N Generation - urbanhabitat.org · short glimpses into the revolutionary lives of three iconic...

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Race, Poverty & the Environment | Vol. 19 No. 1 — 2012

n Photos: See captions in this section.

Next Generation

“ We’re not just talking about legislation. We’re talking about our daily

lives. We need to be our own power. We need to be our own voice. We

need to be our biggest advocates.”—Viridiana Martinez

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Next Generation

ABy Christine Joy Ferrer

We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting ForActivistas from the New Majority

t the Empowering Women of Color conference in March this year, I was moved to hear Grace Lee Boggs, in an open dia-logue with Angela Davis, say that we must re-imagine everything; change how we think, what we do, to re-invent oursociety and institutions in order for revolution to happen. And as I listened to female MC and rapper Rocky Rivera giveshort glimpses into the revolutionary lives of three iconic women activists—Gabriela Silang, Dolores Huerta, and AngelaDavis—in the 16 bars of “Heart,” I wondered who would be our next movement builders.

According to a report from United for a Fair Economy—“State of the Dream 2012, the Emerging Majority”—by theyear 2030, a majority of U.S. residents under 18 will be youth of color. By 2042, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Ameri-cans, Pacific Islanders, and other non-whites will collectively comprise a majority of the U.S. population. But numbersalone are not enough to shift the political and economic landscape if income and wealth remain overwhelmingly in thehands of a small group of whites. Although there have been many social and economic gains made for all races since theCivil Rights Movement, people of color continue to be left behind. The stark disparities that exist today in wealth, income,education, employment, poverty, incarceration, and health are the remnants of hundreds of years of racial oppression. Tocreate a new world, we must sever the connection between race and poverty.

Excerpted here are the voices of young activistas who redefine what it means to be part of the new majority as women ofcolor. They have chosen to confront the challenges plaguing their communities and build to eradicate institutionalized con-fines, while engaging in the struggle for social, economic and environmental justice. In their fight for liberation, theyembody that famous quote from African American poet June Jordan: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

The Activistas• Favianna Rodriguez (favianna.com) is a celebrated printmaker and digital artist based in Oakland, California. Her com-

posites, created using high-contrast colors and vivid figures reflect literal and imaginative migration, global community,and interdependence.

• Smita Nadia Hussain is a poet, blogger and photographer who serves in leadership capacities for local young Democratand API organizations, including Community Health for Asian Americans (CHAA), the English Center and the Nation-al Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF). She recently traveled with Habitat for Humanity to buildhomes in Vietnam.

• Shanelle Matthews (sugarforyoursoul.com) does online media communications for Asian Communities for ReproductiveJustice, advocating for women of color and families on the margins who have strategically been left out of the socio-political debate on reproductive health and rights.

• Rocky Rivera (rockyrivera.com) is a hip hop journalist by day and MC by night who found international acclaim bywinning a Contributing Editor position on MTV's docu-series, "I'm From Rolling Stone" (2007).

• Ya-Ting Liu is a federal advocate for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and also the campaign manager for RiderRebellion at Transportation Alternatives.

• Raquel Nunez is a youth organizer for Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.

Listen to more voices of activistas online and read their fullstories at urbanhabitat.org/rpe/radio

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As a young Latina I felt invisible. I am the daughter of immi-grants and grew up in communities of color most of my life. I feltthat my immigrant family, our communities were invisible. Yet, weall carried the brunt of what was happening to the economy inthe country and even throughout the world. We were experiencingthe effects of injustices in our own community. The injustices I sawas a child, the racism that I experienced via the media or theschool curriculum, the xenophobia directed at my parents...angered me in a way that I didn’t have words for. Art became away for me to talk about those experiences, reframe them, and dosomething positive. Making art was a way to have a voice and anempowering way to fight back, instead of acting out on my inter-nalized oppression.

In my work, I approach issues that most affect me as a womanof color and that I see affecting the women around me, whetherit’s my mother, family or friends. This includes issues around immi-grant rights, economic justice, climate change, sexism, patriarchy,and globalization. I think about systems that work to oppress usand take away our agency to be the full humans we want to be.The same forces that are destroying the planet and organizingagainst workers and supporting the big banks as they rip offpeople all over the country are passing anti-immigrant laws andleading this conservative assault on women’s reproductive rights. Iengage in campaigns that look at the intersections between thesedifferent struggles.

I’ve seen more women than ever before question and chal-lenge the frameworks that we have accepted for so long. Womenof color in particular are really challenging traditional feminismand thinking about how race is a key part of how we need toanalyze being a woman. In the immigrant rights sector, I seewomen workers organizing for collectives that hold betterresources and look at building infrastructures because manyunions are not creating that space for immigrant labor—immi-grant women in particular. I see women organizers usually out-number men organizers and more young immigrant queer womenare speaking out about their experiences. In the environmentalsector, young women are drawing parallels between how weinflict abuse on mother Earth and on women’s bodies. Women arefinally embracing their complexities and claiming their power. n

My parents are from Bangladesh, a country birthed from geno-cide. People were victimized; tongues were cut off. They wantedindependence and were literally fighting for their voice. Theydemanded the right to speak their language and fought fordemocracy. When the civil war happened in 1971, a lot of theguerilla fighters were women. Many were executed. Half a millionwomen were raped in nine months. Yet, they still stood up.

When people think of Muslim women they think of anarranged marriage or a head covering. But, my grandmother’ssisters were doctors and lawyers in their country. They marchedand protested for their rights. My great grandmother and hersisters used to march at their university saying they wanted afree country and that women should be free to go out and work.

There’s a lot of intersection between issues confrontingMuslim women, South Asian immigrants and refugees, andIslamaphobia in the United States. Their stories are those behindheadlines of war, immigration and political strife.

I’m a part of the East Bay Refugee Forum—a coalition oforganizations that work on issues facing API and refugee com-munities in the Bay Area. Directly and indirectly, these organiza-tions provide necessary services and resources—such as, busrider information, community events, legal and health clinics, andwhere to get vaccinations. I do some work also for the EnglishCenter, which serves immigrants, international students and pro-fessionals who need to improve their communication skills toachieve their goals, find better jobs, attend college, and improvetheir professional options.

