Who is the AUSL?

"They gave us air conditioning, they gave us a ramp, they gave us a new library -- no librarian, but they gave us a new library," teacher Ollie Clements said. CPS released a statement from Barbara Byrd-Bennett that says AUSL has a record of improving schools from the ground up, and that "when change is in the best interest of our students, we will not waver." Chicago Teacher's Union president Karen Lewis disagrees. "This is about adult interests and the people who benefit politically," Lewis said. ____ NBC 5 News NBCChicago.com 4/9/14 Ollie Clements, who has two grandchildren at Gresham, said she’s tired of money flowing freely to charter schools, while resources are taken away from neighborhood schools. She had a message for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “We don’t want to beg you anymore, we want what’s ours, and we demand what’s ours, and if you cannot give it to us, you will not get the votes come election time,” she said. ____ CBS 2 News Chicago 3/26/14 Byrd-Bennett said the school district "will not waver" when "change is in the best interest of our students." Byrd-Bennett's statement was a slap in the face to Ollie Clements, who has two grandsons that attend Gresham. If CPS will not waver, then why hold community meetings and hearings to gather public input about the proposed school actions, Clements asked. "That [statement] tells us a lot, because that means ... she's not going through this whole [public input] process," Clements said. She also pointed out that CPS spent money on recent upgrades at Gresham, such as two elevators and air conditioning, to accommodate a charter school that was supposed to share the building with Gresham this school year. The charter school ended up not moving into the building. It bothers Clements that CPS was able to find funds to pay for the upgrades, yet the district has not provided additional resources to the school to help with problems like classroom overcrowding. "They didn't share any additional resources with us," she said. "We asked for additional resources. Of course, we did not get anything. We have a class size of second graders of 32 kids in a class. That is really overwhelming for any teacher....But if we don't have the resources, how can we hire any new teachers to help?" She added that AUSL has an unfair advantage because it has a bulk of resources to help it improve a school's academic performance. AUSL comes "into a setting where the children are making progress, where there's an upward swing, so when they come in and they start teaching to the kids there, they'll take the credit for having made that progress, and that's really not fair," she stressed. "That's not giving the credit to the teachers that are there doing more than an adequate job." If teachers at the three schools are fired, Clements said she is specifically concerned about what will happen to the long-time, veteran educators. In an interview Friday In an interview Friday, AUSL spokeswoman Deirdre Campbell countered complaints from critics. “It’s structured, not strict, we think that it’s really important that all of the students understand what the expectations are,” Campbell said. On the subject of AUSL faculty inexperience, she said, “If you’re a highly effective teacher, we think it’s great to have opportunities for growth,” while conceding that “if they’ve been through the process and they kind of know the ropes, they might move on.” Campbell did say that teachers who are fired in a turnaround are still eligible to apply to AUSL teaching programs. “We have had both faculty and staff return, and many have been very pleased.” AUSL schools do receive more funding. While the amount spent on each student is the same according to Illinois State Board of Education, AUSL receives an additional $300, 000 one-time administrative fee from CPS at the start of the turnaround. For the following five years, AUSL schools get an extra $420 per student, money that Campbell says is invested directly back into the school, and covers the cost of paying for teacher-coaches and staff support. After five years, AUSL fundraises privately for additional support programs such as City Year, a group of volunteers who aid teachers in the classroom. AUSL also has the same advantage as most charter schools to plan their own budget. “Because we’re a non-profit, it is my understanding that we decide how those dollars should be deployed,” Campbell said. Parent-resistance to a turnaround program is not unusual. “The parents that have spoken out loudest against the turnaround become our strongest advocates,” Campbell said.

Contemporary Forms of Racism-today?

