keeper of things.

Close To Home Legislation

Sun, 05 May 2013 18:08:22 -0700

A centerpiece of an overhaul of the juvenile justice system gives New York City’s young delinquents, like Mone’t, 17, local options for rehabilitation.

-If you want to learn more about the work that I do and what forward movements NYC juvenile justice system and public education are making!

Thank you, finally.

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:04:35 -0700

Thank you, finally.

"Learn to listen. This is especially difficult for members of dominant groups. If someone confronts..."

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:01:31 -0700

“Learn to listen. This is especially difficult for members of dominant groups. If someone confronts you with your own behavior that supports privilege, step off the path of least resistance that encourages you to defend and deny. Don’t tell them they’re too sensitive or need a better sense of humor, and don’t try to explain away what you did as something else than what they’re telling you it was. Don’t say you didn’t mean it or that you were only kidding. Don’t tell them what a champion of justice you are or how hurt you feel because of what they’re telling you. Don’t make jokes or try to be cute or charming, since only privilege can lead someone to believe these are acceptable responses to something as serious as privilege and oppression. Listen to what’s being said. Take it seriously. Assume for the time being that it’s true, because given the power of paths of least resistance, it probably is. And then take responsibility to do something about it.”

- Allan G. Johnson (via finedineonmyvegangenitalia)

"I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds–but I think of you always in those..."

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:19:48 -0700

“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds–but I think of you always in those intervals.”

- Salvador Plascencia (via likeafieldmouse)

"Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say “so..."

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:59:15 -0700

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say “so what”. That’s one of my favorite things to say.”

- Andy Warhol (via passivist)

Recognizing these landscapes, can I call New York City home...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 19:41:21 -0700

Recognizing these landscapes, can I call New York City home now?

"I wonder if we would have been better off if we had never discovered the AIDS virus at all?” I..."

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:04:07 -0700

““I wonder if we would have been better off if we had never discovered the AIDS virus at all?” I don’t think he meant that literally, or that he regretted the countless lives that have been saved or prolonged by anti HIV drugs and the AIDS test. What he meant was this: that the AIDS epidemic is fundamentally a social phenomenon. It spreads because of the beliefs and social structures and poverty and prejudices and personalities of a community, and sometimes getting caught up in the precise biological characteristics of a virus merely serves as a distraction; we might have halted the spread of AIDS far more effectively just by focusing on those beliefs and social structures and poverty and prejudices and personalities.”

- Malcolm Gladwell

whatthfu: louise c.k. telling it like it is.

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 18:48:29 -0700

whatthfu: louise c.k. telling it like it is.

http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/03/more_than_100_gather_in_br...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:16:01 -0700

http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/03/more_than_100_gather_in_brooklyn_to_remember_police_shooting_victim_kimani_gray.html

Another name to add to the list: Kimani Gray.
When is enough, enough?

Photo

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:30:44 -0700

think-progress: Rand Paul’s 12+ hour filibuster about drones...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:04:06 -0800

think-progress: Rand Paul’s 12+ hour filibuster about drones gets a succinct 43-word response.

Photo

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 05:47:53 -0800

Photo

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 18:54:02 -0800

this naive hope for juvenile justice

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:18:00 -0800

Who: me
What: Chancellor’s Day Professional Development
When: today, during the School Safety Department’s presentation
Where: Passages Academy, Bronx Hope

Why: everything.

New York City schools have mandated all-day professional development sessions with the fancy (and unnecessary) naming of Chancellor’s Day. What this day consists of are a variety of professional development sessions that look different across the city. At the school where I work, we focused the agenda on collaborative structures due to the continual challenges faced by working with all the different partner agencies we have.

A typical day at one of our school sites can result in body-sized holes punched into the school walls by student wrists, broken tables and hard cover books thrown across the room, a punch in the face for staff members, f bombs and n words dropped like the atomic war, riots where students attempt escape and AWOLs, 20 gallon-ed fire extinguishers sprayed and chucked as weapons, kicked in glass windows of transportation vans, and the cutting of wrists using broken glass from windows.

