Public high school students! Sign up for two free arts workshops at Urbano

Contemporary Dance and Composition
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30-6:00
Learn to express yourself through movement. Classes include lessons in technique from disciplines including ballet, jazz, hip-hop, and modern dance. This dance class will focus on composition and choreography. Through improvisational exercises, students will learn how to create their own original movement. No previous dance experience is required.

Installation: Art in 4 Dimensions
Wednesdays, 3:30-6:00
How can a room become a work of art? Or a sidewalk? Why and how do artists use whole spaces and all 5 senses to communicate? In this class, learn about it by making an installation of your own! We will work with writing, sculpture and video projections to create experimental, mixed-media artworks.

Download an application form at: http://www.urbanoproject.org/programs.html
Submit completed application forms to: info@urbanoproject.org
or mail to: URBANO Project 29 Germania Street Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

Questions or want more information? Contact URBANO at 617.983.1007 or email info@urbanoproject.org. We are happy to visit high schools, libraries, community centers, and other organizations in your community to present Urbano's programming to interested teens.

Urbano's Teen Curators present: Youth Fusion 2010:
Free arts, film, and performance events for teens and community members in March

Friday March 12, 6:00 - 8:00pm at Urbano
Opening reception for Teen Visual Art Curators' exhibition
Dreams, Tales, and Turning Points
How do your dreams, fantasies and memories shape your reality? Urbano's Teen Visual Art Curators sought teen artwork inspired by dreams, fairy tales, and major events from childhood. Welcoming a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, prints, photography, collage, installation, sculpture, video, and performance art, the Curators received many fascinating submissions. Individually and as a group these artworks unveil the mysteries that lurk in our subconscious, and quietly form our fears and fancies.

Friday March 19, 6:00 - 8:00pm at Urbano
Teen Film Curators youth film screening and filmmakers' talk-back

Friday March 26, 6:00 - 8:00pm at Urbano
Spoken Word Open Mic Night hosted by the Teen Spoken Word Curators
Labels: Arts , Education , Events , Workshops

Continuing Black History beyond one month and in celebration of Women's History Month.....

Scholar/Historian Dr. Runoko Rashidi in Boston

A TRIBUTE TO GREAT AFRICAN WOMEN AROUND THE WORLD: ANCIENT AND MODERN--A VISUAL OVERVIEW OF GREAT BLACK WOMEN

Mon. March 15, 2010
6:30 - 8:30 PM
@RCC 1234 Colombus Ave. Roxbury Bldg #3 Lecture Hall

DR. RUNOKO RASHIDI is an Author, Scholar, Historian, World Traveler and Researcher. Dr. Rashidi’s work is primarily focused on the “Global African Presence” and he has authored hundreds of articles on the African presence in Asia, India, Europe, Australia, Canada, North America, South America as well as the Caribbean.

Dr. Rashidi has worked with many of our great Black scholars such as; Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. John G. Jackson and has contributed to the Black Historical Classics “African Presence in Early Asia” as well as “Introduction to African Civilizations”

suggested donation $10
none will be turned away

for MORE info: 617-755-6463
blackstonian@verizon.net

Brought to you by: Blackstonian.com and 10,000 Strong Boston in conjunction with National Black College Alliance (NBCA), Greatest Minds, Union of Minority Neighborhoods (UMN) and Boston Black Men’s Leadership Group (BBMLG)
Labels: Black History , Education , Events , Women's History

Take Action to Demand Equal Quality Public Education!
FULL Funding for Boston’s Public Schools!

 Wednesday, March 3
5:30 pm - Press Conf./Picketline
School Committee, 26 Court St., Boston
for more information: Coalition for Equal Quality Education
equaluqualityeducation@gmail.com
www.equalqualityeducation.com
Across the country, students, teachers, faculty and other workers, along with concerned parents, community activists and organizations, will be using the week of March 4 to strike decisively to defend public education and the right to pursue higher learning. Here in Boston the Coalition for Equal Quality Education (CEQE) has chosen Wednesday, March 3rd to initiate a campaign against budget cuts and charter schools. This date was chosen to to coincide with a regularly scheduled Boston School Committee meeting. CEQE has endorsed the March 4 National Day of Actions to Defend Education.

Over the next several weeks CEQE will be organizing protests at Boston School Committee budget hearings culminating with a major protest on March 24th when the School Committee is scheduled to vote on next years budget. Boston Public Schools are now facing more budget cuts and layoffs. Heat is being turned down, teachers and staff are being laid off, educational programs are being cut, and at least 2 schools will be closed. Safe, reliable transportation of BPS students is once again being threatened with budget cuts. Supt. Johnson is planning to reintroduce the same 5-Zone Plan that was defeated last spring. This plan will lead to the further re-segregation of public education and limit choices for parents & students.

