Nine executed, assassinated, 23 disappeared, at least 21 arrested, 45 in hospital, 100+ injured

[L. Coyote]

"The Battle Has Just Started": Activists Denounce Police Killings & Crackdowns on Teachers in Oaxaca
June 21, 2016 - Democracy Now

In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, a deadly police crackdown against teachers has left nine people dead and more than 100 wounded. On Sunday, police descended on teachers in the community of Nochixtlán, where they had set up blockades to protest against neoliberal education reform and the arrests of two teachers’ union leaders last week on what protesters say are trumped-up charges. "As soon as they arrived, they began to attack. And we were few, very few," said a Oaxacan teacher. "Then we started running. But they began to attack right away, instantly. At no time did they give warning to clear the area." We go to Oaxaca to speak with Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca and author of many books, including "New Forms of Revolution."

AMY GOODMAN: We end our show in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where a deadly police crackdown against teachers has left at least eight people dead, more than a hundred wounded this week. On Sunday, police descended on teachers .............

[Ilsa]

1. killing teachers? wtf? nt

[LWolf]

4. As a teacher,

I am very disturbed by your post.

First, there is the "iron rice bowl" reference. Personally, I support job security, steady income, and benefits, and union representation, for all working people everywhere, in the U.S. and abroad. These things don't make any jobs "hereditary."

Secondly:

On Sunday, police descended on teachers in the community of Nochixtlán, where they had set up blockades to protest against neoliberal education reform and the arrests of two teachers’ union leaders last week

Protest against neoliberal education reform is a positive action. Having worked under the neoliberal deform regime since it began at the state level in the U.S. back in the 90s, I know that it's toxic for students, for teachers, and for the public education system.

Finally: I don't know what evidence you've got about "bribes," but I will say that police shooting protesters is not something to approve of.

We are going to stay here until the government is willing to talk. If tomorrow the government is open to dialogue, then the conflict ends. The governor wants what he calls educational reform. And what we want is a dialogue for the kind of change that the people require, the kind that meets their needs. If you go to our communities, there are many needs. How are the kids doing? The children can’t go to school to learn. All they think about is eating, because they don’t eat. No one can learn if they don’t sleep well, if they walked many miles to go to school. So the government should go and see what happens firsthand. And until there is a dialogue, we will not end our protest demanding educational reform. And who will revive our dead? The dialogue won’t bring our dead back to life. And those who are imprisoned, there aren’t just five or 10, there are thousands.

Are they demanding "bribes" of food and transportation? Of community support?

[L. Coyote]

6. Thanks for taking the time to rebut the trolling.

Albeit, I doubt the person who said the disturbing blather will bother to read responses.

[LWolf]

10. You're welcome.

The person may not read, but I feel better for having responded.

[greiner3]

34. Post removed before I got here but

[Feeling the Bern]

15. As a teacher for 12 years in four countries before I got my executive job in Hollywood,

I thank you for posting this.

I am tired of teacher bashing.

[Wounded Bear]

27. I've seen a lot of teacher bashing over the years...

I missed the post above, so I'll just assume it is more of the same old boring RW bashing of anything they deem as too "liberal."

Anyway, much of the bashing seems to fucus heavily on the teachers' unions, which somehow RWers don't equate to bashing their own childrens' teachers. The old "well I didn't say/mean that" excuse for generalizing in their hatred. But since Reagan, the RW disdain for anybody who works for a living has spread to professions that used to be somewhat immune to it, like teaching and medicine. No more.

The one question I've always asked, and have never gotten an answer to, is simple. How in the hell did we let conditions get so bad for teachers that they felt the need to unionize? For the most part, people who love their jobs (and face it, most teachers teach because they love helping kids), and are well-paid and have decent working conditions don't 'rock the boat' by forming unions and agitating in the work place. The RW budget-slashers never take any responsibiblity for what they do when they slash budgets and payrolls. IMHO, teachers have not been fighting for "more" as much as fighting back and trying to hang on to what they once had.

[Uncle Joe]

18. ...

[L. Coyote]

5. OFCS! So, you ever taught in Mexico? How many years?

You realize Mexico is a real place with real people who are decent human beings?

[Rex]

8. Teachers or teaching?

[L. Coyote]

12. The difference being, in Mexico they teach students to spell.

Not everyone in the USA gets that much education.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. you should have seen the post I didn't make about the amish child gifting....

has there been any discussion about that here, btw?

haven't seen any

if not, here we go:

sorry about off topic, etc, but I've been an educator since '97, and, like mad Floridian have no patience left for ignorant garbage being posted about teachers. excellent responses to the troll bait presented above,
L.Coyote/Wolf

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

11. Classless, as always. n/m

[Feeling the Bern]

16. And of course you have proof of this. Evidence?

[rhett o rick]

20. Are you justifying the killings?

[L. Coyote]

7. There will be repercussions, already there are resignations in the government.

The issue is very broad, and teachers are standing up for communities. From the transcript:

"This is a very complex war. It doesn’t—it did not start in Oaxaca. The teachers’ struggle, it is a global struggle. It started in Colombia, in Brazil, in Chile, in the U.S.—everywhere. And today we are in a war trying to say a very firm no to this kind of education. It is useless instruction. We are discussing education. We have a plan of education. We can offer an alternative for—of education. And we are saying no very firmly to all the so-called structural reforms that mean basically a change of only ownership. They are selling our land, our territory. The people are resisting. And then we are resisting with them to oppose this kind of operation. This is a very complex war that just started. We are at the beginning of this very complex war against us, against our territory. ..."

