Maka Si Tomni (Surround The Universe)
Bringing Forth a Thriving Lakota Language & Culture
Maka Si Tomni - Surrounding the Universe Bringing Forth a Thriving Lakota Language & Culture Little Big Horn Victory Celebration, June 25th 2008 is Sovereignty-In-Action - a spiritual, educational and cultural celebration of 1st nation peoples at Little Big Horn National Monument, Montana USA. This June 2008 event is the largest gathering of descendants ...learn more
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Feb 18, 2008
Updated: Nov 27, 2009
Membership: Open
Semi-Private
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Problem
Because of New Orleans everything’s changed. New Orleans
has made urban issues in the United States into international issues.
It shone a light on race and class in the US and exposed it to the
whole world, so we have a new raising consciousness around race and
class issues. Even Newsweek says we have to start a fight around this
and ask why a part of the US looks like the Third World. And the
reality is that this is happening in all urban areas across the US
especially where there is a majority of Latinos and African-Americans.
So we need to take that light that shone in New Orleans and shine it on
other urban areas. Make New Orleans into a teachable moment. Not a
turning point where there’s a great upheaval and people revolt; it’s a
teachable moment. New Orleans after Katrina is gentrification in fast
forward. If you want to see what will happen in your city, look at New
Orleans. See what happened there. Conservative think tanks have a plan
for a ‘shining new city,’ doing away with minimum wage.
Their approach is to neglect public facilities, then say they’re neglected and follow up saying we need to provide new alternatives. What are those new alternatives? Bringing in private resources, developers who say they need tax cuts to do the work, even though they’re making huge profits. They say they need the help of the government, they´ll bring jobs to the city, ‘we’re doing you a favor.’ It’s just another form of trickle-down policy.
We went to our council member and said “There’s an abandoned school we want to use as a community center. We don’t want it to become a charter school because it won’t be accountable to us. We don’t want a developer to take it because it won’t belong to us anymore. There are 3 schools around it in disrepair, that could use this abandoned school as a temporary facility while they rebuild their locations."
He then said to us: “You have to bring me resources. Your competitors – charter schools – can bring in money from outside.”
"Excuse me," we said, "you’re talking about the 14th street corridor? We see all this money coming in from development. We don’t want to pay our taxes, let them go to something else, and then have to invest our money and time in something where that something should be paid for by government."
In DC there’s been one large project after another: the Convention center, MCI Center, now the new stadium. Tax cuts, advantages, what the city pays in terms of traffic. People coming in from the suburb and using DC as a playground. Most working class city residents can’t afford to go to the stadium. Jobs promised were minimum wage jobs and there were few.
There has been no study of any stadium built in any urban area that benefited the area economically. When Camden Yards closed thanks to a baseball strike, a study was conducted and found that economically the close had made no difference to the city.
DC had a surplus. So it is spending money to pay for a $600 million stadium. Our councilmember wants air right properties provided via libraries and public properties. Then she asks “how do we get the money to rebuild our libraries that are falling apart?” Ward 1 has the biggest population, yet only 1 public library. She wants legislation to sell away the air rights for public properties (e.g. West End library), to allow someone to build on top of it. Developers here are running out of space and they want those areas.
We are using our experience saving the Boys and Girls Club as a model for activists in other campaigns. Local residents didn’t want to eliminate the Club. Developers said they would build a new one twice its size in the basement of the new building on this site (with luxury condos on top), that residents would get a new, bigger Club, and developers their luxury condos. Parents objected because they realized they would be displaced as a result, because they live in affordable housing in the area. Condos would raise speculation on real estate. When values go up, owners find reasons to evict people. If they approved this, they would eventually find themselves without homes in the neighborhood, and the developers would get what they wanted in the first place -- the Boys and Girls Club converted for private gain.
The nonprofit organization that was selling the Club´s CEO had said “Well, this Club will remain there. But if at some point in the future the kids are not there, we can sell that part to the building… e.g. a health club for the yuppies that are moving in.” Parents asked themselves: What do you mean, when the kids are not there? Then they realized they would eventually get kicked out. Residents fought tooth and nail like their lives depended on it, and that’s why they won.