So I get it; I get that the teachers are scared, that one wrong move, one wrong word, one wrong look can result in too many wrong injuries. The unpredictability of it all, the danger of it all, and the moment of panic during escalated crisis, all the while feeling like you have to defend yourself while protecting the students. I get it. It’s not easy teaching in our classrooms. I get it.

I guess I can’t say much or make any value judgements from behind my office desk, since I’m not in the classroom. I get that. But to hear teachers continually ask fiercely about arresting our students and pressing charges, even for emotionally disturbed and mentally unstable students, breaks my heart. To hear teachers continually ask when and why aren’t our students being arrested more often, or if they can press charges, breaks my heart. And this is where I don’t get it.

As the touted number one advocate of students, I don’t get how teachers can want to have their own students arrested when a moment sets off the students’ trauma and instability, or that teachers want to press charges when the student—who believe me, has had their share of unfair heartbreak and brokenness—becomes so upset to throw tables and chairs that accidentally hit the teacher. I get that if this was any other school and any other student, the choices we make might be different.

But this isn’t any other school and this isn’t any other student. This is our student. These are students who probably grew up damaged in all the parts of them but recovered enough to try school—nothing but try. And if a moment in this life overwhelms the student and causes all past-present-future traumas to flood back into themselves, I’d break a window or throw some punches too.

The responses and thought-processes I heard from our staff during the School Safety Agent’s presentation demoralized me about how we care for the young people in the thick of it all. Maybe I am too young and naive to be practical, but if practicality calls for arrests and pressing charges, then I don’t ever want to be practical.

We had a young male student who was throwing furniture, fighting other students, and throwing punches at staff last Friday. It was hard to calm and contain the student in this moment of escalation. After the school safety agent calmed and cuffed him, he fell back into himself and said, “What happened? I blanked out. I blanked out, what the fuck happened just now?”

Do we know his whole and honest story? And you still want to arrest him and press charges? And to hear teachers publicly state that the Close to Home legislation is designed to fail?

I just don’t get it.

I’m not saying that we should do nothing, or that we should allow or excuse our students’ behavior. All I’m saying is that we need to reconsider the juvenile justice setting as an opportunity to heal and grow.

Cornel West explains why it bothers him that Obama will be...

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 15:19:00 -0800

Cornel West explains why it bothers him that Obama will be taking the oath with MLK’s bible

Williamsburg || Brooklyn || New York City

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:26:20 -0800

Williamsburg || Brooklyn || New York City

"But it’s not really as easy as blaming Michelle Obama for not being as radical as we want her to be...."

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:10:54 -0800

“But it’s not really as easy as blaming Michelle Obama for not being as radical as we want her to be. Racist constructions of black motherhood play a large role in how she is perceived, and she has to work double time to avoid being cast as an “angry black woman.” Michelle Obama had to win the appeal of the American mainstream with qualities that make her seem like she’d be a good First Lady: being feminine, appeasing, and focused on home; being successful in her own right (but willing to give it all up for her husband’s career and her children’s well-being) is just an added bonus. Her choice (even if on behalf of their PR team!) to play up her more traditional leanings has a lot to do with the fact that American conceptions of black motherhood not only are racist, but harmful in how they position black motherhood in opposition to white motherhood as a type of failure.

Don’t believe me? Think about how differently Sarah Palin’s campaign coverage would have looked had she been a black woman. Palin was a working mother with five children, one of whom, Bristol, was a teenager and pregnant while Mom was on the campaign trail. If Palin had been black (or Latina for that matter) she would have been cast as ignorant and uneducated and characterized as a drain on the system. Heteronormativity is not just about being straight; it is also about class, race, and lifestyle choices.”

- Samhita Mukhopadhyay (via whydoesanything)

"You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this..."

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:34:57 -0800

““You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist? And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.””

- Junot Diaz

buttonpoetry: Karly Fesolowich - “A letter to Alexander Graham...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:24:00 -0800

buttonpoetry: Karly Fesolowich - “A letter to Alexander Graham Bell from his deaf wife Mabel”

Giant forehead for giant memories

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:34:34 -0800

Giant forehead for giant memories