Teaching: the Hollywood version

Bill Knight column for Aug. 3, 4 or 5, 2020

           

Concerns about safely reopening schools cause new appreciation for teachers, who are working on lesson plans for fall even as they wonder about risks to their students and themselves.

Hollywood’s best films featuring teachers seem to echo a comment by author and teacher James Baldwin, whose words still resound decades after his death. Baldwin – born this week in 1924 and the subject of historian Eddie Glaude’s new book “Begin Again” – said, “It is very nearly impossible … to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.”

Against such odds (and dwindling resources), teachers make connections with students, communicate in give-and-take ways, motivate, and impart knowledge and – most importantly – the attitude that learning is possible and positive – on the big screen, too. Typically, obstacles that cinema teachers and pupils share include poverty (urban and rural), crime or social tension, career crises, and learning itself.

Most such films are dramatic, but some have been comedies, suspense and even horror pictures (“Kindergarten Cop,” “187,” “The Faculty”). There’s usually less “action” and more dialogue from teachers and students, principals and janitors, secretaries and parents.

So, for you teachers – hang in there! For the rest of us – check out a dozen inspiring films:

“Conrack” (1974). Novelist Pat Conroy’s touching “The Water Is Wide” provided wonderful fodder for this Jon Voight vehicle about a teacher trying to modernize a poor rural school, where kids are almost illiterate. Paul Winfield, Madge Sinclair and Hume Cronyn co-star.

“Dangerous Minds” (1995). Based on the autobiography by LouAnne Johnson, an ex-Marine who became a terrific inner-city high school teacher, this drama also is a fine vehicle for Michelle Pfeiffer. As the vet, she fights the status quo as well as more mundane aspects of education. It co-stars Courtney B. Vance.

“Dead Poets Society” (1989). Robin Williams is an idealistic English teacher in a prep school in the 1950s, when the pursuit of creativity and individuality seemed alien to some administrators and parents. Ethan Hawke co-stars in director Peter Wier’s drama.

“Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (1939). Greer Garson’s screen debut as the romantic interest of a shy teacher (Robert Donat) was outstanding in this classic version of James Hilton’s novel. After a tragedy, the sentimental story unfolds to show the teacher rededicating himself to his students. Remade in 1969 (with Petula Clark and Peter O’Toole), this original co-starring Paul Henreid and John Mills is worth watching.

“Lean on Me” (1989). Morgan Freeman stars as no-nonsense principal Joe Clark, who’s determined to improve a deteriorating school in an inner-city neighborhood. Robert Guillaume co-stars.

“Mr. Holland’s Opus” (1995). Richard Dreyfuss stars as a musician who becomes a teacher to support his family while escaping the wedding-reception gigs he hates. Eventually, he thinks, he’ll finish the symphony he dreams of composing. Instead, over decades, he falls in love with teaching, and has a great effect on the talents he mentors. Sentimental without being saccharine, it co-stars Glenne Headly, Olympia Dukakis and William H. Macy.

“The Principal” (1987). Jim Belushi stars as a ne’er-do-well teacher punished for being a maverick by being “promoted” to lead a troubled school. Although brash, he’s also a dedicated educator and disciplinarian. He and a stern custodian (Lou Gossett Jr.) unite against young gangsters and motivate students with compassion and respect. Esai Morales and Rae Dawn Chong co-star.

“Stand and Deliver” (1988). Edward James Olmos is gripping as a frumpy but inspired math instructor in a barrio school who gives up a lucrative electronics job to teach a classroom of misfits. They see the light – and calculus! Based on a true story, it co-stars Lou Diamond Phillips and Andy Garcia.

“The Substitute” (1996). Tom Berenger stars as a mercenary who goes undercover as a substitute teacher after his girlfriend is attacked by high school drug dealers. Co-starring Ernie Hudson, the action yarn is thin on plot and heavy on gunplay, but it’s entertaining escapism.

“Teachers” (1984). Nick Nolte is excellent as a teacher nearly overwhelmed by a system rewarding incompetence – teachers and students, administrators and parents. The “dram-edy” has a fine cast: Judd Hirsch, Lee Grant, Ralph Macchio, Morgan Freeman, Crispin Glover and Laura Dern.

