Image via WikipediaBy Mexico_(orthographic_projection).svg: Ssolbergj derivative work: Addicted04 (Mexico_(orthographic_projection).svg) [CC-BY-3.0, GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia CommonsOpen Season on Teachers in Honduras | The NationI remember hearing Bertha Oliva at the SOA conference in 2009 when she sat at the center of widening rings of people all of whom had jammed into the room when word spread that the session would be held. The coup in Honduras has just happened and we listened raptly as she spoke, a translator working to transmit the news. And there was a talented musician also there providing songs. Betha's expressive face and narrative were moving and as I followed the news in the weeks to come, I became discouraged when the US would not express our solidarity with the rule of law and the people, who were shocked at this coup, the first coup in a long time. There is push back in Honduras and much pain.
The forced measures taken against teachers and citizens in Honduras are wrong and whatever they call these policies, they are clearly not democratic as the use of terror and violence by police indicates. This is not an education issue no matter how it is played in propaganda, just as what went down in Wisconsin was not a policy dispute about staff salaries.
It was Hannah Arendt who used the words banality of evil to describe how bureaucrats can enact policies that kill, hurt, terrorize and impoverish people, an evil that is the outcome of careful work done while sitting at a desk or in a meeting.
Background Posts
countering military recruitment in the schools
SOA, another school
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