Our Back to School Party is Coming Together Los Angeles,

J.T.Leave a comment

jimbotimes_194
TO every supporter: Thank you for your support and for sharing this fundraiser to spread the word! Just to keep you all in the loop, I’m happy to highlight the “first half” of the workshops we’ve now secured for our event.

Workshops now written into our itinerary include Women’s Self-Defense with Peace Over Violence, Renters’ Rights with the VyBe Chapter – Los Angeles Tenants Union, Literature and Literacy with L.A. based Salvadorean-American author Randy Jurado Ertll, Zine-Making into Book Publishing with Dryland: Los Angeles Underground Art & Writing‘s Viva Padilla, and more.

Please also note that our workshops will include people of various histories in the community, including, (new and “old”) business owners, artists and activists, teachers, Senior citizens, and other local residents and supporters. We will also install an “art wall” or art exhibit with work BY locals, FOR locals.

Lastly, please trust that we’ll be photographing this special occasion as much as humanly possible to get as many of our supporters to enjoy the summertime bash with us; what arts and education are all about!

And keep up the support and well wishes. One step at a time! 👌🏾

J.T.

 

Education in Los Angeles: A Look at the Numbers

J.T.3 Comments
LAUSD chart graduates_

In 2008 the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was reported to have graduated only 48% of its class for the 2007-2008 school year. In 2017, a study tracking the college enrollment rate of that same 2008 class found that within twelve months of their graduation, 58% of LAUSD’s high school graduates enrolled in a two-year community college or four-year university. The study goes on to show that by six years later, however, only 25% of those graduates would have their four-year college degree.

Public data also shows that in the 2007 – 2008 school year, the total number of students enrolled at LAUSD was estimated to be just over 694,288 students. Accounting for a graduation rate of 48% then, we can estimate that at the end of that school year, only 333,258 of those enrolled left the schools with their diplomas.

Applying the data from UCLA’s study showing the 25% college success rate for those students by six years later, we can also determine that of the 2008 high school class, of nearly 700,000 students, only 83,314.5, or 8.3% of them would successfully complete a college or a university education six years after their graduation from high school.

Today in Los Angeles, the graduation rate for this same public school district is cited as being at 77% as recently as the 2015 – 2016 school year. But the improved rate is not indicative of the district’s struggle to improve educational and college readiness at the schools.

For example, UCLA’s report also shows that in the 2013 – 2014 school year, less than a third of the class of 2014 graduated from the district with an A or B grade point average, implying that over two thirds of the class left the district with C or D grade point averages.

UCLA’s study goes on to show that while the difference between a C and a D grade point average might not seem like much, students with only a D grade point average are five times LESS LIKELY to enroll in a two or four-year college.

In Los Angeles today, then, for a new generation of high school students, a district with an underwhelming track record in qualitative education and college preparation is only one of their challenges. Lest we forget: these students are attending L.A.’s public schools at the same time that a real estate boom in Los Angeles continues unabated, driving up the cost of living, evicting working class families en masse, and leading many either to seek shelter somewhere along L.A.’s Skid Row district, or straight out of town.

In March 2017, the Sacramento Bee reported that similarly to the way Latin American countries ‘export’ their human labor to the U.S., the Golden State is also a human transporter, that is, of its working class, to states like Texas and Oklahoma.

According to the report, “California exports more than commodities such as movies, new technologies and produce. It also exports truck drivers, cooks and cashiers. Every year from 2000 through 2015, more people left California than moved in from other states.”

In Los Angeles, with a school district where less than 9% of students obtained a college degree six years after their high school education, the work options are limited. And with the cost of living rising, Los Angeles and California as places for such people to live are also limited.

In the same report, the Bee notes that out of the state’s 58 counties, it’s been in the wealthiest two where there’s been the greatest number of expulsions: “the state’s exodus of poor people is notable in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties, which combined experienced a net loss of 250,000 such residents from 2005 through 2015.”

I wonder of those 250,000, just how many were students at LAUSD at some point.

This is Los Angeles. And it is ongoing. That is, until we place our foot on the dial.

J.T.

