As police have set up shop in schools across the country, the definition of what is a crime as opposed to a teachable moment has changed in extraordinary ways. In one middle school we’re familiar with, a teacher routinely allowed her students to take single pieces of candy from a big container she kept on her desk. One day, several girls grabbed handfuls. The teacher promptly sent them to the police officer assigned to the school. What formerly would have been an opportunity to have a conversation about a minor transgression instead became a law enforcement issue.
“Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try—that’s my fate, too.” —11th-grade African American student, Berkeley, Calif.
EDITORIAL • Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline
By the editors of Rethinking Schools
This young man isn’t being cynical or melodramatic [moderator's note: refer to the quote above]; he’s articulating a terrifying reality for many of the children and youth sitting in our classrooms—a reality that is often invisible or misunderstood. Some have seen the growing numbers of security guards and police in our schools as unfortunate but necessary responses to the behavior of children from poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods. But what if something more ominous is happening? What if many of our students—particularly our African American, Latina/o, Native American, and Southeast Asian children—are being channeled toward prison and a lifetime of second-class status?
We believe that this is the case, and there is ample evidence to support that claim. What has come to be called the “school-to-prison pipeline” is turning too many schools into pathways to incarceration rather than opportunity. This trend has extraordinary implications for teachers and education activists. It affects everything from what we teach to how we build community in our classrooms, how we deal with conflicts with and among our students, how we build coalitions, and what demands we see as central to the fight for social justice education.
What Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?
The school-to-prison pipeline begins in deep social and economic inequalities, and has taken root in the historic shortcomings of schooling in this country. The civil and human rights movements of the 1960s and ’70s spurred an effort to “rethink schools” to make them responsive to the needs of all students, their families, and communities. This rethinking included collaborative learning environments, multicultural curriculum, student-centered, experiential pedagogy—we were aiming for education as liberation. The back-to-basics backlash against that struggle has been more rigid enforcement of ever more alienating curriculum.
The “zero tolerance” policies that today are the most extreme form of this punishment paradigm were originally written for the war on drugs in the early 1980s, and later applied to schools. As Annette Fuentes explains, the resulting extraordinary rates of suspension and expulsion are linked nationally to increasing police presence, checkpoints, and surveillance inside schools.
To its credit, The Black Power Mixtape did show the Black Power movement in a more positive light by demonstrating how a people could be moved to (and rightfully so) pick up arms and defend themselves from police brutality, and by highlighting the lesser known programs that were beneficial to the black community’s survival like free breakfast programs for children. Where the film fell shortest was in its inability or unwillingness to connect this extraordinary moment in history to the injustices we face today.
‘The Black Power Mixtape’: Who’s Telling You Your Stories?
By Naima Ramos-Chapman
I was dopily excited to hear about this doc via Danny Glover on Democracy Now way back when he was still shopping it around the Sundance Film Festival. The Black Power Mixtapeis a compilation of never-before-seen footage of the Black Power movement shot by Swedish journalists in the 1960s and 1970s. Left neglected in a Swedish TV station’s cellar for 30 years, it was discovered by documentary filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson who conceptualized the linking of the sparse and seemingly incohesive material of the movement with amazingly shot intimate b-roll of children playing in defunct playgrounds, commentary from Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, John Forte and other “socially conscious” artists, looped to a sweet soundtrack crafted by none-other than ?uestlove… what was there not to love?
How about everything I just described minus the soundtrack?
The Stockholm Syndrome of Occupy (or yet another comment on Chris Hedges to get it out my chest)
Recently, Chris Hedges wrote a piece in truthdig called “Black Bloc: The Cancer in Occupy” in which he condemns what he refers to as “Black Bloc anarchists.” In the wake of the police attack on Occupy Oakland and the following debates over strategy and tactics in the Occupy movement, Hedges’ arguments have generated much controversy. We are posting one response below because it touches on the key contradictions raised by Hedges’ piece. It was originally written as a note on Facebook.
By SKS
I do not want to repeat what many have said, more eloquently or timely. Any repetition will either be unconcious or inevitable – but I do try to bring some fresh perspectives, or at least accents. So bear with me.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Ever since the Oakland Commune came into national conciousness with their successful strike in November, liberals who initially became infatuated with OWS as a possible liberal Tea Party have been launching increasingly virulent attacks against OWS, and in particular, its most militant element.
Naomi Wolf was perhaps the first notorious salvo of the liberal commentariat, when going all in with her arrest cred called OWS protesters against NBC (a corporation) “fascists”.
