Category Archives: Education

Explaining A Hunger Strike to My 3 Year Old: Dyett High School – Hunger Strikes

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Today my son and I took juice to the 12 parents and community members who are performing a hunger strike. They are protesting Chicago Public Schools’ decision to close one of the last public schools in their neighborhood. Frustrations are intense towards CPS who has not been listening to their proposal to open a new public school, one created with real community input.

Now for those of you with children, especially 3 year olds, anytime you do something that is out of their “normal” realm of being, you know you’re about to get the 3rd degree. After explaining what they are going to do one must be prepared to answer a bevy of questions from them, most often the ever present, “Why?”

Let me demonstrate:

Me- Buddy (referring to my son), we are going to the store to buy juice to bring to Dyett High School for parents who are there protesting.

My son- Daddy, why do they need juice?

Me- Because they aren’t eating and need juice to drink.

My Son- Why are they not eating?

Me- Because they are protesting the closure of Dyett High School.

My Son- Why someone close a school?

Me- The city wants to close it.

My son- Why?

At this point, what I want to tell my son is that the way that Chicago Public Schools are run is not a democracy. That CPS and the Mayor do not care what the people actually want. That the fact that people feel forced to go on a Hunger Strike is ridiculous for a developed country, in this day and age.

A Hunger Strike is a measure of last resort in terms of a protest, because if things do not work out it can ultimately lead to death.

When Gandhi was trying to help the people of India get rid of the British colonizers, who refused to leave India, he would use the Hunger Strike as a means of protest to force the British to negotiate with him, when they would refuse to meet.

In California, in the 1960’s, Mexican Americans were being forced to work on grape farms for very little pay, were sprayed with dangerous chemicals, and were provided inhumane work conditions. They decided to organize and form a union. The grape farm owners did not want the workers to organize. The owners would harass and intimidate the organizers. The workers tried many different tactics, such as pickets, strikes, marches, and boycotts. Eventually Caesar Chavez, who was one of the leaders, decided insufficient progress was being made. He decided to go on a hunger strike.

In both of these historical examples of hunger strikes, making the public aware of the hunger strike was the most important goal.

In India, when Gandhi would go on a hunger strike the Indian workers would often refuse to work until negotiations began again. Gandhi had such a following and the entire basis for British control relied on the Indian workers. In the case of Chavez and the grape workers, he and his fellow organizers were able to gain powerful allies in California, like Bobby Kennedy and others, who helped bring their struggle to more national stage.

The media was one of the biggest things that helped Gandhi and Chavez. The newspapers and reporters covered both of these events. The general public became more aware.

Parent led Hunger Strikes are not new to Chicago. In 2001, parents on the South West Side demanded a new high school. CPS ignored them even though they had built 3 new high schools on the North side. So parents staged a 19-day Hunger Strike that eventually led to the opening of Little Village High School.

Here in Chicago, as I write this, the 12 Dyett Hunger Strikers are approaching their 5th day without eating.

What are their demands?
-They want Dyett to be re-opened as a public high school with a plan developed by the actual community.

-They want meetings with Alderman Will Burns of the 4th Ward, who represents Dyett High School. Burns often ignores the community and is closely linked to Rahm. In the past, people have had to camp out on his lawn to just get a meeting with him.

-They want to meet with the new CEO of CPS Forrest Claypool. A meeting is unlikely, since CEO’s are at the beck and call of the Mayor. The key is to get the media covering this event. Once the Hunger Strike is pervasive and repeated on every news channel in the city, the people in “power” will be forced to begin talking with the Dyett 12.

But what happens if Rahm, Forrest, and Will continue to ignore the hunger strikers? Are these politicians just hoping the hunger strikers get sick and too weak from not eating that they end up in the hospital? Do these politicians just want the hunger strikers to die?

Since my son is only 3 years old, I don’t say all of these things. I simply answer his last “Why?” with: “There are a few not nice people in this world. Most people who run this city are not nice people. Your mom and I want you to always be nice to people. We want you to listen to people. We want you to ask questions and be curious. We want you to be brave and do what feels right.”

I tried to explain to him that, “Sometimes we are faced with things that make you feel a pull or a feeling in your heart or stomach. It is easy to walk away and close your eyes. It is not always easy to make a choice to be brave. Being brave means sacrificing your comfort to do the right thing. The parents at Dyett high school are doing just that; they are brave. “

He may not really understand what is going on, but it made him really excited to pick out what kind of juice that we were going to buy to give to the Dyett parents.

If you are interested in helping or getting involved here is more info.

