Truth and Consequences

Not the same thing as the game show

Well hello! It’s Valentine’s Day but it’s also the very important Arizona Statehood Day, that day in 1912 on which Arizona was finally allowed into the union. It had been angling for decades to get in but alas, was deemed too progressive.

Sometimes history is just too weird to be true, isn’t it?

And as a historian, I don’t like for things to be forgotten: knowing What Actually Happened can come in useful sometimes.

Like now, for instance. Apparently there is some kind of impending nonsense event at the Harris School holding up Chicago as a national educational model. Arne Duncan will be on hand to crow about all the awesomeness. But let’s review What Actually Happened in the last ten years or so, shall we? For starters: The largest mass school closure in the history of the US. Comprehensive defunding of schools. Putting in place a testing regimen that amounts to roughly 20 standardized tests per year in every grade. The removal of most libraries and librarians from our schools. An unprecedented contraction of the system as thousands of families, mostly black and brown, have left CPS, and who can blame them? I could go on. Mass teacher firings resulting in a much whiter teaching force, a sexual assault and abuse scandal uncovered only by dogged reporters, the illegal yanking of special ed services from thousands of children with IEPs in the name of cost cutting. What Actually Happened. Go to this thing if you can manage to ask challenging questions of the narrative they’re peddling. I myself won’t be there. A little too much cognitive dissonance for me.

Now let me recommend two things I think you ought to know about and try to make room for in your life.

The great Diane Ravitch is coming to speak at CTU next week in conjunction with her new book, Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Schools. This I will be attending. Diane Ravitch knows What Actually Happened (and Is Happening) and speaks truthfully about it.

More truth telling. Have a look at a letter urging the mayor to put another Inspector General in place soon for CPS, one tasked with investigating race-based inequities in the system. It’s pretty important that we have an IG, which currently we do not, and one who is independent and objective, which….yeah. Anyway, here’s a petition with the letter attached. Think about giving this one a sign and a share.

Okay, that’s it for today. And if Valentine’s Day isn’t your jam, then consider making this easy and wonderful molé for your loved ones tonight, in honor of long-ago progressive Arizona. This is what we’ll be having at our house.

Carlos’ Chicken Molé
This is adapted from a recipe by legendary Native American flautist R. Carlos Nakai, which first appeared in the 1985 Guild cookbook of Phoenix's Heard Museum, From Metate to Microwave.  Usually when I make this I buy a roasted chicken from the grocery store because I am a lazy cook, and add the cilantro, sautéed garlic, and onions to the sauce later.

1 whole chicken
1/4 c. chopped fresh cilantro
6 cloves garlic, diced
1 large onion, diced
1/4 t. black pepper
2 oz. Mexican chocolate
2 8-oz. cans tomato sauce
2 heaping T. peanut butter
2 heaping T. sesame tahini
1 t. cumin
1 t. good chili powder
1/4 t. cinnamon
2 c. chicken broth

Pressure cook chicken with cilantro, garlic, onion, and black pepper in 3 c. water.  Save broth, cool chicken.  Debone chicken and shred or chop into small pieces.  Melt chocolate in a bit of broth in a large pot.  Add tomato sauce, peanut butter, tahini, cumin, chili powder, and cinnamon and simmer for 20 minutes.  Stir in 1 c. chicken broth and add chicken pieces.  Add salt to taste, or use lime juice instead of salt.  If sauce is too thin make a thickener out of remaining chicken broth and a 1/2 c. of masa harina.  Serve with warm corn tortillas.