Activist Times Inc. Issue 317

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

Activist Times Inc

 · 5 years ago

  

During one of the evening's most tense moments,  
a line of protesters carrying a fence made of  
chicken wire and PVC pipe advanced toward police  
lines at Bancroft Place and Connecticut Avenue NW  
about 8:30 p.m. Soon, they were face-to-face with  
D.C. police in riot gear, as observers holding up  
video cameras strained to capture the confrontation  
and the crowd chanted, "The whole world is watching." 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31260-2002Apr22.html 
http://clients.loudeye.com/imc/washingtondc/fenceconfrontationbancroft.ram 

 
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               .317. 
                ... 

Goodbye Roberta Blackgoat. 
A memorial poem  
written by  
moon_grace 
4/24/02  

I bow my head to the woman who would not be relocated and instead of 
weaving cloth, at 84, she picked up pliers and unravelled fences. 

I bow my head to the woman who would not be relocated and instead of 
moving into town, at 84, she drove herself in an old pickup truck 33 
miles one-way on unpaved roads for water, for phones, for gas, for 
news of the world. 

I bow my head to the woman who would not be relocated and instead of 
telling stories and bemoaning what used to be, at 84, she took up pen 
and paper and drew out petitions to stop what she thought was wrong 
with the world around her. 

I bow my head to the woman whose great-grandparents 
taught her relocation of Fort Sumner, and at 84, she flung open her 
doors when history came tapping on her window and she did not hide or falter. 

She did not lock her door and pretend she was not home. 
She dug in and worked for what she believed 
And at 84,  
She kept these words... 
"The Creator is the only one that will relocate me." 

Goodnight, Roberta Blackgoat. 

 

 
       Issue #317    26apr01 

 

GUEST COLUMNIST pAtRiCk MoOrE. 

Schools For Sale 
(Note: This originally started life as a persuasive speech in my speech 
class at Itawamba Community College. However, the time alloted for each 
student's speech made a longer, more detailed speech impossible. But at 
the same time, I feel this is a subject worth talking about, and ATI is 
the place to do it. For Deborah, Erica, Steve, Marilyn, Jimi, and 
Phyllis...this is for you: the "director's cut" of my persuasive 
speech.) 

Today’s issue is NOT brought to you by Pepsi! We can say that, and make 
a joke about it, but there are schools where this is not true. 

Faced with shrinking budgets, many Public schools find they have to rely 
on corporations for needed funding and materials. But often, companies 
that partner with schools put profit over education. As a parent, I feel 
that these kinds of relationships are inappropriate in a school setting. 
Today, I’m going to tell you about school commercialism, and why it’s 
bad for kids. 

Perhaps no other name is more closely associated with school 
commercialism than Channel One.  Channel One loans TV sets to schools 
for an indefinite period, at least 3 years, and most of these schools 
are in low-income districts 

The show itself is approximately 14 minutes long, provided to grades 
7-12. Billed as a way to ‘teach the news", there is very little actual 
news, as much as 80% ‘fluff" (a journalistic term for stories that have 
little relevance to the audience). In fact, some stories are actually 
promotions of events. Super bowl 36 was the "lead story" in one 
installment. 

Channel One contains 2-4 minutes of commercials. Many advertisers create 
ads to be shown only on Channel One. Corporations are charged millions 
of dollars for each ad aired, and some companies create ads for the 
exclusive use of Channel One. Most, if not all, of the ads shown are for 
items that teens can live without, such as Skittles or Nike shoes. 

The reason Channel One is so appealing to advertisers is the terms of 
the contract Channel one has with participating schools. Under 
contractual agreement, the schools must show the program during class 
time. Channel One actually promotes this in its own sales literature as 
a way to reach even the "lightest" TV viewer, that is, one who doesn’t 
watch TV very much at home, therefore beyond an advertiser’s grasp. 
However, the school time lost to advertisers can be as much as $300 
million per year. 

Of course, Channel One is not the only in-school advertiser. YNN, or 
Youth News Network, is basically a Canadian version of Channel One, and 
it has been under fire from its beginning. ZapMe!, a company that loans 
computer equipment and internet access to schools, requires that 
students spend at least four hours per day in computer labs, and the 
ZapMe! operating system contain ads that cannot be turned off. 