Over the past several decades, two phenomena have emerged, as shown in various surveys [1] : 1) the most recent immigrants are always the most denigrated, the most feared, and the most scorned, but time slowly dissipates this fear and this scorn ; 2) immigrants from the former colonies, especially from Africa, are the exception to this rule. In other words, one can distinguish between a xenophobic stigma that only exists in its worst forms for new arrivals, and a racist stigma that is a crystallization of more deeply rooted prejudice. As a result, the racism toward the second category does not—or hardly—dissipate with the renewal of generations and their rootedness in France. Though immigrants from Italy, Poland, Armenia, and Portugal were the object of despicable discourse and often quite brutal discrimination upon their arrival in France, discrimination similar in form and in violence to what today’s postcolonial immigrants undergo, this was not the case for their children, and even less so for their grand-children. [2] The same cannot be said for the children of North African or sub-Saharan African immigrants, who are the only ones to be condemned to the absurd—but politically eloquent—appellation of “second or third-generation immigrants” and the accompanying forms of discrimination. If, as Albert Memmi describes it, racism is “a generalized and definitive valorization of real or imaginary differences, which benefits the accuser to the detriment of the victim, in order to legitimize aggression and privilege” [3], then there is a specific kind of racism that has been constructed in order to legitimize colonial aggression and privilege. “Cultural differences” (especially with respect to Muslims) were essentialized and naturalized ; a “moral” form of exclusion was justified based on these differences ; the “native” was theorized and created as a “body of exception” and framed by specific legislation (formalized, for example, in Algeria by the sénatus-consulte of July 14, 1865). [4] This culturalist racism did indeed get passed down from generation to generation, including in the era following independence—and this without much change, as is the case with any system of representation that goes unchecked by criticism or deconstruction. It is difficult to deny that representations of the “Black”, the “immigrant”, the “Muslim”, the “beur” or the “beurette” continue to enjoy widespread circulatation in contemporary French society and not without consequences. [5] “Cultural” difference remains overvalued in French society (“they” are different from “us”) while ignoring other differences relating to class or “personality” (“they” are all the same, and “we” all share the same “national identity”). Nor can it be denied that this two-fold operation of differentiation and amalgamation results in patently inferiorizing representations (in the best case, “they” are seen as backward or deficient, and in the worst for the danger they represent, while “we” embody “reason”, the “universal”, and “modernity”). [6] Finally, there is no question that this devalorizing discourse serves to legitimate a situation of domination, of relegation, and of systemic social exclusion within the contemporary postcolonial space. Systemic and Institutional Discrimination After decades of denial and blindness to the fact, the extreme level of racist discrimination is finally beginning to be recognized. Moreover, many are ready to admit that this discrimination more specifically affects the descendents of “formerly colonized” peoples. However, despite the existence of several studies highlighting the systemic character of these forms of discrimination, discrimination is still mostly seen as isolated acts of “misunderstanding the other” or a “withdrawal into oneself”. [7] The victims themselves are even at times blamed for their lack of “integration” or their “cultural” backwardnes. In all cases, the existence of the social process of the production of discrimination is entirely denied. But this process has been put in place by the institutions of the Republic itself, even legalized in despite of the official principle of non-discrimination, which is ritually reiterated while being flouted on a daily basis. [8] The systemic and institutional character of discrimination is nevertheless patent, and makes for a palpable analogy with the colonial relationship : “Beyond the series of analogies that one can find in these two phenomena—historical analogies (immigration is often the daughter of direct or indirect colonization) and structural analogies (in today’s order of relationships of domination, immigration takes the place that colonization once occupied)—, immigration has, in a certain sense, been built as a system, much like one used to say that ‘colonization is a system’ (to borrow Sartre’s expression).” [9] Postcolonial racism is thus not simply a holdover from the past. Rather, it is an ever-evolving, systemic facet of our society. Representational forms inherited from the past continually get reformulated and renewed to fit contemporary interests. Indeed, it is our society that continues to produce “natives” in the political sense of the term : “sub-citizens”, “subjects” who are not, legally speaking, foreigners, but who, nevertheless, are not treated as real French. In his work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Karl Marx studied this interaction between the past and the present, and the role that the inherited social imaginary plays. People decipher their lived reality through this imaginary ; they determine the borders between “us” and “them” ; they use it as the foundation of their present actions. Specifically, it was through this colonial imaginary that postcolonial immigrants were first seen in the 1960s and 1970s, and it was this imaginary that legitimized the economic, social, and political marginalization of these immigrants. Starting at the bottom in the most difficult and tiring jobs of the economic world, denial of social needs unrelated to directly productive needs, reduction of man to imple unit of labor (and therefore neglect of family life), the injunction to be discreet and apolitical. The spread of unemployment and of job precariousness beginning in the 1980s took place against the backdrop of an order of domination in which immigrants were seen as dominated among the dominated : thus did French people from colonized backgrounds inherit the place in society that their parents had once occupied. Culturalist, Output-Oriented, Depoliticized “Causal Attributions” The colonial imaginary is related to manner in which real situations of inequality are understood. The colonizer does not negate inequalities produced by the colonial system, but their origins are repressed and attributed to biological or cultural explanations. [10] For example, the lack of ardor in the colonized’s work is not explained in terms of the colonial social relationship that imposes exhausting working conditions on the colonized while simultaneously denying personal initiative or any kind of pleasure from her/his her labor, but rather attributed to the inherent indolence of the “African” or the incorrigible lack of discipline in the “North African”. [11] One sees this same mechanism of decontextualization, depoliticization, and ethnicization today : discrimination is no longer seen as the root of marginalization, of “rage”, or of the “whatever” attitude typical of so many young people from colonial background of colonization, but as a deficiency in the youths themselves—a lack of “direction” or parental guidance, a “cultural” inability or incompatibility, a lack of familiarity with the “values of the Republic” or with “modernity” itself… [12] In November 2005, some even went so far as to inverse the causes and effects, by explaining that these youth had difficulty finding jobs because of their “asocial behavior”, products after all of their “parents’ polygamy” ! The thematic of “integration”, which remains dominant in policies targeting immigrants and their children, can be inscribed in this culturalist, output-oriented, and depoliticized register. The call for integration, in fact, reduces those to which it refers to an irreducible “cultural difference” and a perpetual position of exteriority with respect to the “national community” : the idea that they must integrate themselves or be integrated assumes that they are not already—naturalization proceedings, with their “integration questionnaire” are one of the practical iterations of this logic. Historically, it was under the aegis of the colonial system that the equality of citizens was subverted in support of a culturalist definition of the nation. In this framework, the colonized could only enjoy the privileges of citizenship if they gave up their “statut personnel” [civil status]. [13] Integrationism, Another Form of Racism ? The word integration also requires those targeted to be reserved, discreet, in a word, invisible. Éric Savarèse has shown how the colonial gaze made the colonized invisible, or made him or her a simple mirror in which “France” could contemplate its own “civilizing” genius ; for his part, Abdelmalek Sayad has shown that this “invisibilization” has been reproduced in the sphere of immigration where the immigrant is reduced to a position d’obligés [indebted position] vis-à-vis the host society. [14] The situation is the same today for young French with backgrounds of colonization : they, too, are “invisible” and are also told not to be “ostentatious”, to be polite and discreet, even though they face quotidian encounters filled with scorn and social injustice. All efforts to be seen are taken as a threat, as indication of their “refusal to integrate”, as a “rejection of the Republic”. At the risk of being shocking, we can say that integration, such as it is generally conceived, spoken of, and politically translated for the public, is less often an alternative to racism than a sublimated form or instrument of legitimization for this racism. If racism is the denial of equality, then integration is the credo that evacuates the issue of egalitarianism. Indeed, while being “integrated” and “included”, having “one’s place” are considered better than being purely and simply excluded, these terms do not specify which place is being designated. A waiter has “his place”. He may well be included and integrated while also being subordinated, scorned, and exploited. The fact is that, in many contexts, speaking of “integration problems” is essentially a way to avoid having to articulate words like domination, discrimination, and inequality. The similarities between the use of the word “integration” in the colonial system and then again in the postcolonial system are striking : in both cases, beyond the numerous contextual differences, the word is working in the same way, namely, as pushback against demands for liberty and equality. Indeed, the word “integration” was never used as frequently as when the colonized demanded equal rights, self-determination, and independence—and then again, several decades later, beginning in 1983, when their descendants “marched for Equality”. [15] “Integrate, Suppress, Promote, Emancipate” The postcolonial system also reproduces divisions and compartmentalizations among individuals from the colonial system : masses to integrate, masses to suppress, an elite to promote, and women to “emancipate”. Masses to integrate. The “culturally handicapped”, the “resistant”, the “maladjustment of Islam to modernity” and “secularism”, the lack of “efforts to integrate” : all of these clichés are the product of a “mythical portrait of the colonized”, which Albert Memmi. Analyzed so convincinly in his book The Clonizer and the Colonized. [16] One finds the motifs of “backwardness” and “slowness”, and their opposite : the French State’s “civilizing” mission. Masses to suppress. Rejection and revolt on the part of the youth from the banlieues faced with inequality, particularly those of colonial immigrant backgrounds, are considered illegitimate. Because these acts are seen within a strictly culturalist prism, no other possible meaning, value, or social and political legitimacy can be assigned. [17] Youth demanding social justice are only seen according to their “refusal to integrate” and their familial and/or cultural and/or religious affiliations. They are considered “anomic”—or worse : the bearers of norms and values that pose a threat to the social order. From the rodeos [reckless joyriding] in the Minguettes project of 1981 to the riots of November 2005, the systematic (and almost exclusively and excessively “hard”) recourse to the surveillance and repression of protest movements is another point in common with the colonial model. More generally, all dissident, deviant, or simply “misplaced” behavior on the part of the youth from backgrounds of colonization is met with moral judgment that recalls the outrage, the generalizations, and the content of the colonials’ grievances pertaining to the colonized. The “mythical portrait of the postcolonized person” in large part reproduces the “mythical portrait of the colonized”, the structure and development of which Albert Memmi studied in his time. [18] Today, as in the colonial era, we speak of “territories” to “conquer” or “reconquer”, “uncivilized spaces”, “wild children” and “barbarians”, a “lack of education”, the necessity of “adapting” our penal legislation to “new”, radically “different” populations who once lived “outside of all rationality.” [19] Beyond words, political and police practices (though, happily, to a lesser extent) act according to a script that was in large part written during the colonial context : from the implementation of a curfew to “pre-emptive war”, or repeated police inspections or inopportune dispersions in building lobbies, from the penalization of parents for the crimes of their children to the ways of dealing with political contestation (defamation, criminalization, calls upon religious authorities to pacify a riot or keep the public from political protest), officials have installed methods of control that undermine a good number of fundamental principles (the presumption of innocence, the principle of individual responsibility, the principle of secularism, etc.). These are seen as anomalies within the French legal tradition. But if one recalls that other French tradition, the nation’s shadows where exceptionalism and techniques of power were invented and experimented—we are of course speaking of the colonies—then the current “security-related