Skip to main content

Close

Dear Common Dreams Readers:
Corporate media puts the interests of the 1% ahead of all of us. That's wrong. The corporate media and the billionaire class have controlled the narrative for way too long. In totalitarian countries, the government uses state media to manipulate public opinion and squash dissent. In America, corporations use those same tools to convince voters that commonsense, overwhelmingly popular ideas are impossible. But Common Dreams is different. We cover the news that matters. We know another world is possible. But we can’t do it without you. Our critical Winter Campaign is underway. Please—no amount is too large or too small—pitch in to support our people-powered model and keep Common Dreams strong. Thank you. -- Craig Brown, Co-founder

Please select a donation method:

FINAL DAY. We Still Need Your Help.

Common Dreams is the nonprofit news source for the 99%
Will you pitch in now to help meet our Winter Campaign goal?

Belle Chesler

Belle Chesler is a visual arts teacher in Beaverton, Oregon.

Articles by this author

	Views Thursday, August 20, 2020 The “Great” Reopening Seventeen years ago, against the advice of my parents, I decided to become a public school teacher. Once I did, both my mother and father, educators themselves, warned me that choosing to teach was to invite attacks from those who viewed the profession with derision and contempt. They advised me to... Read more
	Views Monday, May 11, 2020 This Empire Has No Clothes: In the Classroom That Zoom Built Do you hear that silence? That’s the absence of footsteps echoing through our nation’s public school hallways. It’s the silence of teaching in a virtual space populated with students on mute who lack a physical presence. It’s the crushing silence of those who are now missing, who can’t attend the... Read more
	Views Thursday, April 18, 2019 Defunding Children, A National Crisis of the Soul Three weeks ago, I sat in a cramped conference room in the large public high school where I teach in Beaverton, Oregon. I was listening to the principal deliver a scripted PowerPoint presentation on the $35-million-dollar budget deficit our district faces in the upcoming school year. Teachers and... Read more
	Views Thursday, October 18, 2018 The Kavanaugh Hearings Just Won't Leave Me Alone It’s been three weeks since Dr. Christine Blasey Ford gave her testimony before the nation and I’m still struggling to move on. As talk turns toward the impending midterms, I find myself mentally pushing back against the relentlessness of the news cycle as it plows on, casting a spell of cultural... Read more
	Views Thursday, April 19, 2018 Students as Teachers: Facing the World Adults Are Wrecking During the first week of May 1963, more than 800 African-American students walked out of their classrooms and into the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, to call for an end to segregation. Despite frequent arrests and having dogs and high-pressure firehoses turned on them, they kept marching. Their... Read more
	Views Tuesday, March 06, 2018 Will an AR-15 Succeed Where the American Dream Failed? “It was no surprise to anyone who knew him to hear that he was the shooter.” — Emma Gonzalez , Senior, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Over the past three weeks, the impassioned voices and steadfast demands of the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have resounded across social... Read more