2012 Presidential Election: Who Are the Independents That Will Determine the Election?

Hey-Ho Hanksteristas! This week's attacks in the mainstream media/academia against independents gave me pause. I thought about Fred Newman, my long-time friend and colleague, who died last July. Newman was the leading political strategist behind and architect of the current US independent political movement. I thought about the increasing psychologicalization of politics and the inherent politics of psychology (and every other field of study, for that matter!)

It seems rightful that as more and more Americans identify as independents (aka quitting the parties) the existing powers and institutions that be, including the ubiquitous corporate American press, would conduct studies to prove that independents are not really independents. After all, that's the function of established institutions -- maintain the status quo.

There is a vital and growing independent movement in the country (I highly recommend the historical account from Jackie Salit in her new book Independents Rising -- a down-to-earth primer on the history of the movement.

Not only are Americans increasingly declaring their disassociation from the major parties, in fact seems they don't like parties at all!

Bring it on!
NH

PRESIDENTIAL

• Dem registration down in key states (By CHARLES MAHTESIAN, Politico) A new report on voter registration trends finds that Democratic voter registration is down by more than 800,000 since 2008 in eight key battleground states. GOP registration has also declined — but by only 79,000, a tenth of the Democrats’ losses. Meanwhile, registered independents are on the rise, increasing their numbers in those states by nearly half-a-million.
  
• Just How Independent Are Independent Voters? (Sam Sommers, Professor, Tufts University, Huffington Post) New research just published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that Independents may not be quite as independent as they claim they are. Across a series of studies, researchers at the University of Virginia presented respondents with different policies to evaluate and examined the extent to which political affiliation colored their perceptions.
  
• Obama’s costly investment not yielding new voters (Brian C. Mooney, Boston Globe)
  
• In Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada — tossup states where direct election-year comparisons could be drawn — the numbers are striking. Democratic rolls increased by only 39,580, less than one-tenth the amount at the comparable point in the 2008 election. At the same time, GOP registration has jumped by 145,085, or more than double for the same time four years ago. Independent registration has shown an even stronger surge, to 229,500, almost three times the number at this point in 2008.
• Few Voters Are Truly Up for Grabs, Research Suggests (By REBECCA BERG, NY Times)  “There is so much pop psychology surrounding swing voters, but there is very little evidence that there are key demographics in the population that are inherently swing voters,” said John Sides, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University... Part of the difficulty in identifying swing voters derives from confusion about the term “swing voter” itself. These voters might describe themselves as “undecided,” for example, or as “persuadable.” Often, they call themselves “independents,” although many who identify that way are not. Myths about the behavior of these voters are pervasive and persistent: For example, that undecided voters break for the challenger as Election Day nears. (Data have shown this is often not the case.)
  
• Will the real independents please stand up? (Phys Org) Psychological scientists Carlee Beth Hawkins and Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia decided to use a tool called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT, to explore the unconscious biases that churn deep inside the Independent mind.
  

BONUS CLIP
Democalypse 2012 - Cockblock the Vote - Ohio's Voting Laws (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) Stewart calls for nonpartisan elections after flap with Ohio partisan voting hours. [SEE BELOW] Fewer citizens voting doesn't enhance democracy, but it does secure the power of the parties...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Jackie Salit's Independents Rising: A Review from the Trenches

By January of 1992, I was a seasoned national field organizer for a budding independent movement. I had been slogging away with colleagues in small teams, knocking on doors and setting up tables on street corners and on college campuses from Philadelphia to Cleveland to Chicago since 1986, to raise money and build a base of independent-minded Americans in support of legislation that would have made it easier for independent candidates to get on the ballot. I was part of a team of 50 or so organizers -- many of whom were using vacation time from their jobs -- who flew into Texas in the summer of 1988 to put Dr. Lenora B. Fulani on the ballot in one of the toughest ballot access drives in US history. We were doing the impossible in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Florida, California, Alaska, South Dakota, Michigan... making history. Fulani was the first woman and first African American to ever get on the ballot in all 50 states running for President. She ran as an independent.

So it is especially intriguing to me to take a step back and read Jackie Salit’s account in Independents Rising: Outsider Movements, Third Parties and the Struggle for a Post-Partisan America. Indeed, it’s personal. And you don’t have to have been in the trenches to appreciate this story. This is your story, our story -- the story of the rise of independents. Where were you in 1992? What were you doing? What conversations did you have with friends and family? What small or big decisions did you make, and had been making for a long time, that helped create a nonpartisan pro-democracy voice in 2012 America?

REVIEW BY Ken Bingenheimer here

Jackie begins her story in 1992, a year of "awkward contradictions" as she calls it, borrowing the phrase from William Greider’s One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. In the context of an increasingly irrelevant left, and an increasingly centrist Democratic Party, a grassroots voter revolt was gathering force on the fringes.

“These rumblings did not register on most political radars. The big story in 1990 was that the Democrats had controlled the House of Representatives since 1948 (and always would) and that the Republicans controlled the White House (and likely would for at least another six years). It seemed to many observers that the century would wrap up without any major surprises in American politics. In 1989 political science professor Francis Fukuyama wrote an influential essay for the National Interest magazine called “The End of History?” Fukuyama projected that the collapse of communism heralded a new international order of liberal democracy and stability. America would be the world’s beacon and breadwinner. The world would now follow suit. Few saw beyond that ostensibly happy horizon.”

Independents Rising is a beautifully choreographed dance between what was being described by most pundits, journalists, writers, thought-leaders, et al, and what was actually happening on the ground.

“In 1992 Fulani entered the early Democratic primaries to promote her antipartisan pro-reform cause. She had been awarded nearly $650,000 in federal primary matching funds in December 1991...”

