The Network for Public Education has sponsored a series of weekly ZOOM conversations in which I interview someone who has important things to say.
On Wednesday, I interviewed Jitu Brown, a prominent community organizer in Chicago and leader of the Journey for Justice Alliance, which has organizations in thirty cities.
When we set up the discussion, we thought we would talk mostly about privatization and Jitu Brown’s successful fight to save the Walter H. Dyett High School in Chicago. Jitu Brown is one of the heroes of my new book SLAYING GOLIATH, for his success in stopping Rahm Emanuel from closing Dyett.
These topics were discussed but the main focus was on the murder of George Floyd and racism in America. Jitu Brown has quite a lot to say about racism, in large part because of his experiences. We also talked about a Rahm Emanuel, and his disastrous role in running the public schools as mayor of Chicago.
Listeners said it was a “riveting” conversation.
Listen and see for yourself.
Next week, I will talk with Amy Frogge, a great leader of the resistance to privatization in Metro Nashville. She is a member of the Metro Nashville public school board, as well as a parent of public school students and a lawyer.
She too is a hero of SLAYING GOLIATH for her leadership in defending public schools.
We will talk about “The Fight for Better Public Schools in Tennessee.” The billionaires and their puppet organizations have poured many millions into school board races in an effort to capture control of the district. Amy has fought valiantly against proponents of charters and vouchers.
This is a battle that is being played out in urban districts across the nation.
Join us on Zoom on June 10 at 7:30 pm, EST.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I watched and listened to the whole conversation. Thank you for featuring Jitu Brown who really is doing heroic work in Chicago and beyond.
Thank you for watching.
I cannot begin to know what it is like to be black in this country. Since I mostly worked with Afro-Caribbean and Latinx students, I have listened a great deal to my students’ experiences with racism. My TA of twenty years was a middle class black American whose husband and son were in law enforcement. All had “driving while black” stories, stories of being shadowed by security in stores as well as overt, ignorant comments that were overheard by them. This was not in the South. This was in the suburbs of New York City.
I also have to say that most of our teachers were very aware of race relations, and the district actively sought excellent, minority teachers and administrators. Most white parents were also very pleased they could send their children to a good diverse school. Diversity is a benefit to all that embrace it. As Brown notes, we still have a lot of work to do to improve justice in this country.
This was not in the South.
Want to hear some racism? Try a country club locker room in a Boston suburb.
Country club locker room? How about just about anywhere in south Boston? In Portage County, Ohio. In the area between Bloomington and Indianapolis, notorious for its KKK heritage. At the Catholic high school from which I graduated. In central Florida? In any and every part of this country. I agree with you completely.
Didn’t mean to pick on south Boston. It’s just as bad in Lynn.
The shocking thing to me, Greg, when I lived in Boston is that virulent racism was endemic among wealthy, educated people. As someone who grew up in the Midwest and South, I expected better.
Bob, if you haven’t seen this, I think you’d be interested:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/torii-hunter-boston-no-trade-clause_n_5edd9746c5b6bd197e143762
Yeah. Doesn’t surprise me at all.
I was a thirteen-year-old kid living in Bloomington, Greg, at the time of the cowardly murder of Carol Jenkins-Davis in Martinsville, Indiana, between Bloomington and Indianapolis. She was a young woman attempting to sell encyclopedias from door to door to pay for her education. This evil deed had a powerful effect on me, cementing my dedication to doing whatever I could throughout my life to fight racism.
“As we work in coalition together, I want you to know that those screams for justice are inside of me every day, every day of my existence. I have an eleven-year-old son that I am terrified for because I view America as a wolf that preys on us, and it has never stopped. We have never stopped being lynched in this country. . . . That officer that laid on that man’s neck, let it sear into our spirits. There’s no escape. There’s nowhere to turn. And the question is, WHAT WILL YOU DO? Not to save us, because I don’t need anybody to save me, but TO SAVE THIS COUNTRY. . . . We are tired of SUVs full of white men patrolling our communities and beating us at their will.” –Jitu Brown
Powerful!
WHAT WILL YOU DO? Today’s version of Which Side Are You On?
“Taxes for the rich are the lowest in over 100 years. The military budget is the highest in history. The concentration of wealth and income is in the fewest hands. US wars have killed millions of people, and war profits are booming. Labor unions were neutered. Government is privatized. The economy has been deindustrialized. The police are militarized. The working class has been disenfranchised. The middle-class is being impoverished. The unemployed are idle. The poor are criminalized.
I could go on, but you get the point.
And what has the liberal class gotten in return? Token integration. Ending conscription. Adulthood at 18 years of age. Women in the workforce. Acceptance of LGBTQ. A black president. The MeToo movement. Legalized marijuana. A $1200 bailout. Help me out here—what else have the liberal class gotten in the past half-century,….?
The rich do not care about any of the liberal class’s identity politics and correctness.
(or essays, lessons, naming or shaming)
It costs the rich nothing to make those concessions….
The corporatists don’t care if Trump or Biden is the next president. ”
Chris Hedges
The racists care who is president. The neo-Nazis care who is president. The white power movement cares who is president.
And those who care about racism and don’t want a neo-Nazi, authoritarian white supremacist government care about who is president.
Nice to be in a position of white privilege that you get to “not care” whether it is Trump or Biden. The corporatists and some on the left have a lot in common. They don’t care. It doesn’t matter to them because racism doesn’t affect them, racist policing doesn’t affect them.
But the rest of us will vote for the Democrat. But clearly if racism and what NoBrick, Chris Hedges and the white right wing Republicans disparage as “identity politics” is something that is of no value to you, then you will refuse to vote for the Democrat and help continue your empowerment the far right Republican Party.
If your white privilege makes you dismiss racist policies and minimum wage raises and preserving Medicare and supporting a movement toward universal healthcare and preserving free speech and those just don’t mean anything to you, it means you have a lot in common with the corporatists who supposedly also don’t are about those things.
Funny how all those right wing billionaires who are “corporatists” just keep empowering the far right Republicans and not the Democrats.
Funny how all the people who claim to be opposed to “corporatists” have made it their personal mission to empower the far right Republican party that the corporatists love most and not the Democrats that have many members that the corporatists hate.
Or not so funny. Propaganda by privileged white people being used as stooges for the far right who understand what these overprivileged white people do not — that progressive movements build from democrats in power, not right wing Republicans.
And it’s not a coincidence that this type of propaganda comes from the same people who rabidly opposed Trump’s impeachment because they insisted that nothing he did was so wrong. That speaks to what their real concern is and it clearly has nothing to do with opposing corporatism.
This is all about empowering the far right wing Trumpsters. Just admit it already. You hate the democrats 1000x more than you hate Trump. And that speaks to your privilege.
In the middle of this, according to CNN, 41 percent of American voters still say they will vote for the vilest of the vile, Donald Trump. I know. I know. Biden leads by 9-to-11 points, depending on what poll you look at. That’s great, but this result still freaks me out, sickens and bewilders me. It’s so bizarre. What is wrong with these people?!?!?!?!?!?
The inescapable conclusion: 4 out of 10 Americans are ignorant, racist, and crazy.
Well Bob, maybe they are afraid of what they have seen play out in front of their lying eyes in Dem cities across the country for the last week. I know many former Dems (including myself) who are no longer going to vote for the party of “diversity.” I bet you are thankful (as am I) that you live in a red state right now.
What do we want? Dead Cops.
When do we want it? Now.
Pigs in a Blanket. Set them on Fire!
(Black Lives Matter)
What would Jeshua say?
Seriously, Abby? You think that he would call for the military to dominate peaceful protesters? For cops to continue to harass and murder people for being black? I am sickened by the Flor-uh-duh legislature and gun club and by our Trump Mini Me governor whose party put him in office by stealing the election via election fraud–closing polling places in black and brown neighborhoods, sending out mail-in ballots late to Democrats, and so on. If you think that that trash you posted is reflective of Black Lives Matter you are part of the problem. And you are a total moron.
Haaaaa!!!! It’s called democracy, Abby. Get used to it. Trump and the fascists around him aren’t going to be successful in their attempt to incite violence in these peaceful protests so that Private Bone Spurs can play policeman. And guess what? No matter how much racist crap they try to pull, this country is changing and there is nothing Trump and his Nazi ilk can do about it. Very, very soon, we shall be a majority black and brown country. His vile ilk will soon be an ugly history we tell, a reminder of how sick our society used to be.
Here’s the guy starting the looting in Minneapolis, which led to copycat looting elsewhere. A middle-aged white man with an umbrella dressed in paramilitary gear who walks into the protest, does this, then heads to his car to leave:
We’ve had millions of peaceful protesters all across the country and a few looters, almost all incited by white guys. These are the facts. Trump was clearly hoping to use these protests as a means to swagger about and play the tough guy, but even his own military leaders refuse to be used against American citizens in order to make Private Bone Spurs appear to be Mr. Tough Guy.
Trump was so frightened by the demonstrators that he hid in the White House bunker, then lied about doing it. He has surrounded the White House with a 14 foot fence. He is terrified of the people.
LOL, Diane. Exactly.
I’m sorry about the language I used, Abby, but that post was a racist affront to all the good people in the Black Lives Matter movement who are sick to death of systemic economic inequity and official violence against black and brown people in this country. It was a sick, racist caricature.
