WW News Service Digest #284
1) Millions agree: U.S. Navy out of Vieques!
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) General strike rocks Colombia
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) Standardized testing: What's at stake in High Stakes
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: lauantai 16. kes�kuu 2001 11:51
Subject: [WW] Millions agree: U.S. Navy out of Vieques!
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 21, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
PUERTO RICAN DAY PARADE:
MILLIONS AGREE: U.S. NAVY OUT OF VIEQUES!
By Teresa Gutierrez
New York
While the officials certainly did not plan it that way, on
June 10 in New York the Puerto Rican Day Parade became a
massive rallying cry in support of Vieques.
Millions of Puerto Ricans, their friends and supporters
filled Fifth Avenue for 44 blocks in a splendid show of
Boricua pride. Throughout the five-hour march, the avenue
was filled with the music and culture of Puerto Rico.
But it was also filled with this message: The Puerto Rican
people want an end to the U.S. Navy presence in Vieques.
In the last two years, the struggle to get the U.S. Navy out
of Vieques has escalated to a fever pitch. The people of
Vieques, with their fierce determination and steadfast
resistance, have won the support of not only the Puerto
Ricans on the mainland and in the United States but of
progressives throughout the world.
This broad support was reflected in the parade.
'FREE THE VIEQUES FOUR'
Along the route, huge placards could be seen supporting the
Vieques Four, the four community leaders and elected
officials from New York who were arrested in Vieques while
participating in civil disobedience. The four, who include
New York State Assemblymember Jose Rivera and the Rev. Al
Sharpton, were sentenced to jail, where they remain on a
hunger strike.
The struggle to get the U.S. Navy out has become so strong
that politicians have to pay attention. Even the likes of
Republican Gov. George Pataki has spoken for "peace for
Vieques." The mayor of Vieques, D�maso Serrano, marched
alongside Pataki in the parade.
A multitude of prominent individuals joined the call in
support of Vieques at the parade. They included U.S. Rep.
Nydia Velasquez, actor Edward James Olmos and singer Marc
Anthony.
Olmos came specifically to join the Service Employees/Local
1199 pro-Vieques contingent. He had earlier participated in
an action in Vieques.
But the parade did not proceed without its problems. During
the week before the event, city officials, along with parade
officials, told some participants their political pro-
Vieques message could not be carried out the way they
intended.
SEIU/Local 1199 planned to distribute thousands of placards
along the march route with the slogan "Peace for Vieques."
Parade officials told them they could not do this. Only
after heated and prolonged negotiations did parade officials
allow the union to distribute its placards.
ATTEMPT TO CENSURE ANTI-IMPERIALISTS FAILS
The city and parade officials also tried to censure the anti-
imperialist sector of the movement.
The groups Pro-Libertad and the Vieques Support Campaign
filed two separate applications to march in the parade. But
unprecedented repressive measures taken for this year's
parade specified that each contingent could have only 50
participants, who would have to go through heavy security.
Delegates would have to be identified with an orange
wristband even to be allowed entry into the contingent.
Parade officials told the two organizations they would be
allowed only 50 participants in total, instead of 50 for
each group. However, organizers from Pro-Libertad and the
Vieques Support Campaign fought back. On the day of the
parade they were able to swell their ranks to over 200
marchers.
The contingent proudly included a prominent delegation from
the Palestinian Right to Return Committee that had organized
for the parade with the slogan "U.S. bombs: Made in the
U.S., tested in Vieques, dropped on Palestine."
The contingent also included representatives from Student
Liberation Action Movement, St. Romero's Church, the
International Action Center, Women for Peace and Justice in
Vieques, Cubans Against the Blockade and others. Several of
the male participants carried placards that read "Men of
Color for Women's Rights and Against Sexist Violence."
At one point, a contingent from the Almighty Latin Kings and
Queens attempted to enter the anti-imperialist contingent.
The police blocked them. But later in the march, the group
victoriously joined the contingent.
In a blatant show of racism and repression, New York cops
then marched alongside the contingent with nightsticks and
handcuffs, threatening the arrest of anyone they chose.
Throughout the 44-block march the police directed menacing
looks and sneers at the Kings. But it was the Kings, not the
NYPD, who were cheered along the march route.
The Almighty Kings and Queens face racist vilification
comparable to the U.S. government's campaign against the
revolutionary armed forces in Colombia. But the response at
the parade showed that the Puerto Rican masses, especially
the youths, understand that the Kings represent resistance
and the fight against police brutality.