While debate is healthy, and diversity of opinions and views is both inevitable and one of the refreshing things of OWS as a movement – the interventions from the liberal camp have been increasingly totalitarian, undemocratic, and full of factual and historical inaccuracies.
They have moved from honest, concerned, disagreement within the movement, to dishonest hit pieces worthy of the worse dirty politics.
And this is something we predicted – we knew that the primary contradiction within this movement would be the need of liberals and the Democratic Party machine to turn this movement into a huge astroturf to counter the successful cooption of the Republicans of the Tea Party – of sheer importance if Obama is to be re-elected.
A secret police document shows that the New York City Police Department increased surveillance of thousands of mosques and Muslims.
The revelation contradicts the department’s claim that it does not conduct religious profilingPolice analysts listed a dozen mosques from central Connecticut to the Philadelphia suburbs. None has been linked to terrorism, either in the document or publicly by federal agencies.obtained by the Associated Press
For all who can, join us today as we demand the resignation of Ray Kelly. See press advisory below for details of the event and background, co-sponsored by Occupy Faith.
Muslim and Ally Communities to Rally Calling for NYPD Accountability
Today, as the Associated Press reports more secret NYPD documents showing targeted surveillance of thousands of Shi’a Muslims and their mosques based solely on their religion, and one week since the NYPD was caught lying to the public and Mayor about it’s use of a bigoted training film, Muslim and diverse communities across the city are continuing their call for accountability by holding a rally and march. Last week, Commissioner Ray Kelly and the NYPD was exposed for participating in the making and showing of the Islamophobic, hate documentary, “The Third Jihad” to 1,500 police officers and then repeatedly lying about it on the public record.
Who: Muslim communities, interfaith leaders, directly impacted community members, legal advocates, Shia leaders
What: Rally at Foley Square, followed by march to One Police Plaza
When: Friday, February 3, 2012 from 3:00-4:15pm, March begins at 4:15pm
“The stated goal for the day was to “move-in” to a large, abandoned, building to turn it into a social and political center. It is a long vacant convention center – the only people ever near there are the homeless who use the space outside the building as a bed. The building occupation also draws attention to the large number of abandoned and unused buildings in Oakland.”
“They were met with police repression, using the same weapons and tactics the Israeli government deploys against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
What really happened at Occupy Oakland on Saturday January 28 – Read my firsthand account, not the news. Please Spread.
by baked42
For the internet, here’s a first-hand account of Occupy Oakland on 1/28/2012, because the news never tells the full story. I’ll tell you about the street battle, the 300+ arrests, the vandalism, the flag burning, all in the context of my experience today. This is deeper than the headlines. No major news source can do that for you.
The stated goal for the day was to “move-in” to a large, abandoned, building to turn it into a social and political center. It is a long vacant convention center – the only people ever near there are the homeless who use the space outside the building as a bed. The building occupation also draws attention to the large number of abandoned and unused buildings in Oakland. The day started with a rally and a march to the proposed building. The police knew which building was the target, surrounded it, and used highly mobile units to try and divert the protest. After avoiding police lines, the group made it to one side of the building. Now, this is a very large building, and we were on a road with construction fences on both sides, and a large ditch separating us from the cops. The police fired smoke grenades into the crowd as the group neared a small path around the ditch, towards the building. They declared an unlawful assembly, and this is when the crowd broke down the construction fence. A few people broke fences to escape the situation, others because they were pissed. A couple more fences were taken down then necessary, but no valuable equipment was destroyed. They only things broken were fences.
In the wake of the U.C. Davis incident, much has been made about the increased militarization of local police departments, raising questions about the effectiveness of these tactics and a concern about the far-reaching authority of police to use force. However, this is hardly a new phenomenon. The increased militarization of America’s police forces can trace its origins to the black community, and like so much that is currently plaguing the criminal-justice system, it is a different so-called war that can be blamed: the war on drugs.
From War on Drugs to War on Occupy
By: Mychal Denzel Smith
The photos and description of what took place at Occupy Chapel Hill, an Occupy Wall Street offshoot in North Carolina, resemble the second tenet of the so-called PowellDoctrine. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Colin Powell said that “force, when used, should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy.”
On Nov. 13 a tactical team of 25 Chapel Hill police officers equipped with assault rifles, helmets and bulletproof vests forced 13 people to the ground in handcuffs, including a reporter covering the protest, and arrested eight nonviolent and unarmed demonstrators and charged them with breaking and entering for occupying a vacant car dealership.
