Snakes On McCain

Saturday, September 28, 2013

0 What We're Reading Today (9-28-13)

Yeezy, Drake, TFA, AmeriCorps, Rich folks, Chicago, Education

Why Kanye is Right, And Kimmel emblematic - Storify
Ayesha A. Siddiqi (@PushingHoops)

The Worst Part Of the Kanye-Kimmel Saga? It's Hardly Surprising. - Huffington Post
Kia Makarechi

Kanye West Isn't Joking Anymore - Pitchfork
Ernest Baker

Watch/Listen: Kanye West's Full Interview With Zane Lowe - Pitchfork
Evan Minsker and Jean Pelly

I Quit Teach for America - The Atlantic
Olivia Blanchard

Plutocrats Feeling Persecuted - New York Times
Paul Krugman

Breaking the Cycle of Anger - The Nation
Marie Myung-Ok Lee

The Young, Low-Wage, Temporary Disaster Relief Army - The Nation
Max Rivlin-Nadler

Students Take On Teach for America -- and Its Political Allies - The Nation
StudentNation

Why We Write About Oppression - The Nation
Mychal Denzel Smith

Big Ghost Ltd Presents The Nothing Was The Same Review - Big Ghose Limited
Big Ghost

A Conversation With Drake at NYU Gets Very Real, Very Fast - Grantland
Rembert Browne

Is James Baldwin America's Greatest Essayist? - The Atlantic
Ta-Nehisi Coates

All the Starships Scaled to Size - Gawker

The curious case of Alice Walker - Michigan Daily
Zeinab Khalil

How Bad Is Violence in Chicago? Depends on Your Race - The Atlantic
Noah Berlatsky

What Combat Feels Like Presented in the Style of a Graphic Novel - The Atlantic
Evan Parsons

The Case Against High School Sports - The Atlantic
Amanda Ripley

0 What We're Reading Today (9-25-13)

Today is a day of cultural awareness, and creative intrigue. Some collections of music and visuals and interviews from Kanye to 80's Graffiti. Also my girl Solange makes a cameo.

Listen, look and feel.

The 50 Best Rap Album Covers of the Past Five Years, Dale Eisinger et al., Complex

'It Could Have Been Me': The 1983 Death Of A NYC Graffiti Artist, Erik Neilson, CodeSwitch

“I’m Just A White Girl In This World” — On Hip-Hop’s White Girls and Internet Novelty, Kendra James, Racialicious

Gender Bending, Genre Mashing, Elvis Geisha, Lady Man, Andrea Mary Marshall, Dodge and Burn

Kanye West's Zane Lowe Interview, Michael Hann, The Guardian

A Conversation With Drake at NYU Gets Very Real, Very Fast, Rembert Browne, Grantland

On Following Football, Listening To Rap, Watching P*rn, And Feeling Like Sh*t, Damon Young "The Champ", Very Smart Brothas

When Afrocentric Art Goes Wrong: Merchandising the March on Washington, Terryn, PostBourgie

And the aforementioned SOLANGE:

Started from the bottom, now we're queer.
-Jay

0 What We're Reading Today (9-22-13)

Sorry for the long wait. Teaching is.... hard.

New York Times: Voices for Equality - New York Times

The Reality of Black Male Privilege - The Grio
Theodore R. Johnson

In Which You Have No Idea What They've Endured - This Recording
Alex Carnevale

When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland - Tressiemc

When Peace Becomes Obnoxious - MLK and the Global Freedom Struggle
Martin Luther King Jr.

Rosen: The 2013 VMAs Were Dominated by Miley's Minstrel Show - Vulture
Jody Rosen

How school privatization hawks Teach for America promote Israel - Electronic Intifada
Max Blumenthal

[ENOUGH] Keep Chicago Out Your Mouth - Ebony
Joshua Adams

Are Black Names 'Weird,' or Are You Just Racist? - The Daily Beast
Jamelle Bouie

Electronic Dance Music's Love Affair With Ecstasy: A History - The Atlantic
P. Nash Jenkins

Brad Paisley and the Politics of Offense and Offense-Taking - The Atlantic
Ta-Nehisi Coates

How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers - The Atlantic
Gregg Easterbrook

A Rising Tide Lifts Mostly Yachts - The Atlantic
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Trayvon Martin Was a Victim of Black-on-Black Crime - The Atlantic
Ta-Nehisi Coates

George Zimmerman's Way Is the American Way - The Nation
Gary Younge

The Art History of Drake: Influences on Nothing Was the Same's Cover - The Fader
Naomi Zeichner