deviations” lose much of their newness and exoticism. An elite to promote. Be it to show off the “French model of integration” (to show the failing masses that “you can pull yourself up”, and that each individual is ultimately responsible for his or her unhappiness), or to work as an “intermediary” with the other “youths” under the pretext of cultural proximity, or to occupy ethnicized posts under the pretext of certain specifications, an ideological injunction to disloyalty is being declined at many levels. This situation is similar to Frantz Fanon’s conception of the “evolved”, of the “Black skin” and “White mask”. [20] Women to “emancipate”, in spite of themselves, and against their families. The debates surrounding the law on the wearing of religious signs have brought to the fore the persistence of colonial representations of a “violent heterosexuality” between the “Arab” or “Muslim boy” and the submissive woman or girl. The very fact that those concerned went unheard, that they were asked to unveil themselves under threat of punishment, exclusion, and academic expulsion—in other words : to “force them to be free”—recalls the colonial conception of emancipation. [21] The Stakes of Nomination To conclude, and in response to recurring objections, we must clarify two issues. First, to say that a “postcolonial racism” exists does not amount to saying that racism is the only element of French contemporary society, that colonization is the only source of racism, or that countries that did not have colonial Empires do not have their own forms of racism with their own historic foundations. Clearly, other forms of racism exist in France, which is to say, other forms of irreducible stigmatization and xenophobia : Anti-Jewish and Anti-Gypsy racism, for example—or even radical forms of social scorn with regard to “poor Whites”, which amounts, in a way, to a “class racism”. While it might be necessary to recall the past and present oppression of Blacks, Arabs, and Muslims when it is being absolutized or put into competition with that of other groups, it would be absurd and dishonest to suspect or accuse—as is often done—these groups of “colonial-centrism”, of “competing with other victims” or of “trivializing the Shoah”. It would be irresponsible to call someone anti-Semitic for devoting him or herself to the analysis and struggle against specific racism targeted at colonized and postcolonized persons. On this point, let us cite Sigmund Freud, who argued that dedicating oneself to the numerous neuroses that are born from sexual repression is not tantamount to negating the existence of other troubles and causes. In the same way, emphasizing the colonial origins of some forms of racism is not tantamount to negating the existence of other forms of racism and discrimination rooted in other historic moments and other social processes. We do not see colonization everywhere any more than Freud saw sex everywhere—even if we do see it at work in places where others do not want to see it, like Freud saw sexual pulsion where many did not want to see it. Neither is speaking of “postcolonial racism” a way to suggest that descendants of colonized persons experience the same situation, in every aspect, as their ancestors. Here, the meaning of the prefix “post” is clear : it marks both a change of era and a filiation, an inheritance, a “family resemblance”. Here again, it is worth making the distinction. However, it is often a bit beside the point, especially when it is brought up in order to “give a lesson” to militant movements that are often completely aware of the differences between colonial and postcolonial situations—and who say so loud and clear. Such was the case for the Mouvement des Indigènes de la République. In spite of the numerous clarifications they provided [22], a number of scholars and politicians criticized them on a regular basis for calling themselves indigènes [natives] or for qualifying some speech and some legal, administrative, and police documents as “colonial”. [23] The Code de l’Indigénat has been abolished, they sagely explain. The problem with these kinds of demands for seriousness and historical rigor, besides the fact that they take their audience for a bunch of imbeciles, is that they misunderstand the specificity of political discourse, or rather, of certain forms of political discourse (the petition, the tract, the banner, the slogan, etc.), which imply, since the beginning of time and regardless of the struggle (workers, feminists, homosexuals, etc.), a certain use of the shortcut and hyperbole. It is also that they misunderstand the heuristic power that the “anger of the oppressed” can wield. [24] These calls to order also feels like a “double standard”, for one rarely hears the scholar or the politician offering the same lessons or friendly advice to militant feminists when they—and rightly so—call our society patriarchal. However, the same goes for the discriminatory laws giving women the status of minors and the Code de l’Indigénat. Equality between men and women is now enacted by law, just like the principle of non-discrimination in function of “race, ethnicity, or religion”—and they share the same relative-effectiveness… Nor does one find the same worries and hypercorrections when over-exploited illegal immigrants are compared to slaves, when philosophers, sociologists, and left-wing militants speak of academic or social apartheid, or when wage-earners, benefiting from some acquired social status or relative access to consumer goods, continue to sing about themselves as the “damned of the earth” or “slaves of hunger”… More deeply, the hostile, wary, and condescending reactions to the different movements and demands of 2005, among which figured the demands of the Indigènes de la République, pose crucial questions regarding the power to name and its legitimacy. The power to name is performative, which is to say that it affects realities ; it shapes what is said and what is, as a result, relegated to the “un-said” and even to the un-sayable. It constructs social reality in a determined manner and imposes grids for reading, concrete cause and effect explanations that trickle down through public policies. Knowing who is authorized to name whom is not irrelevant. It is not irrelevant to see new terms emerge, be they for self-designation or hetero-designation. It is in this way, rather than in the professional mode of emphasizing the differences between colonial and postcolonial natives, that historians and sociologists ought to understand recent movements that, in part, understand themselves in terms of the colonial past. As Abdelmalek Sayad recalls : “This is a known thing : derision is the weapon of the weak ; it is a passive arm, a protective and preventive arm. This technique is well-known by dominated peoples, and is used with relative frequency in situations of domination […]. Black American sociology and colonial sociology teach that, as a general rule, one form of revolt, and undoubtedly the primary form of revolt against stigmatization […], consists in reclaiming the stigma, which then becomes an emblem of it.” [25] p.-s. This text is taken from Pascal Blanchard (ed), Colonial culture in France since the revolution, Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2014

