Leid Stories

The Nevada Democratic Convention ended in chaos Saturday,

after 16 hours of backroom dealing by party hacks to produce the

desired result: Nevada is Hillary country. In one of the most flagrant

examples of vote fixing in this election cycle, state bosses scuttled

the party’s own rules and ran roughshod over any semblance of fairness

in the Clinton-Sanders battle for delegates. It was a patently

fraudulent process that yielded a fraudulent result, but it appears to

sit well with the Democratic Party leadership, which is decidedly

pro-Clinton.

Dr. James Petras, Bartle professor emeritus of

sociology at Binghamton University and author of more than 62 books and

600 scholarly papers on imperialism and global oppression, notes that

“progressives” have a sordid history of offering themselves as

alternatives to the system when in fact they are political acolytes

working with the system to thwart progress.

Congratulations! You’ve made it through yet another mind-numbing week and you’re still relatively sane. What an accomplishment!

Share

your victory with others who survived the barrage of misinformation and

disinformation that was “news” this week. It’s “Free Your Mind Friday" on Leid Stories, and 888-874-4888 is our lifeline to each other.

Last week’s teacher sickout in Detroit shut down its public school

system for three days and put the national spotlight once again on the

beleaguered city’s budget woes. The teachers’ action came after they

were told that their salaries could not be guaranteed beyond June 30, when emergency funds allocated by the state would run out.

Detroit’s

schools long have been the poster child for the many ills that plague

the nation’s public schools, especially in high-density, predominantly

people-of-color urban areas across America. Now, the city and just about

everything associated with it are widely viewed as being beyond fixing.

Detroit’s

school system didn’t just develop “problems;” it was targeted for

oblivion long before the rest of the city, says Dr. Thomas Pedroni, an

associate professor of curriculum studies and policy sociology at Wayne

State University and Director of the Detroit Data and Democracy

Project. Raced-based policies engineered the

demise of the city to make way for a “re-imagined” Detroit, he says, and

key to hastening that transition was a wholesale attack on its public

schools. Further, Dr. Pedroni says, the model is being replicated all

across “urban” America.

The results of yesterday’s primaries in West Virginia and

Nebraska—with Donald Trump capturing both states and Bernie Sanders

besting Hillary Clinton in West Virginia—have only moved political

outcomes even closer to “inevitability.” Trump has no major impediments

to clinching the Republican nomination, and Sanders’ win did little to

blunt Clinton’s lead in delegates. The duopoly continues to take care of

party business in the leadup to the general election in November, when,

inevitably, there’ll be a new president in the White House.

Meanwhile,

Leid Stories’ listeners ponder new approaches to politics and how best

to prepare to cope with what soon will be our collective reality. We

continue the discussion for the third day.

Leid Stories continues yesterday’s discussion about developing

alternatives to the political “inevitabilities” we face in this

presidential election year.

Also, we look to Detroit, where, in

the face of awesome challenges to community-controlled education and

just about everything governing daily life, there is organized

resistance, and it is gaining ground. Dr. Thomas Pedroni, associate

professor of curriculum studies and policy sociology at Wayne State

University, discusses ways in which the community is mobilizing to

assure a quality education for Detroit’s schoolchildren.

They’re distrusted, even hated, by significant numbers of voters,

but Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton inevitably will be the standard bearers of

the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, say the sycophantic media that

created them, and one of them will lead us.

Leid Stories discusses another self-fulfilling prophesy: We’ll

help it all happen.

It's "Free Your Mind Friday"

on Leid Stories, and listeners' opinions about the week's bumper crop

of news issues and events--or anything they think warrants further

discussion and debate--take center stage.

Add your own intellectual flavor into this delicious stew. Call 888-874-4888  to free your mind--and ours, too!

Say “Cinco de Mayo” to the average American and you’d

probably be asked, “Where’s the party?”

True, it is a celebration, but the advertising world and the

mainstream media have all but erased its historical significance; most people

associate Cinco de Mayo with after-work bar crawls and copious amounts of

tequila and beer, and tacos and guacamole.

Cinco de Mayo commemorates this day in 1862, when an

outnumbered, outgunned Mexican army repelled French invaders in the Battle of

Puebla. Oddly, the event goes practically unnoticed in Mexico, and is more

celebrated in the United States, particularly California and Texas.

Dr. David Hayes-Bautista, author of El Cinco de Mayo: An

American Tradition and professor of medicine and director of the Center for the

Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA’s School of Medicine, explains the

connection between Cinco de Mayo and the abolition of slavery in the United

States, the Civil War, the Declaration of Independence and, most importantly,

the “Indo-Afro-Iberio Americano” sociopolitical achievements already made

 long before English settlers founded Jamestown (Va.) in 1607, and

Plymouth (Mass.) in 1620.

And on the third day, there’s school. The Detroit Federation of

Teachers has ended a two-day sickout that shut down 94 of its 97 public

schools on Monday and Tuesday. Teachers were told over the weekend that the state’s largest school district would run out of money by June 30 and their salaries for summer school and thereafter could not be guaranteed.

Meanwhile,

President Obama today visits Flint, Mich. He’ll get “briefings” there

on the city’s water-contamination crisis—two years after it came to

light. And in Indiana, the presidential primaries delivered many

surprises. Leid Stories discusses the lessons to be learned from all

three events.

For the second day, most all of Detroit’s 97

public schools remain closed—the result of a sickout by teachers whose salaries

are not guaranteed beyond June 30, when the state’s largest school district

runs out of money. About 46,000 schoolchildren remain home today. Abayomi

Azikiwe, editor in chief of Pan-African News Wire and a co-founder of the

Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs,

reports that the misery index goes several notches higher for many of their

parents; more than 20,000 households face water shutoffs today.

Voting is brisk in Indiana, where Democratic

and Republican presidential hopefuls are duking it out for decisive delegate

wins to assure nomination or for badly needed voter boosts to flagging

campaigns. Leid Stories discusses the Indiana primaries.