Philadelphia

Class and Education

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

Abraham Lincoln was the first president to speak on the topic of public education.  He did not form a federal educational plan, but he put forth the ideal that every American should have access to “a moderate education, and thereby be able to read the histories of his own and other countries.”  This statement became the catalyst for the educational system we now have.  Since the time of Lincoln, many presidents have made judgments on education and set into motion practices and policies that have both bettered and condemned the system – none so treacherous a debacle as No Child Left Behind.

For those who are not familiar, NCLB was signed into law by G. W. Bush.  Lobbied into the billions of dollars, it should come as no surprise that the biggest portions of the bill’s funding came from companies that would produce and score the standardized tests.  It was just the first step in a decade long waltz intended to undermine and dismantle public education.

Before I was a full-time mother, I was a full-time teacher.  I got my degrees from a school just outside of Philadelphia that is known for its superior Education program.  During those years, I worked in some of the best and worst schools in the nation.  The dichotomy of school districts in and around Philadelphia tell a story about public education in America – a story about wealth versus poverty, about parents more than students, a story that outlines in near bullet point format all that is wrong with public education, and a story that is about to take a turn toward tragedy.

It is no secret that wealthy school districts produce successful students and low-income districts are characterized by low-performance.  The guise of NCLB was that it was going to “level the playing field,” channeling more money into low-income districts and using tests to discover which teachers were not up to par.  The trouble – well, one of the many, many troubles – with the test is that it completely and totally ignores the countless social and cultural problems low-income districts face.

I did my student-teaching in Philadelphia school district.  I was placed in the most densely populated school in the city.  My students weren’t dumb or lazy, and they were – in theory – capable of passing “the test.”  Unfortunately, my students were hungry, angry, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, non-identified students with “exceptionalities” (“disability”), and far more focused on the father who was in jail, the mother who beat them, and the drug-dealers on the corner they walked past to get home than they could ever be on the base-10 number system.

Meanwhile, in districts like Lower Merion and Tredyffrin-Easttown, not only do the districts have a ton of money but so do Mommy and Daddy.  Breakfast was made by the live-in Nanny and piping hot 30 minutes before the bus stopped at their doorstep.  Any emotional disruption was handled by the child psychologist during their monthly visit.  Tutors were readily available.  And, not only were all special services diligently looked after by both parents and educators, but even average students had relentless advocates.  In fact, if I had a nickel for every time I or a colleague was “spoken to” by a parent about an assignment or grade, I could’ve out-earned the cushy retirement package my freshman year.  Failure was not an option… even if a student actually failed.

You see, what standardized tests embrace is that every student is capable of learning – which I believe wholeheartedly.  What the tests suggest is that the only factor in students’ ability to learn is how well they are being taught – which is completely inaccurate; and what they totally ignore is everything that happens in a child’s life and psyche other than textbook learning – which is most of his life experience.

What’s more, NCLB doesn’t apply the test to measure student success or teacher failure.  The application of the test and its scores end up more a threat.  If the students fail to perform, there are consequences… and they aren’t constructive or pretty.  Sure, they say that the funding kicks in to provide extra services but when you compare the funding to the cost of test (which is covered by the districts) schools barely break even.  The services are far more expensive than any check has ever been large, and they take time – in most cases years – to yield improvement, especially when they are educational services that fail to address the real problems in failing schools (see paragraph five).

Schools that fail to show the necessary improvement with the addition of limited and underfunded services and within the limited time frame then move into the deeper stages of intervention (more aptly: penalty).  As the years progress, teachers are fired, then administrators are fired, and as districts struggle to rehire, reeducate, and recover from these staffing shuffles, the clock runs out.  That is when the districts are taken over by larger political circles.  After all, adding bureaucrats and politicians to a quagmire always clears things right up.

Once the politicians have their greasy hands on these districts, things inevitably go from bad to worse, as they did in Chester (PA) and are about to in Philadelphia.