Westend Library is not a great example of the air rights issues because it is on Connecticut Ave. and so won’t affect speculation. But we understand this not as something designed to meet human need. Developers are calling the shots and our politicians are reacting. That’s why we don’t trust what’s coming out of this: it’s not coming from our politicians carefully thinking through social policy. It’s coming from the developers who are serving the bottom line and their profit, their greed. Not a need.
Citizens are saying: “There can be no more postponement… there has been lots of development in the city… this needs to revert to support the citizens/residents. We need good public schools.”
Politicians are now saying the stadium will fund our schools, but in 15 years. It’s always a postponed benefit. This benefit is a mirage, because it is never going to happen, not without a public outcry.
So we finally started a campaign, the Campaign to Save Our Schools, with a coalition of members from different groups.
There were three coalitions working on schools from different perspectives: Save our Schools, the Full Funding Coalition (in favor of full funding of schools), and the People’s Property Campaign. All of these organizations either were in development (still building their structure) or they had very mixed politics, and there was an ongoing debate about how to go forward. A handful of us representing all of these organizations felt something needed to be done urgently because we realized there was a real danger that in 5-6 years we’d be in the same situation as Dayton, OH (see case study in the Project Briefcase below) where their public school system has been destroyed.
So we started doing several things. We had meetings to organize city-wide teach-ins in DC (September 2005). We started meeting to organize the teach-ins, we started doing research on charter schools and their effect on the privatization of public schools, and we started a study group to strengthen our fury on the big picture, on privatization nationally, starting with the book “The Fox and the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy” by Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich, two grassroots activists who work for Grassroots Leadership.
We started the teach-ins, but we knew that protests were really important and effective, though something none of the organizations we were a part of were engaged in. We did a series of protests while we did the teach-ins because we know that interacting with the world is what instructs how we develop the structure of the campaign, rather than sitting in a room talking theory. That way the group is constantly testing the effectiveness of the campaign, it is not in a vacuum. So many organizations get burned out before they even start because they try to develop ideas in a vacuum and don´t engage the community. We are continually getting feedback from the community, maintaining an ongoing campaign, interacting with the world, figuring out the philosophy behind your group.
We started a series of protests. As the DC government was developing the Master Education plan for DC schools, we found out private and charter school interests were having more of a say and stacking the public hearings on the master education plan, thanks to their better funding. But these events weren’t publicized to the public.
We also realized the school board members weren’t attending the meetings; there were one or two. So we felt it was a farce. We had a protest at one of the four meetings, and we publicized the protest. 25 people attended the first protest. Organizations we read about in the newspaper said they already agreed with the school board publicly, even while the master planning process was still going on. All of a sudden school board members that were unreachable before started calling us to stop the protest. We said “We are not going to stop the protest; we hear that Eastern School is being bled of resources. A pro-charter private advocacy group funded by private interests say it’s a done deal. We need transparency, and we need school board members to participate.” We advertised the protest so the public was more aware of the hearing itself. Almost all school board members showed up to that hearing, to tell us to participate rather than be obstructionists. We did participate, but the important thing is we got them to participate in the process of planning.
Our second protest was outside a restaurant where the Mayoral candidates were coming to speak about their issues. We held a protest to let them know there are people acting on these issues. 45 people attended this second protest. It was very organized – we had chant sheets, decided what the talking points would be with the media, did a press release (proper media outreach), flyering (every person that went took in a flyer saying why we’re protesting and what we demand at the hearing) – and we handed them to the public that came to the Mayoral.
We were very busy people, because we were also pursuing the legislative end. We found the hearings relating to public property and schools, and we came in. We are all working people; we took days off. We found out charter school people were stacking these meetings. We organized to have at least 20 people at one hearing (out of 80-100). Every single one of them spoke (signed up for the hearing). There were another 20 people with t-shirts identifying the cause (out of the 100). Even the city council members recognized our presence. Even so, The Washington Post didn’t report any of this testimony or the presence of the People’s Property Campaign. We continued to be blacked out by major media even when public radio covered us.
Why are charter schools being pushed by their proponents?
