2014 LATINO STUDENT REALITY AT LAUSD- ABSENT IN ESPARZA & OLMOS' 2006 FILM "WALKOUT"
It seems that the motto of today's news is: If it doesn't make the reader feel good or shows our leadership and their allies in a bad light, it doesn't exist and will not be reported. Or worse yet, it will be distorted until it puts those in power in a positive light. In just the last week, I have experienced three examples of this increasingly trendy news phenomenon whose frequency seems to be increasing more and more in what we used to call a free press.
The first was when I reported on the carefully orchestrated American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Convention in Los Angeles, which was carefully choreographed to buy into Common Core and the privatization of public education without ever showing AFT rank and file that its leadership was co-opted in this process by the very corporations and foundations that are leading the charge exclusively to line their own pockets, while eliminating a fairly compensated professional teacher corp.
The second was Israel's attack on the civilian population of Gaza, where all coverage that showed the unrestricted nature of these heinous acts by the orwellian newspeak described Israeli Defense Force (IDF) against clearly civilian targets was completely absent from mainstream media coverage in this country, if it in anyway contradicted the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) blind support for Israel. Dare to question this one-sided view and you are labeled antisemitic. Even when NBC reporter Ayman Mohyeldinwas able to report first hand the unprovoked murder of four innocent Palestinian children playing soccer on a Gaza beach, the initial response by NBC was to remove Reporter Mohyeldin, although he has since been sent back, because of the uproar it created with NBC's audience.
The third episode took place the other night, when I went to La Plaza de Cultura y Artes at Olvera Street in Downtown L.A. for what I thought would be a little R & R from the aforementioned week of depressing media obfuscation. The film they were showing was Edward James Olmos' 2006 production of "Walkout," about the 1968 student walkouts from five E.L.A. high schools, which, according to the film succeeded in addressing the inferior and second-class education that Latino students of the time were getting in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).
So let's take a look at some of the issues raised by the film to show that not only are things no better in E.L.A. high schools and elsewhere throughout LAUSD, they are significantly worse in a district that is now more segregated today than it was in 1968, when the walkouts took place.
1. In reality, the students presented in the film act middle class White, even though they are supposed to be working class Latino. In one scene in the movie the students are depicted quietly reading in class at a level few Latino students have ever been given the ability to achieve at LAUSD. This is a motif that exists in virtually every film 2014 LATINO STUDENT REALITY AT LAUSD- ABSENT IN ESPARZA & OLMOS' 2006 FILM "WALKOUT" - Perdaily.com: