Spurred by reports of increased harassment of students who are members of ethic and religious minorities since the election, a number of education organizations have issued a call to action. Most of the organizations are as mainstream as they come: the National PTA, the National School Boards Association and so on.

From Education Week:

The organizations issuing the call to action are: the AASA, the School Superintendents Association; the American School Counselor Association; GLSEN, an LBGT student group; the National Association of Elementary School Principals; the National Association of Secondary School Principals; National PTA; the National School Boards Association; the National Association of School Psychologists; and the National Association of Independent Schools.

"We come together as national education organizations in the wake of the troubling rash of reports of bias incidents and violence occurring in schools across the nation in recent days," the groups said in a statement. "As learning communities, schools and school systems are responsible for providing all students with a physically and emotionally safe learning environment. This principle is the foundation of academic achievement, healthy individual development, and civic engagement. Violence, intimidation, and purposefully harmful expressions of bias undercut the core mission of schools and have no place in our school communities."

The statement applauded the schools and districts "that have already taken meaningful steps to develop and support positive school climate in their communities." It did not list any examples. In recent weeks, districts like Los Angeles Unified have approved resolutions following repeated school walkouts by thousands of students. Those resolutions call for safe and supportive learning environments, and some have made special mention of a refusal to cooperate with possible future federal immigration enforcement.

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Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed and cheered when he entered the theater to watch the musical, Hamilton. At the end of the show, a member of the cast read a short statement directed at Pence. That's what actually happened. Trump tweeted that Pence was "harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton." That didn't happen. The cast didn't "harass" Pence. In another tweet, Trump wrote, "The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!" That also didn't happen. The cast wasn't "rude" to Pence. It doesn't owe him, or Trump, an apology.

What we have here is another post-election shot across the bow of the First Amendment. Trump is once again putting people on notice that criticizing him is dangerous business. For now he'll respond verbally. Later, well, we don't know what will happen later. His response as president could be more than words. The country could become a Trump rally writ large, with dissenters treated like protesters were treated during the campaign, with Trump's consent and assistance. "Get 'em out! Get 'em the hell out of here!"

Let's go through the Hamilton incident piece by piece.

The cast didn't "harass" Pence.
Here is the full statement read by Brandon Victor Dixon, a cast member, while the rest of the cast stood behind him, holding hands.

“Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you, and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton, an American Musical, we truly do. We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”

That is a pointed, eloquent statement. There isn't a word of harassment, no threatening tone of voice. It is polite dissent, spoken with theatrical diction by a man wearing a formal, American Independence-era suit.

Dixon prefaced his written statement by noting that Pence was in the audience and that he was leaving, and he hoped Pence would stay to listen to the statement. When some audience members booed, Dixon said, "There's nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen, we're all here telling a story of love." You can watch a video of the statement here.

Trump criticized the cast, not the audience.
If anyone could be accused of harassing Pence, it's the audience, some of whom booed him when he walked in, then booed the mention of his name by Dixon after the show. Why did Trump go after the cast and not include the audience in his condemnation? Well, the audience is a well-heeled, predominantly white crowd who could afford to pay anywhere from $300 to thousands of dollars for a ticket. They're Trump's class of people, one percenters to five percenters, even though many of them are of the liberal persuasion. The cast, but for their costumes, could have been a Black Lives Matter demonstration, predominantly people of color with some white faces thrown in. They're among Trump's prime targets.

Writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig makes an impressive debut with this darkly funny take on the life of a modern day high school outcast.

Hailee Steinfeld gives her best performance since True Grit as Nadine, a highly intelligent teen going through an awkward stage when her best friend (Haley Lu Richardson) starts dating her brother (Blake Jenner). Nadine is a practitioner of brutal honesty, which basically gets her ostracized at school and in trouble with her family. The only one who really stops to listen is her teacher (a hilarious Woody Harrelson) who actually has no choice given his profession.

Craig’s screenplay is first rate, and her directing results in some great performances. Steinfeld is good enough here to be considered for her second Oscar nomination, while Jenner (who starred in this year’s Everybody Wants Some) is equally good.

This one is drawing comparison to the best of John Hughes, and I would call the movie a good companion piece to The Breakfast Club. It’s good to see Steinfeld getting a role she very much deserves, and exciting to see a new voice like Craig’s on the scene.

Kyra Sedgwick is also very good in a supporting role as Nadine’s mother, while Hayden Szeto does excellent work as a high school boy who hasn’t mastered the art of properly asking somebody out (His performance is all the more impressive because he’s over 30 playing 18).