Although there are services out there, with the budget cuts tosocial services across the country, so many benefits are lost tothe point where fear of starvation and homelessness is very real.Within the refugee communities in Oakland, there is a highunemployment rate, much higher than the rest of the countryand the rest of California. There’s one group called the Karan—aminority group from Burma that came here because of war intheir country. They have an 80 percent unemployment rate;higher than any other constituency in Oakland. The economic sit-uation of refugees in Oakland is very troubling. On top of thelanguage issues, many don’t have a formal education and noEnglish skills. They are stuck. n

Favianna Rodriguez:Women of Color in the Movement

Smita Nadia Hussain:South Asian Freedom Fighters and Refugees

“I engage in campaigns that look at

the intersections between different

struggles.” —Favianna Rodriguez

Reflections ofActivistas

n Photos: (Left) Favianna Rodriguez (Right) Smita Nadia Hussain

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Race, Poverty & the Environment | Vol. 19 No. 1 – 2012

My passion for environmental justice is ever growing. By the ageof 19, I was working to organize around various social justice issues.Over the last eight years, I have created several bodies of artworkwith a central focus on social change and youth rights. My goal as anadult ally of the youth at Little Village Environmental Justice Organi-zation (LVEJO) is to continue to grow and sustain an environmentaljustice youth leadership program. We organize youth by creating acurriculum that we share with high schools and have an open-doorpolicy for anyone who would like to become involved and learn more.

LVEJO is currently focused on creating a sustainable sense ofawareness with the volunteers and organization members. There isalso a focus on creating more parks and garden spaces in the com-munity, and a clear air campaign that is working on the site reme-diation of a retired coal-fired power plant. LVEJO partnered with theChicago Clean Power coalition for the clean air campaign. This part-nership was the catalyst for closing the two coal-fired power plantsin the Chicago area.

Our current day institutions are crumbling but this has happenedthroughout history. The key is empowering people and openingspaces where they can learn the skills they need to thrive. Education,communication and new ideas go hand-in-hand. If we could changethe way that we deal with one another and speak with one another,a natural evolution will happen through community dialogue. Self-knowledge is a critical component and revolution is the natural re-sult of any community gaining self-knowledge on an individualbasis.

With the current crisis intensifying the number of people expe-riencing poverty and food insecurity, community gardens and openspace help people weather economic storms, inspire self-relianceand enhance health through increased access to whole foods, goodnutrition and physical exercise. They also provide a common spacefor intergenerational interaction and knowledge sharing.

It is important to increase funding for social services, open spacesand community gardens that build local food self-sufficiency and sup-port fair access to fresh food. I believe, in order to improve communityresiliency, we must strengthen local food and gardening knowledgethrough education in traditional foods, permaculture and sustainableagriculture techniques. It’s about providing our communities, youthand elders with business and leadership development trainingthrough gardening and food-based entrepreneurial opportunities. n

Raquel Nunez: Sustainability and the Environment

Reflections ofActivistasShanelle Matthews:Reproductive Health

“All women of color are struggling in

this country for access to resources,

public assistance, for equality.”

—Shanelle Matthews

The way women of color activate themselves in their communitiesis different from the way white women do it. All women of color arestruggling in this country for access to resources, public assistance,equality. Black women are harmed by a lack of solidarity because weare often stigmatized as insatiable and hypersexual. The commodifi-cation of our bodies is something that is left out of the conversation.

The environmental impacts on black women’s bodies are everpresent. From slavery to hurricane Katrina, we are the first to bedisplaced, denied resources and access to healthcare, denied op-portunities to save our families. When you deny a woman an optionto take care of herself, her reproductive rights, you are ensuringthat she is going to withdraw from the workforce, thus increasingthe capital for white men.

The foundational fabric of this country lies in racism and socioe-conomic status. It is almost safe to say that most black women areat the bottom of the socio-economic totem pole. To start workingtowards equality for all women, we must insert a racial and classanalysis and build solidarity across color and gender lines. If wedon’t acknowledge privilege in this country, we won’t be able tonavigate through this conversation.

We have organizations working for the broader benefit ofwomen that are leaving out low-income women and women ofcolor. We must teach others about what we need, letting themknow that it is our race that intersects with our class to deprive usof the things that they can easily access. We must educate thosewho are shifting policy for women that they need to include the in-tersection of race and class.

At Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (ACRJ), our pri-mary initiative is the 10-year-old Strong Families for changing theway people think, feel and act in support of families. We recognizethat only 25 percent of families in America look like the hetero-nor-mative, married-with-biological-children type that policy wouldhave us believe. Seventy-five percent of us are queer, low-income,immigrant, refugee, families of color, and families with disabilities.

We are engineering a campaign, along with several other or-ganizations, to shift policy so that it reflects the needs of familieson the margins. We utilize the reproductive justice framework thatsays people should be able to empower themselves and their com-munities to make those socio-political decisions that are best forthem and their families. n

n Photos: (Left) Raquel Nunez with LVEJO Youth. (Right) Shanelle Matthews with fellow organizer

Next Generation

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My family moved here from Taiwan when I was seven years old.We couldn’t afford a car. The bus was our only way to get around andwe used it for everything. Public transit is a vital service that connectspeople to opportunity and allows for social and economic mobility.It’s just as important as education, health care and jobs. Rural, sub-urban communities also depend on transit and when bus service iscut, folks are literally stranded without any other way to get to work.

New York City boasts the largest and only 24-hour public transitsystem in the country. Its buses and subways carry 7.5 million dailyriders who make up about one third of all mass transit users in theUnited States. Fares cover about 60 percent of bus and subway op-erating costs, so service continues to deteriorate due to lack of ade-quate investment from the state and the city.

Since 2007, New York transit riders have been fed a steady dietof fare hikes and service cuts due largely to the lack of leadershipand political will of elected officials at the state level who controland determine how public transit is run and funded. The Rider Re-bellion campaign was created in 2010 to organize transit riders tohold elected officials accountable for the quality of our transit serv-ice. We’re mobilizing outer borough communities disproportionatelyimpacted by fare hikes and service cuts by partnering with commu-nity-based organizations and local elected officials. We’re also hit-ting the streets and surveying bus and subway riders directly aboutthe quality of their commute and the improvements they’d like tosee.

Nationally, we’re grappling with the legacy of auto-centric trans-portation planning and policies from the 1950s, when gas was 20 centsa gallon. Now we find ourselves in a very different world where we’repaying a very high price for oil dependency, which is also taking a tollon our climate. Transportation accounts for one-third of our country’scarbon footprint. Auto-centric planning has also led to neighborhoodswithout safe places to walk, bike and play.

If laws and policies were made purely on merit and based onmeasurable goals instead of politics, we would have a very differentway of prioritizing government resources. If transportation invest-ment decisions were made based on reducing congestion, fossil fueldependency, job creation, and equitable access, transit projects wouldbe a top priority every time. n

Ya-Ting Liu:Transportation Justice

As a pinay, female emcee and artist in the hip hop industry, Ideal with misogyny so much. Every time I infiltrate this male circle,I must not fall into the “Here, let me show some skin and get yourattention!” because that’s so easy to do. As a woman of color inthe industry, you’re marginalized, hyper-sexualized, not allowed to“play” with the boys, and not treated as a peer. The young womenwho aren’t coming into it with a conscious mind, they’re just hopingto gain acceptance from the mostly male hip hop audience andmost times, you’re treated as a novelty.

