[Xmca-l] Re: My Hometown Minneapolis

Sat Jun 6 07:32:58 PDT 2020

Sorry, but I seem to have misled you about masks here, David.  Wouldn’t want people to think it’s a good idea to pour bleach on cloth and wear it!  (Apparently some people, in this country at least, are using bleach on their skin or on their food;  wouldn’t like to suggest such dangerous practices.)  

Our homemade masks are mostly three layers of cotton, some with pouches for filters if someone has or wants one.  They are intended to be worn by those of us who may unknowingly be asymptomatic and undiagnosed but still infected with SARS-CoV-2 and able to spread it easily to those we are chanting and walking and kneeling and standing with.  We have a continuing very poor diagnostic testing program in most places in this country. The masks are to lessen the danger an individual MIGHT BE to public health rather than a personal health measure way to protect an individual from getting the virus.  Every night, we soak and wash whatever masks we have custody of that have been used – soak in detergent and bleach and rinse well, but some odor of bleach remains, and leave it for a few days before recycling it.  Those who wear masks like the N-94 are people who need to be protected by the mask the wearer from getting the virus as they go into spaces recognized as having infected people likely to spread the infection.

Of course, as for many things, we do not have a well-functioning public health system so the N-94 type masks are expensive and in short supply in many places.  

On the other hand, though, sometimes  rising to the concrete of homemade masks (needed, yes, but liked because they are so damned whimsical) and the making of them seem to yield confidence, camaraderie, apprenticeships for public engagement and purpose.  It’s a bonus that what the virus pandemic has demanded now often plays a part in people learning and using anti-fascist tools against police violence and government misdirection.

BTW, what particularly struck me about the DC mayor’s apparent acceptance of BLM in the street art and new street name, is the immediate challenge from DC BLM and, as immediately, the mayor acknowledging that the symbols do not mask the gap in actions that BLM demands!   Could this be a dialectic or what?

There are about a dozen well sponsored and organized protests in DC today – reduces worries by some of us about severe dangers to the big number of us that could be used for target practice in one place.

BTW:  I appreciate getting news updates I learn from (recently off the top of my head) from Carol MacDonald, David Preiss, David Kellog …). It is different than published material and fills a different function for me.  

Peg

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
Sent: Friday, June 5, 2020 5:11 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: My Hometown Minneapolis

(Is this thread American-centric? If so, 'twere a grievous fault. But grievously hath Haydi answered it--I don't think anybody can consider his dense, encyclopaedic blocks of text--the polar opposite of Anthony's American-centric orthography as well as Anthony's style and content--in any way American-centric....)

Perhaps American-centrism and American-exceptionalism is in the way we read events rather than in the events themselves, Anthony. To me, the situation in and around Washington DC looks very much like the situation in and around Beijing in May1989. As in DC, Beijing had laws preventing the entry of the armed forces other than those of the Beijing Military Region into the city (the exclusion laws were actually written into the Chinese constitution by Mao, who was always afraid of powerful military opponents like Peng Dehuai and Lin Biao). The Beijing Military Region, however, was loyal to the people of Beijing and to the General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, and they opposed to a coup. So, as in DC, the "martial law" forces were called to the city perimeter where they halted for several weeks. As in DC, the provenance of the "martial law" forces were quite mysterious--they didn't carry insignia and it later turned out that these were forces personally loyal to two PLA warlords, the brothers Yang Baibing and Yang Shangkun. As in DC, there were different waves of demonstrators inside the city: someone put up artworks in the square (as the mayor did in DC this morning) and others told people to go home and organize and not stay to be massacred. And then, almost exactly thirty-one years ago, the unmarked shock troops went in shooting, and at least a thousand people died.  I hope that part is NOT like DC, but so far the "American exceptionalists" have been proved wrong on every single detail.

Clorox on cloth? Gadzooks, Peg. Don't Americans have real N-94s yet? At the very height of the Daegu outbreak people had to resort to cloth masks (I don't think anybody used Clorox, though). Then the government brought in a rationing system so that health care workers could get PPE, and the extras are still rationed according to the numbers on registration cards: we go to the pharmacy twice a week to pick up our ration of three masks. No one is allowed onto a bus, a subway, or into a public building without one. Yesterday I went hiking for two hours and whenever I saw someone coming towards me they hastily put on a mask and bowed.

(Do you know, the largest factory for PPE in the USA, and possibly the world until recently, is 3M in Minneapolis? There's a solid transitional demand for a general strike--Masks for all! Occupy 3M!)

David Kellogg

Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.

Outlines, Spring 2020 

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VguVkyAlP1VAS26bsEx2fDGIXPWJFvq_ut-GGonoAE-HMrToUuykYrhhs8lyrElohUg2KQ$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Xp_sgr0_UzNqr7vRI1XOMts503dCWTEnbJj5gRjnZG4dhhNbDC9HkM8UT-m4O5QGCUaqfQ$> 

New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"

 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VguVkyAlP1VAS26bsEx2fDGIXPWJFvq_ut-GGonoAE-HMrToUuykYrhhs8lyrElhprBpYQ$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Xp_sgr0_UzNqr7vRI1XOMts503dCWTEnbJj5gRjnZG4dhhNbDC9HkM8UT-m4O5QTbNA7-g$> 

On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 6:30 PM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com <mailto: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 <mailto: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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