With the state’s incapable of remote-managing these failing districts, repeated cuts to educational funding by state officials, and the false promise of charter school’s pillaging them for millions of dollars, the districts begin to fall apart.  More and more money is siphoned off, much to charter schools that consistently fail to deliver better student performance (but are still put on the Presidential pedestal) and the rest to private companies circling the state’s education departments like hungry vultures.  These companies peddle everything from textbooks to food to entire curriculums – most of which promote corporate agendas through propaganda.

During my days in Philadelphia, I witnessed the signing of a multi-million dollar contract with Aramark, a corporate food distribution company.  The contract was signed mid-year and paid out about $14 million to install complex computer-style cash registers in elementary school cafeterias.  Meanwhile, teachers bought their own staples and copier paper, and a 10-year-old boy in my second grade class who couldn’t read met for less than an hour once every two weeks with a special education teacher that the district couldn’t afford to bring in full-time.  This is the decay that is rotting public education, and when the system becomes so fragmented, so broke, so broken, and so far beyond salvage, they cut another multi-million dollar check for some firm in a far off city to brainstorm and fix the problem.  Their solution?  The for-profit model.

What left Chester County schools in shambles, a district where teachers have been working without compensation since October, is now being proposed in Philadelphia: more money to charters and corporations, closing schools, selling the remaining schools to educational corporations, and hiring a firm to remote-manage the entire process.

This is the result of NCLB.  This is what came from a test that was ill-conceived, ill-advised, ill-applied, and sold as the promise of better education.

When Lincoln brainstormed the possibility of a nation-wide public education system, he understood that education needed to be localized.  He rightly believed that only the people who lived in the community could accurately understand and tackle what knowledge and challenges students in those areas would require and contend with.  He also believed that those responsible for the children would have their best interests at heart, a fact which hasn’t changed.

Granted, the world has become “flat” but in that flatness the horizon that educators gaze upon has become quite broad, and if anyone has the vision to take education into the next millennia, it’s educators.  So, why hasn’t anyone thought to turn to these skilled, educated, dedicated people and ask them what their schools need?  Why are they being shut out of the conversation?  Why is it assumed that a team of trouble-shooters in a high-rise 500 miles away will know better than the people on the ground?  Simple: because denying the obvious ends in dollar signs.

Like countless other things – the expansion of the military industrial complex with the end of the draft, the appointment of former CEOs to head federal agencies of conflicted interest (Monsanto execs to the USDA, chemical execs to the EPA, etc.), the farming of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans to predatory banks – education has become the next great market… poor schools first.

Tonight, in Philadelphia, the School Reform Commission (the only thing pertaining to Philadelphia’s schools that the state has managed to adequately fund) had a public meeting to announce their plan for Philly’s public schools.  It is expected to follow the Chester model… right down the toilet.  Though the meeting was “public,” police were posted at all the stairwells and elevators, prohibiting hundreds of teachers and thousands of protesters from entering.  While I have yet to hear the verdict, I am not hopeful.  In fact, I’m already depressed.

Watching the blatant dismemberment of a public school district is – for me – the equivalent of watching someone rip pieces of the Constitution to use it for toilet paper.  Where is the justice for these students?  What is the future for those who have been sold by their elected officials and educated by corporations?  And where is the line between those schools and the one my own children will attend?

Well, that last question has a simple answer, doesn’t it?

That line in a township line.  Better tighten my belt and trim my budget.  I’ve got to make ends meet and stay on the wealthy side, because a quality education just became a class privilege.

Work In Progress

/ JillArcangela / 4 Comments

Critics and naysayers love to ask the “tough questions” about Occupy, striving to stump or embarrass us.  What they fail to realize, and what was incredibly apparent during this past weekend’s Northeast Regional Meeting, is that no one is asking tougher questions about Occupy than the Occupiers.

Walking into the meeting, I saw surprised at the incredible mix of people there.  I’ve marched with Occupy in Philadelphia, seen GAs via live stream and countless photos of occupations nationwide.  I’ve noted the diversity before, but nothing is quite so intimate and surprising as walking into a 20’x20’ room and shaking hands with 80 year olds and teenagers, hippies and bikers, long haired guys and buzz cut women, professors and janitors, residents of Society Hill, and people who sleep on benches all before finding a seat.  In fact, the only thing that most of these people had in common was their shared belief that our system has gone insane and needs to be 302ed.

After a long introduction and some fun and introspective group exercises, we moved on to do the work of the day.  Our mission was to discuss, in small groups, topics we think are important to the movement.  First, we had to determine what those topics would be, so we were asked to make suggestions.  The numerous proposals revealed a variety of powerful issues.  Everything from “what do we do with the farm this guy gave us?” to “where are we taking this movement?” and “how do we get there?” to “how do we confront agitators?” came to the table.

With incredible patience and an unbelievable amount of respect, we managed to whittle the intimidating list down to several groups by folding similar ideas together and relating our individual focuses to broader spectrums.  The process was a bit long and tedious, but we sighed with pride and relief when it was over.  We took a breather, ate some lunch, networked and chatted, shared amazing stories and ideas, and returned to meet our groups with clear heads and full tummies.

The group I worked with was focused on the national goals and the organization required to accomplish them.  People raised questions and ideas that centered on things like improving communications between camps, honing a unified message, coordinating localized efforts, creating powerful political change at all levels of government, and developing regional and national working groups.  Some people spoke from logical stand points in calm and down-to-business voices as they suggested improvements to our networks, websites, and conference calls.  Others spoke in voices teeming with passion and threw around expressive hands, talking about things like “guerrilla gardening” and street art.  Still others pointed out necessities like controlling our narrative and avoiding media coopting, reaching greater numbers of people, and creating meaningful statements and documents.

The array of insights and visions was awe-inspiring and simultaneously daunting.  We realize that we have some serious work to be done.  Not just work on our government, but work on our movement.  If we are going to get inside this beast and make the changes we understand to be critical for the future of our nation, we have to be more than loud.  We have to do more than march.  We have to build more than an idea.  We have to plan, inspire, educate, and coordinate.  We have to broader our vision while narrowing our focus.  And we have to keep returning to meetings like this one.

Our time to work in our topic groups was limited, and the process that got us there was trying, but we are learning.  In every action and every GA, at this regional meeting and at the many that we know must follow, we are finding our way through the complexities of direct democracy to become a living, breathing reality of change.  We realize that we don’t have to have all the answers today.  Just sitting together and sharing our thoughts is a revelation, but we also know that it isn’t enough.  We do have to find those answers, and we have to do it sooner than later.

As I try now to compile my thoughts, reach out to new contacts, and take advantage of new opportunities for involvement, I find myself feeling similar to how I felt looking at the mammoth list of pressing issues raised at the regional meeting.  The feeling is nothing short of overwhelming.  Tackling the task and backing it down to a manageable undertaking is not as daunting as it seems.  The key to success lies in the simplest lessons: take one step at a time; listen to others; take advice in earnest; learn from past experience; and above all remember that this is a work in progress.

Any artist, any writer, anyone who creates something for a living (or just for the sheer pleasure in it) will tell you that our greatest work is never done.  There are always things that can be done, visions to be intensified, thoughts to be clarified, systems to be perfected.  This is especially true in the case of our democracy.  Believing that the work was done, that we could sit back and let the cogs turn, is what got us into this mess.  So, we are as our nation is: a work in progress – always growing, always changing, always improving, and always searching for the answers to the tough questions.

The City of Brotherly Shove

/ JillArcangela / 6 Comments

I live just outside Philadelphia, and while I draw inspiration each week from occupations across the nation, I have participated in actions and general assemblies (via streaming video) with the Occupy Philly group.  This weekend was a big one for OP.  After months of peaceful occupation and tenuous cooperation with the city, the camp was issued an eviction notice at the end of last week.  The notice itself came as no surprise to the occupants, as construction was scheduled for Dilworth Plaza (the location of their camp).  With the group acting in direct defiance of the eviction order and staging a huge show of solidarity which was supported by hundreds of OP friendlies, surviving Sunday night completely unthreatened by the police forces surrounding the plaza was a bit more unexpected.  What was most amazing, however, was the internal struggle of the group’s conflicting political opinions and how they turned this conflict into palpable resolve.