View this piece on Huffington Post Chicago
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/explaining-a-hunger-strik_b_8018724.html

This piece on Gapers Block
http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2015/08/25/explaining-a-hunger-strike-to-my-3-year-old/

Why Wishing for a Hurricane Katrina in Chicago is Racist

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Tonight I just read an article in the Chicago Tribune in which the author “metaphorically” wishes a Hurricane Katrina would wipe out Chicago. I wish I were making this up, please read this piece. But after intense public pressure the Tribune did decide to “soften” their piece so here is the original piece as it was written. Even while I and many others were tweeting her about how offensive her piece is, she sent out the following tweet:

Screen Shot 2015-08-14 at 12.05.04 AM

What Hurricane Katrina did was kill nearly 2,000 people and displace and relocate 1 million people on the Gulf Coast. In New Orleans the population of the city fell by half due to loss of homes and displacement. 50% of the city’s residents homes lost and forced to move.

Historical and proudly black communities were wiped out.

Now some people like this author will likely say, but New Orleans is back! Who is New Orleans back for? For people that look like me (i.e. white people). NOT the people who lived in those predominantly black precincts.

By the author wishing for a Katrina here in Chicago she is basically saying to get to rid of the black people and let the whites move in wherever they want. It would be like white flight in reverse, coming back from the ‘burbs to the city. We (white people) could proudly colonize, I mean move into Englewood and then joke on our porches while sipping tea about what life used to be like on the corner of 63rd and Racine, while we watch that new yoga studio go in. We would colonize Woodlawn, Roseland, and Austin too and the best part is we (white people) would get that land for cheap thanks to Katrina part II and Disaster Capitalism.

Arne Duncan (one of our fellow white brethren) said it best when he said, “Hurricane Katrina was the best thing for New Orleans Schools”.

I mean to actually fix the schools for the kids who live there, that is preposterous and besides that would be too much work. What is great is getting to have new (wealthier and/or whiter) kids move in, then rebuild the schools and boom schools are “great” now.

The author of this piece needs an education in white privilege. I suggest a starting point for her (and anyone who agrees with her) would be the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh which details and explains White Privilege and how it benefits all white people all the time. She then could read books by Lisa Delpit, Theresa Perry, Beverly Daniel-Tatum, Howard Zinn, bell hooks, Ta-Nehisi Coates and many more authors. Even better she could actually listen and hear the messages of the Black Lives Matter movement or in that case any black person who would take the time to try to educate her.

The key as a white person is to listen to black people and not try to put our white privilege on what they are saying or for heaven’s sake say something like All Lives Matter.

Chicago Tribune author, here is the secret all lives do matter but our (white) lives aren’t being killed for all of America to see (just in case you needed to learn that too).

This country is going through a movement to bring to the forefront and hopefully make real changes to the way policing is done, so we can stop having black men and women murdered by the people who are supposed to be protecting them. There are many ways in which white people (like myself) can help. The first one is to listen to the real stories that people of color share about racism, the second is to call out racism when you see or hear it (like this Tribune article), and the third one (this is the hardest) is to educate our own (white) people. As a teacher in predominantly black schools in Chicago Public Schools I love teaching, learning and talking about race with my students, but talking about race with white people is hard. I’m no expert but I am willing to read, learn, and listen. I am working on always speaking up when I hear any type of racist comment. I am a work in progress, but I am taking the second and third piece of advice I gave by calling out this Katrina piece for what it is, racist and by attempting to teach (other white people) why it is racist.

I will end with a quote from scholar Beverly Daniel-Tatum with the key being white people must be “actively anti-racist”.

Her quote says, “I visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the airport. Active racist behavior is equivalent to walking fast on the conveyor belt. The person engaged in active racist behavior has identified with the ideology of our White supremacist system and is moving with it. Passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway. No overt effort is being made, but the conveyor belt moves the bystanders along to the same destination as those who are actively walking. But unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt – unless they are actively anti-racist – they will find themselves carried along with the others.”

This piece on Gapers Block
http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2015/08/14/why-wishing-for-a-hurricane-katrina-in-chicago-is-racist/

I am a Dictator: A Chicago Public Schools Teacher Responds to Rauner and Claypool

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Recently Governor Rauner said, “…the Chicago Teachers Union shouldn’t have dictatorial powers, in effect and causing the financial duress that Chicago Public Schools are facing right now.”

This statement from Rauner comes just a few days after Forrest Claypool our newest CEO says that teachers need to have “shared sacrifice” by taking a 7% pay cut.

The shared sacrifice Claypool speaks of means that my wife (also a CPS teacher) and I would lose about $11,000 in combined income for this year alone.

