Can’tfindyourdreamhome? HUNGRY MIND EVENTS FOR MAY! Call Richard Dukes, III c Serving Minneapolis and St. Paul Member of Multi-Million Dollar Club • Sound advice • Creative financing • Kind and caring service • Sensitive to your needs Wednesday, May 4th, 7:30 p.m. SUSAN ALLEN TOTH reading from her new book., How to Prepare for Your High School Reunion, published by Little, Brown and Company. Wednesday, May 11th, 8:15 p.m. J.P. WHITE Reading poetry from his book, The Pomegranate Tree Speaks from the Dictator's Garden,published by Holy Cow! Press. Saturday, May 14th, 2:00 p.m. ANNE CAMERON signing copies of her new book, Stubby Amberchuk & the Holy Grail, published by Harbour Publishing. Wednesday, May 18th, 8:15 p.m. DAVIDA KILGORE reading from her Minnesota Voices Project Winner, Last Summer and Other Stories, published by New Rivers Press. Minneapolis Lakes Office 920-5605 Merrill Lynch Realty Residence 822-3289 All events are free and open to the public! 1648 G rand Ave. • St. Paul, MN • 55105 612-699-0587 ONE BLOCK PARADE A Children's Art Workshop & Performance. The biggest little parade in the world! The One Block Parade is a unique event. Artists working with students (ages 8-13) will create a one block parade spectacular like you’ve never seen before! To sign up or to receive more information on classes call: 290-9154 July 18-22 Parade-Performance July 23 Lowertown, St. Paul. This event is sponsored by: Forecast-Public Artspace Productions and COMPAS SHOW YOU CARE, JOIN OUR PLEDGE WALK FOR AIDS. Sunday, May 22,1988 Minnehaha Park, Twin Cities 11:30 Registration Opens* 1:00 Walk Call for Brochure and Pledge Sheet 24-hour Walk Information Line: 612-870-7443 v earn Minnesota Walk for AIDS Care, Research < 9 ^ and Education. ODEGARD BOOKS O F M I N N E A P O L I S CALHOU N SQUARE • 3001 HEN N EPI N AVE SO MINNEAPOLIS MN 55408 • (61 2)825-0336 2 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988
VOL 10 NO. 1 SPRING 1988 S T A F F C o pub l ishe rs Julie Ristau, Lenny Dee Editorial Board Lenny Dee, Diane Hellekson, David Morris, Julie Ristau, Karen Starr, Charlie Sugnet, Kate Sullivan, Jay Walljasper Pacific Northwest Editor David Milholland Art Direction Kate Hunt, Lenny Dee Designers Julie Baugnet, Carol Evans-Smith, Chris Fieber, Connie Gilbert, Gail Swanlund, Eric Walljasper Contributing Artists Ta-eoumba T. Aiken, Ricardo Block, John Callahan, Margaret Chados-lrvine, Mary Conway, Chris Fieber, L. K. Hanson, Curtis Hoard, Kate Hunt, Constance A. Lowe, David Madzo, Stuart Mead, Jean Murakami, Musicmaster, Isaac Shamsud-Din, Cecil Skotnes Production Consultants Mark Simonson, Gail Swanlund Cover Design Connie Gilbert Proofreaders Ann Laughlin, Olivia Lundeen, Carol Salmon Account Representatives Dale Shifter, Kate Sullivan Ad Production Eugene Collins, Pat McCarty Typesetting Paf McCarty, Mary Walstrom Cover Photographer Gus Gustafson Spiritual Advisor Camille Gage Thanks to thee Emily Anderson, Tom Barry, Joel Bassin, Jennifer Gage, Jim Hare, Ann Marsden, David Madson, Nicole Niemi, Musicmaster, Paul Petrella, Margaret Vaillencourt, Mary Westerman, Cynthia Williams, Mike Tronnes, Betsy Kieter, Amy Sundberg, Mona Toft ON THE COVER Artist David Madzo is a St. Paul native whose work has shown extensively throughout the Upper Midwest. In 1987 he won a Bush Foundation Fellowship. He is represented by Thomas Barry Fine Arts. This is a self portrait. The Twin Cities edition is published by the Clinton St. Quarterly, 3255 Hennepin Ave. S., Suite 255, Minneapolis, MN 55408—(612) 823-2103. Unless otherwise noted, all contents copyright ©1988 Clinton St. Quarterly. We encourage your comments, articles and art. All material should be accompanied by a selfaddressed, stamped envelope. 4 What Am I Left with After All —Julie Landsman Setbacks and triumphs during the school year of one Twin Cities high school teacher and her students. 7 The Way I t ’s Suppose To Be —George McKenna III A blueprint for turning a blackboard jungle into a model of excellence. Wonders of the Midwest— L.K. Hanson An amusement park in our future?! Another and yet another roadside attraction. W H Y T H I S M A G A Z I N E NS in tr e e e y t ea Q rs u a a rt g e o r ly t h w e as C li b n o to rn n amidst the cosmic wonder of a total solar eclipse in Oregon’s Cascade mountain range. As rubies and emeralds danced off the sun, a small band of people associated with Portland’s experimental Clinton Street Moviehouse dedicated themselves to a sparkling presentation of uncompromising wisdom in journalism, fiction, and art. The CSQ has unveiled fresh new perspectives in many matters four times a year in Portland since then, and a separate Seattle edition has been published for five years. The genesis of an independent Twin Cities edition is more prosaic Beulah —Olivia Lundeen Behind the pleasant facade of a small Minnesota town. Buntu and I—The Death of a Son—Njebulo S. Ndebele A personal look at the horror of apartheid. 19 I Clinton St. Gallery— Ricardo Block, Curtis Hoard, Kate Hunt, Constance Lowe Some of the Twin Cities finest artists strut their stuff. —going back to a chilly afternoon in December 1986 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Lenny Dee, a co-publisher of the Portland CSQ, had grown increasingly intrigued with reports of the cultural ferment going on in the Twin Cities while Julie Ristau, then associate publisher of the M inneapolisbased Utne Reader, had grown increasingly intrigued with CSQ through the issues she’d read. Vague plans were sealed over cocktails at this between-planes meeting for a Twin Cities edition of the newspaper. A hearty outpouring of local interest in the ensuing months has produced an exciting homegrown product. As in the Pacific Northwest at the time of CSQ’s founding, there 28 Free Trade—The Great Destroyer—David Morris An investigative inquiry into how the growing globalization of the economy will affect all our lives. 34 Paralyzed For L ife— John Callahan The Lighter Side of Being a Quadriplegic. Raquel—Sharon Doubiago What’s it like to be the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world. 44 The Snap Revolution— James Fenton On the scene in Manila as Marcos falls. Was he tripped or did he pull the strings? is no journal in Minnesota open to cross-pollination of artists, activists, philosophers and writers. CSQ—with its unique emphasis of giving equal balance to editorial and visual elements as well as its well-rounded devotion to literature, politics, humor, and the mysterious ways of the world around us—will be a chroniclerand amplifier for the many strains of creativity in our community. What you see in front of you is a magazine with a proven record of publishing history yet one that is at the same time just beginning. To spark wonder—as that exquisite eclipse once did —we need your talents, energy, and opinions. Lenny Dee & Julie Ristau Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988 3
