When I first played “Mike Tyson’s Punchout” on the original Nintendo, I could hardly fight my way past the surfer-boy-gone-bad Glass Joe, let alone get with the big headed bull dude.

Then Lindsay entered a magic code to skip all directly to Iron Mike.

The code worked and I was so nervous, I almost hit the reset button; almost wished that the game would freeze. No such luck.

Soon Mike was dancing across my screen, kinda floating.kinda gloating.already subconsciously fucking with my head. 10 years old wanting to beat mike Tyson. You might not remember, but I remember thinking about the Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince track, I Think I Could Beat Mike Tyson. Actually that was the first song on my first mixtape. Made up of cassettes and albums. If I smoke enough weed I’ll remember the playlist…Rob Mase, Technotronic, Van Morrison

So I saw this poster while driving through LA right before the election, backroads of LA. Century Boulevard. La Cienga, Sepulveda. And it expressed exactly how I felt. The 2008 Presidential Election was a battle of epic proportions. It was a contest of wills and it felt like Good vs. Evil.

Obama won.

“While schoolyard and workplace bullying and harassment have long been problems in our country, the advent of advanced information and communication technologies have now allowed this abusive and destructive practice to extend to virtually all aspects of our lives.”

Cyberbullying!? Who would have ever known there would be such a thing? Someone forwarded me a commentary by Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld, professor at Iowa State University. In it he discusses how cyberbullying works and how it played out regarding Shirley Sharrod.

Citing the work of bullying prevention expert, Dan Olveus, he describes bullying as an eight tier system of roles described below.

First, those who bully; second, the “followers or henchmen (sic)”; third, the support(ers) or “passive bully(ies”); forth, the “passive supporter(s)” or “possible bully(ies)”; fifth, the “disengaged onlooker(s),” the so-called “bystanders”; sixth, the “possible defender(s)” of those who are bullied; seventh, the actual defender(s); and eighth, those who are bullied, or  are “exposed.”

He then proceeds to fill in the role players (Breitbart, NAACP, the Obama Administration, the press, etc). It’s a simple but transparent connection between Olveus’ theory and what occured.

I’ve spoken to people about this Shirley Sharrod incident, people who understood it well, and I still can’t wrap my mind around this. Blumfeld’s commentary helps but I think it is the incident itself that disturbs me. Is our American media so dependent on controversy that we are so easily roused up by what Breitbart claimed Mrs. Sharrod said? Why do we as a society seem so eager to tear down respected people? What does that say about us? And, this cyberbullying! As social networking becomes such a common form of communication for us, what laws must we put in place to insure that good people are not attacked in such ways? What augmentations must we make to childhood education to insure proper ethics in this digital age to come?

This incident raised more questions and concerns than answers for me. I’m going to have to let this one sit. In the meantime, check out the full commentary below.

ANDREW BREITBART CYBERBULLIED SHIRLEY SHARROD

A Commentary by Warren J. Blumenfeld

In selectively editing Shirley Sharrod’s inspirational and transformational speech delivered last March to a local NAACP chapter detailing her coming to understand the ways that socioeconomic class issues affect people of all racial backgrounds, and by placing it on his “Big Journalism” blog site this week, Andrew Breitbart cyberbullied Shirley Sharrod.

While schoolyard and workplace bullying and harassment have long been problems in our country, the advent of advanced information and communication technologies have now allowed this abusive and destructive practice to extend to virtually all aspects of our lives.

What has come to be called “cyberbullying,” like “face-to-face bullying” (also termed “real life” bullying), involves deliberate and repeated aggressive and hostile behaviors by an individual or group of individuals intended to humiliate, harm, and control another individual or group of individuals of perceived lesser power or social status. Cyberbullying involves information and communication technologies such as Internet web sites, e-mail, chat rooms, mobile phone text messaging, and instant messaging.

In addition, both face-to-face bullying and cyberbullying do not simply involve those who bully and those who are bullied (the so-called “dyadic view,”), but rather involve a number of “actors” or roles across the social environment.

Bullying prevention pioneer, Dan Olveus, for example, discovered in his extensive research a tiered taxonomy of roles in the bullying process: First, those who bully; second, the “followers or henchmen (sic)”; third, the support(ers) or “passive bully(ies”); forth, the “passive supporter(s)” or “possible bully(ies)”; fifth, the “disengaged onlooker(s),” the so-called “bystanders”; sixth, the “possible defender(s)” of those who are bullied; seventh, the actual defender(s); and eighth, those who are bullied, or  are “exposed.”