US F-22 Stealth Fighter Pilot Taunted Iranian F-4 Phantom Combat Planes Over the Persian Gulf - The Aviationist

Right-Wing Ideologues in Texas: Not American Education's Biggest Problem - The Atlantic
Noah Berlatsky

Respectability Politics Won't Save Us: On the Death of Jonathan Ferrell - The Nation
Mychal Denzel Smith

The Patriarchy Lives On - The Nation
Bryce Covert

Trayvon Martin medical examiner to file $100 million lawsuit against state - Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera Stream Team

How Gothic Architecture Tok Over the American College Campus - The Atlantic
Robinson Meyer

Whistling Vivaldi Won't Save You - Slate
Tressie McMillan Cottom

0 What We're Reading Today (8-24-13)

College Football's Most Dominant Player? It's ESPN - New York Times
James Andrew Miller, Steve Eder, and Richard Sandomir

Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle - New York Times
Elissa Gootman

Thriving on Chaos, Manziel Shocks a Traditional System - New York Times
Campbell Robertson

Profiting from Racism? Reflections on White Allyship and the Issue of Compensation - Tim Wise
Tim Wise

How my white mother shaped me into a black man - Melissa Harris-Perry
Albert L. Butler

The Economics of Hook-Up Culture - Policy Mic
Michelle Juergen

An Intimate Look at the March on Washington- The Atlantic
Garance Fanke-Ruta

Which Colleges Should We Blame for the Student-Debt Crisis - The Atlantic
Jordan Weissmann

America's Imperial Disdain For the Emerging World - The Atlantic
Zachary Karabell

On the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, a New Civil Rights Movement Emerges - The Nation
Ari Berman

Open Letter: How I Failed Chelsea Manning - The Nation
Aura Bogado

'Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society' - Common Dreams
Chelsea Manning

Will There be Justice for NYPD Victim, Ramarley Graham? - The Nation
Lucy McKeon

New York City Council Overrides Bloomberg's Veto of the Community Safety Act - The Nation
Francis Reynolds

Reducing Racial Inequality in Our Justice System - The Nation
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)

A Long List of What We Know Thanks to Private Manning - The Nation
Greg Mitchell

34 Photos from the March on Washington 50 Years Ago - Buzzfeed
Andrew Kaczynski

A new generation of activists fights injustice, from school cuts to Trayvon Martin - Chicago Reader
Mick Dumke

50 Years After the March on Washington, Many Racial Divides Remain - Pew Social Trends

Every Protest on the Planet Since 1979 - Foreign Policy
J. Dana Stuster

A dream unrealized for African-Americans in Chicago - Chicago Reader
Steve Bogira

Yasiel Puig is a bad guy? Sounds familiar - SB Nation
Mike Bates

How I Met Your Mother - The Atlantic
Ta-Nehisi Coates

No, for the Love of God, Johnny Manziel Isn't Rosa Parks - The Nation
Dave Zirin

Teach for America Apostates: a Primer of Alumni Resistance - Truth-Out
Owen Davis

The Problem With Quick Fixes to Education - New York Times
Alex Caputo-Pearl

Open Letters to Reformers I Know. Part 8: Wendy Kopp - Teach For Us
Gary Rubinstein

Open Letters FROM Reformers I Know. Part 2: Wendy Kopp - Teach for Us
Gary Rubenstein (posting a letter from Wendy Kopp)

From the Mailbag: A Teach for America Defector Speaks - Cloaking Inequality
Julian Vasquez Hellig

0 What We're Reading Today (8-17-13)

'Dropping Science': Profile of the Science Genius Program - NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Mark Anthony Neal

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries - New York Times
Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari

When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative - LA Review of Books
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah

Bill De Blasio's Vision - New Yorker
George Packer

The Betrayal of Helen Thomas - Counterpunch
Barbara Lubin and Danny Muller

This Week in 'Nation' History: James Baldiwn's Four Decades of Prophecy, Confession, Emotion and Style - The Nation
Katrina vanden Heuvel

White is the New White - The Nation
Aura Bogado

Black leadership is missing from education reform - The Grio
Dr. Andre M. Perry

Kiese Laymon's Overdue Success Proves Publishers Can Change - NPR
Karen Grigsby Bates

#BlackPowerIsForBlack: Letters from Brothers Writing to Live - NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Mark Anthony Neal, Kiese Laymon, Mychal Denzel Smith, Kai M. Green, Marlon Peterson, Hashim Pipkin, Wade Davis II, Darnell L. Moore

