Shanna Peeples 🏳️‍🌈

I’ve been flying all day and the TSA and airport staff have been professional and efficient. I’m so grateful for the folks who show up in this situation. Thank you, tower folks, for your work and your service

The Emergency Is the Atmosphere “It’s meant to exhaust us. It’s meant to destroy us."

You should read this by @mskellymhayes.bsky.social if you haven't already done so: organizingmythoughts.org/the-emergenc...

Written in black text on a light green background: “Yet the fight we are in right now is not solely about our institutions. We are fighting for our humanity, the humanity of those being abused by our system, and for the earth itself. We are fighting for a future which best represents our vision and values. And at the core, we are fighting for a collective story about who we believe we are and who we want to become.” - john a. powell The logo FIGHTING FORWARD is in the lower right corner in red.

"A belonging story also honors and celebrates difference—race, gender, religion, and all types of group identity are not rendered invisible in service to a larger, universal story or short-term political project." - john a. powell

Full #FightForward Essay: belonging.berkeley.edu/belonging-st...

I cannot stress this strongly enough: Support your local theatre, café, bookstore, bakery, and library. We breathe life into these places when we support them. They need us, and more importantly, we need them.

The Best Practical Resources For Helping Teachers, Students & Families Respond To Immigration Challenges Many teachers, students and families are understandably concerned about the impact of the Trump Administration’s changes on immigration will affect them: What can teachers do if ICE raids the…

Reposting resources to support students from @larryferlazzo.bsky.social

larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2017/02/26/t...

The Civil-Military Crisis Is Here The leaders of the U.S. military may soon face a terrible decision.

“America’s senior military officers, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, must approach Trump now and make clear to him that they will not obey illegal orders to act against American citizens or disrupt the American political process.”

www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

I still don't have a bookshelf with a rolling ladder, so no, I'm afraid your email did not "find me well."

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado wins the Nobel Peace Prize Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, winning recognition as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.” The former op...

BREAKING: Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has won the Nobel Peace Prize, winning recognition as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”

She was lauded for being a “key, unifying figure" in the once deeply divided opposition to the Maduro regime.

M.I.T. Rejects a White House Offer for Special Funding Treatment

Breaking: MIT just became the first university to reject an agreement that would trade support for the Trump admin's higher education agenda in exchange for favorable treatment.

"Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

A Growing Number of Superintendents Say the Job Stress Isn't Worth It At the same time, superintendents this year identified fewer sources of job-related stress in a new survey.

While superintendents are reporting fewer overall stressors, a growing number of them still feel the job's stress isn't worth it.

If you want to look up if your book is part of the Anthropic Settlement (AI lawsuit) here's a search portal: secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup

#writersky #authorsky #booksky

Study links greater inequality to structural changes in children’s brains Researchers say findings show inequality creates toxic environment and reducing it is ‘a public health imperative’

🧒 Inequality reshapes young brains

A study of more than 10,000 US children found that living in states with greater income inequality is linked to structural brain changes and poorer mental health, regardless of family wealth.

🔗 www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

#SciComm #Inequality 🧪

Mike Johnson: "The WIC program, the nutrition program -- women, infants, and children -- that program won't be funded. FEMA won't be funded."

“Children, everybody, here's what we do during war: In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment.”

From The Fifth Book of Peace by Maxine Hong Kingston

The tradition part 1 Carry it on now. Carry it on. Carry it on now. Carry it on. Carry on the tradition. There were Black People since the childhood of time who carried it on. In Ghana and Mali and Timbuktu we carried it on. Carried on the tradition. We hid in the bush when the slavemasters came holding spears. And when the moment was ripe, leaped out and lanced the lifeblood of would-be masters. We carried it on. On slave ships, hurling ourselves into oceans. Slitting the throats of our captors. We took their whips. And their ships. Blood flowed in the Atlantic— and it wasn't all ours. We carried it on. Fed Missy arsenic apple pies. Stole the axes from the shed. Went and chopped off master's head. We ran. We fought. We organized a railroad. An underground. We carried it on. In newspapers. In meetings. In arguments and streetfights. We carried it

(The tradition part 2) In tales told to children. In chants and cantatas. In poems and blues songs and saxophone screams, We carried it on. In classrooms. In churches. In courtrooms. In prisons. We carried it on. On soapboxes and picket lines. Welfare lines, unemployment lines. Our lives on the line, We carried it on. In sit-ins and pray-ins And march-ins and die-ins, We carried it on. On cold Missouri midnights Pitting shotguns against lynch mobs. On burning Brooklyn streets. Pitting rocks against rifles, We carried it on. Against water hoses and bulldogs. Against nightsticks and bullets. Against tanks and tear gas. Needles and nooses. Bombs and birth control. We carried it on. In Selma and San Juan. Mozambique. Mississippi. In Brazil and in Boston, We carried it on. Through the lies and the sell-outs. The mistakes and the madness. Through pain and hunger and frustration, We carried it on. Carried on the tradition. Carried a strong tradition. Carried a proud tradition.

(The tradition part 3) Carried a Black tradition. Carry it on. Pass it down to the children. Pass it down. Carry it on. Carry it on now. Carry it on TO FREEDOM!

Audre Lorde wrote, “Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”

Assata Shakur embodied this.

CULTURE i must confess that waltzes do not move me. i have no sympathy for symphonies. i guess i hummed the Blues too early, and spent too many midnights out wailing to the rain.