What / Am Left with... By Julie Landsman Illustration By Ta-coumba T. Aiken Design By Eric Walljasper 4 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988
SEPTEMBER The North High School building is full of graffiti, cigarette butts, broken glass and overturned cans of pop that attract bees; even now, the morning after the first frost. I walk the crowded halls, right before the morning bell. I slip past the smokers standing in a pack outside the northwest door. I see kids in the halls who will not get help from me. They have dreadlocks or mohawks. They talk rap talk, small talk. I smell their perfume, their raspberry lip gloss. We’ve been in school for a month now. My classes in special education are filled with kids from all over Minneapolis. Sometimes I have an hour with them, once in awhile two hours. I still get names wrong. To keep order in my life I write down the name of a girl that John Martin, the science teacher, gives me. He is standing outside the door of his overheated classroom. “ She cries every day and her hair is always touching the paper.” I begin to make lists. These lists are poems about what is left undone. A young girl runs down the hall to algebra class. She is late. Just this morning she has gathered up all her clothes and run away from her pimp. She is frightened that he will follow her. She glances behind as she picks up speed. Her high heels click on the wooden floors. She slips into her seat in the back row. Her bracelets ring loud through the classroom. I have to believe that this girl will survive. I have to believe that despite the loss of her childhood—the mornings of slow cigarettes and angry men—she will find a way to pull ...After All through it all. It is so hard to acknowledge that some kids will never make it. It is difficult to read about ex-students of mine, shot on the summer streets, or tricking in Loring Park, arrested in drag. n the lunchroom I cannot pick out the survivors. I do not know who they are. I watch the kids in line as they shift their weight impat ie n t ly from sneakered foo t to sneakered foot. The woman at the cash register questions each one, fumbles over each name. A small black boy with sixty-two braids woven tight to his head stamps his foot, jabs at the woman’s list: “ Damn lady! Every day you ask me! My name is Joe Washington. I get free lunch. See, right there on the paper!” He moves on, glaring at the flustered woman. Hmong and Indians gesture quietly to their names on the list. Whites grin nervously and point. Some of the kids reach deep into pockets for change to buy extra milk or cartons of sweetened juice. Some take a bag of chips, forgetting about the money they’d already spent on cigarettes that morning. They throw the bags back down on the counter. One boy darts into line. No one tells him he “ butted.” The stitching shows on the bottom of his pants where he tried to sew them up, an old man’s pants from an uncle now in prison. His shoes have no laces. He shuffles just to keep them on. He hunches over his food. None of the kids go near him. He snarls. In my classroom, when I ask for an example of an analogy, he tells me that “ coon just tastes like coon.” The kids talk about his clothes. They laugh. After all the others have gone, he sits and talks. He tells me he can wax a floor better than anyone. “ I’m clean, too. My clothes, my skin. They clean, teacher.” And they are. When the bell rings, he walks off, holding the waist of his pants, pushing his feet down the hall in no-lace shoes. DECEMBER There is tension on the streets, in the building. There is anger in the hallways. A single black braid lies on the floor, ripped out of the head of a young girl during a fight this morning. And there is Michael, who comes to class every day. Until the dancing contest, Mike is the skinny fifteen year old black butt of all the kids’ jokes. Nappy headed, hungry, he has no money for a gerry curl, no money for straight legged pants. He smells of sleeping in urine. In class his head often drops, then rises. He wants to read but can’t stay awake. The other kids smile, point, as his eyes fly open and he tries to read the words on flash cards, words most kids know by the second grade. On the day of the dancing contest, Mike comes in a velvet trimmed jacket and baggy pants pulled in at the waist to keep them on. When the music starts Mike takes off the jacket and places it on the back of a chair. He rolls up his sleeves and starts to dance. His whole body moves at once. His hands push the space around him into curves. His feet are snakes. Head back, eyes closed, he moves. A change in the beat, a change in his step. He pulls the music with him. He pushes it away. He gets down on the floor and swivels on his hips. All the strutters, the taunters and teasers edge off the dance floor. The well dressed, straight legged, gerry curled kids move toward the walls, watching as Mike moves his hips, hands, and feet. He is unaware of their shining eyes, their shaking heads, their “ amens” of approval. Finally, the toughest of them shouts “ Go Mike! Take it with you!” and then Mike smiles, as he takes the music inside, down and around his skinny body. After that day, even though the kids still snicker and Mike still comes in all the wrong clothes, something is different. He walks straighter, dances in the middle of class after he finally reads from a book, stays awake for the entire hour. After that day, Mike sings songs in the hall, his church voice clear as a bell in the morning. The other students smile as they bend over their work. JANUARY J I nger moves inside the school building. There are gangs that recruit kids: twelve, thirteen and fourteen year olds. They wait out in the crysta l w in ter air, skipp ing school. I want to pull them in and sit with them, read to them, watch them work with words, with language. The girl who has run away from her pimp walks to algebra without A single black braid lies on the floor, ripped out of the head of a young girl during a fight this morning. looking behind her. She laughs at something a young man has whispered in her ear. But