Hip hop was once underground, something that young blacksand Latinos in the Bronx created. They did what they had to do tomake music. They were oppressed and rebelling. It was an empow-ering movement. Now 30 plus years later, it has become a com-modity. But it all starts from the communities that have nothing...as a voice for the people. Once capitalism gets a hold of it, it ruinsit. Capitalism took hold of the formula and squeezed all the cre-ativity and originality out to package and market it—to white peo-ple. There is no depth to mainstream hip hop. Women areobjectified, disrespected, and men are mere caricatures of them-selves and stereotypes.

My rhyme is basically my world where every woman is re-spected and allowed to be a woman. She's not limited, she has avoice, she's strong, she's vulnerable, she's multidimensional. RockyRivera represents the woman that’s not compromising her valuesjust to be in the entertainment industry.

My song “Heart,” speaks of Angela Davis, Gabriela Silang, andDolores Huerta. Not a lot of people know who they are and theyshould be known alongside the Cesar Chavezes, Malcolm Xs andMartin Luther Kings because they were fighting not only for ThirdWorld liberation and people of color but also for women. There wasa double oppression that they had to overcome in order to be theorganizers they were.

There aren’t a lot of women artists out there that speak of ourhistory and our progress as a people. I knew that given the oppor-tunity, I would definitely be speaking on behalf of all women, es-pecially women of color. At the end of the day, if our male activistsare injured or murdered, it’s our women revolutionaries who arestill left fighting. n

Rocky Rivera:Misogeny and Women Revolutionaries

Reflections ofActivistas

Christine Joy Ferrer is the web and publishing assistant for Urban Habitat and creator of eyesopenedblog.com.

“Public transit is a vital service that

connects people to opportunity that

allows for social and economic mobility.”

—Ya-Ting Liu

In my view, students are a definitepart of the broader struggles of the99% because we face the possibilityof not being able to survive in an ever-growing economic downturn, despitegetting an education. We carry someof the biggest debt in the country.This debt and its increase over timedue to loans are directly related toincreased tuition and fees. Both willsqueeze out people of lower-incomebackgrounds and thereby prevent anyreal success.

The driving force behind the effortsto privatize public higher education isthe rich few who want to marginalize

and push out lower income people,who are predominantly people ofcolor. Behind privatization is a systemthat puts money towards prisons thatare filled up with a majority of AfricanAmericans and Latinos. Our countryspends billions of dollars onAfghanistan, yet there is no similaramount of money put towards theeducation system. This continuingmisallocation of funds to wars, prisonsand other areas will lend itself to thecollapse of our society and the peoplewithin it.

As far as Occupy is concerned, Iwould say that a more inclusive atti-

tude is necessary in order to buildcommunity and actually have a morevaluable effect on particular issues. Idefinitely feel that the Occupy move-ment needs to be more inclusive soothers feel comfortable in taking partin making decisions and taking anyactions thereafter. n

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Next Generation

MStudents for Quality Education (SQE) belongs to

this new wave of organizations rising to protest cutsin the budget for higher education, increases intuition, fees, and class sizes, reductions in availablecourses, and irresponsible salary increases for topadministrators.

These new groups differ from previous studentorganizing in their commitment to creating allianceswith the community, eschewing the traditional privi-lege and presumed vanguard status of the educatedclass, and redefining university students as workerssubject to the dictates of contemporary neoliberalism.

SQE’s specific demands grow out of this refram-ing. The group focuses on the growing debt burden

that working class students are shouldering as publiceducation is privatized. Its members actively engageother workers and activists in dialogue to build com-munity.

But even more important than SQE’s connectionto the wider community is its inclusionary practice,rooted in its conscious understanding of racial,gender and sexual identity differences. In this it sur-passes its predecessors (such as the Free Speech Move-ment, Students for a Democratic Society, SNCC, andthe Third World Liberation Front) as well as its con-temporary allies in Occupy, who remain at a stage ofdebating and theorizing the deconstruction of whitemale privilege.

ore than 40 years after the struggles for free speech and ethnic studies at the University of California Berkeley andSan Francisco State, students on the 23 campuses of the California State University (CSU) system are forging anew form for this generation’s protest movement.

By Nicholas L. Baham III, Ph.D.

Students for Quality Education Decolonize the University

Popular PowerNyala Wright, SQE, California State University East Bay

“Students face the

possibility of not being

able to survive, despite

getting an education.”

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Given the CSU system’s long history of embracingdiverse communities of working class students, it providesan ideal base for SQE, even as its commitment to its tra-ditional population is in jeopardy.

SQE may reasonably claim varying degrees of creditfor the California State Senate’s denial of reappointmentto former CSU Trustee Herb Carter, limitations on execu-tive salary increases, and State Assembly Speaker JohnPerez’ Middle Class Scholarship bill, which aims to sub-stantially lower CSU and UC tuition and fees for stu-dents from families earning less than $150,000 per year.

Several state tax measures supported by SQE that willappear on the November 2012 ballot may also help tostem the tide of rising fees and shrinking services: theMolly Munger initiative, the Millionaires Tax, the Tax onOil to Fund Education Initiative, and the CaliforniaIncome Tax for Multistate Businesses.

In the end, SQE may be judged by its effectiveness atlimiting the ravages of privatization in state education—but its ideology and practice of radical inclusivity and99% discourse will forever alter the future of universityprotest. n

Popular Power

As a first-time college student andChicana single mother, I come from a low-income household and had always been toldthat college would be my ‘ticket’ to success.However, student debt and the current jobmarket make me feel I’ll continue to be‘stuck’ in an economic struggle for sometime.

Although we are ‘student-activists’ andmany of our actions involve issues in highereducation, we’re constantly trying toconnect with other social movements. We’veheld several SQE meetings at OccupyOakland, we’ve gone as a group to thegeneral strikes and port shut-downs, andsome members have been arrested at someof the actions.

Our actions have specific demands: Rollback student fees; fund higher education bytaxing corporations; put decision-makingpower in the hands of students, faculty andstaff; and democratize the Board of Trustees.Our demands are linked with Occupy Educa-tion, where we demand that California makeeducation at all levels a priority and providequality education in grades K-12, as well asin higher education.

