This is the first election my 7 year old son will remember and the funny thing is, he looks like a young Obama….. as part of his interest in “politics” he read the entire Essence article on the family and didn’t mind mentioning that he wanted to know how old the girls were…..Let’s see if I can steer his interest in another direction…at least for now- LOL

- as always the Gris Gris Goddess In Action - Gia Hamilton ( Blue Orleans)

www.thegoddessinaction.com for New Orleans, womanist art and culture

By Caren Bohan Caren Bohan – Sun Oct 19, 3:38 pm ET

Featured Topics:

• John McCain
• Barack Obama

Play Video ABC News  – Obama’s Money Influx

• Play Video Video: Does Powell Nod Help? ABC News
• Play Video Video: Former Secretary of State Powell endorses Obama AP
• Play Video Video: Biden defends Obama tax-cut plan in Wash. AP

AFP – US Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama smiles during a rally at the Crown …

FAYETTEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama won the support of former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday and announced he raised a record $150 million last month, dealing a double blow to rival John McCain’s U.S. presidential campaign.

McCain, despite trailing in opinion polls and fundraising, said he still expects to win the November 4 election and could sense “things are heading our way.”

Powell, who served several Republican presidents including George W. Bush as his first secretary of state, said either candidate would make a good president but he was critical of McCain’s uncertainty on how to deal with the economic crisis.

Powell, who in the past was mentioned as possibly the first black U.S. president, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he backed Obama “because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he’s reaching out all across America, because of who he is.”

“I think he is a transformational figure,” Powell said of the man who could become the first black president. “His is a new generation coming … onto the world stage, American stage.”

Powell’s backing of Obama, 47, could give a boost to the foreign policy and national security credentials of the first-term Illinois senator and appeal to moderates and independents.

But the impact of endorsements on voters is questionable and Powell’s reputation was somewhat tarnished by making the case for invading Iraq to the United Nations on the false claims that it possessed weapons of mass destruction.

In the midst of economic turmoil and with just over two weeks to go until the election, Obama leads in national polls and in many battleground states but McCain said he sees some movement in his direction.

Obama’s lead over McCain has dropped to 3 points, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday. Obama leads McCain 48 to 45 percent among likely U.S. voters, down 1 percentage point from Saturday.

“We’re very happy with the way the campaign is going,” McCain said on the “Fox News Sunday” program. “I’ve been on enough campaigns, my friend, to sense enthusiasm and momentum, and we’ve got it.”

LOVES THE UNDERDOG ROLE

McCain, 72, said he did not mind being behind in polls.

“And I love being the underdog. You know every time that I’ve gotten ahead, somehow I’ve messed it up,” he said, referring to the times he has been written off as a candidate.

Obama’s fundraising announcement highlighted his disproportionate ability to spend money and blanket the air waves with advertisements, sometimes by a margin of 4-to-1 over McCain.

By bringing in at least $150 million in September, Obama more than doubled the $66 million he raised in August, which had been a record. McCain has accepted public financing and is limited to spending $84 million for the entire campaign.

Unlike McCain, Obama chose not to accept public funding for his campaign, freeing him to raise millions privately.

The Obama campaign said it had 632,000 new donors in September to bring its total to 3.1 million. It said the average donation for the month was less than $100.

McCain again chided Obama for not living up to his pledge to accept public funds and warned of the damages of unlimited spending.

“I’m saying that history shows us where unlimited amounts of money are in political campaigns, it leads to scandal,” he said. When asked whether Obama was buying the election as his campaign spokesman claimed, McCain said, “I think you could make that argument.”

McCain was spending the day in Ohio, a state he must win if he is to be president. No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio and it was the state that put Bush over the top in 2004.

Obama was also in a battleground state with a heavy military presence, North Carolina, which had been expected to be an easy Republican win but is now in play for Democrats.

At Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg, the home of the 82nd Airborne Division, Obama called Powell “a great soldier, a great statesman and a great American” and thanked him for his advice over the years.

“He reminded us that at this defining moment, we don’t have the luxury of relying on the same political games, the same political tactics that have been used in so many elections to divide us from one another and make us afraid of one another,” Obama told the cheering crowd of about 10,000 people.

Powell said he has no plans to campaign for Obama and was not looking for a job in his administration but he left the door open to the possibility.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro and Jeff Mason; Writing by David Wiessler; Editing by John O’Callaghan)

Who determines if black students are failing  and why?

What exactly are our children learning….. I have ventured into several RSD schools and they are riddled with pseudo militaristic  behavior modification techniques with little or no context around the deep and profound changes that need to take place.  As a neccesary evil, I decided to send my oldest son (7) to school this year, we moved from Brooklyn to New Orleans ( home) after a 12 year hiatus.   The time that we arrived in New Orleans left us little choice in where to send him, even though we lived in the Lusher School District ( Lusher is one of the most popular public high achieving New Orleans metro area).  The others that follow are Hynes, International School and Audubon Montessori, Ben Franklin and a hand full of others.  My son, who tested highly gifted in math and science was “accepted” to Green Charter School a school who has traditionally dealt with low performance, behavior issues, and lack of parental involvement and commitment.  Green Charter on the positive side includes access to the Edible Garden, a project which promotes sustainability through urban farming philosophies.  The principal, Jay Altman, returned with his family from Europe to lead and  cultivaet a new school environment.  What my son is already saying is that his work is not challenging, in second grade his spelling words include words like down and wind.  He has a fifth grade vocabulary level, surely the No Child Left Behind is leaving some of our children behind. It has become a sort of babysitting service, my son  engages in a few activities that keep him busy most of the day, free reading and playing outsidefor 20 minutes keep him from going nuts.  I keep him home or send him late as often aI possibly can and have even enlisted his pediatrician in on my plan to access better resources and give him more free time during the day.  Recently I kept him home because he missed the bus and I had a spanish tutoring session at a nearby cafe.  He challenged out of his uniform and jumped on his scooter and brought books, paper and markers and entertained himself while I took a crack at conjugating verbs.  He tried a few times successfully, and then took a nap.  Oh that’s the other disgusting this, which is that school lasts from 7:30 to 4:30pm, they stand up, sit down, cross their legs and fold their hands, Apsu almost pees on himself bcause he doesn’t want to waste precious time in teh bathroom when he could be outside playing during the 20 minutes of free time- How do I do it?

I know that CREED will have a home here in New Orleans, I know that this “experiment” is short lived and that once again my son will return to a comfortable learning environment dictated by his interests with resources supplied by me and the community at large.   At work, he helped our IT Director wire up a few computers, played on his favorite “learning site” time4learning.com, read a book picked out soley by him and drew a few pictures.  At home he has free range of the computer ( well except when I am not on it) art supplies, outside, tools, books, music,  blocks, legos and pretty much anything else he decides is fascinating.

I do enjoy the idea of individuals including multi age children coming together in one place to exchange ideas, learn a particular subject together, cook, eat and read etc., that’s just not at most schools, not most RSD schools anyway, you have the teachers struggling with the idea that yelling is not an option, behavior modification, responsive classroom when really is stems from a deep and honest respect for children as human beings.  I make mistakes daily in my interactions with my children, I only hope that my honesty and dedication to them propels them forward, changes a new generation to be even more progressive and accepting of integrated learning.  Once I get more settled and officially launch CREED Center, you will hear a joy from an overworked incredibly focused visionary who is determined to give children of color a choice about their education.

GO HOME do- gooder hipsters who think their systems work for my children.  New Orleans has enough weekend drunks and opportunists here! The systems don’tand let’s not pretend they’re suppose to work.   I determine the success or failure of my children,  save me the violins or  long dissertation later on in life explaining why these systems failed in the 21st Century with web 2.0 available.

Job Posting: Needed a few interesting, caring, trustworthy, intrinsically motivated people with skills that they are passionate about to engage youth.  No teaching experience necessary in fact ~  ONLY RADICAL FORWARD THINKERS MAY APPLY!

Read on to find out about the development of the educational matrix…..

written by radical Gris Gris Goddess In Action - Gia Hamilton, native New Orleanian

Several RSD schools expected to become charters in coming years

by Sarah Carr, The Times-Picayune

Wednesday October 01, 2008, 9:53 PM

Several schools in the Recovery School District are likely to become charter schools in the next few years as part of a continuing push toward school decentralization in New Orleans, which already has the highest percentage of charters of any city in the country.

Independent charter operators will probably take over the lower grades of at least four poorly performing schools next fall, said district Superintendent Paul Vallas. At the same time, the top-performing district schools, probably about a third of the elementary-level programs, will be given the option of applying for charters over the next two years, he said.

All of the changes need the approval of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The move is part of an effort, pushed by Vallas and state Superintendent Paul Pastorek, to create a system in which successful schools can “graduate” out of the state-run district and attain more autonomy, while failing schools receive swift help, sometimes from outside school operators.

Training under way

New Schools for New Orleans, a nonprofit that has nurtured several new charter schools, is already working to train four educators who next year would take control of four poorly performing schools identified by the Recovery School District.

“This is the first time I’ve been able to work so closely with a district to create a new (charter) school, ” said Matt Candler, the chief executive officer of New Schools.

Charter school proposals call for the New Schools trainees to start their programs in the younger grades of the school campuses, and gradually expand to run the entire school.

“The idea is not to let a school that is failing stay in that mode for very long, ” said Gary Robichaux, the director of elementary schools for the district.

Whether many of the district’s schools become charters, though, will depend on how many leaders of the best-performing schools are interested in pursuing the change. Robichaux says he knows of at least a couple of elementary schools that plan to start work on charter applications in the spring, although he declined to say which ones because their plans have not been finalized.

Selection process criticized

But Cheryllyn Branche, the principal of Benjamin Banneker Elementary School, one of the programs that Vallas said would probably be given the option down the road, said she has little interest in having her school become a charter “under the current system.”

“I think the threshold for charters has already been exceeded” in the city, Branche said. “There are plenty of them.”

Branche criticized some New Orleans charter schools for being selective in which students they serve, either overtly through admissions criteria or more subtly by sending special-education students with severe needs to other schools.

Data from the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years show that charter schools, on average, had lower percentages of special-education students than traditional schools, although figures from this school year are not yet available.

Wanda Guillaume, the principal of Craig Elementary School, another program Vallas said might be eligible to apply for a charter, said the school has not discussed the prospect.

Pastorek said he does not envision that all schools in the city will ever be charters, but he does want their numbers to rise.

“I don’t have a preset notion of how many there would be, ” he said. “But I do expect to see more charter schools.”

He added that high-performing schools, unlike poorly performing ones, should not be forced to become charters. “We should not seek to put it out of business for the sake of making a charter school, ” he said.

According to the most recent survey by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, 55 percent of New Orleans public school students attend charter schools, by far the highest percentage of any city in the country. In Dayton, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., the two cities where charter schools have the second- and third-highest market shares, between one-fourth and one-third of public school students attended charters last school year.

New to New Orleans

Charter schools are run by independent boards, which give the schools greater autonomy but may also mean less accountability. But since most of the current crop of charters in New Orleans have not reached the end of their first charter contracts, it’s unclear how aggressive the state and School Board will be in closing down low performers.

Robichaux said the district schools taken over by “third-party” charter operators will be ones that “haven’t shown any major growth in a two-year period.”

He added that the charter operators will start by trying to change the school culture in four of the lower grades and expand over time to run the entire school. He said the district is also speaking with representatives of the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP, about that network working to transform chronically failing Recovery School District schools, and that in other cases the district might work in-house to better manage the schools.

The high-performing schools that will be given the option of becoming charters must have school performance scores above 60, the state’s threshold for determining whether a school is failing.

In the next year, about one-third of the district’s schools should reach that threshold, according to Robichaux.

. . . . . . .

Sarah Carr can be reached at scarr@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3497

Given the current media hysteria whipped up by the RNC, McCain and Pailin themselves, and all of the right wing-nuts and bloggers, “it is refreshing in this “Britney” moment to still find one or two voices trying to get it right.  In coming days, we look at a couple of more than try find some balance and even think about being “objective,” which used to be a standard for journalism. -Wade Rathke

Since when did being compared to Britney become a good thing? ACORN certainly is having its Britney moment, now imagine if radicals could organize around education and principles of learning… imagine all the people….no…err. ..not the song- for REAL!  Maybe that’s what lefties and radicals should have been doing all along- pairing up with pop stars, the more infamous the better.  I wonder if that’s what I must do to get funding for these learning centers for children of color…. Connect with Lil Wayne?  Hit me baby one more time.  Naw but seriously my goal is to connect with the fierce ( thanks Christian for popularizing that word) and visionary famous folks who want to see change and make a difference. Are there really those who believe that children of color deserve the same access to the cutting edge education as their children?  How will we talk about the education of our youth  of color 150 years from now?  Will we simply say what a fucked up system we created and how we wished we had the resources and know how to drastically change and do things differently …you know the way slavery and Jim Crow are referred to………?  Or will the pioneers, the anti institution builders, but collective and cooperative builders stand up proud and tall and take this opportunity as a moment in time to shine, for better or for worse in sickness ( and God knows its sick right now) and in health.   I  mean the saying goes ” any press is good press”, right? and so if that’s true then being named number ten on the search list of the New York Times will certainly count as press.   How will ACORN be remembered in 150 years… as the organization who fraudently registered a young person 74 times or as one of the most powerful movement driven membership based grass roots organizations with the majority of its constituents coming from people of color…. We will just have to wait and see….. in our history books err.. damn I mean history websites, micro chips, nano chips, implantations… you know what I mean.

- Gia Hamilton ( as always the Goddess In Action- super hero who hears the cries of all who hum a tune and sing a song) www.thegoddessinaction.com

JOIN THE REVOLUTION AT WWW.CREEDCENTER.ORG

Check out what ACORN’s Founder has to say…

Front Page Everywhere  

October 16, 2008  by Wade Rathke

            New Orleans               The 3^rd and final debate of the United States Presidential contest was last night at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York on Long Island.  ACORN was right smack in the middle of the action with a hurling accusation by McCain at Obama demanding an explanation of his relationship to the organization.  Obama swatted the punch aside, saying he had represented ACORN in the early 1990’s on a suit to compel the State of Illinois to enforce the federal motor voter law and that he understood some of ACORN’s paid temporary registration staff might have made some mistakes.  Obama correctly said none of this was the point.  But, in ACORN’s Britney Spears moment, being front and center in the white-hot of this election and its partisan heavy artillery, means the “flesh eating machine,” as Herbert Marcuse famously called the media in an interview in the New York Times magazine a million years ago, was oiled and ready to rock.
McCann’s “ACORN punch” was of course also sooooo over the top and flatfooted that there was no way it could land in a million years.  His exact question (according to the lead story on the front page of the Times) was in full context:
But as Mr. Schieffer seemed prepared to move to another topic, Mr. McCain returned to Mr. Ayers on his own. Mr. McCain seemed most agitated in that moment, saying: “I don’t care about an old, washed-up terrorist. But as Senator Clinton said in her debates with you, we need to know the full extent of that relationship. We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with Acorn, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”
He was referring to a community activist group that focuses on housing issues and has been running voter registration efforts in many states that have drawn accusations of fraud.
Obama’s exact response, also from the same story in today’s Times:
On Acorn, Mr. Obama said, “Apparently what they have done is they were paying people to go out and register folks. And apparently some of the people who were out there didn’t really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names. Had nothing to do with us. We were not involved.”
Speaking of his involvement with the group, he said, “The only involvement I’ve had with Acorn was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people register at D.M.V.’s.” Mr. Obama’s campaign made some payments to an affiliate of Acorn.
Separate stories ran on the wires, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and pretty much everywhere, including the Jakarta Post and the Taipei Times.
There were TV stories galore.  In Western PA a channel 11 tried to interview an ACORN voter register, who happened to be a transvestite, and “flashed” the reporter.  Video was available.   CNN and Fox News seem to go into attack mode.
There were stories in newspapers and on television that were looking for ACORN in their towns and disappointed not to find the organization.  In Kansas the reporter was almost disappointed that the organization had not been more active in registration.  In Charleston, South Carolina, where ACORN has never had an office, there was a long story about not finding ACORN, and trying to contact an office elsewhere unsuccessfully to find out what ACORN was doing in the state.  There were stories lots of places that were disappointed that they had not had problems with ACORN.  In a left handed defense many election commissioners said that at worst ACORN might have had some problem with “bad” staff or sloppiness or whatever, but, sorry, no fraud here, ma’am.
Representative Barney Frank actually fired back a defense of the organization, by squarely labeling the whole mess nothing more than intense partisanship running up to the election.
A piece in the San Francisco Chronicle actually stood out as a beacon in the storm by explaining the difference between voter registration problems and the miniscule change that such problems resulted in “voter fraud.”  Further quotes on the positive experience with ACORN voter registration efforts could not be missed in the piece.  Luckily, the piece also ran on the wire in other papers elsewhere.
Greg Gordon writing from the Washington Bureau of the normally very conservative chain of McClatchy newspapers had one of the most even and thorough pieces on the controversy by accurately dating the long history of bogus Republican charges right before elections and the likelihood that this was more of the same.  The headline perhaps caught the tenor best:  “ACORN may be victim of its own workers in voter registration cases.”
Given the current media hysteria whipped up by the RNC, McCain and Pailin themselves, and all of the right wing-nuts and bloggers, it is refreshing in this “Britney” moment to still find one or two voices trying to get it right.  In coming days, we look at a couple of more than try find some balance and even think about being “objective,” which used to be a standard for journalism.

“You take it from here to there.”

Category:   Community Organizing, Ideas and Issues

Ain’t I a Mommy?