some of these kids will not survive. J I young student named Pedro is # 1 kicked viciously by four young W B men from a gang. It is an hour after the last classes have been let out. It happens right in front of the principal’s office. There are thirty-six entrances and exits to North High School. There are three and a half miles of hallway. Five days later Pedro dies. He was able to tell his parents, looking directly at each one, that he loved them. I have to believe there is something beyond his death—and yet I hesitate now. It was a freak fight. No one can understand how he could go all the way under those boots: one kick, his liver split in half. Someone gets up in the auditorium at an assembly and pleads with everyone to stop the killing. Later a boy recites a poem by Langston Hughes. Tears move down the sides of the faces of the young men and women who knew Pedro. Some days it is hard to believe in survival. FEBRUARY ittle kids wait at bus stops in the Minnesota winter. They are dressed in moon boots and down parkas, scarves and moon mittens. They are walking quilts. When they march up the steps of the bus, you cannot recognize their forms. They are squares. You are used to them stripped to the skin, their buttocks round, their elbows sharp. But all bodies have the same shape in winter. Fat kids love it. They roll into school with the rest. Dear Jackie, Somewhere on Hennepin Avenue, maybe between the bar where gays hang out after they’ve been to the bath houses, and the book store filled with old men, you stand waiting for the next slow car. Your skin was like a baby’s when I knew you and you were already turning tricks, giving up your round body for a fine man who kept you in food. You were only fourteen and you stepped over bottles in the morning, careful of broken glass, while you lit your first cigarette. The curtainless window let in the glare of a streetlight, which shone on the head of some John you let stay the night. If your pimp found out about the John you’d be bruised blue on the streets the next day. When you showed up for school you showed up in yellow silk and high heels. You came in some mornings smelling of a sweetness none of us could name, covering up a sweetness we could. You helped Donald W illiams struggle through his vocabulary words, sounding out each letter with him, your mouth agonizing like his mouth as he tried every letter one at a time until he could hear it in his head. You were the only one he’d work with besides me. During the class you’d shrug your shoulders, the silk slipping off one side, rhinestones shining. I wonder if your mother is alive. She was dying when I knew you. She walked in for a parent conference like an eighty year old woman leaning on a cane, one side of her face set strangely on her neck. You guided her to a seat with such gentleness. We told her about all the fine things you did: how you worked with Donald, how you cleaned up in the kitchen after everyone had left, an apron over your tight pants. You talked to the white haired home ec teacher about the kitchen you wanted someday. We told your mother about the time you went sledding with us, your blond hair flying out behind you like a flag. We didn’t tell your mother about your pimp, how he followed you to a pizza place one day when we all went out for lunch. You introduced your best friend, Sandy, to him. Who Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988 5
knows if she isn’t celebrating Valentine’s day on the corner with you, late into the evening, red and green lights changing all night long,onetrickafter another gliding by like canoes. You lived for warm cars and cigarettes, large rings and money. No matter what we did, who we called, we couldn’t get you to leave him. You always ran back. I think of you now because it is winter and the snowy world seems so cruel, especially for young girls in short skirts and coats with fur collars. I think of you and of all the truths we never tell our mothers. I wish you safety. Donald sends his love. He’s learning to read while the snow comes down outside my classroom. Stay well. / have a student named Mark whose father died two years ago. He has not said his father’s name since then. He sits with me in a small group, huddled around a table, talking about the lines on a job application. He always leaves the forms Yet someone is singing, and someone is holding out an orange, and someone is reading a poem and someone is carrying light into the kitchen... blank in the second space for parent, his eyes staring away from the paper. Everyone in the group is filling out the form again and again so no one will be afraid when they go to apply for a job. When Mark comes to “ father” he skips the space as usual. But then some gentle girl, some wisp of a teen age girl with the thinnest legs in the world, says to him, “ Mark, you forgot to put in your father’s name.” Without thinking, he writes it in the square. I don’t say anything. He does. He says it out loud over and over, first softly and then loudly: Logan, Logan, Logan. He grabs a piece of paper and writes it and yel Is it and sings it. I hand him chalk and he goes to the chalk board. He covers it with a huge scrawl of Logans, and then a hundred tiny Logans, singing it, playing with it, saying and writing it. Because his back is to me, I don’t see his tears until he turns around, triumphant, his lips moving in rhythm, his hands covered with chalk dust. He sits down. A small girl with heavy bracelets says, “ That’s a nice name, Logan. That your father’s name, huh?” His mother calls me at home that night. She says she has been trying-to get Mark to say his father’s name for two years. She thanks me through her own tears. Weeks later, Mark comes to me after class. He stands in the afternoon light. He asks me, then, how to spell the word, “ deceased”. APRIL It is spring and a woman helps her daughter on to a bus, headed for South Carolina. She is afraid of the gangs. She turns back to the streets. Summer is on its way. Girls scoop up jacks in the schoolyard and dance on tiny legs, pink beads in their hair. A boy picks up a piece of green windshield glass and it flashes in the sun. He walks with it toward his house, while other children in pastel jackets follow. He has never seen anything so beautiful. He is the king, right there, the one who leads the way. He has found something on the street. It is full of gold and his friends are following him. Beyond the abandoned car, windowless and twisted, is this child, walking past the