On March 1, SQE organized “People’sUniversity: Liberate Education.” Students

conducted teach-ins on topics, such asradical theory, democratizing the Board ofTrustees, fee hikes, access to higher educa-tion, free speech, and faculty solidarity. Thiswas all in an effort to educate our studentbody on issues that affect all of us withinCSU, and on ways we can organize toreclaim our universities.

In SQE we have women of color, trans-gender, undocumented, radical, and not-so-radical folks. Yet, we all vibe together in away that is extremely hard to describe. Wealways seem to point out who seems tohold leadership positions. The majority offolks at Occupy Oakland are white males orwhite women, and after making a lot of

connections with them, most seem to becollege-educated. People of color have beendisproportionately affected by the issuesthat the Occupy Movement has called atten-tion to, yet the organizers and ‘decisionmakers’ have been primarily white. In a dis-cussion with Dr. [Luz] Calvo [in EthnicStudies, CSU East Bay], we talked about howsome occupiers are ready for a confronta-tional action on May Day. However, undocu-mented Americans also want to participatein the May Day actions, and it’s unfair to putpeople who have more to lose at such arisk. Once again, I think it all comes back tochecking our privilege. n

Nicholas L. Baham III is an associate professor of Ethnic Studies at California State University East Bay.

Abigail Andrade, SQE, California State University East Bay

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Next Generation

Youth are much smarter than adults tendto give them credit for, which is ironicsince we were all youth once and knowwhat being marginalized feels like. Youthknow right away when something isunfair—they recognize it immediately butdon’t always know what to do when theywitness this unfairness. Or else, they’ve

been socialized by adults to be complicitwith the way things are.

At the Michigan Roundtable for Diver-sity & Inclusion's Youth Program inDetroit, our issues change each year witheach new group of youth that join ourprogram. One of our program principles isthat youth should organize on the issuesthat they’re passionate about; that theyare directly affected by. In our program,our youth decide on the issues they wantto focus on as they are living those expe-riences. Last year, the group focused ondisability justice, structural racism,strengthening alliance with LGBT commu-nities, and immigration. This year’s groupis focusing on Islamaphobia, educationaljustice, sexual assault against teen girls,and organizing youth to be better con-nected across the city.

It’s necessary to provide youth with a

structure and training for skills to helpthem be successful in proposing/imple-menting solutions to these challenges.Their access to opportunity and resourcesis so intertwined into intuitions of social,racial and class inequalities. Some youthare over-intellectualizing, which detachesthem from what’s happening to everydaypeople. How could they ever connect withone another, especially young people inlow-income neighborhoods where thatintellectual language and mindset is notin their everyday vernacular. If we canhelp them understand our complexsystems by meeting them where they’reat, they can create equitable solutions.

It’s also important to help them under-stand the history of where they live. WithDetroit’s history of racist FHA policies, theintentional segregation of racial/ethniccommunities by one of the automotivecompanies, racial rebellions, and a myriadof other things, history informs us ofwhere and why we are in the neighbor-hoods we are today. We use intergenera-tional oral histories to help young peoplelearn about what our region was like“back in the day” and hear that historyfrom the perspective of people who looklike them.

Youth should learn the history of theircommunities from their own communitymembers. Ethnic Studies is the reason whyI’m an organizer today. When I finallylearned about the oppression faced by APIcommunities in the U.S., I had an “A-ha,this shit is fucked up” moment. It was

truly an awakening for me that openedmy eyes to the ways in which my K-12public school education had brainwashedme into believing—that the U.S. was thisamazing country founded on the princi-ples of freedom, liberty and justice. Andyet, we have a horrific history of devalu-ing and dehumanizing people of color,women, non-Christians, queer communi-ties, and the disabled. I learned aboutamazing API women who were standingup and speaking out for justice, I learnedabout exclusionary policies, JapaneseInternment, and Vincent Chin, whosemurder happened right here in Detroit.

If we don’t offer ethnic studies, weonly maintain the dominant narrative ofwhiteness (and other privilege) in thiscountry. We have to challenge that narra-tive as often as we can to dismantleoppressive behaviors and mindsets. Whena safe space is created, as in a diversityworkshop or an ethnic studies classsetting, we can begin to probe, challengeand devise new ways of connecting toone another. n

Theresa Q. Tran is a youth programspecialist at the Michigan Roundtablefor Diversity and Inclusion. She receivedher M.A. in Social Work at the Universityof Michigan where she studied com-munity organizing with youth and fam-ilies. Tran also serves on the board ofAsian & Pacific Islander American Vote—Michigan, working to increase civic en-gagement of APIAs.

If we don’t offer EthnicStudies, we onlymaintain the dominantnarrative of whitenessin this country.

Youth, Diversity and Ethnic Studies

Interview with Theresa TranBy Christine Joy Ferrer Reflections of anActivista

n Photos: Theresa Tran and Michigan Rountable for Diversity and Inclusion youth with environmental justice activists Grace Lee Boggs.Courtesy of Michigan Rountable for Diversity and Inclusion.

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The “reform” rhetoric is enormously seductive toparents and low-income communities whose childrenattend poorly funded, poorly functioning schools. In pre-dominantly Hispanic and African American neighbor-hoods, schools are often incapable of providing childrenwith more than the rudiments of literacy because theycannot afford to recruit and retain sufficient numbers ofteachers. Schools that serve large concentrations of recentimmigrants are usually so underfunded and overwhelmedby the number of students that they are compelled to usebathrooms and closets as classrooms.

Education “reforms” like NCLB and Race to the Top,however, presume that if children do not succeed atschool, the responsibility rests solely with the school.Such an approach destroys the structure and organizationof a publicly-funded and presumably publicly-controlledsystem of education begun more than a century ago. Infact, NCLB closely resembles the blueprint developed inultra right-wing think tanks for replacing locally con-trolled, state-funded school systems with a collection ofprivatized services governed by the market. What NCLBchiefly adds to the original “free market” framework isstandardized curricula and testing and the ChristianRight’s “faith-based” interventions.

Applying the Skewed Logic of Free Markets to SchoolsThe free market underpinning to education pretends

that schools can compensate for the array of savage eco-nomic and social problems created or abetted by govern-

ment policies. Under such flawed reasoning, publicfunding for low-cost housing is reduced or eliminatedbecause the “market” is best at regulating housing costsand availability. However, when markets fail, resulting insoaring rates of homelessness, schools are told that it isnot an acceptable excuse for a child’s poor performance. Ifthere is sufficient political furor over the schools’ inabilityto cope with this crisis, the government creates a discretetoken allocation for educational services for the homeless.But the allocation often is too small relative to the enor-mity of the problem to be meaningful. Just tracking thewhereabouts of children who move from one shelter toanother, let alone providing them with appropriate serv-ices, is beyond the capacity of most urban schoolsystems, which would have to interact with numerousbureaucratic, under-resourced and dysfunctional agenciesin the process.

