No Struggle, No Progress

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  • I had a great time in Seattle at the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference! Big congratulations to the organizers on their largest ever attendance – 1300+. Unfortunately there is no video or audio of my talk, but I will post an edited...

    I had a great time in Seattle at the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference! Big congratulations to the organizers on their largest ever attendance – 1300+. Unfortunately there is no video or audio of my talk, but I will post an edited version soon – stay tuned!

    • 2 years ago
  • Trump Asked “Where does it stop?” That’s Actually a Good Question
The President of the United States of America has been widely criticized for defending racist protesters who gathered recently in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Not all of those people...

    Trump Asked “Where does it stop?” That’s Actually a Good Question

    The President of the United States of America has been widely criticized for defending racist protesters who gathered recently in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me,” he said. “Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.” Some of them, the President said, “are very fine people.” Explaining further, he defended the reason for their presence in Charlottesville — protesting the removal of a statue of a confederate leader, Robert E. Lee. In doing so, the President raised an important issue about these monuments and about our collective stance towards American history. He pointed out that George Washington owned slaves, implying that he, too, might become a target of protest. “So this week, it is Robert E. Lee,” Trump said. “I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?“

    We do have to ask: Where does it stop? Not everyone in the anti-Trump camp answers this question in the same way. Some historians have rebuked the president on this point, arguing that he made an egregious, ignorant error by equating a man who helped to forge the nation (Washington) with one who took up arms against it (Lee). And yet, that does not completely answer the specific charge raised by the President. After all, George Washington did own slaves. If we begin tearing down pro-slavery monuments in the United States, where does it stop? I want to argue here that “it” ought to go a lot farther than perhaps many people think. I want us to use this moment of disgust at the Confederacy and its modern-day defenders to argue that it is time to tell a new, more honest story about the origins of this country. Instead of ducking the President’s challenge, let’s take it up. Where does it stop? Let’s answer him: it goes all the way to the beginning. If we’re serious about uprooting racism and racist violence, we have to write a new American history for every student in every classroom, for every monument and museum.

    Keep reading this blog post at the Verso Books Blog.

    • 2 years ago
    • 1 notes
    • #charlottsville
    • #confederate monuments
    • #white supremacy
    • #american history
  • Since 2015, I have been working with high school students at the (newly re-named) Maxine Greene High School for Imaginative Inquiry. In collaboration with the Lincoln Center Atrium and Voices of a Peoples History, and working with teaching artist Susan Pourfar, we develop a public student performance based on the historical texts compiled in the book, Voices of a Peoples History of the United States, edited by Anthony Arnove and Howard Zinn. As you’ll see in the video, this is politically, personally and artistically a thrilling project. Stay tuned for info on this year’s performances!

    • 2 years ago
    • #Peoples History
    • #voices of a peoples history
    • #howard zinn
  • Dr. Gwendolyn Marie Patton, 1943-2017
The sky over Montgomery, Alabama is so big and blue, to a city dweller like me it looks like it might swallow me up. When it rains, it feels like that whole big sky is falling on you. It was a bright, sunny day...

    Dr. Gwendolyn Marie Patton, 1943-2017

    The sky over Montgomery, Alabama is so big and blue, to a city dweller like me it looks like it might swallow me up. When it rains, it feels like that whole big sky is falling on you. It was a bright, sunny day and later, a rainy one, too, when they put Dr. Gwendolyn Marie Patton in the earth. To say that Gwen Patton was a lifelong activist and organizer feels like an understatement. People experienced her more as a force of nature. She was introduced to movement politics at nine years of age, when she worked as a junior aide to the Montgomery Improvement Association — the organization behind the famous bus boycott. At age thirteen she was teaching in the citizenship school that operated out of her father’s house. Gwen came to Tuskegee as a freshman in 1963, and was elected the first female president of the Student Government Association two years later. “When I went to Tuskegee,” she told me, “I was already a revolutionary.”

