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2 episodes with jesse hagopian
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3 episodes with jesse hagopian
Thomas Jefferson was the masterly author of the ringing and rousing Declaration of Independence as well as a human trafficker and serial rapist. The second president embodies James Baldwin's observation that “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” The US is a settler-colonial colossus whose founders committed one of the most massive genocides in the history of the world—violence in the service of wealth accumulation has been a national calling card from the start. It's also the birthplace of Harriett Tubman, John Brown, Geronimo, Malcolm X, Grace Lee Boggs, and generations of freedom-fighters. The wealth and the power of the US derives from armed robbery, serial murder, stolen land, and forced labor—that's legacy. And we cannot be free without facing the complexity and the hard truth. We're joined in conversation with Jesse Hagopian, one of the most brilliant contemporary voices in education, and author, most recently, of Teach Truth : The Struggle for Antiracist Education, an essential text for these troubled times.
00:08 — Adam Sanchez is the managing editor of Rethinking Schools and a former high school history teacher based in Philadelphia. He is the editor of A People's History of Abolition and the Civil War and the co-editor of Teaching Palestine. Jesse Hagopian is a Rethinking Schools editor, a former high school teacher, and on the staff of the Zinn Education Project. He is the co-editor of the Rethinking Schools book Teaching for Black Lives and Teaching Palestine. He also serves on the Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and is the director of the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award. The post Fund Drive Special: Teaching Palestine appeared first on KPFA.
In which Dan chats with Jesse Hagopian about the urgent need to teach truthful history in America's classrooms. Jesse is the author of the excellent book Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education and he's an eloquent speaker on the need to push back against right-wing whitewashing. Jesse and Dan talk about the return of colorblindness, the gentrification of history, and why grassroots action is the only way out. As always I welcome comments and questions on BlueSky @dankearney and on Instagram @_dankearney_If you're in or near Los Angeles this summer, check out Learning Adventures Workshop with Dr. Gary Stager on June 30.New podcast alert! Tune into But I Won't Do That, an irreverent look at the music, lyrics, and videos of some favorite pop hits.Mentioned in the episode:Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education by Jesse Hagopian"Oklahoma education standards say students must identify 2020 election 'discrepancies'", NPR, May 14, 2025Zinn Education Project -- lots of incredible resources and lessons for teaching truthMusic: "Sunflower" by Soyb (Youtube Audio Library)
Today I have the great honor of speaking with activist and educator Jesse Hagopian about his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. We talk about the assault on public education that takes the form of criminalizing the truth itself. We note both the powerful corporate forces behind this movement and what they are afraid of, and also discuss the many instances of people fighting back to name, amplify, and mobilize the truth together.Jesse Hagopian's African ancestors survived the middle passage and enslavement on plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. Jesse is a Seattle educator and author of the new book, Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education. He is editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding steering committee member of Black Lives Matter at School, and is the Director the Teaching for Black Lives Campaign of the Zinn Education Project. Jesse is the editor of of the book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing, and the co-editor of the books, Teaching Palestine, Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School, and Teachers Unions and Social Justice.Jesse's writing has appeared in The Seattle Times, The Nation, The Progressive, Truthout, and The Washington Post. You can connect with Jesse on IG (@jessehagopian), Bluesky (@jessehagopian.bsky.social) or his website, www.IAmAnEductor.com.
Bears fans have enjoyed a great start to free agency and are anticipating next month's NFL draft. Optimism is peaking for the 2025 season. However, one story that continues to haunt Bears fans is the future of Soldier Field. Executive producer Simone Alicea and host Jacoby Cochran discuss the various options including a renewed sense of urgency from Arlington Heights leaders and a Bronzeville “hail Mary” location just a few miles south of Soldier Field. Plus, we discuss five years of COVID-19 and what we'd put in our 2025 Chicago time capsule. Good News: Eve L. Ewing and Jesse Hagopian in Conversation Want some more City Cast Chicago news? Then make sure to sign up for our Hey Chicago newsletter. Follow us @citycastchicago You can also text us or leave a voicemail at: 773 780-0246 Learn more about the sponsors of this March 18 episode: Moats Entertainment Babbel - Get up to 60% off at Babbel.com/CITYCAST Become a member of City Cast Chicago. Interested in advertising with City Cast? Find more info HERE
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with activist and educator Jesse Hagopian about his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. They talk about the assault on public education that takes the form of criminalizing the truth itself. They note both the powerful corporate forces behind this movement and what they are afraid of, and also discuss the many instances of people fighting back to name, amplify, and mobilize the truth together.Jesse Hagopian's African ancestors survived the middle passage and enslavement on plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. Jesse is a Seattle educator and author of the new book, Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education. He is editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding steering committee member of Black Lives Matter at School, and is the Director the Teaching for Black Lives Campaign of the Zinn Education Project. Jesse is the editor of of the book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing, and the co-editor of the books, Teaching Palestine, Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School, and Teachers Unions and Social Justice.Jesse's writing has appeared in The Seattle Times, The Nation, The Progressive, Truthout, and The Washington Post. You can connect with Jesse on IG (@jessehagopian), Bluesky (@jessehagopian.bsky.social) or his website, www.IAmAnEductor.com.www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with activist and educator Jesse Hagopian about his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. They talk about the assault on public education that takes the form of criminalizing the truth itself. They note both the powerful corporate forces behind this movement and what they are afraid of, and also discuss the many instances of people fighting back to name, amplify, and mobilize the truth together.Jesse Hagopian's African ancestors survived the middle passage and enslavement on plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. Jesse is a Seattle educator and author of the new book, Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education. He is editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding steering committee member of Black Lives Matter at School, and is the Director the Teaching for Black Lives Campaign of the Zinn Education Project. Jesse is the editor of of the book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing, and the co-editor of the books, Teaching Palestine, Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School, and Teachers Unions and Social Justice.Jesse's writing has appeared in The Seattle Times, The Nation, The Progressive, Truthout, and The Washington Post. You can connect with Jesse on IG (@jessehagopian), Bluesky (@jessehagopian.bsky.social) or his website, www.IAmAnEductor.com.www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with activist and educator Jesse Hagopian about his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. They talk about the assault on public education that takes the form of criminalizing the truth itself. They note both the powerful corporate forces behind this movement and what they are afraid of, and also discuss the many instances of people fighting back to name, amplify, and mobilize the truth together.Jesse Hagopian's African ancestors survived the middle passage and enslavement on plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. Jesse is a Seattle educator and author of the new book, Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education. He is editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding steering committee member of Black Lives Matter at School, and is the Director the Teaching for Black Lives Campaign of the Zinn Education Project. Jesse is the editor of of the book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing, and the co-editor of the books, Teaching Palestine, Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School, and Teachers Unions and Social Justice.Jesse's writing has appeared in The Seattle Times, The Nation, The Progressive, Truthout, and The Washington Post. You can connect with Jesse on IG (@jessehagopian), Bluesky (@jessehagopian.bsky.social) or his website, www.IAmAnEductor.com.www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place
Host Douglas Haynes is joined by Jesse Hagopian and Kimber Wilkerson to talk about the Department of Education, book bans, and the federal government's role in providing special education services. The post Public K-12 Education Under Trump appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.
In this podcast, Jesse Hagopian discusses his recent book, ““Teaching Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education,” a powerful call to action to defend honest education in the face of increasing censorship, attacks on teachers, the destructive Project 2025 playbook, and constant pressures to dismantle our public education system. Hagopian argues that the struggle for a liberatory education is crucial for democracy and challenges the status quo by highlighting the importance of teaching truth and resisting efforts to regulate knowledge Jesse Hagopian is an award-winning educator and a prominent voice on educational equity, social justice unionism, and the school-to-prison pipeline. He teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle's Garfield High School and is known for his activism against standardized testing. Order the books: “Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education” https://www.kingsbookstore.com/book/9798888902516 Jesse Hagopian Social Media: Website: https://iamaneducator.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JessedHagopian Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessehagopian Rethinking School Magazine: https://rethinkingschools.org/magazine/ Black Lives Matter at School: https://www.blacklivesmatteratschool.com/ Teaching for Black Lives: https://rethinkingschools.org/books/teaching-for-black-lives/ Zinn Education Project: https://www.zinnedproject.org/ Greg's Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/ Pat's Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/about TeachTruth#LindaMcMahon#ChristopherRufo#JesseHagopia#DemocracyNow#AntiracistEducation#RacialJustice#EducationalEquity#CriticalRaceTheory#SocialJustice#BlackLivesMatter#BLM#ZinnProject##EthnicStudies#PublicEducation#Censorship#EducationalActivism#SystemicRacism#TeachingforLiberation#HistoricalAccuracy#DemocracyinEducation#UncritialRaceTheory#howardZinn#MelissaTemple#Rainbowland##BlackHistoryMonth#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#ComingFromLeftFieldPodcast#zzblog#mltoday
On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank talk with Jesse Hagopian about his new book Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. Jesse has taught in the public schools for over 20 years, serves on the Black Lives Matter at School steering committee, organizes for the Zinn Education Project, and founded the Ethnic Studies course at Seattle's Garfield High School. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School and Teaching for Black Lives. More The post The Struggle for Anti-Racist Education w/ Jesse Hagopian appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
As Black History Month begins, longtime educator Jesse Hagopian joins us for Part 2 of an interview about the Trump administration and right-wing attacks on education, and his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education.
As Black History Month begins, longtime educator Jesse Hagopian joins us for Part 2 of an interview about the Trump administration and right-wing attacks on education, and his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education.
Did you know that the Seattle Public Library offers any U.S. resident, ages 13-26, a free “Books Unbanned Card,” which allows you to check out any e-books or e-audiobooks from the Library's digital collection, no matter where you live? This is just one example of how people are resisting new restrictions on information and education across the country. In his new book, Teach Truth, Seattle educator and author Jesse Hagopian discusses these restrictions and offers advice on how to defend antiracist education. Hagopian outlines how numerous states and school districts in recent years have enacted policies or laws mandating how to teach about systemic racism and oppression—policies that impact nearly half of all students in the U.S. Thousands of books have been banned from schools. Teachers face termination, attacks, and disciplinary action. You can be punished, including jail time, for providing access to a banned book. These new changes have old roots in McCarthyism's Red Scare and Lavender Scare. They have strongholds in U.S. history. But there is also strong pushback. Hagopian shows how the fight against them also has a rich legacy, from the resistance to anti-literacy laws for enslaved people to the Black Lives Matter at School movement today. Hagopian calls to defend antiracist education, showing how to reclaim suppressed history by creating beloved classroom communities and healthy social movements. Jesse Hagopian has taught in public schools for over 20 years, serves on the Black Lives Matter at School steering committee, organizes for the Zinn Education Project, and founded the Ethnic Studies course at Seattle's Garfield High School. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School and Teaching for Black Lives, and the editor of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing. Dr. Ayva Thomas is a P-12 education and systems leader in and beyond her local community. She has been a speaker, panelist, and thought partner for events like the Zinn Education Project's Teaching for Black Lives campaign, the City of Bothell's DEI work, and the City of Kenmore's Juneteenth Celebration. Wayne Au is Dean and Professor in the University of Washington Bothell School of Educational Studies, and he is an editor for the social justice teaching magazine, Rethinking Schools. A former public high school teacher, he writes and speaks about racial justice in education. Au's most recent book is Asian American Racialization and the Politics of U.S. Education. Presented by Town Hall Seattle and Seattle Public Library. Buy the Book Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education Elliott Bay Book Company
Given the countless and relentless political attacks on education and learning across the country, the need for antiracist education and educators is paramount. Listen as Aaron and Damien discuss the book Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education by Jesse Hagopian, which explores and analyzes the concept and disturbing power of uncritical race theory, as well as the origins and examples of the attacks on education throughout the country, and what we learn and take away from this brilliant book in our continued learning and unlearning work and fight for collective liberation. Follow us on social media and visit our website! Patreon, Website, Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok, Threads, Facebook, YouTube, Leave us a voice message, Merch store
This Week: As we celebrate MLK Jr. weekend, we thought it would be apt to have a special re-release of our recent discussion with Jesse Hagopian about his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. Nearly half of our nation's public school children are subject to laws that forbid honest education about the history of racism in this country. Two-thirds of US teachers report self-censoring discussions on race, gender, identity, and sexuality in their classrooms. How did we get here, and how can we collaboratively fight for the truth to be taught in our schools? Educator and activist Jesse Hagopian joins us this week to unpack his new book. Jesse is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding member of Black Lives Matter at School, and the Director for the Zinn Education Project's “Teaching for Black Lives" campaign. WAYS TO HELP WITH THE EATON FIRE IN ALTADENA/PASADENA -- Please consider giving what you can! Here are links to GoFundMe pages set up by Altadena families, links to GoFundMe pages supporting Black families devastated by the Eaton fire, and the Pasadena Educational Foundation. MAXIMUM WOKENESS ALERT -- get your All of the Above swag, including your own “Teach the Truth” shirt! In this moment of relentless attacks on teaching truth in the classroom, we got you covered. https://all-of-the-above-store.creator-spring.com Passing Period is an AOTA podcast extra that gives us a chance to check-in, reflect, and discuss powerful stories in between our full episodes. Watch, listen and subscribe to make sure you don't miss our latest content! Website: https://AOTAshow.com Stream all of our content at: linktr.ee/AOTA Watch at: YouTube.com/AlloftheAbove Listen at: apple.co/38QV7Bd and anchor.fm/AOTA Follow us at: Facebook.com/AOTAshow and Twitter.com/AOTAshow
We last got together for a live show one week ago today. When Kelly Carlin was on with me, my voice started getting really gravelly and I felt progressively worse as the hour wore on. By Wednesday night I felt like crap and by Thursday night, my breathing was so labored that I feared it was pneumonia, so I went to the ER. (I'm now on Medicare with the Plan G supplemental insurance so won't have an obscene co-pay to deal with this time!). Numerous tests and chest x-rays later I was diagnosed with the flu. I had gotten vaccinated last month, along with the newest COVID booster. But the flu strain they vaccinate against is a guess, and this time they got it wrong. Or I did. Either way, I'm been in flu hell for the past week. I feel terrible every time I miss a show. But it couldn't be avoided. I'm still recuperating, but as I know I'll be taking some time off for the holidays, I really feel bad with each day that I'm out. So I'll do my best to soldier on for the next few days. I promise, if it gets to be too much, I'll stand down. Today's guest has been on the schedule for a while, so I thought I'd attempt to come back today. I first met Jesse Hagopian when he appeared on my show March 6, 2023. I had just learned of the existence of the Zinn (as in Howard) Education Project, and invited Jesse on to tell us about it. We were all glad I did. Last month, Jesse reached out to tell me about his forthcoming book, TEACH TRUTH: THE STRUGGLE FOR ANTIRACIST EDUCATION - a project as important as its title suggests. The book will be released on Jan 14, and is now available for pre-order. Jesse is here today to tell us all about it. With the assault on public education ratcheting up again next month, I thought we'd get a head start on it. Fingers crossed that my voice and health hold up, as I promise you'll love meeting Jesse Hagopian and learning about his dedication to teaching our children the truth.
Nearly half of our nation's public school children are subject to laws that forbid honest education about the history of racism in this country. Two-thirds of US teachers report self-censoring discussions on race, gender, identity, and sexuality in their classrooms. How did we get here, and how can we collaboratively fight for the truth to be taught in our schools? Educator and activist Jesse Hagopian joins us this week to unpack his new book, Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education. Jesse is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding member of Black Lives Matter at School, and the Director for the Zinn Education Project's “Teaching for Black Lives" campaign. But first, Jeff and Manuel take a look at recent headlines in education including schools prepping for upheaval over fears of mass deportations and a new study highlighting the benefits of Ethnic Studies in high schools. → Get your Teach the Truth T-Shirt here! → View this episode on YouTube! AGENDA 0:00 - Welcome! 5:45 - Educational impact of mass deportation fears 17:43 - Study highlights benefits of Ethnic Studies 30:00 - Jesse Hagopian on the Struggle for Antiracist Education 1:14:52 - Preparing for a worsening political climate in education DO-NOW STORIES: Schools are bracing for upheaval over fear of mass deportations California Bill Would Protect Schools, Child Care Centers From Immigration Raids Ethnic studies boosts critical thinking, equity awareness in high school students Judge rejects lawsuit over ‘liberated' ethnic studies classes in LAUSD SEMINAR: Jesse Hagopian Website Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education Black Lives Matter At School: An Uprising for Educational Justice Teaching for Black Lives Teacher Unions and Social Justice More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing. CLASS DISMISSED: Fill your cup, friends. Get MORE All of the Above: - Website - Podcast on multiple platforms via Anchor - Podcast via Apple Podcast - Podcast via Spotify - Facebook Page Theme Music by its tajonthabeat --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aota/support
It's been a full week of democracy in action. Catch up now so you're ready to bust some pencils Monday evening! Catch our monthly check in with fierce advocate of public education, mother of Matt Damon, and professional Pencil Buster, Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige. Wondering how to tackle the big topics in your classroom? Hear the advice of Jesse Hagopian from Rethinking Schools and our weekly guest Teachers Hallie and Joanna of Educators Amplified. And finally... our original educated educator, teacher of teachers, learner leading learner Dr. Tim Slekar... he got schooled.
