A Tale of Two City Kids (Part II)

This is the second of two articles about two young, African-American men---both abandoned by birth parents, both labeled “learning disabled"—who attended a supportive small high school in New York City. [Read Part I here.] As a school social worker, I counseled both of them. I first looked at JB, who graduated and, after two years, seems to be doing okay. Now, I’ll look at Solo, who didn’t graduate and seems like he’s lost, with his possibilities narrowing to the streets.

SOLO’S STORY

Solo, now almost 19, dropped out in senior year. Last I heard, he’d been kicked out of his adoptive parents’ house and was living in a different borough with his pregnant 15-year-old girlfriend and her mother.

Solo came to us from a self-contained Special Education class in elementary school (a small class of 12 to 15 students with Individualized Educational Programs who stay together all day). This indicates that his learning disability was more significant than JB’s. He seemed a little lost and overwhelmed, shy and socially awkward coming into high school (and we didn’t have a self-contained class at that point).

During the first week of school, a cute, aggressive African-American freshman girl named Keisha took Solo under her wing and soon served as his confidante, protector and advocate. She led him to reveal to me in one of our early counseling sessions that he had been getting some pretty severe corporal punishment from his adoptive parents, whom he called Grandma and Grandpa. Best I recall, he had recently punched a wall and hurt his hand slightly, out of anger from the punishment he had received.

Solo had been with Grandma and Grandpa since he was four or five years old, didn’t know the whereabouts of his birth parents and had no contact with them. Grandpa worked for a school custodian and Grandma took care of Solo and two foster children in the house she and her husband owned. They were in their sixties, their biological kids long grown, devout Christians with a “spare the rod, spoil the child” philosophy, deep ties to relatives in the South and an old-fashioned, country shrewdness. It was one of those borderline situations where I considered calling child protective services (ACS) for excessive corporal punishment and gave Solo a stress ball so he could take out his frustrations on it rather than hurt himself or get himself into more trouble. (I think that frequently, the reason for his adoptive parents’ anger was that he played rough, broke things, didn’t want to stop playing etc.) Solo told me he thought the worst had passed and he’d be okay. At our next session, he further stated that he didn’t want ACS called because “I don’t wanna get taken away from them. They’re mostly good to me, they give me the games and clothes that I ask for.”

The school soon created a self-contained class for Solo, Keisha and three other kids. Unsurprisingly, this turned out to be a disaster because, in such situations, the students often feel stigmatized and have no positive peer models. So they feed, provoke and copycat each other’s dysfunctions and diss each other all day: “Ape Face,” “Stupid” etc. Also unsurprisingly, when the school abolished the self-contained class, these students resisted re-integration. They were used to being mocked by each other but they really feared being put on the spot by more demanding teachers and looking stupid in front of “normal” students.

Solo: Weaknesses and Strengths

Unlike JB, Solo had little interest in intellectual pursuits or books beyond whatever soft- core porn he could get his hands on, though he could read at a decent 5th grade level. In math, his skills were poor beyond basic whole number computations, and he didn’t know the times tables by heart. He was strong, fast and well-coordinated, good at helping Grandpa with home repairs and yard work.

Solo sought out nurturing relationships with adults, and he could be reflective and insightful in one-on-one conversations. But if he saw a curvy girl walk by, some drama brewing among acquaintances or a new game on somebody’s Play Station, any other thought was out the window. (I learned that he had previously taken some medication for ADHD but like many teens, now was refusing to take it.) He could critique himself later on—with prompting--- but he couldn’t stop himself from responding to the strongest, basest stimulus. This was a set up for trouble as he grew older, developed into a well-built and more socially adept young man, and had opportunities for actual sex.

Socially, Solo was prone to engage in crude, eight year-old boy-style teasing, laughing at the cruelest put down’s and even at someone’s obvious pain or discomfort. Yet he could also be incredibly kind and protective when he perceived others as vulnerable, and himself in a more powerful position. For example, in one of our first encounters, he was trying to help a new Latino student (from the school upstairs), who didn’t speak any English, to find the right office and get his class schedule.

Solo had obviously been scolded a lot as a child, and when he was confronted about something wrong that he had done, or simply out-talked by someone with good verbal skills, he usually laughed out of embarrassment. If it was an adult authority figure, he was likely to then become tongue-tied, say nothing and do anything to exit the situation as soon as possible. If it was a male peer, he was prone to get physical when he felt put down.

Solo: Smart to Teachers vs. Smart to Kids

Solo entered his junior year making intermittent academic efforts, cutting and hiding from classes he found difficult or boring, and avidly following every drama and comedy in the hallways. He refused my suggestions to ask teachers for help, which they would gladly have given, when he didn’t understand. He couldn’t articulate a reason for this refusal, just shook his head. My sense is that he feared looking stupid or slow. Sometimes we agreed that I would talk to a teacher on his behalf and then the teacher would approach him, but he didn’t really persist in tutoring or classroom work with the push-in Special Ed teacher.

As educators, we often ask ourselves about students like Solo: Is he just unable to do the work? Are we using the wrong teaching methodologies? Or is he really lazy? I realized that Solo wasn’t unwilling to make an effort to learn things, but because he wasn’t the most facile learner and hadn’t developed good work habits, he had to prioritize. And his priority was learning about stuff that matters to kids, not teachers. He and his friend, Curtis, from the former self-contained class, took to following like puppy dogs a more moderately learning disabled student named Robert, a basically decent but un-scholarly kid, rumored to be a minor gang leader. Why? Because “Robert tells us about stuff.” Similarly, Solo explained to me that he had to roam the hallways all the time to know what was going on with everybody, so that he wouldn’t be considered dumb by his peers.

Solo: Struggling with Judgment and Impulse Control

That year saw two incidents where Solo’s poor judgment and impulse control almost caused disasters. The first incident, never completely clear to me, involved his foster-sister. She had taken his new Game Boy and wouldn’t give it back. So to shock her and get back at her, Solo snuck upstairs to her room and dropped his pants. The foster-sister then claimed that Solo touched her sexually, Grandma called the police (perhaps doubting the girl’s story but knowing that the girl might tell the foster care agency and Grandma would be in trouble if she hadn’t acted), and Solo was arrested. He told me that the police promised to release him if he “admitted” it, and guaranteed worse punishment if he didn’t. Typically prioritizing getting away from an unpleasant situation and adult criticism, Solo “admitted” it.

This sounded like a disaster—a possible adult criminal conviction for sexual assault—and I did basically believe his version of the story, feeling that childish antics like dropping his pants were in character, but sexually touching his foster-sister wasn’t. So I got on the horn to the lawyer to try and vouch for his character, and checked in with his Grandmother who had never talked to the lawyer, was very stressed out, and said that neither of the kids’ stories fully made sense. Eventually, the foster-sister recanted her story, the charges were dropped and Solo was saved.

A few days before Christmas, Solo walked into my office as classes started and said “I’m about to do something really stupid and I need you to try and talk me out of it.” The previous evening, he and a few friends had gone Christmas shopping and a few guys approached them, demanding his friend Jovan’s expensive jacket. A fracas ensued and the guys eventually ran off, but not before one of them spat on Solo. Solo restrained himself from retaliating for one reason: he knew that his friend Curtis, who is prone to seizures and had suffered serious head injuries, would have stood up for him and might have been seriously hurt or killed in any fight.

Solo had been seething with rage all night and was now determined to find these guys and have his revenge, no matter the consequences. “I’m not takin’ that—I don’t care what happens.” Throughout first period, I offered reason upon reason to restrain himself. Finally I pointed out that if he hit or killed them and then wound up in jail, it was like letting them win because it would really mess up his life. He said somberly “That’s true. So I’m gonna give you these.” Solo then opened his parka and pulled out two long knives (from Grandma’s kitchen, he explained). They didn’t look like very sharp or strong knives but I didn’t think it was particularly useful to point that out. I quickly stuffed them in a file cabinet I could lock and said I was going to call his grandmother, let her know what happened, and return the knives to her the next time she came to the school. Solo accepted this.

Solo: A Downhill Slide

The next year Solo’s attendance was more and more erratic. In the spring, realizing that he was screwing up, Solo asked to re-consider the suggestion that he attend an off-site vocational program for half the day, and stay with us for the other half of the day until we could give him an IEP diploma. This is the lowest level of diploma, basically a certificate of attendance in school for twelve school years from first grade, not good for college. We had a meeting with Grandma and an Assistant Principal, and Solo signed a contract promising he would attend regularly and complete assigned work.