Bookstores Brim with Motherhood Memoirs. Why Are So Few of Them Penned by Women of Color?

Article by Deesha Philyaw, appeared in issue Genesis; filed under: Books; tagged: mommy wars, motherhood, parenting, publishing, race, women of color.

Shortly before the birth of my first child nine years ago, while browsing the bookstore for mommy wisdom, I discovered Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year and fell in love with the author and the book. More than any parenting truisms the book might have contained, it was Lamott’s writing style—funny, self-deprecating, and brutally honest—that kept me reading. The big mommy insight I gleaned from Operating Instructions was that I wasn’t quite as neurotic as Anne, so my kid and I would probably be all right.

Read

4 comments

Death threat, vandalism hit ACORN after McCain comments

More on this Story

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group’s Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month.

Attorneys for ACORN — short for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now — were notifying the FBI and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division of the incidents, said Brian Kettenring, a Florida-based spokesman for the group.

Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, have attacked the group repeatedly in recent days, alleging a widespread vote-fraud scheme, although they have provided little proof. It was disclosed Thursday that the FBI is examining whether thousands of fraudulent voter registration applications submitted by some ACORN workers were part of a systematic effort or were merely isolated incidents.

Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an email stating that she “is going to have her life ended.”

A woman staffer in Providence, R.I., also got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect that “we know you get off work at nine,” and then made racial epithets, he said.

McClatchy is withholding both of the women’s names because of the threats.

Separately, vandals broke into the group’s Boston and Seattle offices and stole the group’s computers, Kettenring said.

The incidents came the day after McCain warned in the final presidential debate that ACORN’s voter registration drive “may be perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history” and may be “destroying the fabric of democracy.”

McCain’s comments provoked a response from ACORN.

“I would not say that Sen. McCain is inciting violence,” Kettenring said, “but I would say that his statements about the role of this manufactured scandal were totally outlandish. We would call on Sen. McCain to tamp down the fringe elements in his party.”

McCain’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kettenring said that ACORN has received growing amounts of hate mail in recent weeks, but “the campaign debate sort of tipped it over to a scary point where raising allegations of voter fraud went from a cynical campaign ploy to really inciting racial violence.”

Since McCain’s remarks, ACORN’s 87 offices across the country have received hundreds of hostile emails, many of them containing racial slurs, Kettenring said. “We believe that these are specifically McCain supporters” sending the messages. The email to the Cleveland employee was traced to a Facebook web page in the name of a Baltimore man. It featured a photo of a McCain-Palin sign.

Kettenring said that the bulk of the emails have been either “flat-out racist” or included racial overtones, because most of the group’s 400 members and about 80 percent of the 13,000 voter registration canvassers are African-American or Latino.

It’s unclear whether the alleged threats violated federal law, but Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, argued that the Voting Rights Act should apply.

“A real concern is the impact that these terrible acts have on the people who registered through these registration drives,” Goldman said. “Legitimate, eligible voters who sign up through these registration drives may be understandably intimidated and choose not to show up at the polls, and the Voting Rights Act prevents voter intimidation.”

Not long ago, homeschooling was thought of as the domain of hippie earth mothers letting their kids do their own thing or creationist Christians shielding their kids from monkey science and premarital sex. As recently as 1980, homeschooling was illegal in 30 states. Despite the fact that such figures as Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Atwood, Sandra Day O’Connor, and, um, Jennifer Love Hewitt were products of a home education, the practice is still often seen as strange and even detrimental.

These days, homeschooling is legal across the country, and parents are homeschooling for secular reasons as well as faith-based ones: quality of education, freedom to travel, their kids special needs, or simply a frustration with the educational system. Most significantly, many progressive parents are taking their kids education into their own hands to instill open-mindedness and social consciousness along with reading, science, and math.

For these parents, unschooling is an attractive option. In this approach to homeschooling, kids choose what they’ll study and investigate their questions outside the confines of a classroom. In traditional homeschooling, parents play the role of teachers, determining the curriculum, handing out assignments, and administering tests. Unschooling parents, on the other hand, act as facilitators, guiding their kids explorations. Even though the diyapproach may appeal to progressives who identify with the anti-establishment ethos of the punk movement, homeschooling still raises tricky questions for progressive mothers.

Namely, this one: Can women trade their careers for their families without sacrificing a few of their feminist values the very values that inspired many of them to homeschool in the first place? It’s no wonder that punk feminist moms like Kim Campbell, who has homeschooled her kids for seven years, occasionally feel like walking oxymorons.

Despite her indie values, Campbell worries that her economic dependence on her husband could set a bad example for her daughter. The first half year that we homeschooled, I had a complete identity crisis over the matter, she says. At the time I knew that I was making a great decision, but I couldn’t figure out how to square it with what I’d always considered my feminist sensibilities. For Campbell and a growing contingent of other feminist unschoolers across the country, educating their kids has also been a process of figuring out how homeschooling jibes with their feminism.

Nina Packebush, a Washington state mom of three and self-described radical parent, started teaching her son at home because he was dyslexic and had ADHD, and his school wasn’t providing the personal attention he needed. As Packebush sought out teaching resources, she discovered a gaping hole in standard history textbooks.

I noticed that women and people of color were virtually nonexistent, Packebush says. Don’t even try to find any mention of lgbt people in history. One thing led to another, and soon I was homeschooling because I was a feminist. When her youngest child reached school age, Packebush chose to keep her out of the classroom solely because of its gender-biased curriculum.

Instead of using the standard Houghton Mifflin textbooks, Packebush provides a variety of mass-market books, like Freedom’s Children, for her kids. Beyond that, she follows where her kids interests lead; unschooling emphasizes that learning opportunities can pop up at any time. When Packebush’s older daughter became interested in zine-making, it became their curriculum. Packebush even started up her own zine, The Edgy-Catin Mama.

Sarah Schira, who maintains TheDenimJumper.com, a website for sassy secular homeschoolers, says that simply hanging out is one of the best routes to consciousness building. One of the strengths of homeschooling is the incredible amount of time we spend together, she says. We listen to the news on the radio all the time, and they hear our reactions, the political discussions it raises. We talk a lot about societal institutions and the role that larger, almost invisible factors play in shaping events and free choice.

