By Nicholas Johnson

As much as letter writers may have condemned Highline Community College for inviting Dr. Bill Ayers to speak about education reform during the college’s MLK Week, Ayers’ presentation Thursday made no significant mention of his past. Rather, the education professor from the University of Illinois focused on the subject he has practiced since he graduated college in the ‘60s and studied for more than two decades: education.

“The lecture was to focus on education, not Bill Ayers,” said Natasha Burrowes, chair of the college’s MLK Week Committee. “This week is not about creating polarity. We didn’t organize this by labeling people. It’s about the issues.”

And for Ayers, the issues were simple. First, teaching should not be constricted to traditional roles. Second, democratic principles require the recognition of each student as having incalculable value. Third, citizens in a democracy must open their eyes to the world as it is, become motivated to do something and always doubt so as to avoid becoming dogmatic.

Deconstructing the tradition of teaching

Early in his presentation, Ayers revisited his first teaching experience at the age of 20. When his kindergartners began asking questions to which he had no good answer, Ayers said he began questioning traditional models of teaching and learning.

“If the teacher has to be an expert on everything that comes up, it leads to all the squirrelly answers that teachers give,” he said. “The point being that if you think of knowledge as linear and flat and complete, then you’re always in this position where you are trying to figure out, ‘how do I answer that,’ as if there’s a sequence to learning.”

For Ayers, learning isn’t scripted and modeled; rather it’s a unique and differing process for each student. Once he broke down the traditional model of education, he realized alternatives were possible.

“Rather than seeing the teacher as the master and commander in charge of the podium, in charge of the classroom, you could begin to see the teacher as a pilgrim on a voyage, with his or her students, on a voyage of discovery and surprise,” he said. And instead of thinking of kids as a mass of deficits, which is what the school system tends to do, we can think of kids as unruly sparks of meaning-making energy on a voyage.”

Why does the ball bounce?

What democracy requires of education

Regarding the requirements democratic principles place upon education, Ayers’ key critiques included the inequities of funding and resources for schools, political rhetoric framing education as a product to be bought and sold, and the labeling of students that stands in the way of recognizing each student as having incalculable value.

“What’s important is how people, including students, think of themselves,” he said. “Not how they are labeled.”

He stressed the importance of viewing education as a human right, rather than a product, and denounced a system based upon standardized testing and the weeding out of winners and losers. The issue of inequitable funding for schools prompted Ayers to mention the gap in funding per student per year between students on the west end of Chicago and the east.

“What are we saying to kids?” he asked. “We’re saying to kids, ‘we have an educational policy and that policy is simple: chose the right parents. If you choose the wrong parents, don’t blame me. What were you thinking? Why did you get born in that town instead of that town? You could have done better.’ Well, that’s wrong. In a democracy, that is fundamentally, profoundly backward.”

Open your eyes

Ayers then proceeded to argue that to be worthy of citizenship in a democracy, a person must open his or her eyes.

“We are all blind people who can see; we are all seeing people who are blind,” he said. “So when I say open your eyes, I don’t mean once or for a minute. I mean continually. There’s always more to know, more to see. And as soon as you are satisfied that you can see everything, then you are dead as a seeing person.”

The essential reason Ayers advocates opening your eyes, questioning and doubting, is so you can consider alternatives and avoid dogmatism. Ayers said seeking alternatives is to believe another possible world sits right next ours, a world where the inequities that challenge us now have been overcome.

“You cannot be an engaged and moral person if you can’t begin to posit, either tease out or invent or imagine, that standing right next to the world as such is a world that could be,” he said. “Another world is possible. Alternatives are there. If you can’t find them, you have to search for them. If you can’t find them once you search for them, you have to group up with other people and search harder. It’s our responsibility to open our eyes and imagine another world.”

Audience reaction

Tim Lloyd, a Des Moines resident who lives down the street from Highline, attended Ayers’ presentation and said he felt the controversial activist made a great contribution to MLK Week.

“The things he is doing today are definitely things Dr. King would absolutely advocate for,” Lloyd said. “He’s about leveling the playing field, about making sure everyone in our country gets the same type of education and the right kind of education, and I think he perfectly addressed all that.”