Education in Los Angeles is Still a Civil Rights Issue

J.T.3 Comments

Earlier this week Ref Rodriguez, the district 5 representative at the Los Angeles Unified School District, which represents schools throughout Silver Lake, Los Feliz, East Hollywood, South Gate, Vernon and more, resigned after pleading guilty to charges of money-laundering and conspiracy in his campaign for the district seat. Rodriguez originally took his place on L.A. Unified’s board after beating out Benett Kayzer for the appointment in 2015.

I still remember the mail-ads when Rodriguez challenged Kayzer in 2015. It was an often deceitful and indignant race that preyed on people’s fears, not so different from the national campaign waged for the country’s highest office a year later, though with a more local touch; Rodriguez’s campaign sent out ads accusing then-incumbent Kayzer of racist voting policies during his four-year tenure on the board, of leaving his district’s classrooms in ruins, of underpaying school employees, and more. These were distortions of the facts, however: photo-shopped images, votes that were misconstrued, and paid spokespersons. Nevertheless, the consistency with which these ads were delivered to the voters was relentless, and thus distortions of the facts eventually turned into some of the only sources of information for great portions of the electorate.

The race was also a matter of time, however, in that the ‘teachers’ union-backed’ Kayzer waged a lackluster defense of the seat. Although the LAUSD race was a much smaller one than the presidential race in 2016, the same principles needed to be applied to the ‘defense’ of the public interest: in order for voters to come out, they had to be inspired by a particular vision, and Kayzer didn’t much inspire las vecindades towards such a vision. Rodriguez, on the other hand, by virtue of his last name, was regarded as a potential representative for a predominantly Latino district that’s often felt underrepresented in policy-making at both the state and national levels despite accounting for major swaths of the demographics throughout.

I still remember at that time speaking with people throughout the community like the elderly residents of the neighborhood who were interested in a change at LAUSD, for which Rodriguez seemed like just the harbinger; when such individuals at our schools and throughout our communities, who put in major time and investments to both, feel forgotten or unaddressed, it’s a problem. But when the leaders of our community choose to address such people only until election time, that problem becomes a potentially serious liability.

At the same time, when people are fatigued by news cycles followed by election cycles that often do little to speak to the day-to-day concerns of their livelihoods, school board elections come off as only more ads on top of ads and concerns that offer little of substance to them.

But school board positions, while appearing like minor affairs in comparison to national contests, do have major implications. They therefore attract interests from all sides of Los Angeles, including interest from the likes of individuals such as Richard Riordan, the former L.A. mayor and local millionaire on the West side of town. Riordan is a Pro-Trump supporter, and also one who’s known to support candidates on the side of privatizing more schools.

Donors or ‘Philanthropists’ like Riordan, who’ve fared well for themselves with various investments in banking, venture capital, and the sponsorship of these initiatives, have much to say about educating youth in Los Angeles, that is, in the millions of dollars range, but little to no experience in an actual classroom. They nonetheless enter these races, however, and therefore impact not only the outcome, but how people can discuss the issues in the race to begin with; the millions they throw in are matched by millions on the opposing side– or what comes closest to matching that amount–and in the throes of these expenditures, what substance there might be in a contest between two candidates is drowned out by ads, ads, and more ads like the ones Ref Rodriguez deployed against Kayzer.

Something similar to the race between Rodriguez in Kayzer in 2015 would take place two years later. In 2017’s two LAUSD races for Districts 4 and 6, Netflix Co-Founder Reed Hastings was reported to have donated over $7 million to an Association backing the candidates on the side of privatizing more of L.A.’s schools. Both of the candidates supported by these and other donations were successful in beating out the (teachers’) union-backed board representatives at that time, including Steve Zimmer and Imelda Padilla, respectively.

I’m not able to speak on Padilla’s behalf, but I can speak for my experience as a student at John Marshall High School when Steve Zimmer served as a counselor there; since as far back as my time as a ninth grader in 2004 during my first semester at that school, Zimmer was known among friends and I as a counselor we could count on for a safe space at a time when the consequence for missing class or showing up late could mean a suspension or even a court date. Faced with administrators and a disciplinary system that often suspected the ‘B track’ kids in the crowds were usually up to no good, it was a tense environment for students of color then; but with Steve, there was never a moment of doubt: he didn’t care where we came from, he’d show his support to us regardless.

This was forgotten or discarded somewhere in Steve’s reelection campaign when Reed Hastings’s millions poured into the race. But it is not altogether forgotten quite yet. The pueblo has to remember.