Big topics require big conversations. As difficult as it is to discuss injustice, oppression, and atrocities, we absolutely must. Our democracy and the continuing improvement of human life requires us to face the worst things that humans have done and continue to do to other humans. Jesse Hagopian of Rethinking Schools is back to Bust some Pencils for the first time since the pandemic! Jesse joins us to break down his most recent article in Rethinking Schools' Spring Edition on the current war in Israel/Palestine. Busted Pencils is a part of the Civic Media radio network and airs Monday through Friday from 6-7 pm across Wisconsin. Subscribe to the podcast to be sure not to miss out on a single episode! To learn more about the show and all of the programming across the Civic Media network, head over to https://civicmedia.us/shows to see the entire broadcast line up. Follow the show on Facebook, X and Instagram to keep up with Dr. Tim, Dr. Johnny and the show!
Jesse Hagopian is a high school teacher in Seattle, a union organizer, co-author of several books, and a powerful force in pushing back against the "over-testing" of students. Jesse's writing has appeared in such publications as The Seattle Times, The Nation, and The Progressive, and his commentary on education and politics has been featured in Time magazine, The New Yorker, The PBS News Hour with Gwen Ifill, The Dan Rather Report, and Democracy Now! Order the books More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing By Jesse Hagopian (Editor), Diane Ravitch (Preface by), Alfie Kohn (Foreword by) https://www.kingsbookstore.com/book/9781608463923 Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice By Jesse Hagopian, Denisha Jones, Opal Tometi (Foreword by) https://www.kingsbookstore.com/book/9781642592702 Support the documentary film project by Magnum Opus Films, “Help Us Tell The Story of Discovering Where Our Ancestors Were Enslaved-Where I Got My Name: A Story of Struggle and Self Discovery.” GoFundMe https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-tell-the-story-of-our-enslaved-ancestors Greg's Blog (subscribe!): http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/ #JesseHogopain#MoreThanAScore#GarfieldHighSchool#BLM#BLMatschool#optoute#MAPboycott#TestBoycott#CriticalRaceTheory#CRT#ChristopherRufo#FairTest#DianeRavvitch#TeacherUnion#NEA#GeraldLenoir#EnslavedAncestors#MississippiSlave#HighstakesTesting#activist#SeattleSuit#culturewars#EducationPolicy#StandardizedTesting#MomsForLiberty#PatCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#ComingFromLeftFieldPodcast#zzblog#mltoday
Journalist Tim Schwab is no stranger to investigative journalism that scrutinizes power structures and questions how private interests intersect with public policy. With funding from a 2019 Alicia Patterson Fellowship, Schwab pursued an investigative series specific to Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, and his work was published by The Nation in 2020 and 2021. Now Schwab expands on his reporting in a new book, The Bill Gates Problem. Schwab provides an in-depth analysis of Bill Gates' philanthropic trajectory, tracing his evolution from a prominent figure in the tech industry to a globally admired individual. Drawing from years of investigation, Schwab highlights concerns related to undue influence on public policy, private markets, scientific research, and media narratives. Are such philanthropic endeavors truly democratic? Or even effective? By facilitating an open dialogue, Schwab seeks to empower participants to critically evaluate the role of philanthropy in society, encouraging constructive discussions about its impact and implications. Tim Schwab is an investigative journalist based in Washington, D.C. His groundbreaking reporting on the Gates Foundation for The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, and The British Medical Journal has been honored with an Izzy Award and a Deadline Club Award. The Bill Gates Problem is his first book. Ashley Fent is a former research director of AGRA Watch, a campaign of Community Alliance for Global Justice. She co-founded CAGJ's AGRA Watch campaign while still an undergraduate at University of Washington. She has ten plus years' experience as a social-environmental researcher, writer, and multimedia content producer. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography from UCLA and a M.A. in Anthropology and African Studies from Columbia University. Daniel Maingi is a science and development practitioner in Kenya with a 15-year career helping to bring learning on appropriate and sustainable technologies to Civil Society Organizations in Eastern Africa. Daniel is a policy campaigner for CSOs at the Inter-Sectoral Forum on Agrobiodiversity and Agroecology. He is currently researching the digitalization of agriculture in Kenya as a Stanford University Fellow (2023-24) with the Digital Civil Society Lab & The Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). Stephen Gloyd, MD, MPH, is a family practice physician who has been a University of Washington faculty member since 1986. Dr. Gloyd is Director of the Global Health MPH Program in the UW's Department of Global Health where he directs efforts to expand curricular options to address global workforce needs. His work with Health Alliance International is designed to improve approaches to global health assistance and to strengthen primary health care with the Ministries of Health of Mozambique, Côte d'Ivoire, Sudan, and Timor-Leste. Jesse Hagopian has been an educator for over twenty years and taught for over a decade Seattle's Garfield High School–the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test. Jesse is an editor for the social justice periodical Rethinking Schools, is the co-editor of the books, Black Lives Matter at School, Teaching for Black Lives, Teacher Unions and Social Justice, and is the editor of the book, More Than a Score. Presented by Town Hall Seattle and Community Alliance for Global Justice. The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire The Elliott Bay Book Company
This is the WFHB Local News for Wednesday, January 17th, 2024. Later in the program, you will hear remarks from keynote speaker Jesse Hagopian, an award-winning educator and activist, who spoke at the city's MLK Day celebration at the Buskirk Chumley Theater on Monday. More in today's feature report. Also coming up in the next …
For many people in the Emerald City, sports may be seen solely as entertainment. We watch the Kraken on the ice, climb the stands for the Seahawks and Sounders, and hold out hands out for a soaring Mariners ball. But what if something came along to challenge the idea of athletics as mere leisure? In his new book Heartbreak City: Seattle Sports and the Unmet Promise of Urban Progress, author Shaun Scott takes readers through 170 years of Seattle history, chronicling both well-known and long-forgotten events. Examples include the establishment of racially segregated golf courses in the 1920s or the 1987 Seahawks players' strike that galvanized organized labor. Scott explores how progressives in urban areas across the U.S. have used athletics to address persistent problems in city life: the fight for racial justice, workers' rights, equality for women and LGBTQ+ city dwellers, and environmental conservation. In Seattle specifically, sports initiatives have powered meaningful reforms, such as popular stadium projects that promoted investments in public housing and mass transit. At the same time, conservative forces also used sports to consolidate their power and mobilize against these initiatives. Heartbreak City seeks to uncover how sports have both united and divided Seattle, socially and politically. Deep archival research and analysis fill the pages, guiding us through this account of our city's quest to make a change, both on and off the field. Shaun Scott is a Seattle-based writer and organizer. He is the author of Millennials and the Moments That Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-present. Jesse Hagopian has been an educator for over twenty years and taught for over a decade at Seattle's Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test. Heartbreak City: Seattle Sports and the Unmet Promise of Urban Progress The Elliott Bay Book Company
On today’s edition of Bring It On!, hosts, Clarence Boone and Liz Mitchell, speaks with Jesse Hagopian, a high school educator, with over twenty years of experience, and social justice activist. He taught for over ten years at Seattle’s Garfield High School, where the historic boycott of the MAP test or Measures of Academic Progress …
Paul Farber:You are listening to Monument Lab Future Memory where we discuss the future of monuments and the state of public memory in the US and across the globe. You can support the work of Monument Lab by visiting monumentlab.com, following us on social @Monument_Lab, or subscribing to this podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. Li Sumpter:Our guest today on Future Memory is artist, scholar, and composer, Nathan Young. Young is a member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians and a direct descendant of the Pawnee Nation and Kiowa Tribe, currently living in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. His work incorporates sound, video, documentary, animation, installation, socially-engaged art, and experimental and improvised music. Young is also a founding member of the artist collective, Postcommodity. He holds an MFA in Music/Sound from Bard College's Milton Avery School of the Arts and is currently pursuing a PhD in the University of Oklahoma's innovative Native American art history doctoral program. His scholarship focuses on Indigenous Sonic Agency. Today we discuss his art and practice and a recently opened public art project at Historic site Pennsbury Manor entitled nkwiluntàmën, funded by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and curated by Ryan Strand Greenberg and Theo Loftis. Let's listen.Welcome to another episode of Future Memory. I'm your co-host, Li Sumpter. Today my guest is Nathan Young. Welcome, Nathan.Nathan Young:Hello. Thank you. It's nice to be here with you today. Li:Future Memory is the name of Monument Lab's podcast. In the context of your own work, when you hear the words "future memory," what does that mean to you? Do any images or sounds come to mind? Nathan:They really do. There's one. It was a website of a sound artist, a writer, an educator, Jace Clayton, DJ/Rupture, had a mixed CD called "Gold Teeth Thief". I remember it was kind of a game changer in the late '90s. I got that mixed CD from a website called History of the Future. Li:That's very close. It was very close.Nathan:It's always stuck with me. I'm fortunate enough to be able to grapple with a lot of these kind of ideas. I'm not really quite sure how I feel about some of the history of the future because in some ways I work within many different archives so I am dealing with people's future or thinking about or reimagining or just imagining their future.But future monuments are something that I grapple with and deeply consider in my artwork. I think it's one of the more challenging subjects today in art. I think we see that with the taking down of monuments that were so controversial or are so controversial. But I find it fascinating the idea of finding new forms to make monuments to remember and the idea of working with different communities of memory. It's key to my work. It's just a lot of listening and a lot of pondering. Actually, it's a very productive space for me because it's a place to think about form. Also, it opens doors for me just to think about the future. I will say this, that one problem that often arises as a Lenape Delaware Pawnee Kiowa person is we're often talking about the past, and I really like to talk about the future and to work with organizations that are thinking about the future. Li:I can relate to that. Nathan:I think it's a misunderstanding. We always really are talking about the future. I've had the great fortune to be around some people. Actually, I grew up in the capital of the Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma. A lot of people know that Oklahoma is the home to 39 federally recognized tribes. I was fortunate enough to grow up in Tahlequah, which is the capital of the Cherokee Nation, and was able to be around a well-known and respected medicine man named Crosslin Smith, also an author. I remember being a part of an interview with Crosslin. I grew up, he was a family friend.He said, "I'm often asked about the old or ancient ways and the new ways." What Crosland said was, and I'll try my best to articulate this idea, is that there is no difference between the ancient ways and today. These things still exist. It might be an illusion or we might not be able to comprehend or understand it, but there is no difference between the ancient, when we're thinking of things in the sense of the sublime, I think. There is no understanding the ancient and what is contemporary. That was really an important moment for me as an adult. To hear him articulate that was really important. So I think about that. I'm not really sure about a lot of things, but I really like to think about that when I'm working. Li:It kind of runs through your mind as you're working and creating. It's a deep thought, that's for sure, connecting those things. Even thinking back on your own personal history with sound, when did you first connect your relationship to place and homeland to sound and music? Nathan:Well, my earliest remembrances of music, honestly, are my dad driving me around in his truck, picking me up after school, and singing peyote songs, Native American Church songs, peyote songs. The members of the Native American Church call that medicine. My father was an active member of a chapter of the Native American Church at that time. I was fortunate enough to receive my Lenape Delaware name in a peyote meeting. But the first things I remember are the music he played in the car, but really the singing in the car, the singing in the truck that he would do of those peyote songs. Even after he quit going to meetings or he wasn't active in the Native American Church anymore, he still would sing these peyote songs, and I would ask him about the peyote songs, because they're different for every tribe. The forms, they still have their kind of conventions, but they're very tribally specific.Everything in what we call legally Indian Country here in the United States is super hyper local. So just down the road, that's really the beautiful thing about living in Oklahoma, is you have people whose ancestors are from northeast, southeast, southwest. There's only one tribe here from California. So it's a really rich place for sound and song. Both of my parents are Indigenous American Indian. My mother is Pawnee and Kiowa. My father is Lenape Delaware. I also grew up around the Big Drum, what we call the Big Drum at powwows. I never became a powwow singer or anything like that. Never learned anything around the Big Drum. But I did eventually learn Pawnee songs, Native American Church Pawnee songs.But really, I was just a kid in a small town in Oklahoma. When skateboarding hit and you become kind of an adolescent, you start to discover punk rock and things like that. Those to me were the way that the culture was imported to me. I didn't realize that I was already surrounded by all this beautiful culture, all of the tribes and my parents' tribes and my grandparents'. But then it was like a transmitter. Even these tapes were just transmitters to me. So those were really important also. I have a lot of thoughts about sound. Other thing I remember is my father often would get onto us or make fun of us for being so loud and saying we would be horrible scouts or hunters.Li:Making too much noise. Nathan:The Native Americans, yeah, yeah. We weren't stealth. You'd hear us coming a mile away. So he would always say, "You wouldn't be a very good one," just to try to get us quiet down.Li:No one wants to be a bad hunter, right? Can you break down the concept of Indigenous Sonic Agency? is this based on ancestral traditions, your artistic practice, academic scholarship, or a bit of all the above? Nathan:Well, Indigenous Sonic Agency is really one piece of a larger subject sonic agency, which I encountered in a book titled Sonic Agency by Brandon LaBelle. I was a former member of this collective, Postcommodity, and I'm reading this book. When we were first starting the collective, we had the opportunity to work with this Czech poet named Magor, Ivan Jirous Magor. It means blockhead, I believe. It's a nickname. He was kind of described as the Andy Warhol of the Plastic People of the Universe. He was an art historian. He spent most of his life in prison just for being an artist, an art historian. He was an actual musician. He didn't play with the Plastic People of the Universe, to my knowledge, but he did to write the lyrics, to my knowledge. We had the opportunity to record with Magor. So I'm reading this book about sonic agency, and here I find somebody that I'd actually had an experience with sonic agency with in my early days and as a young man and an artist.But ultimately Indigenous Sonic Agency is, in some sense, similar but different to tribal sovereignty. So when you think of agency or sovereignty, it's something that they sometimes get mixed up. I'm really trying to parse the differences between this, what we understand so well as political sovereignty as federally recognized tribes and what agency means, say, as an artist. But in my research, in the subject of sonic agency and Indigenous Sonic Agency, it encompasses pretty much everything. That's what I love about sound. Everything has a sound, whether we can hear it or not. Everything is in vibration. There are sounds that are inaudible to us, that are too high or too low. Then there's what we hear in the world and the importance of silence with John Cage. I think that they're just super productive.I was introduced really to sound studies through this book called Sonic Warfare by Steve Goodman. It was really about how the study of sound was, in a sense, still emerging because it had mostly been used for military purposes and for proprietary purposes such as commercials and things like that. As I stated earlier, I felt like music was my connection to a larger world that I couldn't access living in a small town. So even everything that came with it, the album covers, all that, they really made an impression on me as a young person, and it continues to this day, and I've been focusing deeply on it.My studies in sonic agency -- Indigenous Sonic Agency -- encompass everything from social song, sacred song, voice, just political speech and language, political language. There's so much work to be done in the emerging sound studies field. I felt that Indigenous Sonic Agency, there was a gap there in writing and knowledge on it. Now though, I acknowledge that there has been great study on the subject such as Dylan Robinson's book, Hungry Listening. I am fortunate enough to be around a lot of other Indigenous experimental artists who work in all the sonic fields. So it's an all-encompassing thing. I think about the sacred, I think about the political, I think about the nature of how we use it to organize things and how language works. Silence is a part of it. Also, listening is very important. It's something that I was taught at a very young age. You always have to continue to hone that practice to become a better and better listener. Li:That's the truth. Nathan:My grandmother was very quiet, but whenever she did talk, everybody loved it. Li:That's right. That's right. Let's talk about the Pennsbury Manor project. Can you share how you, Ryan Strand Greenberg, and Theo Loftis met and how nkwiluntàmën came to be? Nathan:Well, to my recollection, I try to keep busy around here, and oftentimes it means traveling to some of the other towns in the area such as Pawnee or Bartlesville or Dewey or Tahlequah. I wasn't able to do a studio visit with Ryan, but I wanted to see his artist talk that he was giving at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, which I was a fellow at at that time. I remember seeing these large public art projects that were being imagined by Ryan. We had worked on some other projects that, for one reason or another, we weren't unable to get off the ground. Eventually, Pennsbury Manor was willing to be this space where we could all work together. I remember rushing back and being able to catch Ryan's artist talk. Then right before he left town, we had a studio visit and found out how much we had in common concerning the legacy of the Lenape in the Philadelphia area, what we used to call Lenapehoking. So it was a really a moment of good fortune, I believe. Li:Monument Lab defines monument as a statement of power and presence in public. The nkwiluntàmën project guide describes Pennsbury Manor as a space to attune public memory. It goes on to say that sites like these are not endpoints in history, but touchstones between generations. I really love