What are the main points and what is the authors purpose? TeachingStudents WhoareExceptional DiverseandAtRiskintheGeneralEdu

FOR USTICE Part 1 and 2

PREFACE

by Joan T Mj,nne My country. My country.

Tis of thee I sing. Country still unborn Sweet land yet to be

I n our country, cited in the above spiritual (Harding 1981), we often find inspiration from different sources. Some find it in poetry, music, science, in cultural beliefs or religions; some are inspired by parents, friends, chil­

dren, or mentors; still others by listening to the earth. I've been inspired by each at different times, especially by my mother and my daughter. Yet I've also found that the source which seems to rock my soul is the rhyme, rhythm, spirituals, poetry, epistemology, philosophy, complexity, indeed, the spell­ binding story of the African-American struggle to be free in a "sweet land yet to be."

Born white in the south and, thus, drenched in the dirty history of southern Jim Crow laws and slavery, I seem to have drunk this struggle into my blood. I've spent a life time studying that Black liberation chronicle; trying to under­ stand it; making friends with it; but mostly standing in awe of it. Immersed in its tale, though, I have often asked the same question the character, Stamp Paid, asked in Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved. After consistently witnessing the savagery of whites during slavery, he asks: ''What are these people?" (1987 p. 172). So, part of my story is also investigatingjust what "these people" are, my white people and me, because I do not want to be "trapped in a history I do not understand" (Baldwin 1963, p. 8). Like James Baldwin, I believe that until I unravel it, I cannot "be released from it." T herefore, I'm always listening for a variety of voices that sing about justice, hegemony, and grace in this "country, my country."

xi

xii PREFACE

My friend and co-editor of this book, Carlos Gonzalez, in our syllabus for a course that we team-taught for Miami Dade College professors, wrote the

following:

This is an invitation to sit and explore the tension of working, teaching, and profiting from a system that inherently creates distinction and privilege, one that thrives on disparity. If Asa G. Hilliard III' is correct, reformation of this system is not really possible. Critical transformation is our best hope.

So, what are we to do as those in the middle? How do we possibly teach and work with the understanding that, at the core of our efforts, there is a seed waiting to sprout, that will eventually put down roots and possibly bring down the bricks and mortar of injustice, privilege, and oppres­ sion? This prospect is downright frightening! What would we do next?

Carlos' words helped shape my vision for this book. It, too, is an invitation, a call for being "out-rageous" in declaring ourselves against the hegemonic machine that pulverizes our imaginations, like a cow's flesh in a meat grinder. Hoping to escape that grinder, however, Carlos and I, through this text, pro­ pose a challenge—that we gather as often as we can and tell our stories, as encouragement to think more deeply and act more diligently in resistance to the "injustices, the privilege, and the oppression" in schools and the acad­ emy, injustices that chop up our spirits, and for many others, their bodies. We picture these pieces, represented in the book by multiple writers' stories, as a catalyst for creative encounters confronting the repression that our stu­ dents face every day in school buildings, where children of the poor are

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treated as fodder for prisons and wars; where children of the elite are bam­ boozled by philosophies of self-aggrandizement and greed; and where the earth has become invisible in concrete camouflage.

Yet rather than a heavily theoretical discussion, we share stories about what philosopher, Martha Nussbaum calls "the frontiers of justice" (2006). For us, that frontier includes all species on the earth as well as all humans. And such conversations in this country, we believe, should begin with a recognition of a crime, one which Civil Rights icon, Bob Moses, brings to light in his essay in this book. To frame his essay, Moses cites James Baldwin who declared, "The crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen is that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it." Baldwin further insists that "It is not

1 Asa G. Hilliard Ill's passage to which Carlos refers is: "Revolution, not reform, is

required to release the power of teaching . . . Vrrtually, all teachers possess tremendous power which can be released, given the proper exposure. We c an't get to

that point by tinkering with a broken system. We must change our intellectual structures, definitions and assumptions; then we can release teacher power."

PREFACE xiii

permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime" (1963, p. 6).

