[Xmca-l] Re: My Hometown Minneapolis

[Anthony Barra]

For years, Andy, you've been a breath of fresh air - even, maybe especially
- when we are not aligned.  Thanks.

On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:06 AM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> Anthony, American cops were killing people before Trump and they'll most
> likely still be killing people after Trump. There've  been plenty of
> pandemics before Trump and there will be more in the future. And you want
> to make this about Trump??! The only reason Trump is relevant to these big
> social problems is that he's irrelevant to them but he's the President.
> Hard to avoid that.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Hegel for Social Movements
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!TvNGfZT3foXO79R35UiiDflFikY80p4yEZNS-Dzs0wN9By8BjPFU25VtnMF8vNwDxCZ0Vw$>
> Home Page
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!TvNGfZT3foXO79R35UiiDflFikY80p4yEZNS-Dzs0wN9By8BjPFU25VtnMF8vNyL1X98vA$>
> On 5/06/2020 11:40 pm, Anthony Barra wrote:
>
> I, too, like avoiding politics here, but this will be a social
> analysis/dialectics question, piggybacking on a fair amount of the rest of
> this "Minneapolis" thread.  So don't ban me! : )
>
>
> Rhetorical hyperbole aside, is this the biggest Straw Man of all time, or
> are a percentage of the following sentences true? My guess is: both. (At
> first I thought that everyone here would reflexively reject and dismiss
> this Social Analysis out of hand - and understandably too, but now I'm
> wondering if some parts of it might be acknowledged, unapologetically, as
> in fact correct.)
>
> "This is about Donald Trump. Of course it is. We just couldn't see it. For
> normal people, Donald Trump is a president: you may like him, you may not
> like him, but either way there will be another president at some point, and
> we will move on as we always have.  But for Donald Trump's enemies: there
> is nothing else. Everything is about Trump; everything. Donald Trump
> defines their friendships, their careers, their marriages. Donald Trump
> affects how they raise their children. Trump occupies the very center of
> their lives. As long as Donald Trump remains in the White House, they feel
> powerless and diminished and panicked, and they cannot be happy.
>
> In everything they do, their overriding goal is to remove Donald Trump
> from office. And that's exactly what they're trying to do now. That's what
> these riots are about.
>
> The most privileged in our society are using the most desperate in our
> society to seize power from everyone else. Got that? That's the nub of it:
> the most privileged are using the most desperate to seize power from the
> rest of us. They are not seeking racial justice. If they were seeking
> racial justice, they wouldn't be denouncing their fellow Americans for
> their race - which they are. It has nothing to do with it. What they are
> seeking is total control of the country. And it goes without saying that
> none of this has anything to do with George Floyd. Shame on those who
> pretended that it did. Those who fell for the lie, and those who knew
> better but played along because they are cowards."
>
> Souce: Tucker Carlson, "Liberal activists now want to 'defund the police'"
>
> (P.S. My own personal utopia would be to synthesize the very best ideas of
> the left with the very best of the right, but alas, that is by definition a
> dream, by definition "no place.")
>
> Thanks in advance for any thoughts (and yes, this thread is
> America-centric, starting from post #1 about the great city of Minneapolis
> -- sorry to those understandably not interested).
>
> Anthony
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 5:27 AM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Thank you, I'll take a look. Sounds similar to dialectics, little I know
>> of both.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, June 4, 2020, Richard Beach <rbeach@umn.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Anthony, the concept of “expansive learning” posits that objects/motive
>>> in activity are ideally always open to change/transformation—that they are
>>> never fixed given that as participants encounter new
>>> contradictions/challenges, they “learn to”/formulate new objects/motives.
>>> This requires learners to be open to exploring optional actions/tools/norms
>>> as they redefine/revise their ever expanding objects/motives.
>>>
>>> Coping with decades-long racist practices in Minneapolis, requires
>>> “expansive learning” to continually experiment with new objects/motives
>>> given that some of the tools/practices attempted in the past haven’t
>>> necessarily worked, although attempts were made to do so, only to be
>>> blocked by a timid political leadership
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.startribune.com/in-2008-we-had-a-reform-plan-for-the-mpd-it-got-derailed-by-politics/570998162/__;!!Mih3wA!SLGpQj8PmApHqKlEeH3z-ohB8R76qeqnpglVMrj9N2HOiJRn_QxL9FXpHMmS9eXEdK2Cgg$>
>>> .
>>>
>>> For more on expansive learning theory, see attached reports:
>>> Engeström,Y., & Sannino, A. (2010). Studies of expansive learning:
>>> Foundations, findings and future challenges. *Educational Research
>>> Review, 5*, 1–24.
>>> Sannino, A., Engeström, Y., & Lemos, M. (2016). Formative interventions
>>> for expansivelearning and transformative agency. *Journal of the
>>> Learning Sciences, 25*(4), 599-633.
>>>
>>>
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