The Real School AKA Dragon Valley invites you to join us for the second meeting of our alternative education reading group. Each month we will have a different short reading, available online or by email, to review beforehand and then a meeting to discuss our thoughts and opinions on alternative educational theory and how it relates to our lives.
The second meeting will be on Sunday, November 11th at 3 PM at The Real School AKA Dragon Valley, located at 5020 Dickson, Houston, Texas 77007 (near Shepherd and Memorial). We will be discussing Chapter 9 (Bribes for Behaving: Why Behaviorism Doesn't Help Children Become Good People) from Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards. If you have a Houston Public Library card you can read it online as an e-book or check it out from several locations. This is also a book that is available in many bookstores. If you would like a copy to print out please email us.
Young people of all ages are welcome at all of our events; they are the reason for our events! But we do not provide childcare. Our underlying philosophy strives to include not segregate kids. We accept the need of many younger people to move around, to come and go from conversation and to act... like kids. Some older folks have similar needs. As a matter of information, jumping up and down often correlates with happiness.
You can find out more about the school at:
http://www.thereals choolhouston. org
You can read the school's blog at:
http://www.thereals choolhouston. blogspot. com/
To contact the school please call (832) 767-0404 or email us at therealschoolhouston@yahoo.com.
Thanks to:
Thursday, November 8, 2007
HOUSTON: Alternative Education Reading Group Meeting -- NOV 11
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
ARTICLE: Taking The Border Battle To The Streets
Nov. 6, 2007, 4:12PM
Taking border battle to the streets
In Houston, debate gives way to confrontation of illegal immigrants, their supporters
By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
It's become a Saturday morning ritual on a street corner in Spring.
Two dozen U.S. Border Watch volunteers, some wearing combat boots and military-style garb, face off with Hispanic day laborers and a half-dozen of their supporters.
''Stop the hate! Stop the fear! Immigrants are welcome here!" boomed a woman's voice recently over a portable loudspeaker.
''Thou Shall not Steal America," reads a sign waved by a member of Border Watch, a group based in Spring.
A similar scene has unfolded over the past months at the busy intersection of Steubner-Airline and Wimbelton Estates Drive in northwest Harris County. The day laborers, many of them undocumented, gather each morning in the Speedo gas station parking lot.
And nearly every Saturday morning since September, dozens of Border Watch members have attempted to drive them away. They chant slogans, wave signs and film employers who pick up immigrants for work.
Far from the halls of Congress and the front lines of the Southwest border, the divisive immigration debate is being played out in local neighborhoods, including the Houston area. A number of groups have upped the ante by moving from debate to confrontation, attempting to take immigration duties into their own hands.
Since the Minuteman group staged a border surveillance operation in Arizona in 2005, more than 250 new anti-immigrant groups have formed, said Mark Potok, director of Southern Poverty Law Center's intelligence project, which monitors such organizations.
''There's been a prairie fire in the last couple of years — these groups have really exploded," Potok said.
In April, the center listed 144 ''Nativist Extremist" organizations that go beyond debate and target individuals, Potok said. There are 13 immigration-related activist groups in Texas, and Border Watch was among three in the Houston area.
"The most significant danger posed by these groups is the poisoning of the democratic debate" about immigration levels, Potok said. Instead, the groups have turned ''the discussion into a diatribe about how Mexicans are destroying our culture, bringing diseases to our country and killing dozens of Americans every day," he said.
'It's about being illegal'
The president of Border Watch, Curtis S. Collier, said his members don't have a racist agenda. Their goal is simple: Expel the millions of illegal immigrants in the United States.
''To be racist, you have to target someone because of their race," Collier said. ''We don't care who you are. If you're here illegally we want you to go home. It's not about being brown-skinned, it's about being illegal."
Doris Meissner, who headed the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton era, said groups such as Border Watch have proliferated due to frustration over the government's inability to control illegal immigration. And while Meissner characterized the groups as ''spot outbreaks," she considers them a threat.
''They are dangerous because they do border on vigilante activity," said Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
But groups lobbying for limited immigration see the growing activism differently.
Dan Stein, president of the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, said the explosive growth of immigration as a domestic issue — fueled in part by the Internet — and the formation of activist groups was triggered by the Bush administration's failure to crack down on illegal immigration. ''It is a truly magnificent populist action, in a way we haven't seen in decades," he said.
They keep close watch
Border Watch was co-founded by Collier, a 47-year-old Spring resident who spent eight years as a U.S. Army policeman before opening a small pest control company. He claims 1,628 members nationwide, with chapters in El Paso, San Antonio and Arkansas. Twice a year, Border Watch tracks illegal immigrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border
Collier, who speaks about border security at events across Texas, repeats claims that 25 Americans citizens are killed each day by undocumented immigrants. Islamic terrorists are slipping across the Southwest border, he says, camouflaged as illegal immigrants.
