Day: July 13, 2018

By Sanashihla, an educator

Our Black children deserve more in our city and our schools. 60% of New Orleans residents are Black. The schools are made up of at least 80% Black children. Nearly 50% of children in New Orleans live in poverty. 96% of all juvenile arrests are of Black children.

New Orleans is a city where the rich ruling class acquired generational wealth on the enslavement of African people, whose descendants now fill the jails and prisons, or many of whom work low wage jobs without workers’ rights.

We cannot just accept this. We must DO SOMETHING to change these conditions!
We should make EQUITY a priority for our children, not just in words but in ACTION.

What does investment into children, of money and resources from the city and schools like now?

1. For an 180 day school year, Louisiana tax payers pay $11,000 per child, which results in an investment of $61 per day.

2. However, for 180 days in juvenile prison, Louisiana tax payers pay $50,400 per inmate, because it cost $280 PER DAY to keep kids locked up in juvenile prisons.

3. Imagine if we flipped the invest to invest $280 per day into the proactive education of children, how much of a difference it could make?

4. Out of the $647 million dollar city budget, only 1% goes to job development, and only 3% goes to children & families, while a
whopping 63% goes to cops, jails, and reactive programs.

All of the above adds up to an intentional investment in mass incarceration.

There are at least three ways the city and schools could prioritize equity for New Orleans’ children:

1. FLIP THE BUDGET so that 63% of the resources proactively go to job development, and children & families. Invest in children rather than criminalize them. Mass incarceration only impoverishes families. Yet, we can meet children’s immediate material and emotional needs, rather than hire more high paid administrators. Hire culturally competent social workers, therapists, and nurses.

2. Rather than invest in test preparation materials and programs, proactively invest in reading and math interventionists/specialists to collaborate with teachers to help children learn how to think, not merely what to think. There is not a sensible educator in any school that believes the current overabundance of testing is healthy for kids or teachers. Testing is a for-profit industry, stealing educational funds.

3. Enable and welcome parents to have a larger role in decision making. This means making extra accommodations that consider the hectic schedules of working families. A strong school parent partnership allows children to feel mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically safe & cared for in their journey to learn.

OneApp Discriminates

Realize that the idea of “choice” can either be about expanding opportunity or limiting options on the sly. Choice is a nice way of saying that every school is NOT equal. And, although the public has been conditioned to “accept” that certain schools have specializations, such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and or ART, the real question is: shouldn’t all schools invest in science, technology, engineering, math, art and other areas of education? Why can’t schools of every neighborhood offer the opportunities that the rich ruling class demands be available in their children’s schools? The answer is: THEY CAN, when our priorities are in order and child centered. The OneApp does not solve equity issues in New Orleans, it exacerbates them when a parent is responsible for selecting up to 8 schools, and gets number 6, 7, or 8. What kind of choice is that?

So how do we get equity for our children, in our schools and beyond?

We don’t get it by sitting in silence or waiting for change to happen on its own. Strategic unity is key. We cannot allow public officials to support laws, policies, or budgets that promote white supremacy and maintain exploitation and oppression. We must educate, agitate, organize! Join us in doing so!

The Black Alliance for Peace faces many challenges and attacks because of its principled stance of opposition to US imperialism. But some people may be surprised to learn that the BAP has recently come under attack from people on the left who call themselves socialists. One of the leaders of Black Alliance for Peace, Ajamu Baraka, was specifically targeted when he was a featured speaker at the annual Left Forum in New York City.

Members of the Democratic Socialists of America and the International Socialist Organization openly lent credibility to the lies and demonizations of other countries that the US uses to justify its military interventions and bloody wars across the globe. They accused Baraka of being an “Assadist”– a meaningless term borrowed from the U.S. State Department which is used to slander those who demand that the United States military withdraw from Syria. Socialists should be protesting actual enemies like the military industrial complex, not radical black leaders like Ajamu Baraka.

Quest Riggs of New Orleans’ Students and Workers Against Racism and Militarism (SWARM) writes, “we stand in solidarity with Ajamu Baraka and the Black Alliance for Peace. We know that these attacks will do nothing to deter them from their committed struggle against US imperialism.”