old woman at the bus stop. Dogs move toward him. Beyond the car, settled half on the sidewalk, the fender slanted and ripped in two, is a group of boys and girls, led by the boy, hurrying through the screen door that hangs on one hinge. I have to believe in the importance of this child’s gift, the boys with tears on their cheeks, Langston Hughes, Pedro’s steady gaze before he died. This child smiles as he sets the glass down on the kitchen floor. His mother moves slowly into the room looking for cigarettes. I have to believe she smiles for a moment at the light. • There is nothing that says this is easy. Yet someone is singing, and someone is holding out an orange, and someone is reading a poem and someone is carrying light into the kitchen where cigarette smoke curls against a blue window. There is nothing left but these gifts, what we find despite the sorrow, the loss, the boy who went under the boots, the girl who waits on the corner. There is only this: the fact children find ways to gather the sun. ’ve taken care of people a lot in my life: fourteen year old prostitutes in brassy silk pants. I’ve taken care of crazy kids who bang on my door between classes, and then run in and move their fingers along the gold stars on their chart just to feel their success with their fingertips. I’ve taken care of Sammy, who called the cop on his father because he had beaten his mother so badly that she broke her neck; only she was so high on cocaine she didn’t know her neck was broken. She walked around for days until they put her in the hospital and I had to get Sammy out of class because they said his mother was dying and wanted to say good-bye. I’ve taken care of kids who ran away and hid in basements, the I think of you and of all the truths we never tell our mothers. dampness of the floor living in their backs as they walked old and stiff around the streets looking for money. I’ve taken care of kids who are silent until they explode and no one can stop them, a knife in their hand, the air whipping around their ears. I’ve taken care of Oscar in his pimp clothes: long coats, large hats and boots, who dealt out sweet talk and rolled-up bills, holding his hands out to young women in short skirts. They line up at the door of my rooms and along the walls of my dreams. Julie Landsman writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She was selected for the 1985 Loft Creative -Nonfiction Award and a 1986-87 Loft-McKnight Award in creative prose. What I AM LEFT WITH, AFTER All is part of a larger work in progress. Ta-coumba T. Aiken /s a Twin Cities artist. Eric Walljasper /s a Twin Cities art director, a folk music addict, and a pro volleyball enthusiast. THE BETTER BED 48th & Grand Minneapolis Mon.-Fri. 12-6 Sat. 10-5 822-9604 We make the finest futons in America! 10% OFF every FUTON & FRAME with this ad East Coast West Coast Man 1211 WEST 24th STREET • 24th AT HENNEPIN • 377 -7835 Boutiques of Distinction Beginning May 3 0 th . . . Watch for our late night ambiance OPENtill MIDNIGHT THURSDAY, FRIDAY& SATURDAY 25% OFFwith this coupon 6 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988 ■ Handmade Wedding Bands When you find each other, the symbol is important. Take the time. J J James Hunt U l GOLDSMITH studio in Mpls. 623-1123 Selected styles available at: J. B. 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The Way It’s Suppose To Be A Speech by George McKenna III Twenty years ago Jonathan Kozol’s Death At An Early Age powerfully detailed young minds rotting in our cities’ schools. Recently a report issued by the National Commission on Education warned that America’s youth was academically ‘‘at risk." Nightly news reports have highlighted accounts of gang warfare in the schools, while theorizing ‘‘why Johnny” s till can’t read. Amidst this bleak landscape Dr. George McKenna, principal of George Washington Preparatory High in Los Angeles, has shown that there is a way to teach the supposedly uneducable. Eight years ago Washington Prep was a nightmare of graffitied walls, empty classrooms and gang rule. Today over 80 percent of the seniors attend college. Enrollment is at a maximum, with 350 on waiting lists. I am a product of the segregated schools of New Orleans, Louisiana. From the time I entered kindergarten at four years of age to the time I graduated from Xavier University with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the age of 19 ,1was segregated. All of my teachers, all of my classmates were b lack.... And I am a well-educated individual. Never believe that integration has anything to do with education because if one believes that, one believes that unless one is integrated, one cannot be educated. I am, however, in favor of integration. Integration is important. Segregation is not a desirable quality. It is the closest thing to slavery th is side of the Emancipation Proclamation, and I was segregated so th is is not ancient history. I am not an old man. It just happened yesterday. And if you think there is a resurgence of racism in America, you would then assume that racism went away.... Racism is an interesting thing. Black people are not its only victims. As a matter of fact, black people are sometimes the perpetrators of rac- - ism. Racism is like...any o the r “ ism.” It is not necessarily the action that makes you guilty of the “ ism.” It is the tolerance of an injustice to any group of people based upon the condition that makes you guilty of the “ ism.” If you tolerate oppression to any group of people based upon their race, you are guilty of racism. If you tolerate oppression to any group of people based upon their sex you are guilty of sexism. If you are black and happen to be a predator within the black community and you are making illegitimate babies that you don’t care for, if you sell cocaine or you prey upon the people, you are a killer, a murderer, a rapist or a robber, you are very racist, too, brother. Wherever you are. When you see a movie about a school that works and call it unusual because it happens to work for black people and therefore schools that do not work are so normal that we don’t make movies out of them, that is an in s t itu t io n a l “ ism ” as well. It is elitism and classism when we walk around th is country assuming that public schools cannot work. And so pub lic schoo lteachers don ’t send their own children to public schools any longer.... If education is going to work at all, educators have to accept the responsibility and stop laying blame on v ictims who already are victimized by the system. There is no such thing as genetically defective children or children unable to learn. No such thing. There is, however, an institutionalized and systematic process that is called mis-education perp e tu a te d by peop le p o s ing as educators.... Let me go back further. Having been raised in the segregated south I already know that education is the only thing that can set you free.... I know that when I went to school there were two types of children.... We were either “ poor” or we were “ poor.” By George McKenna III Illustration by Isaac Shamsud-Din Design By Eric Walljasper Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988 7