''There have been reports of Spanish-speaking schools popping up in the Middle East and teaching people in that part of the world to speak Spanish so they can blend in easily," Collier said.
Potok, with the poverty center, said those claims are common to this new breed of anti-illegal immigration activists. ''These are the paranoid fantasies of people with difficulty handling reality," he said.
Border Watch monitors some of what Collier said are 57 day labor sites in the Houston area.
''We do day labor observations ... workplace investigations, undercover operations," Collier said. ''Like, we'll go to day labor sites and pose as employers to figure out if they're here illegally and what their wages are going for."
He has even posted a video on YouTube documenting one of his "investigations."
So when church leaders in the Spring area proposed a center for day workers who use Stuebner-Airline as a gathering place, Collier and his group pounced.
''All hell broke out," recalled pastor Franklin Moore, part of a local-interfaith group working to establish a center.
''All we wanted to do was get a place for day laborers to be safe, to get out of the sun and rain, to get a drink and go to the bathroom," Moore said.
Border Watch volunteers marched on the Chamber of Commerce, and scores of members dominated a September meeting on the proposed center.
After weeks of Saturday demonstrations by Border Watch volunteers, several pro-immigrant organizations have shown up to support the day laborers. One recent Saturday, the two sides again faced off yards apart at the entrance to the Speedo convenience store. Two police cruisers were parked nearby to keep protesters apart.
Facing off on one corner
''Border Watch has been out here for several weeks harassing the day laborers, and we're out here to oppose the racism and harassment," said David Michael Smith, a professor at the College of the Mainland in Texas City. He has helped sponsor protests by the International Socialist Organization and the Progressive Workers Organizing Committee, among others.
Smith's wife, Rona, an elementary school counselor, used a loudspeaker to lead chants. About a dozen day laborers, with nothing to do since only two employers appeared all morning, held up protest signs. ''Racists! Fascists! Hey, hey, Border Watch go away!" Rona chanted.
Collier stood at the head of the Border Watch volunteers and unsuccessfully challenged Smith and his wife to debate. ''David, you and Rona look alone over there," he chided.
Soon after the protest began, sheriff's deputies had to intervene when neighbors upset with the noise confronted Rona. With the loudspeaker turned off, confrontations continued.
''You are the real traitors of the country, you are dividing the country. All these people are here to work," shouted Cristobal Hinojosa, with Mexicans in Action, who approached Border Watch volunteers.
The demonstration ended shortly before noon. Moore, the pastor, said both sets of protesters have hurt efforts to find a safe place for day laborers. ''It's gotten so convoluted, I don't know how to fix it," he said.
james.pinkerton@chron.com
Thanks to:
HOUSTON: Sweatshops 101 Tour -- NOV 14
USAS Presents: Sweatshops 101 Tour-
The tour will be stopping in Houston, Tx on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007. The discussion will take place starting at 6:30 @ Bohemeos Cafe (708 Telephone Road in the East End about 5 minutes from UofH-Central)
This tour will be a great opportunity to learn more about United Students Against Sweatshops. People already involved and other people interested in learning about USAS's goals are all invited. It is an open event. The talks and focus of the tour include:
- how we can develop valuable organizing skills to take back to our respective campuses
- how we can use our power as students to affect an industry that thrives in secrecy, exploitation, and the power relations of a flawed system
- brainstorming/ strategizing around campus campaigns
- learning about how workers are organizing to make change on the ground
and, most importantly,
- meeting other activists and organizers!
These are links to the flyers:
( there is space on the kids shirt and underneath "sweatshops 101" for you to write whatever you want)
quarter page flyer:
http://www.box.net/shared/ri43ro0ni2
half page:
http://www.box.net/shared/fbougsa75e
jpeg file for emails/web:
http://www.box.net/shared/epym5flabl
Questions/Comment? Please contact Gabriel M. (USAS-San Antonio) 210-254-4757
Deniz Lopez
queenstrawberry782@yahoo.com
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Houston IMC Filmscreening Workgroup Meeting Tomorrow -- NOV 7
Hi everyone, The indymedia filmscreening working group is trying to get off the ground and become more active and collaborative, we'd love folks from the coalition in defense of the community to get involved, especially with the project of getting documentart filmscreenings off of the campus and into the neighboorhoods. if anyone is interested, come out to this meeting tommorow, or let me know.
RoB
--
I'm writing to invite you to the Houston Filmscreening Workgroup meeting that will take place this Wednesday (tommorow), 7pm at Diedrich Coffee,
4005 Montrose Blvd.
We're going to be talking about the filmscreenings we have coming up on November 16th (IDKE 2006 - About Drag Kings, feat. Houston's own Bayou City Gendermyn!) and December 13th (Mural Kings about NYC Graffiti institution Tats Cru, with a panel discussion afterwards, part of the BBoy Hodown + co-sponsored with Objectif magazine), as well as start picking the films we will be screening in 2008, and thinking about other film distrobution projects and opportunities. We'd love you help in the selection, promotions and execution of our 6 year old film series.