In October of 1991, I transferred from a two-month stint in Atlanta, Georgia to San Francisco, California. Arriving at 8:00AM, I was on the street with our team in Oakland by 10:00AM raising money to qualify Fulani’s ’92 campaign for federal primary matching funds. The streets of California were paved with gold for the independent movement in 1992. And in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, by late December I requested to come back to New York. I was tired. I missed being close to my kids in Philadelphia. I couldn’t grock the fact that the water was on the left -- that made no sense to my East Coast orientation, not to mention I was disoriented by the lack of grease, grit and grime of NYC. I wanted to see Fred Newman. My field director Cathy Salit called me to let me know that my request was granted and she had a favor to ask. Would I go up to New Hampshire for a month before coming home? I said yes and arrived in New York on New Years Eve in time for a party in Harlem before "shipping out" again -- briefly -- for points north. I was home, almost.

“The WMUR studios were locked behind a phalanx of Manchester police on January 19, the night of the debate. Former California governor Jerry Brown, the progressive challenger to the Clintonian Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) brand of “new politics," issued a statement calling for Fulani’s inclusion and criticized the party for excluding her... Fulani set up a mass picket ringing the studio, involving 400 protesters--some had traveled to New Hampshire from Harlem and many were Manchester locals. The temperature that night was a lip-splitting 12° F, but the protesters gathered at both entrances to the WMUR parking lot... Not long afterward, a shiny black SUV pulled up at one of the entrances.... Suddenly Clinton dropped to the floor of the back seat, shielding his face from view....  The Clinton camp told me it wanted to avoid any future run-ins of this sort, which were an embarrassment to Clinton. Clinton campaign coordinator Mitchell Schwarz set up a meeting with Newman and me a few days later in the coffee shop at the Manchester Holiday Inn...”

It was very very cold in New Hampshire in January 1992. And very very hot!

I hope you will read this book. Jackie’s statement on behalf of our movement is sharp and witty, and important. Enjoy!

NH

"Sally and Tom (The American Way)" Opens at Castillo Theatre Featuring IndependentVoting.org's Jacqueline Salit as James Madison

POLITICAL THEATER

• Different Stages "Sally and Tom (The American Way)" opens at the Castillo Theatre Feb17 (By Charles E. Rogers, Amsterdam News) With beautiful music by Grammy-nominated songwriter Annie Roboff, this dramatic musical follows Hemings and Jefferson's love affair over a quarter century as it becomes a scandal in the press, produces five children and forces Hemings to confront the relative privileges of her life and the injustices of slavery.
• Musical about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Comes to Castillo Theatre, 2/17-3/25  (Broadway World) Fred Newman, who passed away in July, wrote the book and lyrics of Sally and Tom, which was originally produced at the Castillo Theatre in 1995. Newman served as Castillo’s artistic director and playwright-in-residence for 16 years and wrote 44 politically engaged, experimental plays and musicals. He shaped the Castillo Theatre from its founding in 1984 into a unique kind of political theatre—progressive without being partisan, artistically and philosophically demanding while being inclusive of diverse audiences.

Musical Drama Explores Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings'
American Story of Love, Slavery and Compromise


Jacqueline Salit, the president of IndependentVoting.org, long a player in New York City and national politics, is currently playing on a different stage - at the Castillo Theatre on 42nd Street, where she's appearing as Founding Father James Madison in a revival of Fred Newman and Annie Roboff's political musical, Sally and Tom (The American Way).

Running at the Castillo Theatre for six weeks from February 17 through March 25, Sally and Tom (The American Way) examines the 30-year relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, a relationship that produced five children and embodies the wrenching conflict between democracy and slavery,and its legacy of racism that continues to shape America to this day.

In this polarizing presidential election year, with the meaning of "the American way" itself being hotly contested, Salit makes her acting debut in a play that examines the extreme power struggles and ugly campaigning that shaped our nation's course in the early years of the Republic. In an ironic twist, Salit - a political independent who is outspoken against party control of American politics - plays the author of the Constitution, a man who deeply opposed political parties but ultimately founded one.

Salit has a 30-year history in independent and insurgent politics. She managed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's three successful campaigns on the Independence Party line and was a key strategist in the effort to bring non-partisan election reform to New York City. Her book, Independents Rising, published by Palgrave Macmillan, will be in stores in August. "This is a totally new experience," Salit says of her role as a Founding Father. "I've performed as 'myself' at political gatherings and on TV. But it's very different to be playing someone else - a man, at that - who lived over 200 years ago. In this production, Madison is both a man of his time and can look back at his - and the country's - inhuman compromises. Performing the part hits me very hard every time we do the show." Salit shares the role with veteran actor and director David Nackman. The dates of the performances in which Salit will appear can be supplied.

Under the direction of Gabrielle L. Kurlander, the play is performed on three stages in its own surreal "history museum." The audience is seated throughout the performance space and among the exhibits, and is encouraged to interact with the conflicted history of our nation.

In addition to Salit and Nackman, the cast for Sally and Tom (The American Way) features Ava Jenkins and Adam Kemmerer in the title roles, as well as Sean Patrick Gibbons and Brian D. Hills. Musical direction is by David Belmont with Michael Walsh, choreography by Lonné Moretton; sets by Joseph Spirito and costumes by Emilie Charlotte Knoerzer.

The Castillo Theatre (Dan Friedman, artistic director, Diane Stiles, managing director) is located at 543 West 42nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. February 17 through March 25. Tickets are $35 for adults, $10 for students and seniors. Group rates are available. Tickets can be purchased through the Castillo Box Office at 212-941-1234 or at www.castillo.org.