The first question I ask people is “If this is such a great project, and it were succeeding in terms of providing an alternative, and it wasn’t creating separate and unequal systems, why bypass the people of DC and go straight to the neo-conservative congress?” If the citizens of DC really want this, put it to a vote. Instead the legislation is coming straight from congressmen and they are funding the charter schools in the city. A lot of the money is being earmarked by certain senators/congressmen. This is contributing to the continued neglect of the DC public school system. There are two visions here: one is a long-term optimistic vision that says “we have the resources to build one excellent, coordinated public school system, that is completely accountable to the public." The other says “the schools are neglected, we need to act in forecloseure mode, and save ourselves.” Charter school proponents don’t say they are for undermining the DC public school system. They brag about how many students they’re taking away from the public school system, yet they refuse to say they are for the replacement of the public school system. The charter school system is creating bandaids here and there. A parent says “I can’t take my son or daughter to this school, it’s run down." No one can blame them for changing cabins on the Titanic. We don´t argue against that, but there need to be people looking at the long-term: where is this ship headed and at what speed? We are not radical, reactionary. We are doing the research. We are sensible. Those who are radical are those who want to privatize everything, focus only on the bottom line and profit, serving human need only as a byproduct of aiming for profit. We say “set the course for human need and then analyze that scientifically. Everyone benefits that way.”
We continue in all cities across the US to have mayors and governors, who are mostly democratic and people of color, who have been put in charge of administrating this privatization of urban areas. Say this big stadium will benefit our economy. Yet miraculously, those things benefit the “economy” but hurt the community. It’s their economy, and it’s our community. Their system is based on trickle-down, so it works for them, our communities fall apart. WE WANT PROJECTS THAT DIRECTLY BENEFIT OUR COMMUNITY.
We went to Focus, charter school advocates. We asked them to sign the “Bill of Rights” that this coalition put together. The Bill of Rights said you get to establish a charter school unopposed if you agree to open enrollment for the immediate community. Secondly, that they will hire people from the immediate community. Their representative said “I don’t care to discuss this with you. The law is on my side.” He told this to a room of predominantly women of color. He later refused to participate in a teach-in to offer his perspective.
The civil rights movement did not finish its work. It was interrupted when the job of dispossessing people of color was subcontracted to black politicians – governors and mayors. They pretend they are the champions of the people. They are PR men for gentrification of urban centers. If they were white politicians doing what they’re doing for the corporate powers, there would be an upheaval. Racism! Ethnic cleansing! All these things would be shouted out.
"Like New Orleans, people are willing to accept poverty if it’s covered with a veneer of tourism, and that veneer was peeled off by Katrina in New Orleans. Now it makes sense to me what their vision is. This mad displacement of people, this wholesale destruction of communities… they have this vision of this being a playground for the suburbs, for tourists. We have a vision: there are communities that are tight and thriving here, and you have the resources to sustain these communities." -- Zein Elamine.
Most displaced are going to Prince George´s County, MD. Normally when that happens there’s an increase in crime where they go. DC has been bragging about the drop in crime – the Post has been writing articles about this. But if you pay close attention you´ll notice on page B1 of the Post´s Metro section the article “Drop in Crime in the District” is followed on B3 by “Tripling of Crime in PG County.” There are no economic studies, no research, no tying of these. The Post finally connected the two, but in the worst way possible with several quotes from the police in Prince George´s County saying “We are getting the riffraff from DC.” The “riffraff” are the displaced and dispossessed. Diamondback (University of Maryland) published an article before the Post one linking the increase in crime to DC.
People moving to DC have no kids, and aesthetically would rather see a charter school than a public school with “problem kids.” Gentrification is working hand in hand with charter schools.
We’re not saying all development is bad, we’re saying it has to be planned development, the community has to say what kind of development. There have to be hearings, not daytime hearings where they are stacked by lobbyists (where to do a 3 minute testimony I have to wait 6 hours in the hearing room, take the whole day off). Hearings are just “establishing facts on the ground to show politicians are doing their job of having public intake, but there isn’t any public intake.”