A program to advance educational opportunity has tobe undertaken as part of a larger project to end inequality,including de facto school segregation. To argue thatschools have a limited capacity to ameliorate economicand social inequality is not to diminish the moral orpolitical importance of the struggle to improve education.Any progressive movement deserving of the name willdemand that public schools provide all students with aneducation that will allow them to be well-rounded, pro-ductive citizens, capable of competing for well-payingjobs. Improving schools for the poor and working classcan make a difference in the lives of some children and

By Lois Weiner

Privatizing Public Education: The Neoliberal Model

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was passed with bipartisan support during the Bush presidency and despite many attempts torepeal it, it’s still the law of the land. Its rhetorical promise, like the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” program, isthat the federal government will hold public schools accountable for their failure to educate poor and working class His-panic and African American students. But the purported aim of increasing educational opportunity masks the real intent ofthese so-called education reformers to create a privatized system of public education that has a narrow, vocational curricu-lum enforced through standardized tests.

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Next Generation

for that reason alone, progressive school reform deservesour attention. Improving schools for all children is of crit-ical political significance because it demands that Ameri-can democracy make good on its pledge of equality.However, we also need to be cognizant of the limitationsof school reform as a policy vehicle for making societymore equitable. As the authors1 of Choosing Equality: TheCase for Democratic Schooling note, education can chal-lenge the tyranny of the labor market—but cannot elimi-nate it. As neoliberal policies tighten their grip on govern-ments and capitalism’s assault on the living conditions ofworking people intensifies, schooling becomes an everweakening lever for improving the economic well-beingof individuals even as it remains a critical arena for politi-cal struggle.

Any agenda for progressive social change, whichincludes improving education, must address what histori-an David Hogan calls “the silent compulsion of economicrelations,” i.e. the nexus of racial segregation in schoolsand housing and the funding of schools with local prop-erty taxes. Segregation in housing has become the pretextfor abandoning the challenge of racially integratingschools, which in turn has seriously weakened the forcesthat can challenge funding inequities. Some AfricanAmerican activists and researchers advocate dropping thedemand for integrating schools, arguing that AfricanAmerican children would be better served in segregatedschools staffed by African American teachers. Althoughthe despair that underlies such thinking is understand-able,2 the reality is that racially segregated schools andschool systems are more isolated politically and, thus,more vulnerable in funding battles with state legislatures.The urgency for making schools better is undeniable, butso is the necessity for mounting a political and legal chal-lenge to de facto school segregation and the use of localproperty taxes to fund schools.

NCLB and Capital’s Global Agenda for EducationThe endurance of NCLB is a dismal indication of the

level of disorientation about education’s role in a democ-racy and the contradiction of privatizing this essentialcivic function.

Underlying the bipartisan endorsement of “schoolreform” is a shared ideological support for a neoliberalglobal capitalist economy and neoliberal view of educa-tion. In both industrialized and developing nations,neoliberal reforms are promoted as rationalizing andequalizing delivery of social services. Even the World

Bank demands curricular and structural changes in educa-tion when it provides loans as outlined in its draft “WorldDevelopment Report 2004: Making Services Work forPoor People,” which describes education’s purpose solelyin terms of preparing workers for jobs in a globaleconomy where capitalism can move jobs wherever itwishes—that is, to countries where profits trump workingconditions and salaries. The draft was later modified innegotiations with governments and non-governmentalorganizations, but the original is a declaration of war,especially on public education and independent teachersunions.

Public education remains the largest piece of publicexpenditure, highly unionized and not yet privatized. Thedraft report identifies unions, especially teachers unions,as one of the greatest threats to global prosperity, arguingthat they have “captured governments,” holding poorpeople hostage to demands for more pay and suggeststhat teachers should be fired wholesale when they strikeor resist demands for reduced pay. The report also callsfor privatizing services, greatly reducing public funding,devolving control of schools to neighborhoods, andincreasing user fees. The World Bank has implementedmany elements of the draft report by making loans andaid contingent upon “restructuring,” which is to say,destroying public funding and control of educationalsystems. The results, writes University of Buenos AiresProfessor Adriana Puiggros, have been devastating to liter-acy rates and the Bank’s promise of equality.3

A key element of the program is limiting access tohigher education through the imposition of higher tuitionand reduced government support to institutions and indi-vidual students. Meanwhile, lower education is chargedonly with preparing students for jobs requiring basicskills, which the multinationals aim to move from onecountry to another. Schools that train workers for jobsrequiring limited literacy is all we can realistically expectfor poor people in poor countries, says the report, andthey do not require well-educated or skilled teachers.Teachers with significant education are a liability becausethey are costly to employ and the largest expense of anyschool system, the report argues, whereas minimally edu-cated workers require only teachers who are themselvesminimally educated.

Most of NCLB’s elements for reorganizing educationin the U.S. are straight out of the World Bank draftreport: Charter schools and vouchers to be used in privateschools fragment oversight and control; testing require-

37


ments and increasingly punitive measures for low scorespressure schools to limit what is taught so that the testsbecome the curriculum; privatization of school services,such as tutoring and professional development for teach-ers tied to raising test scores, undercuts union influenceand membership.

Teachers Unions Fight Neoliberal DownscalingThe Bush administration was quite open about the

explicit linkage between a deskilled teaching force and anarrow curriculum as evidenced by the statements ofGrover Whitehurst, an undersecretary in the Departmentof Education agency responsible for education research.Public investment in research about teacher education isunnecessary, he maintained, because the government isrequired to provide only a basic education that willprepare students for entry-level jobs; therefore, govern-ment funds are better spent creating materials for teach-ing basic skills that teachers with little or no expertisecan use. This is precisely the strategy promoted in thedraft report, which lauds programs that briefly train 15year old peasant girls, who then teach literacy skills inrural areas.

One way to limit access is to charge fees to attendschool at all levels. We see the former strategy in underde-veloped countries, where families must often pay forschooling that was once available for free. In fact, a WorldBank condition for loans explicitly prohibited free educa-tion until a movement by liberals in the U.S. Congress,informed and inspired by global justice activists, chal-lenged it.

Access to learning is also limited by curriculum. LarryKuehn, research director of the British Columbia TeachersFederation, has traced this trend to the Reagan adminis-tration, circa 1987, when the U.S. began promoting thedevelopment of “education indicators” to guide curriculaand testing at the Organization for Economic Coopera-

tion and Development (OECD). The OECD consists ofthe 29 most industrialized countries and some rapidlyindustrializing ones, such as Korea and Mexico. In theearly discussions, the OECD planned the development ofuniform curricula with “culture-free” materials appropri-ate for the new “information economy.” Kuehn’s workilluminates not only the anti-intellectual and anti-human-istic assumptions of these curricula, but also how existingexpectations about what students should learn had to be“downscaled.”