MLB in 2007 begun honoring Jackie Robinson by allowing players to wear number 42 on April 15, Jackie Robinson Day,

Jackie Robinson said, "I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me ... all I ask is that you respect me as a human being." Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, into a family of sharecroppers in Cairo, Georgia. He was the youngest of five children born to Jerry and Mallie Robinson, after siblings Edgar, Frank, Matthew (nicknamed "Mack"), and Willa Mae. His middle name was in honor of former President Theodore Roosevelt, who died 25 days before Robinson was born. After Robinson's father left the family in 1920, they moved to Pasadena, California. Robinson's major league debut brought an end to approximately sixty years of segregation in professional baseball, known as the baseball color line. After World War II, several other forces were also leading the country toward increased equality for blacks, including their accelerated migration to the North, where their political clout grew, and President Harry Truman's desegregation of the military in 1948. Robinson's breaking of the baseball color line and his professional success symbolized these broader changes and demonstrated that the fight for equality was more than simply a political matter. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that he was "a legend and a symbol in his own time", and that he "challenged the dark skies of intolerance and frustration."[ According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robinson's "efforts were a monumental step in the civil-rights revolution in America ... [His] accomplishments allowed black and white Americans to be more respectful and open to one another and more appreciative of everyone's abilities." Beginning his major league career at the relatively advanced age of twenty-eight, he played only ten seasons from 1947 to 1956, all of them for the Brooklyn Dodgers. During his career, the Dodgers played in six World Series, and Robinson himself played in six All-Star Games. In 1999, he was posthumously named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Robinson's career is generally considered to mark the beginning of the post–"long ball" era in baseball, in which a reliance on raw power-hitting gave way to balanced offensive strategies that used foot speed to create runs through aggressive base running Robinson exhibited the combination of hitting ability and speed which exemplified the new era. He scored more than 100 runs in six of his ten seasons (averaging more than 110 runs from 1947 to 1953), had a .311 career batting average, a .409 career on-base percentage, a .474 slugging percentage, and substantially more walks than strikeouts (740 to 291). Robinson was one of only two players during the span of 1947–56 to accumulate at least 125 steals while registering a slugging percentage over .425 (Minnie Miñoso was the other).[182] He accumulated 197 stolen bases in total, including 19 steals of home. None of the latter were double steals (in which a player stealing home is assisted by a player stealing another base at the same time). Robinson has been referred to by author David Falkner as "the father of modern base-stealing". Historical statistical analysis indicates Robinson was an outstanding fielder throughout his ten years in the major leagues and at virtually every position he played. After playing his rookie season at first base, Robinson spent most of his career as a second baseman. He led the league in fielding among second basemen in 1950 and 1951. Toward the end of his career, he played about 2,000 innings at third base and about 1,175 innings in the outfield, excelling at both. Assessing himself, Robinson said, "I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me ... all I ask is that you respect me as a human being."