    It was a warm day, fifty years later, in the summer of 2015 when I joined Gwen for lunch in the kitchen of her modest Montgomery home. I had read about Gwen Patton and I had seen some of her articles, but I was totally unprepared for the experience of interviewing Gwen Patton. A petit woman, eating very little of the food I brought her and chain-smoking, Patton was so full of passion, wit, fire and challenge at 72, that I could only imagine how daunting it would have been to lock horns with her half a century earlier. Fortunately for me, she frequently ignored my questions about the Tuskegee student movement (the subject of my dissertation) and instead told me a long, winding story about her family’s roots in Inkster, Michigan, the nature of the black middle class (“the class within the caste” as she called it) and the legacy of Booker T. Washington. I say “fortunately” because, although I didn’t realize it at the time, her story, the way she told it, although it was not what I expected or sought, was full of crucial insights into her place and time that I didn’t know that I didn’t know, and didn’t know to ask. At one point Gwen stepped from the kitchen into her adjacent office to retrieve a document for me. I followed her, and, standing in the doorway, looking at her flip through her papers, the extent of her legacy began to sink in. That Alabama sunshine came through her office curtains just so, alighting on her and the many artifacts of her political activism over many decades. I asked if I could take her picture, and she agreed (see above).

    Gwen Patton’s memorial service drew a large crowd, including her siblings, family, her “movement family,” and some elected representatives. All testified to her powerful intellect and forceful personality. “Gwen was not afraid to speak the truth,” her friend Georgette Norman told the mourners, “She could not and would not be silenced.” Many nieces and nephews recalled the impact “Auntie Gwen” had on their lives. Her cousin Ella Bell told me it was Gwen who challenged her to run for school board, initiating her long tenure in that role. A niece laughed recalling how terrified she was of Gwen’s driving habits (she said she didn’t need to respect stop signs, she could just “wave” through an intersection since “everyone here knows me”). In the hallway, I struck up conversation with one of Gwen’s old friends, Wade Marbaugh, who told me about how they met working on Jesse Jackson’s first presidential campaign. From his jacket he retrieved a yellowed newspaper article, The Montgomery-Tuskegee Times, unfolding it to an op-ed that he had co-authored with Gwen in 1984 about Reagan’s election and the rise of the right. “It could have been written today,” he lamented. Inside the Hutchinson Missionary Baptist Church, where Gwen was a fourth-generation member and a Sunday School teacher, the choir sang, “May the Work I’ve Done Speak for Me,” a truly fitting tribute.

    If you Google “Gwen Patton” you can quickly get a sense of the breadth of her work. Likewise, thumb through the back of nearly any civil rights movement anthology or substantive history of the mid-twentieth century southern black movement, you are likely to find the name “Gwen Patton” in the index. A few of the highlights of her activist career, in my mind, include her role as a leader of the Tuskegee Institute Advancement League, the student-led civil rights organization that outpaced the more moderate political approach of the faculty, and propelled many Tuskegee students into off-campus activism for the first time in their lives. By marching on Montgomery in the hundreds, Tuskegee students — led by Patton — pushed for the completion of the historic Selma to Montgomery march when Martin Luther King and others were hesitant to violate a court injunction on it. In a 2005 interview, Ruby Nell Sales remembered that it was Gwen Patton who came to her dorm and convinced her to get involved in the movement. Patton was breaking the mold for women on campus. “I’d never seen a Black woman in a position that Gwen Patton was carrying out,” Sales recalled, “she had some real clout on the campus. And she had clout not because she was a beauty queen but because she was talking about issues.”

    Gwen described to me the manner in which she “liberated” resources from Tuskegee. She made food, lodging, vehicles, printing, etc. available to activists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the context of their most intensive campaigns in the Black Belt. She was one of the leading activists pushing for desegregation in the town of Tuskegee, an effort that accelerated after one of her friends, Tuskegee student and Navy veteran Sammy Younge was murdered in 1966 by a white gas station attendant. After college Patton played a national role in several movements and organizations, founding both the National Anti-War Anti-Draft Union, the National Association of Black Students, and later, Project South. She earned a masters degree and a doctorate and for time was a professor at Brooklyn College in New York. It seems that she was connected to everyone and that everyone was connected to her — from Rosa Parks to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to Stokely Carmichael to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

    The day after our lunch, Gwen brought me to Trenholm State Technical College to take a look at her papers which are stored there. She frequently described herself to me as a tactician — and indeed, she seems to have had a talent for organization — and yet her archive is filled with speeches and writings on education, political economy, the role of women in revolution, and more. Gwen Patton is someone who spent her entire life trying to figure out how to build a movement for social justice. Future generations will have much to learn from and about her. Fortunately, she was able to complete a memoir and approve the proofs of it before she passed. That text, together with the extensive collection of her papers at Trenholm State, mean that her work will literally be able to speak for her in the years to come.