Their approach is to neglect public facilities, then say they’re neglected and follow up saying we need to provide new alternatives. What are those new alternatives? Bringing in private resources, developers who say they need tax cuts to do the work, even though they’re making huge profits. They say they need the help of the government, they´ll bring jobs to the city, ‘we’re doing you a favor.’ It’s just another form of trickle-down policy.
We went to our council member and said “There’s an abandoned school we want to use as a community center. We don’t want it to become a charter school because it won’t be accountable to us. We don’t want a developer to take it because it won’t belong to us anymore. There are 3 schools around it in disrepair, that could use this abandoned school as a temporary facility while they rebuild their locations."
He then said to us: “You have to bring me resources. Your competitors – charter schools – can bring in money from outside.”
"Excuse me," we said, "you’re talking about the 14th street corridor? We see all this money coming in from development. We don’t want to pay our taxes, let them go to something else, and then have to invest our money and time in something where that something should be paid for by government."
In DC there’s been one large project after another: the Convention center, MCI Center, now the new stadium. Tax cuts, advantages, what the city pays in terms of traffic. People coming in from the suburb and using DC as a playground. Most working class city residents can’t afford to go to the stadium. Jobs promised were minimum wage jobs and there were few.
There has been no study of any stadium built in any urban area that benefited the area economically. When Camden Yards closed thanks to a baseball strike, a study was conducted and found that economically the close had made no difference to the city.
DC had a surplus. So it is spending money to pay for a $600 million stadium. Our councilmember wants air right properties provided via libraries and public properties. Then she asks “how do we get the money to rebuild our libraries that are falling apart?” Ward 1 has the biggest population, yet only 1 public library. She wants legislation to sell away the air rights for public properties (e.g. West End library), to allow someone to build on top of it. Developers here are running out of space and they want those areas.
We are using our experience saving the Boys and Girls Club as a model for activists in other campaigns. Local residents didn’t want to eliminate the Club. Developers said they would build a new one twice its size in the basement of the new building on this site (with luxury condos on top), that residents would get a new, bigger Club, and developers their luxury condos. Parents objected because they realized they would be displaced as a result, because they live in affordable housing in the area. Condos would raise speculation on real estate. When values go up, owners find reasons to evict people. If they approved this, they would eventually find themselves without homes in the neighborhood, and the developers would get what they wanted in the first place -- the Boys and Girls Club converted for private gain.
The nonprofit organization that was selling the Club´s CEO had said “Well, this Club will remain there. But if at some point in the future the kids are not there, we can sell that part to the building… e.g. a health club for the yuppies that are moving in.” Parents asked themselves: What do you mean, when the kids are not there? Then they realized they would eventually get kicked out. Residents fought tooth and nail like their lives depended on it, and that’s why they won.
Westend Library is not a great example of the air rights issues because it is on Connecticut Ave. and so won’t affect speculation. But we understand this not as something designed to meet human need. Developers are calling the shots and our politicians are reacting. That’s why we don’t trust what’s coming out of this: it’s not coming from our politicians carefully thinking through social policy. It’s coming from the developers who are serving the bottom line and their profit, their greed. Not a need.
Citizens are saying: “There can be no more postponement… there has been lots of development in the city… this needs to revert to support the citizens/residents. We need good public schools.”
Politicians are now saying the stadium will fund our schools, but in 15 years. It’s always a postponed benefit. This benefit is a mirage, because it is never going to happen, not without a public outcry.
So we finally started a campaign, the Campaign to Save Our Schools, with a coalition of members from different groups.
There were three coalitions working on schools from different perspectives: Save our Schools, the Full Funding Coalition (in favor of full funding of schools), and the People’s Property Campaign. All of these organizations either were in development (still building their structure) or they had very mixed politics, and there was an ongoing debate about how to go forward. A handful of us representing all of these organizations felt something needed to be done urgently because we realized there was a real danger that in 5-6 years we’d be in the same situation as Dayton, OH (see case study in the Project Briefcase below) where their public school system has been destroyed.