Solo began the building maintenance program, which rotates students through the basic skills required to be a building superintendent: electrical, carpentry, janitorial etc. He soon got stymied by the measuring required for carpentry. I asked him to bring me some assignments and saw that he couldn’t add and subtract fractions. I spoke to the Special Ed coordinator at our school, who agreed to work with Solo during after-school tutoring. But Solo seldom showed up for that. Then, when the teacher at the vocational school noticed this and apparently created a smaller class for Solo and other IEP students who were having similar problems, Solo was insulted. Feeling he was being shunted off into a special class, he attended the vocational program less and less frequently.

For all his withdrawal and intolerance for school, Solo was eager to work and become more self-reliant, and to this end, I helped him apply for a Summer Youth job, which he was offered. At first I couldn’t understand why Grandma didn’t want him to take the job but was insisting that he go with her to visit relatives in the South for the summer. I finally realized, and she confirmed, that while she was away and her husband at work, Solo might invite friends over the house. Given his poor judgment, they might not be the kind of people you’d want in your house. So he resentfully went down South for the summer.

The next October, Solo turned 18. His attendance got even worse, and he was increasingly at odds with the grandparents for staying out late. He realized that legally, no one could tell him what to do anymore. He’d check in after a long period of absence, and several times, I did convince the principal, who could have dropped him for non-attendance, to let him come back and keep open the option of an IEP diploma (which is given at the principal’s discretion and involves no credit or exam requirements). I knew, as did several sympathetic teachers, that he wasn’t going to actually do much work—and I told him that. We just wanted him to come often enough to grab the diploma and have a better chance of getting jobs.

Solo: Sex and New Complications

After one long absence, Solo reported a whole new level of complication in his life. His grandparents had thrown him out, he was staying with his new girlfriend, and she was pregnant.

Solo had accepted a dare from a friend to meet a girl on line and convince her, within a week, to have sex with him. So he seduced Lisette, but then, being a basically decent person, he felt really bad about it, and told her, and started an actual relationship with her. It turned out she was really only 14, (she’d pretended to be older), had been truant from school for a couple of years and was the subject of an open ACS case. Her mother liked Solo and was letting him stay at the house but she didn’t yet know about the pregnancy, and Solo and Lisette were concerned about her reaction. Several times, I asked him if he really thought it was good for his life and his future to be staying with someone who hadn’t been getting her 14-year-old daughter to school. He acknowledged a problem here and several times almost moved back with the grandparents. But he’d stay out too late and they’d get angry, then he’d go back to Lisette. She'd beg him not to leave and he felt responsible to her and his unborn child. And then we didn’t see him anymore.

Solo: What Went Wrong?

Solo wasn’t the slowest kid or the angriest kid or the most distractible kid (though he was pretty distractible) in our school. We had graduated kids with bigger deficits. His biggest weaknesses were judgment and impulse control. I don’t know how to help a kid develop judgment and impulse control at age 15 or 17 when there’s not a previous groundwork for it. I tried all the obvious little techniques. “Before you do something, think of how it will affect you tomorrow, next month and in 5 years;” I talked through the possible consequences; I showed him gestures to shift his thinking and snap himself out of it, etc. But nothing carried over from my office to the heat of the moment, though Solo was capable of solid, if a bit overly concrete, reasoning .

My sense and what I know of the literature and research says that helping a child to improve judgment and impulse control has to begin at much earlier age. And the intuitive working class approach practiced by his adoptive parents--using corporal punishment to reach a child who’s so concrete and so in the moment-- is pretty much the opposite of what’s needed. It doesn’t help a child to develop internal controls, or show him how to slow down and not be just pulled in by the most intense stimulus. It doesn’t model the behavior you want him to follow. It also left Solo with huge resentments of people telling him what to do and never listening to him.

Solo had been prescribed Ritalin when he was younger and then begun refusing medication as a teen, so I don’t know if a drug would have helped him to slow down and focus until hopefully, maturation might have alleviated his distractibility and impulsivity. Maybe if he had grown up in the 1940s when guys could drop out and get a factory job at 16, with decent pay and little stigma, he could have channeled his physical strength and gained the dignity and self-reliance that he craved. I only know that the genuine love of his adoptive parents and the caring of several competent pedagogues in a generally supportive school have not been enough to get him graduated and prepared for a decent job. I hope that somehow, something works out for him.