How's Harold? Happy Birthday Mayor Washington!

Born on April 15, 1922, Harold Washington was Chicago's first African-American mayor. He grew up in the city he spent his career trying to help—Chicago. His father was a police officer and a lawyer and his mother was a singer. Washington attended the city's public schools, but he left high school before earning his diploma. In the early 1940s, he went into the military to serve during World War II. After the war, Washington received a G.E.D. and headed off to college. He earned a bachelor's degree from Roosevelt University in 1949. Continuing his studies, Washington enrolled in law school at Northwestern University. He was the only black man in his class and completed his law degree in 1952. n 1965, Washington won election to the Illinois House of Representatives. He served the city's 26th District for roughly a decade, supporting legislation to advance equality. Washington also sought to make the birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. a statement holiday. Not one tow the party line, he sometimes went against the wishes of his state's Democratic leadership. During his time in the legislature, Washington ran into one serious legal problem. He was convicted of tax evasion for not filling tax returns for several years. For his crime, Washington spent 36 days in jail in 1972. He became a state senator in 1977. Three years later, Washington moved on to national politics. He won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Washington faced a difficult battle in his effort to become mayor. While he clinched the Democratic nomination away from incumbent mayor Jane Byrne, he had to deal with some questionable campaign tactics by his white Republican opponent Bernard Epton. Epton used a slogan—"Before It's Too Late"—that many read to be call for voters to prevent the first black American from getting the city's top job. Other racially oriented attacks were also orchestrated by Epton's supporters. On April 12, 1983, Washington made history when he won more than 50 percent of the vote to become Chicago's new mayor. The struggle wasn't over once he won the post, however. In what is now known as the "council wars," Washington had wrangle with a block of city alderman who seemed to oppose him at nearly every turn. Still he managed to increase the number of contracts awarded to minority-owned businesses and made city government more transparent to the public. Washington, known as being a man of the people, invited his constituents to voice their opinions regarding the city's budget. In 1987, Washington won re-election. This time around he had a sizable block of alderman behind him to help him advance his plans for the city. Unfortunately, Washington died of a heart attack not long into his second term. He collapsed at his desk in City Hall on November 25, 1987, and was declared dead at a nearby hospital that afternoon. Washington's beloved city honored him in many ways after his passing, including renaming Loop College after him. The Harold Washington Library Center is another place that bears his name.

Black men and women between the ages of 20 and 39 account for nearly one third of all sentenced prisoners.

Race defines every aspect of the criminal justice system, from police targeting, to crimes charged, and rates of conviction. Over the last three decades, the explosion of the prison population in the United States paralleled the stagnation in the global economy. In the early 1970s, the United States and the G7 nations began implementing neoliberal policies, moving production from the North to the global South, pushing entire sectors of workers in the United States out of the economy. As the economic role of the working class in the United States shifted from manufacturing to staffing a rising service industry, African American workers faced staggering rates of unemployment. The mid-1970s is also the first period when the incarceration rate in the United States began to rise, doubling in the 1980s, and doubling again in the 1990s. It may surprise some people that as the number of people without jobs increases, the number of working people actually increases—they become prison laborers. Everyone inside has a job. There are currently over 70 factories in California’s 33 prisons alone. Prisoners do everything from textile work and construction, to manufacturing and service work. Prisoners make shoes, clothing, and detergent; they do dental lab work, recycling, metal production, and wood production; they operate dairies, farms, and slaughterhouses. In 1865, the 13th Amendment officially abolished slavery for all people except those convicted of a crime and opened the door for mass criminalization. Prisons were built in the South as part of the backlash to Black Reconstruction and as a mechanism to re-enslave Black workers. In the late 19th-century South, an extensive prison system was developed in the interest of maintaining the racial and economic relationship of slavery. Black Codes and Convict Leasing A system of convict leasing was developed to allow white slave plantation owners in the South to literally purchase prisoners to live on their property and work under their control. Through this system, bidders paid an average $25,000 a year to the state, in exchange for control over the lives of all of the prisoners. The system provided revenue for the state and profits for plantation owners. In 1878, Georgia leased out 1,239 prisoners, and all but 115 were African American Chain Gangs As the southern states began to phase out convict leasing, prisoners were increasingly made to work in the most brutal form of forced labor, the chain gang. The chain gangs originated as a part of a massive road development project in the 1890s. Georgia was the first state to begin using chain gangs to work male felony convicts outside of the prison walls. Chains were wrapped around the ankles of prisoners, shackling five together while they worked, ate, and slept. Following Georgia’s example, the use of chain gangs spread rapidly throughout the South. Prison Labor Exploitation in the 21st Century Just a few decades later, we are witnessing the return of all of these systems of prison labor exploitation. Private corporations are able to lease factories in prisons, as well as lease prisoners out to their factories. Private corporations are running prisons-for-profit. Government-run prison factories operate as multibillion dollar industries in every state, and throughout the federal prison system. In the most punitive and racist prison systems, we are even witnessing the return of the chain gang. Prisoner resistance and community organizing has been able to defeat some of these initiatives, but in Arizona, Maricopa County continues to operate the first women’s chain gang in the history of the United States. A history so rich it must be denied. Where do we go from here:

Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves.--Who was Queen Mother Moore

Queen Mother Moore (July 27, 1898 – May 2, 1996) was an African-American civil rights leader and a black nationalist who was friends with such civil rights leaders as Marcus Garvey, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and Jesse Jackson. She was a figure in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and a founder of the Republic of New Afrika. She was born Audley Moore in New Iberia, Louisiana, to Ella and St. Cry Moore on July 27, 1898. Both her parents died before she completed the fourth grade, her mother Ella Johnson dying in 1904 when Audley was six.[1] Her grandmother, Nora Henry, had been enslaved at birth, the daughter of an African woman who was raped by her enslaver, who was a doctor. Audley Moore’s grandfather was lynched, leaving her grandmother with five children with Moore's mother as the youngest. Moore became a hairdresser at the age of 15. After viewing a speech by Marcus Garvey, Moore moved to Harlem, New York, and later became a leader and life member of the UNIA. She participated in Garvey’s first international convention in New York City and was a stock owner in the Black Star Line. Along with becoming a leading figure in the Civil Rights Movement, Moore worked for a variety of causes for over 60 years. Her last public appearance was at the Million Man March alongside Jesse Jackson during October 1995. Moore was the founder and president of the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women as well as the founder of the Committee for Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves. She was a founding member of the Republic of New Africa to fight for self-determination, land, and reparations. For most of the 1950s and 1960s, Moore was the best-known advocate of African-American reparations. Operating out of Harlem and her organization, the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, Moore actively promoted reparations from 1950 until her death in 1996.[2] In addition, Moore was bishop of the Apostolic Orthodox Church of Judea. She was a founding member of the Commission to Eliminate Racism, Council of Churches of Greater New York. In organizing this commission, she staged a 24-hour sit-in for three weeks. She was a founder of the African American Cultural Foundation, Inc., which led the fight against usage of the slave term "Negro”. In 1957, Moore presented a petition to the United Nations and a second in 1959, arguing for self-determination, against genocide, for land and reparations, making her an international advocate. Interviewed by E. Menelik Pinto, Moore explained the petition, in which she asked for 200 billion dollars to monetarily compensate for 400 years of slavery. The petition also called for compensations to be given to African Americans who wish to return to Africa and those who wish to remain in America. Taking the first of many trips to Africa in 1972, she was given the chieftaincy title "Queen Mother" by members of the Ashanti people in Ghana, an honourific which became her informal name in the United States. She attended the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa, according to her family. Queen Mother Moore being honored for service Uplifting African Diaspora Queen Mother Moore died in a Brooklyn nursing home from natural causes at the age of 97.

A moment to Reflect: The Murder of Dr. King

Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old. In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in America. He organized a Poor People's Campaign to focus on the issue, including an interracial poor people's march on Washington, and in March 1968 traveled to Memphis in support of poorly treated African-American sanitation workers. On March 28, a workers' protest march led by King ended in violence and the death of an African-American teenager. King left the city but vowed to return in early April to lead another demonstration. On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, "We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop...And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land." One day after speaking those words, Dr. King was shot and killed by a sniper. As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out in cities all across the United States and National Guard troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington, D.C. On April 9, King was laid to rest in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to pay tribute to King's casket as it passed by in a wooden farm cart drawn by two mules. The evening of King's murder, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy. On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King's murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King's assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967, a mysterious man named "Raoul" had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning enterprise. On April 4, 1968, he said, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled to Canada. Ray's motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the next 29 years. During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King Jr. spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. government and military. U.S. authorities were, in conspiracists' minds, implicated circumstantially. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under communist influence. For the last six years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by the FBI. Before his death, Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military intelligence, which may have been asked to watch King after he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. Furthermore, by calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S. government.