Racial Profiling Lives On - New York Times
Devon W. Carbado, Cheryl I. Harris, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

The Problem with "Privilege" - Andrea 366
Andrea Smith

Tim Wise, informed by Tim Wise - Critical Spontaneity
Suey Park

Stop and Frisk, South Asians and Kal Penn's Tweets - Color Lines
Rinku Sen, Deepa Iyer

Kal Penn, Stop & Frisk, and Andrea Smith - Loud-Mouthed Bookworm
Ju-Hyun Matthew Park

Modern Loneliness, Explained - The Atlantic
James Hamblin

The Killing Machines - The Atlantic
Mark Bowden

Thanks Much! On the Geography of Language - The Atlantic
James Fallows

The One Chart That Shows the Importance of Egypt's Massacre - The Atlantic
Olga Khazan

Entrepreneurship: The Ultimate White Privilege? - The Atlantic
Jordan Weissmann

Can the GOP Fix Its Woman Problem in Time to Fight Clinton? - The Atlantic
Garance Franke-Ruta

A Texan Tragedy: Ample Oil, No Water - Mother Jones
Suzanne Goldenberg

The Misremembering of 'I Have a Dream' - The Nation
Gary Younge

Chaos and Bloodshed in the Streets of Cairo - The Nation
Sharif Abdel Kouddous

Having the Sexism Talk: Lessons for My Daughter - The Nation
Jessica Valenti

Race, Lead, and Juvenile Crime - Mother Jones
Kevin Drum

Egypt's Day of Rage - The Daily Beast
Sophia Jones

The Week's Best Longreads - The Daily Beast
David Sessions

Why the democratic spring lies closer to Iran than to Egypt - Al Jazeera
Shervin Malekzadeh

Generals and patrons: The American-Egyptian military - Al Jazeera
Marwan Bishara

Arab revolutions: Ignoring a potential catastrophe - Al Jazeera
Peter Hotez

Teach for America Apostates: a Primer of Alumni Resistance - Truth-Out
Owen Davis

Teach Trayvon: What's not in the Common Core & how to close the education gap - I Am an Educator
Jesse Hagopian

Study Links High Stakes Testing to Higher Incarceration Rates - The Real News Network
Jaisal Noor

Why Women Need Their Own Money - Alice Walker's Garden
Alice Walker

The Battle for Egypt - The Economist
The Economist

AP/Getty Photos

0 Help Me Show My Students that Reading is Wonderful

Hi friends,

so as many of you know, I will be teaching 6th grade reading in Houston this coming year at Black MS. As a reading teacher, I am excited to cultivate a love of reading with my students and expand their knowledge of what is possible for them to achieve in their own lives.

Something I noticed this past summer as a teacher for a different group of students was just a general foreignness to the process of reading, an unfamiliarity with the joys of it and a rejection of the notion that reading was something done for pleasure. This isn't unsurprising considering how these students are bombarded with passages from standardized tests more often than they are given books and taught to develop literary skills. In the face of this, I want my students to look past the test and to aspire toward a more comprehensive and enriching attitude toward reading.

Therefore, I am calling upon anyone and everyone who is interested to assist me. It requires very, very little time for you to do so.

Here is what I am asking:

Write a postcard to my students that addresses the following:

Start with "Dear Students," or "Dear Panthers," or "Dear Mr. Cotton's Class," something like that

Who are you? (Just a quick sentence or two about where you are from, what you do, etc.)

What is your favorite book (and/or thing to read) and why? Or, what was your favorite book when you were in 6th grade?

(If you want, feel free to ask questions of my students too. They will be 6th graders.)

I would really appreciate it if what you sent me was hand-written (so that the students know that I'm not just mass-producing these postcards). Also, I think it would be extra-great if your postcard represented YOU in some way (an image of your university, your hometown, etc.)

If you are interested, please just comment below, on Facebook, shoot me a text message, or something else and I will give you my address.

Where is this idea coming from?

My high school mentor/life coach/role model, Mr. Wright, had postcards on the walls in his classroom that were written to him from former students. When ever one of his students went on a trip, or graduated on to college, or moved, they would write Mr. Wright a postcard and he put it on the wall. It really cultivated a sense of community in the class and showed us that he cared about where we were going long after we had left his classroom.

It is one of the favorite things I remember about these classes and I think that postcards from you all would be a wonderful opportunity to connect my students to other locales, people, and to show them that there are people beyond their immediate vicinity who are A. fired-up about reading and B. interested in them and their lives.

If this goes well, hopefully you all will get a postcard back!