Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News Volume XXVII Number 1, January 2019 to Turn It Into All Charter Schools
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Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News Volume XXVII Number 1, January 2019 to turn it into all charter schools. He is a UPCOMING EVENTS businessman with no educational experience and was quoted to say "we don't need a physical Thursday, January 24, 7:30-9:00 PM. presence for learning." (Teachers are Monthly Meeting. We meet at the Caltech Y, expendable?!) He is trying to starve the schools Tyson House, 505 S. Wilson Ave., Pasadena. so that parents will enroll their kids in charters. Our special guest from Cameroon, Mr. Nyuchem Vanasios, is on asylum in the U.S. Why is this a human rights issue? What does He will speak about his personal experiences this have to do with Amnesty? A FREE AND and human rights in Cameroon. EQUAL PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR ALL Tuesday, February 12, 7:30 - 9:00 PM. Letter STUDENTS IS THE FOUNDATION OF A Writing meeting at the Caltech Athenaeum, DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY. EVERY CHILD HAS corner of Hill and California in Pasadena. This THE RIGHT TO A FREE AND APPROPRIATE informal gathering is a great way for PUBLIC EDUCATION. Charter schools do not newcomers to get acquainted with Amnesty. serve all students - they reject children with special needs because they don't want their test Sunday, February 17, 6:30 PM. Rights scores to go down and/or spend the money to Readers Human Rights Book Discussion provide the needed services for our physically Group. This month we read the novel "Radio handicapped students who may need Free Vermont" by environmental activist Bill specialized physical health care services McKibben. (procedures such as catherization, tube feedings, trach suctioning, etc), occupational, speech, and physical therapies and other services such as COORDINATOR’S CORNER deaf and hard of hearing and teachers of the Hello everyone, visually impaired. I can attest to this from my 30+ years as a credentialed school nurse with Happy New Year! Here's hoping 2019 will be LAUSD. I have encountered parents who have better politically (no explanation needed lol). had to resort to hiring a lawyer to get charter schools to provide services to their special needs Well, we went back to work for a week after the children and also students who were kicked out winter break and then went out on strike, which of charters for spurious reasons (the real reason is still the case! It has been an exhausting, being underachievement due to learning exhilarating week. Hopefully an agreement will disabilities). Also, employees of charter schools be reached over this 3-day weekend. do not have the same rights as public Negotiations didn't even resume until Thursday. educational employees. (I think they didn't want to pay us for the MLK holiday on Monday Jan 20th, who knows!) It Paula has arranged for a man from Cameroon was pretty miserable out there on the picket line who was granted asylum in the US to speak to in the rain and cold but we received tons of us about human rights in Cameroon and his support from the community in the form of experiences at our monthly meeting this coming honking cars passing by, the local city Thursday, Jan. 24. This should be very councilman's office bringing us coffee and interesting; everyone is encouraged to attend. doughnuts, and parents bringing food and joining the picket line with their children. I Veronica has said that she will do a program on joined my co-workers from the Visually environmental issues for our March monthly Impaired program at Irving MS in Highland meeting and currently she is making Park. They have a VI resource room there and arrangements for our group to participate in the it's also close to downtown, where almost daily Environmental Fair at the Arboretum in rallies were held after AM picketing. Please sign Arcadia. Robert and I will look for a relevant the online petition to remove Austin Beutner if video to show for the February monthly you are so inclined at: meeting. Ideas are welcome; please share via https://www.change.org/p/monica-garcia- email or at one of our meetings. lausd-superintendent-austin-beutner-must- resign-resignbeutner Con cariño, Kathy He was elected by a pro-charter majority on the school board. He plans to bankrupt the district 1 carry out their own version of guerilla warfare, which includes dismissing local middle school Next Rights Readers children early in honor of ‘Ethan Allen Day’ and Meeting hijacking a Coors Light truck and replacing the stock with local brew. Witty, biting, and Sunday, February 17 terrifyingly timely, Radio Free Vermont is Bill 6:30 PM McKibben's fictional response to the burgeoning Vroman's Bookstore resistance movement. 