Other ways that companies pretend to help schools are what I like to 
call Direct and Indirect sponsorships. Indirect sponsorships, for 
example, are when companies have gimmick promotions to get people to buy 
a company’s product in hopes they’ll help the schools (i.e. "box tops 
for education"), as opposed to outright donations. In fact, some 
companies use this to obtain demographic profiles of consumers in a 
given area. What is not revealed, is that the cost of the prizes is 
small in contrast to what is spent. For instance, under Campbell’s 
Soup’s "Box Tops For Education" program, a school must save almost 
100,000 Campbell’s soup labels in order to receive one iMac computer. 
You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to see who’s the real winner 
here, considering that a fully loaded iMac costs around $750. Other 
incentives offered to winning schools include breakfast with the Trix 
Bunny, for example. 

Direct sponsorship is where companies like McDonalds and Pepsi pay 
millions for the right to advertise on school grounds and equipment. In 
some instances, companies like Pizza Hut serve their food in the 
cafeteria on selected days. One school district in Colorado Springs 
allows Coca-Cola to advertise and set up drink machines in the hallways 
and even allow students to bring drinks to class.  However, it can be 
carried too far, as proposals in Mississippi and Colorado to paint 
school buses with sponsors’ logo in return for donations fail on safety 
issues. 

Yet, for all this ‘help’, there is a price to be paid, as the students 
at the University of Oregon found out. Nike withdrew tens of millions of 
dollars in contributions after the student body decided to support an 
organization that held overseas garment factories accountable for worker 
safety. What’s even more surprising is that Nike CEO Phil Knight is a 
graduate of the University of Oregon, and co-founder Bill Bowerman is a 
former UO coach. In Evans, Georgia, a student in Georgia got suspended 
for wearing a Pepsi shirt on a day honoring school partner Coca- Cola. 

other part to follow...had 2 finals last week, in Govt. and Visual 
Basic: A's on both! 

      [ ed note: other part will go in 318 ] 

 

 
#'s 

 

http://www.cyberista.com/cyberistacolumnsdefault.asp?ID=1719017376 
http://www.senaawest.org/RobertaMemorial/RobertaMemorial.htm 
http://www.angelfire.com/art/hoganview/RBPage/roberta1.html 
http://www.antiglobalizacion.org/Germinal/arte/ap00019.htm 
http://clients.loudeye.com/imc/washingtondc/aliastory.ram 
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0427BLACK27.html 
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=175904 
http://www.sortakinda.com/look/withyoualways.shtml 
http://mke.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=245 
http://www.oberlin.edu/~jdowning/flash/Default.swf 
http://www.progressive.org/webex/wxmc042702.html 
http://www.anarchogeek.com/archives/000009.html 
http://www.thehill.com/042402/protest.shtm 
http://www.ambiguous.org/robin/commentary 
http://www.pbgadget.com/posters.html 
http://66.56.40.6:7777/activism 
http://www.fatherjohndear.org 
http://www.snowshoefilms.com 
http://www.fastforpeace.net 
http://freespeech.org 
http://www.span.org 
http://bernie.house.gov 
http://prorev.com/apr22.htm 
http://www.studentsfororwell.org 
http://www.corporations.org/media 
http://www.burning-wheel.org/nofly.htm 
http://cfl.indymedia.org/media/00/00/00/1B 
http://www.sondra.net/al/vol6/62Frucht.htm 
http://www.splungecomm.com/h3c/release.htm 
http://www.agrnews.org/issues/171/index.html 
http://www.comrade.org.uk/Press/availableindex.htm 
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=21891 
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0428-03.htm 
http://www.nmai.si.edu/livingvoices/html/voices.html 
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.22E.Gore.Vidal.htm 
http://bari.iww.org/~iww-nyc/CUNY/chomsky-interview.html 
http://www.indymedia.org:8081/front.php3?article_id=177100 
http://endthiswar.org/~toups/a20/tn/corporatemedia.jpg.html 
http://media.maineindymedia.org/content/DavidRovics/StLaw-16apr02/audio/ogg 

 

 

 

 
===================-------------- 

Remembering A20s past. 
  by marco 

http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn990421.html 
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=22634 
http://surfin.spies.com/~gus/trenchcoat 

--------------=================== 

 

