Sal Castro addresses students during the East L.A. Blowouts in 1968.

“The East Los Angeles Walkouts or Chicano Blowouts were a series of 1968 protests by Chicano students against unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School Districthigh schools. The first walkout occurred on March 5, 1968. The students who organized and carried out the protests were primarily concerned with the quality of their education. This movement, which involved thousands of students in the Los Angeles area, was identified as ‘the first major mass protest against racism undertaken by Mexican-Americans in the history of the United States.’ … Since the school walkouts, Los Angeles schools have since increased in Mexican American school teachers and administrators, they’ve also seen higher graduation and college attendant rates as well as incorporating both Latino and Bilingual studies and programs. … In a radio interview, Moctesuma Esparza, one of the original walkout organizers…

Jane Jacobs, third from right, with architect Philip Johnson, protests against the demolition of Penn Station in New York, 1963.

“The need for Jane Jacobs and her clear-eyed human-scale urbanism is as strong as ever. Her masterpiece The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) described in brilliant detail the intricate ecology of how a city works (New York) or does not work (Detroit). Though Jacobs never wrote fiction, the book was more like a novelistic rendering of lived street life than a scholarly text. She was, as she once described herself, a ‘student of cities’, more interested in the effects of buildings than their design. Vital Little Plans collects for the first time Jacobs’s interviews, speeches, talks and short pieces of journalism – and there is much in this lucid and persuasive anthology that resonates today. In her essay ‘Downtown Is for People’, from 1958, she criticises…

The blog called “Misinformation Kills” usually focuses on COVID Lies and misinformation and their perpetrators. In this post, however, Dr. Alison Neitzel takes a different perspective on the money men who are undermining our democracy by capturing the courts.

She shows the outlines of a “vast rightwing conspiracy,” as described years ago by Hillary Clinton in 1998. At the time, people thought she was exaggerating. Now we know it exists.

It involves not only Harlan Crowe, the very generous benefactor of Justice Clarence Thomas, but Charles Koch and the mysterious Council on National Policy, where rightwing zealots meet and greet and plan their strategy.

Leonard Leo, the Catholic and deeply conservative leader of the Federalist society, planned the successful conquest of the U.S. Supreme Court. Donald Trump was his useful idiot.

Koch is all in for deregulation. But not when women’s reproductive rights are at issue.

Will Justice Thomas be…

“Who was Stanislaw Lem? The Polish science fiction writer, novelist, essayist, and polymath may best be known for his 1961 novel Solaris (adapted for the screen by Andrei Tarkosvky in 1972 and again by Steven Soderbergh in 2014). Lem’s science fiction appealed broadly outside of SF fandom, attracting the likes of John Updike, who called his stories ‘marvelous’ and Lem a poet of ‘scientific terminology’ for readers ‘whose hearts beat faster when the Scientific American arrives each month.’ Updike’s characterization is but one version of Lem. There are several more, writes Jonathan Lethem in an essay for the London Review of Books, penned for Lem’s 100th anniversary – at least five different Lems with five different literary personalities. Only the first is a ‘hard science fiction writer,’ the genre originating not with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but ‘in H.G. Wells’ technological prognostications.’ Represented best in the pages…

Ron DeSantis has taken national leadership in his effort to stamp out drag queens. I have never been to a drag queen brunch or a drag queen library story hour, but they seem to be popular in some places, especially in Florida. And DeSantis won’t have it! Apparently, parents bring their children to these events, but they don’t have the “parental right” to do it in DeSantisland.

Floridians in the performing arts are worried that DeSantis will send his morality police to close them down next, if they stage a play like “Mrs. Doubtfire.” As it happens, a drag musical called “Kinky Boots” recently opened in Orlando; it was a huge hit on Broadway. Will DeSantis close it down? Will he assign undercover agents to make sure that no parents bring children with them?

Amanda Rosa writes in the Miami Herald:

Before there was “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and drag brunch…

“… In addition to straight remasters, Concord has brought together live recordings previously parceled out over several albums onto a single more cogent and representative release. The first of these is a double anniversary celebration when saxophonist John Coltrane’s Afro Blue Impressions turns 50, as Pablo reaches 40 years old. Originally released as a two-LP set, Afro Blue Impressions contained nine live performances recorded in Berlin in November, 1962 and Stockholm in October, 1963, recorded with his classic quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones. The newly remastered compilation contains an additional three performances from the Stockholm concert (‘Naima,’ ‘I Want To Talk About You’ and ‘My Favorite Things’) that were previously released on The European Tour (Pablo, 1980) and Live Trane: The European Tours (Pablo, 2001). How Granz came into possession of these Coltrane tapes at a time when the saxophonist was…

Ruth Marcus is deputy editor of the Washington Post and is a consistent voice for sanity and reason. In this article, she describes one of the worst federal court decisions ever. If this decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, we will all need guns to protect ourselves. Good news for the gun industry, bad news for public safety. Marcus wrote this article before the latest school shooting in Nashville, where three adults and three children were murdered. The killer was armed with three weapons, including an AR-15, which has no purpose except as a killing machine. Hunters don’t use it because it destroys what it kills.

She writes:

When the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment protects individuals’ right to gun ownership, it emphasized the ability “of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” When it expanded that decision last year…

A reader who identifies as “Retired Teacher” sees the school choice juggernaut as a deliberate plan to destroy our common good: public schools. Thomas Jefferson proposed the first public schools. The Northwest Ordinances, written by the founding fathers, set aside a plot of land in every town for a public school.

The origin of the school choice movement was the backlash to the Brown Decision of 1954. Segregationists created publicly-funded academies (charters) for white flight and publicly-funded vouchers to escape desegregation.

What replaces public schools will not be better for students, and it will be far worse for our society.

So much reckless “choice” will make the public schools the schools of last resort for those that have nowhere else to go. Choice is a means to defund what should be our common good. How are the schools supposed to fund the neediest, most vulnerable and most expensive students when…