“To Sir with Love” (1967). Sidney Poitier is a teacher in London, where his lessons come from experience as much as textbooks. Based on E.R. Braithwaite’s novel, the picture resonates with Poitier’s performance, but also benefits from a cast including Judy Geeson, Christian Roberts and Lulu (whose title tune was a pop hit).

“Up the Down Staircase” (1967). A new teacher (Sandy Dennis) is naïve about the challenges of teaching literature to poor students. Then a bridge and breakthrough take place. Eileen Heckart and Jean Stapleton co-star in the film based on Bel Kaufman’s novel.

Union-busting by any other name would stink as bad

Bill Knight column for 7-30, 31 or 8-1, 2020

                       

In 1939, musician Woody Guthrie sang, “As through this world I've wandered, / I've seen lots of funny men. / Some will rob you with a six-gun/ and some with a fountain pen.”

In the months when the country has been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic – sparking cries of “We’re all in this together!” – related issues vital to people, like safety on the job, have provoked many protests, work stoppages and attempts to unionize.

In response, employers have sought to defeat workers organizing, but instead of bosses using police or thugs with baseball bats, 21^st century companies increasingly use attorneys, consultants and tech.

It’s part of a pattern that pits power and corporate cash against everyday Americans.

“The legal and political environment has been tilted substantially in favor of shareholders and against workers since the 1980s, a trend exemplified by the expansion of state Right-To-Work laws undermining unions’ ability to fund themselves and the increasing corporate use of union avoidance tactics, both legal and illegal,” wrote former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Anna Stansbury in the Washington Post.

It’s a national crisis.

“The United States is the only nation on Earth to have an entire industry of consultants and law firms dedicated to preventing workers from forming unions,” said John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, “one that doesn’t even stop during a deadly pandemic.”

Concession workers at Orlando International Airport in Florida this spring protested their employer, HMSHost, failing to provide adequate COVID-19 protections and for a union, and they were forced to endure anti-union “captive meetings” – without safety precautions.

“They made sure to give us papers about the union,” commented Rosanny Tejeda, a barista at the airport, talking to The Guardian. “But [they] didn’t give us training or protective equipment for us in the stores.”

Recent labor disputes at Whole Foods Market (owned by Amazon) and Trader Joe’s have modernized anti-union methods. Whole Foods, based in Austin, Texas, reported store sales of $17.1 billion in Fiscal Year 2019, but the company has used “explainer videos” to distract from finances by criticizing unions. The corporation has also developed a mapping tool that uses factors such as worker complaints about stores’ labor violations, union activities near its stores, and the diversity of stores’ work forces to track risks of unionization at its 500-plus U.S. locations, which have had sick-outs due to a lack of workers protections against the virus.

Trader Joe’s, headquartered in Monrovia, Calif., has used a series of actions to use against workers to defeat unionizing over issues such as insufficient protections for workers and hazard pay during the COVID-19 outbreak. They’ve range from handing out anti-union talking points to managers to CEO Dan Bane mailing a letter to all workers opposing unions and calling organizing efforts “a distraction.”

Celine McNicholas, government affairs director for the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said, “It’s an absolute disgrace they would take advantage of a pandemic to frustrate workers’ ability to organize and get better representation for themselves so they’re not risking their lives to perform essential services.

“This is an extreme moment we’re in,” she told The Guardian, “but unfortunately this is the traditional employer playbook in opposing workers’ efforts to organize and collectively bargain for better pay and better health and safety provisions.”

Between 71% and 87% of U.S. employers hire union-avoidance interests to counter organizing or campaign to eliminate existing collecting bargaining representatives, she’s testified to the National Labor Relations Board.

Besides such current incidents, familiar companies have conceded in required reports from the years 2014-2018 that they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight workers, EPI reported, based on government records. For example, Bed, Bath & Beyond spent $506,000; FedEx spent $837,000; Nestle/USQ spent $566,000; Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas spent $569,000; and UPS spent $311,000

In Illinois, Archer Daniels Midland during those years spent $324,000 and Caterpillar spent $279,000.

Increasingly common, union avoidance makes it increasingly necessary for organized labor to engage elected representatives, too.

Summers, now a professor at Harvard University, where he used to be president, summed up what’s needed.

“Increasing worker power must be a central and urgent priority for policymakers concerned with inequality, low pay and poor work conditions,” he and Stansbury said. “If we do not shift the distribution of power toward workers, any other policy changes are likely to be short-term and insufficient.”