Spending an incredible amount of time with your kids is great when they’re 8 and 10, like Schira’s. But what about when they’re 12or 17? Can homeschoolers encourage the development of their kids social consciousness without dictating it? It seems that the answer comes back to unschooling and the notion of parents as facilitators, not commanders-in-chief. Granted, kids will always be influenced by their parents views, but if parents stress self-realization as a family value, kids may be more motivated to apply their lessons and grapple with important issues on their own terms.

That doesn’t mean that freedom can’t be a hard pill to swallow, even for a radical parent. At 18, Packebush’s son Jason announced that he planned to become a porn star and asked what she’d do to stop him. Well, I won’t see your movies, she replied, biting back cries of rage. Eventually, Jason lost interest in the porn-star dream, and Packebush chalked up a couple of coolness points. It’s important to trust your kids, she says, even if they choose something that hits you right in the guts.

As challenging and rewarding as homeschooling may be, some don’t see it as real work. A slew of recent books, including Leslie Bennetts’s bestseller The Feminine Mistake, argue that while stay-at-home moms, like homeschoolers, may believe they are choosing to leave the workforce, their decisions are actually influenced by insidious patriarchal forces. Many homeschooling moms counter that removing themselves from the marketplace means freeing themselves from its many sexist influences. If they have the financial means or the ingenuity to opt out, they’d rather live outside the workforce. Schira says that by rejecting the idea that success is all about money, she’s reconceptualizing what happiness means. I have come to recognize that I don’t want the kind of life being offered by our culture, she says. I don’t want things. I don’t want status. I want interdependence, harmony, new solutions to old problems.

Of course, resorting to one income brings out the five-ton mammoth in the room: most homeschoolers are women and most of their income providers are men. Packebush, who was married when she began homeschooling, says that even in her hip, alternative, feminist marriage, she was the one doing most of the childcare and teaching. The vast majority of the people doing homeschooling are women, she says.

Often, that’s because moms want to be their family’s primary teachers. But raising radical, revolutionary children isn’t feminist if the mom’s individuality is getting lost in the lives of her kids. It’s tough for homeschooling mothers to maintain their free time. Forums for homeschoolers abound with tips for dealing with burnout. The workload can be overwhelming, and even with a “fuck money” attitude, it’s natural to feel undercompensated at times. Homeschooling mothers must negotiate a fine line between protesting capitalism and becoming unpaid labor.

Considering progressive parents efforts to break with capitalism spending less, living alternatively, working cooperatively it makes sense that many homeschoolers don’t want their kids going anywhere near the mainstream school system. For Coleen Murphy, a New Orleans mom who was homeschooled herself, the negative social aspects of public education are a major reason she homeschools her two young boys.

I see the school system as largely reinforcing the very worst aspects of societal norms, such as classism, racism, sexism, and good old mean-spiritedness, while limiting or removing access and opportunities to experience the best of what happens when human beings come together acting with compassion; helping others because your help is needed, rather than to win some gold stars or other false rewards; asking questions because we want to know the answers rather than in order to display which of us knows the most how to please authority figures.

Along with the question of self-expression comes gender expression and unschooled kids are prone to ignoring (or at least toning down) the gender distinctions that rule most schools. Take Diana, a homeschooled 17-year-old from New Haven, Connecticut, who swears by Kate Bornstein’s book Gender Outlaw and is very grateful to have missed out on the school social scene. Not going to high school or middle school, I’ve never had that onslaught of pressure to do all sorts of pointless competitive things, like lose my virginity before I wanted to, or be sexy so men will like me, or be queer for the enjoyment of an audience, she says.

Avoiding homophobia is central to many parents decision to homeschool. Packebush thinks queer, feminist homeschooling is on the rise because parents see it as an escape from the rampant sexism, homophobia, and transphobia of public schools. Gender construction is one of the biggest reasons I keep my kids out of school.

Unschoolers conceptions of gender are shaped not only by their open-minded parents, but also by their immediate environment. Having fewer kids around may mean less of a tendency to stereotype by gender or other handy labels. On the other hand, most schools also bring together individuals from different backgrounds, and although the routine clashes based on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation can make a mainstream school a shitty place to be, that diversity can also be instructive. It’s easy to be color-blind when you’re not exposed to racism; it’s easy to ignore gender when you’re not confronted with sexism. Getting to know a varied group of people at a young age and seeing how discrimination impacts everyone could build awareness of the conflicts inherent in our society.

For this reason, many feminist homeschoolers make a concerted effort to expose their kids to a diverse crowd. Though many homeschoolers roll their eyes at the most prominent pop-culture depiction of a homeschooled kid Lindsay Lohan’s character in Mean Girls Jesse Cordes Selbin, a 19-year-old who was homeschooled for seven years, says she identifies with her. Selbin spent a considerable portion of her teens in Sweden and says interacting with a wider world helped her put the often-brutal social scene of many schools in perspective. My parents homeschooled me so that I could get more experience in the world, not so that I could shelter myself from it.

As the feminist homeschooling movement gains momentum, mothers will increasingly be faced with tough, identity-defining questions: Does being a feminist mean you have to have a paid job? What does it mean to raise a feminist kid? Is there a feminist definition of success, and should there be? It’s important to keep in mind that a homeschooling mom is many things besides a homeschooling mom even if she can’t stop talking about her kid’s latest papier-mache dinosaur. Forging these more complex identities entails recognizing all the hats they wear besides homeschooler. Packebush is a zinester, Schira is a webmaster and writer, and so on. They’re Marxists, or anarchists, or punks, or please-don’t-define-me-the-reason-I-homeschool-is-to-get-away-from-this-label-slapping-bullshit human beings.

As for Kim Campbell, she’s still unschooling and still fighting critics of her decision with a vengeance. When others question whether her decision to stop working is feminist, she responds, Honey, you don’t know from work!

