Guerilla Advocacy is back! Join us for a virtual No Kings rally focusing on anti-intellectualism and censorship. We have a stellar lineup of speakers. Want to participate but want to go out in person as well? Go for it! We start at 6:30 pm Central. You can register at the link below. 1/6

Wonderful article by our colleague Greg Wickenkamp about rural educators who, despite censorship campaigns and laws, "take pains to present history in all its complexity, encouraging students to develop their own informed stances through critical thinking." ⬇️ #TeachTruth

Deep gratitude to the editors and the truly heroic educators quoted in this piece. “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future.”

Attention Iowa folks interested in public schools!! You won’t want to miss this, @schooldaves.bsky.social brings so much expertise and interesting ideas to school finance.

🧵 Glad this is getting coverage, though it deserves more. Over a year before UI's center was founded, I bumped into David Barker, an Iowa board of regents member. Before I realized who he was, he was telling me how he and his network planned to begin a new push around civics education.

Historian of abolition here yes worse than the Civil Rights movement when the federal government could be goaded into doing the right thing. right now we are confronting the new Slave Power that controls the government of the United States.

One day, if we are lucky, the erasure of American history will itself be remembered as a shameful chapter in American history

Grateful for @democracynow.org for always bringing crucial daily news and for today airing excerpts from Dr King's ever-timely speeches.

Re-listening to King's Beyond Vietnam speech today it is striking how timely it remains. As Dr Jackson reminds us in this beautiful article, these are still revolutionary times. Tomorrow is already today and we must move with the fierce urgency of now.

"Abolishing an agency that teargasses two-year-olds and shoots mothers in the street isn’t radical. It is basic human decency" "'Abolish ICE' does not go far enough. We need to move away from a system predicated on violence in favor of one that centers people’s humanity" damn right the time is now

Posting as a reminder to myself

"I could not move, because history had me glued to the seat. . . It felt like Sojourner Truth’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder & Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on another shoulder, & I could not move." — Claudette Colvin Claudette Colvin ¡Presente! has died at age 86. 💔

One of the best independent journalists in Iowa being denied access to elected officials.

❤️ iowa city ❤️

Devastating, from Jane Nguyen, who works in the Des Moines, Iowa public schools: “For the first time in my 27 years as an elementary teacher of English Language Learners, I don’t have a single student new to the country this school year.” asianiowan.substack.com/p/the-empty-...

I've lately been researching the JBS in Iowa. Their influence is hard to overstate. Surprising to me, they were 1) wildly successful at getting their framing in the media, and 2) funneled huge amounts of cash to far-right causes throughout the 1960s (likely > $250,000,000 in today's dollars)

"The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind...It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane..."

We’ve graduated from “abolish ICE is the moderate position” to “Nuremberg trials for the Trump regime and its Gestapo is the moderate position.”

I highly recommend this article from U Iowa PhD student @wickenkamp.bsky.social on the new (and Orwellian) "Center for Intellectual Freedom's." Their inaugural event was headlined by Christopher Rufo, the right's leading anti-school propagandists and an authoritarian cheerleader.

I wrote a new piece for @truthout.org looking back at 2025 — a year when educators didn’t just endure repression, they built resistance. ✊🏽📚 Education has never been neutral—It either liberates or subjugates. Here are the stories of those who resisted subjugation. truthout.org/articles/in-...

In response to sweeping federal policy changes, organizers and visionaries took a stand, leading the charge to renew rural civic life. Barn Raiser was there, covering these movements from coast to coast. Here are our top 40 stories from the past year. barnraisingmedia.com/barn-raiser-...

Thank you, @laurarbelin.bsky.social, for publishing this! I expected something disheartening from UI's new center... I didn't realize it'd be this bad. Or that they'd say a soup of feminism and social movements is supposedly destroying higher ed. (?!)

Hmm. Where else have we seen this story?

"Fuentes is the fly born of Heritage’s maggot." As viscerally disturbing as it is accurate.

Time for a third reconstruction of American democracy.

We need your support. Help us provide many more people's history lessons to #TeachOutsideTextbook for free to educators. All donations on this #GivingTuesday will be doubled (up to $10,000) thanks to generous support of @dcolapinto.bsky.social. Donate ⬇️ www.zinnedproject.org/news/double-...

We know about police violence during CRM, but there was also COINTELPRO type surveillance by local dep'ts. And resistance by CORE & SNCC who confronted police abuses head-on, with sit-ins at precincts, blocking streets to protest officer abuse, & more. Join us Monday to learn more. Free class ⬇️

I'm so excited about this upcoming class! Davis's book is really exemplary. It highlights histories of policing that help us understand where we're at today along with potential ways forward.

This is the genius of the Portland protests - they make the claims of lawlessness look not just wrong, but comical

We have signs! Please dm if you would like one. I’m running for school board to ensure that all ICCSD students and educators receive the support and respect that they deserve.

Here are resources to teach about history of policing including lessons, the Empire City podcast by @chenjerai.bsky.social, Police Against the Movement by @joshuaclarkdavis.bsky.social, interview with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, on "The Condemnation of Blackness: Lies We’re Told About Crime" & more. ⬇️

A third Reconstruction is desperately needed.

Given this, it is all the more urgent that we create education is subversive in meaningful ways. The @zinnedproject.bsky.social is indispensable. Please support them, and all other learning projects. And my dear colleagues in academia—wake up and pitch in FFS.

"A free education is incompatible with fascism. That was Dewey's petition from his generation’s age of fascism to our own: that to make education incompatible with fascism is to make us more free." My remarks from #TeachTruth 2025: www.humanrestorationproject.org/writing/refl... #EduSky

We just kicked off our #TeachTruth event in Chauncy Swan park! Incredible turnout from the #NoKings March! @zinnedproject.bsky.social

"I taught my students slavery was wrong. Then MAGA came after me." -- @wickenkamp.bsky.social, who became target of right wing politician after signing our #TeachTruth pledge. Read his powerful article ⬇️. Join us June 7: www.zinnedproject.org/news/teach-t... barnraisingmedia.com/iowa-rural-s...

@booker.senate.gov dismantles a Confederate monument.

In Red States, Rural Voters Are Leading the Resistance to School Vouchers barnraisingmedia.com... @carolburris.bsky.social @piperformissouri.bsky.social @dianeravitch.bsky.social @covingtonedu.bsky.social @gameonkansas.bsky.social

Questionnaire, by Wendell Berry (2010) How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.

So students can be alert to scapegoating divide & conquer tactics, teach outside textbook about Red Scare, "a scorched-earth policy against country’s most progressive forces." Not just McCarthy & Hollywood, it was an attack on Black freedom & labor struggles. www.zinnedproject.org/materials/su...

In 1943 the US government made an antifascist film called "Don't Be a Sucker" in which we see a college professor in Germany removed from his classroom by government officials who do not approve of what he's teaching about race. youtu.be/vGAqYNFQdZ4?...

Really honored to get a chance to work with the amazing editors at @barnraiser.bsky.social -- a publication that's doing excellent work.

To our knowledge, Columbia and Barnard have not officially expelled people for political speech since 1936, when Columbia expelled a student who led a protest against the University’s ties to the Nazis.

New online: Colin Gordon on the Republican war on social assistance programs. www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

As usual, the youth have greater moral clarity than many adults.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.

Teaching history divorced from the concerns of the present is actually doing a bad job at teaching history.

Educator @jessehagopian.bsky.social says Trump's vow to abolish the Education Department is not about "local control" over schools. "Let’s call this what it is: an extremist, authoritarian power grab to dismantle public education and enforce ideological conformity."