I must remind you that a starving child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical needs is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence. – Coretta Scott King
Something is wrong that we have to feed so many. Why should there be poverty with all of our science and technology? There is no deficit in human resources – it is a deficit in human will. – Coretta Scott King
It was not my intent to retread some of the thematic ground I’ve covered over the past couple of months, but current events both locally and across the nation, cause me to do so.
The two columns that were published here in April marked 50 years since Dr. King’s assassination, and subsequently, the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The discussion of the Fair Housing Act is particularly relevant today, as there have been numerous efforts in recent years, both underhanded and overt, to undermine and ultimately overturn this essential law (as ineffectual as it has sometimes been).
Another 50-year milestone that has just passed is what history has come to know as “The Roads to Resurrection City.” It was on Mother’s Day, May 12, 1968, that Coretta Scott King led thousands of demonstrators from far and wide to Washington, D.C. demanding that the U.S. Congress pass an Economic Bill of Rights, an idea originally proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.
The centerpiece of Dr. King’s “Poor People’s Campaign,” the Economic Bill of Rights called for, among other things, full employment and a living wage; sufficient and affordable housing; and the right to health care, social security, and quality education. Of the Poor Peoples Campaign, Dr. King said, “We believe the highest patriotism demands the ending of the [Vietnam] war and the opening of a bloodless war to final victory over racism and poverty.”
Of course, Dr. King was not around to witness the culmination of this campaign or the establishment of Resurrection City on the National Mall where he helped to lead the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom nearly five years earlier. In late June of 1968, six weeks after setting up camp in Resurrection City, demonstrators were violently evicted by the local police and National Guard. Nearly 300 of them, including Dr. King’s most trusted aide Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, were arrested.
Today, history is repeating itself as a new movement (inspired by Dr. King’s original vision), The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, has emerged in communities throughout the United States. This campaign restates the demands of 50 years ago and adds several more. It highlights the rising social and racial inequities in employment, education, housing, economic security, access to health care and health-related outcomes, human rights, and environmental justice.
On Monday, May 14, thousands of protestors, including 13 near the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, were arrested as they engaged in a national groundswell of nonviolent civil disobedience. According to the Minnesota Poor People’s Campaign, this calls for “new initiatives to fight systematic poverty and racism, immediate attention to ecological devastation, and measures to curb militarism and the war economy.”
The national Poor People’s Campaign, along with its state and local affiliates and supporting partners, will continue these demonstrations over the next several weeks before convening at the United States Capitol Building on Saturday, June 23. Dating back to the Women’s March on Washington in January of 2017 up to the student-led March for Our Lives this spring, this will be at least the 22nd major demonstration to take place in Washington, D.C. over the last year-and-a-half.
I am curious to see how America reacts to the upcoming June march as well as to all of the related events leading up to it. Why? Well, let’s be frank for a minute.
An enduring theme throughout the history of this nation is that people living in poverty are somehow to blame for their own plight. There are a number of journalists, scholars and activists, including John A. Powell and Arthur Brooks, who have recently declared that “America can’t fix poverty until it stops hating poor people.”
Please indulge me for a moment while I shift gears to reinforce this point. I chose the two quotes above from Mrs. King specifically for their bold and straightforward assertions. Number one: Poverty is violence. And second, as her husband acutely noted, “Poverty has no justification in our age.”
Why then, do we not have the will to end it? Why do we choose to hate instead?
On a couple of occasions, I have used this space to reference insights from comedian W. Kamau Bell’s CNN documentary series “United Shades of America.” In the third season’s premier episode, which aired at the end of April, Bell visits the U.S.-Mexican border to engage locals about their thoughts on “illegal immigration” and “the wall.”
He visits with a pair of Border Patrol officers who, above all, view their principle responsibility as saving lives. They cite the hundreds of migrants, determined to make a better life for themselves and their families, who die every year from dehydration, heat stroke, and even hypothermia.
It is very common for activists and even concerned citizens who live on the border to leave water out in the hope they might possibly save the life of a fellow human being. Yet, Bell contrasts this good will with images that have been captured of Border Patrol agents who think differently than the two he interviewed.
Knowing full well why the water is there, one Border Patrol agent is shown on film casually kicking gallon after gallon of water down a steep desert hill. Another agent is shown simply dumping water into the sand while he smiles and speaks directly into the camera.
Whatever he was muttering was unintelligible to me, but he was obviously quite proud of himself. Apparently, that was his idea of justice, or national security, or whatever.
Let that sink in. And while we do, let us not forget that poverty is violence. Poverty kills. Hate kills.