I could go on and on about how Claypool is just another puppet of Rahm, in a long line of puppets appointed by the mayor or how Chicagoans demand en elected school board (remember Chicago is the only district in the entire state without an elected school board). But since Rauner thinks that the teachers union run by 40,000 teachers is a dictatorship and Claypool says teachers need to sacrifice I will share my stories, so maybe, just maybe, they both (along with Rahm) will realize what it means to really sacrifice.

Two weeks ago I found out that a student who attended and graduated from my high school was shot and killed. I did not know this student well as I had never taught him, but what I have found is that his death has triggered many other emotions and memories that I have suppressed.

There is a study that says that people who live in violent areas (like many parts of Chicago) show sign of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) similar to soldiers returning from combat. My father was in combat in Vietnam and for the first 23 years of my life he never once talked to me about Vietnam. It was one night that he decided to watch a fictional movie about Vietnam that it all came back to him. I can see how he has days where his mind is consumed by traumatic experiences that he had. He has been able to cope and now is working to prevent people, students especially from going into the military.

I have worked in CPS for 9 years now and have had students share tragic stories of losing their friends and loved ones to violence. I have seen how certain events can trigger their traumatic memories.

I never thought that a teacher (myself) could have this happen too.

When I found out that the student from my school who had just graduated was killed I was deeply saddened for his family, for everyone who knew him, and that our city continues to let young people die.

However I have found that now nearly two weeks after his death I have been thinking nearly every day of the first student that I ever knew who was killed.

Nearly 5 years ago a young man named Trevell was shot and killed. I taught Trevell as a freshman in high school. He was an outgoing, intelligent, and confident young man, but it was clear that he had some difficulties outside of school. As he continued through high school into his senior year he had made many positive decisions to steer his life in the right direction and had got himself into college. I received a phone call on a cold January Saturday morning from my assistant principal saying that Trevell had been shot and killed. I still remember that day that I found out about his death and also what it was like to go into school that Monday and cry with students and staff and share stories of Trevell.

The following school year I was teaching my senior Urban Studies class. I had taught many of the students in this class when they were freshman. There was one student Deonte who as a freshman I never thought would still be at our school, let alone close to graduating, for how involved he seemed to be as a freshman with life on the streets. Deonte as a freshman in my class would typically be focused on anything and everything as long as it was not academic. But amazingly Deonte had turned it around and now, as a senior had become one of the most liked students by staff and students. He had dramatically improved his grades and got himself accepted into many colleges. This one day in late May just a few weeks before graduation he was not in class. When I asked where he was, another student whispered to me that he had been arrested. I didn’t believe it, because he had put that part of his life way behind him. It wasn’t until I saw a mug shot of him wearing his school shirt and read his charge that I finally accepted it. He was one of my favorite students. I still think of him often.

Then about two years ago my wife and I experienced a miscarriage 17 weeks into our second pregnancy. My students all knew my wife was pregnant and while I was out of school grieving the loss I dreaded having to come back to school to see 150 students who knew that my wife was no longer pregnant. My students were amazing and helped me grieve. My students were actually much better than even some of the adults who knew we had experienced that loss.

I share these stories because my “shared sacrifice” is that every time a student dies I think of these things. I don’t even realize that I am thinking of these things at first, because I usually just get angry or frustrated and don’t know why.

There are days that I wonder like many teachers in Chicago, why do I still stay here? Why do I stay in a system that is run by the mayor with an appointed school board that clearly has no clue what is doing. Why do I stay in a system that has a new CEO every one to two years? Why do I stay in a system that allows its schools to be funded often times $10,000 less per student than schools in the suburbs?

Every answer to all of those questions is because of the students. The students are the reason why 40,000 teachers in Chicago don’t just pack up and move out of the city. We love our students. We love to guide, mentor, coach, counsel, teach, listen, and laugh with and at them.

So Mr. Claypool we teachers have “skin in the game”. My personal stories are sadly not unique; we teachers have and continue to make sacrifices every day by being a teacher in Chicago.

Mr. Rauner you want to blame us, teachers, for the fiscal crises of our city? How about thanking us for doing what we do every day. Thank us today, thank us tomorrow, and continue thanking us for your entire four years as governor, because you will never know what we do for the students of this city.

And after you thank us, give us power over our schools. Give us an elected school board. Give us counselors and therapists. Give our students the schools that they deserve.

Yes, giving more to the schools costs money, but let’s be clear, there are money and revenue options out there. You are just choosing to use bogus rhetoric instead of hearing and acting on the revenue options available.

The stress that I and the rest of Chicago’s teachers go through every day of the year to educate the children of this city that we love is not easy, but we do it because we know that our students matter. It is time for the politicians to do the same.

This piece on Gapers Block

http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2015/08/12/i-am-a-dictator-a-chicago-public-schools-teacher-responds-to-rauner-claypool/

This piece on Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/i-am-a-dictator-a-chicago_b_7974616.html

Sifting through Senator Kirk’s “Chicago will become Detroit” threat

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Last week Republican Senator Mark Kirk said that the citizens of Chicago should “re-elect Rahm or Chicago could end up like Detroit“. Now the on the surface the comment seems to just imply that for whatever reason Senator Kirk believes that Rahm Emanuel will be more able to help with our city’s finances than his challenger Chuy Garcia. It is odd that Senator Kirk believes this, because since Mayor Emanuel took over our city’s bond rating has dropped five times. Clearly the mayor is great at raising money for his own re-election campaign, but raising money to help the city….not so much.

So lets go a little deeper into Mark Kirk’s comments threatening that if Garcia is elected Chicago will become like Detroit. My dad grew up in Detroit and like many white Detroiters in the 1950’s and 1960’s his family left the city during the time of “white flight” and moved to the suburbs. This white flight was caused by real estate agents and banks using a lot of scare tactics to convince white home owners to sell their homes quickly and cheaply because the “blacks” were moving in. Then these same real estate agents and banks would jack up the housing costs and sell these same homes to black families. This tactic eventually was made illegal, but not before it radically altered the housing landscape in Detroit and elsewhere .

Detroit had it rough from the 1960’s onward and only until very recently are things slowly starting to turn around. There were riots in the 1960’s, job loss in the 1970’s by the Big 3 (Ford, Chrysler and GM) deciding to close factories to find cheaper work forces so they could maximize their profits, with no regard to the people they employed. Without a strong economic base the 1980’s-2000’s were tough. Detroit had issues with drugs, poverty, and crime. Crime became such an issue that every year the night before Halloween called Devil’s Night , vacant homes would be light on fire and burned. The 1980’s movie Robocop was based on Detroit crime.

To many white people living in suburban Detroit, the name Detroit became synonymous with all of these societal issues. Many white people became afraid to go into the city at all or only go to certain parts.

This is the issue with Sentator Kirk’s comment. On the surface it seems like a just falsely mistaken economic threat, but under the surface lies a much more sinister comment. One that implies that if Garcia someone who is Latino is elected, Chicago will have big challenges, because he isn’t qualified for such complex things as improving the economy.

Implications that certain races aren’t qualified enough date back to the Eugenics movement used in the U.S. to claim only certain groups of people (i.e. white) were intelligent enough for certain jobs or privileges. This idea of Eugenics also led to the creation of tests that we now call “standardized tests” that are supposed to measure intelligence. This Eugenics idea was so wildly popular that Hitler himself and Nazi Germany picked up on this idea.

Republican Senator Kirk’s fear tactics shouldn’t come as a shock either, because Republicans have a history of these type of comments. In 2012 there were enough racist comments said by prominent Republicans that a three minute video compilation was made.  These comments were said by people like Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorium, Mitt Romney, and Tram Hudson. This video is titled “Sh*t Republicans Say About Black People” and you can watch it below.

In 2012 a group of TEAM Englewood High School poets coached by Missy Hughes and myself came across that video and were very upset about it. The students decided to write a poetic response to the Republicans in the video. They titled it “What Black Poets Say to Racist Republicans”. Have a look.

Clearly Senator Kirk and Governor Rauner want Rahm in office and will use fear tactics to try to make this happen.

But now Chicago it is our turn to have a response to Senator Kirk and this new round of outdated racist comments, like how the TEAM Englewood poets responded to the Republican comments in 2012.

But how do we go about this?

The answer is much simpler than a choreographed and researched poetic response. We do this by going to the voting both on April 7th and voting Rahm out!

Posted on Gapers Block

http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2015/03/11/sifting-through-senator-kirks-chicago-will-become-detroit-threat/

The Chicago Teacher Residency Rule: One Thing CPS Gets Right

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A former colleague of mine wrote an article recently that Chicago Public Schools should end the requirement that to work in CPS you must live in the city of Chicago limits.

There are a lot of things that CPS does that I strongly disagree with, from having mayoral control of the schools, to not having an elected school board and just the overall top down undemocratic way that CPS runs schools.

But the rule that to teach in CPS you must live in Chicago is one rule that CPS gets rights.

As teachers we have a moral obligation to helping make the lives of our students better.

One way to make our students lives better is to make the city that we all live in better. There at times is already a disconnect between the lived experiences of our students and the experiences that we teachers have. The thing is, even if we don’t live in the specific Chicago neighborhood in which our school is located we still are infinitely more aware of what life is like for our students than say if we were able to commute from surrounding suburbs. Yes, I could have my students share their experiences so I could attempt to understand and relate to them, but the disconnect between teachers and students will only be greater if they live in Englewood or South Chicago and I live in Orland Park, Oak Park, or Schaumburg.

We owe it to our students as voters, taxpayers, and parents to have a political, economic, and educational stake in this city.

The 40,0000 teachers who work for CPS are an important voice in the electoral process in Chicago, as we have seen with the most recent round of Mayoral and Aldermanic elections. The actions of the teachers who make up the Chicago Teachers Union are changing the way schools are run and the way this city is run. We would have significantly less tangible ways to exert positive change for our students if we had no voting privileges for our students.

We owe it to our students to pay taxes to this city to help improve it for everyone. Yes, the way the money is used or not used needs improvement, but the politicians need our revenue to fund improvements. These same politicians also need our voices to pressure them to use our revenue the way that it should be used.

We owe it to our students to be teachers who not only work in CPS but also send our kids to CPS. By having our children attend CPS, we obviously will have more at stake in wanting to improve the schools for all children in the city.

Teaching is about building connections with our students. We teachers may have differences between our students and us regarding race and/or economic status, but by living in the city, paying taxes, and sending our kids to CPS, our students can see that through our differences we also share many common bonds, most importantly the desire to improve the city that we all call home.

We teachers love and care about our students, which is why discussions about the teacher residency rule and any and everything else that impacts our careers as teachers are vital.

But to truly care about and fight for the schools our students deserve, we must also live in and fight for the city that we all deserve.

Published on Catalyst Chicago
http://catalyst-chicago.org/2015/03/teacher-residency-rule-one-thing-cps-gets-right/

An “Ode”: To the Appointed Chicago School Board Members

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Let’s just get the following truths about the Chicago School Board out of the way:

  • It is appointed by the mayor and not elected by the people of Chicago.
  • It is the only school board in the entire state of Illinois that is not elected.
  • It closed the most schools in the history of the United States.
  • It allows our neighborhood schools to be criminally underfunded.
  • It has opened excessive amounts of new charter schools and allowed them to take public school money even though they do no better and often worse.
  • It allows banks to make millions off our students through toxic loans that the Board agreed to and refuses to renegotiate on.
  • It allows our kids to be in the most militarized school system in the country. As if our streets weren’t already violent enough, let’s give the military access to all of our kids as well. Yes, that seems logical.
  • It has board members on it like Quazzo who uses her role to cut deals and give CPS contracts to her friends.

Let’s move on to things we maybe don’t know about this board.

They are very afraid of losing their power. Yes, they will claim that they are just “volunteers” on the school board, who are dedicated to helping all students. They act is if they are volunteering to serve on this board, because no one else wants the responsibility. Well news flash:  David Vitale, Jesse Ruiz, Carlos Azcoitia, Henry Bienen, Mahalia Hines, Deborah Quazzo, and Andrea Zopp….Your appointed days are numbered.

Chicago will get an elected school board in the near future. Those of you on the school board are just essentially clinging to the “good ole days” when you could do what you want and not have much scrutiny.

The scrutiny is here School Board. But good for you, you do have some options:

  • You can fight tooth and nail for your “volunteer” positions. This is the path you seem to have chosen, unfortunately.
  • The better option, you can quit and then encourage your dear friend Rahm Emanuel to realize an elected board is coming, whether any of you like it or not.

The truth is regardless of whomever ends up being our next mayor in a few weeks (please, please, please, Chicagoans let it be Garcia or Fioretti) the days of the appointed school board are over.

Sadly, history has had far too many people clinging to power in fear, and not letting Democracy actually be carried out. These people who clung to power and refused to even give Democracy a chance are now often referred to in an unflattering light in the history books I use with my students. And yes, school board members you might be sitting there on your high and mighty throne thinking things like “I don’t care if people disagree with my decisions, because I am doing what is best for the kids” blah blah blah.

How can you do what is best for the kids, if you won’t even allow their parents to have a say in what is best for them? By not letting parents or anyone else in this city vote for the people on the school board you are playing the role of someone who thinks they know what is best for all of us. This action is attached to historical words like Paternalistic, Racist, or Privileged to name just a few.

The model you are following is one used by people who colonized other countries and forced the people in those colonized places to believe religions, creeds, and values that were not their own. This was all done with the idea that, “We know what is best for you, because we are better than you”. Don’t you see it School Board? This is the role you are playing.

You DON’T know what is best for the people of Chicago. Only the voters do, but here in lies the problem…you won’t let the people vote!

There will be a movement to oust you. It is coming, actually it has already started. Alderman in Chicago are taking notice, parents and the community have already noticed and are speaking out. Count your days, because they are becoming fewer.

Sure it will be embarrassing briefly if you just stepped down from your “volunteer” role.

But believe me it will be even more embarrassing when you are forced off your throne, by Democracy.

And believe me Democracy is coming.

Article Published on Gapers Block

http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2015/02/11/an-ode-to-the-appointed-chicago-school-board-members/

Article on Huffington Post Chicago
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/an-ode-to-the-appointed-c_b_6655690.html

The 1999 Civil Trial for the Murder of Dr. King

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We are in the midst of Black History Month and I recently came across information regarding the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King that I had never known before. As a history teacher when there are historical events that I don’t know about, it bothers me. One of the reasons that I went on to be a history teacher was because I was upset with the history that I wasn’t taught in school.  At times I had to educate myself, because of the lack of information covered in textbooks. Thankfully I discovered the writings of people like Howard Zinn who helped guide my education.

But I think I have just come across the most alarming piece of information that I never knew about. It involves a trial that took place in 1999, which was 31 years after King’s murder.

The fact that the murder of one of the most important figures in American history took 31 years to be tried is hopefully as shocking and offensive to you as it is to me, but this is just the tip of the offensive iceberg.

There was never a murder trial because the accused killer, James Earl Ray took a plea bargain so there would be no trial.

In 1999 the King family won a civil trial that found the “U.S. Government and other agencies were guilty in the wrongful death of Martin Luther King” This was the only trial in the murder of King.

The only trial that was held about the murder of Martin Luther King took place 31 years after his death AND the verdict of the 12 jurors was that the U.S. Government was guilty of his murder.

So let this sink in.

The verdict concluded that it was not an act committed by a lone random racist gunman named James Earl Ray, but it was in fact a planned assassination, coordinated by the Memphis Police Department and the U.S. Department of Defense.

I know (at least for me) that this information may sound too hard to believe, but instead of my analysis let me just add quotes from the actual trial transcripts that can be found here:

Attorney William Peppers, “Had you known that two army photographers were on the roof of the fire station photographing everything. Two cameras, one on the balcony and one whisking around the driveway and into the brush area. Did you know ladies and gentlemen that the assassination was photographed? That there were photographs buried in the archives at the Department of Defense? No you did not know. And you know why you did not know? Because there was no police investigation in this case.

Well, the jury heard evidence as to how it was covered up for 31 years. And ladies and gentlemen, the evidence they heard ranged from murder, murder of a poor innocent cab driver who was putting luggage into a taxi cab in the driveway of the Loraine Motel and who saw the shooter come down over the wall, run down Mulberry Street and get into a waiting Memphis Police traffic car to be driven away. He told his dispatcher, “Oh, they got the killer. I saw him being driven away in a Memphis Police Department traffic car.” What happened to that poor taxi cab driver? He was interviewed by the police that night and they found his body the next morning. NO record of that death exists. NO record exists. If we had not found people whom he had told that story, who heard him on the very night we would have never known about this.

Then there is the whole thing about the bushes…the bushes. So many witnesses saw figures in the bushes and the shooter coming down over the bushes and running. You know the next morning at 7 o’clock, Inspector Sam Evans, from the Memphis Police Department pulled Maynard Styles, the Administrator of the Public Works Department and told Mr. Styles to get a team out there and cut those bushes down. At seven a.m., on the 5th of April, a team is sent to cut down the bushes. Now what does that mean in police terms? It means that you have totally devastated and changed the scene of a crime so that it is never the same. If there are no bushes, there can be no sniper. So that is the kind of thing that they did. This unfolded throughout.”

These quotes from the trial will surely bring out a lot of questions.

Here are a few of my questions about the results of the trial overall:

1. Since the U.S. Government was found guilty of the assassination of Martin Luther King, why did they not challenge or appeal the verdict? Not surprisingly, after the verdict the U.S. Justice Department did their own internal review and found themselves not guilty of the things the independent 12 member jury just said they were guilty of. But why not publicly fight against the verdict?

2. Why did the Government wait so long to kill King then? He had been protesting, marching, and speaking out since the 1950’s, so why was he assassinated in 1968 and not sooner?

3. Was he not killed sooner, because up until the mid-1960’s he had only been focusing on Civil Rights?

In the mid-1960’s King started focusing our country’s economic policies and also our foreign policies. He began to question why we were in Vietnam in the first place. His “Beyond Vietnam” speech in 1967 caused an uproar, because he was no longer just speaking about civil rights. In an excerpt from that speech King said, “We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As  Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.””

