All posts by Nijmie

Organizing

Pennsylvania: Organizing for the 21st Century

Leave a comment

424466_536565646368466_556301599_nOn a recent canvassing day in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, now famous across the country as the home of rogue police chief Mark Kessler, a local mother went door to door surveying residents about their ability to meet their families’ needs to healthcare, housing, education, food, and other basics. 

On one block, when asked about access to quality, affordable healthcare several residents put forward a vision for our health system that the reader might not expect: “They should make it like Canada.”  As in: a publicly funded healthcare system that is free and universal – which goes beyond even what Obamacare will do. 

The resident doing the door-knocking was a Local Organizing Committee Leader with Put People First! PA, a fast-growing organization formed to change what is politically possible in the state of Pennsylvania.

She discovered what doesn’t go viral on social media and what corporate media has no interest in revealing.  There are lots of people outside of big cities in the state of PA (and every state) who might never call themselves “progressive” but when given a chance to talk about their lives, values, struggles, and needs, will respond in ways that defy labels and even party lines.

For every job opening in Pennsylvania, there are four unemployed workers, and another  four under-employed workers who are seeking additional work (State of Working PA, 2011). Is it any wonder that our education system is on the ropes, with 474 out of 501 school districts in the state receiving less than adequate funds? (Education Law Center of PA). The well-organized fight against cuts to education funding in Philly captured major headlines – and despite how the story got framed, Philly wasn’t the only place that stood up. On all of our fundamental needs – jobs, education, housing, healthcare – PA families and communities are hurting across the board.

This is consistent with our society as a whole – where a recent survey revealed that a whopping 80% of adults face near-poverty and unemployment.This despite the fact that the economy, judging by the stock market and financial indicators, has “recovered.”How can the fundamentals of our economic system be so entirely out of step with the lived experiences of the majority of our population? And more importantly, what are we the people going to do about it?

“We’ve known for quite some time that the real fight in this country is at the state capitals. Because in the state capitals, that’s where election laws are passed, educational laws, labor rights. All of those issues grow out of legislation that comes from state capitals,” says Reverend Willie Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP in reference to the Moral Monday protests that have targeted his state’s legislature.  PeopleFirst! PA – the brainchild of seasoned organizers born and raised in PA working in concert with emerging leaders from around the state – operates on the principle that we need a new kind of organizing to change the political landscape at the state level. 

We need an independent base of regular people who are poised to hold politicians on both sides of the aisle accountable, while at the same time understanding the fundamentals of how our economy works.  We need organizing that doesn’t just amass a list and treat people as bodies to turn out for this or that agenda or mobilization, but as leaders who are prepared to connect, align, and foster joint action of those around them.  We need to focus on policy with the understanding that those solutions are really about principles like universality, equity, transparency, participation, and accountability.

August 28th marks the 50th anniversary of the march on Washington and it’s never been more clear that the powers that be rely on race, gender, sexuality, and now immigration status as tools to oppress, divide and control people.   As we move forward we would do well to remember another anniversary – the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s announcement of the Poor People’s Campaign in 1967.

“There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life…” – MLK

From Philly blocks to Schuylkill County streets, we can feel that freedom and power building in Pennsylvania.  Can you see the new and unsettling force on the horizon?

 

—-

Put People First! PA is an entirely bottom-up, grassroots effort by and for the people of Pennsylvania.  Please support our work to build the new and unsettling force by making a contribution to our summer crowd-funding campaign.  We are proud to be building our model with our partners including the Vermont Workers Center, United Workers/Healthcare as a Human Right Maryland, the Poverty Initiative/University of the Poor, the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, and the Media Mobilizing Project.

Across Color Lines

My Own Private Vigilante

2 Comments

PSU members and me, 2008It was the spring of 2007 and  my students were amped about the US social forum in Atlanta.  I was the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Student Union and also organizing at Sayre High School in West Philadelphia. My students were so excited and I committed to taking a group of about a dozen students to Atlanta, and then had to set about figuring out how to do that logistically and monetarily.

What began with those students resulted in PSU effectively organizing the bus from Philly to Atlanta for the whole city that would enable us to go. We had to figure out everything and transportation, food and accommodations for all the students and staff members that came along was not easy.

Through some friends I was able to secure housing for all of us in an apartment complex where the residents were going to be away during the time of the forum.  We got in to Atlanta, had to carry our bags to the restaurant where the person with our key was, then truck out to the where we were staying.

It was a trying trip.  A dizzying array of workshops and activities; the Georgia summer heat; I believe I was approached by some kind of undercover agent who started questioning me about Philly groups and people (strange because at the time I was not wearing a social forum badge); and a notebook of mine went missing.  Being right in downtown Atlanta meant that my students’ attention was constantly drawn to the kaleidoscope of tricked out cars with rims, hydraulics, and candy coated gloss constantly riding by on the strip.

One of my student’s birthdays fell during the forum and we got him a cake to celebrate. We were all back at the apartment around midnight, singing happy birthday (quietly I remember, because we were being thoughtful about how late it was) when I heard a knock on the apartment door.  I thought at first that one of the students was pranking me when I looked through the peephole and saw no one there.  I opened the door, looked outside and to my shock saw an armed white male in plain clothes off to the left of the doorframe with his arms extended.  In his hands was a gun pointed toward the ground like you see when cops are getting ready to barge into a situation, and his finger was on the trigger.