Clarence Hightower is the executive director of Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties. Dr. Hightower holds a Ph.D. in urban higher education from Jackson State University. He welcomes reader responses to 450 Syndicate Street North, St. Paul, MN 55104
The Cypress Academy community took members of the Orleans Parish School Board to task Tuesday night (May 22) during a meeting at the Mid-City school hours after OPSB announced it would directly manage the charter school to keep it from closing by Wednesday.
Tuesday’s meeting was initially planned by the Cypress administration to explain to parents why its board voted on Sunday to merge the charter with the Lafayette Academy Extension at the Paul Dunbar Building in Hollygrove. The weekend announcement stated the school’s small headcount of students made it “very difficult” for the school to pay for the needs of its students.
Parents in the Cypress cafeteria audibly gasped after head of school Bob Berk told them Cypress has to raise about $600,000 to balance its budget for the next school year. Berk said Cypress even opened this school year on “a leaner model” than they did last year in an effort to maintain the school, which involved only using one co-teacher across grade levels instead of two. However, Berk said the school realized that the leaner model “wasn’t working school-wide.”
Berk said he managed to find a few donors willing to pay up to $250,000 to Cypress, but he acknowledged he did not feel like they would still be able to raise the full amount of funding in time. Several parents in the room filled with more than 30 people told Berk the board should have been more transparent with parents about their financial burdens…
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, our community was under a full-fledged attack. Crack was in our streets, it was in our schools, it was in our parks, it was in our playgrounds, and for some, it was in our homes. The epidemic wasn’t just affecting one part of the community; this impacted the entire community, leaving sons without fathers, daughters without mothers, and parents, ultimately, alone.
But the carnage didn’t stop there. Policies enacted during the crack epidemic exacerbated the destruction. Children in South Los Angeles were ripped away from their parents and shipped off into the child welfare system, some to never see their parents, or their families, again. It was at the height of the crack epidemic when the number of kids in foster care exploded and the percentage of Black youth in the system skyrocketed.
Now, the country, not just our community, faces a new epidemic. Our child welfare system is already becoming increasingly populated due to the consequences of the opioid epidemic. The current crisis is starting to devastate families and our already over-worked and under-resourced child welfare system. This time, we must apply the lessons learned from the crack epidemic: if you want successful policy, you must include the affected communities in the formulation of new policy. We cannot afford to turn our backs on those impacted again.
At the end of this month, the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth will host its 7th annual Foster Youth Shadow Day, a program that brings foster youth from all over the country to meet and shadow the very Members of Congress who represent them in Washington, D.C.
No one knows more about the pitfalls of our nation’s child welfare system than those who grew up in it. These young people are travelling thousands of miles to come to D.C. to share their stories—both their challenges with abuse, trafficking, overmedication, or homelessness—as well as their successes with mentorship, adoption, family reunification, community activism and independent living.
The result of these visits is a better understanding of how to improve the child welfare system and fight against this epidemic. The FY 2018 omnibus bill that was passed earlier this year had the single biggest increase in investment in child welfare funding history along with a large investment in funds to combat the opioid crisis. Despite this progress, there will always be more work to be done and this month, I look forward to continuing this fight. National Foster Care Month is a month to honor the successes and challenges of the more than 400,000 foster youth across the country and to acknowledge the tireless efforts of those who work to improve outcomes for children in the child welfare system.
Making sure that all children have a permanent and loving home is not a Democrat or Republican issue – it should be an American priority. Our society is judged on how we treat the most vulnerable amongst us. We must invest in life improving foster care services, praise foster families, caregivers, and relatives for their selflessness to others, and continue to provide a hand up so that foster youth can realize their full potential.
Congresswoman Karen Bass represents California’s 37th Congressional District. She is the 2nd Vice Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and the co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth. Follow her on Twitter at @RepKarenBass.
I cannot recall a day when I didn’t have a book under my arm, in my backpack or in my briefcase. I’ve treated books like my best friends, sometimes refusing to lend my “friends” to others because they tended to handle my books like they were pieces of paper that could be easily discarded and had little merit.
But I knew better. My parents helped me develop a passion for reading because of the ideas within the covers. Whenever I had questions or could not understand concepts and notions, they’d point me to the room in our house designated as “the library.” Yes, that’s right, even some Black folks have libraries in their homes.
I’d spend hours in silence, without the distraction of television or the radio, reading about faraway places, becoming familiar with historical figures, letting my imagination run wild. Today, young people have even more distractions with their phones and social media apps. And some seem like they have no desire to read. They don’t realize what they’re missing.
Meanwhile, my children in their younger days were, and now my two grandsons are required to read and then, to sit with me now or with my parents in years gone by and share what they’d learned. That was the way we transmitted ideas. That’s the way we passed on our stories to the next generation.
Books were special to me for another reason. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, had been abandoned on the streets of Baltimore when she was 10. She had been forced to drop out of school so that she could find a way to survive. So, her studies ended before she had completed elementary school.