SALLY AND TOM (THE AMERICAN WAY)
Book & Lyrics by Fred Newman
Music by Annie Roboff
Directed by Gabrielle L. Kurlander

Castillo Theatre
543 West 42nd Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues)

little known facts in history

Gail Elberg and Lorraine Stevens organizing the unorganized on January 28, 1972 in response to Fred Newman saying -- in an intense collective meeting of diverse (and contentious) collective sixties types who sound off on any given topic - as they please! - AND have the (correct) (and incorrect) positions up the wazoo, as it were:

"I don't care who you are (or what you think about or how you are feeling today)... Go out there and organize the people."

So far, so good!

NH

Fred Newman: To Listen and Experience What the Other Experiences

Dr. Fred Newman speaks about listening. Another great direction to Congress. Not that they are listening... Americans are working to create a conversation. It's a simple activity!

Postmodernity Considered Comedy

I warmed up to this, hope you enjoy:

Pew Research: Partisan Ideology (A Philosophical Shell Game)

Moderate. Liberal. Conservative. Republican. Democrat. Independent.  With choices like these, who's to say what the Pew Research poll means! What does it mean to say you are a liberal or a conservative? What does it mean to say you are a Republican, Democrat or independent? And what does it mean to derive meaning from polls?

THE PARTIES
More Now See GOP as Very Conservative - Views of Parties' Ideologies (Pew Research) Nearly half of independents (47%) say their political views are moderate, about the same as last year. The remainder tilt conservative, with 33% saying they are either conservative (29%) or very conservative (4%); 17% say their views are either liberal (14%) or very liberal (3%).

Recommended chaser:
Whereas modernist conversation required a grounding in epistemological claims about why we think and feel the way we do when we try to influence each other, Newman and Holzman see that view of language as a kind of "aboutness" and as limiting. In contrast, they propose a view of language as something we perform in relationships, and they take readers beyond John Shotter's position that all meaning-making conversation occurs in a context of justification and argumentation. They suggest, instead, that new meaning is best created in a shared performance of meaning, and they discourage recitations or negotiation of meanings that we bring from our prior forms of "knowing". --  A Review of Fred Newman and Lois Holzman's The End of Knowing, By Tom Strong, Division of Applied Psychology at the University of Calgary

Education Reform: Failing Schools and How Pretending Can Help

EDUCATION REFORM

• School ‘Reform’: A Failing Grade (Diane Ravitch, NY Review of Books) Because of its utopian goals, coupled with harsh sanctions, NCLB has turned out to be the worst federal education legislation ever passed. Recently, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan predicted that more than 80 percent of the nation’s public schools would be labeled “failing” this year by federal standards, including some excellent schools in which students (usually those with disabilities) were not on track to meet the target. By 2014, if the law is unchanged, very few public schools will not be labeled “failures.” No nation has ever achieved 100 percent proficiency for all its students, and no state in this nation is anywhere close to achieving it. No nation has ever passed a law that would result in stigmatizing almost every one of its schools. The Bush-era law is a public policy disaster of epic proportions, yet Congress has been unable to reach consensus about changing it.
• "Here is an idea for solving the education crisis in America. What if all the kids currently failing in school pretended to be good learners? What if all the adults - teachers, principals, administrators, parents - played along and pretended that the kids were school achievers, heading for college? What if this national "ensemble" pretended this was the case day after day, classroom after classroom, school district after school district?" The All Stars Project has released a special report in which co-founders Fred Newman, Ph.D. and Lenora B. Fulani, Ph.D. put forth their solution to America's education crisis in a new white paper entitled "Let's Pretend".

Lenora Fulani: Fred Newman, 1935-2011 - Partner in Liberation (NY Amsterdam News)

A remembrance: Fred Newman, 1935-2011
Posted: Sunday, August 7, 2011 12:00 am
By DR. LENORA B. FULANI
NY Amsterdam News

On Sunday, July 3, Dr. Fred Newman died at the age of 76. I spent more than 30 years of my life with Fred, and he was a very dear friend, comrade and mentor.

I first met Fred in the late 1970s when I was a doctoral student in developmental psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center, looking for a psychology of empowerment that could impact on the suffering and sorrow of Black Americans. I grew up in Chester, Pa., and understood the devastating consequences of being Black and poor.

Fred took seriously my concern that traditional psychology and education were very limited in their capacity to help poor people with the pain of poverty. He told me that to accomplish what I wanted to do, I had to get smarter, and he insisted that I bring the most sophisticated tools of post-modern philosophy to the ordinary people of our communities. He sent me "back to school" in East New York.

Fred grew up in the predominantly Jewish, working-class Southeast Bronx in the 1930s. He served in the U.S. Army in Korea, then graduated from City College and earned a Ph.D. in analytic philosophy at Stanford University. After teaching at several colleges and universities, Fred left academia during the height of the anti-Vietnam War movement to become a community organizer. Over 40 years' time, together with a vibrant collective of activists, psychologists, educators, artists and fundraisers, he went on to found the All Stars Project and a new brand of psychology called social therapy. He became a leading force in the independent political movement, fighting for the inclusion of Black people in that movement every step of the way.

In the Black community, Fred was known for many things. He created the development approach to performance and learning used at the All Stars. The young people at the All Stars, especially those who got to work directly with him, adored him. He was the campaign manager for my two independent presidential bids. He was an early ally of the Rev. Al Sharpton, joining him in many a march and rally anywhere from Bensonhurst, to upstate New York, to London. He drove Rev to the hospital on the bitter January day in 1991 when he was stabbed.