Infrastructures Needed to Support Young People

Looking at the life chances of Solo and JB in the context of a deepening economic crisis, I believe we face a struggle to re-build two types of infrastructure that kids like them need. For Solo, a program that trains youth of color to construct, repair and environmentally retro-fit buildings and transportation grids—advocated by Van Jones in The Green Collar Economy and potentially fundable by President Obama’s recently-passed stimulus package-- could help. It could provide the job, the income and the organic discipline of cooperative labor that he needs to channel his energy and aspirations for self-determination. And JB’s story shows how essential it is to preserve the social service agencies, the public school system, and the subsidized training programs for human services jobs, which have sustained him.

Of course, the causes and solutions of their problems go much deeper. We need to address what drove their parents to illegal drugs and neglect, and to find other ways besides legal drugs and beatings to help kids control their attention and impulses. Exposing kids to more green space and less asphalt and video screen would probably help. But maintaining and expanding the two infrastructures would be a start.

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Singing, Again, for John Brown

With this fall marking the 150th anniversary of the raid on Harpers Ferry, I find my mind turning often to John Brown. And today I am pleased to be able to do something about it.

Regulars here know that I am pretty serious about music (not that the music itself is necessarily serious) and may even recall that I posted three pieces on music about John Brown last year here, here and here.

I now add a new song by my friend David Rovics. It is called "Beecher's Bibles" after the Sharps rifles John Brown's band carried in the war to keep slavery out of Kansas and, in fact, at Harper's Ferry.



As you can see, David knocked this video out by pointing a camcorder at himself in his living room. I hope to see him do it live sometime soon.

And partial though I am to this song, I am compelled to steer you, dear reader, to David's MySpace page and encourage you in the strongest possible terms to click in the right hand column to listen to "The Village Where Nothing Happened." Listen, and think about what 17,000 new troops and a Presidential pledge of 'victory" will mean in Afghanistan.

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Shut it Down! Boycott the Racist Rag! No to the New York Post!!!

When the New York Post decided to combine its editorial opposition to the Obama Administration stimulus bill with an unrelated news story about a pet chimpanzee mauling its owner, no one laughed. When the Post's editorial staff followed up with more racism couched as an "apology" the NJ-based People's Organization for Progress decided enough was enough.

The suggestion that folks were either "too thin-skinned" or "too stupid" to get the joke was itself an extension of the earlier racism, POP decided at our weekly general membership meeting on February 19. On Saturday, February 21, a picket line at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets in Newark publicly called the Post out on their racism (see Star Ledger article, Newark group Boycotts N.Y. Post, by Chanta L. Jackson with photos by POP member Christian E. Gales for additional coverage).

 

"Shut it down! Boycott the Post!!! Boycott Racism!!!" People's Organization for Progress members and supporters chanted at the intersection that is the heart of Newark's downtown shopping district. As POP stalwarts distributed leaflets to shoppers getting off buses, the popular  sentiment was probably best represented by questions about how a major newspaper could get away with a cartoon advocating assassinating the president, as well as calls to defend Barack Obama.

POP's Saturday picket in Newark follows the Thursday demonstration at the New York Post's main offices on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, called by New York City Councilman Charles Barron, and endorsed by Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, NYC, State Senator Bill Perkins, State Assemblywoman Inez Barron,  Viola Plummer of the Women for Obama, Monica Moorehead of the International Action Center, and representatives of the Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive To African People (CEMOTAP), the December 12th Movement, NAACP-Jamaica Queens, Harriet Tubman Collective, Black Men's Movement, and many others.

This struggle demands further attention as many radicals, revolutionary nationalists, and anti-racist agitators find ourselves in the unique position and novel situation of defending a U.S. president.

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Victory at the University of Tennessee!

[Fire on the Mountain is thrilled to bring you this first-hand account of a major victory for the student movement--and the labor movement--this one in the University of Tennessee system. It's from the keyboard of Nelson Hawkins of the sorely missed Pottawatomie Creek blog. One note for non-residents of the Hog & Hominy State: the union mentioned, United Campus Workers--CWA Local 3865, has taken on the difficult challenge of organizing in a right-to work state where public employees have no formal right bargain collectively.]