 

There is a mix of facts and rumors still to be sorted into a full account of what actually happened to create the friction that plagued the group and culminated in a screaming match of a generally assembled debacle on Friday night.  The long and short of it is that a group called Reasonable Solutions, which spoke with the city on the group’s behalf in an attempt to negotiate the messy business that is urban occupation, began making decisions that didn’t accurately represent that consensus of the larger group.  Reasonable Solutions was able to procure an agreement from the city to move operations to a plaza across the street.  Significantly smaller in size, the plaza would support only what the permit allowed: three collapsible canopies to be assembled and removed – along with all persons and operations – in accordance with permitted hours (9 am to 7 pm).  Now, I have not been close enough to the situation to pass on any reliable details of it, nor would I speculate as I believe speculation is akin to gossip.  What the intentions of the individuals who comprised Reasonable Solutions were, are being debated by many.  Be they agitators from the upstart or those who paved the road to hell with their good intentions, I know not, and I presume nothing.  The end result, however, involved a permit the majority of occupants did not want, a megaphoned hijacking of an important general assembly, and a public statement by OP severing ties to the Reasonable Solutions subset.

 

While I marveled from my living room, watching the chaos unfold via live stream on Friday night with a repeat performance circumvented with relative dignity on Saturday evening, I couldn’t help but ask myself what the justification was for not leaving the plaza.  The construction would, after all, create lots of (short-term) employment for the union workers; it would beautify the city, create a space for concerts which raises local revenue, and create (though extremely limited in number) some employment for those maintaining and managing the space.  The cost was extraordinary but it was mostly grants that had to be spent a certain way, and it was being paid into the local groups building the space.  Blocking the project seemed short-sighted.  I sat back, however, and refrained from passing judgment until I had more perspective.  I followed closely during Saturday’s GA and tried to find the reasoning behind this campaign to resist eviction.  The meeting, however, was business as usual.  They made plans for the eviction and discussed and voted on several other items, none of which gave me any insight into the reason for the stand or the split.  Then the time came for the campers to pack their tents and move out.

 

On Sunday, the camp was prepared for eviction, and so were the campers.  With a backdrop that seemed naked compared to the previously colorful, packed, and bustling center of democratic fervor, the occupants of Philadelphia’s camp and their supporters sat down on the steps of Dilworth Plaza and awaited their eviction… and waited… and waited… and waited.  They waited all night.  They filled the time and space with voices, some expressing themselves in the echoes of comrades during an “open mic” and others cheered and sang through vibrant drumming that lasted well into the night.  People in camp visited the people outside of camp via the video stream, answering questions and chatting.  In the morning, the camp was quiet.  Not because it was empty, as so many thought it would be, but because it was sleeping – piled in greater concentration than ever before in the few remaining tents.

 

Somewhere between the locking of the arms moments before the scheduled eviction and the sound of post-midnight jubilance, I realized why these people chose to make this stand, to sacrifice a relatively peaceful experience, to throw away months of positive relations with the local police, and to risk bodily harm.  The answer was simple: the deal was not acceptable.

 

The city issued its original permit for a 24-hour occupation, permitted camping, portable toilets, electricity, and even reduced police presence to ensure that those wanting to approach the camp would feel comfortable doing so.  Suddenly, now that the city had to commence a $50 million dollar project, that only stands to create 20 full-time jobs and promises to disrupt the lives of hundreds of homeless citizens, a restriction was being put on the functions of the Occupy movement.  With so many locations in the city to choose from, many with the space and features necessary to support the camp, the city wanted to force the camp – which is the movement itself, symbolically – into a smaller space with limiting ordinances.  What happened in the signing of the construction contract that made it legal to limit the first amendment rights of the people using the space?  What clause was there that gave Mayor Nutter the power to vote free assembly?  Was it somewhere between who will lay the concrete and who will plant the shrubs?  Of course, not.  So, they stayed – dividing themselves from a unit which, regardless of their intentions, was willing to bargain away their first amendment for reasons unknown to me but speculated by many.