This is one of the better family dramas of recent years, on top of being a solid, funny comedy.

Trump didn't talk a whole lot about education during the campaign, but he said enough to give us a sense of the direction he wants to head. More vouchers, more charters and a modification or elimination of Common Core. "Choice," not Common Core. That pretty much sums it up.

If you want a model for the educational direction Trump plans to take us, look at Indiana, Mike Pence's state. As governor, Pence expanded vouchers and pushed aggressively for more charter schools. On the campaign trail, Trump proposed $20 billion in federal dollars for "choice." And though Trump used the "widows and orphans" appeal for charters and vouchers—helping out all those poor children trapped in "failing government schools"—it looks like the Trump/Pence approach will embrace vouchers for billionaires as well as paupers. According to Pence in September:

“Donald Trump and I both believe that every parent in America should be able to choose where their children go to school, regardless of their income and regardless of their area code, and public, private and parochial and faith-based schools on the list."

Close to 60 percent of Indiana children are eligible for vouchers. The number is only that low because that's as far as Pence has been able to expand it.

How should teachers deal with the Trump presidency in their classrooms? Tough question. Genuinely tough question. The campaign was a hard enough call in the classroom, what with its graphic accusations of Trump's history of sexual predation and the allegation that Hillary should be spending time in jail, not in the White House. But now the election is over. Trump is president. How should teachers discuss the president elect in class?

Before delving into the present, I want to take a look at a classroom controversy during Obama's first year. It came in September, 2009, when Obama planned to give a back-to-school talk to the nation's children. The first President Bush delivered a similar talk in 1991. Before him, in 1988, Reagan did the same. No major fuss was raised about either event, accusing those presidents of trying to brainwash impressionable children with partisan speechifying. But the anti-Obama scream machine cranked its outrage up to eleven, calling the speech part of Obama's agenda to corrupt the youth of America, as if classrooms across the country were giving the Grand Wizard of the KKK an hour to poison innocent minds. The topic dominated the news for days. The result was, some schools refused to air the speech, others gave teachers the option, and many said students could only watch if they had a permission slip from their parents, like a speech from Obama was the equivalent of an R-rated movie.

So anyone who says teachers and everyone else should simply say Trump is our president and he represents all of us needs to remember Obama's back-to-school speech and the never-ending Tea Party outrage directed at our current president. To tell people to cool it about Trump is to say, "We all need to respect the president, starting . . . NOW."

Some teachers believe, as I do, that Trump and what he represents has the potential for being the worst thing that's happened to this country in our lifetime. Others are overjoyed with the election results. I don't think teachers should walk into the classroom and launch into diatribes about their opinions on the election. But the Trump presidency and its ramifications is a fit subject for spirited, even controversial classroom discussion.

If there are instances of bullying at school related to the agenda Trump pushed during his campaign, those issues deserve a complete, open airing. If some students seeing Hispanic students start chanting, "Build a wall. Build a wall," if some students seeing students of Middle Eastern dissent shout, "Terrorist, get out of my country!" those are direct results of the campaign. Schools should condemn those students' actions and punish them for their behavior, but schools are also justified, I would say almost duty bound educationally, to relate the incidents back to Trump's rallies which encouraged that kind of behavior. To do anything less would be to pretend our president elect never said what, in fact, he said over and over.

According to this piece in Rolling Stone, Mötley Crüe's Vince Neil has been "uninvited" to play the presidential inauguration. It's just all so ugly.

Here's the original post:

So Mötley Crüe's duck-voiced frontman Vince Neil is scheduled to perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Of course he is. We knew this face-lifted, woman-loathing, drummer-slaughtering tub o’ lard was a Trump supporter. The two are spiritual bros, to be sure, and they even share the same sort of thinning coif. And just earlier this year in Vegas, Neil was found guilty of battery for pulling a woman to the ground by her hair.

The Crüe, and 98 percent of the fake-glam Sunset Strip metal from which they rose, was total Republican rock, a big, loud and smelly reflection of Reagan-era greed and selfishness. It was also the first time in rock 'n' roll history when its (supposed) outlaws were false outlaws. (Every Crüe event, from ODs to arrests, was tainted with self-interest, and reeked of PR slime. They even titled a album collection Music to Crash Your Car to: Vol. 1. Remember, back in the '80s, old Neil crashed his car drunk, killing Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle. He got off.)

The Crüe's anti-art, anti-intellectual, woman-abusing macho horseshit was never about the music, it was about how rich they figured they could be, about how famous they figured they could be. It was utter misinterpretation of The New York Dolls, Sweet and Alice Cooper.

Neil will be Trump’s bro in arms in Washington D.C. on Jan. 20 when the thumbhead gets sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.

Neil no doubt has his eye on the White House. Stranger things have happened.

Recently, the Hanson Film Institute at the UA partnered with Film Tucson to discuss Film and TV. They've talked about everything from how to fund and independent film, to how to get an agent. In their next panel they will finally be tackling the beast that is reality TV.

In light of recent news, it seems safe for me to say that reality TV has officially taken over the world as we know it.

From never being able to turn on the television without hearing the next Kardashian scandal, or the fact a reality television star will be the next President of the United States, reality TV is here to stay and does not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

During the panel, the Hanson Film Institute and Film Tucson have called upon four panelists who are experts in the topic of reality TV. They will be discussing the ins and outs; covering how exactly it's made, if it is truly reality,​ what makes a good show and the million dollar question, why people continue to watch.

Of the four panelists, three are UA alums who have taken the knowledge that they learned in the classroom and have used it to conquer great things in the realm of reality television. Ryane Belafsky, UA Media Arts grad, is a freelance reality TV producer who has worked on fan favorites such as Project Runway Junior and TLC show Outdaughtered. Nor Caspi, who graduated with a degree in Finance, is currently a TV agent at William Morris Endeavor. Josh Murphy serves as the Senior Vice President of the Pilgrim Media Group, and graduated from the UA with a Bachelor of Arts degree with an emphasis in Media Arts Producing.

The fourth panelist may not have graduated from the UA, but is no stranger to Tucson or reality TV. Anthony Michaels is a local tattoo artist who competed on, and won the seventh season of Spike TV's reality show, Ink Master.

All four panelists have their own unique perspective on the industry of reality TV, and will be bringing their individual perspective to every topic discussed.

Along with the panel, there will also be a contest. Pull out your thinking caps Tucson, because locals will be allowed to submit pitch ideas for a new reality TV show, extra points for one with a Southern Arizona flair. The winner of the competition will have the opportunity to pitch their idea to the judges with the possibility of making their reality show idea, an actual reality.

All submissions for the competition are due to be submitted by Nov. 27. The entires can be submitted at http://bit.ly/2flMcwb.

The panel will take place on Dec. 2 from 4-5 p.m. at the UA Center for Creative Photography (1030 N. Olive Road) and admission is free.

Is anyone else in complete shock that it's already mid November? Maybe it was the election hubbub, or perhaps the workload that falls into our newsroom in the Fall, but both my internal clock and the temperature reading in my car have me feeling like it's actually late August. If you have time for a movie marathon this weekend, I envy you.

If you, like me, are scrambling to catch up on your November to do list, may I recommend this tart, this Etsy shop and these (well, towards the bottom of the page) holiday markets.

For the more well prepared (or the equally overwhelmed), here's your weekly list of what's hot at Casa Video:

1. Bad Moms

“I don't want to be disrespectful,” said Alisha Ratan recently in a Phoenix New Times interview, “but a lot of misogynistic humor gets a free pass. I think we felt more and more like, 'I feel less safe as a woman onstage, and in the audience.'"

In response, Ratan and a colleague, Meredith D. Howell, formed an improv team, Overtly Sensitive. The name refers to a phrase women would like you to stop saying when they make their feelings known. The duo pokes fun at “the patriarchy,” at the pitfalls and life hacks of millennial females and, in a recent show, at stress-relieving meditation, coaxing their audience into centering the heart chakra on the mattress of the body’s core.

Affiliated with the Torch Theatre in Phoenix, Overtly Sensitive will perform on Tuesday, Nov. 22, in Comedy at the Wench, a monthly comedy showcase at Surly Wench Pub. The show starts at 9 p.m.
Also on the bill is Tucson favorite Steven Yanez Romo, host of the popular local talk show Romo Tonight Live. His concoction of chaos, hilarity and special guests was broadcast monthly from the Flycatcher until Romo recently moved to Bisbee. Fans will want to catch what may become a rare stand-up appearance in the Old Pueblo.

Writer and storyteller Em Bowen, salty army vet Stephanie Lyonga and Californian James Quinn round out the bill.

Tucson comics Roxy Merrari and Mo Urban host and perform in the showcase every fourth Tuesday, and an open mic every second Tuesday, at The Surly Wench Pub Bar and Grill at 424 N 4th Ave. Admission is free; a donation is requested. Artist information is available online.