that statement. Do you think Pennsbury Manor and the land it stands on, do you consider it a monument in your eyes? Why or, maybe even, why not? Nathan:Well, yeah, I would definitely consider Pennsbury Manor, in a sense, a monument. I think that we could make an argument for that. If we were talking about the nature of it being William Penn's home and it being reconstructed in the 20th century, you could make a very strong argument that it is a monument to William Penn and also as William Penn as this ideal friend to the Indian. Some people don't like that word. Here in Oklahoma, some of us use it. Technically, it was Indian Country legally. But I use all terms: Native American, Indigenous, Indian. But I'd mostly like to just be called a Lenape Delaware Pawnee Kiowa.I definitely would say that you could make an argument that is a monument to William Penn especially as part of that, as this ideal colonist who could be set as a standard as for how he worked with the Lenape and then other tribes in the area at the time. I think that's kind of the narrative that I run into mostly in my research, literally. However, I would not say that it was established or had been any type of monument to my Lenape legacy. I did not feel that... I mean, there was always mention of that. It was, like I said, as this ideal figure of how to cooperate with the tribes in the area. But I would definitely say it's not a monument to the Lenape or the Delaware or Munsee.Li:Can you share a bit more about the project itself in terms of nkwiluntàmën and what exactly you did there at Pennsbury Manor to shift and really inform that history from a different perspective? Nathan:Well, first of all, at Pennsbury Manor, I was given a lot of agency. I was given a lot of freedom to what I needed to as an artist. I was really fortunate to be able to work with Doug and Ryan and Theo in that manner where I could really think about these things and think deeply about them. I started to consider these living history sites. My understanding is that they're anachronisms. There's a lot of labor put into creating a kind of façade or an appearance of the past, and specifically this time, this four years that William Penn was on this continent. So this idea that nothing is here that is not supposed to be here became really important to me. What I mean by that is, say, if you threw in a television set, it kind of throws everything off. Everybody's walking around in clothing that reflects that era and that time. If you throw some strange electronics in the space, it kind of is disruptive. I didn't feel the need to do anything like that.I felt that one of the great things about working in sound and one of the most powerful things about sound is that sound can also be stealth. You can't see sound. We can sonify things or we can visualize it or quantify it in different ways. But to me, this challenge of letting the place be, but using sound as this kind of stealth element where I could express this very, very difficult subject and something that really nobody has any answers to or is sure about... I was trained as an art historian, and I know that we're only making guesses and approximations just like any doctors. We are just trying to do these things.But sound gave me the ability at Pennsbury Manor and nkwiluntàmën to work stealthy and quiet, to not disturb the space too much because there's important work that's done there, and I want to respect people's labor. As a member of the Delaware tribe of Indians of Lenape, I felt that it was a great opportunity to be the person who's able to talk about this very difficult subject, and that is not lost on me. That's a very, very heavy, very serious task. Li:Yeah, big responsibility. Nathan:Yes. It is not lost on me at all how serious it is, and I feel very fortunate. I think without such a great support system in place, it wouldn't have been possible. nkwiluntàmën means lonesome, such as the sound of a drum. We have a thing called the Lenape Talking Dictionary, Li:I've seen it. I've seen it. Nathan:I'm often listening. I'm listening to Nora Dean Thompson who gave me my Delaware name, my Lenape name, Unami Lenape name in a peyote ceremony. So I often go there to access Delaware thought and ideas and to hear Delaware voices and Delaware language being spoken. I know that some people have different views on it, but let's say, I think artists and people have used the Unami Lenape before and art exhibitions as a lost or an endangered languages. I know that in the entire state that I live in, and in most of Indian country, there's a great language revitalization movement that I was fortunate to be a part of and contribute to.Really, that's where I discovered that that's really where through language, there's nothing more Lenape, there's nothing more Delaware, Unami Lenape than to be able to talk and express yourself in that manner or, say, as a Pawnee or a Kiowa to be able to talk and express. Embedded in those words are much more than just how we think of language. They're really the key to our worldviews. Our languages are the keys to our worldview and really our thought patterns and how we see the world and how we should treat each other or how we choose to live in the world or our ancestors did. So I'm fascinated by the language. I was fortunate enough to be around many, many different native languages growing up. But ours was one because of the nature of us being a northeastern tribe that was very much in danger of being lost. Some would say that at one point it was a very, very, very endangered language to the point to where nobody was being born in what we call a first language household, where everybody could speak conversationally in Unami Lenape.So these things, we all think about this, by the way, all of my community, the Delaware Tribe of Indians. I was fortunate enough to serve on the Tribal Council as an elected member for four years. We think about these things definitely all the time, and people do hard work to try to revitalize the language. I know at this time that the Delaware Tribe of Indians is actively working to revitalize our language. Li:That's a part of that preservation and remembrance because your work, really does explore this idea of ancestral remembrance and is rooted in that. Then again, you're also engaging with these historic sites, like Pennsbury Manor, that tap into public memory. So in your thoughts, how are ancestral remembrance and public memory connected? Are there any similar ways that they resonate? Nathan:Well, I think of different communities of remembrance. Within this idea of memory there are just different communities. I don't want to want to create a dichotomy, but it's easily understood by those who focus on the legacy of William Penn and those who focus on the legacy of the Lenape or the Pawnee. But ancestral memory is key to my culture, I believe, and I really don't know any way to express it other than explaining it in a contemporary sense. If you're deeply involved in your tribal nation, one of the one things that people will ask you is they'll say, "Who are your folks?" Literally, people will say, "Who are your folks?" Li:Who are your peoples? Nathan:"What family do you come from?" I didn't start to realize this until I was an adult, of course. It's not something you think you would ever think of as a child or anything. It started to become really apparent to me that we're families that make up communities that have stayed together in our case for hundreds of years across thousands of miles. It's a point to where we got down to very small numbers. We still stuck together. Then there was also a diaspora of Lenape that went to Canada, the Munsee and the Stockbridge. There was the Delaware Nation who has actually lived more near the Kiowa. My grandmother was Kiowa. But we still had the same family names. For instance, there are people and members of the Delaware Nation that are actually blood related to the Delaware Tribe. So that is really our connection to each other is our ancestors. That's purely what binds us to together is that our ancestors were together, and we just continue that bond. Li:Thank you. A part of Monument Lab's mission is to illuminate how symbols are connected to systems of power and public memory. What are the recurring or even the most vital symbols illuminated in your work? Nathan:Oh, that's a really tough question because my work is all over the place. I work across a lot of different mediums, although I've trained as an art historian, so I came into this as a visual artist. I just happened to be a musician and then discovered installation art and how sound works in art. But for me, the story I feel that I'm trying to tell cannot be held by any number of symbols or signs. I want to give myself the freedom and agency to use whatever is needed, actually, whatever is needed to get across the idea that is important to me. So going back to nkwiluntàmën, lonesome, such as the sounds, these colors, we use these white post-Colonial benches, and there's four large ones, placed across the grounds of Pennsbury Manor. You'll see that, if one were to visit, they would see a black bench, a yellow bench, a white bench, and a red bench. Nathan:If you're from my community, a Delaware Tribe of Indian member and you know that you're a Lenape, you understand that those colors have meaning to our tribe, and you'll know that those colors have sacred meaning. So in some sense, I will use whatever I think is the most appropriate way to use it also. I want to give myself the freedom to use any type of symbolism. I loved growing up with my mother and my grandmother being able to go to powwows. My mom would say, "Well, here comes the Shawnee women. Here comes the Delaware women. They dress like this. Here comes..." Li:You can recognize from their dress. Nathan:My mother and my grandmother taught me that iconography of our clothing, what we now call regalia. Li:I was curious if perhaps the drum or even the idea of homeland show up in your work? Nathan:Oh, they definitely show up in my work when appropriate. But rather than a drum, I would say sound or song or music. We do have these iconographies and symbols that are deeply meaningful to us, and I often use those in my artwork. But really the question for me is how to use them appropriately and, also at the same time, expand the use of these things appropriately. It's just being accountable to your legacy and your community in a sense and not crossing these boundaries, but still at the same time pushing form, pushing the edge.I'm a contemporary person. We're all contemporary people. We want to add something. We want to contribute. We want to be useful. So I'm searching for symbols and forms all the time, different ones. Whether it be a mound, whether it'd be a swimming pool inside an art gallery or a singing park bench or a post-Colonial bench in Pennsbury Manor, in some ways you could say I would be indigenizing and musicalizing those benches. But I consciously work to have a very broad palette. I want my work to be expansive and be able to encompass any subject or idea, because that's why I got into art is because you can talk about anything.Li:Yeah, it's boundless. It's boundless. Then also thinking about the connections and the symbols that you mentioned, the colors that you mentioned, the iconography, what systems of power might they be connected to? Nathan:Well, ultimately, I think that most of the power that is embedded in these symbols comes from the sublime, that come from the sacred. It's complicated. The sacred means to not be touched. That's my understanding, it's to not be touched. However, it's been the source of inspiration for artists of any continent of any time is, if you want to call it, a spiritual, sublime, religious connection, inspiration, whatever, but ultimately, that is my understanding. From my research, even as a young person studying Pawnee mythologies at the University of Oklahoma and special collection and learning stories, our origin stories and what color meant and how the world was seen by my ancestors from other tribes as well as Lenape stories, it's something that's hard to grasp and to hold onto, but that's how we've come to identify each other. It's as simple as we have car tags here that represent our tribes. We have a compact with the state. So everybody's looking around at all these different car tags.Li:Wow. Nathan:You see a regular Oklahoma one, and then you'll see... A very common one is a Cherokee because they're one of the biggest tribes. You'll see a blue one, it's Pawnee. Now you'll see a red one, and it's Delaware or Lenape. It says Unami Lenape on it, and it has our seal. So we play this kind of game all of us. I mean, it's not a game, but we're always looking at license plates to see... It might be your mom's car you're driving that has, say, a Kickapoo license plate or something, and it's a Cherokee driving it or a non-Indian or something, a relative, say. It's not for me to say where these came from. It's something that I actually just really explore and that fascinates me. It's very rich growing up and being a member of my tribal communities. I learn something new almost daily. Li:I can imagine like you said, the learning experience that you have as a child growing up in your community. You mentioned mythologies earlier. I study mythology. One of the purposes I've come to understand is education, educating through these stories. I recently interviewed Jesse Hagopian from the Zinn Education Project and the movement for anti-racist education. The struggles for education reform and reckoning with Eurocentric understandings of history seem to be deeply connected efforts. So on nkwiluntàmën, I understand an educational curriculum has been developed for younger audiences. What do you hope that people take away from this project that they might not find in a textbook or a classroom? Nathan:Well, I would hope that when people visit the large-scale sound installation and visual elements of it that they would understand... my greatest hope that people would learn what I learned while creating the work was that I really don't know what it felt like. I just came across, I was looking for the words in the Delaware Talking Dictionary for feelings, and I found a sentence or a way of saying feeling that said, "It did not penetrate me. I did not feel it." It made me realize that I don't know. I've never had this happen to me. The history of the Delaware Lenape is of constant removal, of constant pushing. Most people know the Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears. Actually, there were many movements of the Cherokee. It's very complex. All tribes are very complex. You always have to qualify. But the Trail of Tears is what most people know about. It was this very long, two-year complex journey. It was fraught. Li:That's one of the stories that we learned in school, if at all. Nathan:So our story is of nine of those and, to my understanding and research, was about once every 30 years. So it seemed to me that most Lenape, who came to be known as the Delaware Tribe, who I grew up with as, had ancestors that had experienced a removal. It's something that we still live and deal with today. We came to Oklahoma from what is now Lawrence, Kansas, when this was called Indian Territory. We had been living before that north of Kansas and had adapted our way of life as we changed across this territory and through time to survive.So as we moved into the Plains, we started to hunt buffalo, and then we get kind of crosswise with some other tribes. I think when the federal government was constituting Indian Country, they were concerned with the relationships between other tribes and how they felt. My understanding is we had upset some... By Buffalo hunting and adopting that way of survival and life, there was some trepidation about us. They wanted our reservation. The railroad wanted our reservation, and Lawrence, Kansas, to run directly through our reservation. They were forcing us to move off that reservation, and they couldn't find a place. That was kind of my understanding of the situation. So we ended up in the northernmost part of the Cherokee Nation. This made us a landless tribe for a very, very long time. Technically, we didn't have a reservation. We were living in the Cherokee's reservation because we had this very ancient but kind of tangential connection to the Cherokees. So that's a very long and complicated story as well. Li:That's actually a beautiful setup for one of my last questions actually. This idea of documentation and stewardship are key for Indigenous communities, as you just mentioned, that continue to contend with stolen land, forest displacements, cultural erasure, and lost languages. Monument Lab thinks a lot about the future archives that can hold the dynamic nature of public memory in all its forms. What would a future archive of ancestral memory look, feel, or even sound like for you? Nathan Young:I love that question because we do work with future archives of our ancestors, all of us do today. So I think it's really a question of form. I've encountered this in my studies of Sonic Agency and Indigenous Sonic Agency. The invention of the phonograph and the wax cylinder are very important. It didn't look like anything. It looked like sound or that archive. I think that unknowingly, we're all living in an archive. We're archiving moments now as things speed up constantly. Paul Virilio, the theorist, was very, very important to my thinking because he theorized about speed and the speed of, say, how a camera shutter and a gun are very similar in their repeatingness. I think about repetition a lot. But today, we live in this hyper surveillance society that any moment could be archived, any moment could be filmed, and also these things will be lost. So that is a fascinating thought to think about what may survive and become the archive and what may not, even with all of this effort to constantly surveil and document everything.But it's my hope that archives are important just because they give us a deeper understanding of a connection to something we will never be able to experience. So I think that a future archive is something that we cannot imagine. We don't know what it's going to look like, and it's up to us to find out and to explore form and explore possibilities so that we're not stuck in this mindset that has to be in steel and monumentalized as a figure or a person or something like that. So in my mind, it's just to be revealed to us. We'll know later, but I would hope that were to make...I know this is what people still do today that make monuments. They want to make something beautiful, but that means something different to Lenape or a Pawnee or Kiowa, so that seems very different to us. And so we do that. We do memorialize things in different ways. But I think that we think of them as more ethereal, whether we think of them as things that we know that aren't going to really last forever. I feel that way, at least. I don't speak for all of my culture. But I know that some of us are trying to find new forms to really memorialize our past and unite our community of memory and our tribes, our experiences.Li:Like you said, time, everything's moving so fast and everything's evolving. Everything's constantly changing. So who knows what the forms will take. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate your time. I just wanted to see if you had any final words or even gems of ancestral wisdom you might want to leave with us before we finish. Nathan:No, I can't share any ancestral wisdom, not knowingly or very well. I just appreciate the opportunity to create the piece. I appreciate the opportunity to expand upon the piece by talking with you about this because I'm just trying to figure this out. I don't have all the answers. Li:Right, that is part of being a life learner and walking this path. Everyone's on their journey. We are constantly learning at every turn. I'm with you, Nathan. I often admit that I do not have all the answers. That is for sure. I really enjoyed learning about your work and your practice. I definitely plan on getting down to Pennsbury Manor and look forward to the curriculum for the youth when it comes out. Nathan:Well, thank you. I hope you enjoy it. I hope that it's a meaningful experience for you. I'm a very fortunate person to be able to work on such a project and very grateful to the entire team and everybody that supported the process. Li:Thank you, and thank you again to Ryan Strand Greenberg, who is also the producer of this podcast and worked with you on the project for nkwiluntàmën. Thank you to Nathan Young, our guest today on Future Memory. This is another one for the Future Memory archives.Monument Lab Future Memory is produced by Monument Lab Studio, Paul Farber, Li Sumpter, Ryan Strand Greenberg, Aubree Penney, and Nico Rodriguez. Our producing partner for Future Memory is RADIOKISMET, with special thanks to Justin Berger and the Christopher Plant. This season was supported with generous funding by the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and the University of Pennsylvania.