Accentuating the hostile relationship between the New York
Police Department and Puerto Ricans, later that evening
police carried out an attack against Puerto Rican youths in
the Bronx. Over 40 Puerto Ricans were arrested in what can
only be described as a police riot.
The Giuliani administration and mainstream parade officials
might have tried to quash the pro-Vieques message June 10.
In fact, one of their arguments to Local 1199 and the
Vieques Support Campaign was that last year's parade theme
was focused on Vieques and therefore the issue did not have
to be emphasized again this year.
But the Puerto Rican people's determination to get the U.S.
Navy out of Vieques could not be silenced. The last two
years have shown that this movement, after decades of
struggle, is on the rise.
It will not be stopped. It is a mighty wave whose tide will
eventually wash away not only the U.S. Navy but all
imperialism from Puerto Rico.
On June 23, the progressive and anti-war movement in New
York will have the opportunity to hear two leaders from
Puerto Rico at the Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Korea.
Ismael Guadalupe from the Committee for the Rescue and
Development of Vieques and Jorge Faranacci from the Puerto
Rico Socialist Front will be participating in the tribunal.
- END -
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From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: lauantai 16. kes�kuu 2001 11:52
Subject: [WW] General strike rocks Colombia
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 21, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
GENERAL STRIKE ROCKS COLOMBIA:
GROWING THREATS OF INCREASED U.S. INTERVENTION
By Andy McInerney
Close to a million workers brought the South American
country of Colombia to a standstill on June 7. The 24-hour
general strike, supported by all of Colombia's public-sector
unions, was aimed at blocking a government measure to cut
spending on public services.
Some 300,000 teachers and 125,000 health-care workers have
been on strike against the bill's passage since May 15. They
were joined by nearly 400,000 other public-sector workers.
Public transportation was at a standstill in the capital
city of Bogota and many of the other major cities. Hooded
demonstrators broke department store windows. Workers in the
capital fought back against government armored personnel
carriers with Molotov cocktails.
Oil workers in the northeastern city of Barrancabermeja also
joined the strike. Protesters set up roadblocks throughout
the country, including the provinces of Norte de Santander,
Cauca and Valle.
The Spanish news agency EFE called the protests "the most
serious of Andres Pastrana's administration, which has been
in power for two years and nine months." It is in fact the
third major general strike since Pastrana took office.
"We are protesting against Legislative Act 012," said the
FECODE teachers' union President Gloria Ramirez, "and also
against other government measures to deepen the neoliberal
model in the country."
Legislative Act 012 is part of Colombian President Andres
Pastrana's 1999 deal with the International Monetary Fund to
win a financial bailout. The IMF has warned that if the act
is not passed before June 20, it will pull back $2.7 billion
in standby loans.
Colombia faces a severe economic depression. Unemployment
stands at over 20 percent. Half the population lives in
poverty.
Strikes and protests take place in the face of brutal
repression in Colombia. Death squads linked to the military
routinely target organizers and activists.
As of the end of May, 48 union activists and leaders had
been assassinated this year alone--in addition to hundreds
of peasants, Indigenous people and Afro-Colombians living in
the countryside.
PROTESTS AMID REVOLUTION
Protests against the IMF and its neo liberal economic
policies have become increasingly common around the world in
the last five years. The Colombian protests take on
increased importance because of the presence of armed
revolutionary insurgencies challenging the Colombian ruling
class and U.S. imperialism.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army
(FARC-EP) exert tremendous political and military power
throughout the country. For the past two years, they have
been engaged in a process of dialogues with the Colombian
government.
Throughout the talks, the FARC-EP have made clear that the
government's neo liberal economic plan must go.
On June 1 the FARC-EP recently won another victory at the
bargaining table. The government agreed to turn over 15 FARC-
EP prisoners in exchange for the release of captured
government troops.
The FARC-EP also achieved a measure of support for their
demand for the status of "belligerent" in the civil war--to
be recognized as an armed force with political goals, which
the government must confront according to guidelines
prescribed by international accords.
While the Colombian government refuses to recognize this
belligerent status, its agreement on a limited prisoner
exchange is a de facto step in that direction.
In early May, Colombian Interior Minister Armando Estrada
made a startling admission about the government's assessment
of the FARC-EP. "These people could one day be governing the
country," he warned. (London Independent, May 2)
INCREASED SIGNS OF U.S. INTERVENTION
Colombia's ruling class is thus being battered on two sides:
from the armed insurgencies and the powerful mass movements.