This week’s incident presents a clear example of the numerous roles people performed in this bullying episode. Breitbart instigated the bullying in an attempt to impugn the extraordinary reputation and career of Ms. Sharrod in his attempts to categorize as “reverse racists” the NAACP (a preeminent Civil Rights organization that, since its inception in 1909, has waged a consistent battle to fight racism and other form of oppression), and by extension the U.S. Department of Agriculture where Sharrod worked, and the entire Obama administration.

The bullying would not have gained the traction and salience that it did had it not been for the piling on of prominent voices from across the political spectrum who, rather than screening the entire taped speech, relying on the facts, and talking personally with Ms. Sharrod, (re)acted and thereby (re)victimized her: voices across the political spectrum from Glen Beck, Tim O’Reilly, Newt Gingrich, to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, President Barach Obama, and the leadership of the national chapter of the NAACP. FOX News extended and heighten this fiction.

And what about the so-called “bystanders,” those in the news media, politics, and the rest us who sat back and did nothing to get involved, to educate ourselves, to speak up in support of Shirley Sharrod. Why was Ms. Sharrod, at least in the initial stages of this drama, the lone voice countering the allegations, the attacks on her character, and her forced resignation. Rodger and Eloise Spooner, two white Georgia farmers did soon speak up on her behalf and showed their admiration for her help in saving their farm many years ago. After much of the harm had already been done, key figures finally screened the entire taped speech and retracted their initial condemnations.

This week, Shirley Sharrod was the target of attack by Andrew Breitbart. This was a cover for what I perceive as Breitbart’s true motivation: to counter the NAACP’s resolution passed earlier this month at its national convention in Kansas City calling on people throughout the country to condemn racist elements within the Tea Party Movement and to counter the Tea Party’s attempts “to push our country back to the pre-Civil Rights era.”

This cautionary tale shows that bullying and cyberbullying know no boundaries, and that none of us have guaranteed protection. It is long past the time that the “bystanders” become the “upstanders,” where collectively, we no longer allow the merchants of fear to distort and manipulate the facts and divert our attention from the genuine roots of the problems we currently face.

(Permission granted to forward or publish this commentary with author credits. All editorial changes must be cleared by author.)

Warren J. Blumenfeld is the co-editor of Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States and Readings for Diversity and Social Justice. (wblumen@iastate.edu)

Cops and gunman shoot it out in Oakland 7/18/2010

the homie and I were chillin’ in the kitchen and we heard gunshots. then they just kept coming and we realized that it was something really going on up the street. so we head to the living room and we can see cop cars converging on the street. This video is about 5-7 minutes into the shootout, from the westside of the 400 block of Oakland Avenue. Audio is probably more descriptive than the actual video because our window faces the freeway but the trees and darkness blocked our view.

I watched this a few months ago. It is the best breakdown of the movement to reform public school education that I’ve seen yet.

The video features lectures at New York University by Diane Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education to George H.W. Bush. Lois Weiner, Professor in the College of Education at New Jersey City University gives a wonderfully detailed and chilling explanation of school reform offering both current and historical context. And finally, Edward Fergus, Deputy Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University discusses the pitfalls of special education programs. It appears to be out of place considering the lectures of Ravitch and Weiner but his lecture sheds some light on why No Child Left Behind and the current Rise to the Top education plan by the Obama Administration will have a dire effect on low income youth. 

It’s a fantastic video and the kind of thing you can watch or listen to and work at the same time. If you want to get an idea of how these issues are affecting people in the U.S. check out this video as well. Featured in the video are powerful testimonies from parents, teachers, students and activists in Chicago. It is a beautiful example of organized people from different cultural backgrounds coming together to create positive systemic change for working class people. Chicago is ground zero for the struggle against school reform. What they are doing over there is amazing.

Check out both videos below. 

Educators Lecture at New York University 

Chicago Struggles Against Renaissance 2010

Apparently it’s really bad. It has an aggregate score of 20 out of 32 reviews on Metacritic. My favorite reviews so far has been from Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle:

Scenes are shapeless, without punch and usually without point. He doesn’t seem to know much about acting. He doesn’t seem to know much about drama. Eleven years ago, Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense” looked like the beginning of a brilliant career. Today it looks like a fantastic anomaly, like a flowerbed in an arid wasteland or some eighth wonder of the world [SFGate].

Ouch.