That’s all we were, one of those two economic conditions. My schoolteachers educated me. And let me tell you the interesting thing about being segregated. The schoolteachers were segregated too. They could not leave and go anywhere else and so the best minds possible were forced by law to go nowhere else but to me. I had the advantage of being segregated, if you will, because these teachers owned me. They were my parents away from home and I was not disadvantaged when I was sent to school everyday.... There was no better school. The salaries were half the salary of white teachers by law. We were all segregated, black and poor and the textbooks were all hand-me-downs. I never had a new textbook. When they said write your name in the inside of the book there was no place to write your name.... How does one turn around a school and change an institution? You have to start with a philosophical base. First of all you must understand that good people participate in the educational process....Good people can (also) participate in the oppression of other people and not necessarily be malicious or mean-spirited. As an example, if you have the experiences as I did of riding the back of a bus, you learn something very interesting ...you get on in the front, that’s where the driver is. And you pass by some real good people in the front of that bus to get to the back. And when you get to the back you find some real nice people. The good people in the front and the good people in the back are very much the same. They believe in God. They go to church. They send their kids to school. They like a little hot sauce in their gumbo, like their music a little too loud, argue about baseball, cooking, have a good time, all going downtown. People in the back and people in the front exactly the same. Except the law says you cannot ride together and therefore we participated voluntarily in our mutual oppression. The people in the back going a step further fighting each other over good seats in the back of the bus until one day a lady said, “ My feet hurt, I’m tired. I shall do this no longer.” And the rest of us said what a wonderful idea. So before we leave here this evening, you will have to ask yourself, are you on the bus? Are you in the back? Are you in the front? Are you driving the bus? Do you even know that there is a bus? Or do you assume that where you are is where you are supposed to be and nobody can be a catalyst? You must be the catalyst who makes the social change, but you have to first understand that it is possible to change and necessary to change. Oppressed people often depend upon that oppression and defend it. You don’t believe that. There are still people in the Philippines wishing that Marcos would come back.... This is Black History Month. Black people have a history different in this country than anybody else (meaning no disrespect to all the other ethnic groups in this country). Nobody can equate themselves with black people and anybody who tries to do so is either malicious or misguided or misinformed. Let me tell you why. Black people have three distinct differences that make them different from all other groups. We came here involuntarily... direct from our families, our language, our history, our culture, our women. The men were taken first, used as absolute chattel, involuntarily. The typical scenario was that a black man walked out of his home to get a breath of fresh air in Africa and woke up 16 months later in chains in Georgia. That’s how we came. Number two. When we got there we were given no privileges at all. We were made property. Horses were worth more than we were. We were not allowed to marry or have families. We couldn’t even talk to each other If education is going to work at all, educators have to accept the responsibility and stop laying blame on victims who already are victimized by the system. because we had different dialects. It was illegal to educate us. We were absolute slaves. We were less than dirt in this country and that has not gone away. We have still been mistreated in this country in very tragic ways. The thirdjcondition that makes us different is that we came from Africa. Not from Canada, not from South America, not from Europe, Paris, not from Israel. We came from Africa.... Those three distinct differences make us unique in this culture....We were treated differently. We are still treated different today. Which made us stronger because we haven’t died. When you take a species and superimpose oppression upon it you either eliminate it or you strengthen it. Since we have not been eliminated you draw your own conclusions about the rest of it. But now that we are still hereand I now that we are trying to be educated and now that this society knows that slavery will no longer be tolerated, maybe not even in South Africa in a few years, there’s another way to enslave the people and keep us in place and make sure that we do windows and toilets that belong to other people. Mis-educate our youth. Now the public school system is a very interesting institution. It is in my opinion the most powerful institution on the face of this earth.... The public school system is the only institution in this society that says you break the law if you don’t give up your children to me. For 12 years you must - give up your children with no interference. And my primary purpose is to shape their minds and their values. Their futures are in my hands with no interference from you and if you don’t give them to me you are a lawbreaker. Do you know of any institution in the most despotic dictatorship in the history of this world that has taken the children for 12 years from the people and had control over their minds and values? And if the public school system is the most powerful institution in America and if America is arguably the most powerful