So we started doing several things. We had meetings to organize city-wide teach-ins in DC (September 2005). We started meeting to organize the teach-ins, we started doing research on charter schools and their effect on the privatization of public schools, and we started a study group to strengthen our fury on the big picture, on privatization nationally, starting with the book “The Fox and the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy” by Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich, two grassroots activists who work for Grassroots Leadership.
We started the teach-ins, but we knew that protests were really important and effective, though something none of the organizations we were a part of were engaged in. We did a series of protests while we did the teach-ins because we know that interacting with the world is what instructs how we develop the structure of the campaign, rather than sitting in a room talking theory. That way the group is constantly testing the effectiveness of the campaign, it is not in a vacuum. So many organizations get burned out before they even start because they try to develop ideas in a vacuum and don´t engage the community. We are continually getting feedback from the community, maintaining an ongoing campaign, interacting with the world, figuring out the philosophy behind your group.
We started a series of protests. As the DC government was developing the Master Education plan for DC schools, we found out private and charter school interests were having more of a say and stacking the public hearings on the master education plan, thanks to their better funding. But these events weren’t publicized to the public.
We also realized the school board members weren’t attending the meetings; there were one or two. So we felt it was a farce. We had a protest at one of the four meetings, and we publicized the protest. 25 people attended the first protest. Organizations we read about in the newspaper said they already agreed with the school board publicly, even while the master planning process was still going on. All of a sudden school board members that were unreachable before started calling us to stop the protest. We said “We are not going to stop the protest; we hear that Eastern School is being bled of resources. A pro-charter private advocacy group funded by private interests say it’s a done deal. We need transparency, and we need school board members to participate.” We advertised the protest so the public was more aware of the hearing itself. Almost all school board members showed up to that hearing, to tell us to participate rather than be obstructionists. We did participate, but the important thing is we got them to participate in the process of planning.
Our second protest was outside a restaurant where the Mayoral candidates were coming to speak about their issues. We held a protest to let them know there are people acting on these issues. 45 people attended this second protest. It was very organized – we had chant sheets, decided what the talking points would be with the media, did a press release (proper media outreach), flyering (every person that went took in a flyer saying why we’re protesting and what we demand at the hearing) – and we handed them to the public that came to the Mayoral.
We were very busy people, because we were also pursuing the legislative end. We found the hearings relating to public property and schools, and we came in. We are all working people; we took days off. We found out charter school people were stacking these meetings. We organized to have at least 20 people at one hearing (out of 80-100). Every single one of them spoke (signed up for the hearing). There were another 20 people with t-shirts identifying the cause (out of the 100). Even the city council members recognized our presence. Even so, The Washington Post didn’t report any of this testimony or the presence of the People’s Property Campaign. We continued to be blacked out by major media even when public radio covered us.
Why are charter schools being pushed by their proponents?
The first question I ask people is “If this is such a great project, and it were succeeding in terms of providing an alternative, and it wasn’t creating separate and unequal systems, why bypass the people of DC and go straight to the neo-conservative congress?” If the citizens of DC really want this, put it to a vote. Instead the legislation is coming straight from congressmen and they are funding the charter schools in the city. A lot of the money is being earmarked by certain senators/congressmen. This is contributing to the continued neglect of the DC public school system. There are two visions here: one is a long-term optimistic vision that says “we have the resources to build one excellent, coordinated public school system, that is completely accountable to the public." The other says “the schools are neglected, we need to act in forecloseure mode, and save ourselves.” Charter school proponents don’t say they are for undermining the DC public school system. They brag about how many students they’re taking away from the public school system, yet they refuse to say they are for the replacement of the public school system. The charter school system is creating bandaids here and there. A parent says “I can’t take my son or daughter to this school, it’s run down." No one can blame them for changing cabins on the Titanic. We don´t argue against that, but there need to be people looking at the long-term: where is this ship headed and at what speed? We are not radical, reactionary. We are doing the research. We are sensible. Those who are radical are those who want to privatize everything, focus only on the bottom line and profit, serving human need only as a byproduct of aiming for profit. We say “set the course for human need and then analyze that scientifically. Everyone benefits that way.”