It reminds me of a story an old friend would tell. He was a Black minister in the south; very involved in the freedom movement. In his later years he visited an enemy, a local racist who wound up in jail. The next day the man died. When asked about the coincidence, the preacher replied, 'I had no idea my prayer was so powerful.'

This was the response of a Knoxville area minister who had helped plan Tuesday's prayer vigil to stop layoffs at the University of Tennessee when he learned Wednesday that UT President John Petersen had just resigned.

Yesterday around 2:30 PM, Knoxville time, the Vice Chair of the University of Tennessee’s Board of Trustees sent an email to staff and faculty announcing Petersen had resigned, and that the media would be notified shortly. Petersen had been working without a contract since last summer, and was currently undergoing a five-year review that by all accounts had not been going well.

Petersen’s resignation comes after months of mounting protest over proposed higher education budget cuts in Tennessee. As the economy has imploded, tax collections in the state have evaporated; after all Tennessee does have the most regressive tax structure in the US with no income tax whatsoever, a very small capital gains tax (the Hall tax), and the highest sales tax at nearly 10% with no exemption for clothing and only a 1% exemption for food. As a result, public higher education in Tennessee faced a 15-20% cut in public funding.


In the past three weeks alone students and campus worker kept Petersen constantly on the defensive:

January 27, 2009. Students with UTK’s Progressive Student Alliance and the broadly-left based Students for a Just University met with Petersen and requested he sign a petition aimed at Gov. Bredesen calling for tax reform and active work on the part of decision-makers to secure Federal Stimulus funds to offset budget cuts in higher education. A media spokesperson for Petersen was quoted in the largest newspaper in TN saying he would not sign the petition prior to the meeting. All local TV stations, some TV in Nashville, radio and print media from across the state covered the event with a noticeably pro-student bias.

January 28, 2009. Nearly 300 campus workers and students rallied at the UT Law School demanding that state and university officials do all they can to secure Federal Stimulus money for TN higher education and use other state means to offset higher education layoffs.

February 9, 2009. Over 400 students, campus workers and our allies held a mock funeral for higher education, a march with posters and coffins ending at the State Capitol mere moments before Gov. Bredesen delivered his “State of the State” address. This was held with the informal state-wide Coalition to Save Our Schools, whose Nashville contingent had held an earlier march there.

February 17, 2009. Nearly a dozen Knoxville area and campus ministers held a prayer vigil with three dozen or so campus workers, students and supporters calling on Petersen and the UT Board of Trustees to do all in their power to offset layoffs. The ministers then lead the delegation to Petersen’s office where they attempted to present the letter to him. All TV media in Knoxville was present, and the story was played by affiliates in Nashville and possibly elsewhere in the state. On one station the reporter even claimed that Petersen had refused to meet the clergy, although he had not even been present.

Certainly other factors contributed to his resignation: Petersen’s ouster of a somewhat popular administrator on the Knoxville campus, a well reported falling out between Petersen’s wife and a major, multi-million dollar donor, his regular use of UT’s private jet to travel to Chattanooga and Nashville (both within a 3 hour drive), and a series of articles in the Knoxville News Sentinel (itself prompted by agitation from United Campus Workers members) exposing top level administrative pay, benefits and an over-budget renovation of Petersen’s campus offices.

Yep, Petersen had one foot on the banana peel, but many were struck by how fast it happened. The U's public relations folks offered as an official rationale that he should leave now, so that the administrators who have to handle this year’s budget cuts will be in place prior to July 1 when the cuts must be made.

Oddly enough, newspapers across Tennessee are today reporting that due to the economic stimulus package, higher education may see its funding restored to 2006 levels, which will result in a funding increase!

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The Occupation Will Not Be...Erm, Scratch That

Students--students I know personally!--are occupying Kimmel Hall at New York University. This is a sentimental moment for an old codger. The first building I ever occupied was an NYU library, forty years ago last fall.

But don't worry, I'm here to neither to wax nostalgic nor to offer advice from the vantage point of my advanced years ("Barricade? You call that a barricade?. Why, a cub scout pack could..."). I wanna give a shout out to the folks from Take Back NYU and their allies from other area campuses for their gutsy action.

Their demands can be found on their website, along with some useful info for the skeptical and self-righteous: they've been trying to negotiate with the administration for several years; the financial transparency they are demanding might have saved NYU from dropping $50 million on Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, their calls for the university to serve the community and promote social justice show that this is not mere self-serving.

