Sunday links.
When No Child Left Behind became law in 2002, teachers suspected there’d be some casualties—they just didn’t think field trips would be one of them. Newsweek
Hanging change agents out to dry. At the request of her principal, Pam delivered a presentation to her staff on technology tools. At a follow-up meeting, she faced a lot of criticism from members of the Faculty Council who claimed that she ‘wasted their time.’ Rather than supporting Pam, her principal simply sat there and nodded her head as Pam absorbed the blows. Dangerously Irrelevant.
There’s a new twist on policymaking efforts to make the Internet safe for young people: denying them access to it altogether. A bill in the Utah state legislature would require public wifi providers to ensure that minors can’t access the Internet. Learning.now
At schools throughout the region and the nation, space and schedule crunches are pushing some school lunch periods far from midday. Students find themselves sitting down to eat an hour or so after they arrive; others shortly before dismissal. Chicago Tribune
After scoring in the Egyptian national side’s 3-0 victory over Sudan in the African Nations Cup, the player known as the Smiling Assassin lifted his jersey to reveal a T-shirt that read, “Sympathize with Gaza.” Edge of Sports
1964 Redux.
Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 Democratic Convention.
Almost every discussion about the election I get into these days features two sets of comments.
One is the excitement people experienced walking out out of the polling place on primary day.
We were having dinner at Dunlay’s last Wednesday along with our neighbors. “I felt very emotional,” one of my neighbors said. I didn’t even ask who she voted for, because I have heard again and again people say they reacted the same way. The fact that the choice was between a woman and an African-American is hitting people very hard in a powerfully positive way.
When my mom was born, woman couldn’t vote in a U.S. Presidential election. The right of Black people to vote throughout the U.S. was not legally guaranteed by the federal government until 1964.
But inevitably the conversation shifts. How will the Democrats screw it up? They always screw it up. With the Republicans about to nominate a guy who says his time table for withdrawing from Iraq is 100 years, you have to wonder: Will the Democrats screw it up this time?
In this morning’s NY Times column, Frank Rich lays out the blueprint.
Rich traces the trajectory of the Clinton campaign’s cynical use of race from “the candidates’ dueling church perorations in Selma” last year to their “effort to scare off white voters, (ghettoizing Obama) as a cocaine user (by the chief Clinton strategist, Mark Penn, among others), ‘the black candidate’ (as Clinton strategists told the Associated Press) and Jesse Jackson redux (by Clinton himself).”
Racism has always been the Achilles heel of the Democratic Party coalition. In 1964, the heroic Fannie Lou Hamer led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in an effort to be seated at the Democratic Convention that nominated Lyndon Johnson. The betrayal of the MFDP by the leaders of the Party contributed to a schism that led to violent demonstrations four years later at the Chicago Convention and the election of Richard Nixon.
Rich concludes,
But does anyone seriously believe that Howard Dean can deter a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary?A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.
Want to know how the Dems will hand this election over to John (100 Year War) McCain and the Republicans?