Maya Schenwar is a reporter for Truthout.org, and was a contributing editor for Punk Planet magazine until its recent demise. She lives in Chicago and still has nightmares about middle school.

A friend called me the other morning frantic and frustrated by a situation at a local public elementary school. She was walking her 5 year old kindergarten son to his class when she saw a security guard get into a screaming match with a third grader and then proceed to physically restrain the child. What is wrong with this picture? Well, um for starters- EVERYTHING!!!! My friend rushed through the hallway praying that her son had not seen the incident as she had. It then reminded me of a conversation that I had one day at soccer with a white homeschooling mother. She thanked me for my candid remarks about being a mother of black boys- and by that I mean boys of color. I told her that homeschooling was very different for me-  My sons are cute now..(according to society), but they are the ones people clutch their purses around. How are our children criminalized? Do I participate in the process by talking to my students about the police or planning how to approach the subject of police brutality with my young boys? It is a sad thought, that all the hard work of parenting three beautiful, intelligent boys could be questioned by strangers because of our inability to deal with race and diversity in this country. Is that how the security felt about black children- like they belong in cuffs? Like they were troublesome or deserving of certain titles. This bothers me on so many levels! I live and work in Brooklyn, a gentrifying Brooklyn where the brownstones of Bed Stuy go for $500,000 and up yet I still hear gunshots every other night. I shelter my children from a lot of it, we go to parks in other neighborhoods, my partner meets us at the bus or train station if we are out past dark, but I can’t help but wonder how many of these kids hanging on the streets are wrongly accused each day of being a criminal. While I do believe that we live in a society that glorifies gun culture- and no I don;t just mean hip hop, but american culture in general; I am still the hopeless romantic, the idealist at heart who wants to believe that we will rise up and change the systems that enslave our minds. I want to continue to have these conversations with people, I want to continue to enlighten folks and let them know that it is NOT fair that I need to have certain conversations because I have black boys. I want mental freedom too! I want to walk to my local park or drive by my neighborhood school and see the children in my neighborhood treating others with respect and being treated with respect- otherwise aren’t we all just contributing to the Prison Industrial Complex and tracking our third grade boys into prison? Do we truly recognize prison culture when we see it on the streets or do we dismiss it as pop culture or the cliche of hip hop culture?

OCTOBER 22, 2008: National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation

IN NEW YORK:
Gather at 4:30pm at the Harlem State Office Building (corner of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd (Seventh Ave) & 125th Street, Manhattan (A/B/C/D/2/3 to 125th Street)

Open organizing meeting October 16th at 6:00pm at the Center for Constitutional Rights, 666 Broadway, between Bond and Great Jones Streets, Manhattan, NY (6th Floor).  For more information, please call toll-free 866-235-7814, email oct22ny@yahoo. com or visit the website http://october22- ny.org

IN NEW JERSEY:
Press Conference, March & Rally
4:30pm Stating of Demands for Reform at the Attorney General’s Office (153 Halsey Street, Newark)
5:30pm Getting the Word Out at Newark Penn Station to distribute “Your Rights and the Police” cards
6:30pm Vigil for Victims of Police Misconduct at the office of the Brazilian Voice Newspaper (412 Chestnut Street, the Ironbound)

For more information, please call ACLU-NJ at 973-642-2084 or check out the website http://www.aclu- nj.org/news/ aclunjholdsmarch forpolicea. htm

STOLEN LIVES INDUCTION CEREMONY
November 22, 2008
Time TBA
The Gallery of John H. Holmes Community House of the Community Church of New York
28 E. 35th Street (between Park & Madison Ave), Manhattan
(6 to 33rd Street, B/D/F/N/Q/R/ V/W to 34th Street-Herald Square) The Stolen Lives Induction Ceremony is an occasion in which recent and past victims of police killings are formally inducted into the roster of the Stolen Lives Project. The Stolen Lives Induction Ceremony is both an affirmation of life and a call to action. It brings together family members to a space in which the humanity of their loved ones lost at the hands of the police is acknowledged in contrast to the demonization by the powers-that- be. Please contact oct22ny@yahoo. com if you can help contribute to or plan for this important event. Any contribution (time, funds, connections, venue) would be greatly appreciated!

Homeschoolers setback sends shock waves through state Bob Egelko, Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writers Friday, March 7, 2008 (03-07) 04:00 PST LOS ANGELES -