I immediately closed the door to put a barrier between him and the young people.  I was thinking about the students circled in the living room on the other side of the door, eating cake and laughing and how I had a duty to protect them and would do so at any and all cost.  Thinking about my body language and tone and not wanting to escalate the situation I began to engage him.  I wanted to be calm yet extremely firm.  “What is going on?” “You can’t be here right now,” he said. I explained that we had permission from the residents of the apartment to use their space for the week.  He said, “This is a private apartment complex and you are not allowed to have so many people staying here.”

We went back and forth for a couple of minutes during which time he put away his gun.  I remained insistent that we were within our rights to be staying in the apartment and made it clear that under no circumstances was he coming inside.   When I asked why he was profiling us he said that someone who lives in the complex had called him.  I think that I remember him saying that he was an off-duty cop.  He ended by telling me that the residents would get a citation and possibly get evicted for having us stay in the apartment.

After he left, I went back into the apartment, shocked and numbed.  I had to tell the young people that a man with a gun had just been standing right on the other side of our front door.  I told them what had happened, that presumably, someone or several people from the apartment complex had called this off-duty cop/vigilante on us because they felt that “we didn’t belong there”, and he took it upon himself to come over and check out what was going on.

I was so angry and made no effort to hide this from the students.  We had to come up with a plan, some kind of response.  After checking in for a few minutes, we decided to go outside.  If they think we don’t belong here, we should show ourselves to them, to contest their cowardly actions, right here right now.  We’re going to show them that we’re not afraid.  So the 12 or so of us, went outside, and stood there.  There was a light rain coming down and it was after midnight, but we stood there, daring the people watching us from inside their apartments between their blinds to come out themselves and meet us, or do something else about it.  But we weren’t going away.

I was angry about the whole situation. I was angry that we had been referred to stay in a place where that would happen to us.  I was angry that the folks who rented the apartment didn’t warn us or give us any concept of what the people living there were like.  I was angry that a vigilante came to our door and came within feet of my students with a fucking gun!

There is no doubt in my mind that we were profiled because of the racial fears of the folks in the apartment building on seeing a group of Black youth in “their” space.  The thing that makes me the angriest and saddest is that not one of those people who were looking at us, watching us, made the effort to introduce themselves or to talk to us and ask us directly what we were doing there. Instead, they called on an armed man to intervene for them.

I’m glad that I was there physically in between the vigilante and my students.  In my (to some) racially ambiguous skin perhaps I was able to elicit a different reaction from this man than if someone else had been at the door.  There is no neat and tidy ending to this story, only an ongoing fierce commitment to act every day on the conviction that #blacklifematters and to consciously dismantle the barriers that keep us from being able to see each other as full human beings.

Public Education

School crisis: We’re not alone in Philadephia

Leave a comment

When we know the names Plainfield, North Annville, Ridgefield, and Village Park as well as we know the names Wilson, Fairhill, Germantown, and University City – and vice versa – we will have a better chance of defeating the people and interests who are destroying the system of universal free public education in Pennsylvania and profiting while doing it.

The momentum generated by students, parents, teachers and school workers over the past year is truly amazing.  The school closings, cuts and “doomsday budget” in Philadelphia have made national news.

Making connections between attacks on public education in major cities around the country, and building unity between directly impacted groups have been keys to the Philadelphia education community’s success in wrestling the narrative away from the corporate reformers and bringing and broader attention to the issue.

The willingness to conquer geography to get to the people who are facing the same conditions is strategic.  The scale at which it is done and who is engaged are crucial.  The pain of austerity, school closings, program reductions and layoffs being directed at our communities through the public education system has been spread around Pennsylvania like thick icing on a cake.  In districts smaller and larger, urban and suburban, among African-Americans, Whites, Latinos and Asian-Americans.  And people have spoken up and spoken out.

Here are just some examples of what has happened around our state in the last five years:

*The Millcreek School Board near Erie voted to close 2 schools – Ridgefield and Vernondale.  Total enrollment in the district is 7,464 students, and the district has only 14 schools, so they are losing 1/7 of their schools.  The district is 96.55% white and it is the county’s 10th largest employer.

*In Northumberland County, Dalmatia and Leck Kill in the Line Mountain School District are to be closed, half of the district’s four schools.

*Pittsburgh School District with 55% African-American, 33% White and 12% Latinos, Asian-American and other students closed 22 of its 76 schools in 2008.

*Allentown School District just announced plans to lay off 99 teachers.  Sixty-five percent of the district’s students are Latino, and the district is the 5th largest employer in the Lehigh Valley.

*As of 2011 it was reported that PA teacher layoffs exceed 4,000, which helped create a budget surplus for the state and which goes into the state’s general fund – not necessarily back into our schools.

*And right in Philadelphia’s backyard a groundswell of parents, students, teachers and community moved to stop cuts in Upper Darby’s schools.

Our collective wealth is being transferred upward, and misappropriated, while children, youth, families, teachers, school staff, and neighborhoods are made to feel the pain.  All the while, the cumulative impact of cuts, layoffs and closings shifts the mental landscape about what a public education means, what our rights are, and what we can reasonably expect.  When something that we urgently need is being taken away so dramatically, it calls into question our worth and value in the society at a deep level.

Pennsylvania’s public schools,  students, workers and communities  are under a coordinated and strategic attack – a grab for resources and power.  It’s outlines are simple – “students” and “taxpayers” are the heroes/victims, unions are the villians, and technocratic and corporate reformers, and privatized educational models are its heroes.  This strategy unites with anyone who agrees with it.  We must build a force that is capable of vying for power and resources too – except we’re not fighting for our profit, but our survival.  Universal free public education for all students, strong worker protections, and a public education system funded and organized around the needs of students, families and communities.