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Eshu’s blues: Michael Jackson dies of Amurrika at 50

Tue, 06/30/2009 - 10:57 — michael hureaux
michael jacksonby BAR columnist michael hureaux perez
 
The King of Pop is dead, and “you can hear the scavengers gnawing on bones all the way to the bank from any vantage point where you stand.” Michael Jackson succumbed to a peculiar Amurridan syndrome: TMTS, Too Much Too Soon. “In United States capitalist culture, performing artists have to deal with a public pillorying that actually ought to be reserved for the war criminals and thieves who have always run and owned this society.”
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Eshu’s blues: Field days for gumbo ya ya

Tue, 11/18/2008 - 18:00 — michael hureaux
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by BAR columnist
michael hureauxEshumagnum

When a Black teenager accidentally shoots his
best friend, it is "all just one more weekend, one of those lunatic moments
when one young Black man kills another young Black man, and once all the usual
sociological theorizing rolls by, no one really knows why, except that it
happened, and it's to be expected, somehow." 
The author, who was both boys' teacher, wonders "how the dividing line
between play and the reality of what a firearm is became blurred." For
too many urban adolescents, "an acquaintance with firearms becomes as casual as
the presence of the television remote."

Eshu’s blues: Obama won. Now whatcha gonna do?

Tue, 11/11/2008 - 18:00 — michael hureaux
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by BAR columnist michael hureauxEshuEconAdvisersl

The more things are supposed to change, the more they
stay the same. Barack Obama seeks "economic counsel from the old Clinton and
Carter machines," perhaps based on "the same tired argument that ‘we have to
become more like the right wing dogs in order to defeat the right wing dogs.'"
The Surge is now deemed to have been successful, a sign of progress. Obama
boosters claim a progressive social movement surrounds their hero - so why do
they "rely on the same old "democratic party insiders" to run the show?

Eshu’s Blues: charter schools and the rest of us

Tue, 10/21/2008 - 18:00 — michael hureaux
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by michael hureauxEshuSchool

John McCain and Barack Obama "share the same
market nostrums for education reform, from charter schools to merit pay to the
test mania of No Child Left Behind," but have no inkling of the meaning of
comprehensive education. An educator himself, the author advocates that
teachers "work to build a new, independent leadership of labor to take charge
of this comprehensive public education question and every other question of any
societal importance." One thing he's sure of: "When the human need factor is
addressed, academic achievement is vastly improved."

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