Ideas don’t just die. They have to be challenged with other ideas, and the forces sustaining them must be defeated. Take neoliberalism, ushered in by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago. Neoliberalism promotes privatization, deregulation, trade and capital liberalization and the ideology of personal responsibility. These are just the means, however. The goal has always been to reverse New Deal-style redistribution by reconstituting upper-class power and wealth. read more »

After teaching elementary education for 27 years at PS 147 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I was offered a technology job at the district level in 1998. read more »

New York City’s public-school system has endured repeated budget cuts in recent years. And now the state Assembly is considering a $492 million “compromise” cut in school funding for the city in the coming year, while Mayor Michael Bloomberg is threatening to lay off 6,400 teachers. read more »

I’ve always romanticized the notion of history represented by dusty stacks and rare archives, and last summer I decided to produce an audio collection of my grandfather’s small, but precious, library of pre-modern poetry and classic literature. read more »

Marisol Ramos is tired of her friends and family living in fear of deportation. The 25-year-old South Bronx native is walking 250 miles to lobby for a moratorium on deportations of undocumented families as well as the passage of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. read more »