We continue in all cities across the US to have mayors and governors, who are mostly democratic and people of color, who have been put in charge of administrating this privatization of urban areas. Say this big stadium will benefit our economy. Yet miraculously, those things benefit the “economy” but hurt the community. It’s their economy, and it’s our community. Their system is based on trickle-down, so it works for them, our communities fall apart. WE WANT PROJECTS THAT DIRECTLY BENEFIT OUR COMMUNITY.
We went to Focus, charter school advocates. We asked them to sign the “Bill of Rights” that this coalition put together. The Bill of Rights said you get to establish a charter school unopposed if you agree to open enrollment for the immediate community. Secondly, that they will hire people from the immediate community. Their representative said “I don’t care to discuss this with you. The law is on my side.” He told this to a room of predominantly women of color. He later refused to participate in a teach-in to offer his perspective.
The civil rights movement did not finish its work. It was interrupted when the job of dispossessing people of color was subcontracted to black politicians – governors and mayors. They pretend they are the champions of the people. They are PR men for gentrification of urban centers. If they were white politicians doing what they’re doing for the corporate powers, there would be an upheaval. Racism! Ethnic cleansing! All these things would be shouted out.
"Like New Orleans, people are willing to accept poverty if it’s covered with a veneer of tourism, and that veneer was peeled off by Katrina in New Orleans. Now it makes sense to me what their vision is. This mad displacement of people, this wholesale destruction of communities… they have this vision of this being a playground for the suburbs, for tourists. We have a vision: there are communities that are tight and thriving here, and you have the resources to sustain these communities." -- Zein Elamine.
Most displaced are going to Prince George´s County, MD. Normally when that happens there’s an increase in crime where they go. DC has been bragging about the drop in crime – the Post has been writing articles about this. But if you pay close attention you´ll notice on page B1 of the Post´s Metro section the article “Drop in Crime in the District” is followed on B3 by “Tripling of Crime in PG County.” There are no economic studies, no research, no tying of these. The Post finally connected the two, but in the worst way possible with several quotes from the police in Prince George´s County saying “We are getting the riffraff from DC.” The “riffraff” are the displaced and dispossessed. Diamondback (University of Maryland) published an article before the Post one linking the increase in crime to DC.
People moving to DC have no kids, and aesthetically would rather see a charter school than a public school with “problem kids.” Gentrification is working hand in hand with charter schools.
We’re not saying all development is bad, we’re saying it has to be planned development, the community has to say what kind of development. There have to be hearings, not daytime hearings where they are stacked by lobbyists (where to do a 3 minute testimony I have to wait 6 hours in the hearing room, take the whole day off). Hearings are just “establishing facts on the ground to show politicians are doing their job of having public intake, but there isn’t any public intake.”
Action
To advocate legislatively and at the grassroots to show the damage that charter schools are doing to the public school system
Services offered by the project:
Results
Protests have forced the school board to acknowledge that there is another side, another view in this whole debate on schools.
Five schools had been surplused and were about to be given away to
private developers or charters without significant public input; two
schools were taken off this list because of activism.
The Washington Post recently ran an editorial that was critical about
the way charter schools have been financed; we believe this is partly a
result of the media blitz we conducted where we asked the Post why they
weren’t reporting about the charter schools and our work.
The public schools advocates willing to take on the issues of charter
schools and real estate developers squarely have been energized by our
campaign: because of their involvement in something solid, they
returned to their coalition and set the stakes, shifted the debate. The
more conservative elements that didn’t want to rock the boat have given
way to the people who want to take on the issues head on. These people
are now dominating the group in a good way. Our work has moved things
out of the mire of endless debate.
These three groups weren’t working together before: we’ve become a
clearinghouse for the coordination of these groups. And we get to have
input that’s listened to and that influences the direction of these
groups. Because we´re a group including members of all these
organizations, we are able to coordinate among them.
We took Save Our Schools on a tour. This has energized it. We’ve made
this issue “sexy.” We’ve put it out there and brought it out, helped
people who were doing amazing work in a localized way, and put some
fury behind it, some national perspective behind it, and the whole
force of Katrina behind it. “The levies of our schools are breaking
down” (on one of the flyers).