In particular, by making demands explicitly in support of the Palestinian people, which will draw no small amount of flak from Zionists at NYU and elsewhere, they are taking an important step in breaking the hold of the Israel lobby on the cultural and political life of this country. It keeps the heat on, as Hampshire College takes furious fire for its recent decision to divest itself of stock in corporations with major ties to the Israeli military.

The easiest way to support the occupation if you are in NYC is to find when solidarity demos are scheduled and attend! If you can, watch the website for calls to mobilize if a bust seems imminent. I hope today to get hold of some other NYUers from my era (especially ones who didn't get turfed out and actually graduated) to see if we can crank up some alumni support.

[h/t for the title to Isaac Silver]

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Comrade Valentine’s Day slogans for 2009

Updated 2/8: Swedish translation added
Updated 2/9: German translation added
Updated 2/10: Spanish translations added





Proletarians! Peasants! Oppressed People! Fighters For Freedom & Justice Everywhere!

1. Let Us March Resolutely Forward, Rank In Rank, Under The Heart-Shaped Crimson Banner of Comrade Valentine!

2. Thoroughly Repudiate All Right Idealist Lines Which Mystify And Commodify Love And Desire!! Thoroughly Repudiate All Undialectical Ultra-“Left” Lines Which Claim That Love And Desire Undermine Class Solidarity!!

3. Temporary Setbacks Like Proposition 8 in California, US of A, Cannot And Will Not Stem The Tide Of History And The Mighty Forward Motion Of LGBTQ People Advancing Toward Equality And Liberation!!!

—Freedom Road Socialist Organization /
Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad

[Swedish version, courtesy PH, 2/8/2009]

Proletärer! Bönder! Förtryckta Folk! Frihets- och Rättvisekämpar Världen Över!

1. Låt Oss Marschera Framåt, Sida vid Sida, Under Kamrat Valentins
Röda, Hjärtformade Baner!

2. Slå Tillbaka Mot Alla Höger-idealistiska Linjer Som Mystifierar Och
Kommodifierar Kärleken Och Lusten! Avvisa Alla Odialektiska
Ultra-"Vänster"-linjer Som Hävdar Att Kärlek och Lust Underminerar
Klassolidaritet!

3. Tillfälliga Bakslag Som Proposition 8 i Kalifornien, U.S.A., Kan
Inte Och Kommer Inte Att Hindra Historiens Flod, HBT-människornas
Mäktiga Framåtskridande Mot Slutlig Likaberättigande Och Frigörelse!

[German version, courtesy Einde O'Callahan, 2/9/2009]

Proletarier! Bauern! Unterdrückte!
Kämpferinnen um Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit überall!

1. Lasst uns entschlossen nach vorne marschieren, Reih' an Reih'
unter der blotroten Fahne des Genossen Valentins!

2. Verwerft gründlich alle rechten idealistischen Linien,
die Liebe und Sehnsucht mystifizieren und zur Ware machen!!
Verwerft gründlich alle undialektischen "links"-radikalen Linien,
die behaupten, dass Liebe und Sehnsuch die Solidarität der Klasse
unterminieren!!

3. Vorläufige Rückschläge wie Antrag 8 in Kalifornien, USA,
können und werden nicht die Flut der Geschichte und
die mächtige Vorwärtsbewegung der LSBRQ-Menschen
in ihrem Vormarsch zur Gleichheit und Freiheit eindämmen!


[Spanish version, courtesy sks. NB: There is a second Spanish translation in the comments section below, courtesy Bruce!]

Obrer@s! ¡Campesin@s! ¡Oprimid@s!
¡Luchador@s por la Libertad y la Justicia en Cualquier lugar!

1) ¡Marchemos Adelante Bajo la Bandera Escarlata del Camarada Valentín!

2) ¡¡Repudiemos Absolutamente Todas la Líneas Derechistas e
Idealistas, que Falsifican y Mercantilizan al Amor y al Deseo!!
¡¡Repudiemos Absolutamente Todas la Líneas Ultraizquierdistas y
Anti-Dialécticas, que Sostienen que el Amor y el Deseo Socavan la
Solidaridad de Clase!!