Today’s discussions regarding equity and equality at schools in Los Angeles distinguish two main camps: either pro-charter or pro-union reformers, or people for the privatization of these schools (with public funds), and people for the ‘traditional’ public option. These labels, like the ads, inundate the electorate and ultimately do not tell the whole story about either position. But they should not do so in any case.

Ultimately, at the start of a new school-year, neither charter school advocates nor teachers’ unions alone can produce the best results for the students of Los Angeles; it’s going to take the whole pueblo, the whole state, and the entirety of a collective nation before we can mark a true culmination from the civil rights movements which fought for and brought home the decision in Brown Versus the Board of Education.

In the meantime, however, it is important to note what has happened in these local histories. Those who do not know history are still doomed to repeat it.

J.T.

Ahora Mas Cuentos Los Angeles

J.T.1 Comment

On the way,

Today I have the privilege of getting back to The Plus Me Project for a visit to another L.A. school. There should be somewhere between 100 – 120 students that I’ll get to speak with at Alliance Neuwirth Academy this afternoon, and it will be my first time ‘back in action’ since my spectacular time abroad.

I will share pictures with the students from the trip, as well as a few insights on just what it means for me to travel to these other pueblos from which so many of our people hail, which I’m confident will make our time together all the more worthwhile.

From there, we’ve got much more work left to do. It is summertime in Los Angeles, and as educators all throughout The City know well, the summer can be a most critical point of the year for young people everywhere; school is out, mamá y papá ‘tan trabajando, and at that point: What exactly is there to do? Where do we go? And with who? Is it safe?

There is a world to build for L.A.’s youth to make these questions less difficult for them, but as with all worlds, we need time. Today is a matter of taking advantage then, of what little time we’ve been afforded. Indeed it always is, but a healthy reminder never hurts. In fact, I think it’s been quite helpful already.

Let’s get it done Los Angeles,

J.T.

Los Angeles Students, California: Do Not Stop at One March

J.T.4 Comments

On the way,I see that it was in March 1968 that the students of five high schools across the fourth street bridge in East Los Angeles walked out of their classrooms in order to make their voices heard. They stood in defiance of rules barring them from so much as even uttering a word in Español at their schools, in protest of being paddled in front of their whole class by teachers and administrators for doing so, and in ire at being left by the state to sift through worn and torn books abandoned by more affluent white high schools on the opposite side of the bridge.

In 2008 I saw that at the end of the school-year at LAUSD, a school district in which over 74% of students speak a language other than English at home, only 48% of students graduated from the district, meaning more students were dropping out than leaving these schools with their diplomas. Unlike in 1968, however, there were no protests regarding these conditions.

In 2012 I saw a community college system in California that stifled the progress of Black and Brown bodies with useless math and “remedial” English classes that fractured their progress as undergraduates at every step of the way, eventually turning these students away from the state’s colleges altogether.

I then saw that in the ninth greatest economy in the world, the liberal dream state, or the home of Silicon Valley, where Brown bodies, or people who speak nomas un poquito de Español en sus casas make up nearly 50% of the state’s population, only 11% of this segment of the population has a Bachelor’s Degree.

I saw this after I watched some of the best minds of my generation in Los Angeles, teenagers who could have been doctors, professors, artists, musicians and far more, ransacked by methamphetamine addiction and its criminalization. Before them, for Generation X in the 1980s, it was the crack cocaine epidemic. In 2018, it is Molly, Xanax, OxyContin, and more.

This is as my generation and I are forced to watch the invasion of our neighborhoods by white wealth, which is moving with the same organized violence against my pueblo’s character as that of 50 years ago.

But now I can also see how “the other” is necessary for the legacy of white supremacy to survive, as necessary as it was over 500 years ago when the first colonizers arrived to the islands of the Western hemisphere to massacre the indigenous people who made their lives here; the colonizers knew early on that “the others” had to be maimed and then made inhumane in order for them to validate the exploitation of their character and that of the resources around them. Today the colonizers no longer arrive in wooden ships upon natives, but they arrive in the form of real estate evictions and rent hikes upon tenants. A war of attrition.

It does not end there, however. It only begins. I can also see that from Orange County to Los Angeles, to Ventura County and Santa Barbara, onto Fresno, Solano, Modesto, Stockton, Sacramento, and the Bay Area, it is the bodies of young Black, Brown, and “others” whose entrapment and displacement together account for over 90% of the state of California’s “juvenile” cases, aiding and abetting the survival of a multi-billion dollar police state here.

