The People’s Rally, March, and Conference—Save Our Schools Coalition July 8-9, 2016

We are gathered here today as we the people are unified in a common cause drawn by G_d spirit of love, truth and justice. We are gathered here in the tradition of those who have worked throughout history to heal a divided nation. We are gathered here because we still believe in one nation one dream. We take seriously that pledge and prayer that we should be one nation under G_d indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

We are here for every student, this young man, young sisters…Ultimately, Saving our Schools is about saving our children…

We come here today and we are in the backdrop of our being here is Abraham Lincoln, who was assonated by hate and injustice. I can’t come here today and act like things are okay in America. I cannot come here today without first speaking to the cries and mourning and death in our nation.

I cannot come here today without speaking to ..Before I could finish weeping about Baton Rouge
Where Alton Sterling was killed first by two bullets at point blank range as he laid on the ground Then less than a day later, in Minnesota, from the deepest part south to the deepest height North in Minnesota where Philando Castile, was killed …and both were killed by what I call Black Bodies, Bullets, Badges, Gone Bad…Another Episode

And then just the night before President Obama pleaded with the nation to do better, to reach higher. And across this nation, peaceful protesters

What we are dealing with now my friends is Shakespearean. This tragedy of the nth degree is forcing us to have to wrestle with who we are. This is violence and death gone wild. And in this moment we must mourn for those killed and the families left behind. In this moment, we must denounce violence and embrace non-violence. Because violence cannot lead us forward. In this moment we must deal with the complexity. We cannot hide from it. Where we can see inhumanity up close we must chose to do better. We must choose to be more human. We must choose to be more loving and just. Even if we can’t fix it all, If the world is broken that bad and we cannot fix it all…our children should at least see us trying to fix it!

We have to challenge the very culture of violence. That brings me to today, Coretta Scott King said some words that I carry with me wherever I go.

Surely that kind of violence is violence, but poverty can produce that kind of violence…
“I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.”

Dyett High School Hunger Strikers Jitu Brown, National Director for the Journey for Justice Alliance and Irene Robinson talk about going on a hunger strike to reopen Chicago’s Dyett High School, at the Save Our Schools Rally in Washington DC.

I think that the great Poet, Freedom Fighter Bob Marley there is a natural mystique flowing through the air.”

In Milwaukee, charter schools…In Newark, some bold students

For the first time on American history, Privatization has been found guilty. Now, the struggle is to make them do some “get right” to the children in Newark.

In Seattle they thought that the testing movement was going to have a clean slate until some bold Badass Teachers and the NAACP..

And Old Chicago, where we supposedly had the most powerful Democratic Mayor.

In Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Newark, Patterson and Camden New Jersey, and other cities around the country our schools are set up to fail and thrown into chaos and we get blamed. The conditions are set up to make us believe we are helpless; that there is nothing to do.

Good afternoon. My name is Irene Robinson. I have lived in the community of Bronzeville on Chicago’s south side for over 30 years. I have 16 grand children and nine of them have been victims of racism in Chicago Public Schools, where Black Schools have been sabotaged and closed; and children made to think they are failures.

My Grandchildren were shuffled from school to school as if they were a desk or a broom; not human beings who deserved to be treated like their lives mattered.

Please hear me;

Closing schools is a Hate Crime. School Privatization is a Violation of our Human Rights.

In Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Newark, Patterson and Camden New Jersey, and other cities around the country our schools are set up to fail and thrown into chaos and we get blamed. The conditions are set up to make us believe we are helpless; that there is nothing to do.

But I Stand as a Living Witness You Are Not Helpless. We Have The Power To Shut All Of This Down. If You Want World Class Schools Across This Country For Every Child Make The Decision! Demand That Your Voice Matters and Under No Circumstances Do You Let The System Destroy Our Children.

Why did we drive all night to be here with you today?

One of the main reasons, I believe is because there is cultural violence on our schools.

I want everybody to look behind you. What do you see? You call it the obelisk. Very few of or children know that that structure was built by Black people in a place called Kemet. The Greeks renamed it Egypt. But Black people African people built scores of that structure along with the pyramids.

Black people were some of the first scientists, and mathematicians and doctors and yet most of our children do not know the genius of Black people.

It is cultural violence to teach Black children and white children that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. He did not free the slaves! He issued an Emancipation that only freed Black people in States that were not in rebellion against the Union. When we teach the truth that George Washington was a pedophile. The father of the country had sex with a fourteen year old and gave birth. But as long as we teach them that people who oppress them were their heroes, we continue to see again, what happen yesterday.