Bill Ferguson, a part-time instructor at Highline, said he felt Ayers represented Dr. King’s ideals and principles very well.

“One thing I liked about his presentation is that he said, ‘I don’t like being labeled. I don’t like being put into a box of what I might believe,’” Ferguson said.

Burrowes, who organized the event, said labeling hinders open discussion of important issues, which has not been the goal of MLK Week.

“I think what we’re really trying to do is continue [Dr. King’s] legacy of dialogue in order to create more non-violent, just, equitable communities,” she said.

To see a full video of Dr. Ayers’ presentation, click here.

Dr. Ayers addresses community’s criticism

When asked whether he felt he made a suitable representative for Dr. King in participating in Highline’s MLK Week, Ayers had this to say:

“I never for a minute claimed I was a good representative for MLK Week. That wasn’t my choice. I think people at the community college have a right to speak to whoever they want to in the spirit of dialogue. Because they invite somebody does not even mean they agree with that person.”

Regarding similarities and comparisons between Dr. Ayers and Dr. King, Ayers had this to say:

“There’s a lot of mythology that surrounds me and what I’ve done. There’s also a lot of mythology that surrounds Martin Luther King. He was an absolute champion of non-violence. He was also a champion of activism. Martin Luther King stood for non-violent, direct action. I think that’s a healthy aspect of every democracy.

Martin Luther King was a radical. He was in the tradition of radical social democracy. By radical I mean what Ella Baker said about King. Baker defined radical as going to the root; finding out the root cause of something.

In his writings from 1965 to 1968 King identified himself as a radical – opposed to racism, opposed to militarism and also opposed to capitalism. People want to rewrite all that and say he was just a saint who mainly thought we should all be nice to each other. That’s not quite right. When he died, he was less popular than George W. Bush when he left office. His popularity came later, after he was defanged and made more palatable. He was a radical and he was an activist, and those are important things to remember about him.”

Regarding accusations of violence on the part of The Weather Underground, he had this to say:

“What I find objectionable is when people single out The Weather Underground as the exemplar of violence when 6,000 people a week were being murdered, and when John McCain runs for president on this phony narrative of being a war hero. He was not a war hero. War heroes don’t actually fly over civilian targets and bomb and kill people. That’s what he did. Forty years later he wanted to make that narrative one of heroism. He’s a violent person.”

Thousands of MLK Day celebrants strolled through Seattle’s streets Monday afternoon. Following a route from Garfield High School down to the Federal Building at 2nd Avenue and Madison Street, marchers carried signs and chanted for equality and justice.

Prior to the march, a rally was held in Garfield’s gymnasium. The rally featured performances by the Leschi Elementary Choir, El Centro Children’s Choir and the PNW Drum line. Keynote speaker Rev. Dr. Robert Jeffrey Sr. delivered a powerful speech, bringing the audience to their feet and motivating them for the long march.

Below are scenes from both the rally and march, accompanied by an audio compilation from the day. Enjoy, and be sure to turn up your speakers.

Click to Play the Slideshow

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King,
from a speech delivered in 1967

by Mark Neuman

Contemplating the Giant Triplets
I am embarrassed to admit that, at age nine, I knew more about Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch and a TV situation comedy called “F Troop” than I did about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I know this because I was watching a syndicated repeat of that silly show on the afternoon of April 4, 1968, when a news bulletin cut into regular programming to announce that Dr. King had been shot and killed earlier that day.

I did not know who he was.

I quickly got to know, in part, on the strength of my third and fourth grade teachers at Holy Rosary Elementary School in West Seattle, and then I never forgot.

Our recent handful of years
With an over half-trillion dollar burden set firmly on the backs of Americans not yet born, the powers-that-be recently bailed out the powerful who failed us.

And some number of millions of everyday Americans participated as well, in the pursuit of a piece of the glittering illusion: unbelievably rapidly appreciating equity.

Any number of common desk working brokers and agents just “did what the boss told us” to earn fast, fat commissions.

Regulators, overseers are somewhat difficult to blame. They, too, like the profits, were largely imaginary, nonexistent. Those who existed sat by, quite silent.