Fred was known as my partner in liberation. In less polite terms, he was sometimes referred to as "Fulani's white guru." Some of the more "politically correct" Black leaders in the city criticized me for working with Fred because he was white. I never cared about those critics. I knew I was lucky to have found him.

Everyone who knew Fred experienced his rigor and brilliance as a scientist. They also experienced the depth of Fred's caring.

I was not only close to Fred in my work; he was also an active partner in helping to raise my son, making it possible for me to be there for Amani even in the most challenging of times. He helped me with the anxiety that every Black mother feels every time our sons step out into the world: the fear that an altercation with other youth or a police officer might result in injury, incarceration or death. Fred showed me how to support Amani and to not let my worries turn me into just another person in his life giving him a hard time. That made it possible for Amani to come to me when there was a real crisis. A few months before Fred died, he thanked me for giving him the opportunity to share in raising Amani. I just gave him a hug.

Thank you, Fred, for the many holidays you've shared with Amani and Ainka, and for sending Amani to baseball camp, where he learned to make his way with strangers and made lifelong friends.

Thank you for sharing with them, with me and with the Black community the history of the Jewish people and the historical importance of Black-Jewish relationships.

Thank you for being such a fierce and brilliant fighter. And thank you for teaching ordinary people that we have the capacity to build and create extraordinary things.

May you rest in peace, and may those of us whom you have organized and led continue to lead.

Bill Gates' Illusive Quest for Better Schools

Below is a WSJ article about the decade-long $5-billion investment by Bill Gates in the current education system and its failures. A quicker and easier route to better schools is outlined in the special report on solving the education crisis in America, "Let's Pretend!" by Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani -- a must read for anyone involved in education reform.

EDUCATION REFORM
Was the $5 Billion Worth It? - A decade into his record-breaking education philanthropy, Bill Gates talks teachers, charters—and regrets. (By JASON L. RILEY, Wall Street Journal) One of the foundation's main initial interests was schools with fewer students. In 2004 it announced that it would spend $100 million to open 20 small high schools in San Diego, Denver, New York City and elsewhere. Such schools, says Mr. Gates, were designed to—and did—promote less acting up in the classroom, better attendance and closer interaction with adults. "But the overall impact of the intervention, particularly the measure we care most about—whether you go to college—it didn't move the needle much," he says.

California Independents Set to Influence Tuesday Open Primary

FRED NEWMAN
Fred Newman, Controversial Political Activist And Philosopher, Dies At 76 (Gothamist) According to his website, "Fred Newman is the public philosopher who for 30 years has translated the most progressive ideals of the 1960s into effective instruments of social and personal transformation," but the NY Times' obituary sums it up more elegantly: "Fred Newman’s influential role in New York life and politics defied easy description."

OPEN PRIMARIES

• `Jungle' primary sets up close 36th District race Tuesday (By Eric Bradley, DAILY BREEZE) Democrats hold an 18 percentage-point registration advantage over Republicans in the coastal South Bay district. However, a quarter of voters decline to state a party preference, and low turnout - 16 percent of voters cast a ballot in May - is expected to play a large role in whether Republicans can pull off an upset.
• GOP looks for upset in race for Calif. House seat (By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, AP) One unknown is the role of independent voters, who account for 22 percent of the district's electorate. Statewide, voters who decline to state a party preference typically side slightly more with Democrats than Republicans, but also tend to be unpredictable and more fiscally conservative than typical Democrats.
• 'Madness Abounds' as Fake Candidates Confuse Wisconsin Recalls (San Francisco Chronicle) The primaries are the opening skirmish in a state at political war. The six districts in tomorrow's races have Republicans running as Democrats, hoping to win the nomination and effectively render the Aug. 9 recall votes meaningless.

NEW YORK
Independence Party backs Democrat for Weiner's former seat (AM New York) “We’ve worked with him before and we think he’ll be a wonderful candidate,” party Chairman Frank MacKay said yesterday of Weprin, a Queens assemblyman.

NYT: Fred Newman, 76, Writer And Postmodern Marxist

Today's print edition carried the headline above, and here is the online version from yesterday:

Fred Newman, Writer and Political Figure, Dies at 76

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: July 9, 2011

Fred Newman’s influential role in New York life and politics defied easy description.

Librado Romero/The New York Times

Fred Newman in 2009.

He founded a Marxist-Leninist party, fostered a sexually charged brand of psychotherapy, wrote controversial plays about race and managed the presidential campaign of Lenora Fulani, who was both the first woman and the first black candidate to get on the ballot in all 50 states.

He helped the Rev. Al Sharpton get on his feet as a public figure and gave Michael R. Bloomberg the support of his Independence Party in three mayoral elections, arguably providing Mr. Bloomberg’s margin of victory in 2001 and 2009.

Mr. Newman, who died at 76 in his Manhattan home on July 3, eschewed conventionality. He insisted, for instance, that there was nothing wrong with psychotherapists having sex with patients. He created an empire of nonprofit and for-profit enterprises, including arts groups and a public relations firm. He wrote books on psychology and philosophy as well as plays. One play, about the 1991 riots between blacks and Jews in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, was condemned as anti-Semitic by the Anti-Defamation League.

His greatest impact came through mobilizing his followers, sometimes called “Newmanites,” to build alliances with third parties, including that of the Texas independent H. Ross Perot.

“If it weren’t for the Independence Party, Mike Bloomberg might not have become mayor,” said Douglas Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College.

In turn, Mr. Bloomberg supported the Independence Party’s goal of nonpartisan municipal elections and gave the party more than $650,000 of his own money. His administration arranged millions of dollars in bond financing in 2002 and 2006 for a building for Mr. Newman’s nonprofit All Stars Project, which uses the performing arts to help low-income children.