I then see how in addition to the state’s incarceration, probation, and other forms of entrapment of California’s Black and Brown bodies, the state also contracts “shadow” organizations or “nonprofits” it oversees and regulates to apply services to these bodies. Once these shadow organizations deem their services applied, though only to a select portion of these disenfranchised Black and Brown bodies, both the state and its partners are proud to tout such “reformed” Black and Brown people as “examples” of change or what could “one day” be of more of them.

At the same time I see that the people overseeing these services maintain the same white power structure, that is, of liberal white men and their peers claiming leadership, differing little from those service-providers who “corrected” my peers 50 years ago, and who “civilized” my people across the American continent long before then.

And so I see that in 2018 many in “the resistance” who like to think of themselves as helping the helpless are actually just helping themselves, signing the contracts, citing the services, and professionalizing the process over the long term in order to assure the state’s backing and its survival rather than assuring a reduction of its assault on Black and Brown bodies or otherwise dismantling.

I see many even in “the resistance” taking and brandishing the intellectual property of these Black and Brown bodies. “Advocates” getting awards off these Black and Brown bodies. “Counselors” getting grants off these Black and Brown bodies. Even “Marchers” getting paid off these Black and Brown bodies.

In turn, I see white guilt relieving itself in a country that is still shooting, maiming, and incarcerating more Black and Brown bodies with the day at the same time that it employs its court systems to further degrade and demoralize our conditions, and to justify such degradation and demoralization afterwards.

And I see that in 2018, the democrats are touted as our only hope in a U.S. Congress currently dominated by a republican majority, as if Black men and their families should forget how they were sent to prison at the highest rate of all time under a democratic president in the 1990s. And as if immigrant families should forget that Obama deported more economic refugees seeking shelter from U.S. destabilization policies abroad –primarily women and children– than the previous three presidents combined.

I further see that since 2016 in California there’s ruled in the state a democratic majority, which nonetheless makes for legislative sessions that are more interested in expanding California’s prison systems than the state’s universities. See Senate Bill No. 776, or Assembly Bill No. 2028.

California could likely be Clinton’s most prized tough-on-crime jewel; over the last thirty years it saw the largest expansion of the prison industrial complex in the country, which now increasingly contracts the private sector to lock up more Black and Brown bodies; so-called undocumented Black and Brown bodies. But the state of California also saw an expansion of its “shadow” organizations or shadow “services”, many of which in 2018 enjoy claiming responsibility for the “reform” of great portions of those same Black men incarcerated in the 1990s. As such, it is just a matter of time before many of these same groups claim responsibility for “services” applied to “undocumented” Black and Brown bodies as well.

Finally, I see my boy G, who is 12 years old and now a student at LAUSD, and one of the sharpest minds I’ve seen through my neighborhood in a generation. Like his peers 50 years before him and prior, he lives in a home without his father, but he must also face a mother in that home who doesn’t know how to nurture or appreciate his mind. G’s life is at risk.

He could be a champion for his pueblo, but the numbers speak for themselves. There is a higher chance of G’s going to prison than the state’s colleges for no other reason than his and his family’s coming from the pueblos.

I see hatred of G’s condition. But I also see collusion in his condition.

I see silence about G’s condition, its normalization.

And this is not all I see. But it is just enough.

Students; Professors; All:

Moving forward with your movements, keep this information close:

There are generations of violence they’ve inflicted on our bodies going back longer than one moment can recount.

Now, we’ve got to be careful with how we distinguish the different mechanisms of this violence. From our school systems, to rent hikes, to evictions and the courts which support them, to incarceration, surveillance of our public transportation, and even the organizations we join in resistance to these things: we’ve got to be careful not only with recognizing the system in its normalcy out in public, but even with those we call allies in the work of resistance to that same system in our more private movements; the state is widespread, covert and overt, and if we’re not careful to trace our steps as we move forward, the state is just as much with us as we hope to be against it.

Let us still be against it.

Let us be against it for the students of L.A. in 1968. But let us also be against it for the students of L.A. in 2008. Let us be against it for G.

For you and me, and the pueblo we all share.

The pueblo of Los Angeles.

J.T.