With A Brooklyn Accent:
Imagination- A Poem for Michael Brown
I can only imaginewhat its like to bewatchedfearedseen as a threatwhen i walkwhen i drivewhen i go to schoolNever knowingwhen i will bestoppedsearchedthrown on the groundor when words thatI sayand gestures that Imakecan lead to mydeath
Us VS Them- A Guest Post on the Larger Implications of Ferguson by Dr Lori Martin
The systematic killing of people of color provides the best evidence that many Americans have been wrong about racism all along. For far too long racism has been understood as an illness, a sickness, or a disease, that older and uneducated individuals come down with because they are ignorant, ill-informed, resistant to change, or are mere products of their racially segregated environments. Racism
AUG 12
Ferguson Missouri- Face of a Nation Where Poverty Has Moved to the Suburbs
Fegruson Missouri, where the police killing of an unarmed young Black man sparked rioting yesterday, represents the demographic contours of a society changed by gentrification and demographic inversion.. There are now more poor people living in suburbs than there are in inner city neighborhoods. In New York, the most famous historically Black neighborhoods, Harlem and Bedford Stuyvestant, have exp
AUG 11
Containment, Confinement and Death- The Plight of Many of Our Youth
There are so many ways we are treating our young people, especially young people of color, as suspects, threats, dangers to the social order.They are heavily policed in their schools and neighborhoods-often subject to arbitrary search and seizureThey are the targets of zero-tolerance disciplinary policies in schools which have become little more than test prep factories.They are arrested and jaile
A Bronx View of the Killing of Michael Brown
The Bronx is full of young people who take what happened to Michael Brown very personally. They go through metal detectors in schools. Get stopped and frisked in the streets. Are looked at with suspicion and contempt when they head into Manhattan. They see themselves in Michael Brown, as they did in Ramarley Graham who suffered a similar fate in the Bronx two years ago. They are in pain right now
AUG 08
What We Want and Need- A Friday Afternoon Message to Arne Duncan:
We Need to show appreciation and respect for public school teachers and make them an integral part of every education policy making body.We need to develop strategies to attract and retain great teachers- teachers for life.We need to ramp up efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color.We need to transform schools in high needs areas into round the clock community centers and help them, not clo
Teach for Life
My improbable initiative-- defund Teach for America and start a campaign called Teach for Life which encourages talented, idealistic young people to become teachers and STAY in the classroom. Such a campaign would treat teaching as the most important profession in the society, not something talented people leave after a few years to pursue careers in law, business, politics or "school leaders