Ken Robinson explores the question of how schools kill creativity - and what education that would cater to multiple forms of learning and intelligence - abstract, artistic, movement-based, hearing, musical, etc… - would look like. The talk was given at the TED conference this year.

Of extreme use for progressive organizers - especially in relation to burnout and maximizing our potentials in organizing and movement building. You can find his 3-hour workshop that he did on Oprah here.

I disagree with lots and lots of Obama’s proposed policies - especially his foreign policies. But his language is superb - something that radical democrats need to learn from and use if we are to build a truly transformative movement. Here’s Obama talking about race, religion, unity and contradictions in America. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a mainstream politician - let alone someone running for president - talk in this way. Certainly not someone who could be our next president. To win we must first learn how to communicate our values to all of America.

Just like will.i.am’s first video for Obama, this one is super powerful.

If progressives want to build a mass movement of millions of people, we need to be this inspiring on a regular basis. That means vision and talking about hope and change - instead of complaining, criticizing, and talking about bad things constantly. In the current issue of Rolling Stone, in which the magazine endorsed Barack Obama, Jann S. Wenner, who wrote the endorsement, said that GOP strategists had refused to campaign against him calling him a “Walking Hope Machine.” Obama’s portrait was on the front cover which carried the words: “Barack Obama: A New Hope”. There were at least two articles in the issue - the endorsement entitled “A New Hope”, and a longer piece about Obama’s campaign called “The Machinery of Hope.” Th fact that the Left can’t yet do this on a regular basis, is a pretty good sign of our weakness. We should learn from Obama’s language and the tone of his campaign and supporters and then build a real mass movement which can implement lasting institutional change in America - and beyond.

Anway, here’s the video:

A funny parody about how absurd it would be if the tables were turned! Hypocrisy is often easily exposed by shiftly switching the parties to the conflict in the rhetoric and seeing if it makes any sense at all. As someone who was raised Christian, I know that progressively minded religious and spiritual folks often greatly outnumber the small, isolated, yet vocal groups of intolerant bigots. We need to elevate those moral voices and drown out the bigoted ones!

Progressives need hundreds of videos, charts, and radio spots like this permeating on television channels, radio stations, newspaper pages, and other forms of media. It is a hyper-visual and self-explanatory method of communicating how spending priorities in America are WAY off. We can use content like this to open up space to talk about the needed progressive and democratic shift in American life.

Check it out: Oreos Cookies, U.S. Budget and Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream on TrueMajority.com

This is priceless! Bush says he’s endorsing McCain because he thinks McCain won’t change anything! Don’t worry, McCain and Bush are happy to bring their message to America! What would a McCain presidency be? Four more years! Four more years!

A profound video by Annie Leonard: The Story of Stuff. Its a great, accessible way to start a conversation with people about production, consumption, allocation, and environmental sustainability and justice. Check it out! http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Aaron showed me this really interesting video from Digital Ethnography, a project at Kansas State University. Here’s Professor Wesch’s post describing the video:

“This video was created by me (Professor Wesch) and the 200 students enrolled in ANTH 200: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, Spring 2007. It began as a brainstorming exercise, thinking about how students learn, what they need to learn for their future, and how our current educational system fits in. We created a Google Document to facilitate the brainstorming exercise, which began with the following instructions:

“… the basic idea is to create a 3 minute video highlighting the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. We already know some things from previous research (and if you know of any interesting statistics, please list them along with the source). Others we will need to find out by doing a class survey. Please add whatever you want to know or present.”

Over the course of the next week, 367 edits were made to the document. Students wrote the script, and made suggestions for survey questions to ask the entire class. The survey was administered the following week.

I then took all of the information from the survey and the Google Document and organized it into the final script portrayed in the video which was all filmed in one 75 minute class period.

The introduction was filmed by myself a month later. It is inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s ideas as they apply to education, especially as they have been used by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner in Teaching as a Subversive Activity.

How we gathered the numbers:

133 out of 200 students responded to the survey which yielded the results. Further explanation of the data is posted below:

“My average class size is 115.”
Survey: What is your average class size?
Average: 115.0602

“18% of my teachers know my name.”
Survey: What percentage of teachers you have had in college would be able to recognize you and call you by name?
Average: 18.2

“I complete 49% of the readings assigned to me.”
Survey: Not including this class, what percentage of assigned readings do you complete?
Average: 48.73

“Only 26% … relative to my life.”
Survey: Not including this class, what percentage of assigned readings do you find relevant to your life?
Average: 25.95

“I will read 8 books this year.”
Survey: How many books have you read this year?
Average: 8.03 (ranging from 0-200)
We discovered later that there was some disagreement about whether this question referred to a semester, the past year, or the year starting as of January 1^st (this survey took place in April - roughly equal to one semester). To make the ratio to web page and Facebook reading more accurate we assumed this statistic to relate to one semester rather than one calendar year.

“2300 web pages”
Survey: On average, how many web pages do you read each day?
Average: 21.51
(We then multiplied this by 105 - roughly the number of days in a semester and rounded to 2300.)

“and 1281 facebook profiles.”
Survey: On average, how many Facebook profiles do you view each day?
Average: 12.2 (multiplied by 105 = 1281)

“I will write 42 pages for class this semester.”
Survey: On average, how many pages do you write for your classes each semester?
Average: 41.96

“And over 500 pages of email.”
Survey: On average, how many pages of e-mails will you write in a single day?
Average: 4.96 (*105 days/semester = over 500) “

Check out this YouTube video about John McCain! Points out more of McCain’s conservative policies, including him saying that a 100 year occupation of Iraq would be “fine by me”.

“We know that, as a country and as a world, we’re all in it together and we’re more than the sum of our parts. That goes for both sides of the border. What would it mean to value everyone equally, no matter where they come from and how they got here? How would you tell America that immigration is about Community Values?

[Read more →]

Again, progressives get it wrong (Obama knows strategy though!). It isn’t about facts - you can pile facts to the ceiling (though we have truth on our side and must show it). Without a clear vision, an emotional vision, a spiritual, cultural, epic vision of the future - you won’t get the votes. Here’s Frank Luntz - Republican Party Strategist and Message Maker doing a focus group of Democrats after Super Tuesday. He asks “name one accomplishment of Barack Obama”. Almost none can do it. While Obama might have a ton of them. that’s not the main part of his message! (Also see my post: Language Warriors)

====

After the polls closed on Tuesday in Super Tuesday States, Hillary and Bill Clinton injected $5 million from their personal fortunes into Hillary’s campaign. As a challenge, the Obama campaign asked their supporters to match that number. In under 24 hours, that happened - mostly from small donors giving small amounts from their pockets. That number is up to over $7,600,000.00 in a little under two day. TWO DAYS. He reached $6.5 million in a little over a day. Incredible!

The Left should ask WHY this is happening, instead of merely critiquing Obama’s politics (and theres plenty to critique). Below are six of Obama’s speeches. All are incredibly inspiring. The left should learn from his rhetoric, his lack of stupid dogmatic language, his imagery and story-telling skills, his charisma, and his message. We take that message roll with it - using real organizing, and real analysis behind it. We should stop whining and start winning!

====

Here’s an letter to the San Francisco Chronicle talking by Rabbi Michael Learner. He talks about how Obama is basically one of the only spiritual progressives on the national scene:

“Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine, chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue-without-walls in San Francisco and Berkeley, and author of the 2006 national best-seller ‘The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right.’

I enthusiastically support Barack Obama, the first serious spiritual progressive candidate for the presidency. Once in office, Obama’s discourse of hope, challenging narrow technocratic consciousness, will open the possibility for serious social movements to push him beyond the constraints of Democratic Party spinelessness.

Spiritual progressives want a New Bottom Line so that institutions, social practices, even our own personal behavior is seen as efficient, rational and productive, not only to the extent that they maximize money and power (the Old Bottom Line) but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring for others, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and enhance our capacity to respond to others as embodiments of the sacred and to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement.

In our Spiritual Covenant with America ( www.spiritualprogressives.org ), we apply these ideas not only to support single payer health care and taxes on carbon emissions but also to replace our foreign policy Strategy of Domination with a Strategy of Generosity, recognizing that our well-being as Americans depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet. Hence we call for a Global Marshall Plan to dedicate 1-2 percent of the GDP of the United States each year for the next 20 to once and for all eliminate domestic and global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care. It will be up to us ordinary citizens to create the pressure that will allow Obama to fight for the spiritual progressive agenda he actually believes in, but is unsure can be realized at this historical moment.“

====

Finally, I have been looking through Obama speeches. His speeches in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Chicago (Super Tuesday) had something really interesting about them. None of them mentioned God. In the past, Obama has talked about “an awesome God”, giving moving speeches in Churches and other religious institutions. He’s a member of the United Church of Christ, but it seems as if he doesn’t need to wear it on his sleeve. He finishes most speeches with talk about an epic mission to build a better America. Again, if the Left wants to win, we should take notice of why this man is winning…