Mr. Newman began his climb to influence in New York in the 1960s, when, from his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he formed a Marxist collective called “If ... Then.” Its members, many of them self-professed anarchists, collected money on the streets for the group. Most participated in Mr. Newman’s newly articulated “social therapy,” which encouraged patients to change themselves by seeking to change society. He encouraged collective members to sleep with one another, an activity he called “friendosexuality.” The collective published newspapers and started a dental clinic.

“It’s probably fair to say I was the dominant leader,” Mr. Newman said in an interview with The New York Observer in 1999. “I hope I wasn’t an authoritarian oppressor, but I think that’s probably accurate to say that.”

His detractors, however, said his “collective” amounted to a cult. Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates, which studies unorthodox political groups, called Mr. Newman “a master at creating a myth of importance.”

“He was a brilliant charlatan,” Mr. Berlet said.

Frederick Delano Newman was born in the Bronx on June 17, 1935, and grew up there. His mother chose the same middle name as that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a hero of hers. After his father died when young Fred was 9, his mother raised her five children alone, supported by welfare checks, the rent from rooms in her house, near Yankee Stadium, and the fees she earned running poker games.

Mr. Newman hated school but tested well enough to be admitted to Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. He worked as a toolmaker to help support his family. At 19, he joined the Army and served in Korea. He graduated from the City College of New York and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford in 1962.

He was twice married and divorced. He is survived by his son, Donald; his daughter, Elizabeth Newman; and by Gabrielle L. Kurlander and Jacqueline Salit, his life partners in what Ms. Salit described as an “unconventional family of choice.” He died of renal failure, his spokeswoman, Christina DiChiara, said.

Mr. Newman taught at City College but was fired after giving male students A’s to help them avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam. Other colleges hired him but fired him for the same reason. A job as a drug counselor led to his therapy career.

After forming his Upper West Side collective, Mr. Newman, in 1974, allied his group with Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., originally a leftist leader who veered to right-wing conspiracy theories and ran for president eight times from the political fringe. Tensions between the two prompted Mr. Newman to break the alliance after less than a year, however. He then formed the International Workers Party from what he called his core collective, with a mission to advance minority rights and a leftist agenda.

The party was dissolved at the end of the 1970s. Mr. Newman then founded the New Alliance Party as a vehicle for moving beyond a narrow leftist spectrum. Around the same time, he met Ms. Fulani, a graduate student who attended one of his clinics and joined the collective. Mr. Newman helped mold her into a political professional who for many years was the face of his political ventures.

“She is one of my life’s proudest accomplishments,” he told New York Newsday in 1992.

In 1988, as her campaign manager, he helped Ms. Fulani get on the presidential ballot in all 50 states, something no black candidate or woman had done. She received more than 200,000 votes. In 1992, Ms. Fulani ran again, and raised more than $2 million from private donors.

In 1991, the New Alliance Party gave strong support to Mr. Sharpton, then a community advocate, at a time when he was struggling for broader political recognition. It provided Mr. Sharpton with income, public relations help and up to half the participants in his demonstrations, often protesting attacks against blacks.

In the early 1990s, Mr. Newman began a campaign to encourage more independent voices in politics, almost regardless of ideology. These included Mr. Perot, Ralph Nader and even the conservative stalwart Patrick J. Buchanan. Mr. Newman supported a succession of reform parties, ultimately capturing control of the New York City branch of the Independence Party.

As late as 2005, Mr. Newman wrote that he remained a Marxist, albeit what he called a postmodern one. His final cause was to end the two-party system, which he believed stifled real choice. He wanted primary elections to be open to all parties, and to have all candidates run against one another. The top two would vie in a general election.

That proposal prompted a question from Mr. Bloomberg one day in 2001 when the future mayor was seeking Mr. Newman’s support, Ms. Salit recalled. Mr. Bloomberg asked him if he would be putting himself out of business if he were to give up the ballot line he had used so effectively.

“We’re an anti-party party,” Mr. Newman answered. “We want to be put out of business.”

American Politics: The problem is not division but partisanship

FRED NEWMAN
Fred Newman, Writer and Political Figure, Dies at 76 (By DOUGLAS MARTIN, NY Times) Fred Newman’s influential role in New York life and politics defied easy description.

OPEN PRIMARIES

• Sund: Should politicians' first loyalty to be to nation or party? (By Roberta Sound, Times Record News - Wichita Falls, TX)
• How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans - AN INSIDER’S SIX-STEP PLAN TO FIX CONGRESS (By Mickey Edwards, The Atlantic/Ideas) I am not calling for a magical political “center”: many of the most important steps forward in our history have not come from the center at all, including women’s suffrage and the civil-rights movement, and even our founding rebellion against the British crown. Nor am I pleading for consensus: consensus is not possible in a diverse nation of 300 million people (compromise is the essential ingredient in legislative decision-making). And I’m not pushing for harmony: democracy depends on vigorous debate among competing views. The problem is not division but partisanship—advantage-seeking by private clubs whose central goal is to win political power.

NONPARTISAN ELECTIONS

• U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. Rules that Independent Candidate in City Election Has Standing to Challenge Partisan Elections in Kinston, North Carolina (Ballot Access News) The decision says that independent candidate John Nix, who wants to run for city council of Kinston, North Carolina, in the November 2011 election, has standing to challenge the chain of developments that causes Kinston to still have partisan city elections.
• Hartford Mayoral Deal Cheats Voters Of Choice (By URANIA PETIT, The Hartford Courant) But contested elections are already too rare in Hartford. A competitive race between highly qualified candidates is something many community activists and ordinary citizens value. Instead, once again, the decisions have been made for us by a small group of power brokers and party leaders. That's not healthy for democracy, and it perpetuates the pattern of voter apathy and mistrust.