4. Did the Government get scared that King could possibly lead a revolution that could truly and permanently alter the way the U.S. has operated since its creation?

Here is a reflection on the trial from King’s wife, Mrs. Coretta Scott King. In her reflection she mentions how her family wanted no money from the government, but just the truth of her husband’s murder to be made public.

 “There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief. I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations. This verdict is not only a great victory for my family, but also a great victory for America. It is a great victory for truth itself. It is important to know that this was a SWIFT verdict, delivered after about an hour of jury deliberation.

The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband.

The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.

I want to make it clear that my family has no interest in retribution. Instead, our sole concern has been that the full truth of the assassination has been revealed and adjudicated in a court of law…

My husband once said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” To-day, almost 32 years after my husband and the father of my four children was assassinated, I feel that the jury’s verdict clearly affirms this principle. With this faith, we can begin the 21st century and the new millennium with a new spirit of hope and healing.”

Whether you want to accept this information or not, you at least owe it to yourself to read more about this trial and the events surrounding Dr. King’s murder.

No matter how messy, the implications or inconvenient the truth is, it must be told.

This is what Coretta Scott King wanted and surely this is something Martin Luther King himself would want.

Resources to continue researching the trial:

The King Center

The Trial Transcripts

U.S. Justice Department Response

Synopsis of events of the day King was killed

White America’s Silence Enables Black Deaths

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Let’s be honest, the word white often makes white people uncomfortable. Many of us who are white, when asked to describe ourselves do not say our race in our personal descriptions. A typical white person’s description of their self will likely include their gender, their ethnicity, and their looks. For example my description would sound something like this, “I am male, of Italian and German descent, 5’ 8” and bald.” Notice how race is not often mentioned.

The reason many white people don’t often think in terms of our own race is privilege. It is privilege that makes it so we don’t have to think about our race every single minute of every single day.

In 1989 a professor named Peggy McIntosh wrote a paper titled White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. In this document she lists many privileges that white people have been taught to ignore and just accept as normal without even thinking twice about them.

Here are a few I selected from her list that are incredibly relevant for today:

  • I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
  • If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
  • I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
  • I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
  • I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
  • If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
  • I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

Her list goes on. She wrote this piece 25 years ago and all of the items on her list still ring true today. In light of the events over the past few years in Ferguson with Mike Brown, Sanford with Trayvon Martin, Cleveland with Tamir Rice, Brevard Country Florida with Jordan Davis, Beaver Creek Ohio with John Crawford and New York City with Eric Garner I added a few more to the White Privilege list:

  • I (as a white person) can wear a hood, buy skittles, and walk down the street in the evening without fear of harassment from police or “neighborhood watch”.
  • I can listen to loud music in my car without being told to turn it down.
  • But if for some reason I was to be told turn my music down I could be assured in knowing that no one would shoot at me because of it.
  • My son could play with a toy gun in the park (even though I hate toy guns) and I know no one would call the cops on him.
  • My son could play with a toy gun in the park and if a police officer saw him playing with a toy gun he would not shoot and kill my son in under two seconds.
  • I could rest assured knowing that if ever my son was ever shot someone would attempt to perform CPR on him.
  • I know I could walk into a Wal-Mart pick up a BB gun since they are sold there and walk around the store and not be shot.
  • I can choose not to speak up when black people are being murdered by police and racist “Stand Your Ground” laws in this country and go about living my daily life, like America really is the land of equal opportunity.

It is this last privilege that I really want to focus on. We white people have the privilege to live in a bubble. We can choose to live in areas that are all or nearly all white.

We can share stories of that one time when we were in a “dangerous” (i.e. black area) of a city and how we made sure to lock the car doors and not get out of the car and then afterward joke about that “scary” situation back in the safety of our suburb, rural area, or safe (white) part of the city that we live in.

Beverly Tatum a scholar on race compares racism to breathing smog. “Sometimes it (racism) is so thick it is visible, other times it is less apparent, but always, day in and day out, we are breathing it (racism) in.”

Whether we accept it or not, racism is very much alive and going on at all times around us. By not choosing to actively resist and fight back against it we are actually promoting racism and prolonging its very existence.

Lisa Delpt another scholar on race wrote a letter to her daughter when she was eight years old titled “Dear Maya”. In the letter she says, “As much as I think of you as my gift to the world, I am constant­ly made aware that there are those who see you otherwise. Although you don’t realize it yet, it is solely because of your color that the police officers in our predominantly white neighbor­hood stop you to “talk” when you walk our dog. You think they’re being friendly, but when you tell me that one of their first questions is always, “Do you live around here?” I know that they question your right to be here, that somehow your being here threatens their sense of security.”

