“Don’t Get Angry, Get Even” When Do You Start Counting
When the great Muhammad Ali was asked how many sit ups he did, he responded, “I don’t count my sit-ups, I only start counting when it starts hurting, that is when I start counting, because then it really counts, that’s what makes you a champion.” These words resonate in Tucson where Latina/o students are fighting [...]
Failing Schools or Failing leadership?
Since the 1980s, factories all over southern California have been shutting down or downsizing, many moving to countries where wages are lower, others using technology to replace workers. Their corporate owners did this to increase their profits, and it worked – the rich got richer by creating unemployment and reducing wages for those still lucky [...]
“Let’s Take Over the Takeover!”
When the LA School District abruptly turns their middle school into a charter-school, people protest. “Let’s take over the takeover,” vowed a South Los Angeles resident about the Los Angeles Board of Education’s recent move to close Henry Clay Middle School and then reopen it with Green Dot, a charter-school corporation, as operator. In effect [...]
Student Activists Train at ‘Bring It!”
Youth from South Caroline to Maryland gather at Virginia’s Wayside Center “I came to see students talk about what it takes to organize in our own schools and to then go back and actually do it,” says Luis Oyola, one of the facilitators of the first student-organizer retreat at the Wayside Center for Popular Education. [...]
1970s: How to educate Mexicans? 2011: Why educate Mexicans?
Arizona’s famous SB 1070 has overshadowed another law affecting, primarily, Mexican-American students in Arizona. House Bill 2281 bans Ethnic Studies in public schools and targets the Tucson School District’s Raza Studies Program. The two bills are an attempt to split the Latino community by forcing immigrants to fight against SB 1070 and Mexican Americans against [...]
The battle over Detroit public schools: A dispatch from District 2 (the barrio)
‘We are in a pitched battle over who controls the school system, and we have not lost’ I was appointed to the Detroit School Board in July, 2010 – the only Latina/o on the 11-member board. The elected board member was forced out by a minor scandal. The rest of the board is African American. [...]
Detroit students face ’economic violence’ from the state and the foundations
The students at Western High School who waited six weeks for a chemistry teacher were told that they would “pass the class.” The ones with whom I spoke, all 11th graders, hope to go to college. They know that if they get accepted by a college (and they will get accepted, based on their grade-point [...]