[AAACE-NLA] A critical time for advocacy

[Eileen Eckert]

Thanks, Judy, for bringing this up again. I've been waiting for the 
guidelines from NIFL, and for answers to the questions I posted several 
weeks ago about what is happening and why. Debbie Yoho said she thought she 
would be able to answer those questions but I have not seen the answers. My 
assumption is that Debbie, the other moderators, and NIFL staff are all 
doing their best to navigate a political minefield--but I don't know. 
Nonetheless, I believe that it's important for those of us who believe the 
First Amendment <does> apply here to keep advocating for free and open 
discussion and information sharing. It may seem like pressure on NIFL and 
assoc. but I believe it is more in the nature of support for them to stand 
up for all of us!

Several of us in Connecticut visited Senator Dodd's office a couple of weeks 
ago, told his community liaison about the situation and asked him to 
investigate. Could one of my Connecticut colleagues talk about this?

The adult learners I tutor have been working with me on understanding the 
big picture of economic and political forces shaping our lives. The other 
night we spent much of our time analyzing the income and wealth distribution 
charts from the website of United for a Fair Economy (since the GED test is 
very graphics-intensive, this lesson had academic and real-life 
implications). One of the things we talked about was how income and wealth 
distribution, resources for education, and political action are connected 
and what we can do (they were the ones who raised the latter issues). I 
think this is also a critical time for advocacy with our students--not only 
single issue advocacy, but critical thinking, systems thinking, and 
strategic planning.



Eileen

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail