Alberta: Academic freedom, or shackles?

June 3, 2009

Alberta, Canada’s legislature passed a bill that allows parents to pull kids out of the classroom if evolution is taught, or almost anything else that the parents deem counter to their own religion.  It’s a passive-aggressive response to laws that require non-discrimination against sexual orientation.

Or does it really allow an opt-out for evolution?  Maybe.  Who can tell?

Even Albertans agree they don’t want to be Arkansas:

‘All they’ve done is make Alberta look like Northumberland and sound like Arkansas.’— Brian Mason, Alberta NDP leader

Oy.  Canada has its own version of the Texas Lege.

Bill 44 represents a deep-seated resentment of education in the hearts of conservatives.  It strikes at the purpose of education, to make students aware of society and other people.  It suggests that some ideas are so dangerous they cannot be discussed, even to rebut.

Fears of parents and conservatives are real.  Often what they fear is not real, or not a problem, or maybe even part of the solution.  Can they come to understand that if they can’t even discuss the issues?

Resources:

3 Comments | Academic freedom, Education, Evolution, Human Rights, Religion, Religious Freedom, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Boy Scout won’t go away

April 21, 2009

Scouting mom and columnist for the Hartford Courant Susan Campbell tells the story of David Knapp, a Boy Scout who refuses to just fade away.  He has a message, and it’s worth listening to.  See “On His Honor, this Boy Scout will do his duty.”

Leave a Comment » | Boy Scouts of America, Civil Rights, Human Rights | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Arc of history under the St. Louis Arch

November 7, 2008

This is just so, so, so delicious.

Look at this photo.  It’s a shot of the crowd gathered in St. Louis on October 19 to see and hear Barack Obama — about 100,000 people.  Study the buildings in the photo.

Supporters of Barack Obama rally in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 19, 2008

Supporters of Barack Obama rally in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 19, 2008

See the building with the green dome?  Recognize it?

Elizabeth Kaeton wrote at Telling Secrets:

If you look in the distance there, you can see a building with a greenish-copper dome. That’s the Old St. Louis Courthouse. For years and years, slaves were auctioned on the steps of that courthouse.

The Old Courthouse used to be called the St. Louis State and Federal Courthouse.

Back in 1850, two escaped slaves named Dred and Harriett Scott had their petition for freedom overturned in a case there. Montgomery Blair took the case to the US Supreme Court on Scott’s behalf and had Chief Justice Roger Taney throw it out because, as he wrote, the Scotts were ‘beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’

Hard to imagine, isn’t it?

What is rather uplifting is that, 158 years later, the man who will most likely be the first black US President was able to stand outside this very same courthouse and gather that crowd. Today, America looked back on one of the darkest moments in its history, and resoundingly told Judge Taney to go to hell.

That case is the first one I thought of when Sarah Palin got caught by Katie Couric unable to explain Supreme Court decisions with which she might have disagreed.  In re Dred Scott is right at the top of my list, and generally on the tip of my tongue.  We fought a great and bloody war to overturn that decision, amended the Constitution, bore another 100 years of atrocities, then passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, all to blot out the dreadful decision those conservative, activist judges wrought on the nation.

Kaeton posted the photo and comments last Saturday, before Freedom Tuesday when we voted as nation to clean up even more of the mess of the Dred Scott case.

History teachers:  I’ll wager that’s a photo you can get cheap, to blow up to poster size for your classrooms.  You ought to do it.  Students should not only understand history, they ought also be able to take delight in watching it unfold, especially when justice comes out of the unfolding.

Found the photo and post, with a tip of the old scrub brush to Blue Oregon, while looking at the astounding number of literary and history allusions in Obama’s unique victory speech, in which he talked about Americans trying to “bend the arc of history.”  I knew I’d heard that line before.  It’s from Martin Luther King, who saidm “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”  (Where did he say that?  When?)

Those allusions, and the speech, may be a topic for another post.