Then there was the most fun from Charlie Jane Anders:

Shyamalan has boiled every epic heroic story of the past 20 years down to its most basic, primal soup-y essence, so he can spray it all over the audience, in a kind of Hero’s-Journey bukkake. You will be finding chunks of Joseph Campbell’s calcified spooge behind your ears for three days after watching this film, no matter how many times you bathe [i09].

Damn!

And, finally the most gut wrenching came from my friends 15 years old daughter, Aminah Ortiz! The little movie critic to be wrote a review for Youth Outlook:

The transitions between each scene were awkward and sloppy. It was comprehendible, but in all honesty, it was pretty irritating to watch. This, along with everything else that wasn’t up to par, had me disappointed when walking out of the theater [YO].

So there you have it. The Last Airbender sucks but this just in – somehow it’s making money. Airbender grossed $53.2 million since last Thursday. Check out what other people are saying about The Last Airbender in a previous post right here.

Tucson High School Ethnic Studies teacher, Curtis Acosta  talks to us about the Arizona ban, why they’re fighting and what makes them so “radical”. Enjoy.

What is the purpose of your ethnic studies class?

The purposes of our classes are varied, but our main objective is to rehumanize the academic experience for our students through culturally and socially relevant curriculum. It is no news flash that Latin@, African-American and Native American students have been historically marginalized and ignored in mainstream public school curriculum, and that the drop-out/push-out rates for our communities are far out of proportion compared to European-American students. The numbers are disturbing, unsettling, and as educators we have an obligation and responsibility to offer progressive pedagogical and curriculum changes to promote academic equality and achievement for all our students. That is what we have tried to provide our community and youth in Tucson.

Why is ethnic studies valuable to your students?

We have seen our students gain a sense of self that has encouraged them to be civically engaged in our community, as well as an academic identity that has inspired them to seek undergraduate and graduate degrees in college. Above all else, they see school as an extension of themselves, their family and community. Our classrooms depend on our students to bring their lived experiences into our spaces, rather than ignoring their lives, cultures, and languages and leaving them outside of the school gates. This allows us to critically analyze the conditions and situations in their lives to create empowered citizens. Our students leave our classes capable of contributing to a critical democracy with a will to seek action to create change in order to increase freedom, justice and equality for all.

What is the benefit of teaching ethnic studies to HS students?

For me, it is exciting to teach literature that reflects the lives and experiences for our students. Many times my students comment that it is the first time that they have ever enjoyed reading for a class, ever read a book that has been assigned to them or that they have never been able to identify with literature until our classes. I teach multicultural voices and my students identify with many of the situations in our books, novels, and plays regardless of ethnicity. However, I find my students’ comments interesting. Educators give much lip service to multicultural literature and curriculum, but if it is truly happening in all of our classes, why would the literature we study in our classes have so much more resonance and impact?

Are the teachers at Tucson High School radical teachers?

If teaching our students to honor the Maya concept of “In Lak Ech” or “you are my other self” and to treat everyone with respect, dignity and love, regardless of their feelings toward us, then we are radical teachers. If graduating Chican@/Latin@ students at over a 90 percent clip is radical teaching, then we will embrace the term.

What has been lost in this current debate is the success of the program to pass our state exam at a higher rate than other cohorts, the high graduation rates as I previously mentioned, and the vast number of students entering college. Compared to the national and state averages in these categories, our program is quite radical.

It is also important to note that in our entire district, our ethnic studies program only impact 3% of our students. At Tucson High, we offer the most classes but it is merely 14 sections of history and English at the junior and senior levels in a school that has nearly 3,000 students. I mention this to contextualize the question about Tucson High and to show that most of my colleagues are not ethnic studies teachers, but are incredibly supportive to the work we have achieved. Ethnic Studies teachers are a small group of educators in our district that have worked very hard with our students in reaching the success that we have obtained.

How does this fit into what is happening in Arizona?

Arizona has a history of racial tension with the Chican@/Méxican@ culture and population. The latest legislation has illustrated this to the nation, including the law that targets a small group of students, classes and teachers that we are discussing today. It seems absurd that legislators and politicos in a state that is still not one hundred years old can selectively ignore the greater history and cultural influences within this tierra. It is not as if the Chican@/Méxican@ community are a recent addition to the landscape of our desert, in fact the direct opposite is true. In this sense, the current political backlash is ahistorical and lacks intellectual credibility and human sensitivity.  With that being the political backdrop of our state, it makes perfect sense that a state superintendent of public instruction would target the elimination of a program that achieves such documented success. We are living in strange times in Arizona like when Superman visits BizzaroWorld and everything is backwards.

What is the one thing you want to share with folks around the country who are watching what’s going on?