2012

• Iowa Democrats trying to stay in the game (By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times) Whoever the nominee is, she said, "they are going to have to come back here and make the argument to independent voters. Even if they've won the caucuses, what they've won is only a subset of Republicans. That's the danger of blowing off Iowa."
• Iowa Democrats plan Obama re-election strategy (By Jennifer Jacobs, The Des Moines Register in USA Today) Between Nov. 1, 2008, and July 1 this year, Iowa gained 17,758 more active registered Republicans and lost 10,148 independent voters. Independents tend to move around, and with all the action this year in the Republican caucuses, politics watchers said, it's not surprising if they register with the GOP to weigh in on that contest.

NEW YORK
F.A.Q.: What could keep Andrew Cuomo from fixing redistricting? (BY JOSH BENSON, Capital New York) It's still early, but when we saw LATFOR, the legislative body that's charged with redistricting, start to move forward this week, I sure took it as a sign that the legislature doesn't have much interest in creating an independent, nonpartisan panel to (theoretically) draw independent, non-partisan lines. Which in the judgment of goo-goos, they don't. And, after a little back-and-forth with the governor, he agreed they can't make independent lines in their current form.

Fred Newman

From the All Stars Project Board of Directors and staff, New York Times Obituary

FREDERICK D. NEWMAN 

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NEWMAN--Frederick Delano. The All Stars Project Board of Directors and staff are deeply saddened by the passing of the All Stars' extraordinary and much loved co-founder, Fred Newman, Ph.D. He was 76. Dr. Newman was born in the South Bronx, grew up in the shadow of the old Yankee Stadium (becoming a lifelong Yankees fan), and served in the U.S. Army in Korea. Upon his return he completed his undergraduate studies at City College and went on to earn his Ph.D. in analytic philosophy and foundations of mathematics from Stanford University in 1962, where he was mentored by the renowned analytic philosopher Donald Davidson.

All who knew him will remember him as a fierce champion for giving the best, most sophisticated, most far-reaching tools of postmodern philosophy to ordinary people. He taught at several colleges and universities in the 1960s before dedicating himself to community organizing and the creation of numerous independent education, health, mental health, cultural and political projects in New York and nationally. Dr. Newman was a practicing therapist for more than 30 years and was the founder of a new humanistic psychology known as Social Therapy. The author of numerous books and articles on postmodern, Vygotskian, and performatory psychology, he and his colleagues worked to develop and popularize their breakthrough discoveries about human development.

He co-founded the All Stars Project with Lenora Fulani, Ph.D. in 1981 to bring this new science of development to the lives of inner-city young people. He was the chief designer of the All Stars Project's performance-based development approach, which has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor, Black and Latino youth across the country and is providing a new theoretical and practical framework for eliminating poverty and underdevelopment.

Dr. Newman was artistic director and playwright-in-residence of the All Stars' Castillo Theatre from 1989 until 2005. Often a lightning rod for controversy, Fred Newman was a relentless champion for a new style of progressivism. He was also a pioneer in the development of independent politics in the United States, starting in the 1970s, and had a major hand in the creation of the Independence Party of New York, playing a key role in the party's endorsement of Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2001, 2005, and 2009.

Despite serious illness, Dr. Newman was unflagging in his work. He will be deeply missed by the Board of Directors, staff, volunteers and countless young people and their families in our poor communities whose lives he and his work have touched. We extend our deepest condolences to Dr. Newman's life partners Gabrielle L. Kurlander, who so ably serves as the All Stars President and CEO, and Jacqueline S. Salit, and to his children Elizabeth and Donald and granddaughter, Jane. As we mourn the passing of our founder and friend Fred Newman, his legacy of radical humanism, his commitment to community, to development and to creating ensemble performances live on through the work of the All Stars Project.

Show us slowly slowly... dance us to the end of love ... never done

A shout-out to Fred Newman on his 76th B'Day -- Dance us to the end of love ...  we'll never be done. What would be the end of love? The end of humanity. Not on our watch...

Thanks for your efforts, FN, and all. This isn't the right song, but the right song hasn't yet been written for us. We'll keep trying! xoxo

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
And dance me to the end of love
Yeah dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Oh let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Oh and dance me to the end of love
Yeah dance me to the end of love

La la
La la la
La la
La la la
La la
La la la

Oh dance me to the wedding now
Oh dance me on and on
Oh dance me very tenderly
Oh and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love
We're both of us above
And dance me to the end of love
Oh won't you dance me to the end of love

La la
La la la
La la
La la la
La la la

Solving the Education Crisis in America

EDUCATION REFORM

• NAACP Dinner Focuses on School Reform (BY Allan Appel, New Haven Independent) Yale psychiatrist and school reform pioneer James Comer received a lifetime-achievement award.  His “Comer method” addresses social development as intrinsic to academic development; it is in place at the high-performing Davis Street Magnet School and nine others in the New Haven system.
• Leveling the Playing Field in our Classrooms (Gabrielle Kurlander, President and CEO, All Stars Project, Inc.) The All Stars Project recently released a new white paper, entitled  Solving the Education Crisis in America: Let’s Pretend, by our co-founders, Fred Newman, Ph.D. and Lenora Fulani, Ph.D. which discusses how poverty and the life circumstances of poor youth impacts on their capacity to become good learners and how that “difficult truth” (as Nocera calls it) can not only be faced – but positively and effectively addressed.
• The Limits of School Reform (By JOE NOCERA, NY Times) What needs to be acknowledged, however, is that school reform won’t fix everything. Though some poor students will succeed, others will fail. Demonizing teachers for the failures of poor students, and pretending that reforming the schools is all that is needed, as the reformers tend to do, is both misguided and counterproductive.