So, following Moses' lead, we and our students continue to help each other deconstruct that crime of innocence. We assume that our civic duty requires exploring the nation's feigned innocence in the hundreds of years of death and destruction of many cultures in 'this country, our country.' In the class­ room as well as in the national dialogue, we argue that learners and citizens alike should heed Bryan Stevenson's suggestion, in his Equal Justice Initiative report on lynching, that "Suffering must be engaged, heard, recognized, and remembered before a society can recover from mass violence" (Lynching 2015 p. 23). The severity and the currency of the repercussions of the crimes referenced by Baldwin and Stevenson as well as the violence against other cultures seem to demand that we address this suffering in Who speaks for jus­ tice?. Within that context, we like to think of this book as an instigator of what David Lawrence,Jr.2 calls "creative outrage" (2012).

As we wrote and edited, we strove to carefully parse our words, wanting them to stay as true to our committnent to justice as Diane Nash's actions demon­ strated on March 7m. during the 50m. anniversary of "Bloody Sunday." Returning there, to Selma Alabama, to push forward the country's dream of democracy, one soaked in blood that day 50 years ago, Nash3 spoke to the media, sat in priority seats to listen to President Obama speak, and, then, stood alongside the President and his family to walk across the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge. Yet, when Former President George W Bush walked

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into the line to cross that bridge with them, Diane Nash walked out of that privileged line.

Explaining later to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now (2015), Nash said: "They placed me in the front line. And then George Bush . . . got in the march. And I left. … I wasn't marching anywhere with George Bush. T he Selma movement stands for nonviolence, peace, democracy, fairness, voting rights." To her, Nash clarified, Bush represented the exact opposite, even tor­ rure. She didn't want to be a part of any photographs, she explained to Goodman, which might travel around the globe depicting Bush as one of the leaders of nonviolence. For Nash, his picture would suggest the nonviolent movement had "sold out;" and, more importantly, she insisted, it would be an insult to all of the people who had been murdered in Selma.

2 President of the Children's Movement of F1orida and former publisher of the Miami Herald. 3 :1ash a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC); co-led the Freedom Riders; helped plan the Selma march; and is nationally known as a

constant "Freedom Struggle" activist.

xiv PREFACE

Well, regardless of what position someone might take on former President Bush's right to be on that bridge, Nash's spontaneous action of walking away from that stately spot shook our conscience, crystalizing what vigilance to one's truth might look like. Forced us to ask the question, "How often have we remained in the lines of privilege, and, thus, compromised our vision for jus­ tice, for listening to those who have been silenced?" Nash's daring action that day seemed to model a different way of being in the world. Her releasing attachment to the traps and seduction of privilege that oppress us as citizens, as teachers, as students was not only a gutsy move. It, indeed, also required, as Lisa Delpit once said about Vmcent Harding,

4 "principles of steel."

Nash and Bob Moses, another one of our heroes, have dedicated their lives to pushing for full rights of citizenship for all Americans. A citizen-poet­ writer who also pushes America toward realizing its dream of freedom for all is Nikki Giovanni. In 1994, she suggested that the ideals of democracy in America still create a powerful imaginative force that she continues to hold onto in spite of the horrors of the nation's history and the terrors of its current global initiatives. But, she declares later in her book, Racism 101, that the African-American "spirituals teach us that the problem of the twentieth century is not the problem of the color line. The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of civilizing white people" (p. 56-5 7).

We seem to have failed to solve that problem. For, in the twenty-first century, Western-Eurocentric people on the planet perpetually ratchet up the bellows and machinations of wars upon wars. In the twenty-first century, public edu-

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cation is becoming more a mouthpiece for corporate interests than interests of a democracy or of the earth and all its species. In the twenty-first century,

unarmed black boys, men, and women have been shot down like vermin in a nation that professes •�ustice for all." Yet as the rapper, Common, sings in Gltny, ''.Justice for all ain't specific enough."