Reparations Bill H. R. 40

Issues: Reparations In January of 1989, I first introduced the bill H.R. 40, Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. I have re-introduced HR 40 every Congress since 1989, and will continue to do so until it's passed into law. One of the biggest challenges in discussing the issue of reparations in a political context is deciding how to have a national discussion without allowing the issue to polarize our party or our nation. The approach that I have advocated for over a decade has been for the federal government to undertake an official study of the impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation. Over 4 million Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and its colonies from 1619 to 1865, and as a result, the United States was able to begin its grand place as the most prosperous country in the free world. It is un-controverted that African slaves were not compensated for their labor. More unclear however, is what the effects and remnants of this relationship have had on African-Americans and our nation from the time of emancipation through today. I chose the number of the bill, 40, as a symbol of the forty acres and a mule that the United States initially promised freed slaves. This unfulfilled promise and the serious devastation that slavery had on African-American lives has never been officially recognized by the United States Government. My bill does four things: 1.It acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery 2.It establishes a commission to study slavery, its subsequent racial and economic discrimination against freed slaves; 3.It studies the impact of those forces on today's living African Americans; and 4.The commission would then make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies to redress the harm inflicted on living African Americans. The commission established would also shed light on the capture and procurement of slaves, the transport and sale of slaves, the treatment of slaves in the colonies and in the United States. It would examine the extent to which Federal and State governments in the U.S. supported the institution of slavery and examine federal and state laws that discriminated against freed African slaves from the end of the Civil War to the present. Many of the most pressing issues, which have heretofore not been broached on any broad scale, would be addressed. Issues such as the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery, whether an apology is owed, whether compensation is warranted and, if so, in what form and who should eligible would also be delved into. H.R. 40 has strong grass roots support within the African American community, including major civil rights organizations, religious organizations, academic and civic groups from across the country. This support is very similar to the strong grassroots support that proceeded another legislative initiative: the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday bill. It took a full 15 years from the time I first introduced it on April 5, 1968 to its passage in the fall of 1983. Through most of those 15 years, the idea of a federal holiday honoring an African American civil rights leader was considered a radical idea. Like the King Holiday bill, we have seen the support for this bill increase each year. Today we have over 40 co-sponsors, more than at any time in the past. What is also encouraging is the dramatic increase in the number of supporters for the bill among Members of Congress who are not members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Just this past month my Colleague Tony Hall, from Ohio introduced a bill calling for an apology as well as the creation of a reparations commission. So now, for the first time we now have two bills in Congress that call for the creation of a commission. We are also encouraged by the support of city councils and other local jurisdiction that have supported our bill. Already the city councils in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Atlanta have passed bills supporting H.R. 40. And just this past month a councilman in Los Angeles, the site of our 2000 convention has introduced a bill with the strong support of the Los Angeles community. Also, there are presently two bills in the Michigan State House of Representatives addressing the issue of reparations. It is a fact that slavery flourished in the United States and constituted an immoral and inhumane deprivation of African slaves' lives, liberty and cultural heritage. As a result, millions of African Americans today continue to suffer great injustices. But reparation is a national and a global issue, which should be addressed in America and in the world. It is not limited to Black Americans in the US but is an issue for the many countries and villages in Africa, which were pilfered, and the many countries, which participated in the institution of slavery. Another reason that this bill has garnered so much resistance is because many people want to leave slavery in the past - they contend that slavery happened so long ago that it is hurtful and divisive to bring it up now. It's too painful. But the concept of reparations is not a foreign idea to either the U.S. government or governments throughout the world. Though there is historical cognition for reparations and it is a term that is fairly well known in the international body politic, the question of reparations for African Americans remains unresolved. And so, just as we've discussed the Holocaust and Japanese internment camps, and to some extent the devastation that the colonists inflicted upon the Indians, we must talk about slavery and its continued effects. Last year the Democratic Party included this issue in the platform it asks that country engage in a discussion at the federal legislative level would send an important signal to the African American community and other people of goodwill. Learn more about The Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African Americans Act