So far we've been talking about:
Meeting Resistance - a doc on the Iraqi Insurgency
(http://meetingresistance.com/)
Total Denial - on Chevron/Unocal's role in human rights abuses in Burma
(http://www.totaldenialfilm.com/)
Desserter and War of 33 - new films from Big noise Films
(http://www.bignoisefilms.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=1)
Their dispatches series look dope too!
Chiapas Media Project's fall tour
(http://www.promediosmexico.org/eng/index.html)
Bringing films to neighborhood - continueing our collaboration with MEXA to bring films to parks and public places in East Houston
a possible mini-film fest to accompany the Center For Mexican-American Studies conference on Contemporary Mexico in mid-April
Helping promote the Second annual Houston Palestine Film Festival in '08
2007 schedule:(http://vbbarts.org/palestinefilmschedule.html)
There are lots of things in the works, we're only limited by the amount of time and energy people can invest to make these screenings happen. Please come out to this meeting if you are able or contact me (RoB) to get more information on place on the email list.
Also Tonight, Video Houston Indymedia shot at the March to End Executions will be screened at the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement's Meeting at 7pm at SHAPE Community Center. Come by if you can, it'll be really laid back.
--
We Are All Journalists
Dont hate the Media, Be the Media
Thanks to:
rob
roblock@riseup.net
Tancredo is Comin' To Town... -- NOV 20
FORWARDED MESSAGE:
Reception for Presidential Candidate and Immigration Reform Leader Tom Tancredo
Date: Tuesday November 20, 2007
Time: 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Type: Appointment (Public)
Location: TBA
"Presidential candidate and immigration reform leader Tom Tancredo will be in Houston, TX on Tuesday, November 20th for an intimate fundraiser. Tickets are $400 per person, $750 per couple, and $1,500 for 5 tickets. Attendees are encouraged to reserve their ticket early as space is limited."
Please RSVP to Beau Correll at 888-GOTOM08 or by e-mailing beau.correll@teamtancredo.org.
Gotta find that location!
--
A.S. (Stace) Medellín, MS
Bloguero, DosCentavos.net
Stace Medellín
doscentavos@gmail.com
Sunday, November 4, 2007
HOUSTON: Sunday Rally for HISD Bond -- NOV 4
PRESS ADVISORY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
November 2, 2007
CONTACT:
Anna Núñez
Cell: (713) 857-9160
E-mail: anna.nunez@yahoo.com
LATINO COMMUNITY RALLY FOR HISD BOND
East End Parents & Students Highlight School Needs
WHO:
East End Parents and Students (over 60) will speak about the problems at Burnett Elementary.
WHAT:
Latino Community Rally in support of HISD Bonds
WHERE:
Eastwood Park
5000 Harrisburg & Dumble Street
Houston, Texas 77011
WHEN:
Sunday, November 4, 2007, 2:00 p.m. (Press conference to begin at 2:30 p.m.)
WHY:
Parents and children of Burnett Elementary (predominantly Latino) are calling upon the Latino community to vote on Tuesday, November 6th, in support of the HISD Bond.
“Our main concern is our children’s safety and we want security cameras,“says parent María Treviño whose daughter Andrea attends Burnett Elementary. “It’s a must. Everyday we are faced with different issues and our children’s safety has to be our priority.”
Parents constantly complain that when it rains, the roof leaks and water actually pours into the classroom through the windows.
Top on their list of complaints is a broken air-conditioning system, which is slated to be replaced with the $1.5 million Burnett Elementary will receive upon passage of the HISD Bond.
“Our children had no air-conditioning on Friday and it’s hot!” continues Ms. Treviño. “We’ve had two hot days this week and our children sit in hot classrooms with no cool air. Parents are worried and concerned for their children. We need new everything!”
# # #
Worker Center Delegations -- NOV 5, 8
Two workers have cases of wage theft with us that merit a visit to applicable patron rata. Please let me know if you could join us to show some solidarity with these workers who need their due wages!
Monday 11/5-
Abel Hernandez worked for Las Rosas Mexican Grill. He is owed $3,553 in overtime and back pay! The company has refused to pay him what he's owed. We need to put some more pressure on Las Rosas!
Meet at the Worker Center @ 10am. We'll meet up with Abel and travel to the restaurant to arrive during lunch hours
Thursday 11/8-
Martin Gonzalez worked for Azteck Communications - a vendor of Cricket phones. There's all kinds of abuse going on there. Not only are workers denied their full wages, but also clients are being over-charged for simple things like changing the language option on their phone. Ain't right.
Courtesy of:
Laura Boston
lboston@iwj.orgPublish Post
