Lubbock Left

Today the ACLU of Texas announced that 25 paid trips to the National ACLU Conference are available!

The ACLU nationwide Membership Conference is an opportunity for students
to meet up with others who believe in liberty and justice, to hear
well-known speakers and to attend workshops that provide skills and the
inspiration to stand up for freedom. The ACLU of Texas is proud to pay
for the registration fees and 2 nights’ stay in Washington, DC, for 25
Texas students who wish to attend! The conference begins on Sunday,
June 8 at 2 PM and concludes on Tuesday, June 10 at 2 PM.

Learn more:
http://www.aclu.org/conference/2008

A straw poll of 2008 Democratic Presidential candidates on the Texas Tech campus is underway. Volunteers from the Texas Tech Law Democrats and the Lubbock County Democratic Party will be at the West end of the Student Union Building (near the bookman statue) from 11AM-2PM Mon-Thurs to conduct the straw poll.

Results will be posted at www.lubbockstrawpoll.com.

It will be interesting to find out which candidate resonates the most with students here in Lubbock!

Texas Democratic Women of the South Plains will have their regular meeting tomorrow (Friday) at 11:30am at Furr’s on Slide Rd. Their featured speaker will be LISD School Board member Vernita Woods-Holmes. She will discuss the decision-making process for the all-girl charter school as well as other issues of importance to the school district.

Their meetings are always engaging, and TDW of the South Plains is one of the fastest-growing TDW chapters in the state!

My friend Tommy Sellers has finished a redesign of his website TommySellers.Com. He’s one of the first real masters of IT in the area, having run Lubbock’s first Internet Service Provider as well as an Apple store.

I’m plugging Tommy’s website here because he has lots of useful LOCAL content and links. He also covers a lot of ground in areas of interest to this blog: education, health care, consumer issues, and senior issues to name a few.

Thanks, Tommy, for this great resource!

For all future haters of public education, I have written down the 5 easy steps for assaulting our schools:

1) Underfund schools and underpay teachers for at least a decade in the name of “cutting taxes” and “smaller government”
2) Create bullshit standards for everyone to meet, and watch the poorer schools fail to meet them
3) Complain that schools are failing to meet standards while at the same time criticizing them for not teaching important civic and life skills because they spend all their class time “teaching to the test”
4) Offer the “solution” of letting a “free market” of competing private schools educate our children
5) Profit!

The rest of us — who believe that public education is America’s greatest strength — are up against “Attacking Public Education 203,” the advanced class. For their class project, state legislators like Lubbock’s own Carl Isett are actively writing legislation to destroy public education. Financiers like Leninger bankroll pro-voucher candidates to speed their project along, and privatization cheerleaders like Robert Pratt rant about their project on the radio. They’re working hard to get an A at being the bad guys.

That means we need to roll up our sleeves and work to elect people that are serious about preserving and improving our system of public education, as opposed to those who want to throw out the whole thing and start over.

If you’re not happy with our current system of public schooling, get in there and fix it… before it hits the auction block!

I saw Garnet Coleman, one of Texas’ finest Democratic leaders, speak at the monthly Texas Democratic Women meeting today. He was wonderful, and his appearance brought the biggest turnout I have ever seen at a local TDW meeting (I have been to a few).

He talked quite a bit about the Speaker’s race, education, CHIP, and other priorities for 2008-2009. If events unfold as they are trending, we’ll see a new speaker (odds are good that there will be 76 people pissed off at Craddick), a Democratic majority in the State House, restored funding to CHIP, re-regulated college tuition, and a public school funding system that makes sense and actually funds our schools.

In what I couldn’t help but think was a remarkable coincidence, Coleman referred several times to Grover Norquist’s rhetoric about shrinking the government, which was the same rhetoric on my mind earlier this week for the Katrina anniversary. What is sad is that the Norquist school of neoconservatism — which is nothing short of an attempt to totally dismantle our government — has been the policy of the Republican overlords at the federal and state level since 2001. His point was very dire: the neocons are succeeding in their attempt to cripple government. Look at CHIP: 230,000 kids cut + 100,000 kids restored = still 130,000 kids not covered while Texas’ population continues to boom. Worse, Bush is now playing the same games with CHIP at the federal level. Sometimes I feel like Texas is the playpen for the most vile Republican policies out there.

But, there’s hope. With seasoned, effective leaders like Garnet Coleman (along with Jim Dunnam and Pete Gallego) and high-performing newcomers like Crosbyton’s own Joe Heflin, I think our odds of making things better for Texans in 2008 and beyond are looking pretty good.

Edit: The A-J covered the event.

The Lubbock County Democratic Party is having its annual school supplies drive. All money collected for the drive goes toward buying school supplies at bargain prices and distributing them to families in need on Saturday, August 18. Last year, over 1,000 students were given a full set of required school supplies.

You can donate securely online (via actblue) at:

http://actblue.com/page/ldpschoolsupplies

Even a few bucks will buy dozens of folders, pencils, or spiral notebooks. If you’re looking for a very direct, efficient way to help area children in need, this is it.

Just came back from a wonderful lunch meeting of our local chapter of Texas Democratic Women that featured State House Representative Joe Heflin as the speaker. He told the group about his experiences in this past legislative session and about plans for the future.

One of the things I like best about Joe Heflin is his strong stance on public education. He is one of the key representatives responsible for keeping vouchers out of Texas. Rural residents, like Joe’s constituents, especially have no use for vouchers; they would just be taking tax dollars away from their already struggling schools. Our public schools, even the rural ones, work well when they are funded properly.

Texas Democratic Women is a great grassroots organization, and the South Plains chapter is the fastest-growing in the whole state. Check ‘em out!

Tonight I participated in the mad rush that is a liquidation sale at the 50th St. Hastings. It has been one of my favorite stores to shop at because of its late hours and wide range of products. Throughout the years several of my friends have worked there. I can honestly say I will miss it when it closes.

Rumor has it that the building owner wanted Hastings to sign another 10-year lease, which the company did not want to do because the margin of profit at the store was not high enough for that long of a commitment. I respect the choices of the businesses, even though I am sad to see the store go.

I have a hunch that we will see a new Hastings store in Southwest Lubbock soon…

The store closing got me thinking: this sort of thing is exactly why I don’t want to see our public education system privatized. Picture a low-performing school with declining attendance. The responsible, public system of education would try to find and fix the problems at the school and correct them for the good of the community. A private system of education would likely close the school and seek out better, more profitable schools — undoubtedly in Southwest Lubbock! After all, competition between schools will send the students to the best schools, right? Never mind the gaping holes in our community that business will judge “not worth the risk,” right?

It makes me sick to my stomach to think about an education system with no accountability to the community.

A battle is brewing between those who want to privatize our schools and those who believe that we need the community and accountability of government-run schools. I predict that education will be a major issue for Lubbock politics in 2008.