From a Teacher:

"I want kids to know who BA is, that there is another way..."

November 11, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

A Revolution correspondent recently interviewed a teacher who took up the quote 1:13 from the book BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian in relation to the October 22 National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization in her middle school. Her students come from a very poor, mainly Black and West Indian area of New York City. This correspondence is slightly edited from that interview.

The full quote from Bob Avakian is:

No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that.

Here is the correspondence.

* * * * *

I was excited about being in the classroom this year because I could have a very direct relationship with the kids, talking about Bob Avakian. I want kids to know who BA is, that there is another way, that their life doesn't have to be over and their fate sealed. October 22 was a legitimate opportunity to put these things on the table for the kids. A few weeks before O22 I had made available to the kids an article from a teen magazine about racism with Trayvon Martin's picture. It flew off the shelf, everyone wanted to read it and talk about it. This was interesting because these are seventh graders, they were 11 years old when Trayvon was killed, but it was very emotional, they wanted to express their feelings, there was lots of outrage. They mentioned the word "racist" a lot when they talked about it.

So then I put up the Revolution centerfold poster with the picture of the boys carrying the cutout of Trayvon Martin with BA's quote "No more generations of our youth..." in the classroom. The kids started studying the picture and trying to work at and "decode" the text.

I also put up the front page of Revolution with the call for protesting on October 22 and "Hoodies Up" on the classroom door. Immediately, kids walking by in the hallway started saying, "Hoodies up, yeah!" "What does it mean?" "Yeah, I'll do it." I used the whole front page including the Revolution masthead. One sixth-grade girl said, "It will be revolution day!" We talked about what that meant. They don't know.

We have a rule in the school, no hats and no hoodies. This rule is strictly enforced EXCEPT there is permission on October 22 to put hoodies up. When October 22 came, a bunch of kids came into school with their hoodies up. The kids associated it with standing with Trayvon Martin. At the beginning of the day I said, "Put your hoodies up now" and I put mine up. A bunch of the teachers and the principal and deans all wore hoodies up too.

My class is seventh grade, 30 students, a mix of special ed and general ed kids. Most kids read far below grade level. The kids are very talkative; it's very hard to get everyone's attention all at once. But on this day, I put up the BA quote, "No More Generations..." in the middle of the room and read it out for us to talk about. We stopped after every sentence to discuss and we stopped whenever anyone wanted to ask what something meant. Here's what the kids said, sentence by sentence:

"No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed..."

"Wait, what does that mean? What's 'fate'?" Other kids respond: "It's your destiny, your future."

"...who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality ..."

This was confusing to them. What is meant by "misery and brutality?"

"...whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that."

"What does that mean, the system has destined for ... what?"

I explained that BA is the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party and he feels very strongly that kids here and around the world do not have to live a life where your destiny is chosen for you and it's a life of brutality and oppression. When you are "oppressed," it means you are held down by someone or something. I said to the kids, "He says 'NO MORE OF THAT' and I SAY 'NO MORE OF THAT' and WE should ALL say 'NO MORE OF THAT!'" They said, "YEAH!"

They got a very basic idea that BA is saying we shouldn't have our destiny chosen by other people. They were not so clear it's a system. They don't know what that means. When I tried to break that down, I lost them, so I knew I had to change it up. I asked, what have you had enough of that the police do? How many have heard of stop-and-frisk? Everyone. How many have been stopped and frisked? No one put up their hand. How many know someone who has been stopped and frisked? Quite a few. How many have been stopped by the police yourselves? Quite a few—but they didn't identify this as stop-and-frisk, they just experience it as what happens, part of life. These are 12- and 13-year-olds. So I said, alright, let's talk about that. We went around the room and there were so many stories. Twenty out of the thirty kids had stories.

"Me and my cousin were walking down the street, we didn't do anything, the cops come out of nowhere and said, 'where are you going and where do you belong?'"

"We were playing tag on the playground, we ran behind a building, the cops came and said, 'what are you doing, are you drinking and smoking? Get out of there.'" This girl was 10 years old when this happened.

"The police came into my house to get my father, for no reason." Imagine as a child, watching the police abruptly enter your house and pull out your father. I don't think, from knowing this child, that there was any legitimate reason for his dad to be pulled out of his house.

"My brother didn't come home one night and we didn't know where he was. He was taken in by the police for nothing. He was let out without being charged."

"My dad was pulled over, I was in the back seat. There was nothing in his car, he wasn't doing anything. He had to get out, the police bothered him, then they let us go on our way."

"Me and my brother were outside the pizza store a store all of the kids knew, all the sudden cops come out of nowhere, 'why are you here?' 'We're just trying to get pizza. Like, What!?'"

Some kids mentioned stories where they felt they needed the police—a house party where someone stabbed somebody, they called the police, then the police shook everyone down, made everyone nervous and scared.

Some thought that cops would prevent bad things but at the same time, the stories of what these kids experienced, some from the age of five years old, there were many invasions of their lives, many interactions for "no reason." All the kids kept saying, "for no reason" and it's very routine. "For no reason" was their way of saying, "I don't get it, I don't understand why this happens." They don't know yet fully that this is because they are Black, Latino, in the "wrong place."

