Be Careful What You Blame on Hip Hop

Before hip hop ever became commercially popular ( mid 80's) the Bronx, where hip hop began, had experienced 1. A heroin epidemic exacerbated by the Vietnam War 2. A wave of arson and disinvestment that had destroyed much of the housing stock in the South West portion of the bronx and had left many once thriving neighborhoods look like they had experienced aerial bombardment 3. A city fiscal crisis which led to the removal of the great music programs form the Bronx's public schools, the elimination of night centers and after school programs in the area's elementary schools and the cutting of Parks and Recreation budgets in half, eliminating the position of recreation supervisor in the Bronx's vest pocket parks 4. A series of riots during the 1977 Blackout which destroyed scores of stores in the Bronx's key commercial districts Given these multiple tragedies-- all of them "post civil rights" that beset the Bronx ( and soon would hit, in one form or another every industrial city inn the nation) can we really blame hip hop for having more elements of nihilism and cynicism than earlier forms of African American popular music? We should also remember that hip hop has always had a prophetic, inspirational side (the music of Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy, Brand Nubian, Lauren Hill, and underground rappers such as Akua Naru and Rebel Diaz) and that white suburban males have been the largest audience for the most violent, misogynistic music This is not say that commercial hip hop should be exonerated from the a sharp critique of its lyrical content,but we should be careful of assigning too much blame to hip hop for the multiple tragedies that have befallen the poor and people of color in the US in the last 40 years

The Invading Army That Has Occupied America's Public Schools

When a nation is invaded by an occupying army, there are multiple responses from those who communities have been occupied. Some resist openly, at great risk; some decide to collaborate; others grimly go about their business in sullen compliance; others decide to feign compliance, but take their resistance underground. Such would be a good description of the varied resistance to the Corporate takeover of American schools, which has many of the elements of a foreign invasion. Those who have coordinated the campaign of privatization, testing and union busting that has swept through America's public schools, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Arne Duncan, Michael Bloomberg, and the like, none of whom have a background in teaching, have used the Shock and Awe tactics employed by invading armies to overwhelm opposition. They have crushed or bought off opponents, controlled public media, and found an eager army of mercenaries- Teach for America corps members- to implement their policies, which undermine the best practices of those who have spent their lives working in the nation's schools. If you freeze this Corporate takeover in time, it would look like a resounding success. Not only has the federal education bureaucracy been taken over by the invading group, one state and locality after another has adopted the policies they have proposed. Charter schools have been replacing public schools with breakneck speed; teacher evaluations based on student test scores have become the norm throughout the nation, and in school testing is multiplying while other pathways to learning are being crowded out. But one should not underestimate the extent, or the complexity of the opposition to these policies that is arising. When rules are imposed by an invading army using overwhelming force, compliance doesn't necessarily mean consent. And this is true of the testing regime the Corporate reformers are introducing, Many teachers, parents, union leaders, and school administrators secretly despise the policies being imposed on them; but see no way off opposing them with sacrificing their careers or children's welfare. But little by little, voices of resistance are appearing, some public, some private, which are not only raising doubts about the wisdom of the policies, but also building hope that some day they can be reversed. What we now have is non-violent army of resistance to Corporate Education Reform, small in number, but high in courage, morale, and vision, which is exposing the flaws of these policies on every front. And as the policies themselves become more invasive, demoralizing and counterproductive, more people are joining the opposition, some clandestinely, others publicly. The Chicago Teachers Strike mobilization,, the New York Principals and Professors petitions against high stakes testing,, the national movement to have parents opt out of high stakes testing, the student and neighborhood protests against school transformation policies, all show that the Corporate invaders have not been able to effectively pacify the territories they have occupied. And as their policies become more brutal- as poverty proliferates and the middle class shrinks, as class size mounts, and as K through 12 testing becomes the norm while all activities which foster creativity and critical thinking are discarded, resistance will grow Few battles have more significance for the future of Democracy in the United States than this one. Who knows, even some member of the Mercenary Armies recruited to implement these policies may decide to rebel.

Education and Trickle Down Segregation in Michael Bloomberg's New York

The other day, I was walking to an appointment on East 125th Street in Harlem and saw an interesting sight outside the huge new building holding Promise Academy, the central institution of Geoffrey Canada’s much celebrated Harlem Children’s Zone. I saw a teacher marching about 20 children from one entrance in the building to another. All twenty children were black, dressed in uniforms of white blouses with blue trousers or skirts, and they moved through the street with discipline and purpose. This was the face of one of the city's best known charter schools I could not help but contrast with the scene I regularly see outside PS 107 on 8th Avenue between 13th and 14th Street in Park Slope when I drive by the school. There, on a typical late morning or early afternoon, I see groups of parents, virtually all white, taking their children to school or picking them up, their movements cheerful and often chaotic. The whiteness of the group never fails to stun me because in the 80’s, when my friends kids went there PS 107 was one of the most multiracial schools in the city, with its student population well over 2/3 Black and Latino. This was the face of one of the city’s high. performing public schools. The contrast between the two scenes struck me because of what it said about the direction of housing policy, education policy, and law enforcement in Michael Bloomberg’s New York and how they contribute to maximizing segregation in the city. Though the Bloomberg administration has constructed a significant amount of affordable housing and has made it a priority to give parents in poor neighborhoods more options through the development of charter schools, it has not made fostering integrated schools or communities a priority. The vast majority of affordable housing the city government has fostered through has been located in already hyper-segregated communities like the South Bronx and the vast majority of charter schools it has approved have had 100 percent Black and Latino populations, One result is that in the neighborhood where I have lived for the last 35 years, Park Slope, excellent public schools which were once 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 Latino, and which had enormous income diversity, have become majority white and affluent. The loss of educational opportunity for Black Latino and working class families this evolution entails has been maximized by the city government’s approach to market level housing. Had the city government required that all market level housing designate 30 to 40 percent of all units as affordable, then the proliferation of new housing development in Park Slope would not have changed the demographic character of the neighborhood, and the neighborhood schools. But because so much of affordable housing in the city has been constructed in neighborhoods where the public schools are segregated and struggling, the opportunity to create high quality integrated public schools has been lost. This in turn affects the “choices” the city is offering working class parents and parents of color. Instead of giving them the option of sending their children to integrated public schools with top teachers, innovative curricula and excellent arts program, the city offers parents only the chance to attend highly regimented, ethnically homogeneous charter schools, some of which drive out children with special needs or children who can’t adapt to the school’s rigid discipline. What we have, at the extreme, is a Promise Academy or working class blacks, and a PS 107 for affluent whites, each committed to educational excellence, but following strategies for achieving that excellence that are totally contradictory to one another and which lead to young people of different race and class backgrounds having no contact with one another. And when you add stop and frisk to the mix, the result is an ever more segregated city. Is this the kind of environment we want our children to grow up in? It’s tine to start making the development of culturally and economically diverse communities the city’s top priority even if it undermines the city’s character as a playground for the Global Rich.. Like · · Unfollow Post · Share

Antecedents of "Stop and Frisk"

Stop and Frisk is not new. In the Bronx in the 1930's, 1940's, and 1940's, police would stop blacks boys and adolescents when they were walking through middle class white neighborhoods and tell them they had to leave- in working class white neighborhoods, street gangs would do the job for them. Here is an excerpt of an interview I did with longtime Bronx activist Jesse Davidson dealing with racial profiling by police during his youth MN: So in other words, you would have these “islands” of racial harmony surrounded by highly segregated neighborhoods where African-Americans couldn’t move. JD: Absolutely, yes. MN: Was it unsafe to go into those neighborhoods? JD: You are talking about my young life again. For the sake of the policemen, I can tell you right now, they still leave a very bad feeling inside of me. In those days, I couldn’t walk on the concourse, two or three of us together without a police car pulling up. MN: In the late 30s early 40s, if there were more than one African-American walking on the Concourse, a police car was going to stop them. JD: Absolutely. MN: What would they say to you? JD: By the time you got over to the car, the door would open and bang you right in your stomach. The term “nigger” would come out of a policeman in a minute. Two policemen with guns, pulling out their guns when you haven’t said anything yet.

Elections and History

While I am not one to place electing progressive candidates to office above building grass roots movements, I am also very aware that the fate of grass roots movements often depends on those who hold public office, especially those who control the power to suppress such movement through the application of armed force. Many of the most important strikes in US History-the 1877 Railroad Strikes, the Homestead Strike of 1892, the 1894 Pullman Strike, the 1919 Steel Strike- were defeated when Governors and Presidents ordered the National Guard and/or the US Army Conversely the two most important strikes of the Depression Era, the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, which turned the Teamsters Union into a powerful national organization and the Flint Sit Down Strikes of 1936-37, which led to the unionization of General Motors and US Steel, only succeeded because progressive governors, elected with labor votes, refused to use the national guard to suppress the strike, and because President Roosevelt refused to send in the army Today’s activists need to keep these examples in mind when deciding how, or if, they should become engaged in local and national elections. No grass roots movements can succeed without taking actions which stretch the boundaries of the law. How elected officials dealt with such instances will be critical to their success. One example of this is the occupation of foreclosed and abandoned properties by Occupy groups and advocates for the homeless. All over the country, housing activists are barricading themselves in houses to prevent foreclosed families from being evicted and placing needy families in abandoned and foreclosed houses and apartment buildings. In some instances, Mayors have ordered police to evict protesters; in other instances, they have let protesters stay. How Mayors and city officials decide to act will have a critical impact on the impact of this growing movement, which addresses the failure of the private housing market Similarly, some parents and teachers are occupying schools which have been targeted for closure under federally mandated “turnaround” policies. Local officials thus far have moved to use police to suppress such actions, but if enough such actions start occurring, they may hold out for a negotiated settlement in which the community’s interests are taken into account In both of these instances, who is holding public office, and what kind of demands are made upon them during their campaigns, matters enormously. Occupy groups and allied activists know how devastating it can be when elected officials unite to suppress a movement; they now have to turn their attention to strategies which turn some elected officials into allies There is no simple formula for doing this, but it is something that has to be done. Elections matter, and influencing public officials is as important to the success of grass roots movements today as it was in the past. July 8, 2012

Lucky to Be Born When and Where I Was

Although i dodged many bullets in my life ( in a few instances literally) i realize, talking not only to my students but to people 20 years younger than me, how lucky I was to be born when I was (1946) and where I was ( Brooklyn). Although I came of age in a working class neighborhood and had parents who grew up in extreme poverty, I went to public schools which had excellent teachers and were open every day 3-5 and 7-9 for supervised recreation, had access to free zoos and museums, could go anywhere in the city by bus and subway for 15 cents, and if I did well in school could go to college free. I lived in a city where the very rich were relatively small in number, where most working people were members of unions and were living a decent life,and where kids like me thought they had a great shot at going to college or getting a good job. Part time jobs were plentiful, we had amazing sports and music, and a great cause to fight for, civil rights, if we wanted to confront the racism that still deformed the society at every turn. Life was rougher, a lot rougher, if you were Black and Latino, sexism sharply limited women's opportunities, but wealth was distributed far more equally than it was to day, the economy was expanding at an unprecedented rate and everyone i knew had hope of living better than their parents. It all seems like a dream now when I look at what is out there today. The good things in life are increasingly reserved for the rich and young people in neighborhoods like mine face an economy that offers them few opportunities unless the jump through many hoops and overcome many obstacles.

Support for the United Opt Out Challenge to Teachers Unions

The most important moment in modern labor history is when John L Lewis, David Dubinsky and Sidney Hillman, frustrated with the complete inability of the American Federation of Labor to develop an effective strategy to organize the nation’s largest industrial corporations – which at that time included General Motors, General Electric, US Steel, the Ford Motor Company, Armour and Swift, Westinghouse- decided to break away from the AFL and organize their own independent labor federation, the Committee for Industrial Organization- which would organize workers by industry rather than by craft. It was under the auspices of the CIO that the Flint Sit Down strikes were organized, leading to the unionization of General Motors and US steel, and it was under the auspices of the CIO that America’s largest manufacturers- once as non union as Wal-Mart is today- were unionized , to the point where by the end of World War II, 15 million workers were members of unions, as compared to 3 million when Roosevelt assumed the presidency I say this to point out that sometimes, to save the labor movement, truly radical steps have to be taken, including forming new unions based on principles more appropriate to the challenges they face. No one is a stronger supporter of unions than I am. But if unions are betraying their membership and their mission, then radical actions should be taken to transform them. United Opt Out’s challenge to the NEA is a breath of fresh air in the current political climate. Members need to organize to have these unions fight back hard, and intelligently against the forces which are undermining public education in the United States. They should fight from within locally and nationally to have the NEA fight the imposition of high stakes testing tooth and nail. They should seek to replace current leadership if they refuse to support that goal. But though forming new unions which are more able to mount effective resistance is a last ditch alternative, and one that should not be considered until in-organization insurgency is mounted and failed, it should not be off the table either. The labor movement would not have uplifted the living standards of three generations of Americans if John L Lews has remained in the AFL and continued to work with its bankrupt strategy of craft unionism, which could not work in huge corporate conglomerates So I like what United Opt Out is saying, particularly in its revised concluding section. We need our unions. But we do not necessarily need them in their current form if they evade the most important educational and political struggles of our time.