Grandma never lamented over what happened to her, the obstacles placed in her life and she never sought anyone’s pity. She just kept keeping on.
Whenever we were together, she’d reserve time for just the two of us — time during which I would read to her. Sometimes, it would be the Bible. But she would also ask me to read a story that I liked or a book that I may have been reading at the time. Whenever there were words with which she was unfamiliar or concepts that were a bit too complicated, she’d ask me to explain. She would even pull out her dictionary and have me give her the definition of words she didn’t know.
These were our special moments, our treasured moments. And she only reserved them for me. I guess with my thick glasses and mountains of books that I always brought with me during our visits to her home in Williamsburg, Virginia, she wanted me to feel good about my passion for reading, my desire to learn as much as I could. She celebrated the fact that I was a smart little boy. And she loved listening to me read.
I read to my grandmother … because she could not read. And we loved every minute of our story time sessions.
What’s the last book you read? And when did you last read to someone you loved?
The 5000 Role Models of Excellence conducted its 2nd Annual Awards Ceremony and Dinner at William M. Raines High. Students from the Raines High Culinary program catered the event. The celebration honored 5000 Role Models of Excellence student leaders and graduating seniors who have gone above and beyond for the 2017-2018 school year. Adult Role Models who serve as mentors for the students enrolled in the program and Site Directors who head up each of the 12 school programs were also honored.
The event was held at William M. Raines High, which along with Highland Middle School, will be the two new expansion sites for the 2018-2019 school year. This will make a total of 14 schools comprised of 7 middle schools and 7 high schools spread throughout Duval County. Currently the program has 425 registered minority male student members from Duval County Public Schools. Initially founded in Miami, FL by Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, the program has been in Duval County for three years. The initiative looks to provide exposure to minority male students educationally, vocationally and culturally. In its third year in Duval County, the program has partnered with female compliment programs at six of the twelve current sites.
Amongst awards received during the ceremony included a custom backpack designed by BlendedDesigns, a custom 5000 Role Models of Excellence class ring designed by Rhodes Graduation-Jostens and over $7,000 in scholarship funds. Lawrence Hills, District Supervisor for the initiative stated, “this was an opportunity for us to honor those students who have worked extraordinarily hard in the classroom and/or improved their citizenship in an effort to become a leader in their schools and community.”
Nearly three months—and six school shootings—since President Donald Trump created a commission to seek solutions to school violence, the Cabinet-level panel is being slammed for what critics see as its slack pace, lack of transparency, and limited representation.
Advocates, parents, and educators note that the commission, which is led by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, has met only once since it was set up in the wake of February’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. They say there’s been very little outreach to the education community. And they worry that the commission seems to have already made up its mind about where to go on school safety.
“It really begs the question of how seriously they are taking this situation,” said Myrna Mandalowitz, the director of government relations at the School Social Work Association of America. “It’s past time for this commission to meet and get the ball rolling.”
Besides DeVos, the commission includes Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. It has had one organizational meeting, on March 28. Since the commission was first announced on March 11, there have been six school shootings resulting in death or injury, according to Education Week tracking of such incidents…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
By Dr. Elizabeth Primas, Program Manager, NNPA/ESSA Public Awareness Campaign
When the best educators in America traveled to Washington, D.C. for a series of events celebrating innovation in the classroom and to share best practices in K-12 education, they let officials at the Department of Education and the White House know exactly how they felt about the Trump Administration’s current push for school choice programs.
According to edchoice.org, school choice programs allow, “public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that best fit their needs—whether that’s to a public school, private school, charter school, home school.”
In April 2018, the Department of Education (ED) hosted the “Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s Drum Major Legacy: Innovative Pathways to Success” celebration; the event was sponsored by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans in collaboration with the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
The Education Department’s MLK Legacy event honored individuals who perform extraordinary acts of service in their communities, specifically those individuals who support high-quality education for children of color. Many of the awardees work with parents or community groups that provide primary care for children; some even provide educational support services outside of the traditional public school model.
School choice became a hot topic during the event, as several attendees were visibly disgruntled at the mention of the controversial approach.
The Trump Administration has proposed to decrease funding to authorized investments for public schools while increasing funding opportunities for school choice programs and private school vouchers. Ninety percent of children in America attend public schools. Increased funding to school choice programs, while reducing funding to public schools is a strategy that leaves behind our most vulnerable students.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has repeatedly said that she’s committed to uphold the intentions of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the education law signed by President Barack Obama. However, the prioritization of school choice programs in the proposed FY2019 budget contradicts one of the original intentions of the law: to promote equity and increase access to high-quality education for all students. Furthermore, prioritization of school choice isolates homeless children, migrant children, youth in foster care and children from military families. In fact, ESSA requires that school districts report student outcomes for these groups for the very first time.
