Privatization of America’s Public Institutions: The Story of the American Sellout [] San Miguel Literary Sala

San Miguel Literary Sala Presents:
Lawrence Baines
Privatization of America’s Public Institutions:
The Story of the American Sellout
and
Mary Katherine Wainwright
En Route

Thursday, March 12
5 to 7 PM

NEW LOCATION:

Casa de la Noche
Calle Organos #19

$100 pesos ($50 pesos for Literary Sala members)

 Captivating Memoir in Verse and Stunning Political Revelations

By Carole Schor

The March 12 Literary Sala combines a beloved local writer and educator, Mary Katherine Wainwright, with a celebrated professor and scholar, Lawrence Baines, with a stunning message about our times!

Mary Katherine Wainwright

Mary Katherine grew up as a young woman in the 50s in the Deep South land of Jim Crow and “pork chop” politics. She fulfilled the American Dream of getting married and raising four children, and then took off in a completely different direction by earning her PhD at age 40. Mary Katherine devoted her education, her thesis, and her eventual career to the literature of powerful African-American women: Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and the women of the Harlem Renaissance.

Her new book, entitled En Route, vividly evokes the era she lived through. We see her discovery of the library and books at the tender age of seven, the awakening to injustice and racism in the Birmingham of 1963, the birth of the Women’s Liberation movement with her newfound freedom of being able to divorce and travel the world on her own, attending workshops and learning to write from some of the most renowned teachers of our time. Mary Katherine is a true renaissance woman herself.

Lawrence Baines

We are fortunate that distinguished professor Lawrence Baines will be in town to present a discussion about the privatization of prisons, public schools, and the military in the United States. Our democracy and culture are on a dangerous trajectory away from the common good and towards profits for a very few. This privatization has been going on at least since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. But how far have we gone with this privatization, and at what cost―in dollars, in measures of efficiency, and in our moral sense of ourselves? Reviewers have called the book “gracefully clear, readable, and often astonishing.” It is an “excellent, organized, and impassioned book―a valuable, insightful read.”

For example, Baines points out that about half of department of defense allocations go toward paying private contractors with limited accountability and a history of inflated budgets and fraud, and that few of these private contractors are Americans. Up to 90 percent of private contractors are foreigners with no loyalty or allegiance to the citizens of the United States. We have a similar loss of control over private K through 12 schools, and over our entire prison system.

Lawrence Baines is Professor of English Education at The University of Oklahoma.  He has held endowed chairs at the University of Toledo and at Berry College in Georgia.

Mary Katherine Wainwright will take us on her journey of self-discovery to become a writer, a teacher, a poet and a world traveler. Lawrence Baines will take us on another kind of journey – down the rabbit hole of politics, corruption and greed. Join us at Casa de la Noche. Calle Organos #19, on Thursday, March 12 at 5 PM. Admission is $100 pesos for members, 50 pesos for non-members. For more information, visit sanmiguelliterarysala.org.