Education Reform: we have to get better faster than we ever have in education

EDUCATION REFORM

• Solving the Education Crisis in America: Let's Pretend (Fred Newman PhD and Lenora Fulani PhD, East Side Institute) As referenced earlier, the more privileged of America’s youth, even by a very early age, have had a host of developmental cultural experiences, which leave them to varying degrees and in varying ways, open to learning. Our lower performing children have not, and moreover, have grown up within cultures which often relate negatively or conflictedly to learning. These children must be helped to grow (develop) if they are ever to begin the learning process and to function in the same classroom environment as the more developed children. The remedy cannot be “education” pure and simple. A system which presumes that classroom learning can substitute for, or override, a lack of development has failed to deliver. Does this have racial connotations? Of course. There is nothing in American life and culture that doesn’t. And a significant proportion of kids failing in the classroom are in inner-city areas and are Black and Latino. But that does not mean it cannot be remedied. However, the remedy cannot be remediation. It must be development.
• Illinois Bill Exemplifies Groundbreaking Education Reform - State Shows How Collaboration Can Lead to Change (By Cynthia G. Brown, Theodora Chang, Center for American Progress) The bill, S.B. 7, ties tenure and dismissal to performance in the classroom, rather than experience, and makes it more difficult for teachers to strike.
• Education Secretary Duncan: U.S. schools need to get 'better faster' (Princeton University) "If you look at (education) as a civil rights issue, as an economic imperative, as an issue of national security -- I look at it through all three of those lenses -- we have to get better faster than we ever have in education," Duncan said during a speech Wednesday, April 20, in Richardson Auditorium of Alexander Hall. "Somehow, we have a 19th-century model for a 21st-century economy."
• Gov. Deval Patrick Opens Up About Educating Kids of Color for The Root (by Jamilah King, ColorLines News for Action) Patrick: "Yet for all the five years we’ve had these extraordinary achievement results, we have had at the same time a persistent achievement gap. Stuck in that gap are poor kids and kids who have special needs or speak English as a second language. A disproportionate number are kids of color. It’s an economic and educational issue to have an achievement gap at all, but to let it go for the years and years, decades or more that we had here [in Massachusetts], that’s a moral question. Now we have some tools to reach that part of our family as well."
• Newark's Underperforming Schools Almost Have A New Leader (Joy Resmovits, Huffington Post) "With that investment, if things don't work out in Newark, ... it would have a chilling impact on other philanthropists and on those rising-star politicians who may want to latch onto the education issue," said Kevin Chavous, a former Washington, DC city councilman and current national chairman of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Zuckerberg's donation, however, represents only one tenth of the budget of a system that White Bradley says has a "base level of distress." And working with that high-profile money will put Newark's new superintendent under closer scrutiny.

Dennis Walcott Takes Reigns of New York City School System

NEW YORK
NYC to add $1.75 billion to school capital plan (Associated Press, Wall Street Journal) Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, chose Walcott to succeed publishing company executive Cathie Black, who resigned last week after a rocky three months as schools chancellor. Walcott was in Albany on Tuesday thanking state legislators for restoring the funds.


EDUCATION POLICY
The Urgent Need to Reframe National Education Policy (By Elizabeth Demarest, Education Week SUBSCRIPTION) Test scores in the United States have not significantly improved in recent years, the achievement gap has not closed, and other developed nations have continued to build their educational capacity and surpass U.S. performance on international assessments. Political rhetoric exhorts Americans to catch up, but the national policies that are driving education reform do not provide the means.

EDUCATION REFORM
Solving the Education Crisis in America: A Special Report, LET’S PRETEND (by Fred Newman, Ph.D. and Lenora Fulani, Ph.D.) While there is much to say about good teaching, highly motivated administrators, strong discipline and auxiliary support (mentors, tutors, longer school days, parent engagement, etc.), we believe that projects like the Harlem Children’s Zone, the KIPP schools and many other charter schools succeed where much else fails because the teams running those projects are collectively pretending that the kids can become learners. In the process of that jointly performed “pretending” activity, the kids develop. And their development is a critical step on the road to becoming learners.

REVIEW: Independence and Talk Talk About the Talk of Talking Heads

Review

Talk/Talk: Fred Newman and Jackie Salit Making (Non) Sense of an Irrational World

Edited by John Opdyke

Review by Todd Neff

I once covered local politics as a newspaper reporter in Boulder, Colorado. I felt I understood Democrats. Broadly speaking, they seemed to make decisions based on some semblance of what my five senses construed as reality, with a degree of humility, and with at least some empathy for the nonrich, not-environmentally destructive, nonfundamentalist masses. I thought I understood modern Republicans, a self-certain lot who seemed to make decisions unburdened by such empathy, based on a worldview so pixilated as to seem otherworldly.

I had no clue about independents. I mean, an independence movement seemed inimical to the idea of a movement in the first place. Michael Bloomberg’s rationality notwithstanding, a bunch of independent ideas assembled into a movement would regurgitate a mess of helter-skelter policy, right? The book Talk/Talk has helped set me straight.

Talk/Talk is a very different concoction, as books go. It’s a compilation of talking heads talking about the talk of talking heads they (that is, the talking heads featured in Talk/Talk) watched on Sunday TV talk shows. Independence movement leaders Jacqueline Salit and Fred Newman are the stars of this 170-page show, which proceeds in dialogue format, as in:

Newman: What we’ve said before and will say again: that independents are able to shape positions which come closer to where the people are. Democrats and Republicans who are party loyalists can’t easily do that. They can’t do that because their loyalty is fundamentally party loyalty.