The history devalues us. We devalue us!

And even Activists do not lift up the History and fight for Righteous education in our schools!
It pains me to my heart that we do not teach Black History, Native American History. How do you expect children to feel good about themselves when everything they hear is negative!?

That is just as important as the curriculum!

How long must the people suffer from violence, and from rape and from crime?

When you fight for Equal Education as we did in Selma..

Selma is known for the voting Rights Movement but we had a Movement against tracking that was also…

After the Brown decision, they re-segregated the schools. They put all the lack kids at the bottom and all the white kids at the top.

The schools are still segregated.

Until we tackle white supremacy, which is the foundation of All Inequality that poor Black and Brown people.

We don’t like to say the words because it makes us feel uncomfortable.

What we are dealing with is white supremacy that tears you alive and tells you that is an obelisk rather than a Tekken min.

Until we get the truth to our children that, theirs was among the first scientists, mathematicians and doctors … if we love them we will teach them.

It is not the lynching of the neck but the lynching of the mind that cause suffering for generations to come.

My heart is a little heavy. I am struggling with what I want to say… So let me start with something easy. My name is Jitu Brown from the South Side of Chicago. I work with The Journey for Justice Alliance which is national network of grassroots community-based organizations in about 23 cities. Committed to community-driven school improvement.

[We are] committed to the notion that we don’t need Superman. We don’t need people to fly into our communities—that solutions to our issues exist in our neighborhoods. The issue is that there is a fiercely organized resistance to us having the right of self-determination. For us, to see our children and for the system to see our children the way we do, as parents. When your child moves you to tears because you love them so much. Isn’t that how an education system should treat our children?

But that is not what we have in this country. So, my charge today—We make this thing very complicated. We make it very complicated. We talk about this issue or that issue.

The truth is very simple. If it is complicated it is a lie.”
~ African Proverb

The truth is very clear if we have the courage to face it. But often we manipulate the truth to make ourselves feel more comfortable. We manipulate the truth so that we do not have to do the self-reflection we need to do to actually transform.

I want to talk with my family today. Anyone in this struggle is family.

I want to speak my truth this morning, and I want to do it with a group of people that will hear with an open mind. Can we make that agreement?…

What is Education? Ancient African Society “Education is Inspiration and Information…” That Prepare a People to Make Their Way in the World.”

Education is not about education of an individual. It is about “Preparing a people.”

Every child has infinite possibilities.

The very notion of School Choice is an insult. There is no such thing as School Choice in a Black And Brown Communities. Because we do not have a choice of world-class schools within walking distance from our home.

Continent of Africa was pillaged. Great civilizations crumbled. Mothers who had never witnessed a murder in their lives watched entire families exterminated”

Wars were fought there wrestling matches.

The first that brought another person to the ground won the wrestling match.

African Culture was not a culture of death. But today, we live in a society

What’s your inner resource?

Last, today’s conference, yesterday’s activity and March—and what I am surmising, and I am making some assumptions about who we are together, you are not the wallflowers in your neighborhoods and communities. Can I make that assumption? You are not the one’s that nobody hears from you at all. You are typically the loud mouth ones. The one’s always out there on the line, Telling your business and then advocating the one’s that day for day are doing the work of creating a better community, a better space and place for you and your s and your people’s and your mamma and them and your Daddy and them…

You are the one’s who give it and get it done all the time. I am talking to you. Am I talking to the right house?

Theodore Parker, said this, and it has been attributed to Dr. King, He’s a white dude, a New Englander said a few years earlier than Dr. King, “The arch of the moral universe is long and it bends to the arch of justice.” Most of the people have heard this and they heard it attributed to Dr. King, and that’s all right. He can claim it.

I believe each of us has a thing that is driving us to do the things we do. You have a thing inside of you. It was birthed in you. It is encoded into our DNA. Toward being the kind of rebel rouser I think some of you, most of you already are. You are the kind of people that somebody has said to you before “you talk too much.”

I used to say it to my Daddy. “You have a take over spirit.” You get in a room and you take meetings over. Yeah, that is some of you in here. You get into a space and places and suddenly the agenda gets shifted. …The ideas start flowing.

You are the very people who take the course of history and write it yourselves…. I want to ask you, “What do you use.”….What is the theme, thing, that is your well?

Some of you all are advocating in spaces and places

What makes you tick? Where does that thing come from. What is that thing/theme? What is that inner motivator….?