And yes, there were a few, very, very few, poor, uneducated, mostly very young black people who joined in the looting. Blacks make up 12.1 percent of the U.S. population but have only 2.6 percent of the wealth. Our inner cities are full of young people who never had anything. A few–very, very few, saw a chance to grab something. Not excusable. But also not surprising given the numbing history of economic exclusion of black people in this country. ALMOST ALL the protesters have been peaceful. When protests have turned violent, it has TYPICALLY been because violence was incited by police, lobbing tear gas and pepper spray at people exercising their Constitutional right to assembly and speech.
I am not, emphatically not, condoning looting or violence. It sickens me. But painting the Black Lives Matter movement in those terms is inexcusable and repulsive in the extreme. That’s never been what the movement was about. And we see that in the peaceful protests and protection of shops and calls from black leaders across this country to refrain from looting and violence. A few bad apples in a forest.
And here is what my brother Yeshua would say to the cops shooting journalists and peaceful protesters in the face with rubber bullets, pushing peacefully protesting old men to the ground and cracking their skulls, and all the other sickening stuff we’ve seen in the last few days: “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” –Matt 25:40
Who’s “dominating” peaceful protesters? I only QUOTED the BLM chanters- don’t blame me if you don’t like their rhetoric:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/black-lives-matter-protesters-chant-for-dead-cops-now-in-baton-rouge/
Trump is inciting violence? Seems to me to be a money grab by a bunch of people who couldn’t care less about George Floyd or anyone else but their greedy selves. Have you taken a stroll down Manhattan lately? It looks like a war zone. I doubt it will ever come back. I know many people who are moving out.
Systemic racism? In Democratic-run cities, such as Baltimore? They have a black mayor, black police commissioner and a black police chief. They have been under Democratic leadership since 1934. One has to wonder, why are they still oppressed? Why is there still systemic racism under this Democratic regime? It must have something to do with their leaders, right? Something to ponder.
Gee, Diane, why was the president of the United States frightened?
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/george-floyd-protests-05-31-20/h_cb459ab077b164295d8d61d80987e3fb
More than 60 secret service agents injured in attacks by the democracy-loving protesters. Was Obama ever treated thus by Republican protesters?
I cannot believe you so-called Liberals who defend this criminality!
What is liberalism if not respect for life, property, free speech and rule of law?? NOTHING. And yet this week we have had two newspaper editors lose their jobs for daring to express opinions opposed to the Kommissariat. No doubt the Gulag or the Guillotine or Maoist Re-education Camps are next. That’s a requirement for utopian liberals. We’ve been here before – we all know how this ends.
“A few looters”? Some Dem-run cities will NEVER come back from this:
https://www.startribune.com/manufacturer-that-burned-during-mpls-riots-plans-to-move-out-of-the-city/571104922/
Bye-Bye to businesses, Dem-run cities, They are going somewhere where the Rule of Law applies!
Especially now that some of these misguided cities are going to defund the police, a brilliant decision of which 14% of the American people approve. You really can’t make this stuff up.
I’m sorry, but I have lost all respect for both of you. I won’t be posting anymore. Goodbye and good luck.
Signing off…..
Abby,
You don’t understand the lure of cities. They are a magnet for young people. They are diverse. When there is not a global pandemic, cities are alive with concerts, museums, plays, and in New York City—Broadway! There is a German expression which I won’t attemp to write in German: City air makes free.
Yes, cities are more liberal than suburbs and rural areas. People who are creative will always be drawn to city life.
I can’t wait for Broadway to turn the lights on again!!
It’s “a great day for Floyd,” says the Moronavirus trumpinski orangii. What, exactly, Mr. “He who plays President on TV,” is so great about being the dead victim of racist official violence? What exactly is so peachy about having a pretend President in orange clown makeup who responds to a nationwide call to end state violence against black people by threatening to use the military to attack American citizens on American soil?
No justice, no peace
Silence is violence
Meant to comment, Moronavirus should become a thing. The Moronavirus of Idiocy.
I understand what Jitu said about not wanting to force integration. I would agree with him about that if we could ensure that all public schools would always be equitably funded, and guarantee that schools in predominantly black communities would never again be targeted for closure and privatization. While being in a segregated environment might be comfortable and even supportive for many people, there is no known way to keep a segregated community from racist predation. De facto segregation is dangerous, and de jure integration is the responsibility of the federal government after Brown v Board. Integration and civil rights are inseparable.
Agreed. Teaching in Southern Florida, in an integrated school, I saw this first-hand. Many of my white students of extremely racist parents nonetheless had shed those sick beliefs and had extremely close cross-racial friendships, boyfriends, and girlfriends. This was beautiful to see. Racism is a distillate of ignorance, fear of the unknown, and a pathetic desire to position one’s self as superior vis-à-vis some Other. When racist whites actually get to know some black people, it fades like dew before the sun.
The song from “South Pacific” was powerfully true: “You have to be carefully taught to hate.”
Hatred does not come naturally. It is instilled by word and deed.