Resources:

11 Comments | 1861-1865, Barack Obama, Civil Rights, Civil War, DBQ sources, Elections, Freedom - Political, History, History images, Human Rights, Obama 2008 | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

George C. Wallace, and Barack Obama

November 5, 2008

Would George Wallace, the late segregationist Governor of Alabama and one-time threat to win the presidency, have voted for Barack Obama?

Ask George Wallace’s daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy.  You might be surprised.

Wallace’s politics were a southern response to what was perceived as Washington’s abandoning of the southern states.  Bush’s policies, especially in the wake of hurricanes that destroyed New Orleans and many other communities in the south, look the same to many southerners.

So, which way would Wallace have voted?

1 Comment | 1968, Barack Obama, Civil Rights, Elections, History, Human Rights, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Vigilante book banners

October 1, 2008

As we ponder how to keep freedom in America in the middle of Banned Books Week, I worry about the dangers of vigilantes acting to effect a ban on a particular book, despite official actions.

How to fight these anti-reading, anti-American vigilantes?  People in Lewiston, Maine, came up with the fantastic idea of simply buying more books.

Vigilantes sometimes check out the books they want to ban, and then simply don’t bring the book back to the library.  If there’s no book on the shelf to be checked out, they reason, no one else can check it out.  One such vigilante in Lewiston, an activist in favor of homophobia it appears, refused even a court order to return the book she wanted to ban, Robie Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal.

Cover of Robie Harriss childrens health book, Its Perfectly Normal

Cover of Robie Harris's children's health book, It's Perfectly Normal

Jail time for the vigilante?  Oh, the law would allow that.  But instead, freedom fighters purchased four more copies of the book for the library.

Voting with ideas.  What a concept!

Full text of the American Library Association press release, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

54 Comments | Banned Books, Books, Civil Rights, Education, First Amendment, Free press, Freedom - Political, Freedom of Information, Freedom of the Press, Human Rights, Libraries, literacy, Literature, Politics, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Rape: A weapon of war

July 28, 2008

With very little fanfare U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice used her time at the UN recently to get a resolution through the Security Council that recognizes rape as an instrument of war (report from Global Sociology Blog).

UN Security Council (UN photo)

UN Security Council (UN photo)

Unfortunately the act got very little coverage in the U.S. press, so far as I can tell. (Please feel free to post links to articles you know about in comments.)

Mark this carefully, you’ll not read it often here: Kudos and thank you to Rice and the Bush Administration.

The UN News Centre reported:

In a resolution adopted unanimously after a day-long debate on women, peace and security, Council members said women and girls are consistently targeted during conflicts “as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.”

The effect is to also prolong or deepen conflicts and to exacerbate already dire security and humanitarian conditions, particularly when the perpetrators of violent crimes against women go unpunished for their actions.

The resolution demands that all parties immediate stop sexual violence against civilians and begin taking measures, from the training of troops and upholding of military discipline procedures, to protect women and girls.

Sexual violence crimes should be excluded from amnesties reached at the end of conflicts, the 15-member Council added, calling on States to also strengthen their judicial and health-care systems to provide better assistance to victims of violence.

The resolution was adopted after dozens of speakers told the Council about the appalling effects of sexual violence during armed conflicts, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying the problem had reached “unspeakable and pandemic proportions” in some countries.

Mr. Ban announced he will soon appoint a UN envoy tasked entirely with advocating for an end to violence against women.

Opening today’s meeting, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the truest test of the will of the international community was the protection it gave to the most vulnerable.

“When women and girls are raped, we cannot be silent… we must be their advocates,” Ms. Rice said.

See a second report here. Security Council report and resolution text here. The text of Resolution 1820 (2008) is listed below the fold.

International law develops quickly, but often out of sight of most people. This action is another in a long string of international agreements that build on the laws of war, and the laws of human rights. As part of the string of treaties including the Geneva Conventions on war, this offers a 21st century turn on the laws that gave rise to the International Red Cross, the rules of war, the war crimes trials following World War II, the drive for NATO and the UN to intervene in Bosnia, and it provides commentary on events and genocides in Turkey, World War II China and Europe, Cambodia, Guatemala, San Salvador, Rwanda, Congo and Darfur — and other places we don’t even know about yet. Each class will differ; these materials suggest topics for in-class debates about current issues seen through a lens of the experience of history.

