Author: mopress

This morning’s editorial at the Dallas Morning News says: “Though not unanimous, the Teacher Voices agree with us in general on a bottom line: A three-year regimen of end-of-course tests makes more sense, in theory, for graduation than TAKS exams given partway through the 11th grade.”

But a link to sample Teacher Voices leaves us wondering where the agreement is. The agreement, as we read it, is teachers saying give us back our students, classrooms, and curricula. Let us do the teaching and testing. If the Dallas Morning News fails to match conclusions with available evidence, the flagship newspaper of Texas instructs us nevertheless that an elite agenda is on the table.
We have a longstanding suspicion of state-administered tests, because they were implemented about the same time that demographers were trumpeting the Hispanic shift. We think the agenda is driven more by an urge to homogenization than excellence. Would our vaunted elites demand a standardized test for admission to the rank of CEO? Nonsense.

Fact is the legislature picks on the people it can pick on. And teachers qualify for that. When it comes to tapping the wealth of Texas so that it can be put into teachers hands? That’s where you’ll find the real agreement these days: can’t do that, no way.

Or, to quote Teacher Voice Kirk Evans, “Put the emphasis where it matters most: in the lives of our students, our children. Give our children the help and support they need to be successful in any direction they choose for their lives. This would be an improvement!”

What is not an improvement is the state handing teachers final exams before the courses begin. That is a recipe for homogenization, not excellence, across the board.

By Greg Moses

This strange tale begins with an eye on the Abilene Reporter News of March 15, just checking to see what might be happening on the Texas Rolling Plains. And this is where we see a heated letter to the editor in which a local landlord is advised to move his holdings to Iraq. That way he won’t have to hear the word “Jesus” again.

Curious about what might have provoked such advice, we turned back the pages of the Abilene Reporter News to Feb. 17, where we found a letter from 80-year-old Seymour Beitscher who complained that the so-called Christian identity of Abilene can be offensive. “It is offensive when we, non-Christians, must endure any prayer ending in the name of Jesus Christ during a public affair,” wrote Beitscher, identifying himself as Jewish.

There have been two other letters responding to Beitscher. “This country is a Christian nation, founded on Christian beliefs,” says a correspondent on Feb. 28. Not so fast, says a reply on March 14, the principles of the USA are not Christian, but Judeo-Christian. “The founding fathers were primarily Deists, not Christians; there were even a number of Jewish individuals involved as well.”

Turning back the pages of the Abilene Reporter News just a little further we find a Jan. 28 column by former editor Terri Burke where she describes newsroom drama over the publication of a story and photo about a notorious “Ghetto Party” at Tarleton State University, in which white students mocked the MLK holiday by dressing up as Aunt Jemima, etc.

Describing her part in the debate, Burke wrote: “We, I said, have a chance to show Abilene and the surrounding area that even folks who call themselves a ‘Christian, loving, welcoming community,’ open their arms, really, only to a limited few.”

As you can see, Burke’s reference to “Christian, loving, welcoming community” is a citation of a phrase often heard around Abilene town, home of Abilene Christian College, etc. Beitscher’s complaint slightly misreads Burke, since the columnist and former editor never says “we” say such things. She says “folks” do.

Nevertheless, Beitscher makes clear that he had heard “we Christians” too often in Abilene circles, and his complaint can be read as advice to the would-be tolerant. Please be mindful that we are not all Christians.

Which brings us to the gumballs. We picked up the gumball reference from the website of “The Traditional Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” In preparation for their rally at the Stephenville courthouse Saturday, they urge you to view the popular gumball video by Roy Beck.

For anyone schooled in basic fallacies of manipulation, the Beck gumball video offers a classic demonstration of selective framing. But fallacies work well on audiences nevertheless, as the video is diligent to show.

Some stories we dislike from the pit of the stomach. Klan stories. Stories about student “ghetto parties”. Tedious analysis of right wing propaganda. We’d rather not choose to write about such things, so long as we can spend time on other things closer to hard-fought civil rights frontiers.

There are two reasons why we will now move on. First, we agree that there is some danger is adding more coverage to areas adequately documented already. Second, there is something too easy about slamming the Klan, even the Traditional Christian kind.

If we are to repay tribute to MLK, we will remember what he wrote in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

If we don’t miss the point that King makes, it will not be the bigot or Klan of the Rolling Plains that angers us most, but the white moderate these days.

We are receiving emails indicating that sources close to the Hazahza family say they have heard nothing regarding a court ruling in their case.

In an earlier post we cite a source saying the federal magistrate court is expected to support the detention of the Hazahza family, and we have editorialized our dismay.