Today, a Senator from Illinois engenders, through no fault of his own, racist sentiments from various pockets all about our country.

And this is seven score and three years after the end of the Civil War.

And meanwhile another chunk of trillion has been thrown at a conflagration, a quagmire, in the Middle East that, inarguably, Dr. King would have opposed.

A great speech
And so I bring to you today words earnestly delivered by Dr. King, less than a year before he died. Officially it is titled: "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam."

It could quite well be subtitled: “The Giant Triplets Speech.”

It could also be called: “Please Don’t Make Our Country Look Like This in the First Decade of the 21st Century.”

If only all we Americans had recited or read, daily, his powerful words, spoken forty-one years ago:

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.”

In our modest blog offices it was suggested: Should we post and highlight this speech two days before Election Day?

We “Woodwarded and Bernsteined and Bradleed” this about. Would some be offended? Might some misunderstand?

Perhaps some will.

Some always do.

Any complaints? Send them to me.

Any credit or compliments? They go to Dr. King.

Here is a recording of, in my opinion, a stunning and timeless speech from the greatest and most courageous leader of my lifetime.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When you hear Dr. King’s words, spoken less than a year before he passed, does your heart beat fast?

I should expect and hope it would.

Perhaps your eyes water at certain points.

You’re in good company if they do, I assure.

Never heard this speech before? You are not to blame. We live in a “forget the past” society. Additionally, Dr. King’s other stunning and courageous works, including “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” happen to overshadow his own genius, literary and oratory greatness and prescience displayed at other times in his life.

Does the speech seem familiar? Please give it a listen again, in the relative stillness of this, the day most often set aside for meaningful thought, then send a note to that Social Studies teacher from grade six, your History professor from college, your Speech Coach and thank her or him for the initial introduction.

Send the links to your nephew in the Navy, your sisters from the old sorority, your Aunt in Auburn or Alabama, your boss in Bellevue, your kid in college.

Move it along the internet line to your favorite State Rep or least favorite Congressman, the most ethical attorney you know, or maybe even the least trustworthy scumbag Wall Street suit you are glad you never met, or, perhaps, are sorry you ever did.

Print out Dr. King’s words (we’ll get that link to you soon), fold it up and send them along with warmth in your Holiday greetings later this Autumn.

And so, on this Contemplative Sunday Holiday
No matter for whom you wish to loft into office with the fuel of your ballot this Tuesday, I am sure we can all agree, today, on this Contemplative Sunday, the following goal: Let us all, now and in these crucial near years, stare down those Giant and Ugly Triplets and knock them off their high perch for good.

Thanks.

–Mark Neuman
mark@b-townblog.com

Just received word from a Reader who sends us this info on a local “Day of Service” on Jan. 19th (MLK Day) starting at the ACORN Offices in Burien (and as we previously reported, broken into in October):

Join Washington ACORN On January 19 in making Martin Luther King Day a true day of service.

First, we will join other organizations in a march on the Washington State Capitol in Olympia to talk to our legislators and have our voices heard.

Then, President-Elect Barack Obama has asked us to make this special day a Day of Service. Washington ACORN members will leave Olympia and gather in Tacoma to deliver the message that there is help for people facing mortgage foreclosure.

Meet in our Burien office at 7:30 AM to travel together to Olympia.

Burien office located at 134 SW 153rd Street.

WHAT: MLK Day “Day of Service”

WHEN: Monday, January 19 7:30 AM

WHERE: Washington ACORN Office, located at 134 SW 153rd Street in Burien (see map below)

INFO: 206-723-5845

Here’s a video of the announcement of USAService.org featuring Colin Powell:

Click here to view the embedded video.

“It is important for us to honor and celebrate the legacy of Dr. King and all those that were in the struggle so that it can remind us to continue the work for freedom and justice in our own historical moment,” said Natasha Burrowes, assistant director of Student Programs and Diversity.

Now in its 17th year, Martin Luther King Jr. Week is one of Highline’s biggest events. More than 600 people attended last year’s discussions and performances.