Without the support of U.S. imperialism, the Colombian
regime would quickly collapse.
For that reason, U.S. intervention has stepped up
dramatically.
Aid to the Colombian government skyrocketed from $89 million
in 1997 to the $1.3 billion "Plan Colombia" last year. Much
of this aid has been sold to the public as part of a "war on
drugs."
But there are growing signs that this is just the tip of the
iceberg. In a report commissioned by the U.S. Air Force, the
Rand Corp., a right-wink think tank, argues that the "drug
war" rhetoric is an obstacle to the increased intervention
the Colombian government will require. The report was
released on June 9.
"U.S. policy misses the point that the political and
military control that the guerrillas exercise over an ever-
larger part of Colombia's territory and population is at the
heart of their challenge to the Bogota government's
authority," the report notes. It argues that new aid should
not be hampered by restrictions on the anti-drug effort.
United Press International's Pamela Hess reports that "Rand
recommended the United States dramatically increase its
support for Colombia and the military along the lines of
what the United States did in El Salvador during the Reagan
administration--transforming the military from a defensive
force into mobile units that can root out guerrillas in
strategic areas."
The report, read in tandem with recent Bush administration
moves toward increasing military aid to Colombia under the
so-called "Andean Initiative," points toward new levels of
U.S. intervention to try to hold back the Colombian people's
fight for a new society and an end to IMF exploitation.
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: lauantai 16. kes�kuu 2001 11:53
Subject: [WW] Standardized testing: What's at stake in High Stakes
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 21, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
STANDARIZED TESTING: WHAT'S AT STAKE IN HIGH STAKES
By Lyn Neeley
Teacher at East Side Community H.S., New York City
High-Stakes Tests produce a single numerical score to
determine if a student passes to the next grade.
Take this test:
High-Stakes Tests are valuable to public education because
they:
[ ] a. prepare students for high-paying jobs
[ ] b. help students pass high school
[ ] c. raise the teaching standards in public schools
[ ] d. develop "higher level" thinking skills
[ ] e. are an accurate way of measuring intelligence
If you're having trouble choosing a correct answer, you're
not alone. The testing craze sweeping the country is full of
empty promises that right-wing educators, politicians and
testing corporations use to confuse the public.
Standardized tests are being used to dismantle free public
education, institutionalize racism and widen the gap between
social classes.
"My guess is that testing improves education the same way
that bombing promotes democracy," said Steve Cohn, an
education professor at Tufts.
Standardized tests are turning schools into corporations
where the bottom line is how well students do on the tests.
Instead of raising standards, High-Stakes Tests dull down
the curriculum--and the students' minds.
Creativity, reasoning and analyzing skills are sacrificed
when students are
forced to memorize and regurgitate isolated facts and
choose only one right answer.
In order to pass the state-mandated tests, many schools are
eliminating art, music and physical education to make time
for test preparation classes that are more cost effective.
Teachers who have to "teach to the test" become automatons,
spending larger chunks of curriculum time giving tests and
getting students ready for tests.
In Montgomery County, Md., students spend 50 hours each year
just taking tests. And that doesn't include Advanced
Placement tests.
Caleb Rossiter, who teaches statistics at American
University, wrote, "If you could see how they waste
students' time with all this test prep--it's so
disheartening."
Educator Peter Sacks explained, "Evidence strongly suggests
that standardized testing flies in the face of recent
advances in our understanding of how people learn to think
and reason."
One study showed that 77 percent of teachers feel that
standardized tests are not worth the time and money spent on
them. Many educators and reformers have developed
alternative methods of authentic assessment.
This kind of assessment, Sacks explained, is "the notion
that students ought to be judged on the basis of what they
can actually do, not how well they take tests. Also called
performance assessment, these methods can mean anything from
evaluating portfolios of student work or writing samples to
art and science projects."
Teachers are better than standardized tests at assessing the
progress of students.
BUSH'S HIDDEN AGENDA
What's the real agenda behind the George Bush education
agenda, which he dubs "No Child Left Behind"? Without
mentioning any dollar figures, the plan calls for vouchers
to promote private schools, and for standardized math and
reading tests in grades three to eight.
It also promises to "reward success" and "sanction failure"
by introducing a program of merit pay for teachers and
schools, based on test scores. Thus the tests will be used
to grade teachers and principals, which the tests supposedly
were not designed to do.
High-Stakes Testing is cost effective. It serves as a smoke
screen for policy makers, politicians and the media--and the
business interests they all represent--to look as if they
are raising the standards and improving schools. It covers
up their failure to provide money for programs that would
make real improvements.