So when they read the quote, they weren't able to connect the concepts of this system, oppression. I think this year they'll be starting to understand why these things are happening. At this age they can start to connect the dots, and they need adults who can help them connect the dots in honest ways. Lots of teachers don't tell the truth.

They were quiet, they listened, they watched when each of them spoke. And this is a rowdy, social group of kids. Everyone sat up straighter and listened, and kids spoke who never talk in class. The conversation mattered to them. It was real shit, not how to punctuate in a text. They all felt, this is something I want to know about, it matters. It was like opening up a floodgate.

They feel this oppression but don't know it has a name. I'm sure they also feel it from the school, from the teachers. We are part of the system by definition; we demand compliance even when we are trying to do something different. So we also risk them saying [to me and other honest teachers], "You are oppressing us." It's true that as the system is set up we are in this position.

They have these personal experiences but the idea of the system, politics, is not part of their discourse. They are proud that Obama is president but they don't seek out or demand evidence to back up whether he is doing a good job or not. When I taught in (a different area of the city) some kids understood "the system"—oh, you mean the way the government works, politicians, how money is devoted to education or not, for example. Some had heard of communism and had opinions about it.

But these are kids who are part of generations unable to pick their heads up. "It's just this way." Religion is strong too and a constant undertone with the kids. In one of the reading groups, we were talking about Greek gods, polytheism. The kids said, "I thought we only believe in one god." I said, who's the "we"—there are many different religious belief systems AND there's atheism. I love to tell kids about atheism! They write "I'm blessed," "I know god will take care of me," when they write about their dreams for the future. Family members tell me "god bless you." We aren't supposed to teach our own opinions; we are supposed to teach about religion from the historical and sociological perspective. But yet anyone can wear a cross and I don't know if I can wear an "atheist" t-shirt. I don't think anyone should be allowed to wear crosses and religious symbols in school.

My co-teacher sat in the back while I facilitated the discussion of the "No More Generations..." quote. She has been fine with what I do—putting up the Trayvon and "No More Generations" centerfold, putting up the front page of Revolution newspaper on the classroom door. But after this discussion she said, "Oh my god, I can't believe how serious they were, how quiet, how much they listened. And their stories!" She worked with these same kids before this year and never saw anything like this.

It wouldn't be true to say that now this is a bunch of revolutionary kids. The underlying themes of "it's unfair" and racism were there, but they were not so clear on details. So I encouraged them to do research. One girl said, "I'm going to write about this." She's writing a big paper about police brutality—she did research on Rodney King and Trayvon, she is interviewing other kids about their experiences. I had a conference with her and she said, "This is so unfair. Ms. X, I'm not being racist [because I, her teacher, am white], but lots of white people do messed up things and I'm upset with those white people." I said, "You are right, let's talk about what to do about this." She wanted to research what Black people say about experiencing racism—I said, "Why not reach out to your classmates, you can learn, ask follow up questions, and many experiences are right here" (vs. just researching on the Internet for example). I asked her if she had bad experiences with the police and she said no. This made me think, the kids don't even know this isn't how it's supposed to be. I asked her, what about the stories in the class of getting stopped by the police—this is profiling. She wrote it down, to use in her piece. Lots of what she said made complete sense, when this is a student who often has difficulty communicating. This is something she is passionate about.

What I learned from this is that this experience of the repeated encounters and invasions by the police in these kids' lives, it puts a tag or a chain on them in every realm of existence. It is so foundational to how they are as human beings—as sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, students, the young women or young men they will become—they can't shake it off. They don't identify this as being there, but is so at the core of how they are being shaped.

We see it in kids with "anger issues" who pop off in a second. When I raise my voice, I hate what happens. They respond to an authority figure and it kills a part of them. They are bit by bit saying, let me stop being who I am. Let me shut up and listen, or be quiet, so I don't get in trouble. This isn't freeing, it's compliance. With those who completely buck authority and won't listen, it's very hard to have an honest conversation; with those who feel they have to comply—with all of them, they have to stop being who they are. We (in our school) want kids to be able to say, "Ms. X, you don't have to yell at us, just try again to get our attention." We want them to have enough pride and dignity so they don't have to lose who they are. We are trying to get the kids to be who they are all the time. We ask them: "Who do you want to be?" I always say to the kids, "Tell me when I'm unfair." But this isn't part of their experience. They can't do this with the police—"Mr. Officer, can we have a conversation?" I don't think so! But we are trying to get them to relate to authority with some power.

The more that we name these experiences, I hope it will make the kids want to understand more. I want them to be saying, "Ms. X, help us understand this," and we'll read more and watch videos. They should be fucking enraged but it's not enough to just say "I'm angry"—you need to understand causes and not just that the problem is "this person" or "that cop." In thinking about this, I'm planning to show the kids some parts of BA's Revolution talk on DVD, or the new REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! talk. Some will be very interested and want to know more. It will be good for the kids to see BA, to hear him—this is easier for some kids to take in than the written texts.

We had a Swedish visitor at our school who said their kids have a lot provided for them and less to worry about and they walk taller. She said, it's so clear on our kids' faces that they worry all the time. It broke my heart. My co-teacher said this made her realize that the way our country is affects these kids' lives. YES, now read BA!! It's not just that "our kids are poor," there are reasons for this. I don't know if Sweden is how to do it, but other systems can do differently.

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