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution. The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming. At first, there was a sense of, No way, said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation. The shock spread all across the United States in my opinion, I spoke to many of my public school high schoolers in NYC about this topic and most of them agree that they wish they had access to their parents and people in their community in this way. We are in need of not only education reform, but educational revolution and the technological age has done just that! We are now seeing people seek telecommuting positions or online jobs more and more. With outsourcing people are able to accomplish so much more online then in the past, is it not safe to say that with online universities and colleges that home schooling is not only viable, but practical solution and spin off of online education? It is important that we as a nation outline goals and benchmarks for our youth, how do we expect them to be truly competitive in a global economy with updated educational buildings, teachers, curricula, and philosophies. Some homeschoolers are affiliated with private or charter schools, like the Longs, but others fly under the radar completely. Many homeschooling families avoid truancy laws by registering with the state as a private school and then enroll only their own children. The question of parents as appropriate educators has surfaced among New York City home schooling parents. Most homeschooling parents especially those that unschool pay attention to parental rights about homeschooling, vaccinations, college entry and abuse. It is imperative that we keep our eyes peeled and our ears to the ground so to speak in order to know what may come. I have always considered California a very progressive place to homeschool, and now it frightens me that I could be so wrong, many of us create cooperative learning situations or groups in order to offer our children various opportunities based on their specific needs. One of the reasons I chose to homeschool ( especially after being in a homeschooled environment at home) is that I wanted my boys to have access to many different professionals and adults who had skills and information to offer. Do we no longer believe that adults can impart knowledge unless they have a degree? Are all those people who have created a village for my children’s education insignificant and useless? Check out the Full article below! Homeschoolers setback sends shock waves through state Bob Egelko, Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writers Friday, March 7, 2008 (03-07) 04:00 PST LOS ANGELES  A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution. The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming. At first, there was a sense of, No way, said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation. The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential. The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year. The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home. Some homeschoolers are affiliated with private or charter schools, like the Longs, but others fly under the radar completely. Many homeschooling families avoid truancy laws by registering with the state as a private school and then enroll only their own children. Yet the appeals court said state law has been clear since at least 1953, when another appellate court rejected a challenge by homeschooling parents to California’s compulsory education statutes. Those statutes require children ages 6 to 18 to attend a full-time day school, either public or private, or to be instructed by a tutor who holds a state credential for the child’s grade level. California courts have held that  parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children, Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws. Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said. A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare, the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue. Union pleased with ruling The ruling was applauded by a director for the state’s largest teachers union. We’re happy, said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting. A spokesman for the state Department of Education said the agency is reviewing the decision to determine its impact on current policies and procedures. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell issued a statement saying he supports parental choice when it comes to homeschooling. Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which agreed earlier this week to represent Sunland Christian School and legally advise the Long family on a likely appeal to the state Supreme Court, said the appellate court ruling has set a precedent that can now be used to go after homeschoolers. With this case law, anyone in California who is homeschooling without a teaching credential is subject to prosecution for truancy violation, which could require community service, heavy fines and possibly removal of their children under allegations of educational neglect, Dacus said. Parents say they choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, from religious beliefs to disillusionment with the local public schools. Homeschooling parent Debbie Schwarzer of Los Altos said she’s ready for a fight. Schwarzer runs Oak Hill Academy out of her Santa Clara County home. It is a state-registered private school with two students, she said, noting they are her own children, ages 10 and 12. She does not have a teaching credential, but she does have a law degree. I’m kind of hoping some truancy officer shows up on my doorstep, she said. I’m ready. I have damn good arguments. She opted to teach her children at home to better meet their needs. The ruling, Schwarzer said, stinks. Began as child welfare case The Long family legal battle didn’t start out as a test case on the validity of homeschooling. It was a child welfare case. A juvenile court judge looking into one child’s complaint of mistreatment by Philip Long found that the children were being poorly educated but refused to order two of the children, ages 7 and 9, to be enrolled in a full-time school. He said parents in California have a right to educate their children at home. The appeals court told the juvenile court judge to require the parents to comply with the law by enrolling their children in a school, but excluded the Sunland Christian School from enrolling the children because that institution was willing to participate in the deprivation of the children’s right to a legal education. The decision could also affect other kinds of homeschooled children, including those enrolled in independent study or distance learning through public charter schools - a setup similar to the one the Longs have, Dacus said. Charter school advocates disagreed, saying Thursday that charter schools are public and are required to employ only credentialed teachers to supervise students - whether in class or through independent study. Ruling will apply statewide Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban homeschooling in the state. California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home, he said in a statement. But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the Longs two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law. They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor, she said. If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers. Heimov said her organization’s chief concern was not the quality of the children’s education, but their being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety.

My family, like most home schooling families I know, arrange, orchestrate and re-arrange their schedules to make time for everything they deem important- my family is no different. However, I am excited to share my parenting and home schooling experience as a working mother of three. We are otherwise known as the Power Rock Family- while I have been sworn to secrecy about the true nature of our roles in the universe, I can tell you that each member takes on the super powers of certain rocks and crystals. Allow me to introduce my clan- Gia (mother and ruler of all-A.K.A. Amethyst), Hassan (Baba extraordinaire- A.K.A. Hematite), Apsu, six and a half (son to the first power- A.K.A. Jade), Kush Amen, four years old (the spunky middle child A.K.A. Tiger’s Eye) and last, but certainly not least Isael who is five months now (the ancestor who has returned A.K.A. Lapis). It is extremely important that when one of us is in need of support that we shape shift into our aliases.

My partner and I start each day as plain ole parents roll out of bed amazed at just how short the nighttime seems to be. Our five month old is still curled up in between two pillows on our bed. We stare at him for a few moments perplexed by the fact that he takes up forty percent of the space in our bed. He seems rested, I often think to myself. We then secretly shift in our Power Rock Family alter egos (that is if we are going to make it through the day) and go about our business of checking email, packing lunch, writing to do lists, looking at the monthly calendar we have set up in the kitchen, setting breakfast out on the table or some mixture of items that resembles a meal, for instance we might have a platter of carrot sticks, apples, pears, granola, yogurt, and almonds. The two older boys Apsu and Kush Amen spring out of bed with enough energy to run a small nuclear power plant. After climbing, running through the house, and trying as hard as they can to wake their younger baby brother, they sit at the table and munch while I start their bath water. I would love to say that we give them a bath every night and read them a bedtime story, but this simply is not the case- that’s not to say that these things don’t get done, they do- just in a slightly different fashion. I usually include essential oils of lavender or sandalwood into the morning bath. The boys love soaking- it seems to center them for the rest of the day. My partner, Hassan, rushes around asking me where things are and grabbing last minute items for day while popping in and out of the bathroom with tidbits of information and vocabulary words for each boy. Then he is off to his job at a high school campus in Bushwhick where he will work with over 300 youth training them in various character education lessons.

By this time the smallest Power Rock Family member is awake. He usually gets changed and nurses ( at this point I have nothing to do with these tasks- no really!) while I read to the boys and go over Apsu’s spelling words. Kush draws something about Star Wars (his present obsession) and we think of words that begin with the letter of the week for Apsu this activity is about vocabulary building and sparking questions. For Kush Amen this lesson is about writing the letter and thinking of words that start with this letter. Each week we try to focus on Revolutionaries such as A, Assata Shakur that leads to conversations about Cuba, activism and our changing community in Bedford Stuyvesant etc. We then munch on snacks and head outside, maybe to the park, library or to run the many errands that have to get done, but not without sending off emails, returning phone calls and picking up some of the things we’ve taken out. The boys pack their bags with reading material, pens, notebooks, or games and always a toy of some sort- lately its Star Wars figurines. Occasionally I take the boys to meetings with clients I am extremely familiar with, if not I have a caregiver for them at the house. This generally happens twice a week for a 2-3 hours.