Learn more about the Black Alliance for Peace at www.blackallianceforpeace.com

Immigrants risk everything to come here because U.S. imperialism and Wall Street policies have destroyed their economies or installed military governments that guarantee profits for U.S. corporations. 10,000 children ripped from their families and imprisoned shows there is no limit to what U.S. capitalist rulers will do. Immigrants come here as refugees but they are not recognized as such because that would mean admitting the imperialist US government’s role in their displacement.

Take two examples: Mexico and Honduras. When the U.S. put in place the North American Free Trade Agreement, US agribusiness firms flooded Mexican markets with corn, the longtime staple economic crop of Mexico. Corporations reaped a windfall of profit while more than two million farmers lost their livelihoods and were stranded, hungry and homeless.

In 2009 the people of Honduras elected a government that wanted to enact some measures to help the people. The U.S. under Obama/Hillary Clinton financed and orchestrated a military coup against that elected government and put in place a repressive regime that has murdered and imprisoned thousands while impoverishing the masses.

Here in the U.S. workers and oppressed people are seeing low wages and all our public services gutted, while the for-profit military machine loots the treasury. Profit making prisons mean mass incarceration for immigrants and working class people, especially the Black community. The rich are getting much richer but we are not. They are taking it all and still come back for more.

To carry off this robbery of the people, the government, which represents Wall Street, is whipping up racism and homophobia, attacking women’s rights, and scapegoating immigrants. They want to divide the working class and turn our attention away from their thievery.

The reality is that whenever any group of workers, whatever their status or nationality, race or sexual identity, is unequal, it lowers the livings standards and rights of all workers.

Capital–that is, money accumulated from the sweat of our labor but owned privately by a few individual capitalists– can cross all the borders in the world to exploit people’s misery for profit. There are no laws preventing U.S. capitalist corporations from running away to other countries, no laws preventing them from hiding their profits offshore, no laws ensuring a good job or income for all. But human beings, our class sisters and brothers and children, are imprisoned.

We as workers are linked together globally. If the U.S. installs a dictatorship to pay workers $1 a day somewhere, it lowers our wages. There are no borders in the workers struggle. The government comes up with all sorts of lies to justify their wars for private profit. They can’t openly say they are trying to dominate the world to fill their bank vaults at any cost, no matter how many lives are taken.

In our fight to free the children and families we recognize that these crimes are not new to US policy but a continuation of the kidnappings that ripped apart families under slavery and that tore Native children from their homes. Every day, throughout this land of for-profit prisons, thousands of families, especially Black families, suffer under the US system of mass incarceration. Just as sheriffs originated as catchers of enslaved people, today ICE plays this role.

We must stand up for all the children, free all the families, abolish ICE, win equal political and economic rights for immigrants, and put an end to for-profit prisons and mass incarceration. These aims are in the interest of “citizen” and immigrant workers alike.

Yemen, which has a population of nearly 29 million people, is being devastated by a long and bloody war. For nearly 3 years Saudi Arabia has bombed the people of Yemen, destroying their access to essential goods. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has enforced a devastating blockade of the nation’s main air and sea ports through which Yemen imports almost 90% of its food and the majority of its medicine. This has caused a food crisis that has starved millions of Yemenis including 50,000 children in 2017. Malnourishment has resulted in the worst cholera outbreak that the world has ever seen, with a million recorded cases last year. On June 11 the Saudis stooped so low as to bomb a cholera treatment center operated by Doctors Without Borders, knowing full well the purpose of the facility.

If you’re lucky, you might have heard this much on the news. But what the corporate media never reports is that this is being done with American planes, ships, rockets and military intel. Trump and his crew are supporting the genocide with money and weapons, and they’re also giving a diplomatic shield to the Saudis as they carry it out. As much as they try to distance themselves from it, the U.S. politicians and generals are truly responsible for genocide against Yemen.

Millions of Yemeni workers and their children face starvation, disease and regular bombings. Some of them resist, some of them try to flee to other countries but the majority can do neither. Just like us, they have to go back to work every morning despite these unimaginable conditions. Workers in different countries must build the solidarity necessary to truly support each other and finally bring an end to the scourge of US bombs across the globe.

Get informed and show your solidarity with the people of Yemen!

End the U.S.-Saudi massacre of Yemen NOW!