In fact, poor scores are being used as the rationale for
leaving many children behind by cutting resources and
privatizing schools, especially in poor, under-funded urban
school districts.
Teachers in New York City earn 25 percent less than those in
the suburbs. Not a big draw to attract highly qualified
teachers.
New York City's school districts received $8,213 per capita
for each student compared to the surrounding suburban
districts, which get $12,050 per student.
Money is needed for programs that are proven to help all
children succeed. A good teacher and a well-run school mean
far more to a child than another test. If public education
is to be improved, class size must be reduced, financial
incentives provided for the most qualified and experienced
teachers. There must be teacher-training programs. The
number of teachers of color must be increased.
The schools need up-to-date materials, much-improved
resources, more schools and better maintenance of school
buildings.
TESTING FLUNKS
The New York Times recently reported, "The testing industry
is coming off its three most problem-plagued years that have
affected millions of students who took standardized
proficiency tests."
Writing and scoring tests is a new quarter-billion-dollar
industry. It is dominated by four companies: CTB/McGraw-
Hill, Harcourt, Riverside and NCS Pearson.
To maintain profits these companies pay only $9 an hour to
employees who work 12 hours a day, six days a week.
Employees told the Times that they were "pressed to score
student essays without adequate training and that they saw
tests scored in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner. Lots
of people don't even read the whole test--the time pressure
and scoring pressure are just too great."
In Minnesota last May, 47,000 students received lower scores
than they deserved. Mistakes in the scores of standardized
tests were questioned in Michigan, California, Arizona,
Washington, Tennessee, Indiana and Nevada as well.
After lies and attempts to cover up its mistakes, CTB/McGraw-
Hill finally admitted to errors in scoring standardized
tests.
When Rudy Crew was hired as New York's school chancellor, it
was largely because he had engineered a big increase in
standardized test scores in Tacoma, Wash., in the early
1990s.
In 1999, Crew and the New York Board of Education decided to
raise the stakes for CTB test scores. Students who failed
the tests would be required to pass summer school or be held
back a grade. School principals and superintendents could
lose their jobs if students scored poorly.
When devastating results came back, it looked as if reading
scores had stagnated for two years. New York Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani fired Crew soon afterward.
Now it has been proven that 9,000 of the New York
schoolchildren who were forced to attend summer school in
1999 shouldn't have been there. They had been mistakenly
scored too low by CTB.
BUILT-IN RACIST BIAS
African American and Latino students are disproportionately
failing standardized tests.
"It's revealing that standardized tests have their origins
in the Eugenics movement earlier in this century and its
belief in the intellectual superiority of northern European
whites," Barbara Minor writes in "Rethinking Schools."
The "standardized tests didn't really exist until it was
decided that IQ and similar tests were a valid way to
identify 'superior' and 'inferior' students," she continued.
"Standardized tests legitimize and preserve existing power
relations."
Recent studies show that people taking the SAT college
admission test will score an extra 30 points for every
$10,000 in their parents' yearly income.
A study of California high-school students revealed that
parent education alone explained more than 50 percent of the
variation in SAT scores.
A principal at a school on New York 's Lower East Side said:
"Let's be honest. If poor, inner-city children consistently
out scored children from wealthy suburban homes on
standardized tests, is anyone naive enough to believe that
we would still insist on using these tests as indicators of
success?"
Standardized tests will prevent thousands of students from
graduating from high school, especially in under-funded
urban schools with predominantly students of color.
These young people will become members of the growing pool
of non-skilled, underpaid workers that capitalism needs to
maximize profits. Or they will become part of the profitable
prison-industrial population and receive no salary--creating
more wealth for the ruling class.
Emphasizing standardized testing does not train students to
be critical thinkers. A hidden agenda of the testing craze
is the movement to eliminate anti-racist, multicultural
education that arms young people with an understanding of
themselves, their cultures and the contradictions of being
poor in the leading industrialized country.
A hundred years ago capitalism needed to take rural
agricultural workers and turn them into a disciplined work
force to run its factories. That's when the promise of
universal, free education became a mandate.
Forty years ago, when businesses needed workers for an
expanding service economy, it produced a boom in community
and junior colleges.
But in today's high-tech society fewer educated, skilled
workers are needed. The main purpose of standardized testing
is to sort students according to criteria set by the bosses.
Take this test: What's at stake if the schools continue to
use high-stakes standardized testing?
Answer: A free, well-rounded education for all students.