We return ready for lunch, the boys baby sit their little brother and/or help prepare lunch- usually something hot and we sit down to eat together doing MadLibs, learning a lesson on the Time4learning website and plan the afternoon activities. After lunch Isael and Kush Amen lay down to take their naps. This is my most valuable time to talk to Apsu about projects he is working on and conduct business. Apsu is very into projects as opposed to short fragmented lessons so we may spend a month or longer on a particular interest. Currently, he is working on bridges. One night while I was facilitating a workshop in Queens (you know my normal super hero gig) the babysitter let Apsu stay up past his bedtime to watch a PBS special on bridges. Well, he watched the entire two-hour special and woke up well um-FIXATED! So we decided he would work on researching different types of bridges, famous bridges and so on and so on. We sit and discuss what happening with his interest, read, talk, research and finally work on a few things together like geography related map making stuff, science or multiplication which he has become excited with because of his allowance and wants to calculate how much money he will have when x,y,or z happens.

I then squeeze in time to write my entry to my blog- radical educators of color, follow-up with clients about up coming professional development workshops, track invoices, write proposals and breathe and become overwhelmed and breathe again. Our days vary based on what activities the children have going on like piano, lego robotics, chess, African Scouts, Art at Pratt, drumming, soccer or errand days. After the two younger superheroes awake from their afternoon slumber, we play a game- Chutes and Ladders or UNO is Kush Amen’s favorite and leave the day open for teachable moments. In the afternoon, if we are home they like to play make believe, play dress up, or build with legos and blocks. We take pictures of the creations; Apsu emails photos to his grandparents using his own email address. I am blessed to have two boys that really like to play with each other except for the occasional,  I’m not playing with you! or Actually, Apsu that’s not fair or my personal favorite  I’m telling!

I begin fixing dinner and playing with Isael as I try to discover what his exact super powers will be, I make mental notes of how he stares at people very intensely and how he likes very colorful art work, his brothers work is his favorite followed by my work. I call the boys in and out asking for help setting the table or rinsing dishes and make follow-up phone calls. The boys and I have chore time when we scramble around the house with Soulful House music or Newark’s Jazz station 88.9 on- somehow listening to Dizzy Gillespie or Horace Silver makes the last minute cleaning go by faster. I sit down to think about the next day- maybe my partner will be at home with the boys while I work a few hours, maybe its time for my weekly yoga class, or for a meeting at Kush Amen’s Home schooling Cooperative Little Maroons, or maybe it is a day just to explore, go to the park or museum to see the Kara Walker exhibit.

We do have a few basic things that happen everyday in terms of home schooling that make life predictable for us all. Reading independently and reading as a family, spelling or vocabulary words, urban sustainability (through composting, joining the Bed-Stuy CSA, etc.), and math either in the form of money, time or abstract concepts brought into reality and discussing current events. One current event that I remember is Apsu’s confusion about how Barak Obama can be the governor of New York and the presidential candidate- I smile, well at least he’s thinking about politics.

And while we do not generally watch TV during the day, we do love Project Runway (our whole family watches!), National Geographic Channel (gotta know the latest on global warming), PBS (just watched a series on the genealogy of well known African Americans like Maya Angelou) the boys play a bit, we talk about our day, Hassan and I catch up- vent and celebrate ( this is a very important part of the day). Then it is off to bed for Apsu and Kush Amen- maybe we read a story or if the night was like last night (Isael screaming because of an incoming tooth) we cuddle and hug until they drift off to sleep.

Our job as super hero parents is not done after we tuck in the super hero boys in, we bathe the babe who surprisingly has gotten a second wind and watch a movie, work on my business, talk to family and friends and finally just before passing out on the sofa we smile and tell each other that we love our family and each other. We awake to the baby reminding us to get him from his crib and fly over to the bed where at least one of us will get a good night sleep. Of course during the night, we leave our regular parent bodies and travel New York City as super heroes fighting the injustices that lurk around every corner- or at least that’s what I tell myself about why I am so tired each morning. Oh, and I left out the part where I talk about typing this up while nursing a baby using only one hand- nice trick hugh?

I have always been a person with strong opinions and ambitious goals. At times my idealism has sparked philosophical conversations in my peer groups, at other times it has a been a source of frustration. Having experienced many different types of educational settings as a student/learner/ and teacher/facilitator, one thing has remained in tact: Education needs a Revolution! My intensity for the cause became more pronounced when I became a parent myself, and now as a mother of three boys of color the need couldn’t be stronger. As an interesting dichotomy, I am an unschooling parent and an educational consultant for public and charter schools- the seemingly ironic marriage gives way to some rather interesting insights. #1 Those children that are highest at risk are children of color in particular black boys ( I use the term black to include all people who identify with the diaspora) #2 Special needs and Special Education do not enhance learning opportunities in boys of color, prevent them from being tracked into the Prison Industrial Complex , create critical thinkers or educate the whole child. As a radical educator, I believ that education and learning are two synergistic parts of a whole. We are indeed life learners, my generation has proven that school is not for everyone through the rebellion of generation X. We have children now , we are educators, activists, artists, business women/men. These are new children and their education is based on a global if not galactic society. If the educational paradigms do not shift to include mobilization, questioning current educational authorities who are mostly white afluent people, redefining and restructuring a new paradigm then we are destined to recreate powerful yet culturally and socially irresponsible institutions that maintain the current status quo of and churn out another generation people who have I term I coined worker bee syndrome. It is not that I think that those great thinkers of the past have nothing to offer, it is simply that I do not want the authority to come from the main oppressive group- western male dominated culture. I want to begin the discussion as a crisis of education, the crisis of black and brown children, and call my generation of forward thinkers so that we may take our role as the authority however we define that role. check out www.creedcenter.org for more information on resources