Transitions

I want to take a break from electoral politics for a while. I want to spend time promoting my book, White Knight or how one man came tobelieve that he was the one who caused the San Francisco City Hall killings andthe Jonestown Massacre (it’s a comedy) as I am shamelessly doing right now. I want to work on my memoir called Schools of Thought My 65 years in education. I want to enjoy my retirement.

One of the things I’ve re-discovered in the process of the Sanders campaign is how little power is actually being scrabbled over. The primary role of the constitutional government is to sell the policies of the National Security State – that’s NSA, CIA, DIA, Joint Chiefs, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Homeland Security. These are the primary instruments of power that rule us. Ironically, this is slightly reassuring in terms of what looks to me like is going to be a Trump victory. It will be horrible for people of color because Trump’s movement unleashes the power of the white supremacists. But the National Security State won’t allow Trump to do anything foolish in foreign policy. Since their policy is to foment maximum chaos in the middle east, it’s unlikely that he would even want to do anything different, it’s such a terrific strategy for the elites to stay in power. The rich are not challenged when the lives of the 99% are in chaos.

I had some hopes for Jill and the Greens for a while, and I'll vote for her to strengthen the Green Party -- if she promises not to campaign in Ohio, North Carolina, and the other swing states. I do think we need Clinton to win to keep the racist dogs of the alt-right in check. Even so, keeping it real, I’m afraid Trump will win because his people, like Bernie’s people, understand that this is a war. The white supremacists call it a race war; we call it a class war. The Clintonites don’t get that. They think it’s a war against ISIS. But it isn’t.

So I’m transitioning this blog out of Bernieland and into the world of schools, writing, memoir, and self-promotion (LOL). Somebody’s got to do it. I did start a new Facebook group called Progressive Successes to document the smaller, more local victories we achieve -- keeping a school open, getting a independent police review board, winning a union election, stopping coal trains from traveling through our neighborhoods. Check it out, like, join, share, and post about the victories you know about.

My book White Knight is about building a parent student alliance in the San Francisco schools in the seventies. It’s a people’s historical novel about white teachers supporting Black parents in keeping their school open. It’s about a lot of other things too, pedagogy, racism, interracial marriage, sexism, and paranoia. And politics. It’s all politics, isn’t it?