    From the church, I followed the caravan a few blocks to a graveyard, where Gwen was laid to rest next to her grandmother and grandfather. We mourned under the hot sun that day, and that night the rain came. Driving through the rain, I thought about all the violence, oppression, terror and intimidation that had taken place under that big Alabama sky. For her entire life, Gwen Patton had dared to stand up and speak out. Now it’s our turn to follow her example.

    • 2 years ago
    • 3 notes
    • #Gwen Patton
    • #civil rights movement
    • #tuskegee
  • I wrote two letters to you-know-who. I haven’t heard back yet.
You can read them here:
Two amazing Americans! February 9, 2017
Dear Mr. Civil War Scholar-In-Chief May 8, 2017

    I wrote two letters to you-know-who. I haven’t heard back yet.

    You can read them here:

    Two amazing Americans!  February 9, 2017

    Dear Mr. Civil War Scholar-In-Chief  May 8, 2017

    • 2 years ago
    • #donald trump
    • #black history
    • #frederick douglass
    • #civil war
  • 50+ Organizations Working to Defend and Improve Public Education.
I asked my social media feed to send me the names and links of organizations that are working to defend and improve public education. The 50+ that were sent to me are listed below....

    50+ Organizations Working to Defend and Improve Public Education.

    I asked my social media feed to send me the names and links of organizations that are working to defend and improve public education. The 50+ that were sent to me are listed below. This is, of course, a partial and provisional list. There are many, many states and organizations not represented below. Also, some may disagree about whether certain organizations should be included or not, based on stances or compromises they may have made. I cannot vouch for these organizations. I asked for organizations that people know and trust, and this is what I received. Personally, I think we are going to need broad, principled and democratic organizations and alliances in the next few years. I am publishing this list in that spirit. If you think something should be added or subtracted, I may not agree with you, but i’m happy to hear about it. Write to me. See you in the streets.

    Updated January 22, 2017.

    NATIONAL

    The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools

    Annenburg Institute for School Reform

    Badass Teachers Association

    Class Size Matters

    EduColor

    Education Law Center

    Education for Liberation Network

    Fair Test: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing

    GLSEN

    Journey for Justice

    Live Above the Hype

    National Association for Multicultural Education

    National Coalition on School Diversity

    Network for Public Education

    Parents Across America

    Rethinking Schools

    Save Our Schools

    Teacher Activist Groups

    Teaching for Change

    United Caucuses of Rank and File Educators

    Voices of a Peoples History

    Zinn Education Project


    REGIONAL

    Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference

    CALIFORNIA

    Grassroots Coalition for the Schools LA Children Deserve

    Homies Empowerment Program / Adelante

    Peoples Education Movement

    Roses in Concrete

    Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing


    ILLINOIS

    Blocks Together

    Caucus of Rank and File Educators

    Chicago Student Union

    Chicago Teachers Union

    Parents 4 Teachers

    Teachers for Social Justice


    MARYLAND

    Baltimore Algebra Project

    Teachers’ Democracy Project


    MASSACHUSETTS

    Boston Education Justice Alliance

    Boston Student Advisory Council

    Citizens for Public Schools

    Educators for a Democratic Union

    Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance

    Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts

    Youth Organizers for the Now Generation


    MICHIGAN

    Michigan Parents for Schools

    NEW JERSEY

    Newark Education Workers

    Newark Student Union

    NEW YORK

    Alliance for Quality Education

    Black New Yorkers for Educational Evidence

    Buffalo Parent-Teacher Organization

    Community Task Force on School Climate, Rochester

    Conference of Big 5 School Districts

    Independent Commission on Public Education

    IntegrateNYC4Me

    Movement of Rank and File Educators

    New York Collective of Radical Educators

    New York State Allies for Public Education

    New York State Youth Leadership Council

    New York Student Union

    Parent Leadership Project

    Participatory Action Research Center

    Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association

    Teachers Unite

    Youth Activists — Youth Allies Network


    NORTH CAROLINA

    Public Schools First, NC

    Organize 2020


    PENNSYLVANIA

    215 People’s Alliance

    Caucus of Working Educators

    Philadelphia Student Union


    RHODE ISLAND

    Providence Student Union


    WASHINGTON

    Social Equality Educators


    WISCONSIN

    Educators’ Network for Social Justice

    IWW Education Workers, Industrial Union 620

    • 3 years ago
    • 1 notes
    • #public education
  • When President-elect Donald Trump tapped Betsy DeVos to be his Secretary of Education, a colleague reminded me that a few years ago, when I was running for public office in NY, I went on Fox to debate DeVos on the issue of school choice. 

