Born Out of Struggle

David Omotoso Stovall

Description

Rooted in the initial struggle of community members who staged a successful hunger strike to secure a high school in their Chicago neighborhood, David Omotoso Stovall's Born Out of Struggle focuses on his first-hand participation in the process to help design the school. Offering important lessons about how to remain accountable to communities while designing a curriculum with a social justice agenda, Stovall explores the use of critical race theory to encourage its practitioners to spend less time with abstract theories and engage more with communities that make a concerted effort to change their conditions. Stovall provides concrete examples of how to navigate the constraints of working with centralized bureaucracies in education and apply them to real-world situations.
Foreword
Patricia Maria Buenrostro and Carolina Gaete

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Responsibility to the Word: Into the Work of Putting Our Theories to Practice

1. Hunger Strike: History, Community Struggle, and Political Gamesmanship

2. To Create a School: Uneasy Partnerships with the Central Office

3. Counterstory as Praxis: Confronting Success and Failure on the Design Team

4. Paper Proposals Do Not Equal Real Life: Race Praxis and High School Creation

5. Educational Debt Relief: Classroom Struggles, Critical Race Praxis, and the Politics of School

6. Struggle, Failure, and Reflection in the First Cycle (2003–2009): Practical Lessons in Creating a School

7. Always on the Run: School Struggle in Perpetuity

Epilogue
Glossary of Acronyms
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Secondary school

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 31 mars 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438459158
• Langue: English

Extrait

Born Out of Struggle
SUNY series, Praxis: Theory in Action

Nancy A. Naples, editor
Born Out of Struggle
Critical Race Theory, School Creation, and the Politics of Interruption
David Omotoso Stovall
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Ryan Morris
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stovall, David.
Title: Born out of struggle : critical race theory, school creation, and the politics of interruption / David Omotoso Stovall.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2016. | Series: SUNY series, praxis, theory in action | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015005101| ISBN 9781438459134 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438459158 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Critical pedagogy—United States. | Racism in education—United States. | Education—Social aspects—United States. | Discrimination in education—United States. | Social justice—United States.
Classification: LCC LC196.5.U6 S88 2016 | DDC 370.11/5—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015005101
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to the communities of South Lawndale/Little Village (La Villita) and North Lawndale. May the quest of both communities to coexist under one roof in a high school serve as evidence for the possibility of community justice in Chicago.
Contents
F OREWORD
Patricia Maria Buenrostro and Carolina Gaete
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION
Responsibility to the Word: Into the Work of Putting Our Theories to Practice
C HAPTER 1
Hunger Strike: History, Community Struggle, and Political Gamesmanship
C HAPTER 2
To Create a School: Uneasy Partnerships with the Central Office
C HAPTER 3
Counterstory as Praxis: Confronting Success and Failure on the Design Team
C HAPTER 4
Paper Proposals Do Not Equal Real Life: Race Praxis and High School Creation
C HAPTER 5
Educational Debt Relief: Classroom Struggles, Critical Race Praxis, and the Politics of School
C HAPTER 6
Struggle, Failure, and Reflection in the First Cycle (2003–2009): Practical Lessons in Creating a School
C HAPTER 7
Always on the Run: School Struggle in Perpetuity
E PILOGUE
G LOSSARY OF A CRONYMS
B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX
Foreword
Patricia Maria Buenrostro, huelgista , mother of Greater Lawndale Little Village School of Social Justice (SOJO) graduate, math educator, and Ph.D. candidate
Carolina Gaete, huelgista , mother of Greater Lawndale Little Village School of Social Justice student, community organizer
Struggle from the Outside-In: Joining Movements for Change
In January 2001, I was approached by Tomás Gaete to join a group of Little Village parents working together to investigate the whereabouts and the whatabouts of a new high school previously promised by the then-mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley. I had recently begun to teach in a neighboring community and was feeling the need to reconnect to my hood—so I agreed to attend one of their meetings. Tomás was the community organizer working with the parents and the father of several dear friends of mine. At this first meeting, I was immediately impressed by the fact that the parents determined and facilitated the agenda. In my previous short stint in community organizing, I knew this was rare, as many organizers try to steer the agenda from their perspective to such things as “winnable” issues and leadership training. This was not the case here. Parents on the west side of Little Village had a long-standing need for a new high school and wanted answers to an unfulfilled promise and the resulting misallocation of state funds originally slated for Little Village High School. The parents with the support of the lead community organization had been fervently organizing for some time delegations to the Board of Education meetings, even serenading one with a Mariachi, Mexican style. In this first meeting I attended, the parents’ determination was palpable, so I decided to join their efforts. Over the next several months, we continued holding accountability sessions for district officials, community summits, and various stakeholder meetings—all in the effort to get answers from the district on the missing funds and to simultaneously draw in more community voices into the conversation. After months of meetings and circular conversations and unanswered questions, we became disillusioned in our fight. It was four days before Mother’s Day when we sat in the organization’s small, cramped office with long faces and weary hearts. The organization’s director, looking at our disheartened wills, threw out the idea of holding a hunger strike on Mother’s Day. “Mothers Hungry for an Education” would be the headline. It seemed sensational enough for media outlets to pick it up and get us coverage on Sunday evening news. While we all considered and debated the idea, some immediately ruled it out while others of us considered it for the moment. We had to go back to our families and discuss the implications of launching such a strike. I was one of only four who originally committed to the idea. We came back together on that Saturday to get prepped for the press and by the end of the press conference on Sunday evening, sixteen community residents had committed to carrying out the hunger strike. I myself thought, “How long could this really last? Three days? Five days max?” And so we began to set up camp on the site, putting up tents, requesting a porta-potty on site from the alderman, gathering wood for a campfire. May in Chicago can still be rather chilly. The first few days were awkward and scary as onlookers questioned our presence. Yet it was quite fascinating how quickly a group of people can muster up a collective sense of agency when your next meal is on the line. We marched through the community to inform Little Village residents of our common plight. We formed committees to deal with such things as media, health issues, flyers, and so on. We hosted a wide variety of events on Camp Cesar Chavez from teach-ins to spoken-word events to a community-wide mass to an intimate meeting with Paul Vallas (CEO of Chicago Public Schools at the time) inside a tent on a hot May day. What can I say, Chicago weather can be quite erratic. Most importantly during our nineteen days of strike, we followed the Mayor wherever we knew he would be speaking publicly to interrupt his day, his media coverage, and to remind him that we wanted to know the whereabouts of our money. We interrupted a midday press conference with then–California governor Gray Davis and made the five o’clock news. We interrupted his speaking engagement at a UNO Parents First educational conference and made the Saturday evening news. And when we couldn’t find him in public, we went to his house to interrupt his family dinner. A critical moment was when on May 23, we showed up with hundreds of community residents and supporters to the Board of Education Meeting demanding an answer to the missing $30 million the State of Illinois had specifically allocated for our school. It was only a few days after this meeting that then-CEO Paul Vallas and board president Gery Chico resigned from their posts, as they both had their political gaze set on their upcoming and failed runs to become governor of Illinois. It was a busy nineteen days that our strike lasted. I personally learned a lot about how our city government works and the power of community agency when our target is clear and our commitment is undying. I must acknowledge as many of us did during and after the strike, our victory was only possible because of the outpouring of support within Little Village and across the City of Chicago. It was this support that gave us our fuel to continue to fight for and demand justice. This momentous event serves as a reminder of the importance and the right to a quality education our community deserves and fights for daily in both small and big ways.
Fast-forward nine years and my firstborn son enters the doors of the Greater Lawndale Little Village School of Social Justice (or SOJO for short) to begin high school. He is scheduled to graduate in just a few short days from the writing of this foreword. As a parent of a soon to be SOJO graduate, four years ago I had hoped for my son to receive a quality (i.e., rigorous) education, grounded in a culturally and socially relevant curriculum. I hoped that what he was studying actually mattered to him as a socially conscientious youth, while preparing him with the necessary skills to become a successful college graduate. As a young person in a wheelchair, I had hoped that his teachers and the administration would be sensitive and accommodating to his special physical and sometimes academic needs. As a future leader, I had hoped the curriculum writ large would serve to motivate and inspire him to learn and investigate and act on his local context to bring about personal and social change. I had seen how the founding pr