[lostnfound]

28. Killing "radical teachers". That's what the crawler on MSNBC said

When I first saw it yesterday, the crawler said that protests resulted in death of "9 radical teachers" who were protesting "teacher testing".

I knew it was bullshit the minute I saw it. Authoritarian crackdown on opposition to same stupid testing regimes that have destroyed American schools on the altar of profit and, I suspect, in the filtration / pasteurization of independent liberal thought.

[Ilsa]

33. That's what I figured...

Media ia shameful when it comes to teachers. That they are murdered for trying to improve theirprofession and student experience isunconscionable.

[a la izquierda]

2. It's all that's on the news here...

I'm not in Oaxaca, but in Yucatán on a research trip. I was in Oaxaca during last year's protests and in Mexico City two weeks ago during the marches on the zócalo.

Not good, that's all I'll say.

[AllyCat]

13. Teachers? WTF? What does the human race have against those helping to educate our youth?

Oh wait. Never mind. Education is a dangerous thing. And worth fighting for. But no one should pay with their lives.

😥

[L. Coyote]

14. Apparently, they want to dictate neoliberal education reforms to teachers.

They being the government neoliberals who don't want progressive education. The culture war knows no borders.

[Gabi Hayes]

19. one of the cornerstones of the 1%'s insatiable need to control all aspects of modern day culture is

to keep people as ignorant as possible

they're doing an excellent job

sometimes I think I should have had children; then I realize where everything is headed:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2005/02/stephen-bender/karl-rove-the-spectre-of-freudsnephew/

[lostnfound]

29. exvellent progressive public education still blooms in my neighborhood

As long as you can afford $25,000 per year in property taxes.
Which tells us all we need to know.

I don't agree with this stratification; it horrifies me.
The insidious narrowing of American thought in the last thirty years is hard to explain to youth. Fortunately quite a few of them get it anyway.
Weirdly, a llot of people my own age seem like frogs in boiling water, maybe they see the change but they chalk it up to other causes. And most of us are focused on survival and adapting to the insecurity of our changing environments.

[Feeling the Bern]

17. Why do you think they are destroying humanities and arts and trumping math and science?

Make good little worker bees that can't create or critically think.

The owners don't want that. They want people just smart enough to run the machines and dumb enough to passively accept a system that threw them overboard 40 years ago.

[rhett o rick]

21. This is just a part of the revolution against neo-liberalism world wide. The Powers That Be, we are

coming after you.

[davidthegnome]

22. First I've heard of this.

What the heck is going on? Does anyone have more information on what started this whole thing? Yeah, google is my friend, but would appreciate more info from anyone who has it.

[L. Coyote]

23. No one pays attention to the rest of the world in the USA, it seems.

It is as if there was a wall on our border that doesn't let information in. Democracy Now is a real exception in talking a larger, more inclusive view of the world.

Telesur is also covering this, with videos:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Mexican-Police-Kill-3-in-Clashes-with-Striking-Oaxaca-Teachers-20160619-0024.html

... Before Sunday's events, hundreds of academic, religious, popular, student, human and social rights organizations around the world signed a document Friday that condemned the “brutal repression” exerted by the Mexican government against teachers who reject the education reform by President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Peña Nieto unveiled an education reform in 2013 as part of a set of 11 neoliberal reforms implemented in his first 20 months of power.

The controversial law imposes teacher evaluations in order to determine which applicants will be chosen to fill open posts in the public school system nationwide. Critics say the testing only justifies mass layoffs and does not effectively measure teaching skills, like the special knowledge and demeanor needed to teach in rural areas and Indigenous communities. ***

[davidthegnome]

35. I try.

When we want to know... pretty much anything about what's going on around the world (with the exception of huge events like Britain leaving the EU, for example) we really can't rely on our primary media outlets. Most of the information I get is online - so I frequently end up having to double and even triple check things for accuracy, which is difficult to do in today's world. I'd rather get the story right and really know what's going on, to the extent that I can.

I pay attention as much as I can - but my deep and well founded suspicion of many media outlets makes it a bit more complicated.

Even so, the fact that I haven't heard so much as a peep about this out of the American main stream media (neither had a few of my friends - who are real news junkies) does indicate the level of ignorance here. Yes, we're often unaware of what's going on. That's what happens when your corporations own all of your media and it's a 24/7 competition to see who can squeeze the best ratings out of Donald Trump's latest comment.

Some of us do what we can to be aware of what's going on - that doesn't mean we always succeed. It's hard to know what sources to trust for news these days.

[L. Coyote]

36. Democracy Now and the RealNews make a huge difference.

[flamingdem]

24. This is insane

I hope the rest of the Latin American countries sanction Mexico big time.

[L. Coyote]

25. TheRealNews: Nine Killed in Police Crackdown on Oaxaca Teacher’s Strike = 2 videos

Nine Killed in Police Crackdown on Oaxaca Teacher’s Strike
TheRealNews Jun 21, 2016

Laura Carlsen of the Center for International Policy says that Oaxacan teachers are protesting not only teacher evaluations, but also the entirety of neoliberal reform under Peña Nieto

[Brickbat]

26. Solidarity. K&R

[lupinella]

30. Thank you

For giving this the attention it deserves.

[ileus]

31. Disarmed population?

[L. Coyote]

32. No, civilized people who expect the same of their would-be "protectors" of civilized order.

Albeit, that certainly is a goal when civilizing a savage and brutal people, you know the kind, they build nations on genocide and stealing continents in the name of their God and "his" Manifest Destiny, freeboot pagan people of color, generally use brutal violence as a cultural adaptation to take what they want, and rationalize it as good.

Good bless the gunslingers, how did we survive so long without them?