Marianne Williamson joins TVLR to talk about her campaign. Lots of Alabama news, including a freak attorney making as much as Nick Saban to defend our unconstitutional prisons. In OVERTIME, we talk to educator Jesse Hagopian about the #TeachTruth Day of Action and David Van Deusen, President of the Vermont AFL-CIO. ✦ ABOUT ✦The Valley Labor Report is the only union talk radio show in Alabama, elevating struggles for justice and fairness on the job, educating folks about how they can do the same, and bringing relevant news to workers in Alabama and beyond.Our single largest source of revenue *is our listeners* so your support really matters and helps us stay on the air!Make a one time donation or become a monthly donor on our website or patreon:TVLR.FMPatreon.com/thevalleylaborreportVisit our official website for more info on the show, membership, our sponsors, merch, and more: https://www.tvlr.fmFollow TVLR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheValleyLab...Follow TVLR on Twitter: @LaborReportersFollow Jacob on Twitter: @JacobM_ALFollow TVLR Co-Creator David Story on Twitter: @RadiclUnionist✦ CONTACT US ✦Our phone number is 844-899-TVLR (8857), call or text us live on air, or leave us a voicemail and we might play it during the show!✦ OUR ADVERTISERS KEEP US ON THE AIR! ✦Support them if you can.The attorneys at MAPLES, TUCKER, AND JACOB fight for working people. Let them represent you in your workplace injury claim. Mtandj.com; (855) 617-9333The MACHINISTS UNION represents workers in several industries including healthcare, the defense industry, woodworking, and more. iamaw44.org (256) 286-3704 / organize@iamaw44.orgDo you need good union laborers on your construction site, or do you want a union construction job? Reach out to the IRONWORKERS LOCAL 477. Ironworkers477.org 256-383-3334 (Jeb Miles) / local477@bellsouth.netThe NORTH ALABAMA DSA is looking for folks to work for a better North Alabama, fighting for liberty and justice for all. Contact / Join: DSANorthAlabama@gmail.comIBEW LOCAL 136 is a group of over 900 electricians and electrical workers providing our area with the finest workforce in the construction industry. You belong here. ibew136.org Contact: (205) 833-0909IFPTE - We are engineers, scientists, nonprofit employees, technicians, lawyers, and many other professions who have joined together to have a greater voice in our careers. With over 80,000 members spread across the U.S. and Canada, we invite you and your colleagues to consider the benefits of engaging in collective bargaining. IFPTE.org Contact: (202) 239-4880THE HUNTSVILLE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD is a union open to any and all working people. Call or email them today to begin organizing your workplace - wherever it is. On the Web: https://hsviww.org/ Contact: (256) 651-6707 / organize@hsviww.orgENERGY ALABAMA is accelerating Alabama's transition to sustainable energy. We are a nonprofit membership-based organization that has advocated for clean energy in Alabama since 2014. Our work is based on three pillars: education, advocacy, and technical assistance. Energy Alabama on the Web: https://alcse.org/ Contact: (256) 812-1431 / dtait@energyalabama.orgThe Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union represents in a wide range of industries, including but not limited to retail, grocery stores, poultry processing, dairy processing, cereal processing, soda bottlers, bakeries, health care, hotels, manufacturing, public sector workers like crossing guards, sanitation, and highway workers, warehouses, building services, and distribution. Learn more at RWDSU.infoThe American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union proudly representing 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers nationwide and overseas. Learn more at AFGE.orgAre you looking for a better future, a career that can have you set for life, and to be a part of something that's bigger than yourself? Consider a skilled trades apprenticeship with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. Learn more at IUPAT.orgUnionly is a union-focused company created specifically to support organized labor. We believe that providing online payments should be simple, safe, and secure. Visit https://unionly.io/ to learn more.Hometown Action envisions inclusive, revitalized, and sustainable communities built through multiracial working class organizing and leadership development at the local and state level to create opportunities for all people to thrive. Learn more at hometownaction.orgMembers of IBEW have some of the best wages and benefits in North Alabama. Find out more and join their team at ibew558.org ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Li Sumpter:So welcome back to another episode of Future Memory. My guest today is Jesse Hagopian. He is a Seattle-based educator and the author of the upcoming Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education. Hagopian is an organizer with the Zinn Education Project and co-editor of the books Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice and Teaching for Black Lives. Welcome, Jesse.Jesse Hagopian:Oh, thanks so much for having me. Good to be with you. Li:Thank you for joining us. Well, I want to get started with some questions about your own education and how you got started. I was curious about what your own early education and high school experiences were like. As a youth, what ways did you relate to or even resist to your own classroom curricula? Jesse:I was very alienated from school growing up. I felt like it didn't really speak to me. I didn't feel like I was intelligent. I can remember very clearly a parent-teacher conference in third grade where the teacher brought us out into the hallway with me and my mom, and she took out my standardized testing scores and there was a blue line that ran through the middle that was the average, and then there was the dot far below that line that represented my reading scores.And I knew from that day forward until about halfway through college, I knew that I was not smart, and I had the test scores to prove it to you. And school just felt like a place that reinforced over and over again that I was not worthy, that I was not intelligent. And there was very little that we studied that was about helping me understand myself, my identity, my place in the world as a Black, mixed-race kid.And really, it was just a fraught experience, and I took quite a bit to get over that. I was sure I was going to fail out of college, that I wasn't smart enough to go to college. And I think that it was finally the experience of a couple of professors in college that showed that education could be more than just eliminating wrong answer choices at faster rates than other children, that it could be about understanding the problems in our world and how we can collectively solve those problems.And then I realized I did have something to contribute. Then I realized that I did have some perspectives on what oppression looks like and how it feels and what we might need to do to get out of it, and I was hungry to learn about the systems that are set up in our society to reproduce inequality. And that was a real change for me. But growing up, my mom would tell me, "You're good with kids. I think you're going to be a teacher." And I said, "That's the last thing I'm going to be."Li:Oh, really?Jesse:School is just so arduous, and why would I want to come back? And then she was right. I came back to my own high school. I came back to Garfield High School, where I graduated, and I taught there for over a decade now. Li:I think that's an amazing story, coming full circle to teach back where you got your first experiences in the classroom. And going back to that, I was wondering if you had any standout memories, like I did, with the actual content. You were saying you didn't relate to it so much, but I remember very clearly a moment with my mother coming to the school when I had a moment in the classroom around Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, things like that. Do you have any standout memories of content that really either made you feel excluded or exploited or any of these things that really stuck with you? Jesse:For sure. I mean, there are many experiences that I think shaped my approach to education throughout the years. I mean, one of my firsts is from kindergarten. I remember very clearly one of the boys called me the N-word. And I didn't really know what it meant, but I knew it was directed at me and not the other kids. So I went and told the teacher, but there was parent-teacher conferences going on and parents were coming through, prospective parents, to look at the school, and the teacher got just beet red in front of the parents and was very embarrassed that I had said this, and said, "Oh, yeah. We'll deal with that," and just sort of pushed it aside and never came back to it.And the message that I got was that I had done something wrong, like I had disrupted the education process and that it was wrong for me to have done that because nothing was taken care of. And that's something that still sits with me and I think guides a lot of my approach to how to handle situations in the classroom. And I can remember the first time I had a Black teacher and that I began to learn about Black history in sixth grade, an incredible educator named Faith Davis, taught us about ancient Egypt. And it was the first thing I really got excited about learning, and I was amazed by all these accomplishments that Black people had done.And then after that class, it just sort of disappeared for a long time, and I never learned about anything else that Black people had done, and it made me wonder, "Is that why I score so poorly on these tests? Because I'm Black? Because I don't see other people like me in the advanced classes? And maybe those aren't for us. Maybe it has something to do innately with my race." And that's such a disempowering feeling, and I wanted to ensure that no other kids had to go through that kind of humiliation. Li:No, that's a great point that you bring up because I think we had similar experiences. I was actually recently going through some old photos at my mom's house, and I came across my elementary school class photo, the classic one, everyone's lined up, shortest to tallest kind of thing. And there I was, the only Black child in a class of 25 white students. And I think at that young, innocent age, I didn't really understand what I was up against, and today's youth and teachers are facing so many challenges in the classroom today, things that I don't think either of us could have really imagined.And so, as I was exploring the amazing tools and campaigns that you've been authoring and spearheading, like Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School, and the Zinn Education platform of so many resources, I think, "What would my early school experience have been like if these tools were available?" Right?And I'm wondering, would you have thought the same thing? Because when I think about these amazing tools that are being offered, I just imagine, and we're not even talking about the digital stuff. I'm just talking about the things around critical race theory, these ideas, just about things that are showing a representation of Black folks. Like you said, even just having a Black teacher and what that meant for you. So even thinking about, what if the tools that you are all creating today were actually in your classroom back at Garfield when you were youth? Jesse:Oh, wow. That would've been incredible. I mean, at the Zinn Education Project, we have scores of free downloadable people's history lessons that center Black history and struggles against structural racism. And these lessons tell history from the perspective of people who have been marginalized, who have been pushed out of the centers of power. We look at the founding of America from the perspective of those who have been enslaved, not those who were doing the enslaving. We look at American history through the eyes of those who are organizing multiracial struggles for racial and social justice, not the ones that are trying to maintain segregation and hoarding wealth in the hands of the few.And I would've just lit up to be able to have a teacher say that your family's history matters, that struggles that your family went through shaped this country, and whatever semblance of democracy that we're able to hold onto in this country is the result of the Black freedom struggle and the result of multiracial struggles for social justice. Instead, we got the message in American government class that democracy is something that's handed down from those in power and those on high.I can remember, at Garfield High School, my American government teacher assigned a research project, and I did a project about J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director. And it was the only paper I think I ever really tried on in high school. I was very disengaged from school and didn't see any point in it, but this research project captured my imagination because I learned about some really despicable things that someone in power had done.I couldn't believe that J. Edgar Hoover had led a campaign against the Black freedom movement, had targeted Martin Luther King, someone who we're all supposed to revere, and yet our government was wiretapping and even trying to get him to commit suicide and some pretty despicable things. And I poured myself into the research and I wrote the best paper I had done up until that point, and she gave me a C with the notes that the claims I was making were unsubstantiated. Li:Wow. Jesse:And it's clear that she just didn't agree, that she didn't want to hear that a white man in power had misused it. And that was a strong message I got that some ideas are off-limits, and it doesn't matter how hard you work. If you go against what makes a white teacher comfortable, then there are consequences for that.And after that, I really didn't want to try anymore. I didn't feel like my opinions mattered, and I would've loved to have a teacher help me understand how we can live in a society that calls itself the freest nation on earth, and yet was based on enslavement of Black people and genocide of Native people, continued with Jim Crow segregation to where up through my dad's generation couldn't vote if you were Black.And then in our own generation, we have mass incarceration. And how is it that racism continues to change in focus and character, but is a constant in American society? And I wasn't able to learn that until much later, and I would've loved to have some of the resources that the Zinn Education Project provides today. Li:Yes, you and me both. Jesse:Yeah. Li:And that brings me to my next question about one of your ongoing campaigns is Black Lives Matter at School. And this year, the 2023 Creative Writing Challenge prompt was, "How can a school community support you in being unapologetically Black?" How might the young Jesse have answered that same question? Jesse:Wow. Well, the young Jesse would've been scared to answer that question. Li:Really? Say more. Jesse:I think that because I was so worried about what it meant to be Black and what that meant about my intelligence, that being unapologetically Black was very foreign for me for far too long. It was hard to come to loving my blackness, and it was a long road to get there. And I'm just so glad that the Black Lives Matter at School movement exists, because so many children like me who are scared to embrace their blackness because they're afraid that it could make them labeled as lesser, not as beautiful, not as deserving of love, not as deserving of care, and everything that all of our kids deserve.Now, these students are celebrated in our Week of Action that happens the first week of February every year, and also on our Year of Purpose. So every month, we're revisiting the principles of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and we're highlighting different aspects of the Black freedom struggle. And this would've been transformative in my life, helped me come to love my blackness much earlier. And I hope that for many thousands of kids across this country, they are having that experience. Li:I love that answer. Thank you. So Garfield High School in Seattle is where you actually attended school as a youth and were also a teacher for over a decade. It's the place where your role as an activist also took root. So history was made here, not just for you as an individual, but really locally and then nationally. So why do you think this was happening at Garfield? Why Garfield High School? And what's the culture and social climate of this school that made it such fertile ground to spark local protests and now national change? Jesse:Yeah. I love that question because I bleed purple and I'm a Bulldog to the core. Garfield is a special place to me, and I think the history of the school is a lot of the reason why it was a fertile ground recently for social change. Garfield High School is the school that the founder of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party graduated from in 1968, Aaron Dixon. Li:Wow. Jesse:It's the site where Stokely Carmichael came to speak as the Black Power movement was rising. And before that, Martin Luther King came and spoke at Garfield High School in his only visit to Seattle. It's the heart of the Central District, which was the Black neighborhood in Seattle that was redlined so that Black people could only live in that area. And for that reason, it developed a culture of resistance, and it's an important part of the Black freedom struggle throughout Seattle's history.And I think that in recent years, we've been able to revive some of that legacy in some of the struggles we've participated in. In 2013, we had a historic boycott of the MAP test, the Measures of Academic Progress test. And this was one of the myriad of high-stakes standardized tests that the kids had to take, and studies show that the average student in K-12 education now take 113 standardized tests. We used to take one in elementary, one in middle school, maybe a couple in high school, and now they're taking standardized tests just constantly.And this was a particularly egregious test that wasn't aligned to our standards. And finally, one educator at Garfield, Mallory Clarke, said she wasn't going to administer this test anymore, and she contacted me and wanted to know if I could help, and we began organizing the entire faculty at Garfield. And we called a meeting in the library and we asked everybody, "Is anybody getting useful information out of this test that's helping them with creating their curriculum?" And nobody found this test useful.And then Mallory said she wasn't going to give the test anymore, and who would join her? And we took a vote, and it was unanimous. Everybody said they were going to refuse to administer the test. And so, we organized a press conference in Mr. Gish's room, and we invited the media to come learn why we were going to refuse to give the standardized test, and one of the reasons is because of the legacy of standardized testing based in eugenics. Right? Li:Mm-hmm. Jesse:Standardized testing was created by open white supremacists. A man named Carl Brigham created the SAT exam out of Princeton University, and he was also the author of a book called The Study in American Intelligence, which was one of the Bibles of the eugenics movement. And the book concludes by lamenting that American intelligence is on the decline because we have more Black people than Europe does, and he fears that intermixing of the races will degrade the intelligence of Americans. And so, he created the SAT exam as a gatekeeper.And lo and behold, these tests prove that white native-born men were smarter than everybody else. Right? Well, they designed the test to show that, and then they get the feedback that they were looking for, and that's why people like W.E.B. Du Bois, Horace Mann Bond were some of the first opponents of these bogus IQ standardized testings that started to be grafted onto the public schools at the behest of the eugenics movement.And we knew this history. I'd read Wayne Au's book, Unequal By Design, that explained the racist history of standardized testing, and then we saw it playing out in our own school. We saw how English language learners would get low scores and it would make them feel deficient and unintelligent. But it wasn't measuring their intelligence. It was just measuring their proximity to white dominant culture, the English language, and not their intelligence. And we had so many examples of the way these tests were abusing kids, and we refused to do it. And the school district threatened the faculty of Garfield High School with a 10-day suspension without pay for the tested subject teachers in reading and math, and even our testing coordinator refused to administer the test. Jesse:Kris McBride was an amazing advocate for the MAP test boycott. And even the first-year teachers, who didn't have any tenure protections, none of them backed down. And at the end of the school year, not only did they not suspend any of the teachers because of the overwhelming solidarity we received from thousands of educators and parents and students, not only around the country but around the world, who had heard about our boycott, at the end of the year, they actually suspended the test instead and got rid of the MAP test for all of Seattle's high schools, and it was just a resounding victory. Li:Yeah. That's a triumph. That's a triumph for sure. Jesse:Yeah. Right? Li:And I was watching some of the news coverage, and it was just, like you said, quite a victory to have that test obliterated, really, just removed completely from the system, and also then making way for this idea of multiple literacies and ways of learning that are more just and equitable for all students. And I love to see that, like you said, it begins just with one person. Shout out to Mallory and everyone who followed that one teacher. And like you said, that's all it takes, but then just to see the students really take lead in their own way was a beautiful thing. Jesse:Yeah. Yeah. It was cool that the students, when they knew we weren't going to administer the test, they sent administrators in to try to get the students to march them off to the computer labs to take the test, and some of them just staged to sit in in their own classroom, refused to get up and leave, and then the ones that went just clicked the button on the computer through very quickly so the score was invalidated.So the BSU supported us and the student government supported us, and it was an incredible solidarity that emerged in this struggle. And it wasn't about not wanting assessment. I think as you said, we wanted more authentic forms of assessment, ones that could actually help us understand what our students knew. And we started doing much more performance-based assessments. Li:Right. Jesse:When you get your PhD, they don't want you to eliminate wrong answer choices at faster rates. They want to know, can you think? Can you create? Li:Right. Are you a critical thinker? Jesse:Right. Yeah. Can you critically think? Can you make a thesis and back it up with evidence? And so, that's what we began doing. We wanted to have kids develop a thesis. And it might not be at the PhD level, but it'll be at a developmentally appropriate level for them, and then back it up with