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.

On my calendar!

On soup, freedom, and heritage in the heartland greg wickenkamp reflects on the University of Iowa's "Center for Intellectual Freedom" and a panel discussion he attended there.

Barker was recently appointed to the Dept of Ed. UIowa's center has already begun its work eroding democracy.

At the opening of UI's center, a different board of regents member flat out said the event (and undoubtedly the center itself) was cooked up in personal (far-right) networks.

🧵

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

if you're in Iowa City, George's buffet has the best burgers in town. $7

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

Thanks! I overlooked that.

Thank you for documenting these important histories!
Your book is just excellent and deserves to be widely read.

Have you found any evidence of FBI repression of youth activism in Iowa?

Posting as a reminder to myself

March 2, 1955: Claudette Colvin Refuses to Give Up Her Bus Seat At age 15, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama.

"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.

graffiti that says ACAB and Abolish ICE

❤️ iowa city ❤️

The Empty Chairs in My Classroom In one year, my table has gone from overflowing to nearly empty

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 who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as our culture has defined it." — David Orr, What is Education For?

"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.

In 2025, Educators Didn’t Just Endure Repression. They Built Resistance. The right wants the teaching of history to no longer indict power or inspire resistance. But our side won’t submit.

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-...

So helpful. Thank you.

Thanks so much, Professor Ray! And thanks for sharing it!

Barn Raiser’s 2025 Year in Review Explore a selection of rural stories in 2025 from Barn Raiser that made an impact, from covering the Trump administration to Native voices.

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-...

Agreed! They're as dangerous as they are weird.

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. (?!)