So, we wanted the stories in this text to be "specific enough." We wanted to tell of the tragedy and glory of cultures, of humans, of trees, of earth. We wanted to raise all of those stifled intonations. The youth, the ancestors, the elders, the rock, the land, the river, the sea, the cosmic energy. We believe those vibrations and stories will stir us in our perpetual work toward resis­ tance and inspired action. For, as Giovanni insists about story-tellers, "There must always be griots … else how will we know who we are?" (p. 19).

And when thinking of us as griots, we were reminded of Archbishop

Desmond Tutu when he condensed the history of Africa into this one short quip: He said, "When the white missionaries came to Africa, they had the

• Historian; writer; social activist; speech writer for MLK, Jr.; Professor of Religion and Social Transformation

PREFACE xv

Bible, and we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray.' Ne closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible, and they had the land" (f utu 2015). Therefore, the lens we look through, as we describe our individual u·uths, can become as vital as the truth itsel[ Recognizing the imperative of seeing our separate histories through multiple lenses can create an intellec­ tual smorgasbord that might entice all citizens Lo see and reckon with the complexities of living in an inscrutable world, one full of contradictions and ambiguity.

Any ambiguities that unfold in this text, we hope, might also encourage stu­ dents to recognize not only tl1e inevitable convolutions of life's sLOries, but also tl1e power and the place of those sLOries in tl1e scope of researcl1. For, Carlos and I tl1ink of research as just a story. Some tell it in statistics; some in ethnographies; some in case studies. But all research is formed within a specific context of socio-political realities. As Dcepak Chopra suggests, "We have all walked through different gardens and knelt at different graves" (p. 16). Because of those separate realities of lived experiences, the fact that research studies and discoveries often conflict with one another holds no sur­ prise for us, especially since humans from all walks of life design those stud­ ies. Yet it is important to reckon with at least two realities when searching for research validity. These realities are as significant as assessing the validity of

tl1e measurements used. The first is that hist0rically the typical researcher came from the colonial elite. The second is that most often now researchers come from the academic elite. So, we hope that students will wrestle with the biases that naturally emanate from the context of researchers' lives. Taking

Lhe time to examine our lived experiences can clarify how those events com­ plicate our perspectives in di,·erse disciplines, whether literature, science, an, music, or education. Further more, unpacking the ever-present colonial sub­ texts of our own lives might liberate our minds from the daily grind of the oppressive institutional demands that often trap us into accommodating injustice.

Recently, raising Lhe issue of tl1e historical V.'estern economic accommoda­

tion of injustice, scl10lar and activist, Noam Chomsky, insisted I.hat "Racism is a serious problem … white supremacy in tl1e U nited States was even more extreme and savage tl1an in Soutl1 Africa …. Our economy, wealtl1, privilege relies . .. on a cenwry of horrifying slave labor camps." Drawing from tl1e work of Edward Baptist (2014), Chomsky equated I.hose camps Lo tl1e horrors of tl1e ones created in :1 azi Germany. Baptist, in his book, insists tl1at American slavery, tl1e buying and selling of bodies as investrnem and capital, created an economic engine in tl1e 18th and I 9th century in Lhe south, in Lhe nonh, and in Europe I.hat drove the explosion of U.S. fmancial and commer­ cial prosperity and superiority, which is still sustained in this nation. But, for us, Baptist's and Chomsky's condemnation of our history seems Lo beckon

xvi PREFACE

another line from the song, Glory, the challenge of John Legend and Common when Lhey proclaim, "Now we right the wrongs of history" (Glory, 2014).

So how do we do Lhat? How do we right the wrongs, not only of our human hisLOI) but the history of our abuse of the ecosystem? How do we nurture ourselves and others as we take on sucli daunting work? How do we, in any corporate or bureaucratic jungle, create what Bob ?vioses calls, the "crawl spaces," (200 I) where we can build healLhy relationships? How do we resist

injusLices and continue to laugh big and loud? How do we stop oppression while learning to sing new songs? How do we dismantle public policies Li1at sustain the plctl1ora of societal utjustices, while lcarnu1g to dance wildly? How do we stop planetary destruction, while eawig apple pie? How do we walk iii and out of privilege, while sLrumming a guitar? How do we redeem America's soul, while frolicking witl1 every �!other's cliild? And how, oh how, do we block out the cacophony of hegemony and begin to live Fannie Lou Hamer's chorus, "Freedom is a constam struggle; make a joyful noise"?

