Unhappy facts about the school to prison pipeline, which Brave New Films describes as “..another way the United States incarcerates more people than any other country on earth.*”
* From NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet: Combining the number of people in prison and jail with those under parole or probation supervision, 1 in every 31 adults, or 3.2% of the (USA) population is under some form of correctional control.
This 8 minute film shows us the value of being alive at a time when communication is possible on a scale never before experienced. Yet, while the world is being destroyed and monetized we pay more attention to our screens than everything else around us.
But, we are not in a movie where everything is decided in advance. In real life, WE write the script. Let’s give up our addiction to fantasies that are being fed us and script our own … beautiful future … together. All power to the people!
Enjoy this “World Version” of John Lennon’s iconic song Imagine with dozens of celebrities and children from across the globe singing along. Features Sonu Nigam, Katy Perry, Priyanka Chopra, will.i.am and many more. Enjoy!
The mature, angelic voice and astonishing range of a young Dutch girl has captured hearts and souls, including my own. The purity of 9 year old Amira Willighagen’s untrained operatic voice has brought me to tears, twice now. When asked by one Holland’s Got Talent judge how she had been taught to sing, confusion appeared instantly on the little girl’s face. You can just see Amira asking herself, “How does a person get taught to sing?” – she learned by watching videos with her brother.
On December 14, the New York Times published Op-ed Columnist Charles M. Blow‘s opinion America, Who Are We? Mr. Blow writes on “Politics, public opinion and social justice” and his thoughts are deep and persuasive.
Last week I spoke at a seminary and graduate school in New York about the protests following the grand jury decisions in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.
It was invigorating and inspiring to be among so many young people with so much passion about social justice, young people beginning to feel their power as change agents and brimming to exercise it by disrupting the status quo.
Here’s a schedule of Eric Garner #icantbreathe protests happening around the country. Attend one or add your own to the national protest list.
Found via Daily Kos
Friends share #afterthoughts in the days following #Ferguson and #EricGarner.
Analilia Mejía, on Facebook
Analilia Mejia
07 Dec 2014 at 08:42
Watching a White Christmas for the first time this morning and all I can think of is that this exemplifies the economic disadvantage forced on people of color.. There are no black soldiers in the 151 Division, in fact no black characters asides for the AA car porter (whom at the time would have been discriminated against in employment, advancement and pay). All of the happy GI’s who created comfortable lives (enough to drop everything and head to Vermont) did so through their access to higher Ed, a growth in professional jobs and their ability to build equity in a newly created suburbia. Blissfully ignorant (or directly complicit) to the denial of the same benefit to AA GI’s. Redlining prevented home purchases and neighborhood covenants kept them out of suburbia (and its schools). Racism denied (and denies) equal access and advancement into more lucrative jobs and careers. The American Legion and VFW routinely denied claims of African Americans in pursuit of higher education, and those who did access it where barred by racist policies in many universities, or limited to increasingly strained HBCU’s and even then faced the hurdles of an inferior preparation by Jim Crow segregated AND unequal k-12 schools.. This all led to a wealth gap passed on through generations. Your comforts today are DIRECTLY influenced by your grandparents owning a home, generations of superior education impacts how well YOU did (much less if you went). This inequity is exacerbated today by the foreclosure crisis that disproportionately dismantles POC communities thanks to predatory lending. All of this didn’t happen centuries ago and hence we are past it. This systemic racism has tentacles that reach back into times of slavery, peonage re-enslavement, Jim Crow, the struggles of the civil rights era and into today with the subsequent dismantling of that dream through continued inequity in education, mass incarceration, an unjust justice system to name a few.. But much like those soldiers and Bing in that movie, most of white America is OBLIVIOUS to all of this. Insulated or intentionally blind. Lucky them, they get to dream about a White Christmas while black mothers are mourning their sons and WE continue to lose our belief in the system this holiday season…
No justice, no peace, what now? Join the conversation with #FergusonNext and at FergusonNext.com and add your solution.
Please share it with us here too.
There are times in history when the story of current events – what we know as news – enters a state of flux. New voices emerge to tell the stories of people and our world that are happening in real time. Today, we see this with YouTube, blogging, social media, community radio and TV. Periods of change can also be times of danger. People’s right to know must be protected and reporters must hold themselves responsible for present facts and truth without embellishment as far as they are able to discern them … in other words, the principles of expository journalism must be upheld.
Chloé Simone Valdary is young Black non-Jewish woman Zionist who believes that the current worldwide campaign to create unfounded hatred of Jews and Israel has been artificially engineered by Arab oil magnates, and is funded with their fortunes. Chloé established the group “Allies for Israel” at the University of New Orleans where she studies, to fight “anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism on campus”.
In Tablet Magazine Chloé explains why an anti-Israeli/Jewish position is fundamentally wrong, especially for African Americans:
The Journey 4 Justice Alliance has issued an important new report entitled Death By A Thousand Cuts which includes the number and location of school closings not previously gathered together by any major organization or media portal. It discusses the racist motivation of the misnamed “education reform” movement; the injustice that investor-based charters represent – institutions which are publicly funded but privately controlled; and is a must-read for any person interested in education equity.
Story circulating thru the internet on what happens when you argue with children about whales:
A teacher was doing a lesson on whales and stated that though whales are very large, their throats are very small and it would be impossible to swallow a human. A little girl said “Jonah was swallowed by a whale.”
The teacher told the little girl that it was impossible. There was no way a whale could have swallowed him. So the little girl said “Well, when I get to Heaven, I will ask Jonah about it.”
A friend posted this on Facebook about the $25 Million gift given to the United Negro College Fund by the Koch Brothers:
If this money comes from sincerity (their heart) it is a blessing, but if it comes with “strings attached” the Koch brothers will have not surprised us. They will show us as usual their true colors! Win-win situation either way!
My thoughts are different:
Not necessarily, Maria. The insidious multi-level strategies that typically accompany gifts by the rich and powerful are designed to have subtle, but long-lasting and far reaching effect. First we should ask, what is being asked for as a direct trade for the gift? We may never know everything that was bargained away behind closed doors but we do know that two Koch Brothers designees will sit on a scholarship decision committee of three that will decide which students get that blood money. Right out of the gate, it’s clear that the money was not given with an open hand.
Four years is a long time in community college terms but it was so worth it to keep on working at bringing this program to Bergen Community College. I got to know so much about the college and campus organizing just by recruiting advisors, speakers and participants to the College Leadership Development Program. 2014 CLDP @ Bergen Cohort members are enjoying participation tremendously, and the speakers we’ve brought in are enjoying us!
Thanks to USHLI for dreaming up a really good program and providing us with guidance to get it off the ground, to our speakers, donors and advisors, to BCC for hosting our evening workshops and to Kimi Wei of The Wei for so much help.
~ Jorge Ivan Gomez Wei
We’re fundraising to cover the cost of food served at the five College Leadership Develop Program (CLDP) workshops we just completed … and hopefully, we’ll receive a few thousand more dollars to get to the USHLI National Conference in Chicago. Participants in the inaugural CLDP at Bergen Community College are invited as USHLI’s guests!
The CLDP @ BERGEN students and The Wei Team which organized the CLDP @ BERGEN workshop series thank our awesome sponsors for helping us enjoy great food during our sessions. We also thank our advisors Gene Calderón and Johanna Heule and the beautiful speakers who brought words of enlightenment, hope and knowledge to this project and all of its participants.
