soon after the death of her wealthy husband, Arthur DeMoss, Nancy DeMoss had become my mother's friend and an ardent Schaeffer follower. She also took over her late husband's foundation as CEO. Besides underwriting several Schaeffer projects, Nancy contributed millions to Republican and other far right causes (including $70,000 to start Newt Gingrich's political action committee, GOPAC [12]). She also helped the Plymouth Rock Foundation, a Reconstructionist-aligned group.

When Nancy's daughter (the aforementioned Nancy Leigh DeMoss) took Pride's ideas to a bigger audience than Pride could have imagined, she was just taking the next logical step begun by her mother. Like my sisters and I, the DeMoss siblings found themselves in their parents' orbit. The DeMoss children became co-workers in the "cause," much as I filled that role in my family. Nancy's other daughter, Deborah, worked for Sen. Jesse Helms. Nancy's son Mark worked for Jerry Falwell before founding the DeMoss Group, a P.R. firm used by the likes of Billy Graham's son Franklin. But unlike the Schaeffers, the DeMoss clan had tens of millions of dollars with which to back its pet far-right schemes, one of which would be the Quiverfull Movement- a group dedicated to early marriage and huge families....(Click title for more)


A stunning yet subtle Cliff Curtis performance, an inspirational true story and a lively directorial touch make for a winning combination.


By Peter Debruge
Variety

Jan 20, 2015 - Watching movies can be a lot like playing chess. With enough practice, you start to anticipate the moves, adjusting your defenses so as not to be taken off-guard. As such, "The Dark Horse" is as good a title as any for a film that takes an overplayed genre - the inspirational mentor story - and still manages to surprise, sneaking up to deliver a powerful emotional experience within a formula we all know by heart: After suffering a nervous breakdown, a Maori chess champ volunteers to coach a group of disadvantaged kids. New Zealand stories seldom travel, but this exceptional true story has potential.

As it happens, the film's title reflects an earlier telling of the same story: That would be Jim Marbrook's 2003 documentary "Dark Horse," a portrait of speed-chess star Genesis Potini, who was a formidable opponent on the board, bringing unconventional, combustible energy to a game most play with polite inscrutability. Potini also suffered from bipolar disorder, which is how we first encounter him in James Napier Robertson's second feature (after 2009's "I'm Not Harry Jenson").

"Gen," as big brother Ariki (Wayne Hapi) calls him in the film, seems clearly disconnected from the real world as he lumbers through the rain to the local chess shop, draped in a colorful patchwork quilt. This giant, gentle bear of a man will surely look familiar to admirers of such exceptional Maori stories as "Whale Rider" and "Once Were Warriors," though we've never seen actor Cliff Curtis looking quite like this: With a shaved head and a missing-teeth mouthpiece, the Kiwi star appears completely transformed, playing a figure whose potentially intimidating physical presence is offset by a clear awareness of his own frailty.

That unpredictability - the sense that Gen could lose control at any moment - gives the film an edge seldom found in the genre's typically mellow fare. Here, it's the raw tone, the ragged camerawork and the revealing performances that allow "The Dark Horse" to hustle its way into our hearts.

Determined to add some stability to his life, Gen volunteers to help the Eastern Knights chess club, a scrappy after-school org whose hyperactive members barely understand the game's basic moves. The group's patient mentor (Kirk Torrance) is rightly dubious: There's no sense in exposing already troubled kids to the potentially volatile influence of such an adult. But Gen persists and eventually gets his way, spending the money Ariki gave him for lodging on new chessboards and other supplies, even if it means having to sleep outdoors.

Though the kids' personal challenges are never made clear, they register as distinct individuals, to the extent that we find ourselves rooting for each of their success when they finally reach the chess championship - an event for which they look alarmingly out of place, like a posse of skater kids who've stumbled into a stuffy rich-kid prep school. In the case of Gen's hotheaded teenage nephew, Mana (James Rolleston, the talented child thesp who made his debut in "Boy," now in greater control of his seemingly feral energy), that might as well be the case, since Ariki intends for his son to toughen up and join the same biker gang that serves as his surrogate family.

For Mana, showing up for practice and competing in the meet are acts of open defiance, and Ariki isn't the kind of character you want to make angry, which pulls the openly conflicted Gen into the center of a potentially violent situation - one that feels like something out of a Paul Schrader movie (say, Travis Bickle's foolhardy attempt to liberate Iris at the end of "Taxi Driver") rather than the sort of climax audiences might anticipate from this otherwise Disney-appropriate inspirational drama. Not that anyone would mistake it as such. Occasional expletives, some rough material involving Ariki's gang and a tense cross-cutting sequence toward the end would likely land this film an R rating in the States, potentially limiting exposure for the most deserving cinematic export to emerge from New Zealand in years - and that's taking into consideration the recent "Hobbit" trilogy, even if this pic's kings and queens are little more than carved plastic.
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By Teresa Albano
People's World

In her new book, "What Did You Learn at Work Today? The Forbidden Lessons of Labor Education," Helena Worthen provides a unique blend of theory and practice. Based on her years of experience with working people - in and out of the classroom - she gives concrete examples of how people learn at work. Lessons on the job span the spectrum of skills to be successful at your work, to navigating the social context of a system based on class conflict, including the "forbidden lessons." At the same time, she explains the educational theories behind her examples; theories that have a wide application for adult education as well as leadership training not only for the labor movement but in many other contexts.

Worthen draws from her years of experience and work both in the labor movement and as a labor educator. Her partisanship to and passion for working people, their struggles and triumphs become apparent reading the first page. She details numerous real life examples of what people learn on the job, valuing all the lessons - some of which most people would not even consider "real" learning. Whether it's learning new software or "how to text your kid with your hand in your pocket so no one could see you using your phone, to see if she made it home from school," Worthen distills all these lessons, relating them to four educational theories, and placing it all in the complicated process of class struggle and social change by addressing a simple question: "Can they get away with that?"

Her examples of learning - taken from real life situations - are an intimate look at how collective knowledge is learned and produced by working people whether on the job or on strike. The case studies range from her classroom experiences to the dramatic and protracted fight by workers at a social service agency in the small Central Illinois town of Effingham to organize a union and to win a contract to safety issues in a power plant; black workers trying to break into the construction industry and the life and struggles of garment workers. She also reviewed essays written by children of union members to draw out what they have learned from their parents. From each of these cases, Worthen quotes workers involved and analyzes their experiences in such a compelling way that it's like eating a chocolate cake - you want to savor every bite.

Like most other services and goods produced by the working class, these lessons are rarely appreciated, let alone mined for their value to understand and improve the human condition. Yet Worthen's dedication to these values takes her into groundbreaking territory; where very few U.S.-based educators, scholars or labor organizers have gone before. And we are richer for it.

In her final chapter, "Why did I write this book?" Worthen makes the point that a wall has been constructed between "labor" and "education." "Education in the US does not think much about work or the working class majority as workers. ...(Click title for more)
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