That’s on page 45, the beginning of Salit and Newman’s discourse on “This Week with George Stephanopolous” of Sunday, July 8, 2007. The shows they watch change, and the dates and topics leap back and forth with pleasant randomness. There is no central message, no polemic. You realize, as you read through conversations on topics as diverse as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the applicability of Henry Kissinger’s power politics to the modern world, that being independent is mostly about thinking, and that Salit and Newman are well practiced at the art.

Closing the book, I had a sense that, perhaps, the independence movement is actually about policy-making on a rational basis, based on a will to deliver the greatest good for the citizenry – and not, as is the case with today’s political parties, warped by the pressures of self-serving lobbies from the left or right.

I’ll close with Newman’s words, spoken after a PBS News Hour on December 14, 2008. In the wake of the catastrophe in northern Japan and in the face of our own unfolding policy disaster courtesy of party politics, they resonate.

“There is something fundamentally tragic about our lives, all our lives. . . We’re up against forces which we’re thought to be smarter than and more powerful than, but which, in fact, we’re not smarter or more powerful than at all,” Newman said. “That’s our tragedy. We, meaning human beings, believe we are supposed to be in control – of nature, of the world. But we’re not, as we’re discovering. Can we do things better? Yes. Do we? Sometimes.”

Todd Neff is a Denver journalist and author of “From Jars to the Stars: How Ball Came to Build a Comet-Hunting Machine.”

Independent Voter Roundup: Arizona, North Carolina, California, Virginia, New York and Then Some

TOP TWO OPEN PRIMARIES WOULD ENGAGE ARIZONA'S INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Report backs idea of revamping primaries (by Channing Turner, Arizona Central) Arguments for reform persuaded Rep. Tom Chabin, D-Flagstaff, to author a resolution this legislative session that would haveallowed voters to decide whether Arizona should also adopt a single-ballot primary system, but the bill was never assigned to committee.

NORTH CAROLINA INDEPENDENT VOTERS AREN'T SATISFIED WITH STATUS QUO

• NC not responding well to new majority (Public Policy Polling) The key finding there is that independent voters, who gave GOP legislative candidates a 20 point advantage at the polls last year, now rate the new majority negatively by a 37/26 spread.

CALIFORNIA INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING

• Dan Walters: Redistricting panel shows true colors of ideology (By Dan Walters, Sac Bee) The underlying stakes of redistricting were starkly evident in last week's maneuvering over the selection of advisers. The finalists for both contracts were seen by political insiders – and apparently by commissioners themselves – as having at least some political taint… Thus the overall tenor of the commission is definitely left-of-center -- no small irony given the right-of-center support for the ballot measures that created it.

VIRGINIA REDISTRICTING AND RACE

• Race and redistricting (EDITORIAL The Virginian-Pilot) Speakers at a public hearing this week in Norfolk raised a more provocative question: Can minority representation be increased by creating a second majority-minority congressional district or at least a new district with a black population of 40 percent or more?

NEW YORK

• Thousands Rally And March From City Hall To Wall Street (By James Lane, Hot Indie News [a lefty Green Party type online publication]) Oliver Gray, Associate Director of AFSCME District Council 37, whose members made up the largest part of the rally, said public sector workers will not allow the Governor to blame them for the so-called deficit. “How are we to blame,” he asked, “when the Governor wants to cut the taxes of the richest people in New York, and gives back to Wall Street investors $15 billion a year in stock transfer taxes?”… New York City Council member Charles Barron, who was the 2010 Freedom Party candidate for Governor of New York, contradicted Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg, who claim cuts are necessary because the state and city are “broke.” If the state is “broke,” he asked, why are taxes being cut for the richest 1 percent of the population, whose share of the state’s income has shot up to more than 35% from 10% since 1995. Their share of the city’s income is even higher, at 44%, he said.

EDUCATION REFORM

• 7 Essentials for Education Reform (Suzanne Tacheny KubachExecutive Director, Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network, Huffington Post) Over the past five years, education reform has gained enormous traction. A new generation of reform-minded policy makers has taken up the cause of transforming state school systems to prepare students for a dramatically changing economy, urged on by state-level advocacy groups who are playing a crucial role in advancing reform state by state. But while urgency has increased and many fresh faces have taken up the cause, the core ideas guiding education reform have remained remarkably stable, defying the ideological or partisan claims that can often stifle political change.
• Fulani and Newman on America’s Education Crisis (Lois Holzman) “Here is an idea for solving the education crisis in America. What if all the kids currently failing in school pretended to be good learners? What if all the adults – teachers, principals, administrators, parents – played along and pretended that the kids were school achievers, heading for college? What if this national “ensemble” pretended this was the case day after day, classroom after classroom, school district after school district?” ----- So begins “Let’s Pretend,” a special report on “Solving the Education Crisis is America” written by Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman, co-founders of the All Stars Project (which released the report) and long-time friends, colleagues and mentors of mine. The three of us have written thousands of words (and spoken millions more) on play, performance, pretence, creative imitation and their critical role in learning and development for people of all ages, but especially for those whom schools have failed/who failed school. All of our words grow out of the complicated interplay of carrying out on-the-ground performance-based development work and dialoguing with scholars, practitioners and policy makers. In “Let’s Pretend,” Fulani and Newman  say it as they see it in a mere six pages. In the time it takes to make a cup of coffee you can read it and see if you see it their way or if they’ve helped you see in a new way.