Conscious of the joy amidst the angst in the struggle, Carlos and I offer this te..xt as an enticement to explore each other's sto1;es about our battles to be free, as researchers, teachers, learners, citizens. Vhen editing, he and I tried to write ourselves out of Lhe lines of privilege that we occupy, while seeking

to extricate ourselves from the scholastic shackles Lhat we wear. As a counter to our professorial privilege, we listened not just to persons wiLh national rep­ uLaLions in circles of jusLice, but also to studenLS, friends, and younger col­ leagues. Ve invited Lheir m·iting imo our circles im·esLigating their lessons,

. . .

challenges, joys, quesLions. Ve believe Lhose narraLives can lead us LO con­ front togeLher Lhe hegemonic noise of systems LhaL exploit humans and Lhis small planet earLh. As Ram Dass suggests, "�'e're all jusL walking each oLher home" (1971 ).

So, as we 're walking each oLher home, let's consider once again Lhe words of Lhat master of story-telling, James Baldwin, who said, " … while the tale of how we suffer and how we are delighted and how we triumph is never new, it

must be heard. There isn't any other tale Lo tell, it's the only light we've got in all Lhis darkness" ( 1995 p. 87). Carlos and I believe that it is in our shared sto­ ries, Lrue or not, Lhat we can discover what sustains us "from the inside when all else falls away" (Orial1 1999). BuL, beyond Lhat, perhaps, our joint stories will help us and our studems determine" .. . if we can get up, after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised 10 Lhe bone, and do what needs 10 be done LO feed [and Leach) Lhe children" (Oriah) in our communiLies, in our schools, and in Lhis "counLry sLill unborn."

PREFACE xvii

References

Baldwin, J. (1963). My dungeon shook: Letter to my nephew on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation. The fire next time. New York: Vmtage Books (p. 6).

Baldwin,James. (1995). Son'!)''s Blues. New York: Penguin Books Ltd.

Baptist, E. (2014). The half has never been /Qld: Slavery and 1k making of American capilalism. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Chopra, D. ( 1991 ). Unconditional life: Discovering 1k power /Q fo!fill your dreams. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Dass, Ram (1971). Be here now. New York, NY: The Crown Publishing Co.

Giovanni, N. (1994). Racism 101. New York: William Morrow and Company.

Harding, V. (1981). There is a river: The Black struggl.efor freedom in America. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace and Co.

Hilliard, A.G. III (1997). "The Structure of valid staff development." Journal of staff tkvelopmem. Spring, Vol.18, No.2.

John Legend & Common, video on YouTube.com. https·//wwwyoutube com/watch ?v=HUZOKvYcx o

Lawrence, D.Jr. (2012). The Principles of Power and Leadership: How to l!'et thinl!'s done in Miami and America. The Chapman Leadership Lecture.

Florida International University, S eptember 12.

Lynching in America.: Confronting the legacy of racial terror (2015). EJI R.eporL Birmingham, AL: Equal Justice Initiative. hUJrllwwwi.jj.ocg/files/ ETI%20Lynching%20in %20America %20SUMMARYpdf

Morrison, Toni ( 1987). Beloved. New York: Alfred Knopf

Moses, R. P. & Cobb, C. (200 I) Radical Equations: Cwil RighJs.from Mississippi /o the Algebra Project. Boston: Beacon Press.

ash, D. (2015). Interview. Democr<lfl Now http://www.democracynow. ocg/2015/3/9/cjyil rights pioneer djane nash i

Noam Chomsky on Black Lives Matter: Why Won't U.S. Own Up to History of S lavery & Racism? Mar. 3, 2015. DemOCT<lfl Now. http://www. democracynow.ocg/2015/3/3/noam chomsky on black lives matter

Nussbaum, Martha (2006) Frontiers of Justice: Disabili!J, nalumalip, speciM membership. Cambridge MA: First Haivard University Press.

xviii PREFACE

Ori ah Mountain Dreamer ( 1999) http· //www. oriahmountaindreamer com/ person.html

Roberts, Wally. (2004). E-mail sharing his experience living one summer in Fannie Lou Hamer's home.