In much the same way I now will write a letter to all of the white people I know who are not or don’t know how to speak up about the legalized killing of black people in our country.

Dear White People,

Over the past two years very extreme and public examples have come out about police and regular citizens using certain laws to kill unarmed black people in the name of self-defense. Some of you have expressed outrage, some of you said nothing, while others of you advocated for the police and the laws that allowed these tragic events to happen.

Just because a something is legal does not make it just. Just because it is a law does not mean it should be allowed.

Most of us are not comfortable talking about race since it is not something we often need to talk about. We get defensive or afraid we might say the wrong thing. But we must start talking about race as uncomfortable as it might be. It cannot wait any longer.

We must start reading authors and educators who are helping to teach us about our own whiteness. We must sit down and read Lisa Delpit, Theresa Perry, and Beverly Daniel-Tatum as a start.

We must actually spend real time with people who don’t all look like and have the same experiences as us.

And once we actually sit down and talk and listen to someone who does not look like us we actually have to listen to and not dismiss their experiences.

I’m writing this as someone who grew up in a small town that was nearly all white outside of Ann Arbor Michigan. I’m writing as someone who chose to work at a YMCA in a predominantly black area of Toledo Oho while I was going to college. I’m writing as someone who chose to live on the South Side of Chicago in one of the few racially diverse neighborhoods of the city. I’m writing as someone who has spent the last eight years successfully teaching in schools that are nearly all African-American.

I’m writing this not to say I still don’t have a lot to learn about race, institutionalized racism, and my own whiteness, but I am writing to say that if we really want too we can start to truly understand how our skin color impacts our daily existence.

This letter could go on, but this is a start.

We must start and we must start now.

#WeCantBreathe

until

#BlackLivesMatter

and

#AllLivesMatter

On Huffington Post Chicago

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/white-americas-silence-en_b_6272280.html

On Gapers Block

http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2014/12/05/white-americas-silence-enables-black-deaths/

I would be so Thankful if only Chicago had an Elected School Board

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While we all prepare to give thanks for family, friends, and loved ones, I want to pause and give thanks to the people in this city who are relentlessly trying to give us all the opportunity to have an elected school board.

Because Mayor Rahm Emanuel keeps Chicago the only school district in the entire state of Illinois that does not have an elected school board.

We have a school board that is handpicked by the mayor and therefore does whatever the mayor tells them to do, because if they go against him then guess what? They are no longer on the school board.

We have an appointed school board that meets during the work day so parents, teachers, students, and the community cannot easily attend the meetings. But in spite of this every month people attend and speak out about how CPS can be and needs to be improved. Yet every month the CPS board pretends to listen to the pleas of the people they should be representing, watches while parents make their pleas and says nothing while people are physically removed from the microphone. The appointed board then goes into a closed door session and does whatever they want to do err I mean whatever they were told to do.

We have an appointed school board that agreed to close the most schools in the history of the United States and claimed that closing schools was good for children.

We have an appointed school board that has according to a Chicago Tribune editorial has allowed “CPS to get ripped off by the banks for the last ten years”.  This money that the School Board and our Mayor allowed the banks to take from our schools was enough money to keep ALL of the 50 schools that were closed open. This money could reduce class sizes and allow for more counselors, librarians, art teachers, nurses and the list goes on and on to be hired.

A truly Democratic society means we are able to vote and be represented by people whom we voted for. In Chicago our mayor will not let Democracy into education. As a social studies teacher we are required to teach our students about the major types of governments in the world. When I teach about Democracy and then compare it to a dictatorship it is evident that our school system is run like the latter.

Various groups and people have been attempting to get a referendum on the ballot to allow the citizens of Chicago to vote to determine if they would like an elected school board or not. Yet every election one of Rahm’s puppets I mean Alderman, specifically Alderman Joe Moore has managed to bump the Elected School Board question off the ballot.

Why is this?

What is our mayor so afraid of?

Rahm must be afraid of Democracy.

The time is now to give the people of Chicago the say in how our schools are run.

Because there is one thing that we all can agree on and that is Chicago Public Schools are a mess.

If you want to help make an Elected School Board a reality check out and get involved with CODE Chicago and the work the Chicago Teachers Union is doing to bring educational Democracy to Chicago.

Published in Huffington Post Chicago & Gapers Block

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/-i-would-be-so-thankful-i_b_6201080.html?utm_hp_ref=chicago&ir=Chicago

http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2014/11/24/i-would-be-so-thankful-if-only-chicago-had-an-elected-school-board/#.VHNdpOnJEUg.twitter