695 E. Colorado Blvd Pasadena ABOUT THE AUTHOR Radio Free Bill McKibben is an Vermont author and environmentalist who by Bill McKibben in 2014 was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called REVIEW the ‘alternative Nobel.’ (http://billmckibben.com/radio-free-vermont.html) His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as RADIO FREE VERMONT the first book for a general audience about A FABLE OF RESISTANCE climate change, and has appeared in 24 languages; he’s gone on to write a dozen more “I hope no one secedes, but I also hope that books. He is a founder of 350.org, the first Americans figure out creative ways to resist planet-wide, grassroots climate change injustice and create communities where movement, which has organized twenty everybody counts. We've got a long history of thousand rallies around the world in every resistance in Vermont and this book is country save North Korea, spearheaded the testimony to that fact.” —Bernie Sanders resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment A book that's also the beginning of a movement, movement. Bill McKibben's debut novel Radio Free Vermont follows a band of Vermont patriots The Schumann Distinguished Scholar in who decide that their state might be better off as Environmental Studies at Middlebury College its own republic. and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was the 2013 winner of the As the host of Radio Free Vermont - Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize, and “underground, underpowered, and underfoot”- holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently universities. Foreign Policy named him to their broadcasting from an “undisclosed and double- inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important secret location.” With the help of a young global thinkers, and the Boston Globe said he computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern was “probably America’s most important uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet environmentalist.” radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States A former staff writer for the New Yorker, he and operates under a free local economy. But for writes frequently for a wide variety of now, he and his radio show must remain publications around the world, including the untraceable, because in addition to being a New York Review of Books, National Geographic, lifelong Vermonter and concerned citizen, Vern and Rolling Stone. He lives in the mountains Barclay is also a fugitive from the law. above Lake Champlain with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, where he spends as much time as In Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben entertains possible outdoors. In 2014, biologists honored and expands upon an idea that's become more him by naming a new species of woodland gnat popular than ever - seceding from the United - Megophthalmidia mckibbeni - in his honor. States. Along with Vern and Perry, McKibben imagines an eccentric group of activists who (http://billmckibben.com/bio.html) 2 Background Security With Human The US withdrawal – the timeline and details of Rights which remain unknown – is unlikely to stop the By Robert Adams US-led Coalition’s air strikes in Syria, putting more civilian lives at risk. SYRIA: US WITHDRAWAL DOES NOT Amnesty International is carrying out an ERASE COALITION’S DUTY TOWARDS ongoing investigation, in partnership RAQQA’S DEVASTATED CIVILIANS with Airwars, into the shocking scale of civilian 01/11/2019 casualties resulting from four months of US, UK UPDATE: This statement has been modified to and French bombardment to oust the armed reflect a clarification by US forces that the early group calling itself Islamic State (IS) from stages of the withdrawal involve military equipment, Raqqa. The results will be made public in April but not troops, leaving Syria. 2019. Reacting to today’s statement by the US-led Amnesty International’s on-the-ground Coalition that it has begun “the process of investigations and analysis since the battle deliberate withdrawal” from Syria, Lynn ended in October 2017 revealed compelling Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Middle East evidence of prima facie international Research Director, said: humanitarian law violations by the US-led Coalition. They prompted the Coalition to revise “It is deplorable that the US-led Coalition its civilian death toll statistics upwards from 23 continues to ignore its responsibility of carrying to more than 100 – a 300% increase. out any meaningful investigations into the hundreds of civilian deaths it caused in Raqqa In a September 2018 letter to Amnesty and elsewhere – even as it starts to withdraw International, the US Department of Defense – from Syria. whose forces carried out most of the air strikes and all the artillery strikes on Raqqa – made “The Coalition is unashamedly ignoring the clear it accepts no liability for the hundreds of devastating legacy of its bombing campaign, civilian casualties it caused.