Tutu, Desmond. Seeds in corifli,ct in a haven ef peace: From religwus Studies to lnteTTeugious Studies in Aftica. Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) e-mail list-serve, April 7, 2015.

Defiiclltum jjj

Preface xi

TABlE OF CONTENTS

PART 1: A human being is part of the whole ……………. _ ………….. 1

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us a universe, a part limited in time and space. iHe experiences himseJJ; his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest … a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and lO affe ction for a few persons nearest co us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion lO embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

-AlbertEinstnn.

Math, struggles, and slash pine …………………………………. 3 by Gartos Gonzalez

Generations Connect: Variation on …………………………….. 7 "Om Namah Shlvaya" by Gartos Gonzalez

Constitutional Eras for "We the People" …………………… 1 s by Robert P. Moses

Blockages become gifts …………………………………………. 33 by Gartos Gonzalez

Nature as home . . . antidote to war …………………………. 35 by Matthew Rubenstein

S he told me that she did not think she was going to pass her math class, that the teacher was confusing, that she worked full time, went to school full rime, and she did not have the energy or time to go to tutor­

ing. She saw herself talcing the class once again, she said. It was five minutes before I was taking students on a tour of the Environmental Center. I was drawn into my student's struggle and for a moment wondered what I had to offer her; if anyth� In my work I see so many who juggle too much, who struggle and often don't sec a way through their challenges because they arc so many.

We walked toward the start of our tour, and I felt the heaviness of this conver­ sation. To me it wasn't just one more student merely giving up on a class, but hers was the voice of so many others. Math was not the real issue. It was life itself, life that seemed unfair; harsh, and impossible. Clearly I was hearing her story filtered through my own heaviness, my own sense of struggle, loss, and pain, the past nine years or so of seeing my mother lost to dementia, the break­ down of family bonds, the loss of loved ones, and at times, che loss of hope.

The week before hearing my student's story, l had read over 140 essays. Some of them detailed suicide attempts, painful separations, failed dreams, loss on a scale that surprised me and reminded me how we are more alike than we are different. And as I walked to the entrance of the Center, the air plant growing on the tree caught my attention. It did not do so in a subtle way. It spoke to me and asked me to tell a particular story. This beautiful being, although voiceless, was asking t0 speak t0 my student and to me.

The clarity of the communication surprised me. It was now evident to me that I needed to have overheard my student mention her math class. It was also evident that what I was going to do for the next seven hours of reaching was to repeat the message, not so much because of my math challenged

3

4 WHO SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE

student but because I, too, needed to hear a good word. I needed a reminder. We needed a story, this story, as Barry Lopez reminds w, "more than food to stay alive" (1990, p. 8).

The Environmental Center is a nine-acre preserve. One enters it through a colorful mosaic gate and is immediately presented with a radically different space. TI1e CenLei' is on tl1e edge of campus, tl1e edge of time, and a text tl1at often is misread or not read at aU. It is a reminder of what parts of South Florida used to be, of how the landscape looked before development. It offers a glimpse of a bygone era where slash pines covered the area and the human footprint was less obvious. It is also a clear reminder of the feeble efforts to preserve the often tenuous relationships between humans and other life forms. It is a place where one can experience great peace and also be in touch with a sense of deep loss. It is filled with life and reminders that death is also part of life and the cycle of beginning and endings is infinite.

So what did the cpiphyte say to me? This was no joke. Adaptation = Learning. The rest follows.