nation on the face of the earth, then the public school system becomes the most powerful institution on the face of the earth. And if you and I are the people who run that system then we are the most powerful people on earth. If you don’t believe that then you have no business being in the profession. Power is what you take and assume.... Everybody with a teacher credential walking into a classroom has all the authority they need.... If a teacher ever says, “ I don’t have enough control, I don’t have enough authority” —you already run a dictatorship. What do you want, the power of life and death? What more power do you need over your students? (You say) “ All of my students are crazy. They act the fool. They treat me with disrespect.” Let me tell you something. Kids know who to treat with disrespect. When you went to school you knew it too. There were some teachers we’d run out of the room in 10minutes. There were others if they just looked at us we knew our lives were in danger. You s t i l l remember them, don’t you? You know who they were. They knew who they were too. It had nothing to do with j their education. It had to do with the ! content of their character.... I am not saying to you that teach- I ersshould be abused by children. I am saying to you that for the most part teachers who are out of control have themselves to blame, not the children. Not the children to blame [ because the children are gonna be children. They have always been their way. You and I were the same way. I But let me go a bit further. The public schools in America have not ] ever been prepared to educate the i disenfranchised other than in those I public schools, in the segregated । south. Other than in the segregated I schools we don’t have any good examples system-wide of schools that have been effectively educating poor ( and disenfranchised children. But segregation allowed us to all be i locked in together. We had a common j dilemma and a common purpose, r Nowadays, as I indicated, public f school teachers don’t send their kids f to public schools. So who are they i teaching? Not their own children.... If we are going to effectively j educate young people we must dis- | continue the notion that the kids must come to us in a different condition before we can be effective. We can no more assume that young people in America be pre-educated by their parents as a condition of our being effective as schoolteachers than physicians in America can demand that all of their patients get well | before they come for medical treat- I ment. Of what use are you as a teacher if you can’t educate the uneducated? Stop demanding that the parent do something with the child. Why don’t we build in the vehicles that support the parent and give them some assistance in sending the child to us in a better condition? We do need support systems, we do need preferential treatment for the needy in I America. You call that affirmative action, special treatment. I just call it justice.... Until all of us are set free none of us can call this a just society. And you must understand this, I know a lot of people who sometimes get very intimidated by this kind of rhetoric.... I might ask you to stand up on your hind legs and look somebody in the eye and say, “ I will take this no longer.” And you say that’s not a very peaceful thing to do. “ I don’t want to cause waves. I am a very nice person and I don’t want to get in any trouble.” ... Non-violence is the only way that we are going to survive in th is society.... (But) what is non-violence? If you think non-violence means turning the other cheek and refusing to fight back you misunderstood it.... Non-violence is defined by Dr. King in a very simple way. He defines it by first giving you the definition of violence. Violence is anything that denies human integrity and leads to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. I’ll repeat that. Anything, any act, any person, any place, any word, any deed, any thought, any legislation, any event, any time, anything that denies human integrity and leads to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness is called violence. And by that definition racism is violence. Poverty is v io lence . Hunger is violence. Homelessness is violence. Sexism is violence. And so is the miseducation of children.... Therefore those of us who believe in nonviolence must see these institutions in our midst as being absolutely violent and reach out as an army, soldiers of justice, and try to attack these ins titu tions by non-violent means and destroy these predators within our community that happen to be a part of us.... There is no “ they” out there who are responsible for this. We are re s p o n s ib le fo r mak ing th a t change.... And if you understand that, you understand that the power to make these changes lies in this room. So let’s talk about education as a vehicle for changing this society.... I am the principal of a high school in South Central Los Angeles. It has 2,850 students. It is 90 percent black and 10 percent Hispanic. When I took it over seven years ago it had 1,700 students and 1,300 per day were voluntarily leaving the school afraid to come to it. They were terrified. The school was run by the Crips gang. There was extortion every day. Kids fighting each other. Nobody going to class. Thirty-three percent absence rate. Less than 30 percent of the students even thinking about going to college. Unbelievable chaos. Graffiti everywhere. Students truant, hanging out. Narcotics being sold on a regular basis. Teachers being assaulted, real and imagined.... And coming onto that campus I knew something was wrong. Yet the people who worked there, the adults, told me, “ This is normal, this is the way black people are.” And their brothers walking around with their heads full of curlers and a shower cap, earrings down to here and 40 pounds of radio in the back and people telling me, that’s the way the brothers are. I have been black too long and I know they are lying to me. I know that that’s not genetic to black people. We were not born with curlers in our hair. Lord knows, I know, we need our curlers but we were not born with them. Ladies, if we were born with curlers in our hair, childbirth would be worse than it is now, wouldn’t it?... We have to begin to set some standards for the young people and the adults. Washington Prep began to talk about excellence. They established a contract for every student and parent. Homework is mandatory. Attendance is monitored daily. Conduct is non-violent. And dress has a code. Homework must be mandatory. Otherwise people won’t give i t . ... And attendance needs to be monitored on a regular basis. We cut absenteeism from 33 percent to less than 10 per8 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988