Union avoidance or union-busting, the practice is just another attack, even if it’s by thugs in suits.

Katy, Barr the door

Bill Knight column for 7 27, 28, or 29, 2020            

Attorney General William Barr might look a bit like Fred Flintstone, but the Rubble his Stone Age approach to justice is leaving behind is not Barney.

His Department of Justice’s priorities are now Trump’s priorities. Barr is acting as Trump’s personal lawyer, not the nation’s, and he’s signaled that federal involvement in issues related to the President are off limits, whether tax-related matters or action by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani or, now, sending secret federal law-enforcement personnel to cities to attack, abduct or intimidate nonviolent demonstrators.

Last week, four former presidents of the D.C. Bar Association signed a letter calling on the group to investigate Barr for ethical violations including dishonesty and failing his oath to uphold the Constitution.

This week, Barr is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, which is discussing the politicization of the Justice Department. They’ll surely ask why he:

* falsely framed the Mueller Report as an exoneration,

* criticized an Inspector General’s report on the Russia investigation, plus DoJ’s own probe and prosecution of wrong-doing that Trump called a hoax,

* helped purge the FBI of people not deemed to be “loyal” to Trump,

* dropped charges against Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI,

* reduced sentencing for Roger Stone, convicted of lying, witness tampering and obstruction, but whose prison term was later commuted altogether by President Trump (especially since Barr supposedly argued against back-tracking Stone’s prosecution, which Barr reportedly termed “righteous,” and in his confirmation hearing told Senators that a President pardoning someone in exchange for not incriminating the Commander in Chief “would be a crime”),

* oversaw the release of Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty to witness tampering and conspiracy and was also convicted of bank fraud, tax evasion and hiding foreign bank accounts, but had his sentence commuted to house arrest over COVID-19 concerns (though comparable inmates weren’t offered the deal),

* launched an investigation into Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, subverting U.S. intelligence findings,

* removed prosecutors Jessie Liu (Washington, D.C.) and Geoffrey Berman (New York),

* ordered federal law enforcement personnel to gas peaceful protestors from Lafayette Square so Trump could walk to a nearby church for a photo holding a Bible, and

* circumvents Congress’ bipartisan criminal-justice reform.

Conflicts of interest seem to swirl around Barr. In 2017 he was hired by Caterpillar to examine the federal case against the Illinois company for using foreign subsidiaries to avoid paying U.S. taxes (despite Barr’s law firm’s involvement in the strategy). Now he’s reportedly questioned U.S. Attorneys’ looking into allegations of campaign fraud and extortion within his boss’s operation.

Meanwhile, an Appeals Court last month heard objections to Barr’s Flynn Forgiveness Express by Judge Emmet Sullivan, who accepted Flynn’s original guilty plea. In a 2-1 vote it ordered the dismissal anyway. In Appellate Judge Robert Wilkins’ dissent, he said Sullivan “must be given a reasonable opportunity to consider and hold a hearing on the government’s request [to drop charges] to ensure that it is not clearly contrary to the public interest.”

This month, Sullivan asked Washington’s full, 12-member Circuit Court of Appeals to hear his request.

In the Southern District of New York, Berman this month told Congress that Barr lied in conversations about changing the office, seeking Berman’s resignation so Trump loyalist Jay Clayton (who’s not a prosecutor) could replace him. If Berman resigned, the administration assumed their choice could take over. If Berman was fired, the prosecutor said, his assistant Audrey Strauss would succeed him (which is what eventually happened). Plus, even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) conceded that the precedence of Senators from a nominee’s home state clearing the move (and New York Democrats’ Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer are unlikely to OK Clayton).

As far as criminal justice reform – which through 2018’s First Step Act started to relieve overcrowded prisons and improve federal sentencing guidelines – Barr has issued federal charges in connection with recent civil uprisings instead of the more appropriate state charges, leading legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker to comment “The Attorney General has expressed nothing but contempt for more civilized approaches to law enforcement.”

Former Deputy Attorney General Donald B. Ayer, who served President George H.W. Bush before Barr was there, was more direct in recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

“I believe William Barr poses the greatest threat in my lifetime to our rule of law,” Ayer said. “That is because he does not believe in its core principle that nobody is above the law.”

This isn’t animation; it’s animosity.