WHEN: Jan. 19-23, 2009, various times

WHERE: Highline Community College’s main campus, which is located midway between Seattle and Tacoma at South 240th Street and Pacific Highway South (Highway 99); address: 2400 S. 240th St., Des Moines, WA 98198 (map below).

COST: Free and open to the public

INFO: www.highline.edu/stuserv/programs/mlkweek.htm

PROGRAMS:

• King as a Social Scientist: The Revolution of Values Towards Creative Maladjustment
  9 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, Highline Student Union (Building 8), Mt. Constance Room
  Dr. Mark A. Bolden, who holds a doctorate from Howard University and is the president elect of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Association of Black Psychologists, will discuss how students can find creative ways to do King’s work. Bolden is also founder and convener of the Fanon Project, a collective of scholars and activists who employ the work of Frantz Fanon toward decolonizing the mind of African people.
• Living the Vision
  11 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, Highline Student Union (Building 8), Mt. Constance Room
  Dr. Bolden hosts this interactive workshop that incorporates skill building exercises related to the interpersonal transgressions that we commit against one another with a re-commitment to treat individuals more humanely.
• Creating a Vision of Equity and Opportunity in Education
  12:10 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, Building 7
  Dr. Debra Ren-Etta Sullivan, co-founder and first president of the Praxis Institute for Early Childhood Education, a college that provides education and professional development, discusses the importance of creating equity, sharing opportunity and taking responsibility for children’s education.
• From Dr. King to President Obama: Racial Vision, Racial Blindness and Racial Politics in Obamerica
  10 a.m. and 12:10 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21, Highline Student Union (Building 8), Mt. Constance Room
  Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a professor of sociology at Duke University and author of “Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States,” discusses how systems of racism continue to exist and manifest in this historical moment.
• Diversity at Highline: A Critical Analysis of Recruitment & Retention of Faculty and Staff of Color
  2-3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21, Highline Student Union (Building 8), Mt. Constance Room
  This program focuses on the importance of recruitment and retention of faculty and staff from diverse backgrounds at Highline. Campus leaders will discuss broader campus initiatives and the ways these actions impact increasing and retaining a multicultural staff and faculty.
• Born Rich
  12:10 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22, Highline Student Union (Building 8), Mt. Constance Room
  Kevin Stanley, Highline Economics professor, discusses “Born Rich,” a 2003 documentary directed by Johnson & Johnson heir, Jamie Johnson, about growing up in one of the world’s richest families. The film will also be screened.
• Elders Panel: Retrospection on Dr. King’s Vision
  11 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 22, Building 7
  Local elders from Highline and the community who were, and remain to be, political activists and advocates for their communities will discuss being a part of the transformation of the 1960s.
• 2020: New Visionaries Panel
  9 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 22, Building 7
  Dr. King and the civil rights movement occurred in the 1960s. Who is leading the charge for truth and rights in our communities now? Come listen to current social justice activists and learn how you can get involved in making a difference now.
• A People’s History of Sports in the United States
  9 and 10 a.m. Friday, Jan. 23, Building 7
  Dave Zirin, author of “What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States,” “Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports” and the online column edgeofsports.com, will discuss his latest book, “A People’s History of Sports in the United States: From Bull-Baiting to Barry Bonds … 250 Years of Politics, Protest, People, and Play.”
• Rainbow of Desire
  Noon to 2 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23, Highline Student Union (Building 8), Mt. Constance Room
  This interactive performance and community dialogue will be facilitated by Marc Weinblatt, founder and director of the Mandala Center. The “Rainbow of Desire” is part of a body of work known as “Theatre of the Oppressed,” a community-based education that uses theater as a tool for transformation and was created by Brazilian visionary Augusto Boal. It is used for social and political activism, conflict resolution, community building, therapy and government legislation.

Highline Community College was founded in 1961 as the first community college in King County. With approximately 10,000 students and 350,000 alumni, it is one of the state’s largest institutions of higher education. The college offers a wide range of academic transfer and professional-technical education programs, with day, evening, online and weekend classes.