evidence and then present that evidence to the class or to other teachers and administrators and defend their position, and that, I think, was a real victory for all of our students for authentic assessment. Li:And went down at Garfield. Jesse:Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. Li:So another question I got for you. Part of the work of Monument Lab is to engage community in the current state of monuments and public memory in this country and beyond. Have you made any connections to this parallel movement to take down monuments that stand as symbols that continue to uphold oppressive systems and then honor the same false histories that you and your comrades are fighting in the classroom? Jesse:Yeah. Definitely. I think one of my favorite assignments I ever gave my students at Garfield was to research the debate over monuments around the country and think about, "How do we decide as a society who to honor, and who should be honored, and who shouldn't be?" And all the students got a big chunk of clay and they created their own monument to replace one that they thought was inappropriate. And so, many chose Confederate monuments or monuments to any slaveholders, including the hallowed Founding Fathers, that many of my students didn't hold in reverence given that they could have been owned by George Washington.And so, at the University of Washington, we have that statue of George Washington. Some people wanted to replace that with a statue of Aaron Dixon, who graduated from Garfield High School, founded the Black Panther Party, went to the University of Washington, and they felt far better represented our community as somebody who started the Free Breakfast Program in Seattle and who founded a free medical clinic that's still open to this day, just a few blocks away from Garfield High School, where many of our students receive free medical care to this day. Li:Oh, that's amazing. Jesse:So creating themselves some beautiful monuments to really honor the people that have made their lives better rather than just powerful people who imposed their will on our society. And I just think it was such an incredible moment in the 2020 uprising when all across the country, people said, "We are no longer going to honor slaveholders and perpetrators of genocide." It was incredible to see them dump the statue of Columbus into the Bay in Baltimore and teach the whole country a lesson, a history lesson about the genocidal attack of Columbus on Native people and how we need to find better heroes. Li:I like that. Find better heroes. You've dedicated a bunch of your recent efforts to resisting House Bills 1807 and 1886 introduced by state Republican Representative Jim Walsh. As you put it in your article that I read, these bills are designed to mandate educators lie to Washington students about structural racism and sexism, essentially forcing educators to teach a false, alternative history of the United States. Can you break down the basic proposals of these bills and their connection to, say, recent book bans, critical race theory, and resources like The 1619 Project? Jesse:For sure. Many people imagine that the attack on critical race theory is mostly in red states or it's just a product of the South. But instead, people should know that actually the attack on critical race theory originated from Christopher Rufo, who ran for city council in Seattle, and he is still a resident in Washington state, and that every state in the nation, except for California, has had a proposed bill that would require educators to lie to students about structural racism or sexism or heterosexism.And even in California, the one state that hasn't had a proposed bill, they have many local school districts that have one of these educational gag order policies in place that seek to coerce educators to lie to students about American history, about Black history, about queer history. And Washington state is one of the many states that has had proposed bills by Republican legislators that are trying to deceive students. They were so frightened of the 2020 uprising and all the questions that young people were asking about our deeply unequitable society that instead of working to try to eliminate that inequality, they just want to ban people from understanding where it comes from.So in my state, last year, they proposed House Bill 1886 that would make it illegal to teach about structural racism. And I found it deeply ironic that the House bill was numbered 1886, because that was the same year as a mob of white people in Seattle rounded up hundreds of Chinese people and forced them into wagons and hauled them to Seattle docks where they were placed on ships and illegally deported. And the chief of police helped this riotous white mob illegally, Police Chief William Murphy, and he never had faced any penalty for it. He was acquitted, even though this racist attack on Chinese people was carried out. Right?And our students have the right to learn about this. They should know that this happened in our city, and too many don't grow up learning the reality of that anti-Chinese attack. And then when hate crimes skyrocketed in our own era in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, you saw hate crimes increase by several hundred percent against Asian Americans, and people wonder why. There's a long history of this Yellow Peril narrative in American society that has labeled Asian Americans and Chinese Americans as the other, as dangerous, as dirty, and our students need to learn about that if they're going to overcome those racial divisions today. Li:And what would the passing of these bills mean for the next generation of youth and their futures, and their education? What's the status of these bills now? Jesse:Well, thankfully, the bill in Washington state did not pass, but they are proliferating around the country. 18 states have already passed bills that seek to coerce educators into lying about structural racism, denying the fact that our country was built on structural racism, of enslavement of Black people, and genocide of Native people, and the exploitation of labor of immigrants, hyper-exploitation of Chinese labor on the railroads and Latinx labor in farms, and they want to hide this history.And you saw it in Florida when they banned the AP African American Studies course. In Virginia, they're trying to rework the state standards to hide the legacy of structural racism and the contributions of Black people, and they are trying to send us back to the era of the 1940s and '50s during the second Red Scare known as the McCarthy era. In the McCarthy era, hundreds of teachers, thousands of teachers around the country were fired after having been labeled communist.And then the Red Scare had the overlapping Lavender Scare, which was the attack on LGBTQ people, and that was especially intense against educators, and Florida had a particularly pernicious attack on queer educators. They had the Johns Committee there that would interrogate teachers about their sex lives and then fire them, remove their teaching certificate so they could never teach again. And this is what people like Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida are trying to revive with the Don't Say Gay bill that has outlawed any discussions of LGBTQ people for the younger grades, and also his so-called Stop W.O.K.E. Act that imposes anti-truth laws on Black history.And in Florida now, it is a third-degree felony for an educator to be caught with the wrong book about Black people or about queer people in their classroom. You can get five years in jail and a $5,000 fine for having the wrong book. Thousands of books are being banned all over the country, and they are rapidly trying to bring us back to that Red Scare, Lavender Scare era where they could just label you a communist or today label you a critical race theorist and push you out of the classroom.So we're at a crossroads right now, where everybody has to decide, "Are we going to build a multiracial struggle to create a true democracy? Or are we going to submit to this fearmongering and this racial hatred and allow them to turn back the clock?" And I hope that people will value social justice enough to join our struggle. Li:I'm just blown away by all the things you're saying, and it's really powerful because I come from a family of educators. Both my father and my mother are educators. My brother and myself are both educators. So I see it not as a job, but like a vocation. And it really sounds like you and the folks that you're in community with, in solidarity with in Seattle and beyond are really making amazing strides and asking such critical questions that could determine the future of our country. Jesse:No doubt. Li:For me and so many other educators, Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress were defining transformative works that greatly impacted my trajectory in the world. And I wanted to know, can you share what books or even creative works that inspired the path that got you where you are today? Jesse:Yeah. I love that question. Definitely those two books are at the top. Li:Oh, you like those books? Aren't they at the top? Jesse:I love those books. Yes. Li:I love them. Jesse:Yes. Li:I mean, and I'm sure you reread them because I'm always rereading those books. Jesse:Sure. Yes. I'm quoting them in the book I'm writing right now. So much of what I'm doing would not be possible without the theoretical framework that bell hooks gave us and that Paulo Freire gave us to understand how to use dialogic pedagogy to engage your students in a conversation, and educating isn't about filling their heads with what you know, the banking model of education, as Paulo Freire put it, right? Li:Right. Jesse:It's about learning from your students. Li:Right. That relationship between this... I learned so much from my students, especially now that I'm getting older. Jesse:Yeah. No doubt. Li:You got to stay in the know with the youth. Jesse:Hey, the students created the greatest lesson plan of my lifetime when they organized the uprising of 2020. That was mostly young BIPOC folks that organized that uprising and taught the nation what structural racism is and taught many of their teachers that they needed to learn something about it and they needed to begin teaching about it. Right? That's where this whole backlash to critical race theory started.And I think that all of us in the struggle would do well to join in study groups around books that can help deepen our understanding of history and theory that will help us in these struggles to come. There are so many books that I could cite that have been pivotal to my understanding of the struggle. I mean, working at the Zinn Education Project, Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States has been really important. Li:Yes. Jesse:So I think reframing who the subjects of history are and... Li:And the authors of history, right? Jesse:Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I think that Jarvis Givens book, Fugitive Pedagogy, should be read by all educators. Li:Yes. I'm familiar, very familiar with that project, and it is super inspiring. Yes. Jesse:Yeah. I mean, that book is just a key that unlocks the truth about why we're in the situation we're in right now, where they're trying to outlaw education. Li:And all the overlapping systems, because you talked about that, like these intersecting oppressions and overlapping systems of oppression that are really creating something that it feels like it's impenetrable, but people are making strides. Jesse:Yeah. No doubt. And I would just say that the book, Fugitive Pedagogy, just gives you that history of how Black education has always been a fugitive project. It's always been a challenge to the power structure. It's always been verboten. And starting in 1740 were the first anti-literacy laws in South Carolina banning Black people from learning to read and write.Li:How about that? Right. Jesse:Why was that? Because in 1739, the Stono Rebellion happened. A man named Jemmy helped lead an uprising of enslaved people, and he marched with a banner that read "Liberty" as they collected more enslaved people along the way during their uprising, and this terrified the enslavers. And they not only wanted to kill all the people that were trying to get their freedom, they wanted to kill the idea of freedom. They wanted to kill the ability of Black people to ever write the word liberty again.And so, they imposed these laws to ban Black people from learning to read and write. And today's racists aren't so bold as to ban the ability for people to learn to read and write, but they do want to ban the ability to read the world, as Paulo Freire put it. They don't want us to be racially literate. They don't want us to understand how systems of power and oppression are maintained. And so, they're banning ideas now in the classroom. And once you understand the long history of the attacks on Black education, you can understand why it's happening again today. Li:And even through the digital divide, right? This idea of being disconnected from these resources that are so much a part of education today that Black and brown communities don't always have really makes a difference in the education that they receive and how they learn as well. Jesse:No doubt. I mean, that was emphasized during the pandemic, right?Li:Exactly. So much was amplified during the pandemic, especially that digital divide. Jesse:No doubt. No doubt. Li:So, Jesse, I want to think about the future and speculate. In the best-case scenario, maybe a utopian future for education in the United States. Teachers often have to draft a wish list for what they want, the resources, the needs they have for their classrooms as the academic year comes around. So thinking about what you would want, the three essentials that would be on your wish list for the classroom of the future.Jesse:Yeah. I love this question, because too often, images of the future are all about dystopias. Those are the movies and books we get, and there's not enough freedom dreaming about what's possible. Li:I love that. Shout out to Robin D. Kelley. Jesse:No doubt. Another essential book to read. Li:Yes. Jesse:So I think in the classroom of the future that provides a liberatory education for our youth, the first thing I think we might see is the breakdown of subjects and getting rid of these artificial divisions between the different academic disciplines. And so, school would look very different. Instead of going to math class in the first period and then language arts and then social studies, you might have a class called Should Coal Trains be Used in Seattle? Right? They were just debating whether we should allow coal trains to come through our city.So it would be based on a real problem that exists in your society, and then you would use math and science and language arts and social studies to attack this problem. You would want to learn about the science of climate change and the math that helps you understand the changing climate. Right? We would want to learn the history of coal extraction in this country, the toll it's taken on working people who are minors and the toll it's taken on the environment.We would want to use language arts to write speeches, to deliver your opinion to the city council about this. So we would have problem-posing pedagogy, as Paulo Freire put it, where the courses would be organized around things that the kids care about that impact their lives, and then we would use the academic disciplines in service of that.I think in addition to that, my second requirement for this liberatory classroom would be about wraparound services, so that when kids come to school, they also get healthcare. They also get tutoring services, dental care, mental health care, food for their families. And schools could be really the hubs of community where people have their needs taken care of and are invested in to support not just the students, but their families as well.And lastly, I think schools would be flooded with resources, so that instead of wasting trillions of dollars on the Pentagon so that the United States can go bomb countries all over the world and kill children and their families, we would take that money and flood it into the school system so that kids have all the state-of-the-art resources they need, from the digital equipment, recording equipment, music, art supplies, to funding the school nurse, to the auditoriums, and the music halls. I mean, you can imagine that the richest country on earth could have incredible resources for their kids if we valued education, if we valued our young people.Instead, so many schools in America today are falling apart. The first school I ever taught in in Washington, D.C., an elementary school, I had a hole in the ceiling of my classroom, and it just rained into my classroom and destroyed the first project that I ever assigned the students, their research project, and they never even got to present the projects. Li:No way. Jesse:And our kids deserve better than that. Li:Oh, they definitely deserve better than that. Right? Oh my gosh. Jesse:We're in a society where 81 billionaires have the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of humanity, and that wealth divide means that our kids go to schools that are falling apart, and we would transform that in a future society that's worthy of our kids. Li:Most definitely. And if I can, I wanted to add a fourth thing, because I remember something you said about performance-based assessment. Jesse:Oh, yeah. Li:And I think that would- Jesse:I should put that in. Li:... definitely be essential, right? Make sure you get that one in. But last but not least, my final question to you is, what's next for Zinn Education? And more specifically, what is next for Jesse Hagopian? Jesse:Oh, thank you. Well, I'm really excited about the June 10th National Day of Action. The Zinn Education Project has partnered with Black Lives Matter at School and the African American Policy Forum to organize the Teach Truth Day of Action on June 10th, and I hope everybody will join us on that day of action in organizing an event in your community. This is the third annual Teach Truth Day of Action, and the past ones have been incredible.People have organized historical walking tours in their community to highlight examples of the Black freedom struggle and sites that were important in the Black freedom struggle in their own communities or sites of oppression and racial injustice that students have the right to learn about in their own communities. Some people went to sites where Japanese people were rounded up and incarcerated during World War II. Some people in Memphis, Tennessee went to a site right on their school grounds where there was a race riot and many Black people were killed.In Seattle, we went by the clinic that the Black Panther Party started and gave that history and highlighted how, if the bill passed to deny teachers the right to teach about structural racism, we couldn't even teach about the origins of the health clinic in our own community. And so, there'll be many creative protests that happen on June 10th, 2023, and I'm excited to say we have more cosponsors than ever before.The National Education Association is supporting now, and many other grassroots organizations from across the country. So I expect hundreds of teachers and educators will turn out to protest these anti-truth laws, and I'll be right there with them all helping to organize it and learning from the educators and organizers, who are putting these events on, and hopefully helping to tell their story in the new book that I hope to be finishing very soon about this- Li:You're going to finish it. You're going to finish. This month, man. Jesse:Thank you. Li:This is your month. Jesse:I need that encouragement. Li:You got this. Jesse:I hope I finish it on this month. Li:Believe me. When I was so close to finishing my dissertation, everyone kept asking me, "Are you done yet? Are you done yet?" So I know, because I could see you cringe when I asked you that in the beginning. All I can say is, look, I mean, I'm just so grateful to have this conversation with you today. Thank you for joining me. And I also got to say, I'm sorry to say, Jesse, your mother was right. I think this was your calling. I think this might have been what you were set on this planet to do. Jesse:It feels that way now. Thank you so much. Li:Yes, indeed. So this is Monument Lab, Future Memory. Thank you to my guest, Jesse Hagopian. Jesse:Hey, I really appreciate you having me on. I just felt your warm spirit come across and brighten my day. Really great to be with you. Li:My pleasure.
I first met Jesse Hagopian a few months ago, after I discovered the existence of the Zinn Education Project. I invited him on the show to talk about his work as an educator and activist for truth in education. Unfortunately, such activists are necessary in today's world, as elected officials like the fascist Florida Man DeSantis are pushing to whitewash history, literally.When Jesse joined us back in March, he mentioned an event called the Teach Truth Day of Action coming up on June 10, which I dutifully put in my calendar.When I noticed that day would arrive on Saturday, I invited Jesse back on the show for another conversation about the dumbing down of America and the need to teach our children the truth!So, Jesse Hagopian returns today to talk about how the attacks on our public education system have only intensified since we last spoke, and to remind us how to get involved in the Teach Truth Day of Action on Saturday. Hint: Visit TeachTruthPledge.org. That will take you to the details page for the day.Or you can go to the Zinn Education Project where the day of action originated.What are you waiting for? Go, now!
To counter FL Fascist Gov Ron DeSantis' attack on schools (and therefore students and their right to learn), I invited a guest who's working hard pushing back against the push to whitewash our history and to keep teaching our kids a truthful, honest history from which they can actually learn.Jesse Hagopian is above all else a teacher. An educator! He's on hiatus from the classroom, working to ensure that teachers are able to continue teaching our children facts– from science to history and beyond, free from the heavy authoritarian hand that Republicans favor these days.From his website at iamaneducator.com, we learn that Jesse is an editor for the social justice periodical Rethinking Schools, is the co-editor of the books, Black Lives Matter at School, Teaching for Black Lives, Teacher Unions and Social Justice, and is the editor of the book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. Jesse serves as the Director of the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award, is an organizer with the Black Lives Matter at School movement, and is founding member of Social Equity Educators (SEE). And if you liked the “Legalize Black History” hat Jesse is wearing in this interview, he's got that merch for sale here, with proceeds going to supporting the youth winners of the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award, as well as supporting the writing of a forthcoming book about the movement to stop the banning of Black history.But I invited him to join us to tell us about his work with the Zinn Education Project! Hopefully you're read or are otherwise familiar with Howard Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States.