Later that week, there was the controversial NYPD raid on the original Occupy encampment in lower Manhattan, and more recently, a video of peaceful student protesters being pepper-sprayed on the campus of the University of California, Davis, went viral and sparked national outrage. The shocking imagery is now ingrained in the public consciousness, representing the increasingly violent response of police to these nonviolent protests.
Overwhelming and disproportionate, indeed. But what Powell was describing in 1991 was a new way of waging war, one intended as a last resort and to minimize military involvement unless absolutely necessary. What police officers at the Occupy protests were engaging in was not war.
“We want straight people reading this article to understand that the liberation of LGBTQ etc. people is not just about some ‘others,’ but is about their lives too. It is about expanding the realm of freedom and possibility that they live in along with us.
“We’re not trying to carve out a little spaces of tolerance in existing society. We’re trying to overthrow the existing society and create a new one, because the same existing society that is crushing queer people as queer people is crushing just about everyone else, and the planet to boot! This is the same society that is perpetuating imperialist war after imperialist war, or locking people up by the millions!”
The following interview conducted with several participants in the Kasama project and the Voice Collective who have been active in queer politics within Louisiana.
The interview was conducted by a reporter for a university newspaper in Louisiana. It focused on the efforts repeal of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA is a federal law which seeks to legally limit marriage and the rights associated with marriage to couples made up of one man and one woman. The attempt to repeal that bill is, therefore, an effort to advance the legalization of marriage between same-sex couples.
MUMIA SPARED! No Death Penalty For Mumia Abu-Jamal
Written by Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors have called off their 30-year battle to put former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal to death in the killing of a white police officer, putting to an end the racially charged case that became a major battleground in the fight over the death penalty.
Flanked by the police Officer Daniel Faulkner’s widow, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced his decision Wednesday.
“There’s never been any doubt in my mind that Mumia Abu-Jamal shot and killed Officer Faulkner. I believe that the appropriate sentence was handed down by a jury of his peers in 1982,” said Williams, who is black. “While Abu-Jamal will no longer be facing the death penalty, he will remain behind bars for the rest of his life, and that is where he belongs.”
Abu-Jamal was convicted of fatally shooting Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981. He was sentenced to death after his trial the following year.
Abu-Jamal, who has been incarcerated in a western Pennsylvania prison, has garnered worldwide support from those who believe he was the victim of a biased justice system.
The conviction was upheld through years of legal appeals. But a federal appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing after ruling the instructions given to the jury were potentially misleading.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the case in October. That forced prosecutors to decide if they wanted to again pursue the death penalty through a new sentencing hearing or accept a life sentence.
Forty-two years ago today, Fred Hampton was murdered by the Chicago Police Dept. with FBI cooperation.
As Deputy Chairman of the Black Panther Party’s Chicago chapter, he brought about a truce between various street gangs in Chicago, organized weekly rallies, worked with the BPP’s local People’s Clinic, taught political education classes, and launched a project for community supervision of the police.
He was twenty-one years old when Chicago police gunned him down in his bed, after he had been drugged by his bodyguard, who was an FBI operative. Despite their attempts at a cover-up, Chicago Police Dept. were exposed in the documentary “The Murder of Fred Hampton” which we have provided below in its entirety. This film does not only reveal the lengths to which Chicago PD, along with the FBI, went to kill Fred Hampton, and destroy the Black Panthers, but also portrays his talents as a speaker, organizer and thinker who was tireless in his efforts to fuse revolutionary politics with the people.
In the aftermath of Mayor Bloomberg’s brutal raid on Liberty Square in New York City, this is a statement from Occupy Wall St.
You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.
Posted 6 hours ago on Nov. 15, 2011, 1:36 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
A massive police force is presently evicting Liberty Square, home of Occupy Wall Street for the past two months and birthplace of the 99% movement that has spread across the country and around the world
The raid started just after 1:00am. Supporters and allies are mobilizing throughout the city, presently converging at Foley Square. Supporters are also planning public actions for the coming days, including occupation actions.
You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.
Two months ago a few hundred New Yorkers set up an encampment at the doorstep of Wall Street. Since then, Occupy Wall Street has become a national and even international symbol — with similarly styled occupations popping up in cities and towns across America and around the world. A growing popular movement has significantly altered the national narrative about our economy, our democracy, and our future.