cent. Why? The teachers call home when the students are absent.... You have got to personalize and individualize. Love requires a personal touch. When teachers call parents, parents know they care. Kids know they care. The students understand there is a relationship now between this teacher and my parent.... I now understand there is an extended family relationship. Washington High School started talking about caring and sharing. A lot of people didn’t buy into that so they left the school. I am talking about the teachers. No students were kicked out of school. I take great issue with some of these pseudoheroes in America today. One of them is praised by Secretary Bennett, you know—Joe Clark, Eastside High School, Patterson, New Jersey. Black man carries a bullhorn into a black school and cleans it up by kicking out 300 kids. Item, item, read it on the news. Ridiculous to brag about the fact that you kicked 300 kids out of school. You put 300 predators on the street and everybody else becomes prey. You don’t brag about that. That’s not an educational model. That’s absolute insanity for an educator to brag about the fact that he kicked people out of school. But, you see, when you happen to be black and you walk into a black school somebody assumes that you are a good overseer. And you can get away with that for black people. That’s the way you treat black people. You take that same black face wi,th the bullhorn and go into white affluent America and you’d be hanging from a tree before nightfall. Because they don’t tolerate that kind of abuse. But we accept it. As a matter of fact we even expect it f rom ti me to t ime.... When I told the teachers I was going to give mandatory homework ...they got mad about that. “ You can’t make me give homework,” they said. Of course I can. The choice is yours how much to give and what to give, but not whether you will give it.... Homework ought to be mandatory across America. Let me give you an example. If every Monday night, across America, we gave mathematics homework, then no parent on Monday in America from kindergarten through college would ever have to ask that child, “ Do you have homework tonight?” Well it's Monday, isn’t it? And it ’s America, right? Then you have mathematics homework. The advantage of that is that every television station could tune into math exercises between the commercials. Instead of selling Miller beer we could do a math exercise and give the answer between the shows. From one show to the other. Every crossword puzzle in the newspaper, every television and radio station could tune into math exercises, solving equations and talking about the consciousness of math. You would not have to be so paranoid that the Japanese are coming, the Japanese are coming. The Japanese have a right to be excellent in their system, all we have to do is institutionalize excellence.... We have a dress code.... Young men cannot wear gang attire. No brothers get to wear earrings in their ears. I don’t care if they wear them on the streets. That’s up to them. That’s a fad. But not on campus because I know they don’t get to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court with rollers and curlers and that kind of stuff.... How are you going to keep kids from dropping out of school? Make them successful in school. (Then) they won’t leave.... Washington High School had support systems for kids. Tutoring programs, every Saturday. 1 started the tutoring program, running it for five years now, started it all by myself.... Ail the teachers don’t teach the students in a way they are going to understand. So there needs to be a secondary support system. Where does the tutor come from? Use your academically gifted kids to tutor the ones that are not too proficient. You can go out and get fraternities and You must be the catalyst who makes the social change, but you have to first understand that it is possible to change and necessary to change. sororities to...do things.... They can sing the alma mater all night long.... They can also do tutoring. Church people praying every Sunday say they want to help. After Sunday, when do they help? I built a vehicle. Now we have a school full of people on Saturday getting tutoring.... Every teacher should be teaching skills in the content areas. What skills? Speaking, writing, reading, listening, thinking, studying, and test taking.... (These) can be taught by an English teacher, a physical education teacher, an art teacher, a geography teacher, a chemistry teacher. You should not just be corrected in your writing by your English teacher, your math teacher should give you writing exercises as well.... Let me get back on another issue. We need to be teaching our young people how to care for each other.... If you are a good student, and you get your high school diploma and you left your brothers and sisters behind, you haven’t done them a favor because you got yours. If they don’t get theirs you’re in trouble. You either take care of them now or they’ll take care of you later.... Football players play football on Friday night across America. On Saturday morning those same strong young bodies get up after beating each other up over a football game and, led by their coach, go out into the neighborhood and help some old lady cut her grass, or roll the wheelchair of the crippled child, or read to the blind or help the aged in the convalescent home who can’t feed themselves. If the football players can’t do that they lost the real game.... If you don’t teach the kids to love don’t be surprised when they turn into predators and scavengers in your community and form things called gangs.... Washington High School had one of the most notorious street gangs in the world.... It was born in 1969, called the Crips. You are going to get Crips here real soon, too. Crips are everywhere. Well let me tell you about Crips. Crips are just kids who don’t have leadership. Washington High School had Crips, Brimms, Southlose, Inhoods, Raymonds, Rolling Sixties—all of that on thecampus at the same time. And the teachers are telling me, “Well, you have to cut the campus up into territories. Crips has their part of the campus and Brimms is over there.” I couldn’t believe that. I said, wait a minute. Has anybody