3) ¡¡Tropiezos Temporeros como la Proposición 8 en California, EE.UU., No Pueden y No Podrán Detener la Histórica Marea y el Gran Empuje de la Gente LGBT Hacia la Igualdad y la Liberación!!

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The Other Lesson of the Greensboro Sit-Ins

This week marks 49 years since the Greensboro, NC, sit-ins, the historic protest which launched the Black Freedom Struggle in this country onto a new trajectory. Next year we will see a lot of celebration of the courage of the four students who first sat down at the Woolworth's lunch counter and of the chain reaction it set off. Or at least I sure hope we will.

I wrote such a tribute myself, yesterday. (You can read it pasted in directly below the fold.) In the course of refreshing my fading memory, via Google, to complete the task, I found another facet of the Greensboro story. It's one I had never come across, and one that will, I think, resonate with anyone who has spent much time in the activist trenches.

Many of us know the story of how four students on February 1 became dozens and by February 4, hundreds, as students across North Carolina and the South girded to emulate them and launch the wave of struggles that finally killed Jim Crow.

The other side of the story has to do with the five months it took to crack the management at Woolworth's and S.H. Kress and the rest of the Greensboro power structure.

The multiplication of protesters in that first week is now at the heart of the legend. But that level of activity was hard to sustain, especially as the students' demands remained unmet and white hostility grew more intense.

Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil remained part of the organizing core from Day One. McCain recalls:

What people won't talk (about), what people don't like to remember is that the success of that movement in Greensboro is probably attributed to no more than eight or 10 people. I can say this: when the television cameras stopped rolling and we didn't have eight or 10 reporters left, the folk left. I mean, there were just a very faithful few. McNeil and I can't count the nights and evenings that we literally cried because we couldn't get people to help us staff a picket line.

I don't know about you, but I can recall lulls in more than one campaign for justice when fatigue, frustration, setbacks and doubt had me in tears. When it happens again, and it will, I hope I remember to draw on this part of the lesson of Greensboro, not the audacity and the courage of the students, but the dogged persistence of the core they built.


[This is a piece I posted at the left-liberal DailyKos website, yesterday, February 2, after reading a post there entitled "The day the music died - 50 years ago tonight" about the plane crash at Clear Lake, Iowa that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper.]

The Day The '60s, Our '60s, Began: 49 Years Ago Today

Nothing to do with rock and roll. Nothing to do with JFK.

It has to do with what happened in Greensboro, NC, the day before, February 1, 1960. Four young men, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain, went to the lunch counter at the Woolworth's department store near the school where they were underclassmen, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

The four sat down and awaited service. They ignored Woolworth's policy of serving food only to African-Americans who remained standing or took it elsewhere. They defied North Carolina law and the Jim Crow culture which pervaded, indeed defined, the South of the United States. The four sat, unserved, from 4:30 in the afternoon until management closed the store, early, at 5:00.

You can find much written that dates the decade of upsurge, promise and change we call the Sixties from that day.

I'll argue for the next day, February 2, 1960, 49 years ago today.

That's the day that really counts, because that morning David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, Ezell A. Blair Jr., and Franklin McCain went back to the lunch counter at the Greensboro Woolworth's and sat down. So did 21 other young men and four young women from traditionally Black schools in the area.

The next day, February 3, 63 of the 65 seats at the Woolworth's counter were occupied and on February 4 a sit-in began at S.H. Kress, another department store, and the protesters had been joined by three white students from Woman's College. At the same time racist whites in increasing numbers gathered to heckle and harass the disciplined and determined protesters.

On February 7, Black students in Winston-Salem and Durham, NC held sit-ins at lunch counters. On February 8, Charlotte, NC. On February 9, Raleigh, NC.

It took five long months before the Greensboro establishment caved in and ended segregation in dining facilities. Once the original burst of enthusiasm and defiance passed, it was a long hard slog for the ones who started it and the small core that had formed in the struggle. McCain recalls:

McNeil and I can't count the nights and evenings that we literally cried because we couldn't get people to help us staff a picket line.

But even as they undertook the long painful battle to bring the victory home, their example had spread the tactic of sit-ins to hundreds of localities, including solidarity protests at chain stores in the North and West. Even more important, their action in sitting down at that counter, and returning the next day had spread the determination to smash Jim Crow and fight for justice to the hearts of millions.

And the Sixties, our Sixties, were underway.

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