I would like the rest of the country [to] know that this isn’t about the books we read, but is a larger agenda by a handful of powerful people in our state that refuse to visit our classes or engage in a productive dialogue. We have invited these folks for years and have been constantly rebuffed. However, I would also like to tell your audience that we have successfully beaten back numerous attempts to end our classes from these same powers at be. We are a committed group of students, former students, families, community members, and teachers that will exercise our First Amendment rights in order to protect a space that is built around the concept of “In Lak Ech.”

What can people do to help?

We are preparing to challenge this law in court and will be organizing fundraisers for our defense. We are currently planning a hip-hop concert and art show to raise funding, so if anyone wants to donate their talents to the show and art auction they can contact us at saveethnicstudiesaz@gmail.com.  

Soon, supporters will be able to stay active with news on our struggle and donate to our legal defense through the following social media outlets.

http://saveethnicstudies.com

http://saveethnicstudies.org

http://saveethnicstudies.net

You can tell that Freshloveink is really into this subject of banning Ethnic Studies. We admit that we’re suckers for Cultural Education. 

Check out this video of teachers, high school and college students preparing to hop buses and head over the Arizona to aid in protest. Inspiring.

Californians Prepare to Support Arizona Protest

Arizona has decided that Ethnic Studies classes will not be taught in public high schools. Starting January 1st, any schools teaching ethnic studies will have their school district budget cut by 10%.

CNN has been getting some great coverage of the conflict between public schools and the state of Arizona. Check out the link at the bottom of the page.

If you want a detailed explanation of the ban, known as House Bill 2281, website Revolution gives an unsettling run down of what this bill entails. We may not agree with everything posted on their website (they are the self proclaimed “Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA”) but the piece was well written.

Here’s a sample:

“(Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom) Horne’s letter went further; it singled out for attack particular books used in the curriculum, including Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by historian Rudolfo Acuña, a book which received the Gustavus Myers Award for an Outstanding Book on Race Relations in North America, and has been used as a standard text in college-level curricula for Chicano (Mexican-American) Studies for many years. And Horne targeted the student group MEChA for attack as well.”

 

We at Freshloveink are Bay Area boys so we have a personal connection to this controversy. A little bit of history: The first Ethnic Studies class was offered at San Francisco State University in 1968 after one of the longest strikes in US History.

It looks like it might be time for us to strike again.

CNN enter Tucson High Schools Ethnic Studies class

A recent article from the Associate Press, discusses the issue of Hollywood casting white actors in movies with non-white source material. The most recent movies are two of this years summer blockbusters: “The Last Airbender” and “The Prince of Persia.”

The “Prince of Persia” is a Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean) produced adventure tale about a rogue Persian prince and his race against dark forces. The emphasis, of course, is Persian prince. In the movie, white American actor Jake Gyllenhaal plays the Persian protagonist. The other film, “The Last Airbender” is even more controversial, according to the article. Based on the hugely popular Nickelodeon animated TV series, “Airbender” is about a young boy name Aang (Noah Ringer) who has the power to possess Earth, Water, Air and Fire. Aang teams up with a Waterbender and her brother to stop the brutal Fire Nation. So, what is so controversial about this movie? The entire television series is based on an Asian inspired world. The four main characters in the movie, played by white actors (with the exception of Dev Patel, a last minute replacement for actor Jesse McCartney), are all Asian characters in the original television series. Said Guy Aoki of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans:

It speaks volumes when the initial casting decision was to cast four white leads,” he said. “For them to be comfortable with that… it’s embarrassing, it says a lot about their attitudes.”

A highlight for me was addressing the 2008 movie “21”. Based on a true story “21″ is about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings. The issue was the real life MIT Blackjack Team featured in the movie were mostly Asian, including the professor (played by Kevin Spacey) of the Blackjack team, American born John Chang.

It’s a good article that brings up some interesting points about Hollywood’s long history of casting white actors in non-white roles. It begs many questions. What’s the difference between Noah Ringer playing the role of a young Asian boy in 2010 and some of Al Jolson’s blackface performances in the 1920’s? At a time in this country where we have the first ever African American President, female Secretary of State, and Hispanic American Supreme Court judge, is Hollywood ignoring its other Americans? If we saw more diversity in leading roles of Hollywood blockbuster movies would we even care about three white actors playing Asian characters?

Give it a read and let us know what you think. Its pretty good food for thought right before the big summer blockbuster season.

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.ap.org/critics-airbender-prince-were-whitewashed-ap