As I stood before my students, I told them how at some point, millions of years ago, I was guessing, the ancestors of this plant learned that living on the soil was not to its advantage, and somehow learned to live on the tree canopy, gathering food and water from the falling leaves o: the host tree and in the process providing a home for small animals such as frogs and lizards.

This particular air plant was about to bloom, and we could see the emerging structure of the flower, an elegant manifestation of perfecdy adapted design. We looked at the plant, I caressed its leaves. Students looked at me as if I were on some lcind of drug. I assured them I was not. I told them the mes­ sage from my plant friend: To adapt is to learn and to lake on life's chal­ lenges and use them to create what is necessary for survival and the possibility to thrive. We took a moment. I answered some questions. We were quiet. Some were looking at their phones. I hesitated to take st.cps away from the air plant, but I knew then that I would be able to hear its message the rest of the day. And we walked to the little sliver of slash pine forest.

It was only a hundred feet or so away. At the head of the trail, a beautiful specimen of a tree stands tall. It's probably 60 or more years old. As I came upon it, I told them that this tree was a Ph.D. in South Florida; that it had

learned this area so well that it had specialized in living here and nowhere else. This particular species of slash pine, Pinus elliouii var densa, is endemic to South Florida (Pine Rocklands-Miami-Dade County). Students looked at me funny. I stared back. I kissed the tree. I thanked it. By now, everyone had been pushed over the edge of weirdness, and they just looked at me and smiled.

MATH, STRUGGLES, AND SLASH PINES 5

I continued with my message and repeated the mantra the epiphyte gave me: Adaptation is learning. It is the means that all of life has to continue to exist. Change is a constant. Adaptation is a dance with change. It is the engage­ ment of the core challenge associated with change. It is the ''yes" in all crea­ tures to life, possibility, and existence.

I told them the little I know about slash pines, that there are other relatives of this tree, but that this species is only found here. I pointed out how this particular pine learned to use the wet and dry seasons, the poor soil condi­ tions, frequent fires to manifest a beauty that is a gift to witness and appreci­ ate. I celebrated the tree in front of me. Everyone did so as well. A little attention, at least, from the more hard to reach. We took a moment to breathe deeply and notice the scent the tree gives off. I was filled with won­ der. Some were too. Others looked at their phones. They were receiving mes­ sages at the time, but not from the epiphyte, the slash pine, or me.

So many unique elements of this tree's knowledge and manifestation of life exude in this place, the fringes of this campus where concrete replaced its kin. Its bark is fire resistant, a useful trait given lighting strikes that in the past burned the under story: These fires took place in the wet season and were not destructive. They were energy deposits into the area that these trees knew how to use. The slash pine drops its seeds after a fire into the ash-enriched limestone and the seeds take root.

The specialization worked well for thousands of years. It stopped working once large numbers of people moved into the area. The Dade County slash pine did not specialize in humans, however. It did not take us into account

and our aversion to fire. Nat sur prisingly, the slash pine has lost out to our home building and fire suppression. In a matter of less than 100 years or so, about one to two percent of the endemic slash pine forest is left (Pine Rock­ lands-Miami-Dade County). This tree adapted to the area but has not been able to adapt to our presence.

The lesson in this is difficult. It presents us with many questions. Primarily, 'What's our responsibility and role in preserving those life forms that don't have the capacity to adapt to the rapid change we are creating?" and "How do we address those who are not able to learn at the pace of change all around us?" These were big questions, but not the thrust of what I was hop­ ing I was conveying to my students. The message of the air plant, though a

species that supposedly lacks judgment, seemed more direct: To adapt means to learn. To stop learning or not learn fast enough means death.

So about one to two percent of the original Dade County slash pine forest is left. Our campus has a couple of patches where once the entire area was domi­ nated by these trees. We walked away from this small patch and felt ambivalent.

6 WHO SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE

The beauty of the trees is obvious; their fate also seems sealed. But. There is always a "but'' that carries the possibility of surprise. On the way out of the slash pines, I spotted one solitary atala butterfly heading for its morning break­ fast. This small dark blue butterfly with a red belly and metallic blue dots on its wings echoed …