The resolution and debates offer opportunities for Document Based Questions for AP and pre-AP course practice.

A look at some of the events in a reverse chronology of the issue, from the archives of the New York Times, reveals both the difficulty of getting this simple acknowledgement made, and the horrors of rape as a tactic or weapon.

Other Resources:

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Africa, Congo, Darfur, DBQ sources, History, Human Rights, Politics, United Nations, War, War crimes | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Not for children, not for sleeping: Goodnight Bush

July 21, 2008

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd is one of my favorite books of all time. I first read it when I was in college, but it was a toddler favorite of both of our sons, and it rapidly became one of mine, too. Reading it to them at bedtime helped calm them down and put them to sleep. There is from the book a feeling of safety, of warmth, coziness, and love. I may have liked reading it to them more than they liked being read to.

With our youngest off to college this fall, I wish there were some book to give them that would reproduce those good feelings of nearly 20 years ago.

::sigh::

Here’s what we have instead. Goodnight Bush.

This image is scary enough (see the bugging microphone? the burning ballot box? the tilted scales of justice? the polluting smokestacks?).

Cover of Goodnight Bush

Cover of Goodnight Bush

This is the one that makes the more serious statement:

Goodnight human rights, everywhere

Goodnight human rights, everywhere

A story on this book at NPR was the “most e-mailed” last week.

Images by Gan Golen and Erich Origen, Goodnight Bush, copyright © 2008, Little, Brown and Co.

4 Comments | Books, Elections, History, Human Rights, Political cartoons, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

New book: Sex Trafficking by Siddarth Kara

July 18, 2008

1.  Siddarth Kara has written an important new book on trafficking in sex:

2.  Columbia University Press’s move into internet, viral videos to sell books is a good idea with decent execution, so far.

Leave a Comment » | Books, Economics, Globalization, History, Human Rights, Justice, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Jihad for Love – in New York City this week (take 2)

May 23, 2008

How very, very odd. I had a post up, and it disappeared.

This is a recreation, as much as I can.

If you’re in New York City this week, go see this movie. It’s got a great producer, a fellow I know only through the Louis August Jonas Foundation. It has a good director, and a few very good reviews. And it covers a topic of surpassing importance.

Below, the press release from the producer, Sandi DuBowski, and other resources.

A Jihad For Love Launches U.S. Theatrical Release at IFC Center in New York from May 21st – June 4th – Two Weeks Only!

Buy your ticket online at http://www.ifccenter.com/film?filmid=38472.
Box Office: 212.924.7771 323 Sixth Avenue (at W. 3rd St. )

“CRITIC’S PICK! BRAVE…EYE-OPENING!”
– New York Magazine

“REVEALING AND MOVING…A GIFTED FILMMAKER!”
–Wall Street Journal

“COURAGEOUS!”
-The Guardian

“LIFTS THE VEIL OF SECRECY…FRANKLY BRAVE!”
-NPR Talk of the Nation

Fourteen centuries after the revelation of the holy Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, Islam today is the world’s second largest and fastest growing religion. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma travels the many worlds of this dynamic faith, discovering the stories of its most unlikely storytellers: lesbian and gay Muslims.

Produced by Sharma and Sandi DuBowski (director of the award-winning Trembling Before G-d), A Jihad for Love was filmed over 5 years in 12 countries and 9 languages and comes from the heart of Islam. Looking beyond a hostile and war-torn present, it reclaims the Islamic concept of a greater Jihad, whose true meaning is akin to ‘an inner struggle’ or ‘to strive in the path of God.’ In doing so the film and its remarkable subjects move beyond the narrow concept of ‘Jihad‘ as holy war.

www.ajihadforlove.com

After Premieres in 15 countries, being banned in Singapore , selling out everywhere including India and Turkey and five international awards, the film comes to the U.S. and NYC.