Teachers in the Global North have avoided the full forceof neoliberalism’s assault on education for decades. It isonly in the past few years that they have started to realizethat their profession and the ideals that brought them intoclassrooms may be destroyed. Many are frightened, butthey are also angry. Growing numbers realize that teachersand their unions have to reach out to communities andparents, forming mutually respectful alliances. And nowdiscussions about the global context now seem relevant.4

The universal experience of privatization, increasingtuition, enormous student debt, and ever less support forpublic education has awakened the unions. Yet, missingstill in the work of teacher unions, their leaders andranks, is an understanding that to defend public educa-tion in this country, teachers and their unions must helpdevelop an international response to neoliberalism—onethat puts justice and equity at the forefront of the union’sprogram for education and develops alliances acrossnational borders. n

Endnotes1. Ann Bastian, Norm Fruchter, Marilyn Gittell, Kenneth Haskins, and Colin Greer, foreword

by James P. Comer. Temple University Press. 1986.2. African American and Hispanic youth are frequently tracked into classes that offer low-

level materials and poor instruction rather than college preparatory work, even in wellfunded school districts.

3. <indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/cambridge/2004/02/286118.html>4. Lois Weiner, “Teacher Unionism Reborn.” New Politics, Winter 2012, Vol:XIII-4,

<newpol.org/node/579>

Lois Weiner, Ed.D. is a professor of elementary and secondary education at New Jersey City University. She is the author of Social Justice and Teach-

ers Unions: Reversing the Assault on our Schools (Haymarket Press), forthcoming October 2012. This article is adapted from one previously pub-

lished by New Politics (newpol.org/node/285).For more information on resistance of teachers to neoliberal reforms, go to teachersolidarity.com.

n

Photo:

Elementaryschools stu-dents in theBayviewHuntersPoint in SanFrancisco.

©2011 JarrelPhillips

The Occupy farmers have laid out footpathsaround cultivated plots, created wildlife corridors,riparian zones, protected areas for native grasses and awild turkey nest, and set up a library and a kitchen.They have planted thousands of seedlings of corn,tomatoes, squash, beans, broccoli, herbs, and straw-berries, including heirloom varieties from a local seedbank. Other plots have been reserved for agro-ecolog-ical research. There’s also a permaculture garden forkids on the other side of a gazebo of woven brancheswhere wind chimes tinkle in the breeze.

Gopal Dayaneni of Movement Generation saysthat the vision for the farm is the “practice and pro-motion of sustainable urban agriculture with a com-mitment to food justice and food sovereignty.” He is

a father, activist and member ofwhat he calls the “new urban peas-antry.” Food grown on the farmwill be distributed—for free—through existing food justice net-

works in the San Francisco Bay Area.On April 24, the University shut off the water

supply and threatened the farmers with eviction.University administration has gone on a media offen-sive, attempting to pit researchers against the Occupyfarmers1 and according to some reports, preventingthem from negotiating with the farmers. Somefaculty members have published statements2 insupport of the farmers, arguing that the goals of the

farm are aligned with the public policy goals of thestate and the U.C. mission.3 If transforming astudent’s life is part of that mission, U.C. Berkeleystudent Lesley Haddock has certainly experienced itworking on the farm. “Before our project began, Ihad never planted a seed,” she admits. “But in thepast two weeks, I have become a farmer!”4

Public Good—Private Gain at the Gill TractOne of the Occupy farmers, Ashoka Finley, is a

program assistant with Urban Tilth and runs anorganic farm in collaboration with students at Rich-mond High School, in Richmond, California. Apolitical economy graduate of U.C. Berkeley, Finleybelieves that the farm is redefining and reclaimingthe role of the public university, just as the Occupymovement is redefining and reclaiming public space.

“The history of the Gill Tract is [about] publicsubsidization of private research that [profits] the cor-porate industrial complex; not research for the publicgood,” he says.

It was not always this way. The 104-acre plot wassold to the University in 1928 by the Gill family withthe condition that it be used as an agriculturalresearch station. Under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914,part of the University’s mission as a land grant insti-tution is to promote community involvement andinitiatives in agriculture.

From the 1940s through the 1990s, research con-

38


Web Special

By Diana Pei Wu

Occupying the Future, Starting at the Roots

On Earth Day—April 22, 2012—about 200 people, accompanied by children in strollers, dogs, rabbits, and chick-ens, and carrying hundreds of pounds of compost and at least 10,000 seedlings, entered a 14-acre piece of landcontaining the last Class I agricultural soil in the East Bay. Located on the Albany-Berkeley border in the BayArea, the plot is owned by the University of California Berkeley. By the end of the day, they had weeded, tilledand successfully cultivated about an acre of the land. By May 14, when 100 University of California riot policesurrounded the tract and began arresting the farmers, Occupy the Farm had cultivated around five acres of theplot known as the Gill Tract.

“Farmland is for farming.”

—Gopal Dayaneni

39


ducted at the Gill Tract laid the groundwork for suc-cessful, non-chemical and non-petroleum-basedmethods for controlling numerous major insect pestson several California crops, and for the integration ofbiological, chemical and cultural methods of pestcontrol.5 The innovative methods developed, sharedand refined at the International Center for BiologicalControl included intercropping6 and using bugs tocontrol pests in addition to or in place of pesticides,and means to reduce overall chemical dependencyand prevent the development of superbugs in indus-trial and community agriculture worldwide.

The turning point came in 1998, when Novartisgave $25 million to the Plant and Microbial Biologydepartment to conduct genetic research on the land.“They kicked off the local organic pest managementproject to do gene research,” says Ulan McKnight ofthe Albany Farm Alliance. “What was here beforedirectly benefitted the people of California; nowwhat they do here directly benefits biotechnologycompanies. Instead of doing things that can helppeople, they are doing things that benefit the onepercent.”

Among the projects closed down at the time was aseed bank of rare heirloom varieties of many impor-tant food crops, and a state-of-the-art drip irrigationsystem from a student-run urban sustainable agricul-ture demonstration plot. Until the water was cut off

at the Tract, the Occupy farmers were planning tostart using those irrigation tubes again.