ever told these brothers that they are all born by the same creator, that they all come from women, anybody ever told them that?... They said, “ Well you can’t bring them together.” I said that’s a lie. And today there is only one gang on the campus at Washington High School. It is called the Washington Generals, that’s the motto of the school. That’s our logo. Washington Generals. And you are looking at the gang leader. That’s real simple. That’s not heroic. That’s just common sense. Somebody’s got to be in charge. If not, the inmates will (be).... Let’s talk about the structural programs. Teachers at my schools do lesson plans...so I can see what everybody is teaching. Do you know that you can have a situation where three teachers are teaching algebra all out of the same book and they are 40 pages apart and they all call it algebra?... Good teachers shouldn’t want to be that far apart. They should be sharing with each other. When is the last time any teachers saw each other teach?... If you don’t do that you are not learning anything. If the only person you see teach is yourself, what makes you think you are so darn perfect?... If I am not a capable teacher I should either be improved or I should be moved.... You can’t allow the mediocre to pass themselves off as excellent...just tolerating it and saying “ I wish I’d get some better people.” That’s the same thing the teachers say, “ I wish I’d get some better kids.” The kids are not going to get any better. The teachers are not going to get any better. You have to be the one to improve the product or get rid of the people.... You can’t let them institutionalize inferiority within the system.... Do the good teachers in your schools all fight to teach the good, and therefore the kids who need the most help are given the teachers with the least capability? And so all of the excellent math teachers get to teach the high-level math and the kids who still can’t do long division never get to see that kind of teacher. They still get the teachers who don’t like math themselves.... Excellent teachers need to be teaching kids who need the most. They should be shared. Sure somebody’s got to teach the (advanced math) class but somebody’s got to teach the remedial math class as well, and it should be shared. You can’t institutionalize that separatism because then you have got elitism. Which is another one of those “ isms” that we have to protect ourselves against. Do you say to the academically gifted kids that they have a responsibility for reaching down to the other students? You students have to understand this.... You can’t just get yours without helping somebody else.... I (want to say a few words) about cause and symptom.... If I gave you 10 billion dollars and asked you to cure lung cancer, you’d go out and spend your money on hospitals and research and doctors and state-of- the-art technology and you’d say you were attacking lung cancer. But all you’d be dealing with is a symptom. I’d take the same 10 billion dollars and attack tobaccoism. Because that’s how to eliminate lung cancer. You want to cure the ills of society, don’t start with the symptoms on the outside. Go to the source, the public school system. That’s where the kids have to come everyday. They shouldn’t have to leave the campus to go see a probation officer. Probation officers ought to come to them on campus. You want to stop dropouts? You can spend money on counselors if you want to.... I’d take my money and put it into peer counseling. If this side of the room was about to drop out and all had the profile of a dropout...I’d take this bunch over here who loves school, who wouldn’t drop out to save (your) soul—cheerleaders and ball players and musicians and good students and just average everyday kids who like coming to school. I’d pay you a minimum wage to take some training in peer counseling. The (potential dropouts) would become your clientele. You’d call them every morning, tell them you love them, tutor them, support them, drag them to school. If you had to you would drag them to the tutoring program, bring them everyday, from September to Thanksgiving, get them from Thanksgiving to Christmas, from Christmas to January—and you’ve made a semester. That’s a lot in life. Just to hang in there one more semester, because in high school is when they start dropping out. They start thinking about it in Junior High School. But they are not strong enough to do it. So all of the kids pretty much get to high school but it ’s at the ninth and tenth grades they start giving up because they don’t have a support base. And both groups would be enriched by this because this group would be demonstrating love, which is rewarding in itself, and this group would be receiving love, which is certainly rewarding, and they would transmit it to somebody else. The revolution can take place right at the school site.... You can spend your money on teachers if you want to and more professionals if you want to, just like the war on poverty. Hire a lot of middleclass people to keep the people poor. But the poor people stay poor. The war on povertyjust got a whole bunch of jobs for some middle class people. You’d be better to talk about empowering the people to help themselves. These kids are not going to ask you for pay raises, overtime, worker’s comp—they don’t care. If the money runs out, they like helping their friends. In Los Angeles they call them their “ home tjoys” and “ home girls.” They live in the neighborhood. They don’t mind helping. (If) you want to eradicate a gang problem and you have got a little money to do that, don’t put your money into more police. Don’t put your money into more crime prevention. Don’t put your money into more jails and tougher sentences and more hardware. Put your money into community-based people and put them to work on the school site campus. If it were up to me I would find every school that’s already in gang territory...and I’d put in a communitybased person, somebody who lives in that community. A respected member of that community. Pay them a decent wage—$15,000 to $20,000 a year. They’d work on the campus just like a regular member of the staff. They’d start working with fourth grade young males.... Let us not kid ourselves. I am not talking about being inequitable to ladies.... The death rate among the males is so high nowadays that ladies are not going to have Photo by John Danicic Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988 9
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