We need people to show up during our NYC theatrical run in very large numbers. Bookers across the country will be looking at the success of the film at the NYC Box Office to determine its life everywhere else in the country. If you come the first five days, you can significantly impact the film’s theatrical life in the U.S. and other countries.

Joining director/producer Parvez Sharma and producer Sandi DuBowski in the theater are Imam Muhsin Hendricks, the first openly gay imam from Cape Town , South Africa and Mazen from Egypt/France, featured stars of the film and Faisal Alam, the founder of Al-Fatiha.

We will turn the cinema into a town hall – for debate, change and transformation. Visit http://www.ajihadforlove.com/screenings_D.html for our dazzling line-up of Q & A’s and forums on Islam, Human Rights, South Asian Sexualities, Interfaith such as

Thursday, May 22nd, 7 PM & 9.30 PM
Evening with Sholay and A Jihad for Love Team

Friday, May 23rd, 7pm
Dialogue with Progressive Muslims Meet Up Group

Saturday, May 24th, 5:05pm, 7pm, 9:30pm
Human Rights Watch and Scott Long present in association with A Jihad for Love: Before the Crusade Passes By: Trapped in the middle of a “clash of civilizations.”

Sunday, May 25th, 7 PM and 9.30 PM
Films for Change

… Looking forward to seeing you there!

May 21st – May 29th Show Times: 11:20am, 1:15pm, 3:10pm, 5:05pm, 7:00pm and 9:30pm

Q & A’s and forums with Parvez, Sandi, Muhsin, Mazen, Faisal, and others after 7pm & 9:30pm shows

Get Involved! Here are some ways you can support this film:

Right Now:

* Purchase tickets online for The IFC Center
* Post a link to www.ajihadforlove.com and www.ajihadforlove.blogspot.com on your blog

Support The Cause:

* Donate to our International Muslim Dialogue Project at http://www.ajihadforlove.com/donate.html

Watch A Jihad for Love trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78jUBRio3So

Listen to Parvez Sharma on NPR‘s The Takeaway at http://www.thetakeaway.org/archives/2008/05/19/3

Best,

Sandi DuBowski
Producer, A Jihad for Love
Director/Producer, Trembling Before G-d

Parvez Sharma
Director/Producer, A Jihad for Love

Other resources:

1 Comment | Civil Rights, Human Rights, Movies | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Marriage rights and civil rights giant, Mildred Loving, 68

May 5, 2008

We learned today that Mildred Loving died Friday in Milford, Virginia.  She was 68.

2007 was the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision in which she played a key role, Loving vs. Virginia. In that decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state laws against interracial marriage are unconstitutional.

The romance and marriage of Mildred and Richard Loving demonstrate the real human reasons behind advances in civil rights laws.  They left Virginia to avoid facing prosecution for having gotten married; but when they wanted to be closer to family, they wrote to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union, who financed the case to get the law changed.

Richard and Mildred Loving, screen capture photo from HBO documentary,

Richard and Mildred Loving, screen capture photo from HBO documentary, “The Loving Story.”

See the post from last year on the anniversary of the decision. The Associated Press wrote today:

Peggy Fortune [daughter] said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

“I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love,” Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

“There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause,” the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.

“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said. “It was God’s work.”

Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, “Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers.”

Richard died in 1975.

History loses another hero.

Update: Just as one more showing of how things have changed, this is the headline of the story of Mrs. Loving’s death in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Free Lance-Star, the local newspaper in Mrs. Loving’s home county, Caroline County:  “CAROLINE HEROINE DIES”

I’ll wager the Virginia headlines were quite not so glowing in 1967.

4 Comments | Bill of Rights, Biography, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Current History, Desegregation, Family, Famous trials, Freedom - Political, Good Deeds, History, Human Rights, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Politics, Racism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Shame on you, Tony Campolo: Darwin was not racist

January 21, 2008

Tony Campolo is an evangelical Christian, a sociology professor and preacher who for the past 15 years or so has been a thorn in the side of political conservatives and other evangelicals, for taking generally more liberal stands, against poverty, for tolerance in culture and politics, and so on. His trademark sermon is an upbeat call to action and one of the more plagiarized works in Christendom, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming” (listen to it here).

Rev. Tony Campolo; photo from Stephen Sizer's site.

Rev. Tony Campolo; photo from Berean Research.

Since he’s so close to the mainstream of American political thought, Campolo is marginalized by many of the more conservative evangelists in the U.S. Campolo is not a frequent guest on the Trinity Broadcast Network, on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” nor on the white, nominally-Christian, low-budget knock-off of “Sabado Gigante!,” “Praise the Lord” (with purple hair and everything).

Campolo came closest to real national fame when he counseled President Bill Clinton on moral and spiritual issues during the Lewinsky scandal.

His opposite-editorial piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, “The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” is out of character for Campolo as a non-conservative evangelistic thinker — far from what most Christians expect from Campolo either from the pulpit or in the college classroom. The piece looks as though it was lifted wholesale from Jerry Falwell or D. James Kennedy, showing little familiarity with the science or history of evolution, and repeating canards that careful Christians shouldn’t repeat.

Campolo’s piece is inaccurate in several places, and grossly misleading where it’s not just wrong. He pulls out several old creationist hoaxes, cites junk science as if it were golden, and generally gets the issue exactly wrong.

Evolution science is a block to racism. It has always stood against racism, in the science that undergirds the theory and in its applications by those scientists and policy makers who were not racists prior to their discovery of evolution theory. Darwin himself was anti-racist. One of the chief reasons the theory has been so despised throughout the American south is its scientific basis for saying whites and blacks are so closely related. This history should not be ignored, or distorted.

Shame on you, Tony Campolo.

Read the rest of this entry »

18 Comments | Accuracy, Biology, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Evolution, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Human Rights, Junk science, Racism, Religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Howard Zinn’s blog

December 20, 2007

Did you know infamous historian with a view to the left, Howard Zinn, has a blog?

Howard Zinn, photo: City Lights Books

And you didn’t tell me?

Actually, it’s more of a website. Many teachers use some of Zinn’s writings, and your library really should include a copy of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Note the on-line collection of essays from The Progressive and ZNet. Links go to audio and video of Zinn lectures and debates, and this series of dramatic readings from A People’s History featuring James Earl Jones, Alfre Woodard, Marisa Tomei and other stars. Students will find his site entertaining.

And notice, revealed in the note about a movie coming from the book, there is a connection between Zinn and Matt Damon. Any mnemonic device will do in a rising tide . . .

4 Comments | Books, Education, History, History audio sources, History video sources, Human Rights, Politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks sits down for freedom

December 1, 2007

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted, Library of Congress

Rosa Parks: “Why do you push us around?”

Officer: “I don’t know but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.”

From Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Quiet Strength
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Pub. House, 1994), page 23.

Photo: Mrs. Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Alabama; photo from New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, Library of Congress

Today in History at the Library of Congress states the simple facts:

On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was full. Blacks were also required to sit at the back of the bus. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system and led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.

Rosa Parks made a nearly perfect subject for a protest on racism. College-educated, trained in peaceful protest at the famous Highlander Folk School, Parks was known as a peaceful and respected person. The sight of such a proper woman being arrested and jailed would provide a schocking image to most Americans. Americans jolted awake.

Often lost in the retelling of the story are the threads that tie together the events of the civil rights movement through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. As noted, Parks was a trained civil rights activist. Such training in peaceful and nonviolent protest provided a moral power to the movement probably unattainable any other way. Parks’ arrest was not planned, however. Parks wrote that as she sat on the bus, she was thinking of the tragedy of Emmet Till, the young African American man from Chicago, brutally murdered in Mississippi early in 1955. She was thinking that someone had to take a stand for civil rights, at about the time the bus driver told her to move to allow a white man to take her seat. To take a stand, she remained seated. [More below the fold] Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments | Civil Rights, Dissent, Famous quotes, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Politics, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

When do we reach the “never” in “Never again?”

November 4, 2007

You won’t find this in your world history text.