A Flat 
(To Langston Hughes) 
By Jarrett Fulton 
I hear evil whisper, 
Memories lost, memories broken 
Cover in beautiful women and big city slickers 
Footsteps, echo with the streetlights that flicker 
Wind blowing against my back 
As car horns honk, A Flat 
The ground that bleeds the loss of innocence 
Life, rushes through the streets with Adrenaline 
An old man asks me about living, and how I feel about that 
I struggle with my answer while an insecure infant cries, A flat 
I’m new to this game 
Causing me to be offbeat 
As an adolescent, and there’s something that I lack 
The movement and the sounds of A flat 

 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 

The Punk Rock Band Name  
Suggestion Of The Month: 

The Tyson Bites 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 

 

 
Sympathy 
  a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) 

I know what the caged bird feels.  
Ah me, when the sun is bright on the upland slopes,  
when the wind blows soft through the springing grass  
and the river floats like a sheet of glass,  
when the first bird sings and the first bud ops,  
and the faint perfume from its chalice steals.  
I know what the caged bird feels.  

I know why the caged bird beats his wing  
till its blood is red on the cruel bars,  
for he must fly back to his perch and cling  
when he fain would be on the bow aswing.  
And the blood still throbs in the old, old scars  
and they pulse again with a keener sting.  
I know why he beats his wing.  

I know why the caged bird sings.  
Ah, me, when its wings are bruised and its bosom sore.  
It beats its bars and would be free.  
It's not a carol of joy or glee,  
but a prayer that it sends from its heart's deep core,  
a plea that upward to heaven it flings.  
I know why the caged bird sings.  
  
http://www.geocities.com/frankie_meehan/CagedBirdDunbarPoem.html 

 

 

 

 

 

A BREATHING CARCASS 
  poetry by Jarrett Fulton 

Have you ever felt that you were at the bottom of the food chain? 
Why did God give us nerves to feel so much pain? 
Feeling those rigid jaws chewing, 
Nibbling my precious, unstylish body 
With claws that slash through my flesh 
The only sound is my screaming 
Becoming? 
A breathing carcass 
1/4 of myself is missing 
As the Earth lies there and watches 
The beast and I are silhouetted like two lovers in the murky shadows 
I’m dying 
But the pain does not cease 
The beast devourers my body and all its wealth 
And I chant... I chant death 
Can you picture this torment? 
My body paralyzed, my mouth glutted with blood 
Only to cover my screams 
My screams... 

 

FATHER'S DAY 
By Jarrett Fulton 

9 Months: 

They say we don’t spend time with our kids, 
(But we put clothes on their backs) 

They say we don’t nurture our seed, 
(But we provide them a place to live at) 

I hear songs of a "Motherless child" 
An abandon regiment of a juvenile 

And for what does a man gets, 

For what is a Man Identity? 
To tell his daughter not to lose her virginity 
Daughters, yearning for a male’s affectation, desire a broken gift 
Living out in the streets or follow into a boyfriend’s mischief 

6 Months: 
Picture a woman giving her 18-year-old son discipline 
Punishing the young men with a belt or a hard-stricken instrument 
Without men, the domicile holds bars, but no fear 
Only an underrated parent can play it by ear 

Answer questions on where and how 
Where are we headed? 
But I don’t understand; why do mother receive all the credit? 

3 Months: 

You ask us to be in the household 
To cover our kids when temper or cold 
Become the substitute, when a child’s mind is badly influence 
Accuse us of adultery, but in the bedroom; what are you doing? 
Someone told me that, women are being independent 
But I hear songs; without men, there’s no reason for living 
What do you need us for? To buy or fix your vibrator 
So on June 19, we Fathers receive a hug, a card, and a 
"I’ll see you later" 
Men are tired of these underrated antics 
See how our seeds grow, for without us, and take us for granted 

Born: 
It’s a boy 

Ha, you want me now, huh 
I’ll be back 
I need a cold case of the beer?! 

 

 

 

ATI - No longer abusing puts and calls since 1991 

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                          Well, that's about it for ATI issue 317. 

Send all the stuff to 
ati@etext.org 

The Zine's semi-official website is at: 
http://www.thepentagon.com/primeanarchist 

http://www.thepentagon.com/schoolofamericas 
or 
http://www.thepentagon.com/soa 

for all things reconsidered. 

Oh, and if you've got sense, you'll dial 
1-860-887-2600 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ext. 5293 

 

 

End with poetry 

BOLTCUTTERS 
by marco 

I dedicate the rest of my life  
to the name,  
and all that is called up  
when I say "Roberta Blackgoat." 

And that is all I can say for now. 

http://www.frucht.org/roberta.html