 

Philadelphia, which literally means “brotherly love,” has never been a place renowned for its charm.  We are city of working class people, strong on culture and rich in pride, opinionated and close-knit, critical of our leaders (and sports teams), and fabulous at applying more swear words to a sentence than words comprising the actual thought.  We are sarcastic and sharp at the tongue.  We are as tough as we are loud, and we are equally unapologetic.  It is this character, read through our snickers and jeers, that often leaves the nation asking “where is the love?”  I try to help others understand us by asking them recall how their brother loved them.  He poked; he pinched; he knocked you around; but he loved you unconditionally, taught you to stand up for yourself, and never let you down when you really needed him.  We are the birthplace of the freedoms this nation has taken from granted and this movement is determined to put to work.  We are great in a debate, but even better in a fight.  And, we are really, really good when push comes to shove.

 

Occupy Philly demonstrated all things bold and beautiful about the history and character of this city.  They were uncompromising in their stance and unrelenting in their stand.  They saw an element that endeavored to sway them toward a compromise that left them holding all the short straws, regarding their camp and regarding their rights.  They withstood, with peace and dignity, the chaos that ensued when this now annexed portion of the project attempted to divide and harass them.  They made clear their objective and their ideology with their rejection of an insufficient negotiation that tried to limit their rights and their reach into the community.

 

This movement is not about compromise.  This movement cannot rely on those in power to do what is right for the people.  This movement cannot take leave of the rights written right here in my city so that mayors can be credited with a keeping on the peace sown by our commitment to non-violence.  And above all, this movement cannot be negotiated into smaller space and smaller time at so critical a moment in our American history, especially for the continuance of the same type of progress that has been pushing our nation backwards for half a century.  If the leaders of our cities want us to move, they are just going to have to give us the space they call their office – because that is what we are after: change in leadership.  Not by name, not by party, but by thinking, by conduct, and by construct itself.

 

It was a beautiful moment for Occupy Philadelphia.  It was a moment of epiphany for me.  And somewhere between the locking of the arms and the drums that celebrated long into the night, I’m sure the fathers of nation who lived and walked on these very streets, who rallied the servants of an empirical British doctrine designed for the profit of kings, who wrote the words on which we all stand now, did their own mic check.  We might not have heard it, but it was loud and clear to those who were paying attention, and it started off something like, “We, the people…”

The Ants Go Marching

/ JillArcangela / Leave a comment

“Mic check!”

“MIC CHECK!”

“Mic check!”

“MIC CHECK!”

And just like that, my heart is pounding.  A cold gust of wind whips the excitement around the crowd and registers more like electricity on my skin than it does the chilly foreshadowing of a coming winter.  The crowd closes in a little as a reverse echo, quiet than loud, reminds us of the things we know and informs us of the changes.  Then, the closing remarks, each phrase repeated by the shouting crowd, “We will be peaceful… …and non-violent…  …We will respect… …all property… …both public and private…  …And above all,…”

As I shout these words, I reflect on the statements I have made.  I think about how they are so important to the health, safety, and success of this movement.  I think about the acts of vandalism and public indecency, even defecation, which are being played up by those who attempt to discredit this movement and should never have happened.  A mix of hope and sadness color a whirlwind of thoughts, so many in a split second, and then a cheer rises from the crowd – a hooting, hollering response to the final words in our pledge, “WE WILL BE LOUD!”

I am pulled back from the momentary mental flood – the head plague of all writers – into this moment, this place, these people, this march.  Another cold wind forces its way through the crowd, supercharging the surface of my skin.  The beat of a single drum begins somewhere near what is about to be the front, and the movement moves.

It is hard for me to believe that this is the first time I’ve ever done this.  I feel nervous, almost self-conscious, and the sound of my own voice yelling is strange and uncomfortable, but I press on.  As the group moves further from the starting point, I have the feeling of being in a parade, something I have done.  I notice the people on the sidewalks looking at us, some smiling, some cheering, others scowling, and many taking pictures.  I resist the temptation to smile and wave like a half-witted beauty queen atop a moving pink-and-white iced wooden cupcake.  I refocus on the people ahead of me, and I continue to yell even though I feel a bit silly.  I know that what I’m doing matters, that it has to be done, and if I am unwilling to do it than I do not deserve to benefit from its efforts.  I think about how many people know they will feel as I do at this moment, and I wonder how many of them aren’t here for that reason.  I credit myself for stepping beyond my shallow suburban comfort zone, and by the time the group turns the first corner, so do I.