The
Full Funding Coalition had done some work but were in a debate: we
showed that by going out there, taking it to the streets, we could
affect things; helped people advocating within the FFC to take things
further, be braver.
PPC also: we are helping them structure their work and goals better.
Limitations
Taking very complicated information about the relationship between
charter schools and public schools and boiling that down to accessible
fact sheets that can be read in five minutes or so. If you don’t have
that, you don’t have a campaign, you don’t have a popular campaign.
Need to distill information so people can read it on the escalator on
the Metro;
A lot of liberals including friends have attacked us for attacking
charter schools because they see well intentioned people pursuing
charter schools out of exasperation for public schools. But they don’t
see the big picture of where we’re heading; they haven’t read the case
studies of what’s happened in other cities (like Dayton, OH);
Will need more people for future protests, that will be a future
challenge. But we’re getting reports that we’ll have more than is
legally permissible, and reports that we’ll need to change the venue of
the teach-in to a larger space because of the big response (these are
good problems). Someone passed the flyer out at a huge meeting and got
a great response;
Defending a system that is not currently working – one of the biggest
obstacles! And you’re trying to work with that system: get a venue in a
DC public school takes forever because of the disorganization and bad
bureaucracy; under siege because every principal is living in fear;
“My children are in a charter school; as soon as you fix your school I
will pull them out and put them there. Because I care about a longer
term solution to this problem, about my community.” We need to show
that these longer term assets are more important to serve the community.
When to Use
What to Do
We start out by doing research and preparing facts
sheets. Charter schools aren’t proven -- we´ve put together three fact
sheets to this effect. Those in favor of charter shcools´ best defense
was that this is a complicated issue: so we went through all the data
and compiled three fact sheets to decomplicate it. Members from the
various groups in our coalition debated it out, we didn’t agree on
everything, and so the result of the debate is what we’re all certain
about. The consensus. Whatever people weren’t comfortable saying, said
there was no proof for, that was taken out.
We then work with a broad coalition of residents to use the facts we´ve pulled together and present them at teach-ins in local schools, informing local residents about the issue.
As we do this we run a series of protests. Struggles that aren’t joyful aren’t sustainable. So we’re having fun with it. We put on a contest “Meddling Mary”. She (Mary Landrieu) knows we’re coming to her house. We say “you’re coming to our house, meddling with our house, so we’re coming to your house.” “Mary Mary Quite Contrary.” She is a Louisiana Senator who has been getting involved in local DC matters.
All of this to drum up media exposure for the issue and engage politicians in a real dialogue, rather than letting them work ´behind the scenes,´ without involving the public.
We then work with a broad coalition of residents to use the facts we´ve pulled together and present them at teach-ins in local schools, informing local residents about the issue.
As we do this we run a series of protests. Struggles that aren’t joyful aren’t sustainable. So we’re having fun with it. We put on a contest “Meddling Mary”. She (Mary Landrieu) knows we’re coming to her house. We say “you’re coming to our house, meddling with our house, so we’re coming to your house.” “Mary Mary Quite Contrary.” She is a Louisiana Senator who has been getting involved in local DC matters.
All of this to drum up media exposure for the issue and engage politicians in a real dialogue, rather than letting them work ´behind the scenes,´ without involving the public.
Tips
Joyous approach.
Diverse coalition.
Everyone in the campaign has a national picture.
Sharing resources with other cities.
Equipment
Funding:
Yes
What/who: So far we have gotten all of our funding from two fundraisers that we put on in cooperation with a local establishment called Cafe Nema. They hosted two "Middle Eastern Night" events with a DJ and dancing.
What/who: So far we have gotten all of our funding from two fundraisers that we put on in cooperation with a local establishment called Cafe Nema. They hosted two "Middle Eastern Night" events with a DJ and dancing.
Assessment
n/a
Related Resources
Partners within the community:
Coalition of parents, students, community activists, trade unionists
(b/c charter schools don’t unionize) and citizens of DC (including Save
Our Schools, People’s Property Campaign, and Full Funding Coalition.
Partners from outside the community: Similar efforts in cities across the country.
Partners from outside the community: Similar efforts in cities across the country.
