I spent yesterday afternoon at a rally at Daley Plaza opposing school closings. The rally was the culmination of a three-day march across Chicago by students, educators, and community members. The video below offers a good report about the protests and the issues surrounding the proposed closures.

As I listened to several speeches and then marched along with friends, allies, and strangers, I caught myself smiling. Why should this be the case?

It seems unlikely, after all, that these major protests will prevent the majority of the proposed school closings. The Chicago Board of Education will almost certainly vote to close dozens of schools at its meeting this Wednesday. CPS seems to be preparing for this outcome. Rahm Emanuel thinks that black and brown folk in this city have short memories. In fact, he is counting on it. I personally think that he is wrong.

Yesterday the Chicago Sun Times published an editorial calling for 21 schools to be removed from the closure list. This would still leave 33 schools on the chopping block which is one too many.

Given these odds, why shouldn’t those of us who want education justice and vehemently oppose mass school closures succumb to despair and hopelessness?

At yesterday’s rally, I stood with people from every walk of life to resist the attempt to further decimate our communities. We raised our collective voices to say that we would continue to fight back no matter what “decision” the Board announces on Wednesday. THIS is cause for hope.

When I looked around, I noticed the joy and even more importantly the love that was reflected in the chants and in the protest. Yes, it was love that I could feel in the crowd but also hope. It’s important to be reminded that social justice movements are rooted in hope. This one for education justice in Chicago certainly is. To remain hopeful no matter our circumstance is to already be victorious. I am profoundly grateful to everyone who stands in a place of hope while organizing to change the world.

There is an essay by Howard Zinn that I always return to and last night the brilliant and committed scholar-activist Nancy Heitzeg reminded me of it. I’ll share the part that most resonates with me and that seems most relevant to the current struggle for education justice:

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Watch the individuals who were arrested yesterday as they staged a sit-in at City Hall after delivering over 10,000 petition signatures to Mayor Emanuel. Notice that they are singing throughout:

There is hope embodied in these acts of civil disobedience. Knowing that there are many who will put their bodies on the line to say “No, you will not destroy us without a fight” is a manifestation of radical love.

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/20/13) – City Hall Elevator Blockade

Listen to the impassioned words of 9 year old elementary school student Asean Johnson as he excoriates Mayor Emanuel for his plan to close 54 schools.

How can we lose hope when we have young people like Asean to fight for? We cannot. Instead we must ask if we’ve done our very best by Sean and if our answer is no then we must do better…

Once again, I am privileged to share Sarah Jane Rhee’s beautiful photographs documenting three-days of protest against school closures here in Chicago. I’ve decided to share photographs of children & youth in the spirit of hope and justice.

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/2013) Chicago

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/2013) Chicago

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/2013) Chicago

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/2013) Chicago

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/2013) Chicago

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/2013) Chicago

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/2013) Chicago

I’ve been reading some of the letters published in the book “Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall” by Michael G. Long. Long (2011) writes that: “Marshall dealt with prison abuse claims frequently in his early years at the NAACP (p.27).”

One example from the book is below:

On July 2, 1937, an inmate in the Texas state prison system sent the NAACP an anonymous letter requesting assistance for combating cruel prison conditions: “Please hear our cries…These officials are sure cruel to us, we have in each building two prisoner as building tenders they is allowed to kill you if they see fit. They have whips with iron handles and dirka knives. Each one of these buildings tenders are first grade student and they will do what the captains and guards tell them.”

Below is a letter of protest that Marshall wrote to the governor of Kentucky about these complaints:

July 31, 1937

Dear Governor Allred:

We have received complaints concerning the treatment of Negro prisoners on the Ramsey State Farm, Camp #1, near Houston, Texas. We are informed that the Negro prisoners are beaten and, in many cases, killed for trivial reasons.

We are informed that on July 28th of last year, one Booker Smith, in charge of prisoners, killed a prisoner and claimed it was in self-defense. We are also informed that Captain Shaw chained a prisoner with a quarter-inch chain around his neck and fastened it to his feet so that his neck was pulled down to his knees and that the same Booker Smith whipped this prisoner, whose name was James Brown, to death.

We cannot too strongly urge upon you the seriousness of such offenses which, even though committed by persons in charge of a prison, are, nevertheless, brutal murders. These are only a few examples of the intolerable conditions reported to us in the prison camps in Texas, and we urge you to immediately cause an investigation to be made.

Very sincerely yours,

Thurgood Marshall

In reply, Governor Allred simply asked for more information and added: “I am sure that neither the Manager of the State Prison System nor the members of the Prison Board, as well as myself, will tolerate any brutality if they can find evidence that it exists anywhere in the System.”

Malcolm would have been 88 years old today had he lived. I write a lot about him on this blog. I’ve never featured his fingerprint card. I have profound admiration for the man Malcolm grew into becoming. It’s a testament that everyone is capable of making great contributions to society.

Catharsis (n):
1: purgation
2
a : purification or purgation of the emotions (as pity and fear) primarily through art
b : a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension
3: elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression

After all of these years, I have gotten used to the early morning phone calls. They never bring good news. Yesterday, a young man I’ve known for three years was shot. He was one of over a dozen people shot and/or killed in Chicago overnight. We are used to these numbers. This was actually on the low end of the usual range.

I was alerted about the shooting by his cousin: another young person I’ve known for a few years. I went to the hospital to check on him. He will recover. The temporary relief was quickly replaced by dread that cannot be dislodged in the pit of my stomach. I learned from his cousin that his friends were already planning their retaliation for the shooting. The cycle of violence is unbroken.

As I waited to see him, I spoke to his family members and what came across was a profound sense of weariness and of resignation. He’s been talking about dying violently since he was 10 years old, his aunt tells me. What is the antidote to this certainty about one’s impending mortality? Whenever I start to slip into a mode of thinking about death as an abstraction, I am slammed right back into reality by events.

When I finally see him, he smiles wanly. His first words are: “Think I’ll be on the news, Ms. K?” I burst into tears.

This is what it’s about, isn’t it? Even lying in the hospital shot, he can’t show any vulnerability. He is still sarcastic and ‘tough.’ He’s a teenager, not yet a man. He’s scared and I know it. I’m sobbing. “Awww, don’t Ms. K. Look, I’m good. I promise, I’m good.” But he’s not “good.” I apologize and ask if he needs anything. I don’t ask what happened. I don’t care.

Driving home, I try to gather my emotions. It’s difficult because I know that most people don’t give a damn about this young man or about his life. He lives in a community rife with structural and interpersonal violence. While I was lying in bed unable to sleep, I read an op-ed in the New York Times that captures the unremarkable routineness of violence in such neighborhoods.

“to be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.” – James Baldwin (quoted in Joan Didion’s “The White Album” 1979, p.30)

I think also about the unrelenting societal hatred and oppression directed at him and at his peers. Earlier this week, conscious black people in Chicago had more reason to be enraged. A white woman said she was robbed in broad daylight on Michigan Ave by a mob of black teens. Coverage of the event saturated our local airwaves:

An elderly woman was confronted on the Magnificent Mile by a mob of young men on Wednesday, who proceeded to take $100,000 worth of jewelry she was wearing.

A Chicago police source said the 69-year-old woman from Homewood Flossmoor was accosted by 10 to 12 African American men while walking in the 700 block of North Michigan around noon in front of Saks Fifth Avenue.

By Friday, it was revealed that she had lied. She fabricated the story but to many this doesn’t matter. Her name has still not been released. She remains anonymous. All we know is that she is a wealthy elderly ‘philanthropist’ who lives in the South suburbs. The young men who she accused of robbery are also anonymous, nameless. But they aren’t faceless, she said that they were black. Just the accusation is enough to impugn an entire race (still). We know this nameless “criminalblackman.” This is a familiar story.

An anonymous person writing in “The Independent” on September 18, 1902 explained the process of criminalizing black people:

Whenever a crime is committed in the South the policemen look for the negro in the case. A white man with face and hands blackened can commit any crime in the calendar. The first friendly stream soon washes away his guilt and he is ready to join in the hunt to lynch the “big, black burly brute.” When a white man in the South does commit a crime, that is simply one white man gone wrong. If his crime is especially brutal he is a freak or temporarily insane. If one low, ignorant black wretch commits a crime, that is different. All of us must bear his guilt. A young white boy’s badness is simply the overflowing of young animal spirits; the black boy’s badness is badness, pure and simple (in Black Women in White America: A Documentary History, edited by Gerda Lerner, 1972, p.168).

The trope of the “criminalblackman” serves as the key organizing principle in the treatment of blacks in this country. I can’t imagine how it will be dislodged. What I know for sure is that it has been and is killing us slowly as a race. So many of our young have to swallow their rage as they find themselves surveilled in stores and on the streets, as they try to make themselves small in elevators and in school, as they are targeted by cops for endless stop & frisks and as they are locked in cages by the thousands. I am amazed that so many are resilient and don’t lose their sanity. But some are in fact dying slowly…

I am a child of America
a step child
raised in a back room

-Pat Parker

I think again of his first words to me: “Think I’ll be on the news, Ms. K?” I hear them differently now. This is a young man living in exile in his own country. His humanity is unacknowledged. He languishes in a place that Richard Wright has called “No Man’s Land.” He is allowed no feelings. He is just a threat: all of our fears rest on and in him. I realize that perhaps he is asking whether he has been “seen” by the larger world. Have we taken notice of him? Do we know that he exists? Maybe this is his way of writing himself back into our national story. I don’t know.

I feel exhausted and want to close my eyes to what’s happening. In this moment, I wish I could be oblivious. So many others seem to be… My tears are uncontrollable now; the tissues are soaked. I pull over and call a friend. “Stay where you are, I’m coming to get you,” he says.”It’s OK, I’ll drive to you,” I respond. Somehow, I make it to his place still in one piece. I haven’t broken apart. He makes lunch. I try to breathe. Hours later, I’m still struggling to catch my breath…

The following is a set of six original photos of Black prisoners on a chain gang building Rt 30 in Florida. The photos date back to the 1930s.

Original photo, Chain Gang, Florida (1930s)

Original photo, Chain Gang, Florida (1930s)

Original photo, Chain Gang, Florida (1930s)

Original photo, Chain Gang, Florida (1930s)

Original photo, Chain Gang, Florida (1930s)

Original photo, Chain Gang, Florida (1930s)

I picked up this photograph while antiquing last year. I didn’t recognize the young man’s name or know of his legal case. I was just struck by the photograph. Later, I did some research to educate myself about what happened to him. Predictably, it was another miscarriage of justice. You can read more about his story here and here

I try as much as possible to document activism & resistance by youth in Chicago on this blog. I do this because I am profoundly committed to the idea of youth leadership development and voice. I am co-founder of the Chicago Freedom School and these issues are central to our mission. I also see the activism of youth in this city as critical to prison abolition.

Anyway, today over 100 people gathered on the Southside of Chicago on 61st & Cottage Grove as part of an event organized by youth from FLY (who I’ve referenced several time on the blog) and members of Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS).

The Chicago Tribune reported on the event:

The protesters [sic] staged a “die-in” about 4:45 p.m. on South Cottage Grove Avenue at East 62st Street to make the case that school closures will force displaced students to cross gang lines. The protesters wore mock blood-stained shirts as they blocked traffic at the intersection before being arrested. Goldenberg said.

The protest was intended “to demonstrate to Mayor (Rahm) Emanuel the loss of life that he will be responsible for if he and his appointed school board go through with the proposed closures,” the group said in a press release.

DNAinfo Chicago offered more details:

Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, an organizer with Southside Together Organizing for Power, and others called the event — in which students blocked traffic in the intersection of 61st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue — a “die-in.”

Students wore mock-bloody clothes in an effort to show the effect they believe school closings will have: more violence and death for the young students forced to cross new gang territories.

“The message is that school closings are killing people,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle said. “Everyone knows what will happen when these kids start crossing these gang lines.”

The students laid down in the intersection, blocking traffic for several minutes before being taken away by police after refusing to leave, witnesses said.

Police could not confirm immediately confirm any arrests but said the protest was “peaceful.”

According to witnesses at the scene, the students were led away in handcuffs.

Kelly High School teacher William Lamme said two of his students were arrested in the protest.

“They wanted to do something to show how they feel,” said Lamme, a Kelly social studies teacher. “Mayor [Rahm] Emanuel is certainly creating a school for young activists.”

Nearly 100 activists, parents and students were at the event, initially arranged by parents from Fiske and Sexton elementary schools. Sexton is slated to close and merge its students into Fiske.

“We have to make our voices louder and our actions stronger,” said Lamme, who came to support his students. “This is civics 101.”

Here is a brief video of a student whose school is targeted for closure speaking the importance of keeping it open:

As per usual, the amazing and intrepid movement photographer, Sarah Jane Rhee was on the scene to document the student resistance. She posted her terrific photographs on Facebook. I share some of them below.

by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/15/13) – Vigil to Stop School Closings

by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/15/13) – Vigil to Stop School Closings

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Thanks to the outrageously talented Ariel Springfield, the Assata Shakur Teach-Ins have a poster that can be used to advertise your event.

by Ariel Springfield

In today’s edition about the racist and failed “war on drugs,” I wanted to share this commentary and report by Melissa Harris-Perry who asks if this is the beginning of the end for this so-called war.

The word “war” is often utilized to push people into fighting for a collective goal or against a common enemy. There are classic military conflicts like the Civil War and World War II, and there are the ideological fights like the “War on Poverty” launched by Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

But what happens when a war is waged against a faceless and intangible enemy? Host Melissa Harris-Perry asked her Sunday panel whether it is time to re-focus and rename the “War on Drugs.” As Eugene Jarecki, director of the documentary The House I Live In, put it, “It hasn’t achieved anything. It’s achieved catastrophe.”

In the 42 years since President Nixon launched the “War on Drugs” in 1971, the consequences have outweighed the gains. According to the ACLU, of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States, 25% of them imprisoned for drug offenses. There’s a reason why these incarceration rates are so high, according to Kathleen Frydl, author of The Drug Wars in America, 1940-1973. “Our incarceration rates reflect the artifacts of our enforcement strategies,” said Frydl on the show.

There is an ethnic divide when it comes to drug arrests. Thirty-eight percent of those arrested for drug offenses are African-Americans, and they spend almost as much time in prison for those drug offenses as white criminals do for violent offenses.

Read more

This month is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. I am certain that this is flying under many people’s radars. It shouldn’t. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I am familiarizing myself a lot more this year with the history of Japanese Internment. The entire country should be well-versed about this unjust and immoral travesty.

Today, I have decided to highlight a copy of Executive Order 9066 from the National Archives:

Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the evacuation of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland. In the next 6 months, over 100,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry were moved to assembly centers. They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded relocation centers, known as internment camps.

Read more here

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