At the same time that funding for public education is being slashed the state legislature recently passed legislation to allow for the creation of more charter schools. Charter schools are publicly & privately funded corporations (The Bradley Foundation, Entertainment Properties Trust, & Wall St. investment banks to mention a few) whose purpose is to make a profit off of the education of our youth while robbing public education of badly needed funding & resources. Contrary to the claims by charter proponents charter schools will not eliminate the opportunities to learn (achievement) gap. In fact, charter schools do not provide adequate services for ELL and Special Education students. According to the Massachusetts Teachers Association 19% of BPS students are ELL as compared to 2% for charters. In contrast, Boston Public Schools are required to educate every student that walks through the door. Students who don’t fit the charter profile due to low grades or other challenges will be forced to leave charter schools and return to an even more underfunded & under-resourced BPS. In short, the proposed budget cuts and the expansion of charters creates a two-tier, separate & unequal education system: one that is highly funded for students who fit the charter profile & the other severly underfunded for everyone else.

The effects of the economic crisis have been felt in all sectors. Hundreds of thousands have faced having their homes foreclosed on or being evicted. Millions have lost their jobs and have added to the ranks of unemployed, especially people of color. Many families face hunger on a daily basis.

The crisis has not abated but continues like a storm. Federal, state and local governments are now cutting back on vital social services; closing schools; defunding education, health care and other needs; and laying off more workers.

There has been an accelerated push to privatize public education under the guise of “school choice,” using the crumbling infrastructure of inner city schools as an excuse. This crumbling is due to decades of systemic underfunding.

Parents and their children are wooed by for-profit and even nonprofit charter schools as a way out. But the charter schools offer a clear and present danger to teachers’ unions and are not bound to provide English as a Second Language or special education services. Charters can be granted to companies or a group of individuals who ultimately select the students and control the curriculum and budget.

Besides the above, corporations and financial institutions would like to get their hands on the $800 billion a year spent on education.

The Obama administration has contributed to the race to privatize public education. It has dangled $4 billion in front of strapped state governments to compete for by devising a new plan for education. This “Race to the Top” program calls not only for diminishing or eliminating altogether the cap on charter schools, but also calls for the tying of teacher pay to performance, opening the door for the firing of teachers at “underperforming schools.” Just this past week, the school committee in Central Falls, Rhode Island voted to fire every educator at Central Falls High School at the end of the school year. This anti-union attack on the hard won rights of teachers was applauded by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The state budget crisis, which grew out of the general economic crisis, has provided state governments across the country a pretext for further attacks on public education. As of December, 36 states have made higher education budget cuts, resulting in tuition increases and reductions in faculty and staff. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have cut aid to K-12 schools. Additional cuts across states are expected to be widespread in 2010.

In this climate of severe and relentless education cuts, the protests that will take place in conjunction with March 4 is just the beginning of a movement to unite students, educators and other workers against the attacks on public education. As the struggle continues to grow post-March 4, it will be critical to link together the movements for jobs and education with the movement to stop the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For more information on the March 4 National Day of Actions to Defend Education:
 - Visit the Web site for more details at http://www.defendeducation.org.
 - Endorse the call by sending an email to march4nationaldayofaction@gmail.com
Labels: Education , Events

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 22 February 2010

A fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Martin Kramer, has called for "the West" to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.

Kramer, who is also a fellow at the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), made the call early this month in a speech at Israel's Herzliya conference, a video of which is posted on his blog ("Superfluous young men," 7 February 2010).

In the speech Kramer rejected common views that Islamist "radicalization" is caused by US policies such as support for Israel, or propping up despotic dictatorships, and stated that it was inherent in the demography of Muslim societies such as Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. Too many children, he argued, leads to too many "superfluous young men" who then become violent radicals.

Kramer proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would "happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status."

Due to the Israeli blockade, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are now dependent on UN food aid. Neither the UN, nor any other agencies, provide Palestinians with specifically "pro-natal subsidies." Kramer appeared to be equating any humanitarian assistance at all with inducement for Palestinians to reproduce.

He added, "Israel's present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim -- undermine the Hamas regime -- but if they also break Gaza's runaway population growth, and there is some evidence that they have, that might begin to crack the culture of martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men." This, he claimed, would be treating the issue of Islamic radicalization "at its root."

The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, defines genocide to include measures "intended to prevent births within" a specific "national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

The Weatherhead Center at Harvard describes itself as "the largest international research center within Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences." In addition to his positions at Harvard and WINEP, Kramer is "president-designate" of Shalem College in Jerusalem, a far-right Zionist institution that aspires to be the "College of the Jewish People."

Pro-Israel speakers from the United States often participate in the the Herzliya conference, an influential annual gathering of Israel's political and military establishment. This year's conference was also addressed by The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and, in a first for a Palestinian official, by Salam Fayyad, appointed prime minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.

Kramer's call to prevent Palestinian births reflects a long-standing Israeli and Zionist concern about a so-called "demographic threat" to Israel, as Palestinians are on the verge of outnumbering Israeli Jews within Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories combined.

Such extreme racist views have been aired at the Herzliya conference in the past. In 2003, for example, Dr. Yitzhak Ravid, an Israeli government armaments expert, called on Israel to "implement a stringent policy of family planning in relation to its Muslim population," a reference to the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Labels: Articles , Palestine

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