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Multiracial Unity

Ethnic Studies In Seattle: A Look Inside The Classrooms Of Antiracist Educators

The Seattle Public Schools recently wrote the below article about the powerful pedagogy of local educators who are piloting a new Ethnic Studies program.  The Ethnic Studies initiative in the Seattle Public Schools is the result of an on going movement that was birthed from the Black Lives Matter At School action last school year.  Building on that action, the Seattle NAACP teamed up with teachers, parents and students to lead a campaign to integrate Ethnic Studies across the school district. The below article highlights the work of several educators in Seattle including Tracy Gill, one of the lead organizers of the movement for Ethnic Studies, and Donte Felder,  head teacher at Orca K-8, who are piloting the new program. My classroom is also featured, the first standalone Ethnic Studies class in the Seattle Public Schools. 

Tearing Down The Walls That Keep Us From Finding Common Ground

By JoAnn McAllister for Waging Nonviolence - The current occupant of the White House wants to build a “real,” “big,” “serious” wall. To avoid a government shutdown, the administration wavered on the timing of funding. But that does not mean a wall, or walls, will not be built. Walls are material structures, and — maybe more importantly — they are metaphors. They promote ideas like possession, property and separation, as well as mine, yours, who belongs, and who doesn’t belong. They create emotional responses: safety, trust, envy, frustration, fear, anger, dread, hostility. The wall on the border between the United States and Mexico is both material and metaphorical. If you have not looked at pictures of the walls, fences, or barriers already installed on some 650 miles of the 2,000-mile border, you should do so right now. Considerable damage to the environment, the economies of border communities, and individual human lives has already been accomplished by the militarization of the border. In 1961, the Berlin Wall appeared almost overnight. It was physical and metaphorical, carrying a weighty ideological message to Western “fascists,” who, according to the U.S.S.R. were trying to destroy the socialist state.

A Great Political Organizer Worth Knowing Bob Lee

By Jakobi E. Williams for Viewpoint Magazine - Bob Lee, a key mem­ber of the Illi­nois Chap­ter of the Black Pan­ther Par­ty (ILBPP), founder of the orig­i­nal Rain­bow Coali­tion in Chicago, and self-described life­long com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er, passed away Tues­day March 21, 2017 after a bat­tle with can­cer. He was 74 years old. He leaves behind his wife Faiza, two broth­ers, a son, and a long list of activists and orga­niz­ers influ­enced by his ded­i­ca­tion to the poor and under­served. I last saw Bob Lee less than two weeks before his death in his hos­pi­tal room in Hous­ton, Tex­as. Still the con­sum­mate orga­niz­er, he was try­ing to orga­nize the hospital’s nurs­es and din­ing staff from the con­fines of his hos­pi­tal bed!

Protest Groups Uniting As ‘The Majority’ For Actions On May Day

By Aaron Morrison for Mic - Activist groups are uniting as a broader coalition they've dubbed "The Majority," an idea inspired by the Movement for Black Lives — a collective of organizations in the Black Lives Matter movement — organizers first shared with Mic on Thursday. More than 50 partners representing black, Latino, the indigenous, LGBTQ, refugees, immigrants, laborers and the poor will collaborate from April 4 through May 1, International Worker's Day, when they'll launch massive protests across the country. The action will "go beyond moments of outrage, beyond narrow concepts of sanctuary, and beyond barriers between communities that have much at stake and so much in common,"...

Brown: Neighbors Joining Together To Block Trump Deportations

By Mark Brown for Chicago Sun Times -In neighborhoods across Chicago with large immigrant populations, people are banding together to form rapid response networks to support their neighbors in the event of expected deportation raids by President Donald Trump’s administration. In the 35th Ward on the city’s Northwest Side, Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa has started what he calls the Community Defense Committee. In Rogers Park, home to an extremely diverse immigrant population, volunteer organizers have chosen to dub their effort Protect RP. In Little Village, the Mexican capital of the Midwest, they have picked the name La Villita Se Defiende, which translates to Little Village Defends Itself. As with the different names, each group seems to be charting its own tactical approach, but the overarching goal is the same: to protect undocumented immigrants by resisting efforts to deport them.

Don’t Shame The First Steps Of A Resistance

By Staff of Socialist Worker - THE UNITED States has just experienced a corporate hijacking. If Trump's inaugural speech did not alert you to the fact that they intend to come after all of us, then you are not paying attention. The scale of the attack is as deep as it is wide, and this means that we will need a mass movement to confront it. To organize such a movement necessarily means that it will involve the previously uninitiated--those who are new to activism and organizing. We have to welcome those people and stop the arrogant and moralistic chastising of anyone who is not as "woke." The women's marches in Washington, D.C., and around the country were stunning, inspiring and the first of a million steps that will be needed to build the resistance to Trump.
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