Our Education - Our People

Marlon Crump/PoorNewsNetwork
Monday, February 15, 2010;

I want my school to stop punishing me for the things that I do. I want them to understand the things that I do. A student of Balboa High School stated to me, following a meeting in the school's auditorium.

The fairly chilly evening of December 17^th, 2009 would find myself, POOR comrade Carina Lomeli, and Revolutionary Youth Scholar, Tiburcio (son of Tiny  and student in POOR's FAMILY SKool started by JEwnbug and Tiny) going back to school: The Educational Town Hall.  We were here to re-port and su-pport for the future generation, for our families for our mamas for our youth skolaz of tomorrow.

The three of us took a seat in the auditorium listen to the voice of youth skolaz, and learn how they felt

The students of Balboa High School designated their dialogue to everyone, including adults in attendance. Their voices were un-silenced. They expressed their desire of not only being passionate about their future, but to retain their fundamental human right of equality, and education.

Supporters for this evening's event were the Institute for Civic &Community Engagement, Filipino Community Center, Coleman Advocates, and various other community organizations.

One of the primary concerns for the town meeting were the education budget cuts that continue to threaten their future.

In an institution industrialized in many levels of learning for the youth to receive self-fulfillment in modern day society; education for the most part in the U.S.A. always come under attack. Since (and before) my tenure here at POOR Magazine/PNN, so many actions have taken place by my comrades to stop the city, state, and especially federal government.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and former U.S. President George W. Bush, introduced education proposal cuts every single year. Continuing cuts to the education of the youth sets the stage for more actions and protests by the community to be reluctantly rehearsed for 2010.

Schwarzenegger also proposes to delay about $100 million in past payments owed to schools in 2010-11. As what was recently reported from Jim Sanders of The Sacramento Bee revealing a summary detail of Governor Schwarzenegger's budget proposal for the year.

"Without art, science, less testing, real teaching, and all of our parent's leadership, students like us won't make it through school." As quoted from a student in West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD), from the May 2007 article, It takes a community to raise a school. on www.poormagazine.org

Cuts to school budgets impacting its critical programs, controversial test exams, empathy-less teachers, race and class segregation sets future precedents for incarceration, not education.

Our education is at the core of a lot of our issues that we face in our communities. Alejandra Mojica stated to me. Alejandra is a community educator, and is from the youth group, H.O.M.EY. (Homies Organized the Mission to Empower Youth.) With a broken education system, we are not raising critical thinkers or leaders. Instead, we're oppressing people to operate like machines.

Hearing this from Alejandra took my mind back into the history of the Slave Age, whereas it was literally illegal to educate a slave. The slave masters with financial interests of productivity were truly aware that no prosperity would be there for them, if their property gained enough knowledge to be self-empowered and free.

Alejandra further explained the importance of this evening's event stating, this event is to engage the community in a discussion and process to take back our education and liberate our people. Just as we at POOR is aimed to take back the land One Story at a Time.

We've recently launched a component of POOR Magazine/PNN's Race, Poverty, and Media Institute called People Skool. This new project is aimed to dismantle lies, the non-profit industrial complex, poverty pimpology, and rep the revolution through our own media art.

I asked Monet Wilson, a student of Balboa High what this event meant for her. It means to me that schools need to step up and make sure the students understand what's required of them.

Being here with the students was a memory lane stroll for me, and what it really meant to be prepared for the world. For me, growing up, I was quite often lectured on the importance for success by getting a job or a career, by teachers.

What was never really taught or even lectured to me in school by my teachers were the politics that would follow, even upon graduation. The failure to truly teach and prepare a young mind, or even willing to understand it always leads to more problems than communities can handle, especially in poor communities of color.

A local community member had words of motivation for not just the youth skolaz, but for the community as well. It's about time we start changing our conversation with education. He said.

You can't audit a course in the skool of hard knocks.....tiny 2002