Audrey Watters gave a talk at the Academic Technology Institute. I am always interested in her writing because she is truly an original thinker. She sees the future of surveillance, control, and loss of human agency. She is our Cassandra. Some things never change. Some things seem to change despite our efforts. Audrey gives up hope in a desperate time that we can still stop the machines that seek
Audrey Watters summarizes the present crisis that grips the nation. Uncontainable. Inconsolable. Over the past few months, we have all experienced the grotesque failures of the state, and we’ve all lost something to the pandemic — directly or indirectly from the disease. But racism and white supremacy are the scourge that have destroyed so much more, for so much longer. “America Is Giving Up on t
Cathy Frye is a veteran journalist who worked for the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, then quit when she decided she could no longer stomach being part of the Walton Goubdation machine. She writes here about the plan to outsource schooling this fall to a tech corporation that is under investigation. She writes: I got curious and took a little gander today at the Arkansas Public School Cen
The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools [sic] announced that its executive director had stepped down. This followed the controversy that erupted after she wrote on her Facebook page that the protests over George Floyd’s brutal killing disgusted her, then removed the post. Too late.
Trump is desperate to justify his threat to send the military to “dominate” America’s cities. He is also shaken by his declining poll numbers. So he tweeted that the 75-year-old Buffalo man who was roughly shoved to the ground by police officers and got a bad head wound was actually part of an ANTIFA (“anti-fascist”) group of provocateurs, and he staged his own mishap, perhaps as a publicity stun
In another act of gratuitous cruelty, Betsy DeVos insists that undocumented students should get no emergency aid, although Congress did not pass such a restriction. Politico reports: DEVOS SEEKS TO ENFORCE RESTRICTIONS ON PANDEMIC RELIEF GRANTS THROUGH REGULATION: The Trump administration will roll out a new regulation this week that restricts which college students may receive emergency grants t
The editorial board of the Washington Post denounced Trump for abruptly withdrawing one-third of American troops from Germany, in retaliation for Chancellor Merkel’s rejection of his invitation to have a snap summit. IN A transparent attempt to boost his sagging political fortunes, President Trump proposed to stage a summit meeting of the Group of Seven nations in Washington this month, with Vlad
I have known Jamaal Bowman as an enlightened educator and a fighter for social justice. Right now, he is running for Congress against a senior Democrat, Elliot Engel. Engel is a 16-term member of Congress and chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Most people think of Jamaal as a long shot. But the times are changing. Jamaal has raised nearly $1 million. He was endorsed by AOC. He is young and e
This is a story of a community organizer, Monica Cannon-Grant, who has used her character, determination, and passion to create a force on behalf of the black community of Boston. She is relentless. She demonstrates the power of one person to make change. She makes real the quote attributed to Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: i
Trump is losing the support of prominent Republican figures and military leaders. They can’t support the re-election of a man who is systematically destroying the country. WASHINGTON — It was one thing in 2016 for top Republicans to take a stand against Donald J. Trump for president: He wasn’t likely to win anyway, the thinking went, and there was no ongoing conservative governing agenda that wou
Just when you think Betsy DeVos, like Trump, has hit rock bottom, she does another utterly vile deed to harm vulnerable students. Get this: in the middle of a global pandemic and an economic meltdown, with millions of people out of work, the DeVos Department of Education ilegally seized $2.2 billion from students who were in debt. Adam S. Minsky wrote in Forbes: In response to a class action laws
The Wall Street Journal, which has a teacher-bashing, union-hating pro-privatization editorial board, published an editorial warning about the dangers of policing the police. The editorial included these sentences. “There’s a case for police reforms, in particular more public transparency about offenses by