At this point we have no reason to retract the earlier post, because it is from a good source. But friends of the family believe the source has been misinformed.–gm

From the Rio Grande Guardian and KGBT 4 TV Harlingen come two advance stories about next week’s walk. For background on the issue, also see subtopia and aztlan electronic news. Materials forwarded by Jay Johnson-Castro.–gm

Johnson-Castro walking in the Valley again, this time against immigrant detention camps

By Steve Taylor
Rio Grande Guardian

AUSTIN – Anti-border wall activist Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr., is heading back to the Rio Grande Valley next week… for another walk.

“I’m hoping many of the friends I made on my last Valley walk will join me on this next one,” Johnson-Castro told the Guardian, announcing details of the walk.
The walk starts in Brownsville on Wednesday, March 21, and ends in Raymondville on Sunday, March 25.

“This time I want to help give voice to the immigrants locked up in the children’s camp in Los Fresnos, the prison camp in Bayview, and the new tent city in Raymondville,” Johnson-Castro said.

The 60 year-old Del Rio bed and breakfast owner achieved international attention last October when he walked 205 miles from Laredo to Brownsville to protest the federal government’s plans to build 700 miles of extra fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Johnson-Castro also protested the border wall on a 55-mile walk from Ciudad Acuña to Piedras Negras in November and a caravan tour from San Diego to Brownsville in February.

However, much of Johnson-Castro’s focus of late has been directed towards what he claims is the inhumane treatment of immigrant children and families in prisons administered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He has walked from Austin to Taylor and participated in a number of vigils to protest conditions for Other Than Mexican families detained at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Uni*n filed a lawsuit over conditions at the center.

Johnson-Castro has also walked from Abilene to Haskell , Texas , to protest an ICE facility in Haskell.

Johnson-Castro said one of his main objections to ICE policy was the decision to award huge contracts to private prison operators.

“I just cannot understand how our government can pay private companies to imprison children. I do not know how to equate that in history. It’s like rounding up wild horses. It’s beyond my imagination,” he said.

Johnson-Castro said that in Raymondville, that meant awarding Management & Training Corporation (MCT) $7,000 a month per inmate. In Hutto, he said it meant awarding Corrections Corporation of America $126,000 a month for medical services the immigrants do not get.

Johnson-Castro said he was “encouraged” by all the attention the Port Isabel Detention Center in Bayview was getting in Massachusetts and in Congress.

ICE’s decision last week to round up hundreds of immigrants, mostly female factory workers, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and fly them to both Bayview and a detention facility outside El Paso, angered Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and many in the state’s congressional delegation.

Johnson-Castro said the BBC news network was interested in filming the Bayview facility.

“I cannot tell you how many folks contact me every day now from all over the state, the country and the world,” Johnson-Castro said. “They are waiting for this next walk. I believe that we will get special solidarity like never before.”

Johnson-Castro said he hoped groups that have supported him in the past, such as LULAC, LUPE, ARISE and the South Texas Immigration Council, would participate in the latest walk.

He said he planned to meet with the Valley staff of U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, before setting off on the walk.
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Protest Walk in the Valley

March 14, 2007 09:09 PM

reported by Ryan Wolf
KGBT 4 TV Harlingen

Action 4 News gets exclusive details on another protest walk coming to the Valley. It’s in response to government detention centers used to house illegal immigrants right here in the Valley.

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, the man who brought a protest walk last October in opposition of a border wall, says he’ll be staging a 5-day walk next week.

The self-proclaimed border ambassador says he was outraged to learn families were ripped apart during an illegal immigration sting along the east coast. Many were sent to holding centers in the Valley.

Johnson-Castro wants to highlight how the government facilities in Bayview and Raymondville translate into nothing more than prison camps… he calls it taxpayer waste.

We ask, “Jay, you’re going to have people who are going to say these people were illegally in our country and the government is doing what they need to secure our border… to this you say what?”

“I say the term illegal is a recent phenomenon… most of the people who came to this country… did so as a migrant… and most of them came illegally…. I don’t consider it illegal when looking for refuge . . . when looking for hope,” says Johnson-Castro.

Here’s a look at where his 5-day walk will take him. On Wednesday March 21st… Johnson-Castro says he’ll leave from Brownsville and walk his way to the Bayview Detention Center arriving on Thursday March 22nd. From there, he’ll head West to Harlingen and then North to the Raymondville Detention Center, arriving on March 25th.

Johnson-Castro encourages anyone from the public to join him on his quest… he says he’ll provide more details as the walk draws near.