    • 3 years ago
    • #choice
    • #charter schools
    • #privatization
    • #Betsy DeVos
    • #us department of education
  • My review of Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s book, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation is featured in the new issue of Monthly Review. Read it online here.
In late April 2016, at a town hall-style event in London, President Obama complained about...

    My review of Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s book, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation is featured in the new issue of Monthly Review. Read it online here.

    In late April 2016, at a town hall-style event in London, President Obama complained about the rising movement against the state-sanctioned murder of black people often referred to as Black Lives Matter. Activists, he admonished, should “stop yelling” and instead push for incremental change through the official “process.” “Once you’ve highlighted an issue and brought it to people’s attention and shined a spotlight,” the President remarked, “and elected officials or people who are in a position to start bringing about change are ready to sit down with you, then you can’t just keep on yelling at them.”1 The spectacle of the first black president scolding black activists in the context of a rising rate of police murder (as of this writing, the police have killed 630 individuals, at least 155 of them black, nationwide in 2016) speaks volumes about the state of black politics today.2 Read the entire review…

    • 3 years ago
    • #Haymarket Books
    • #keeanga taylor
    • #black lives matter
    • #book review
  • Jacobin published my contribution to an ongoing debate about reparations and socialism:
The Socialist Case for Reparations
In a series of recent articles in the Atlantic, columnist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates criticized US presidential candidate and...

    Jacobin published my contribution to an ongoing debate about reparations and socialism:

    The Socialist Case for Reparations

    In a series of recent articles in the Atlantic, columnist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates criticized US presidential candidate and self-described socialist Bernie Sanders for not supporting reparations. Cedric Johnson responded with an open letter that challenged Coates’s worldview, and suggested that Coates is operating as part of a black managerial elite whose calls for reparations and critiques of redistributive social programs are really about carving out their piece of the American capitalist pie.

    There is a lot at stake in this debate — much more than whether Bernie Sanders cares about black people or whether we should support him as a candidate. The more important issue is how the Left views the relationship between racist oppression and the exploitation of the working class. And in this respect, Sanders, Coates, and Johnson all get it wrong.

    I think socialists should absolutely support the call for reparations for people of African descent in the United States (and elsewhere). Sanders was wrong to dismiss the issue, and Coates erroneously concluded from Sanders’s position that socialists necessarily adopt a reductionist, “class first” politics. Coates’s error was then confounded by Johnson’s argument, which counterposed the call for reparations to the fight for social-democratic redistributive policies — as if the two couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be part of the same struggle.

    Read more…

    • 4 years ago
    • 4 notes
    • #reparations
    • #ta nehisi coates
    • #bernie sanders
    • #cedric johnson
    • #socialists
    • #socialism
  • I wrote this piece in July, just after the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten announced the organization would endorse Hillary Clinton for President. Since then, the primary battle with Bernie Sanders has heated up...

    I wrote this piece in July, just after the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten announced the organization would endorse Hillary Clinton for President. Since then, the primary battle with Bernie Sanders has heated up considerably, further demonstrating (in my view) the fact that the Democratic Party is not going to be the vehicle for getting the kind of justice we need in public education – or anywhere else.

    Time for a New Strategy
    by Brian Jones
    January 26, 2016

    For those on the front lines of the fight to defend and improve public education, the 2016 presidential election is already a minefield. On July 11, 2015, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten announced that the roughly one-million-member organization would officially throw its weight behind Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president of the United States. The million members had zero opportunity to discuss or vote on the matter. This was not surprising in the least, given the union’s historic allegiance to the strategy of backing whichever Democrat is most likely to win, regardless of what he or she is likely to do in office.

    We’re living through an unprecedented attack on the public schools, on the teaching profession, and on unionized teachers in particular. The AFT could use its collective strength to alter the political landscape. At the very least, it could open up a political discussion in every local about the candidates and their positions. At best, it could do the unthinkable and dare to throw its weight behind “unelectable” candidates who actually support public education and teachers’ unions.

    Read more…

    • 4 years ago
    • 3 notes
    • #Hillary Clinton
    • #Bernie Sanders
    • #Democratic Party
    • #Jill Stein
    • #AFT
    • #public eduction
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