Events in Congo trouble at so many levels. Reports in The New York Times and other places document unspeakable violence: 27,000 sexual assaults in South Kivu Province in 2006, just a fraction of the total number across the nation of 66 million people. The assaults are brutal. Women assaulted are often left so badly injured internally, they may never heal.

  • Map of Congo, showing area of high violence in east, from New York Times Map of Congo, highlighting province of Bukavu where violence against women is epidemic, from New York Times

Genocide you say? Many assaults appear to be spillover from the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in next-door Rwanda. But assaults by husbands on wives also are epidemic. Result of civil war? Then how to explain the “Rasta” gang, dreadlocked fugitives who live in the forest, wear tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys, and who commit unspeakable crimes against women and children? What nation are they from, and against whom do they fight, if anyone — and for what?

The facts cry out for action:

  • Nightly rapes of women and girls. The violence appears to be a problem across the nation.
  • Huge chunks of Congo have no effective government to even contend against the violence.
  • Killers with experience in genocide in their native Rwanda moved into Congo; they live by kidnapping women for ransom. The women are assaulted while held captive. Sometimes husbands do not take back their wives.
  • The oldest rape victim recorded by one Congo physician is 75; the youngest, 3.

Surely intervention by an international group would help, no? However

  • Congo hosts the largest single peacekeeping mission of the United Nations right now, with 17,000 troops. Congo is a big nation, bordered by nine other nations. How many troops would it take to secure the entire nation, or the entire border? No one knows.
  • 2006 saw an election that was supposed to remake history, end the violence and start Congo on the road to recovery; but was the $500 million it cost enough to change Congo’s history of a string of bad governments?
  • International attention focuses on other crises: Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Darfur, Iran, Korea, Chechnya, Turkey and the Kurds, Palestine and Israel. Congo, constantly roiling since the 1960s, is way down the list of world concerns, no matter how bad the violence.

Americans looking for a quick resolution to the situation in Iraq might do well to study Congo. At Congo’s independence in the 1960s, there was hope of prosperity and greater peace. Foreign intervention, including meddling from the U.S., regional civil wars, bad government and long international neglect, ate up the hope. Achieving what a nation could be is difficult, when so many forces align to prevent it from being anything other than a violent backwater. Pandora’s box resists attempts to shut it. Quick resolution is unlikely.

So the violence in Congo continues. In this world, when is the “never” in “never again?”

How many other such cases fall outside our textbooks, and off the state tests?

Resources:

2 Comments | Africa, Disasters, Economics, Genocide, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Human Rights, Natural resources, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Slave narratives in Flash animation

August 31, 2007

Wow!

Graphic for Slave Narratives on-line exhibit

Teachers, take a look at this Flash animation about slavery, from the Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. Yes, that beautiful, distinctive narrator voice is Maya Angelou — this is a high quality, high-impact presentation.

This MoAD piece, “Slave Narratives,” gives a glimpse of the potential of on-line learning, and what can be done with computers to supercharge a subject. Here slavery is presented as not only a colonial American problem, but is instead carried on through salvery issues in the 21st century. It’s part of the MoAD “Salon,” a site that world geography, world history and U.S. history teachers need to visit right away.

Cyberspace Nova discusses the site in a quick review of recent great Flash animations:

Imagine how it looked like taking a people freedom, torturing them, killing them and moving them far far away from their home. Tears can follow very easily if you just put one picture on your mind how it looked like. Yet, Slave Narrative put thousands of pictures in front of your eyes if you listen to the stories of slaves who lived to write them and share with people that will live after them. Let’s never forget this, because it’s happening today, like some stories from Slave Narratives tell… I love that this site is done in Flash, it is so powerful, it tells a story that we cannot hear a lot… Narrative part not just only justifies use of Flash, whole interactivity makes it great. 5/5

Opening to Photographs from the African Diaspora exhibit

Also look at this photographic exhibit of from MoAD, featuring more than 2,000 photos of people of African descent and places and things important to them — again, with great flash animation.

Bookmark the home page of the museum while you’re there.

1 Comment | Education, Geography - Economic, Geography - Political, History, Human Rights, Museums, On-line education, On-line learning, Slavery | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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