Privatization Leaves U.C. System ImpoverishedThe trend of privatizing the research and knowl-

edge produced at public institutions is systemic,according to Julie Sze, associate professor of Ameri-can Cultures at U.C. Davis. A long-time supporter ofsocial justice andstudent movements,Sze attributes heractivism to her studentdays at U.C. Berkeley,where she took courseswith the likes of RP&Efounder Carl Anthony.She credits the univer-sity with being the“social justice innova-tion lab” that pro-duced so many of theenvironmental justiceleaders of today and argues that corporatization is animpoverishment of the U.C. system and a betrayal ofthe system’s legacy for California.

It is worth noting that the number of people gradu-ating from UCLA annually exceeds the total numberof people graduating from all private colleges in the

“I was nervous about taking my

daughters into a land occupation.

But I also feel an enormous

responsibility to stand up against

a global economic system that

puts profit over people.”

—Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan

Photo:

Occupy the Farm at theGill Tract, Albany, Cali-fornia.

2012 occupyoakland.orgcc

40


state. It is no exaggeration, there-fore, to say that whateverhappens with the U.C. systemaffects the future of California.

Universities have a specialrole to encourage ways of think-ing that go beyond the corpo-rate workplace, says Sze. Peoplewho have fought to work withcommunities on the side ofracial and economic justice are an important legacyof the university. People like Paul Taylor, who in the1930s, promoted the idea of the agricultural jobladder (where farm workers could eventually becomefamily farmers) over the agribusiness model, whichdepended on seasonal workers. The university is aplace to explore and imagine different possibilitiesand different futures, which is why student activismis a global force and so deeply threatening to theexisting order.

Sze believes that the move towards corporatefunding of research, coupled with increasing studentdebt, has curtailed the ability and desire of studentsto participate in the creative and innovative socialjustice thinking and activity that is so important tothe common good.

David Naguib Pellow, another movement scholar-activist and a professor of sociology at the Universityof Minnesota, observes, “Every [public] university

I’ve worked at, professors are encouraged to secureexternal funding for their research to alleviate statebudget constraints. This often involves seekingresources from corporations and foundations thathave little or no accountability to the public, whichamounts to the privatization of ideas, knowledge andthe commons, and is a dangerous trend if we desireto live in a democratic society.”

The tuition hikes and the cuts in programs thatdo not have a corporate/profit bent are a direct resultof the bias towards education in the service of corpo-rations, according to Finley, and needs to be coun-tered by the training of people in the service ofpeople.

Occupy the Future—Take It, Make It, Shape ItIn an email sent out in early May, Adbusters urges

recipients to “occupy the future;” that is, “to describe,build and sustain the post-capitalist future we wantto live in.”

Dayaneni concurs with that sentiment. “Peopleask me what they can do to support. I say, take moreland. Occupy a library, a clinic, whatever, plan itright and [re-launch] it appropriately and at scale. Weneed to prove that we have the ability to self govern.This is the new moment of occupy, not tit for tat,not cat-and-mouse games with cops, but full-scaleintervention. Occupy the Farm is one of the first to-scale interventions.”

Projects like Occupy the Farm also create a sort ofsovereignty and allow a space for larger politicalexpression where people can articulate their demandfor a more egalitarian, just society through workdone with their own hands, argues Finley.

“In the first world, we have been fed a false senseof security that is imploding,” says Michelle Mas-

n

Photo:

Above: Occupy theFarm at the GillTract. Albany, Cali-fornia.

2012 occupyoakland.org

Below: The originalGill family homeand farm.

Courtesy of the Al-bany Library Histor-ical Collection

cc

Web Special

41


carenhas-Swan, recounting her family’s experiencewith the militant experiment in collective governanceand self-sufficiency. “On Earth Day, our families werea part of manifesting a collective vision for a betterway forward—that the land be a community educa-tional center. We have planted strawberries in thechildren’s garden and feed the chickens with snailsthat we collect from our own garden. My partner, acook, brings us food regularly. We are making thatvision real.”

Not everybody, however, sees Occupy the Farm inthe same light and on the same terms, Finley pointsout. For many communities of color, farmwork isboth a practice of material and cultural survival andself-sufficiency, and at the same time, deeply tied toracialized exploitation in the United States. ForAfrican Americans, farming is related to slavery andsharecropping. For recent immigrants from LatinAmerica, farming is about the bankruptcy broughton by the dumping of subsidized monoculture prod-ucts in their countries. And for Southeast Asianimmigrants, farming is associated with a bloodycountryside strewn with unexploded ordnance andother detritus from U.S. wars. At the same time, likeother forced immigrants before them, these peoplehave also brought with them a knowledge and identi-ty that is wrapped up in the cultivation and ceremo-ny of working the land.

Subsistence through the production of one’s ownfood is one of the most effective forms of resistance.But the action at Gill Tract also points toward thebroader challenges at the University.

The arena of struggle revealed by Occupy the

Farm is not just organic farming, food justice, andfood sovereignty. The classrooms, the libraries, andthe research agenda of the university are being shapedto meet the needs of corporate sponsors. Ground-breaking areas in scholarship that were pioneered atthe University of California, such as Ethnic Studies,Women and Gender Studies, Peace and ConflictStudies, were won by student-led protest and strikes(and occupations) in the early 1970s. They now facedevastating cuts, against which students are mobiliz-ing. Battles against tuition hikes, student debt, anddemocratizing University governance will be key toshifting the overall direction of the University andthe society.

Amilcar Cabral, the African revolutionary andagricultural engineer once said: “Culture contains theseed of resistance, which blossoms into the flower ofliberation.” At the Gill Tract we can see seeds ofresistance that have been planted—but it is clear thatin order to blossom, they will need watering. n

Endnotes1. <dailycal.org/2012/05/02/gill-tract-occupation-impedes-agricultural-research/>,

<dailycal.org/2012/05/02/gill-tract-occupiers-sustainability-ideas-are-wrong-headed/>

2. <occupythefarm.org/index.php/17-general-content/51-professor-jeff-romm-s-statement-regarding-the-gill-tract>

3. <dailycal.org/2012/05/01/gill-tract-occupations-mission-mirrors-state-public-pol-icy-goals/>

4. <dailycal.org/2012/05/06/occupation-is-gill-tracts-last-chance/>5. <mindfully.org/Farm/2003/Altieri-Gill-Tract28oct03.htm#1> 6. The practice of planting two or more crops together or in close proximity. Benefits

include structural support for climbing plants (beans and squash growing oncorn), increased yields (from legumes enriching soils), natural pest repellents(marigolds, for example), and climate control for shade loving plants (coffeegrown under shade-producing trees, such as Erythrina or Jacaranda).

n

Photo:

Occupy the Farm at theGill Tract. Albany, Califor-nia.