The group is yelling things like “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” and “no representation without taxation.”  I believe what I am saying.  I’m settling in.  I notice that the crowd is swelling, putting my middle position much further from the front and back than I was when we started only a few short blocks ago.  Another high-voltage breeze pushes through the crowd.  Signs held high wiggle as their bearers struggle to control them.  The wind sweeps upward, carrying our voices high along the shiny walls that narrow the sky above us.  I follow our voices with my eyes, realizing that the places to which our cries sore are the parapets of the glass castles in which our tyrannical adversaries hide, enthroning themselves with political manipulations and drenching themselves in the thick rewards of their loathsome, unscrupulous behaviors.  I yell louder.

I find myself gaining momentum as the march presses on.  The crowd in yelling, “We are the 99%.”  An echo within the group is bouncing back, “and so are YOU!”  The ones in the secondary call are making eye contact and pointing directly at specific people who watch from the sidewalk.  “Spectators” pops into my mind.  I remember being told once that life is not a spectator sport.  This, I realize, is why I am here.  It is also why, against my husband’s wishes, I have my two-year-old on my back.*  I want him to learn participation the same way he learned speaking and eating, by just doing it all his life.  I suddenly feel a gratitude I’ve never felt before, gratitude for the very thing that got me in most of the trouble I’d been in during my life thus far: the wing-walker gene.  It is the little thing in my brain that makes me able to take chances without fear; a sensible nervousness and a bit of looking before leaping, sure – but not fear, never fear.

In my moment of appreciation, I have again turned my face skyward, and this time I notice people in the windows.  Some, in the lower levels, are pumping their fists in the air.  In the higher windows, they are tight-lipped with folded arms, expressionless except from a furrowed brow.  There they are.  They are just men, I hear myself thinking above my now throat-straining shouts, men with jobs that pay for the food on their table… and the Land Rover, but ok – there’s no crime in owning an expensive car or even an expensive yacht, for that matter.  It is the job at which they work that bothers me, as their life’s work has become the business of taking the food off my table and a future of opportunity from the 30 pound promise on my back.  What will his world be like if I don’t march?  And yell?  And throw my fist in the air?

The group stops here, and a girl with a bullhorn spouts off disgraceful facts about the companies housed in these lofty offices.  I repeat her calls with a sense of disgust growing in my stomach.  I watch the windows as I yell.  They are looking back from high above the city streets, from behind their glass ramparts, scowling faces and silken ties.  To them, we look now the same way they always see us, small and insignificant, like ants scouting for and surviving on their crumbs.  They have that part right, at least.  We are, indeed, like ants.

Ants, an army of individuals who alone seem quite puny, but I have never opened a cupboard door to find an army of ants devouring the sticky dripping of my honey pot without that distinct “oh, shit” moment.  The thing about ants, you see, is that they don’t have to be big because they come by the thousands.  They are capable of moving things hundreds of times larger than the body mass of their entire colony, the human equivalent of moving mountains.  They are resilient and relentless, focused and cooperative.  They work together to pick apart things that they never dream of approaching alone, and with time and patience there is nothing they cannot tear down.  When ants are marching, it is for the purpose of their survival.  They head for the target, without breaking their line, without faltering at all, and they attack their mission with tireless dedication until the work is done.  They are, for all intents and purposes, unstoppable; and though they seem small from above, they are, in the grander scheme of things, a force to be reckoned with

Again, I come back to where I am.  Feet planted firmly on the ground, son on my back, fist in the air, hearing myself chanting in unison with the people who also had the courage to be in this place in history.  “…AND WE WON’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!”  A huge cheer erupts from the now enormous crowd.  Again, the beat of a drum, and we continue of our path.  The ants are marching.

* A note of thanks to Occupy Philly, the Philadelphia Police Department, and the Office of Mayor Michael Nutter for making our city’s occupation safe, so that I could experience this day and share it with my son.