Americans are talking about the consolidation of wealth and power in our society, and the stranglehold that the top 1% have over our political system. More and more Americans are seeing the crises of our economy and our democracy as systemic problems, that require collective action to remedy. More and more Americans are identifying as part of the 99%, and saying “enough!” Read the rest of this entry »
The following talk was given, Nov. 5, at the first national conference of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, in Chicago. Sundin is a leader in the anti-war movement. Her home was among those raided by the FBI, on Sept. 24, 2010.
by Jess Sundin
Sisters and brothers, I’m so glad to be here with you today. I’m honored to speak on the same platform with so many people I respect, whose examples I strive to follow. Not only my friend, Carlos Montes, but also the speakers you will hear later – the families of political prisoners from the Palestinian struggle – Sami Al Arian, Ghassan Elashi and Abdelhaleem Ashqar. These men, like Carlos, have dedicated their lives to the liberation of their peoples and making this world a more just one for all of us.
We are here today because the powers that be will do anything to silence voices for justice. U.S. imperialists have bombed out whole cities, killed, tortured and starved millions of people – all in the pursuit of power and profit. We are here today as those who have raised our voices to oppose imperialist wars. We have organized our communities to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, those directly in the crosshairs of the imperialist war machine.
And yet, they dare to call us the terrorists, to treat us as the criminals. But turning reality on its head cannot save them as their grip on the world slips every day. From the Arab uprisings to Occupy Wall Street, and all points in between, the war criminals are losing ground. They cannot control the will of the peoples of the Middle East or South America, so they make criminals of those here in the U.S. who support self-determination for the world’s peoples.
The following article, from Party for Socialism and Liberation expresses a long-standing common view held by radical socialists, communists and Marxists on the role and nature of cop. It was written by a participant in the Oct. 1 Occupy Wall Street march on the Brooklyn Bridge, and among the 700 protesters trapped and arrested there.
Kasama is publishing it here to raise two questions: Is this analysis essentially nuanced enough to capture the reality it explores — do cops have a basic role that is fundamentally opposed to progressive and radical politics that they are unlikely to break to of? And if so, how will a generation of diverse new activists come to embrace such views — will it help that they are pressured to adopt them in repeated sharp debates between liberals and radicals, will the common adoption come as pepole learn in practice the loyalties of police and local officials to the capitalist system (and its 1% masters)?
Kasama believe a debate over the facts (the nature of the police) and on method (how we settle differences over this within the movement) deserve to be carried out with some patience, openmindedness and urgency.
This was originally on gawker.com. H/T to Ajagbe for the heads up.
At a New York cyber security conference one day before the protest began, Loyd cited Occupy Wall Street as an example of a “newly emerging threat to U.S. information systems.” (In the lead-up to Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous had issued threats against the New York Stock Exchange.) He told the assembled crowd the FBI has been “monitoring the event on cyberspace and are preparing to meet it with physical security,” according to a New York Institute of Technology press release.
Meet the Guy Who Snitched on Occupy Wall Street to the FBI and NYPD
By Adrian Chen
The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for a month. And it seems the FBI and NYPD have had help tracking protesters’ moves thanks to a conservative computer security expert who gained access to one of the group’s internal mailing lists, and then handed over information on the group’s plans to authorities and corporations targeted by protesters.
Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, New York security consultant Thomas Ryan has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement. Ryan says he’s done contract work for the U.S. Army and he brags on his blog that he leads “a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world.” But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers’ social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.
The crowd erupted in cheers upon the announcement: as of 6:30 this morning, Occupy Wall St. was not moving. Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD postponed their plans to “clean” the park, and averted a confrontation with a 3000-strong occupation. We, raising our brooms in the air like peasants resisting tyrants, cheered and broke into spontaneous chants, beginning with: “We..ARE..the 99%!”
While recognizing that the threat is still looming, we celebrated this moment as an important victory, not just for New York, but for the other occupations. Facing our most serious threat thus far, we stood our ground and won. But let’s step back for a moment.
Twice, we have been brutalized by police and twice, we grew in support and numbers. With their third move, they backed down. For days, Mayor Bloomberg whipped up a campaign of lies about sanitation, crowding, harassment of business owners and people on their way to work, but it backfired.
This law student was arrested protesting in front of a major bank. Although you can’t hear what he’s saying in the video, here’s a brief account from Suzy Subways:
I saw this guy speak at the General Assembly on Sunday. He described his arrest: “I went up to the barricade, and I said, ‘This is the bank that took my parents’ house! Now take me!’ And they did.” He also said that his father is dying of cancer. He’s an incredible speaker, and the people’s mic made it even more dramatic. People were crying and holding each other afterwards. There was a sense of, THIS is why we want to occupy wall street.
This comes from Rethinking Schools.
