You know how in some gumball machines the gumball gets released into a funnel-like thing and circles slowly around and around and as it nears the center it circles faster and faster until it finally drops into the hole? Well, I've been dancing around the point of this project for years now, and since the blog started I've gotten closer and closer. This week, the gumball dropped.

Three community events helped me zero in on my topic: The impact of over-incarceration and under-education on communnities in New Orleans and Palestine.

Uplifting? Certainly not. Optimistically constructive? I certainly hope so.


The first event:
Education in New Orleans Post-Katrina: A Human Rights Violation

This event was held at my church. The speakers were teachers, students, activists and spoken word artists who shared their experience with education, crime and incarceration. The point of the evening was to reflect on our country's human rights record, which is now being evaluated by the United Nations. One woman went up and gave statistics on out-of-school suspensions, expulsions and drop-out rates for African-American students in New Orleans. A man went up and shared his experience with the OPP-Orleans Parish Prison. An English teacher went up and recited a poem about a student who committed suicide. Another girl went up and shared her poem about being African-American and Muslim. I was reminded of how little the kids at my school know about Muslims, aside from their desire to blow things up.

Question: Why are Americans not guaranteed the Right to a Quality Education?


The second:
Public Meeting with the Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition

This event was held at the Dryades YMCA in Central City. There were probably 130-150 people there, including the Working Group panel and several police officers. The Deputy Mayor ran the meeting, and I was only there long enough to hear an hour of questions/suggestions/demands from the audience. There were representatives of various Christan groups, social justice organizations, former in-mates and friends and family of, and of course, the anarchist.
Key issues/questions raised:
-Why is our most viable mental health treatment facility located in Orleans Parish Prison?
-Why are you rushing into this decision when our tax dollars are at stake?
-The NOPD planted drugs on my husband and told my little boy that he would be better off without a father. Why are we pouring money into a prison that will require more incarcerations and perpetuate a racist system that says slavery is okay in prison?
-I damned near starved to death in OPP. Health care? Forget about it. They gave us classes on how to write a resume, but the GED I got? No one will take it. No one will hire me because I've been in prison. Now I live with no water and no electricity. What are you doing to fix this? Because your system doesn't work.
-Why did Safe Streets lose its representative on the panel? We have family members in prison, we have former in-mates, what better experience can you have than that? You ask us to be polite in these meetings, and you don't understand our frustration because we are the ones being affected here and we have no representation.

There were a lot of technical questions about legislation and money that I just don't remember, but I remember the people who came to represent themselves and their loved ones. It was a powerful hour, just standing there in the back...

Question: Why are we expanding a system that doesn't make us safer?

(Side note: I'm in a cafe and one of the lady baristas just said "I told them not to arrest him, I didn't want him to go to jail. I've been to jail, it sucks....")


Third event
Screening of Waiting for Superman followed by Panel of New Orleans Educators

Because of the OPP meeting, I made it to the second half of the screening. Here's what I picked out from the movie...

Schools that put students on different academic tracks based on test scores and other often arbitrary factors are failing a large portion of their students. Charter schools (like KIPP) hold their entire student body to the same academic standards, and have achieved miraculous results. Miraculous in the sense that after decades of attempting to close the achievement gap between students from low-income and high-income backgrounds, it was widely believed that the gap would never close, that disadvantaged students couldn't learn. This new wave of charter schools is turning that assumption around. KIPP Believe is now the highest-performing open enrollment middle school in New Orleans. Two more schools are in the works for next year, and more for the year after that. More kids will have access to a quality education because the chances of being called up on the lottery won't be 10 to 1. I hate sitting in the teachers lounge and hearing the daily phone call: "I'm sorry ma'am, we don't have any more spots available, but we can put you on our waiting list." As much backlash as there's been since the Recovery School District took over five year ago, we need more understanding of and support and funding for these charter schools, because they are WORKING.


After the screening and panel discussion, I knew I was almost done dancing. The gumball was about to drop.

Over-funding incarceration. Under-funding education.

I knew it was a match made in heaven (more appropriately, hell) when the General Union of Palestinian Students at the University of New Orleans e-mailed me the next day. Next week is Right to Education Week at Birzeit University, and it highlights all of the issues that prevent Palestinian students from accessing a quality education. Education is highly valued in Palestine, but the right to education is actively denied by Occupation forces. Israeli officers pose as reporters and interview Palestinian students on campus activism, then they make arrests. At Birzeit, student council members are arrested merely for being on the student council. The last president has been in jail for almost a year.

Over-funding incarceration. Under-funding education.

To be sure, New Orleans and Palestine have this problem in common, and it stems from decades of racism, corruption and mismanagement. But to say these are the only reasons behind the active DENIAL of the right to education is to give Israel entirely too much credit. There are stark differences, but the purpose of this comparison is to tie the two communities together into some semblence of mutual investment. I wish I could say that my audience is the City of New Orleans, or the City of Ramallah, but for now I'm confident in the support of young students and activists of both communities. Now to see how it unfolds...