Coffee Beans, Brown Boys and Truth: A Letter To Those Who Would Listen
next summer my brother will be the same age trayvon was when he died. and you will no longer think of him as the polite and adorable little boy at camp kaleidoscope with teeth too big for his head. and a head too big for his [...]
#LastWords of the Killed – Illustrations Tell the Story
"Were you with him?" "What did he say?" "What were his last words?" "Did he mention...?" By the time we are nine, ten, or eleven most of us will hear someone wonder aloud, after a passing, what did it all mean and how did it come [...]
“Stop Fearing Our Children”: Why Juvenile Incarceration Needs to Go
"Children, it turns out, will never thrive in storage," Nell Bernstein writes in the recently released Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison. It's a statement that shouldn't seem radical. (I Googled "thrive in storage," just to make sure, and it [...]
Irene Robinson Cries, “Mayor You Stole My Children’s Safe, Sane Neighborhood School”
Surrounded by girls, Rasheed Curtis, 6, talks about why Overton should stay open before the last day of school at Overton Elementary School, June 19, 2013. | Jessica Koscielniak ~ Sun-Times Mayor You Stole My Children’s Safe, Sane Neighborhood SchoolA second open letter from Irene Robinson [...]
Abolishing the Broken US Juvenile Justice System
By the time I was 7 years old I knew drugs were bad. I didn’t need a parent to sit me down on their knee and tell me this because Saturday morning cartoons were frequently interrupted by an advertisement brought to me by Partnership for [...]
not an elegy for Mike Brown
I am sick of writing this poem but bring the boy. his new name his same old body. ordinary, black dead thing. bring him & we will mourn until we forget what we are mourning & isn’t that what being black is about? not the [...]
The New Racism
Long before he became the most powerful man in the Alabama Senate, before he controlled billions of dollars in state money and had lobbyists, governors, and future presidents seeking his favor, Hank Sanders used newspapers and magazines as bathroom tissue. His mother would collect periodicals [...]
Research on Reforms – Comparison of 2014 Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) Results
It is generally accepted that the Orleans Parish Schools taken over by the Recovery District in New Orleans (RSD-NO), as a group, performed at or near the bottom for achievement levels on The Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP). Nevertheless, ardent supporters of this "reform" movement [...]