Those following the VanPatten Open Letter thread here over the past few days are invited to do some nonviolent direct action (MLK) as per:
…we who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive…
We don’t have to compromise Lance’s relationship with the department chair at UMass by referring to details he wrote in his response to Lance, because that hones in on one individual.
Unless Lance says we can, with perhaps a note to the department chair saying that he shared that response with us. I don’t know how Lance wants it handled but we will respect his wishes and it is normal for him not to want us to go there. We must at all costs avoid turning this work with the VP document into a personal vendetta against individuals.
My point is simple. I feel that it is time for us to use the power of the internet to mount an email writing campaign to the very bigwigs in universities who are such a deep part of the problem identified by VP in his open letter. Is anyone else up for this?
Our opportunity to each take five minutes on this one is a good one and we shouldn’t let it go. We can give sample emails in the comment fields below that include points made, for example, like the ones made by Angie yesterday in a comment on this thread. What VP wrote is going to get sucked up into the past real fast, unless someone supports it vocally and with some direct action.
There IS a hidden tension in our profession and we who would write these emails to the appropriate university people, or perhaps only to the department chair at UMass, would be doing direct action vs. no action. Five minutes. It’s not too much to keep VanPatten’s point alive.
This chance we have makes me think of those eight or ten people who yesterday came together in Cleveland to stand for Tamir Rice since he, who will not see his 13th birthday because he was murdered by a police officer, can’t stand up for himself. It’s not as dramatic, but can we not stand up for the very kids we train in CI but must then go off to universities where all the work we did with them will be quickly and efficiently snuffed out the minute they arrive in their first foreign language class on campus? It is already happening. Many of our CI trained kids are being labeled as incapable at the language because they don’t know the rules and verb charts. This is true in spite of, as in the famous example of Anne Matava’s “Hogs” some years ago, some of them having powerful command over the language. Somebody has to stand up for our CI trained kids.