The 2018 Teacher of the Year awardees echoed similar concerns during their annual White House visit in April. The top teachers in the country reported that they did not approve of funding private schools at the expense of their most vulnerable, at-risk students.
Every child should be entitled to high-quality education in the United States of America. Every neighborhood school should be equipped to provide high-quality courses and curriculum. Every student should have highly-qualified teachers and a menu of extra-curricular activities to choose from. Until the administration prioritizes the equitable improvement of all schools, their verbal commitment to uphold the original intent of ESSA is just another “alternative fact.”
Learn more about the Every Student Succeeds Act at nnpa.org/essa.
“Claretta Street” follows the lives of four young African-American girls living in Pacoima as they navigate the turbulent change of the 1960s, coming of age in the decadent and destructive 1980s.
Through the lenses of the young women, the sound and textures of life unfold as the devoted friends provide vivid accounts of one of America’s greatest periods of social change.
This work of historical fiction is the first novel by Pacoima native Colette Barris, who was inspired to write her debut book as a testimony to the struggle and triumph of Africans in America.
“Much is written about the African-American experience, most of which purposely spins black achievements as not much more than snippets of missteps, one depicted (often) as simple and jovial,” Barris said. “While in actuality, the black experience is one of unbelievable intelligence and courage.”
In “Claretta Street,” Barris explores America’s black past without marginalization. The author hopes readers gain “knowledge and appreciation of black female sisterhood and comradery” and “depth and insight of the African-American experience in the development of America further dismantling the mythology of American development.”
Colette Barris
“I wanted to bring up the element of sisterhood for young African-American women because they need to know that they have it within them,” Barris said. “It’s in their DNA and they can reach out to one another for support.”The author’s favorite character is Denise, the protagonist, because of her love and appreciation for family and sisterhood.
“Claretta Street” is the first installment of Barris’ trilogy. The second book is set to debut in early 2019.
In addition to being an author, Barris is a science teacher in Los Angeles. She lives in the San Fernando Valley.
“Claretta Street” is available for $19.99 (paperback) and $4.99 (kindle) at bookstores and online on Amazon.com.
What do chefs, politicians, mechanics, educators, and doctors all have in common? The answer is science and engineering. Most of us probably didn’t realize when we started Kindergarten that science and engineering would affect us every day for the rest of our lives. Science and engineering are all around us – in current events, in the food we eat, even in governmental policies. Science—and therefore, science education—is central to student’s lives, preparing them to be informed citizens, successful problem solvers, and knowledgeable consumers. If kids are to be able to pursue expanding employment opportunities in science-related fields, they must have a solid K–12 science education.
Thanks to new, multidimensional standards like the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), K-12 students have access to a high-quality science education that provides them with the skills and knowledge they need to be well-informed citizens, to be prepared for college and careers, and to thrive in modern society. Major advances have taken place in the world of science, engineering, and in our understanding of how students learn science effectively.
The foundation for the new multidimensional science standards is A Framework for K-12 Science Education (2012 NRC) that describes a vision of what it means to be well-educated in science and engineering. So far, 37 states have developed new multidimensional standards, including the 19 states, the District of Columbia, and the American Education Reaches Out (AERO) schools that have adopted the NGSS…
Jayme S. Ganey, Special to The Informer via DiversityInc.
There is no sanctuary for children in President Donald Trump’s racist world, and now schools can be a tool for deporting children and parents.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Tuesday before the House Education and Workforce Committee that schools and local communities decide whether to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they suspect their students are undocumented.
With reports presented at the hearing of parents being arrested by ICE outside their children’s schools, DeVos gave the same blanket response to every question:
“I would just say we are both a nation of laws and we are a compassionate people,” she said. “And I think it’s important that we follow the laws of the land, and if it’s important that laws be changed I encourage this body to do so.”
But one of those laws is a ruling from 1982’s Plyer v. Doe that guarantees the right to education for all immigrant children. And ICE was discouraged from entering schools previously by Homeland Security, but there are exceptions. Some schools have protected students assuring them that without legal pressure, they will not out the children and families.
DeVos’ remarks put no support behind communities trying to provide sanctuary.
Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) President Thomas Saenz said in a statement, “Her testimony … stems either from an astounding ignorance of the law or from an insupportable unwillingness to accurately advise local school districts. Either of these indicates a severe dereliction of duty.”
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who confronted DeVos with the issue at the hearing, released a statement saying: “Sec. Betsy DeVos is unqualified to lead the U.S. Department of Education, and her reckless statements regarding undocumented youth, not only conflict with the law, but will lead to fear and intimidation among immigrant students across the country.”