To Sir, With Love
Excuse me for asking, but since I already pay taxes to the state and county to educate other people's children, and additional taxes to the City to babysit those children after school (aka "L.A.'s Best"), why must I pay, through my DWP bills, for that utility's "adopt-a-school" program, which, per a press release issued today, "culminates in a Reading Olympics Medal ceremony?" Is the DWP trying to take over the schools before Villaraigosa can? Or were the executives there just feeling generous -- with other people's money?
Anyway, the press release promises the following, which I think fits in the "priceless" category in those credit card commercials: "PHOTO OP: Students will receive their medals standing inside a bucket of a LADWP truck." Love the concept -- kids in a bucket. Apparently the original thought was to have the tykes walk across an electrical high-wire, but legal nixed it.
And, speaking of legal, do the people at DWP realize "Olympics" is a trademark that they cannot use without permission? That's why the "Gay Olympics" lasted 10 minutes or so.
In a related story, Superintendent Romer announced today that, of the LAUSD students who actually make it to 12th grade, 86% pass the exit exam, i.e., 86% have "mastered" English at the 10th-grade level and math at the seventh-grade level. (You read that right: the SEVENTH-grade level.) Thank goodness for those cash registers that have pictures of the fast food customers order, instead of those pesky and anachronistic numbers!
The pass rate for the state was 90.4%.
Posted by Walter Moore @ 6/01/2006 05:43:00 PM
6 Comments:
I don't think I've ever agreed with you before, Walter, but I agree this time about the DWP. Remember that these are the people who brought us the Green LA program which spent something like 3x the amount it brought in on marketing itself.
It's like the Postal Service running a float in the Rose Parade! WTF? "I need to mail this bill, I wonder what service I should use? The Postal Service had that nice float, I think I'll use them this time!"
Blatant Racism by the Pro-illegal Alien Crowd
By Daneen G. Peterson, Ph.D.
June 21, 2005
http://www.unitedpatriotsofamerica.com/Home/Popup_Article_Details/Params/articles/1100/default.aspx
Marcos Aguilar, the Principal of the Academia Semillas del Pueblo "If Brown (vs. Board of Education) was just about letting Black people into a White school, well we don’t care about that anymore. We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools. What we want to do is teach ourselves, teach our children the way we have of teaching. We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain. . . We don’t need a White water fountain. So the whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the Civil Rights Movement is all within the box of White culture and White supremacy. We should not still be fighting for what they have. We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction. And so it isn’t about an argument of joining neo liberalism, it’s about us being able, as human beings, to surpass the barrier."(45) Is this a school where taxpayer dollars are well spent? If so, what can be done about it? Any suggestions?
Academia Semillas del Pueblo (Academy Seeds of the Town): A K-8 California public charter school that was created "to fulfill our commitment to justice, freedom and dignity in education." "Our mission is to provide urban children of immigrant native [an oxymoron] families an excellent education founded upon their own language, cultural values and global realities [global realities?]." "Our pedagogy is meant to enrich the human capacity to transform our reality in one that is more just." They provide "ancestral Mexican ethos [culture] schooling" where: "The indigenous heart of our vision is a repossession of an identity denied from our children in standard schools."(43) This mission statement makes is clear that their intent is to indoctrinate these students (seeds) so that they will become the future balkanizers of America!
Just imagine, for the sake of discussion, we were to have German schools, Italian Schools, and Irish schools for the rest of us native Americans, who, for the sake of America, became part of the melting pot and subsumed our ethnicity to become AMERICAN citizens. Then we too, could 'repossess an identity denied to us' instead of remaining as we ought, the assimilated citizens of American culture and society! What would happen to the 'melting pot' of America, if each of those schools inculcated their own ethnic nationalism?(44) Of significance, is that the school is a 'Featured Link' on the home page of the following racist 'hate' web site "In Support of World Wide Indigenous Revolution." Please be advised that this site is particularly vicious:(45)
How will the people of the New Aztlan identify other Aztlanites? By skin color? DNA? Last name? Last time I checked, AGUILAR was a Spanish-European name, not an Aztec one, so Mr. Marcos Aguilar must trace at least some of his ancestry to white Europe.
I'd be interested in reading any position papers or policies the various Raza organizations have in place to identify those who qualify as Hispanic or Latino. Unless they're willing to accept all skin tones and racial types they are going to exclude a lot of people who self-identify as Hispanic.
Skin color won't matter; there is even evidence of Aztecs who had light skin and/or beards. Yes, most are of mixed-blood and still have Spanish names. But they realize that if they continue to accept this 500 year-old hybrid ethnoculture of Spanish & Amerind, this leads many of their youth to think they can potentially be an Indo-European group. This is not something we nor Nordic Nationalists want. So many are changing their names to Aztecs ones, and are letting go of other foreign elements like Christianity. They will identify by the Mexica spirit, so those who are truly Hispanic (preferring their hybrid Christian-Mestizo culture) can go somewhere else...
Who Are You Calling an Immigrant?
By Tom Hayden, Truthdig, May 2, 2006
I wore the multicolored Aymaran flag of Bolivia to the May Day march in Los Angeles, the same day that Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, nationalized the oil and gas fields. It seemed right to recognize the reappearance of the indigenous in the Americas. I gazed at Marcos Aguilar, one of the UCLA hunger strikers for Chicano studies in 1993. Now he stood bare-skinned and feathered, leading a traditional dance below the edifice of the Los Angeles Times. Rather than becoming assimilated into gringotopia, he was forcing the reverse, the assimilation of the Machiavellians into the new reality of L.A. Another hunger striker from those days, Cindy Montanez, was chairing the state Assembly’s rules committee. Another UCLA student, a beneficiary of ’60s outreach programs, was mayor of the city.
Contrary to most mainstream commentary, these protests were part of a continuous social movement going back many decades, even centuries.
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