The non-profit Zinn Education Project has released a new report that shows that the teaching of Reconstruction in schools is inadequate or non-existent in 90 percent of states. Reconstruction is one of the most significant times in the history of this country. It offered incredible possibilities for economic equity and progress for multiracial democracy, but that promise was crushed by white supremacists. Our guest today is Jesse Hagopian, a high school teacher in Seattle and co-editor of the books Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice, and Teaching for Black Lives. He says “ignorance about Reconstruction upholds white supremacy.”.
Interview with Jesse Hagopian about the 2022 Black Lives Matter at School week of action. Interview by Chris B. Bennett.
In this episode, from our series on Teach the Black Freedom Struggle, our host, Jesse Hagopian, a high school teacher, speaks to Brooklyn College Professor of Political Science and author, Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, about her recent article, Martin Luther King Knew That Fighting Racism Meant Fighting Police Brutality. Theoharis speaks about the white-washing of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the intricate connections between his life's work and the issue of police violence against Black people. Theoharis also talks about the white media's approach to talking about racism, eliminating much of its context and significance, particularly outside the South. She also grounds the conversation in the difficulties of being an educator and the importance of community during these times. Read about the event and find related resources.
In this episode, from our series on Teach the Black Freedom Struggle, our hosts, educators Jesse Hagopian and Cierra Kaler-Jones, speak to assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Jarvis Givens, about his book, Fugitive Pedagogy: CG Woodson & the Art of Black Teaching. Givens discusses the central role of African American educators in the Black Freedom Struggle and their tradition of fugitive pedagogy to smuggle in the truth about Black history–including studies of the Haitian revolution, maroons in Suriname and Jamaica, Reconstruction, and more– into school systems dominated by white supremacy. Read about the event and find related resources.
In this episode, from our series on Teach the Black Freedom Struggle, our host, Jesse Hagopian, a high school teacher, speaks to The Nation sports editor and host of the Edge of Sports Podcast, Dave Zirin, about his book, The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World. Zirin talks in-depth about the “Kaepernick Effect” and the similarities between the NFL quarterback's protest and the legendary Olympic medal stand protest in 1968, and the countless actions they inspired. Zirin shares some of the stories he came across during the writing of the book, including high school students and specifically Black girls. Zirin also discusses the consciousness of younger people, their political awakening, and how the 2020 uprising influenced these dynamics. Read about the event and find related resources.
In this episode, from our series on Teach the Black Freedom Struggle, our host, Jesse Hagopian, a high school teacher and Rethinking Schools editor, facilitates a conversation between authors Jeff Chang and Dave “Davey D” Cook on their new young adult version of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A Hip-Hop History. Chang and Davey D catalogue the role of urban policy, marginalization of Black and Brown youth in places like New York and Los Angeles, and how that influenced both the politics and the development of hip-hop. The struggle for Black Power played a direct role in shaping the music from its onset. Our guests also discussed how hip-hop shapes both the movement for Black lives and why young people should learn about the history, aesthetics, and politics of hip-hop. Read about the event and find related resources.
Huge changes to the education scene in Chicago with the de-funding of their charter system. Part of a discussion on the racist history of standardised testing featuring Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price, co-founder of MapSO Freedom School and Black Lives Matter at School, Wayne Au, author of Unequal by Design- High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality and Jesse Hagopian, author of More Than A Score, full discussion available here-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmd7OeXqRw0&t=7s Plus the flexibility of the public schools and their ability to adapt to their surroundings.www.adogs.info
With the sweeping passage of bills aiming to ban truthful teaching of America's history and legacy of racism, educators across the USA are grappling with the spectre of being fired over something as simple as assigning a children's book about integration. What's really at stake when politicians strip away learning standards that uplift MLK and criticize the KKK? To help us understand the present culture wars and the increasingly rowdy scenes at school boards across the country, we're joined by teacher, author, and activist Jesse Hagopian! Jesse is a high school Ethnic Studies teacher in Seattle, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, director of the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award, and a campaign organizer for the Zinn Education Project's “Teach the Black Freedom Struggle.” But first, Jeff and Manuel take a look at recent headlines in education including a new report about the dwindling number of school librarians and new survey data out of California regarding how people feel about their public schools. → Get your Teach the Truth T-Shirt here! Please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel! AGENDA 0:00 - Welcome! 5:55 - The Disappearing School Librarian 19:35 - CA voters show support for public schools 34:50 - #TeachTruth with Jesse Hagopian 1:12:30 - EduColor Summit FTW! DO-NOW STORIES: Where Are the School Librarians? New Study Shows 20 Percent Decline In Past Decade Perspectives on School Librarian Employment in the United States, 2009-10 to 2018-19 California voters give schools and teachers top grades in year-end survey Californians and K–12 Education Amid COVID-19 Recovery More from our guest: Blog - I Am an Educator Black Lives Matter at School Rethinking Schools TeachingForBlackLives.org Zinn Education Project Get MORE All of the Above: - Website - Podcast on multiple platforms via Anchor - Podcast via Apple Podcast - Podcast via Spotify - Twitter - Facebook Page Theme Music by its tajonthabeat --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/aota/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/aota/support
A new right-wing campaign to ban "critical race theory" aims to crack down on teachers who teach honestly about racism. How can teachers protect themselves and their students? The post Belabored: Critical Race Panic in Schools, with Jesse Hagopian appeared first on Dissent Magazine.
Education activists Lisa Covington, Jesse Hagopian, Denisha Jones, Lucket Kiche, and Matè Muhammad, in conversation about the struggle against systemic racism in schools, how we can win real educational justice and other lessons from Black Lives Matter at School organizing in Iowa and beyond. Order your copy of Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice from Prairie Lights Bookstore here: https://www.prairielightsbooks.com/book/9781642592702 ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Matè Muhammad is an activist, organizer and cultural worker from Des Moines, IA. Matè is a passionate writer, graffiti artist and musician and began his activism in 2014 after the tragic police murder of Michael Brown. In 2019 Matè created @theblackartivist - a revolutionary creative vehicle - and in 2020 Matè co-founded the Des Moines Black Liberation Movement of which he is currently the Field Operations Director. Lucket Kiche (He/They) is a Black, Queer, Non-Binary Transman teaching in the Iowa City Community School District. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, he came to Iowa City as an infant and has yet to leave. He spends time serving as an At-Large Board member for Iowa City Pride. As an educator, Lucket pushes and advocates for the equitable treatment of all minorities and strives to teach about as many intersectionalities that time will allow. They also continue to remind others that we can no longer be complacent with a system that has superficial protections for marginalized people. Denisha Jones is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and Director of the Art of Teaching, graduate teacher education program, at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School. Jesse Hagopian is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle's Garfield High School. He is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is a co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives. Lisa Covington, M.A. is a youth development professional, curriculum developer and PhD Candidate at The University of Iowa studying Sociology of Education, Digital Humanities and African American Studies. In 2020, Lisa received the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award from the Iowa Department of Human Rights. As the Director of the Ethnic Studies Leadership Academy in Iowa City, Lisa works with Sankofa Outreach Connection to provide an educational leadership program for African American girls to learn Black history and advocacy strategies through developing competencies in digital humanities, social sciences and the arts. Lisa also works with teachers across the state through Black Lives Matter at School-Iowa. ---------------------------------------------------- This event is sponsored by Prairie Lights Bookstore, Black Lives Matter at School-Iowa and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/QIALE2cLpb0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price, Jesse Hagopian, and Denisha Jones discuss the racist history of standardized testing and its impacts today. ---------------------------------------------------- Join antiracist educators and organizers for a conversation about the history of eugenics and standardized testing, the racist impacts of high stakes testing on learning and instruction and how we can build a movement against the testing regime. Speakers: Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price, Ed.D is a former classroom teacher, teacher-leader, and organizer, who is committed to collectively undoing and unlearning the racist, colonial, patriarchal, and other oppressive systems and structures that hinder us all from being able to access our full human-selves. She is a core trainer with the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, co-founder of an organization, MapSO Freedom School, and is a founding steering committee member for the National Black Lives Matter in School, a network of educators and organizers committed to centering Black students, educators, and communities, while advocating for the creation of anti-racist learning environments for all students. Jesse Hagopian is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle's Garfield High School. He is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, editor of More Than a Score and co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives . Denisha Jones is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and Director of the Art of Teaching, graduate teacher education program, at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School. Wayne Au is a Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He is a long-time Rethinking Schools editor, co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives and author of A Marxist Education: Learning to Change the World. ---------------------------------------------------- This event is co-sponsored by the New Jersey Education Association and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Nmd7OeXqRw0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
How can educators help destroy entrenched inequalities and enact the values of Black Lives Matter in their classrooms, schools, and communities? Jesse Hagopian and Denisha Jones, both educators and members of the Black Lives Matter at School movement, joined us to discuss this question. They believe that the United States is in the midst of an urgent moral and legal crisis over the safety, liberty, and well-being of Black young people. In an edited collection, Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice, they have gathered essential essays, interviews, poems, resolutions, and more from educators, students, and activists who have been building the Black Lives Matter Movement across the country. Hagopian and Jones layed bare the institutional racism inherent in our educational system, and present a critical call to radically reshape learning environments to make them safe, supportive, and transformative for all students. Jesse Hagopian is a member of the Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School. Hagopian is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, the co-editor of the book Teaching for Black Lives, and the editor of the book More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing. Hagopian serves as the Director of the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award. Denisha Jones is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and Director of the Art of Teaching, graduate teacher education program, at Sarah Lawrence College. Denisha is an education justice advocate and activist. She serves as Co-Director for Defending the Early Years, Inc, and is the Assistant Executive Director for the Badass Teachers Association. Currently, her research focuses on utilizing the BLM at School curriculum as cultural citizenship and documenting the value of play as a tool for liberation with an emphasis on global approaches to play. Buy the Book: https://bookshop.org/books/black-lives-matter-at-school-an-uprising-for-educational-justice/9781642592702 Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here.
In this ninth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Jesse Hagopian, an Ethnic Studies teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington. The public schools in the United States have been near Ground Zero during this confluence of COVID, the recession, and the fight for racial justice and because of this, education has become a flashpoint for political struggle. Jesse has been active trying to ensure that any school re-opening takes places on a timeline and fulfills key conditions that best serves the interests of students and staff, not the needs of outside political actors with their agendas. Prior to the pandemic, Jesse worked with others from around the country developing a liberation pedagogy and working with his union (and others) to build a social justice unionism that has the power to transform education. Recently, Jesse has edited two books collecting essays on making teacher unions a force for racial and economic justice: Teacher Unions and Social Justice: Organizing for the Schools and Communities Our Students Deserve Black Lives Matters at School
Jesse Hagopian and Denisha Jones, editors of Black Lives Matter at School, discuss antiracist education with contributor Brian Jones. ---------------------------------------------------- Join us for the launch of Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Education Justice, an essential collection of essays, interviews, poems, resolutions, and more from educators, students, and activists who have been building the Black Lives Matter at School movement across the country, including a foreword by Opal Tometi. “Black Lives Matter at School is an essential resource for all those seeking to build an antiracist school system." —Ibram Kendi “Black Lives Matter at School centers the humanity of our children. It is a sharp rebuke of white supremacy—the very thing that interrupts the healthy development of Black youth. School communities must affirm Black lives. This book is essential. Period.” — Stacy Davis Gates, Vice President Chicago Teachers Union "There is no easy way to talk about the complexities of race facing our school system in America—but we have to talk about it if we are ever going to achieve the schools our children deserve. Black Lives Matter at School is a playbook for undoing institutional racism in the education system. — Michael Bennett, NFL Super Bowl champion and author ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Jesse Hagopian is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle's Garfield High School. He is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is a co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives. Denisha Jones is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and Director of the Art of Teaching, graduate teacher education program, at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School. Brian Jones is the Associate Director of Education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He writes about black education history and politics. ---------------------------------------------------- Get a copy of Black Lives Matter at School here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1554-black-lives-matter-at-school ---------------------------------------------------- This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Black Lives Matter at School. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important education, organizing and publishing work. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/PJOOVBvHcAw Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Join Black Lives Matter at School activists and educators for a conversation about the new uprising for educational justice in California. ---------------------------------------------------- Education activists Nathaniel Genene, Jesse Hagopian, Taunya Jaco, Denisha Jones, and Cecily Myart-Cruz in conversation about the struggle against systemic racism in schools, how we can win real educational justice and get cops out of our schools and other lessons from Black Lives Matter at School organizing in California and beyond. The event will include also include a statement from Derrick Sanderlin. #carenotcops ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Cecily Myart-Cruz is a teacher, activist and the United Teachers Los Angeles President. The first woman of color in the union's 50-year history – having previously served as NEA Vice President for six years. Cecily has taught for 26 years, at both elementary and middle school levels, most recently at Angeles Mesa Elementary. She is the Chair of the CTA Civil Rights Committee, Chair of the NEA Black Caucus and member of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. Denisha Jones is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and Director of the Art of Teaching, graduate teacher education program, at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School. Taunya Jaco, a 6th grade ELA/Social Studies teacher, serves as a member of the National Education Association (NEA) Board of Directors, Secretary for the NEA Black Caucus, and Chair of the Civil Rights in Education Committee for the California Teachers Association‘s (CTA) State Council. She is pursuing her doctorate of education at San Jose State University, where she is conducting a qualitative study on the implementation of Ethnic Studies in California K-12 schools and the impact of its implementation on teacher preparation programs. Jesse Hagopian is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle's Garfield High School. He is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is a co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives. Nathaniel Genene is a rising senior at Washburn High School in South Minneapolis. He serves as the student representative to the Minneapolis Board of Education and the at-large member on the City-Wide Youth Leadership Council. He also works with ThriveEd, a nonprofit working to build an educational paradigm shaped by innovation and joy for learners and educators, and Our Turn, an advocacy organization fighting to mobilize young people in the fight for educational justice. Derrick Sanderlin is an artist, musician, and community organizer. He is now organizing with Sacred Heart, co-leading the committee for Racial Equity and Community Safety. He has also joined the efforts of the San José Unified Equity Coalition, whose mission is to reimagine safety across the district and reallocate funds previously used for sworn police officers toward student support positions and resources, restorative justice practices, and a district wide safety plan led by the community. The proposal has been lovingly named the Derrick Sanderlin Resolution to Defund the Police in light of his attempts to de-escalate police violence during the George Floyd/Breonna Taylor protests in downtown San Jose last summer. ---------------------------------------------------- This event is sponsored by United Teachers Los Angeles, San José Unified Equity Coalition and Haymarket Books While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and organizing work. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Cglq30AgID0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Join Black Lives Matter at School activists and educators for a conversation about the new uprising for educational justice, Philly-style. ---------------------------------------------------- Education activists Tamara Anderson, Jesse Hagopian, Ismael Jimenez, Dana Morrison join Edwin Mayorga for a conversation about the struggle against systemic racism in schools, how we can win real educational justice and the lessons from Black Lives Matter at School organizing in Philadelphia and beyond. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Tamara Anderson is an advocate for children and teens, an antiracist trainer, a professional artist, an editor, a freelance journalist, and a blogger with over twenty years of experience as an educator. She supervises middle and high school pre-service teachers at La Salle University and serves as an adjunct at West Chester University. Her work with juvenile justice led to her being the recipient of the Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant. Jesse Hagopian is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle's Garfield High School. He is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is a co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives. Ismael Jimenez is a dedicated educator, who for the last fifteen years has worked with students in Philadelphia from preschool age to high school. Ismael assisted in the development of the updated social studies curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia. Ismael is a core member of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee and Black Lives Matter Philly, a founding member of the Melnated Educators Collective and a co-founder of the Philadelphia Black History Collaborative. Dana Morrison is an Assistant Professor in West Chester University's Department of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies. She began working on higher education outreach for the week of action in Philadelphia in 2017 and has since organized Black Lives Matter events with students, faculty and staff throughout the PA State System of Higher Education. Edwin Mayorga (moderator) is a parent, educator, scholar-activist. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies and the Program in Latin American and Latino Studies at Swarthmore College (PA). He is host of the podcast Encuentros Políticos/Political Encounters on USALAmedia. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Black Lives Matter at School: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1554-black-lives-matter-at-school Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/zkN_kOrgjSg Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Join Opal Tometi, Brian Jones, Denisha Jones, Jesse Hagopian and Marshé Doss in conversation about Black Lives Matter and education justice. ---------------------------------------------------- Join us for conversation about making Black lives matter in our schools and beyond as part of this year's Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. In her foreword to Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice Opal Tometi writes: "Both within classrooms and outside the school grounds, Black lives are under threat. The events that led to the creation of Black Lives Matter—the murder in 2012 of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer—weren't isolated events. The culture of endangering Black lives is something students know well from inside their very own classrooms. . . Young people deserve safe, affirming environments where they know without a shadow of a doubt that their lives matter. The work that supporters of Black Lives Matter at School are doing is making this happen." Join us for conversation about making Black lives matter in our school and beyond. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Opal Tometi is an award-winning human rights defender and one of three women co-founders of #BlackLivesMatter. Born to Nigerian Immigrant parents in the USA, her human rights activism crosses borders and extends almost 20 years. Tometi recently graced the #TIME100 Most Influential people of the year 2020 and March 2020 cover for #TIMES100 Most Influential Women of The Last Century. She is the founder of the new media and advocacy hub, Diaspora Rising and is a trusted advisor to various transnational organizations. Denisha Jones is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and Director of the Art of Teaching, graduate teacher education program, at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School. Jesse Hagopian is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle's Garfield High School. He is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is a co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives. Marshé Doss was born and raised in South Los Angeles.She is a recent graduate from Dorsey High School in South Los Angeles. Marshé is an organizer and leaderin the student-led movement Students Deserve. She leads the Making Black Lives Matter in Schools effortin LA, which tackles the school-to-prison pipeline and over-policing of schools in Black communities. She is a nationally recognized speaker, organizer, and activist, known for direct actions and addressing crowds of over fifty thousand people. She can be reached on Instagram at @its.marshe. Brian Jones (moderator) is the Associate Director of Education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He writes about black education history and politics. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/-MlHmF8xNYk Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Join Katrina Johnson, Michael Bennett, Nikkita Oliver and Jesse Hagopian to talk about justice for Charleena Lyles and Black Lives Matter. Katrina Johnson, Charleena Lyles' cousin, will join Michael Bennett, Nikkita Oliver and Jesse Hagopian to talk about the struggle for justice for Charleena and the new uprising for Black Lives. The mass uprising in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd around the world has created bold new possibilities for the Black Lives Matter Movement. Bold incentives are being taken around the country to defund, disarm, and dismantle policing. As the African American Policy institute raised by launching #SayHerName, much of the focus of police violence has been given to the killing of Black men, and Black women and transgendered people have not received the same attention. The recent murder of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American emergency medical technician, who was fatally shot by Louisville Metro Police Department by police is one case that deserves more attention. Another is Charleena Lyles. On June 18, 2017, two Seattle police officers entered the apartment of Charleena Lyles. The police had been called by Charleena because she feared someone was breaking into her home. Within minuets of entering the apartment, the officers shot her down in a hail of seven bullets, with at least three of them in the back. The officers alleged they had to use lethal force because Charleena had a paring knife. One of the officers was supposed to have a taser, but had not properly charged it, so he did not bring it with him–a violation of department policy. Charleena was pregnant and was killed in front of three of her four kids, who had to be carried over her body to leave the apartment. Join a conversation about next steps in winning justice for Charleena and her family and how her story connects to the new movement for Black Lives in the streets today. Katrina Johnson works for the Public Defenders Association as a Project Manager diverting people out of the criminal legal system into community based resources—instead of jail and prosecution. Katrina became a social justice activist/advocate and spokesperson for her family in June of 2017, after her first cousin Charleena Lyles was killed in her home in North Seattle after police officers responded to the location to investigate a theft Charleena had reported. Katrina works with other families who have lost loved ones to the use of lethal force in Washington State and around the county. Michael Bennett is a three-time Pro Bowler, Pro Bowl MVP, Super Bowl Champion, and two-time NFC Champion. He has gained international recognition for his public support for the Black Lives Matter Movement, women's rights, and other social justice causes. In 2017, he was named one of the 100 Most Influential African Americans by The Root, was the Seattle Seahawks nominee for the NFL's Walter Payton Man of the Year award, and was honored along with his brother Martellus with a BET Shine a Light award for exceptional service. He is the author of Things That Make White People Uncomfortable. Nikkita Oliver is a Seattle-based creative, community organizer, abolitionist, educator, and attorney. Nikkita is the co-executive director of Creative Justice, an arts-based alternative to incarceration and a healing engaged youth-led community-based program. Jesse Hagopian is an award-winning educator and a leading voice on issues of educational equity and social justice unionism. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is the co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives, and editor of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/vAM_XkdCXJY Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Three leading voices in the struggle for education justice (Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au, and Noliwe Rooks) discuss the remaking of public schools in the time of crisis. What has this crisis taught us about the role of public schools in society? What have we learned about what really matters in education during this time? When we re-open schools, what kind of education will we have, will we demand? The Covid-19 crisis has upended public education around the country. Join three radical education activists in conversation about what this crisis means for public education now and how moving forward we can continue to fight for the schools our students deserve. Jesse Hagopian is an award-winning educator and a leading voice on issues of educational equity and social justice unionism. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is the co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives, and editor of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. Noliwe Rooks is the W.E.B Du Bois Professor of Literature at Cornell University and the author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education which won an award for non-fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Wayne Au is a Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He is a long-time Rethinking Schools editor, co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives and author of A Marxist Education: Learning to Change the World. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/rDnP663yEbM Buy books from Haymarket: haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
The new book, Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational JusticeCancel the Gifted and Talented Test Now, Not Next Year, Gotham GazetteWhat the leaked DOE memo about the gifted program reveals, NYC Public School Parents blogVideo of FairTest forum on why the US Dept. of Education should waive the federally mandated tests this springNY State Education Department announcement that they intend to ask for a federal waiver, with instructions on how to provide commentThe documentary The Inconvenient Truth behind Waiting for Superman about the fight against privatization and school closures, narrated by Brian JonesExcerpt from the book in the Washington Post—with essays by Jesse Hagopian and Brian JonesBlack Lives Matter at School Resources
In this episode, initially recorded on May Day, our host, Jesse Hagopian, a high school teacher and Rethinking Schools editor, interviews historian Jeanne Theoharis to address Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s positions on oppression in the North, police brutality, the Memphis sanitation workers, reparations, the Poor People's Campaign, and more. Theoharis describes the sanitization of Dr. King and his legacy, challenging the narratives in textbooks. She also addresses the radical influence of Coretta Scott King. People's Historians online mini-series - Black Freedom Struggle. Music from Rose City Kings from Free Music Archive.
In this episode, from our series on the Black Freedom Struggle, our host, Jesse Hagopian, a high school teacher and Rethinking Schools editor, introduces scholar-activist Mary Phillips and historian Robyn C. Spencer, who discuss how Black women transformed the Black Panther Party. Spencer and Phillips describe the role of Black women in the Black Panther Party as an outgrowth from their long-standing family activism. Many Black women made sacrifices as they balanced motherhood and community organizing. Our guests also tackle how Black women played a central role in delivering the message of the party through art. Link to images discussed: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1utU7UbzctFFzs2azaG6NBhDClvHHGxduI8CgwT41pM8/edit?usp=sharing Music from Rose City Kings from Free Music Archive.
In this episode we meet Amariae, a 16 year-old girl with a clear message about racial justice in the U.S. We discuss a range of topics related to the Black Lives Matter Movement including education, youth activism, social media, police violence, protests, communication during conflict, practicing empathy and compassion, and our shared love of true crime. BLM Resources: www.blacklivesmatteratschool.com www.m4bl.org www.teachingtolerance.org Book: Teaching for Black Lives Edited by Ryan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, and Wayne Au For additional discussion and resources follow us on IG @marywardlupinacci or @tinyreminderspodcast Original Music by Mark Ward www.markwardmusic.com
In this episode we have a conversation about defunding the police: what it means, what it doesn't mean, and how the phrase raises different emotions in people depending on their personal experiences with the police and racism.How decades of consistent and pervasive defunding of community programming, healthcare, and education has harmed communities. We focus on the effects for children with disabilities.School Resource officers and police brutality in the schools that specifically targets black and brown children and children with disabilities.How policy runs on narratives, not statistics. We discuss and challenge narratives about “bad neighborhoods” and “bad children” that are steeped in anti-black racism, anti-indigeneity, and ableism and have fueled bad policy for decades. For more information about this topic: Defunding the police: Democracy NOW!: “Defund the Police: Linda Sarsour & Mychal Denzel Smith on What Meaningful Change Would Look Like” USA Today “What does 'defund the police' mean and why some say 'reform' is not enough” Black Lives Matter Los Angeles Times “Eliminate school police, L.A. teachers union leaders say” Reading Towward Abolition: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness by the Abusable Past. Resources for teaching and talking about racism: EdJustice: “Black Lives Matter at School – Resources” Watson, Dyan, Jesse Hagopian, and Wayne Au. Teaching for Black Lives. , 2018. Print. The Black Lives Matter Syllabus The School to Prison Pipeline: Bullies in Blue: The Problem with School Policing [infographic] by the ACLU Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of School Mental Health is Harming Students by the ACLU ** The image above was drawn by Akim, a 10 year African American boy expressing his feelings in this current moment of police brutality, racism, and Covid-19.
In this episode we have a conversation about defunding the police: what it means, what it doesn’t mean, and how the phrase raises different emotions in people depending on their personal experiences with the police and racism.How decades of consistent and pervasive defunding of community programming, healthcare, and education has harmed communities. We focus on the effects for children with disabilities.School Resource officers and police brutality in the schools that specifically targets black and brown children and children with disabilities.How policy runs on narratives, not statistics. We discuss and challenge narratives about “bad neighborhoods” and “bad children” that are steeped in anti-black racism, anti-indigeneity, and ableism and have fueled bad policy for decades. For more information about this topic: Defunding the police: Democracy NOW!: “Defund the Police: Linda Sarsour & Mychal Denzel Smith on What Meaningful Change Would Look Like” USA Today “What does 'defund the police' mean and why some say 'reform' is not enough” Black Lives Matter Los Angeles Times “Eliminate school police, L.A. teachers union leaders say” Reading Towward Abolition: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness by the Abusable Past. Resources for teaching and talking about racism: EdJustice: “Black Lives Matter at School – Resources” Watson, Dyan, Jesse Hagopian, and Wayne Au. Teaching for Black Lives. , 2018. Print. The Black Lives Matter Syllabus The School to Prison Pipeline: Bullies in Blue: The Problem with School Policing [infographic] by the ACLU Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of School Mental Health is Harming Students by the ACLU ** The image above was drawn by Akim, a 10 year African American boy expressing his feelings in this current moment of police brutality, racism, and Covid-19.
In this episode we have a conversation about defunding the police: what it means, what it doesn't mean, and how the phrase raises different emotions in people depending on their personal experiences with the police and racism.How decades of consistent and pervasive defunding of community programming, healthcare, and education has harmed communities. We focus on the effects for children with disabilities.School Resource officers and police brutality in the schools that specifically targets black and brown children and children with disabilities.How policy runs on narratives, not statistics. We discuss and challenge narratives about “bad neighborhoods” and “bad children” that are steeped in anti-black racism, anti-indigeneity, and ableism and have fueled bad policy for decades. For more information about this topic: Defunding the police: Democracy NOW!: “Defund the Police: Linda Sarsour & Mychal Denzel Smith on What Meaningful Change Would Look Like” USA Today “What does 'defund the police' mean and why some say 'reform' is not enough” Black Lives Matter Los Angeles Times “Eliminate school police, L.A. teachers union leaders say” Reading Towward Abolition: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness by the Abusable Past. Resources for teaching and talking about racism: EdJustice: “Black Lives Matter at School – Resources” Watson, Dyan, Jesse Hagopian, and Wayne Au. Teaching for Black Lives. , 2018. Print. The Black Lives Matter Syllabus The School to Prison Pipeline: Bullies in Blue: The Problem with School Policing [infographic] by the ACLU Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of School Mental Health is Harming Students by the ACLU ** The image above was drawn by Akim, a 10 year African American boy expressing his feelings in this current moment of police brutality, racism, and Covid-19.
I hope this information is helpful and insightful, and I apologize if we forgot to cover some essential bases. There’s so much history about this important issue that people must be educated on during these trying times. Ways to help support the BLM movement: Ways you can help: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ Barack Obama's post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CA5X31igzCL/ Chris Cuomo's post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAwUrNQJ_aO/ Georgetown Law link History: https://www.zinnedproject.org/ If you want to find specific articles about black American history I linked some below. Articles (all found from the Zinn Education Project): Tulsa Massacre: https://www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our-history/burning-tulsa-the-legacy-of-black-dispossession/ Segregation: https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/color-line-colonial-laws The Necessity to Teach Reconstruction: https://www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our-history/when-black-lives-mattered/ Housing Segregation: https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/how-red-lines-built-white-wealth-color-of-law-lesson Teaching SNCC: https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/teaching-sncc Books: Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Mercy-Story-Justice-Redemption/dp/08129849 Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au's Teaching for Black Lives: https://www.rethinkingschools.org/books/title/teaching-for-black-lives Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Kathleen Van Cleve's Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: https://www.audible.com/pd/Never-Caught-the-Story-of-Ona-Judge-Audiobook/150827830X? Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds's Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning: https://www.amazon.com/Stamped-Antiracism-National-Award-winning-Beginning/dp/0316453692 Blair Imani's Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Our-Way-Home-Migration-ebook/dp/B07QWH7YXR Podcasts: 1619 Project (from New York Times) Code Switch (from NPR) School Colors (from NPR) Uncivil (from Gimlet Media) Scene on Radio (from John Biewen and collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika) Justice in America (from Josie Duffy Rice with guest hosts Darnell Moore, Donovan X. Ramsey, Derecka Purnell, and Zak Cheney Rice)
This week's show is a talk I did with educator and author Jesse Hagopian about the history of Black athletes and their intersection with the Civil Rights Movement. We go through the famous hidden stories of people like Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali as well as people you may never have heard of like Wyomia Tyus and Rose Robinson. The event was put on by the Zinn Education Project. Jesse Hagopian is an award-winning educator and a leading voice on issues of educational equity, the school-to-prison-pipeline, standardized testing, the Black Lives Matter at School movement, and social justice unionism. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, an author, public speaker, organizer, and Ethnic Studies teacher at Seattle’s Garfield High School – the site of the historic teacher boycott of the MAP test in 2013. Jesse is the co-editor of the new book, Teaching for Black Lives, and is the editor of the book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. His writing has been published in numerous books including 101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals Who Changed US History, Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation, Why We Teach Now, and Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove’s Voices of a People’s History of the United States. https://www.zinnedproject.org/ https://iamaneducator.com Jesse Hagopian Twitter: http://@JessedHagopian — http://www.edgeofsportspodcast.com/ | http://twitter.com/EdgeOfSportsPod | http://fb.com/edgeofsportspod | email us: edgeofsports@gmail.com | Edge of Sports hotline: 401-426-3343 (EDGE) — Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: http://thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.
According to Diane Ravitch, citizens across America are successfully fighting to stop corporations from privatizing our nation’s public schools. Ravitch joined us with insight from her book Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance To Privatization And The Fight To Save America’s Public Schools. She highlighted how parents, teachers, activists, bloggers, religious leaders, and others are stepping forward to fight against the disruption of one of America’s most fundamental public institutions. Ravitch identified corporate interests, political voices, and economic disruptors who believe America’s schools should be run like businesses, modeling the structure of our schools on a gig economy in which students are treated like customers or products and teachers are incentivized with threats and bonuses. Join Ravitch to learn about the nationwide story of brave individuals who, spurred on by the power of ideas and passion, are fighting back to successfully keep their public schools alive. Diane Ravitch is a research professor of education at New York University and the author of eleven books, including The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn and Reign of Error: The Hoax Of The Privatization Movement And The Danger To America’s Public Schools. Jesse Hagopian teaches Ethnic Studies and is the co-adviser to the Black Student Union at Garfield High School. He is an editor for the social justice periodical Rethinking Schools and is the co-editor of the book Teaching for Black Lives. Presented by Town Hall Seattle. Recorded live in The Great Hall on February 4, 2020.
In this episode, co-hosts Andrea Parker and Jim Staros grapple with the causes and consequences of the disappearance of Black educators from Chicago Public Schools. Jackson Potter, history teacher at Back of the Yards High School, and Gervaise Clay, teacher on leave and field rep at the Chicago Teachers Union, discuss the racist impact of school closings and turnarounds pursued by a host of Chicago mayors. Then, Jim talks with Jesse Hagopian, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter at School national movement, about the origins, the demands, and the curriculum of Black Lives Matter At School movement and its February 3-7 week of action. Share your thoughts and questions with the CTU Speaks! team by emailing ctuspeaks@ctulocal1.org or calling 312 467 8888.
Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression among activists, journalists, and politicians. To discuss new strategies for putting an end to police violence, the University of Washington's Department of Global Health assembles a panel of community activists and experts—whose gathering commemorates the one-year anniversary of Charleena Lyles' death at the hands of Seattle police. Join this critical conversation about the threat posed to public health and safety by police violence, and what we can do to stop it. Panel members include: Nakeya Isabell, spoken word artist and cousin of Charleena Lyles; Katrina Johnson, member of Charleena Lyles' family; ACLU Deputy Director Michele Storms; Black Lives Matter activist Jorge Torres; Seattle public school teacher Jesse Hagopian; former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; and authors Alex Vitale and David Correia. Their conversation is moderated by UW professor Clarence Spigner. https://archive.org/details/scm-595141-policeviolencepanel Subscribe to more videos:https://www.youtube.com/c/PoliceBrutalityWorldwide Check out my Fiverr link: https://www.fiverr.com/kingemjay?up_rollout=true My blog: https://policebrutalityworldwide.blogspot.com/ My Website: http://www.policebrutalityworldwide.com Check this Surf roam link: https://surfroam.com?tap_a=22019-573852&tap_s=492427-1313ee My paypal link: www.paypal.me/kingemjayconsulting Other links:http://raphead.com/profile/DJEMJAY Mining site: https://cryptouniverse.io/en/r/EQGGJZEO https://blackjunction.com/?ref=KINGEMJAY https://blackjunction.tv/@KINGEMJAY Get CryptoBrowser:https://get.cryptobrowser.site/7009526 My podcast: https://anchor.fm/king-emjay PI Network: https://minepi.com/KingEmjay3355 https://www.karatbars.com/?s=kingemjay https://www.karatbars.com/shop/?s=kingemjay https://www.karatbars.com/landing/?s=kingemjay https://lp1.kb-universe.com/?referer=kingemjay https://www.dualmine.com/?ref=88302 https://baioafrikstan5.ning.com/?xgi=OPNVkQvdmcVWBW CashApp:£DaOfficerofdadamnlaw http://chng.it/kT9ygt7kPn https://client.iqmining.com/rf/190f2a5fe1f09 . . . . . . . . #PBWWChannel #DaOfficerOfDaDamnLaw Feel supa dupa free to contact me at my email: kingemjay3355@gmail.com Stay melanin
We speak with Jesse Hagopian, an editor for ReThinking Schools and a long-time teacher in the Seattle Public Schools. He is a co-editor of the book Teaching for Black Lives. Jesse discusses the groundbreaking annual National Week of Action in February that makes four demands of schools: replace zero tolerance discipline with restorative justice, implement...
Trending News Bible Literacy? Teachers who protest should lose their license. Just say no to abstinence. Special Episode: Educators in Madison, Wisconsin gathered on a cold Sunday at Edgewood College to kick off the National Teaching for Black Lives week of Action. Jesse Hagapioan (one of the editors of Teaching for Black Lives) was the... Read more »
This week we discuss the conviction of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke for the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald—the first conviction of a Chicago cop for an on-duty shooting in 50 years. Our two guests are Todd St. Hill, a socialist and anti-racist organizer in Chicago who talks to us about the years of work that laid the basis for this historic conviction, and Seattle public school teacher and activist Jesse Hagopian, who talks about victims of Seattle’s racist police such as Charleena Lyles, and how the Black Lives Matter at School project can bring together the powerful forces of labor and civil rights. Links from this episode: · Todd’s article on the Van Dyke verdict (http://bit.ly/VanDykeguilty) · Todd’s article on Chicago violence (http://bit.ly/Rahmgunviolence) · How Black Friday protests forced out police chief (http://bit.ly/ChicagoBlackFriday) · Mayor 1%, Kari Lyderson’s book on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/459-mayor-1) · The Chicago Teachers Union powerful statement on the Van Dyke verdict (http://bit.ly/CTULaquan) · Seattle media coverage of the Seattle police pepper spray attack on Jesse (http://bit.ly/JessePepperSpray) · More information on the Black Lives Matter at School week of action (http://bit.ly/BLMatSchool) And check out Jesse’s two books: · More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing: (http://bit.ly/MoreThanScore) · Teaching for Black Lives (http://bit.ly/TeachingBlackLives) Audio for this episode: The Boy & Sister Alma, “Lizard Eyes” (Dead Sea Captains Remix) Noname, “Blaxploitation” Ty Money, “United Center” (video) Joey Bada$$, “For My People” Jay Rock, “Win” :30 Blue Scholars, “Commencement Day” Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee, speaking the day before his death James Brown, "Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”
Local educators and activists feel that Black students’ minds and bodies are under attack. That’s why they created Teaching for Black Lives, a handbook for creating the sweeping reform of our education system and equitable teaching strategies for Black students. The editors of this collection joined us on Town Hall’s stage to read excerpts and call us to action to dismantle stereotypes and the school-to-prison pipeline. They called for educators everywhere to engage Black students in self-reflection and develop a curriculum that emphasizes community activism and social transformation. Listen in to these critical discussions of the ways we can improve the environment of education for Black students and communities in our nation and fight marginalization in our classrooms. Dyan Watson is a member of the Rethinking Schools executive board, as well as the social studies coordinator for the secondary program in teacher education at Lewis & Clark. Jesse Hagopian teaches ethnic studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School where he is also co-adviser to the Black Student Union. Wayne Au is a former public high school social studies and language arts teacher, as well as a professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington, Bothell campus. To learn more about these speakers and the Teaching for Black Lives collection, click here. These editors will be joined by several student speakers for a collaborative conversation. Recorded live at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute by Town Hall Seattle on Monday, September 24, 2018.
Trending News: Don’t Mess With Texas Hillary. NRAtv goes after Thomas the Train. Billionaire Bezos creating preschool consumers. What Would Matt Damon’s Mom Say about the billionaire assault on public education. Can you say “Hijacked?” Kohn’s Zone: It’s been 25 years since Alfie published Punished by Rewards (A dismantling of behaviorist learning theory). Progressive education... Read more »
Trending News: Substitute news guy—Stick—breaks down the the “fake news” of conservative influenced propaganda. Michigan conservatives want their own history taught. How fair is it to diss Trump in an AP History book? In Texas history books not all slaves were unhappy. Feature Interview: “Teaching for Black Lives” with Jesse Hagopian. Jesse joins Tim to... Read more »
05: Teachers’ Rebellion-Strike Wave Edition ***Please subscribe to us on iTunes (bit.ly/BetterOffRediTunes) and leave us a rating and review. It helps us reach a wider audience with these ideas.*** “West Virginia first, Oklahoma next”. That’s what teachers started chanting when they won their strike in West Virginia. And now the teachers’ rebellion really has spread like a wildfire, with the Oklahoma teachers’ strike entering its second week and teachers talking action in Kentucky and Arizona. This episode is entirely about the teachers’ rebellion. Danny, Jen and Eric discuss some of the lessons of these strikes before bringing you a series of great interviews from the front lines. We bring you clips from an onsite interview with Oklahoma teacher Jessica Lightle. Then we are joined by Eric Blanc, a journalist who has been covering the strike wave for Jacobin magazine. Eric has been on the ground in both West Virginia and Oklahoma and shares his analysis and insights with us. And finally, we talk to a teacher organizer and striker from West Virginia, Nicole McCormick. She is joined by Dana Blanchard, a veteran teacher who travelled to West Virginia to cover the strike for Socialist Worker. There’s a lot packed in this episode and we’re pretty sure you’ll want to hear more. Here are some resources mentioned in the show as well as links for further reading: Socialist Worker ran an article featuring the voices of Oklahoma teachers (bit.ly/OklahomaSW), including more from the interview we excerpted with Jessica Lightle. You can also go to the full site of SW to read extensive coverage of West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma as well as more on why these strikes are spreading. Eric Blanc’s has been covering the strikes for Jacobin and his most recent article is on Oklahoma’s turn to strike (bit.ly/OklahomaJacobin). You can also go to the full site at Jacobin for more coverage of the strikes. We’re including a link to the full video of the solidarity rally held in NYC (bit.ly/SolidarityNYC) just after the victory of the strike in West Virginia. There was also a solidarity rally held in Seattle (bit.ly/SolidaritySeattle) a few weeks later, which featured Seattle educator Jesse Hagopian in conversation with Nicole McCormick (featured in this episode) and Oklahoma strike leader Larry Cagle.
Resources and links mentioned in this episode: We start this episode with a clip from Edna Chavez at the March for Our Lives, but the whole video is a must watch. Danny talks about “Taking on Gun Fundamentalism” [https://socialistworker.org/2018/02/27/how-do-socialists-take-on-gun-fundamentalism] in Socialist Worker, while Chicago activists Alex Vega-Byrnes and Todd St Hill talk about how Chicago high school students are Making the connections to stop gun violence. We quoted LA teacher, Gillian Russom, about the criminalizing and alienating impact of more cops in our schools. You can read her full article here. We talked about how important it is to bring the demands of #BlackLivesMatter into the debate on gun violence, particularly in the wake of the police murder of Stephon Clark. You can read Jesse Hagopian, one of the initiators of the Black Lives Matter in Schools week of action, discuss this and highlight the demands raised by students in Chicago, on his blog. We ended our intro segment with a tribute to Draylen Mason, a Black 17-year old high school student murdered by a package bomb in Austin, Texas. Draylen was a gifted musician who would have learned this week that he had been accepted into the highly selective conservatory at Oberlin. We ended with a clip of him playing bass in a performance of Vanhal’s Concerto and provide the link to the full video here. In our segment with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, we talk about the West Virginia teachers strike, and you won’t want to miss this inspiring solidarity meeting in New York City about the West Virginia teachers strike. You can read more coverage of the strike at Socialist Worker, including Khury Petersen-Smith on How West Virginia Put Class Struggle Back on the Map. In this interview we talk about race, class and Trump in West Virginia—a theme Pranav Jani discusses in more detail in an article about talking socialism in Trump country. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor also weighed in on the new movement against gun violence—and especially the many potential linkages with the Movement for Black Lives. This is a theme she took up in a piece on anti-racism and the uprising against guns. If you enjoyed listening to Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, you can hear her speak at this year’s Socialism 2018 conference, a gathering of nearly 2,000 radicals and activists, featuring more than 100 meetings on topics like those we take up. You can also order both of her books at Haymarket Books. Thank you so much for checking out our first episode. If you liked what you heard, please leave us a review and rating at iTunes, share with your friends and consider subscribing so that you don’t miss any future episodes.
Truth For America is a podcast about Teach For America (TFA) that provides voice to educators, parents, students, and other key stakeholders. Truth For America is co-hosted by Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig and Dr. T. Jameson Brewer. They are joined in Episode 6 by Dr. Terrenda White and Jesse Hagopian, both TFA alums. Their conversation includes a discussion about diversity, racism in TFA, and the (in)adequacy of TFA’s summer training and pedagogical approaches. Truth For America is sponsored by the Network for Public Education Action.
Jesse Hagopian is part of a movement challenging the regime of high stakes testing in U.S. schools. Global Warming, war, poverty, violence against women, disease... None of these problems can be solved by A B C or D thinking, he writes in a new book, so why do we continue to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into just that sort of test? Jesse Hagopian teaches history and is the Black Student Union adviser at Garfield High School in Seattle which made history when teachers, parents and students there chose to boycott the standard test in 2013. He's also editor of the new book More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. This episode also looks at ground zero in the school reform movement with a short film about the privatization of schools in New Orleans.
Hi I'm Laura Flanders of GRITtv. Governor Scott Walker stirred up the hornets this winter when he not only proposed cutting $300 million from the University of Wisconsin's budget, but simultaneously tried to change the vaunted mission of that institution from seeking truth and serving society to “meeting the needs of the workforce.” Walker's effort to edit UW's Progressive Era principles angered educators and students and led party predictable pundits to cry out about the presumed presidential contender's Tea Party plans for education. What's been missed in all this is that while Walker may be their pal, putting schools to work for business is hardly a Tea Party innovation. Businesses have always looked to classrooms to serve up pliant workers. One hundred years ago, Wisconsin's Idea was notable precisely because in the age of the industrialization, the pressure was on for schools to produce workers fit for factories. Craftsmen had a nasty habit of walking off the production line at the degradation of their labor by automation. The 1917 Smith Hughes Act funded two tracks of manual education: the vocational and the general to more smoothly ease blue and white-collar workers into their places. Vocational ed. endured until such time as US manufacturers fancied shedding their US workers, when, in the 1980s and 90s, government started pushing college degrees for all, no matter how unpredictable and how costly. Today's high stakes economy favors high stakes testing. All those tests are a nifty profit center themselves (which is why so many profit driven folks are lobbying mightily for them) but polarizing testing also serves the needs of a polarized economy. Multiple (which is to say actually, minimal)choice testing doesn't produce the kind of creative thinking we need to solve today's pressing problems (which may be why the rich don't force their kids to do it), but tests reinforce the myth of meritocracy and with it the idea that those at the top are deserving. When we interviewed people for Own the Change, about starting worker owned-cooperative businesses, the single biggest challenge they named was a lack of training in cooperation. Walker blamed his editing plan on an underling's error and backed away from it, but education-for-the-workforce isn't going away. It's enshrined in today's Common Core curriculum as school reformer Jesse Hagopian reports in his inspiring book on the uprising taking place in education. The question for those who seek structural change now, is if a polarizing education meets the needs of a polarizing workforce, what sort of education befits an economy that puts people first, and the needs of profit behind community and the planet? You can watch my interview with Jesse Hagopian, editor of More Than A Score, The Uprising Against High Stakes Testing this week on The Laura Flanders Show on KCET/LINKtv and TeleSUR and find all my interviews and reports at GRITtv.org. To tell me what you think, write to: Laura@GRITtv.org.
Join Cynthia Liu of K12 News Network and Peggy Robertson and Morna McDermott of United Opt Out and Jesse Hagopian, teacher leader from Seattle, to discuss rising unrest over the time and expense of standardized testing and how you can opt your child out of end-of-year and other tests. K12NN is a partner in the Testing Reform and Resistance movement to inform and support families who want their children to experience meaningful diagnostic tests that are teacher-originated, authentic and performance-based to assess children's progress. Here's to more learning, less testing! For more details on Testing Reform & Resistance Spring, see http://resistthetest.org Go to United Opt Out for the 50-state guide and toolkit: http://unitedoptout.com/opt-out-tool-kit And for people who say we need some sort of test, send them to read this: "No Unnecessary Testing": http://skrashen.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-fundamental-principle-no-unnecessary.html
Protest and resistance have been grassroots tools that communities use to create systemic change. Today, protests in education are demanding common-sense approaches to education and education reform. Students, parents and families, teachers are banding together in cities across the country in protest of, among other things, school discipline policies and practices, teacher evaluation rubrics, and standardized tests. My guest, Jesse Hagopian, is a history teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington. Jesse recently organized his fellow teachers at Garfield and other Seattle schools and refused to administer the state standardized test, the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress). This boycott has led to several other local efforts to resist the national push to test public-school students, rather than provide meaningful, teacher-developed assessment. Jesse will talk to us about the MAP boycott and about how it fits in the larger picture of resistance and protest in education. Host Allison R. Brown is a civil rights attorney and President of Allison Brown Consulting (ABC), which works with schools and non-profit organizations to create education equity plans and promote equity in education in compliance with federal civil rights law.
Even the best teachers feel disillusioned about teaching at times. However, some are brokenhearted and dispirited about what teaching has become, yet continue teaching because they have limited alternatives. Is there a solution? Follow:@blairteach, @JessedHagopian @coolcatteacher, @bamradionetwork Jesse Hagopian teaches history at Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test in 2013; Vicki Davis is a classroom technology teacher and author of Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds; David Smith taught for 20 years in both public and parochial schools in Southeastern Pennsylvania; and Nancy Blair is a school improvement consultant and former administrator.
Last year, people across the country were inspired by the solidarity of the faculty, students, and parents at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington. The teachers there were tired of being forced to give a test they didn’t believe in, and they decided to do something about it. They boycotted the test, and become theContinue Reading…
The national discussion of standardized testing was ratcheted up a notch when five schools in Seattle voted to boycott a standard test. In this segment we interview one of the leaders of the boycott and get some views on what impact, if any, this strategy will likely have on the practice of testing. Jesse Hagopian teaches history at Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test in 2013. He was recipient of the 2012 Abe Keller Foundation award for “excellence and innovation in peace education.” Celine Coggins is the founder and CEO of Teach Plus, a former teacher and current Mind Trust Education Entrepreneur Fellow. Patrick Riccards, CEO of ConnCAN, has more than 20 years of communications political strategy under his belt.
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