The Fight Against Rape Culture and Sexual Violence

May 5, 2013 | Author: peterbrannan

The Fight Against Rape Culture and Sexual Violence

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

University of Washington – Savery Hall Room 264

RSVP on Facebook Here!

rapeculture

Join us for a discussion of rape culture, its sociopolitical context, the role of race and class in the violent oppression of women, and what we can do on our campuses and in our communities to fight back.

Horrific events have shone a long overdue light on the ongoing and global epidemic of sexual assault. While attacks in Steubenville and Delhi may be exceptional in the brutality and violence involved, they are not unique and cannot be disconnected from our sexist and victim-blaming culture. In the US, figures like Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and others have dismissed the physical and emotional effects of sexual assault, and coined the Kafka-esque term “legitimate rape.”

On campuses across the country, students have found university administrations unwilling to put the needs of a rape victim above the school’s desire to sweep accusations under the rug. ”What were you wearing?” and “Are you sure it was rape?” remain acceptable questions to women already making the difficult decision to report an assault. This idea that women’s bodies are not their own pervades every aspects of our lives.

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Welcome to the Puget Sound District of the ISO

November 29, 2012 | Author: Rachelw

Find out more information about our Seattle, University of Washington, and Everett branches on their branch pages. Come to a meeting or event and get involved!

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE STANDARDIZED!

UK testing

Tuesday, April 9

7-9pm

The Summit

1533 Summit Ave (between Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill)

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Featuring

Wayne Au Professor – University of Washington Bothell and author of Unequal by Design, High Stakes Testing and the Standardizing of Inequality

Jesse Hagopian Teacher – Garfield High School, contributing author 101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals Who Changed US History and Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

Corporate Education Reformers, like Michelle Rhee, claim the mantel of modern day civil rights movement in their efforts to close schools, fire teachers, and set up charter schools and merit pay by using the results of standardized tests and the gap between racial groups and poor and wealth communities to justify their reforms. But how have standardized tests been used to propagate educational inequities thus far and can they be used to correct these very same inequities?

Read more

Why testing fails our kids

Testing isn’t educating

INTRODUCTORY STUDY SERIES: Socialism from Below & the Centrality of the Working Class

Tuesday, April 16

6-7pm, before the City branch meeting

Black Coffee Co-op

501 E. Pine St. (at Summit Ave on Capitol Hill)

Suggested reading:

Hal Draper, Why the working class?
Hal Draper, The Two Souls of Socialism

Audio resources:

Emily Giles, “Why the Working Class?”
Amy Muldoon, “How Workers Become Revolutionary”

SAVE THE DATE!

S13_web_logo

June 27-30, 2013

Chicago O’Hare Crowne Plaza, Chicago, IL

Join socialists and other activists at the biggest left-wing conference in the US! Check out the conference website for more info.

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Seattle Times: Why Garfield Teachers Boycotted the MAP test

January 18, 2013 | Author: LizF

Jesse Hagopian is a history teacher at Garfield High School and a member of the Seattle branch. The faculty of Garfield as drawn national attention for their united refusal to administer the Measure of Academic Progress test, citing it’s unnecessary drain on resources,  unethical practices in it’s purchase, and unfair incorporation into faculty evaluations.

Sign the petition to support Garfield teachers!

January 17, 2013 (permalink)

WALKING the same halls once trod by Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones, Bruce Lee, Brandon Roy and Macklemore makes teaching at Garfield High School exhilarating.

When I look at the students in my history classes, I see young people who may be the next to turn the world inside out. Garfield has a long tradition of cultivating abstract thinking, lyrical innovation, trenchant debate, civic leadership, moral courage and myriad other qualities for which our society is desperate, yet which cannot be measured, or inspired, by bubbling answer choice “E.”

Garfield teachers voted last week, without a single “no” vote, to refuse to administer the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, test on ethical and professional grounds. Our student government and PTSA both voted to support us.

Why did we take this stand, now, against this test?

Read more »

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Statement: The Left and the vote in 2012

January 17, 2013 | Author: LizF

By Alan Maas

Originally appeared Jan 17, 2013 at socialistworker.org

SOME READERS of SocialistWorker.org may have come across a long article from Socialist Alternative (SA), a small U.S. group, attacking the International Socialist Organization (ISO) for its alleged position on a local election campaign in Washington state. The topic may seem obscure–because it is obscure–but the article’s criticisms will come as a surprise to any regular reader of this site.

The campaign in question involved a candidate of Socialist Alternative, Kshama Sawant, running for a state House seat from a district in Seattle. SA claims that the rest of “the U.S. left largely missed a major opportunity to intervene in the 2012 elections” by not supporting Sawant, and they single out the ISO for a very lengthy critique.

SA does admit that it first attempted to contact the ISO as a national organization about supporting its candidate with an e-mail sent in mid-October. Our reply to that communication began by noting that we “encouraged [ISO members] to vote for genuine anti-corporate third party alternatives.” We then pointed out that contacting the ISO national leadership a couple weeks before Election Day was “not a serious effort at collaboration” since there was no time for any actual collaboration.

Likewise, the tome published by Socialist Alternative earlier this month is not a serious effort at discussion on the left. It ends by claiming that SA has “initiated a dialogue in Seattle and elsewhere about running broad left slates of candidates in 2013 and beyond.” SA has not initiated anything of the kind, at least that they’ve told us about–since that would mean having an actual discussion with forces other than themselves, rather than lecturing them.

We thus must reach the same conclusion we came to after receiving SA’s mid-October request to support its candidate–that SA is not interested in collaboration or dialogue toward common efforts on the left, but with rhetorical statements to that effect and sectarian point-scoring.

Read more »

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Statement: Garfield HS teachers against MAP testing

January 11, 2013 | Author: LizF

Yesterday the entire faculty of Garfield High School announced that they will decline to administer the Measure of Academic Process (MAP) test. This is the first action of it’s kind in the nation and could have national ramifications. Everyone that believes children are more than a test score should sign the petition in support of the teachers, like their facebook page to show solidarity, pass resolutions of support in your union or community group and spread the word about the action!

Here is the teachers’ full statement:

SEATTLE – In perhaps the first instance anywhere in the nation, teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School will announce this afternoon their refusal to administer a standardized test that students in other high schools across the district are scheduled to take in the first part of January.  Known as the MAP test, it purports to evaluate student progress and skill in reading and math. The teachers contend that it wastes time, money, and precious school resources.

“Our teachers have come together and agree that the MAP test is not good for our students, nor is it an appropriate or useful tool in measuring progress,” says Kris McBride, who serves as Academic Dean and Testing Coordinator at Garfield.  “Additionally, students don’t take it seriously.  It produces specious results, and wreaks havoc on limited school resources during the weeks and weeks the test is administered.”

McBride explained that the MAP test, which stands for Measure of Academic Progress, is administered two to three times each year to 9th grade students as well as those receiving extra support services.  The students are told the test will have no impact on their grades or class standing, and, because of this, students tend to give it little thought to the test and hurry through it.  In addition, there seems to be little overlap between what teachers are expected to teach (state and district standards) and what is measured on the test.

Despite this flaw, McBride states, results of the MAP tests will be used by district officials to help evaluate the effectiveness of instructors who give the test. “Our teachers feel strongly that this type of evaluative tool is unfair based on the abundance of problems with the exam, the content, and the statistical insignificance of the students’ scores,” she says.

Refusing to administer a district-mandated test is not a decision the school’s teachers made casually, or without serious internal discussion.

Read more »

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