LOVE Love is contraband in Hell, cause love is an acid that eats away bars. But you, me, and tomorrow hold hands and make vows that struggle will multiply. The hacksaw has two blades. The shotgun has two barrels. We are pregnant with freedom. We are a conspiracy.

ASSATA 240 CURRENT EVENTS i understand that i am slightly out of fashion. The in-crowd wants no part of me. Someone said that i am too sixties Black. Someone else told me i had failed to mellow. It is true i have not straightened back my hair. Nor rediscovered maybelline. And it is also true that i still like African things, like statues and dresses and PEOPLE. And it is also true that struggle is foremost in my mind. And i still rap about discipline— my anger has not run away. And i still can't stand ole el dorado. And i still can't dig no one and one. And i still don't dig no roka fellas. And i call a pig a pig. And a party, to my thinking, happens only once in a while. Anyway, i'm really kind of happy being slightly out of style.

AFFIRMATION I believe in living. I believe in the spectrum of Beta days and Gamma people. I believe in sunshine. In windmills and waterfalls, tricycles and rocking chairs. And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts. And sprouts grow into trees. I believe in the magic of the hands. And in the wisdom of the eyes. I believe in rain and tears. And in the blood of infinity. I believe in life. And i have seen the death parade march through the torso of the earth, sculpting mud bodies in its path. I have seen the destruction of the daylight, and seen bloodthirsty maggots prayed to and saluted. I have seen the kind become the blind and the blind become the bind in one easy lesson. I have walked on cut glass. I have eaten crow and blunder bread and breathed the stench of indifference. I have been locked by the lawless. Handcuffed by the haters. Gagged by the greedy. And, if i know any thing at all, it's that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down. I believe in living. I believe in birth. I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth. And i believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, seasick sailors, can still be guided home to port.

Assata Shakur’s autobiography is brilliant, and I encourage everyone to spend some time with her poems. My best friend Tim teaches Affirmation every year to high school freshmen and it sticks with them heavy for years.

The gap between teacher pay and other college graduates’ pay is the highest it’s been in over four decades.

Is there a “teacher shortage,” or a shortage of jobs that treat educators with the pay, dignity, and support they deserve?

This isn't reform - it's asset stripping disguised as accountability. As the article shows, these efforts have never been a good faith attempt to improve education, but rather the transfer of public resources to private hands.

A Wave of School District Takeovers Could Be Coming. Some Past Interventions Ended with More Failing Schools. Fort Worth ISD is among the districts that could join Houston in having its elected board deposed, while Beaumont and Edgewood ISDs offer a cautionary tale.

If state takeovers don’t consistently improve outcomes, what’s the actual purpose? These takeovers normalize removing local control whenever the state says it’s necessary
www.texasobserver.org/state-school...

The problem with allowing guns everywhere is that no one is safe anywhere.

This afternoon, following full consideration of the facts related to this situation, I directed the Provost to terminate the professor involved, effective immediately. Please understand that these decisions were mine alone and were not made lightly. While I cannot provide all the details at this time, I will share the following facts.

Update on the Texas A&M professor / cell phone video situation: the professor has been fired by the A&M president
president.tamu.edu/messages/an-...

In the minds of most Americans, we’ve tended to mythologize the Warren Court as most representative of the Supreme Court, when in truth, for most of our history the Court has ruled against minority rights, upheld the power of wealthy white men, and rarely protected the most vulnerable.

Book Review: Mr. Lancaster's System: The Failed Reform That Created America's Public Schools by Adam Laats - Shanna Peeples, 2025

Thanks to @shannapeeples.bsky.social for a thoughtful review of my Lancaster book.
"Laats’ greatest contribution lies in excavating this link between early notions of educational improvement and present-day echoes in perennial technological miracles that promise comprehensive learning on the cheap."

My Liberal Arts Degrees Pat McCrory of North Carolina is the latest governor to question the value of a liberal arts degree. This is the story of how its provided one kind of value (economic) to me.

I am not surprised about the degrees which are useful because I have three of them and they've been very useful indeed. This is one of the earliest pieces I ever wrote @insidehighered.com. Spreading the gospel in 2013! www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-v...

Warnings From Weimar Why bargaining with authoritarians fails.

Warnings From Weimar
www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/hitl...

AI could deplete drinking water sources around Illinois, Midwest Large data centers working on artificial intelligence that need water for cooling could drain area water supplies, a Great Lakes advocacy group warns.

"Large data centers, many devoted to researching artificial intelligence, are expected to use more than 150 billion gallons of water across the U.S. over the next five years, according to the advocacy organization Alliance for the Great Lakes. That’s enough water to supply 4.6 million homes."

James Dobson, Influential Leader of the Religious Right, Dies at 89

I highly recommend “Wild Faith” by @swordsjew.bsky.social for understanding the profound damage wrought by this man

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/u...

"None Of These Books Are Obscene": Judge Strikes Down Much of Florida's Book Ban Bill In a major win for intellectual freedom, a judge rules against Florida law that led to removing hundreds of books from school libraries.

“None Of These Books Are Obscene”: Judge Strikes Down Much of Florida’s Book Ban Bill

This is a big win for intellectual freedom and will have big implications in other ongoing lawsuits and future laws aiming to ban books.

bookriot.com/penguin-rand...