In schools, a question of cops vs. students - Queens Chronicle: Queenswide

In schools, a question of cops vs. students - Queens Chronicle: Queenswide:

In schools, a question of cops vs. students

Calls for change in school safety after NYPD releases arrest data

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PHOTO COURTESY DESIS RISING UP AND MOVING

Students protested outside One Police Plaza in Manhattan last week against what they said are discriminatory police practices in the city’s public schools.

Posted: Thursday, March 1, 2012 12:00 pm | Updated: 12:43 pm, Thu Mar 8, 2012.

by Anna Gustafson, Senior Editor | 0 comments

As a student at Flushing High School, Nilesh Viswashrao said police unfairly punished him, and other minority students, so often that he and many of his friends dreaded going to class — so much so that Viswashrao ended up dropping out of school days after his 17th birthday.

“When I was a student in high school, every day I was harassed by the school safety agents and NYPD officers,” said Viswashrao, now 18. “My friends and I were threatened, frisked and discriminated against, to the point where many of us never made it past high school.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union and the Dignity in Schools Campaign say Viswashrao’s story is all too common and charged that it highlights a systemic problem within the city —that minorities make up the 

Marian Wright Edelman - A Prayer For The Children #trayvonmartin

Marian Wright Edelman:

 

A Prayer For The Children

We pray for the children
who sneak popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks,
who can never find their shoes.And we pray for those
who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
who never "counted potatoes,"
who are born in places where we wouldn't be caught dead,
who never go to the circus,
who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for the children
who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.
And we pray for those
who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
who watch their parents watch them die,
who can't find bread to steal,
who don't have rooms to clean up,
whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,
whose monsters are real.

We Pray for the Children
who spend their allowance before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories,
who shove dirty clothes under the bed,
who never rinse out the tub,
who get visits from the tooth fairy,
who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at and
whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those
Whose nightmares come in the daytime,
Who will eat anything
Who have never seen dentist,
Who aren't spoiled by anybody,
Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
Who live and move, but have no being

We pray for the children
Who want to be carried and for those who must,
Who we never give up on and for those who don't get a second chance.
We pray for those we smother and for those who will grab the hand of
anybody kind enough to offer it.

It's Past Time to Protect Children Not Guns

170 Comments | Posted March 23, 2012 | 5:58 PM

Thousands of people across the country have poured into the streets -- from New York to Sanford, Florida -- to demand justice for Trayvon Martin. Hundreds of thousands more stepped up to protest online. In response to the public outcry, the Sanford chief of police has temporarily stepped down and...

Read Post

Walking While Black

437 Comments | Posted March 21, 2012 | 8:24 PM

Every parent raising black sons knows the dilemma: deciding how soon to have the talk. Choosing the words to explain to your beautiful child that there are some people who will never like...

Read Post

A Healthy Start: Protecting Great Gains for Children in the Affordable Care Act

341 Comments | Posted March 16, 2012 | 4:35 PM

Since our founding almost forty years ago, the Children’s Defense Fund has fought to ensure that all children in America receive the healthy start they need and deserve. Next week marks the second anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the federal health reform legislation, which has been...

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The American Promise: The Right to Vote

708 Comments | Posted March 9, 2012 | 4:58 PM

Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right... The command of the Constitution is plain. There is...

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Pursuing Justice for Children and the Poor Now

14 Comments | Posted March 2, 2012 | 3:44 PM

I begin each year with a women’s spiritual retreat at CDF-Haley Farm’s leadership development center in prayer, silence, and song seeking God’s guidance for the year ahead. Our very thoughtful retreat leader, Shannon Daley-Harris, never fails to inspire and challenge us with her Bible study and stories -- and this...

Sunday links. « Fred Klonsky

Sunday links. « Fred Klonsky:

Sunday links.

by Fred Klonsky

Protest in Chicago on Saturday.
Why Illinois is broke? Caterpillar bleeds it dry.
The Gingrich campaign was always about book tours and speaking fees. But that doesn’t make him any less a racist prick.
Linda Darling-Hammond suggests that maybe it’s time to ask teachers. Actually, that time was a long time ago.
Beating the parent trigger law. Diane Ravitch wants us to learn from Florida.
If a loose framework of common national standards was the end point of this adventure, I wouldn’t worry so 

The Best Posts & Articles On The Education & National Security Report | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

The Best Posts & Articles On The Education & National Security Report | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…:

The Best Posts & Articles On The Education & National Security Report

by Larry Ferlazzo

Earlier this week, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Independent Task Force on U.S. Education Reform and National Security (chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice) was released.
Happily, it received attention for a couple of days and then dropped off of everybody’s radar screen. It will join the countless other task force reports that rest in the dust bin of history.
In the unlikely chance that someone does bring it up again in an education discussion, I thought it would be worth bringing together a few useful posts about it.
Here are my choices for The Best Posts & Articles On The Education & National Security Report:
The Joel Klein-Condi Rice ed report: What it will and won’t say is by Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post.

US could bring hate charge in Fla. teen shooting NorthJersey.com #trayvonmartin

US could bring hate charge in Fla. teen shooting : page all - NorthJersey.com:

US could bring hate charge in Fla. teen shooting

SUNDAY MARCH 25, 2012, 11:29 AM

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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MIAMI — The U.S. Justice Department could bring a hate crime charge against the shooter in the killing of black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin if there is sufficient evidence the slaying was motivated by racial bias and not simply a fight that spiraled out of control, legal experts and former prosecutors say.

AP

George Zimmerman, left, the neighborhood watch captain, is seen in police mug shot provided by the Orange County, Fla., Jail, via The Mimai Herald, from a 2005 arrest. Zimmerman says he shot Trayvon Martin in self-defense. Martin was not armed.

So far, only one such clue has surfaced publicly against 28-year-old George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who fatally shot the 17-year-old Martin on Feb. 26 in the central Florida town of Sanford. On one of his 911 calls to police that night, Zimmerman muttered something under his breath that some listeners say sounds like a racial slur. Zimmerman's father is white, and his mother is Hispanic.
"It sounds pretty obvious to me," said Donald Tibbs, a Drexel University law professor who has closely studied race, civil rights and criminal procedure. "If 

The in box. The value of finger paint. « Fred Klonsky

The in box. The value of finger paint. « Fred Klonsky:

The in box. The value of finger paint.

by Fred Klonsky

The last 24 hours have seen a lot of responses to Finger Paint. Here are some:

Fred,
I’ve posted about this before, but it bears repeating in the hopes that Mr. Olson will read it:
Mr. Olson,
The arts can play an important role in the life of a child. My nephew was very troubled as a teenager. He was acting out and failing until the day a public school music teacher put a saxophone in his hands and taught him how to play it. The music turned him around and helped 

Daily Kos: Aretha is 70 today

Daily Kos: Aretha is 70 today:

Aretha is 70 today

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

and I cannot let the occasion go unnoticed.
So here are just a few examples of why we should honor her today
Popout