Michael:

Thanks for your words of inspiration and call to action this week. As a gay pacifist of earth-centered spirituality in a long-term relationship with a multiracial child, I watched neoconservatives target all of the above identities in my family to ensure their electoral dominance. But they haven't won my soul, heart or brain. And that's the most important message for all of us progressives: RESIST, CHALLENGE, QUESTION, MAKE TROUBLE, KEEP YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR, AND ORGANIZE ORGANIZE ORGANIZE.

So, in CSJ, we need our members and leaders and allies to join us in the following:

Finalize our plans to create a journal and get our editorial board in place with lots of submissions from folks to create a repository for our best ideas and examples of systemic change

We need to get more members involved in our e-action groups: currently focused on transforming school counseling, challenging mangled care, infusing advocacy in counseling programs, and challenging corporate greed, media bias, militarism, privatization and globalization.

We are working on a partnership with Psychologists for Social Responsibility with our journal and for other events, and let's add these voices to our list as well. Tod Sloan is the co-chair, and I'm adding him to our email list. We also have many members who are partners with the Education Trust's Transforming School Counseling initiative, www2.edtrust.org, and I'm adding Reese House, director of that initiative, to the list as well. We focus on redoing school counseling programs at the state, city, and local levels to focus exclusively on social justice equity: closing achievement, opportunity, and attainment gaps which continue to disproportionately harm the life chances of poor and working class children and youth and children and youth of color.

Last, we need to be making sure we are teaching systemic change skills rooted in history of resistance of oppression in our classes. I will be using Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States in multicultural counseling classes again this year to help inspire the next generation of school counselors to see how we've always had a culture of resistance to oppression in the USA and we need to carry it on! Our students are our future and as we empower them as leaders, advocates and systemic change agents, it is our most powerful way to change the status quo.

With love, hope, courage, and equity for all,

Stuart Chen-Hayes

>