Diana Pei Wu is a frequent contributor to RP&E. She is a researcher, activist, organizer, and trainer with the Ruckus Society and other

organizations.. She has a Ph.D. from the department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at U.C. Berkeley.

Ellen Choy: Why are you committed to the Occupy move-ment?Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan: We think Occupy’s crit-

ical because we believe that mass movements are a vitalingredient to shifting the public debate and moving uscloser to transforming the economy and the politicalsystem. This is not just about making demands on thestate, but also about reclaiming our right to meet ourown needs directly, in community—to restore ourresilience, our ability to support one another, to lookafter each other, to have the means to do that collec-tively. I think Occupy is presenting a really importantmodel for how people can work together to set priori-ties and make decisions about how to best meet eachothers’ needs in a way that’s responsive and responsibleto the place where they live. Carla Perez: Movement Generation is trying to flesh

out and articulate a concept around an organizingmodel. This model organizes people around the directdecision-making process and physical work in meetinga need at hand. Whether it’s needing to grow our ownfood because of the discriminatory land-use processesthat haven't allowed for fresh produce in our neighbor-hood (at least, not without highly gentrifying our his-torically black, Latino, working class, diverse communi-ty); or putting people back in their homes by repairingthem and making them accessible; or building our ownschools. And doing it in a way that forces a right-to-govern question. You know there’s some legal or otherkind of barrier that you’re going to hit up against.They’re going to say, “You can’t use tax money to dothat!” Or, “You’re exceeding the amount of food that’s

permissible on a lot of this size in an area that’s zonedin this way!” That gives us the opportunity to say,“Who are you to say that we can’t do this when youhave made political decisions that take these essentialresources out of our community?”

Resilience-based organizing. That’s what Occupy isdoing, too. It’s learning how to self-govern and self-manage and bring people together to get directlyinvolved in that process at multiple levels. Gopal Dayaneni: We don’t think that a movement is

going to emerge solely out of the long, hard sloggingorganizing of 501(c)3 organizations. It’s going to needthose sparks and those pushes of mass momentum. Allof those things need to be in relationship to each other.And we do not have time to miss opportunities. It isokay for us to jump onto an opportunity like Occupyto try and create a psychic break with the system, tospark a shift away from the dominant culture. It’s okayfor us to try that and to be unsuccessful. But it’s notokay for us to miss the boat. Because for us to be com-mitted to the long haul, something has to change verysoon, or the long haul will not be pleasant. Communi-ties in Oakland will have a much harder fight if thingsdon’t change really quickly, very soon. It’s going to be a

42


Next Generation

Interview by Ellen Choy

From the Camps to the Neighborhoods

A Conversation with Movement Generation

The transformation of the Occupy moment into power for movements that can actually challenge entrenched economicinterests will be a complex process. Movement Generation activists recently gathered to reflect on what it will take tomake this happen. For the full interview visit urbanhabitat.org/rpe/radio

n

Photo:

Occupy the FarmThe Gill TractAlbany, California.


43


n

Photo:

Occupy the FarmThe Gill TractAlbany, California.


hard road regardless, but we have the opportunity toset up transformations in our relationships to eachother that will make it better. That, for us, is anotherreason why the movement can’t be missed.

Choy: The reclamation of land and housing has become apinnacle battleground for Occupy. Interestingly enough,this directly overlaps with Movement Generation’s com-mitment to a strategy where land reclamation is central.How did land and housing become an Occupy fight? Andwhy is this critical?Mascarenhas-Swan: One is the obvious plight of

many of our families after this [real estate] bubbleburst. The financial sector had duped a lot of familiesof color and working class people into deep debt basedon this bubble and then ended up putting folks out onthe street—foreclosing on family homes. That’s obvi-ously one way the land reclamation [issue] has come tobear. People recognize that housing and access to landis a basic human right. No one should be out on thestreet at any time. People need shelter; and not onlyshelter, but a stable and safe place to call home. Whenso many millions have had their families impacted bythis foreclosure crisis—it’s a clear call to reclaim whatwe believe is a basic right.Dayaneni: This idea that we need to fundamentally

change the tenure relationship to land and housing inthis country, to take soil out of the market, to restorethe commons—all of these ideas share a commonhistory. What’s interesting for us right now is thatthere is an opportunity to take the tactic of claimingspace and connecting it with real political projects thatcan transform people’s relationship to place. One ofthe ways that we think about the ongoing and ever-escalating food crisis in the City of Oakland is: “Whathuge plots of land can we take to do urban agricul-ture?” That’s important, but from our perspective, it’salmost more important to have small lots that half-a-dozen or dozen families around a neighborhood canshare control of and grow food on, together. Notbecause it will meet all of their needs, but because itchanges their relationship to the community, to theplace. That’s where the transformative work happens.

The idea of people actually laboring in their owninterests, as a form of organizing, is what’s transforma-

tive, instead of door-knocking to convince people thatthey should work together to take a plot of land wherethey can have a community garden. The idea of theaction as an organizing opportunity in and of itselfthat the people model, join in, and can have controlof—that’s what ultimately butts up against the rules.The rules of the city or the rules of the developer. Andas we all know, the rules are made by the rulers. Untilwe are the rulers, the rules don’t serve us, they servethe rulers. So, the idea of us actually doing the workand using the actions to organize people is an excitingpossibility.Mateo Nube: The part that connects to Movement

Generation’s interpretation of both our societal crisisand the solution to it, is that our profit-based, pollu-tion-based economy sees land as a commodity. Thenext step to seeing land as a commodity is to disre-spect land and disrespect everything that depends onthat land—all species and ecosystems. That’s a mis-management of [our] home. Many members of ourspecies have forgotten what it means to take good careof our home and take good care of each other. Sothen, land reclamation becomes an expression of: “We,the people who live in this neighborhood,” or “We,who’ve been here for a long time, are the best keepersof this place.” We need to re-learn what being keepersof a place is and to have ownership over that keeping.Land reclamation, I think, is a really logical, healthy,proactive, generative way of calling the question: Willbig corporations and capitalists determine how wemanage where we live? Or will those of us who livehere, or who deserve to live here, or have historicallylived here, be the ones to manage that space and makethe decisions. n

Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan, Carla Perez, Mateo Nube, and Ellen Choy are members of Movement Generation. Ellen Choy is also a pro-

ducer on KPFA radio’s Apex Express.

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Photos: (Left) Selma to Montgomery March to protest Alabama's immigration and voter ID laws. Courtesy of Equal Voice News. (Center) Occupy the Farm occupyoakland.org(Right) Community Rejuvenation Project ©2011 Eric K. Arnold. (Front Cover Art) Created for the Immigrant Defense Project, New York City. ©2012 Favianna Rodriguez.

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