With the most diverse population of any college in Washington state, Highline takes a multicultural approach to education for the success of all its students and the prosperity of its surrounding communities. Alumni include former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, entrepreneur Junki Yoshida and Washington state’s poet laureate Sam Green.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: We're proud to say that we're alums of HCC, having attended as a Journalism Major in the late 70s/early 80s, where we served as both a Writer and Photographer on the Thunderword.

This is when we met TM Sell, now an accomplished Playwright as well as Professor of Journalism at Highline.]

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“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King,
from a speech delivered in 1967

by Mark Neuman

Contemplating the Giant Triplets
I am embarrassed to admit that, at age nine, I knew more about Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch and a TV situation comedy called “F Troop” than I did about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I know this because I was watching a syndicated repeat of that silly show on the afternoon of April 4, 1968, when a news bulletin cut into regular programming to announce that Dr. King had been shot and killed earlier that day.

I did not know who he was.

I quickly got to know, in part, on the strength of my third and fourth grade teachers at Holy Rosary Elementary School in West Seattle, and then I never forgot.

Our recent handful of years
With an over half-trillion dollar burden set firmly on the backs of Americans not yet born, the powers-that-be recently bailed out the powerful who failed us.

And some number of millions of everyday Americans participated as well, in the pursuit of a piece of the glittering illusion: unbelievably rapidly appreciating equity.

Any number of common desk working brokers and agents just “did what the boss told us” to earn fast, fat commissions.

Regulators, overseers are somewhat difficult to blame. They, too, like the profits, were largely imaginary, nonexistent. Those who existed sat by, quite silent.

Today, a Senator from Illinois engenders, through no fault of his own, racist sentiments from various pockets all about our country.

And this is seven score and three years after the end of the Civil War.

And meanwhile another chunk of trillion has been thrown at a conflagration, a quagmire, in the Middle East that, inarguably, Dr. King would have opposed.

A great speech
And so I bring to you today words earnestly delivered by Dr. King, less than a year before he died. Officially it is titled: “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam.”

It could quite well be subtitled: “The Giant Triplets Speech.”

It could also be called: “Please Don’t Make Our Country Look Like This in the First Decade of the 21st Century.”

If only all we Americans had recited or read, daily, his powerful words, spoken forty-one years ago:

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.”

In our modest blog offices it was suggested: Should we post and highlight this speech two days before Election Day?

We “Woodwarded and Bernsteined and Bradleed” this about. Would some be offended? Might some misunderstand?

Perhaps some will.

Some always do.

Any complaints? Send them to me.

Any credit or compliments? They go to Dr. King.

Here is a recording of, in my opinion, a stunning and timeless speech from the greatest and most courageous leader of my lifetime.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When you hear Dr. King’s words, spoken less than a year before he passed, does your heart beat fast?

I should expect and hope it would.

Perhaps your eyes water at certain points.

You’re in good company if they do, I assure.

Never heard this speech before? You are not to blame. We live in a “forget the past” society. Additionally, Dr. King’s other stunning and courageous works, including “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” happen to overshadow his own genius, literary and oratory greatness and prescience displayed at other times in his life.

Does the speech seem familiar? Please give it a listen again, in the relative stillness of this, the day most often set aside for meaningful thought, then send a note to that Social Studies teacher from grade six, your History professor from college, your Speech Coach and thank her or him for the initial introduction.

Send the links to your nephew in the Navy, your sisters from the old sorority, your Aunt in Auburn or Alabama, your boss in Bellevue, your kid in college.

Move it along the internet line to your favorite State Rep or least favorite Congressman, the most ethical attorney you know, or maybe even the least trustworthy scumbag Wall Street suit you are glad you never met, or, perhaps, are sorry you ever did.

Print out Dr. King’s words (we’ll get that link to you soon), fold it up and send them along with warmth in your Holiday greetings later this Autumn.

And so, on this Contemplative Sunday
No matter for whom you wish to loft into office with the fuel of your ballot this Tuesday, I am sure we can all agree, today, on this Contemplative Sunday, the following goal: Let us all, now and in these crucial near years, stare down those Giant and Ugly Triplets and knock them off their high perch for good.

Thanks.

–Mark Neuman
mark@b-townblog.com