From hunger striker supporters: Please read to get a full understanding of what you can do and why the students are striking. The amount of money is SMALL — .005 of the city budget and the students are just asking for the one year INTEREST on the rainy day fund. Sun Op-Ed at the bottom plus links to other media coverage. If you have friends and family in other states, please forward. They can help also!

Dear friends,

Why the Mayor thinks of the hunger striking students as adversaries is a mystery. They’re the solution, not the problem.

The hunger strikers are entering the third day, and are healthy–examined daily by a physician, spirited, but physically tired, of course. They have been consuming only juice and water since Friday. Great media yesterday on TV and in the paper publicizing the demand for $3 million for youth jobs in the knowledge-based economy. But we need much more.

Mayor Dixon refuses even to schedule a meeting with the young people. On the news she says she already has budgeted $14 million for youth programs. That is less than .005 of the city budget–less than half of one percent.

Students and Peer-to-Peer Youth Enterprises are asking for only the interest on the rainy day fund, Councilman Bill Henry’s excellent idea–not a penny from any other program, not even a penny from the rainy day fund, but only the interest.

Call Mayor Dixon today at 410-396-3100 or 410-396-3836
Email her at mayor@baltimorecity.gov

The students have recommended this script for supporters:

Hello, my name is……and I live in…….. I want to leave a message for the Mayor. I heard that Baltimore City students are on a hunger strike and I think that is outrageous. I am calling to urge the Mayor to fully fund Peer 2 Peer Youth Enterprises to create knowledge-based jobs for youth who might otherwise turn to street crime and violence to support themselves and their families. We must invest in our youth because they are the future of our city! Thank you very much, I will be seeing you at Mayor’s Night In on Monday.

Students are asking you to:

1. Call Mayor Dixon

2. Come to Mayor’s Night In, Monday, 6 PM, War Memorial–(or march with students from Pratt and Light at 5)

3. Donate money/supplies (water, juice, cups, vegetables & fruit for juice,) (call Jay at 443-248-9032)

4. Come to our rallies & bring your friends (next rally: Pratt and Light , Monday, 4:30)

5. Sign our petition

Talking points:

The young people on hunger strike are the solution, not the problem.

Peer-to-peer youth are:

• engaged, not apathetic
• educated, not ignorant
• committed, not distracted
• creative, not destructive
  
• peace-loving, not violent
• hard-working, not lazy
  
• united, not divided.

They’re the solution.

What’s the problem?

Call Mayor Dixon today at the main switchboard 410-396-3835 or if you can’t get through, (410) 396-3100.

E-Mail her at mayor@baltimorecity.gov

Read Bryant Muldrew’s outstanding letter to the Sun below:

Fasting to give city kids a chance

May 31, 2008

I’ve lived long enough to watch my city descend through some levels of the underworld. I ask: Who will stand up to fix the problems of my Baltimore?

We students in a coalition called Peer-to-Peer Enterprises are aware of the injustices city youths face.

Peer-to-Peer organizations employ older youths to teach their younger peers skills and knowledge.

In the past few years these organizations have employed hundreds of youths, helped increase test scores, kept young away people from violence and drugs and established “families” outside the home.

These programs should be expanded and need sustained investment to grow their accomplishments.

The Peer-to-Peer coalition has requested $3 million from the city’s budget to create an additional 700 to 1,000 jobs and provide services to thousands more peers.

The funds would allow youths to participate actively in a knowledge-based economy. Peers help peers learn all kinds of things: public speaking and debate, algebra, theater and playwriting, drumming and dance, video production and much more. These technical skills help students plan successful futures.

The City Council unanimously approved a resolution in March requesting that the mayor include this $3 million in the city’s budget. But Mayor Sheila Dixon has refused the council’s request.

The City Council recently missed an opportunity to do something to help us by refusing to fund Peer-to-Peer Enterprises with the interest on the city’s rainy day fund (”Youth fund boost denied,” May 29).

The interest this year will be approximately $3.5 million on a total fund of $88 million.

We don’t understand why an investment in our youth can’t be made from the interest on money that isn’t even being used. In effect, we’re just asking for the loose change under the cushions in the sofa.

Why would the City Council unanimously pass a resolution in March but then tell us in May that we aren’t worth a little interest?

Having exhausted all other courses of action, we have decided that participating in a hunger strike is a way to take action against injustice.

We dedicate our bodies in solidarity with our peers. Educationally, we’re starving already. We choose now to represent voluntarily what’s already happening to us against our will.

We would love to eat of the fruits of knowledge-based jobs and quality education. But our city, not our peers, keeps us hungry.

Bryant Muldrew

Baltimore

The writer is a student at Baltimore City Community College who works for one of the Peer-to-Peer Enterprises groups and is one of the hunger strikers demanding city funding for the Peer-to-Peer program.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.protest31may31,0,4785526.story

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/letters/bal-ed.le.hungerstrike31may31,0,2792000.story

http://wjz.com/video/?id=39447@wjz.dayport.com

http://indyreader.org/node/129

*******

UPDATE AS OF TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 2008:

From: Betty G. Robinson <bgrobinson@verizon.net>
Subject: Hunger Strikers advance a step
Date: Tuesday, June 3, 2008

From the Hunger Striker Support Team:

Responding to hundreds of emails, phone calls, and protestors, Mayor Sheila Dixon offered yesterday to meet with students on Wednesday, inviting “compromise”

PLEASE CONTINUE TO CALL AND EMAIL THE MAYOR–Ask her to fund peer-to-peer enterprises with $3 million.
410-396-3835 (mayor’s office) or 410-396-3100 (main switchboard)
mayor@baltimorecity.gov

In a television interview, Dixon said, “Mayor Dixon said: ‘I’m going to meet with them, but they’ve got to be ready to compromise. We don’t have three million dollars.” Since the mayor had previously refused to schedule a meeting, we consider the openness to meeting and compromise a positive sign. (http://wjz.com/video/?id=39543@wjz.dayport.com). The mayor did not hint, however, at what kind of compromise she might offer.

Students from Peer-to-Peer Youth Enterprises and adult supporters packed the event with about 200 participants. Many were prevented from entering the assembly room by police claiming overcrowding. One student described the occasion as “not Mayor’s Night In, but Peer-to-Peer’s Night Out)

The hunger strikers felt tremendously supported, and later described their sense of power at being able to completely control a public meeting with their message. We will be putting portions of the video on the peer-to-peer website later this week (some today, hopefully) http://p2pyouthenterprises.org/ at the “media” tab.

Today (Tuesday), strikers and the student planning team will be caucusing to determine a negotiating strategy for Wednesday.

THERE WILL BE NO RALLY TUESDAY (June 3, 2008). We will keep you informed.

We have heard that the story has gone national. If anyone sees it, hears it or reads it, please send links!

For more information, please contact: Chris Goodman, Tel. 443.957.5346, E-mail: chris_byc@yahoo.com

• To inform parents what the Algebra Project can add or bring to Petersburg
• To ensure that every child Kindergarten through 12^th learn math/Algebra
• To ensure that each parent is involved with what is best for his/her child
• To ensure that there will be some kind of evaluation for the high school AP program
• To clarify what can be done to help others
• To disseminate information concerning AP classes to parents

Funded by the Ford Foundation, this work will continue into the remaining school year. Next meeting is scheduled for April 19^th, 9AM to 1PM. If you are interested in attending, please contact Ernest at ebrooks@algebra.org.

DOWNLOAD RFP

RFP Deadlines: 

Abstract:  APRIL  28

Full Proposal: MAY 5

General registration will open shortly - please visit this page for updates.

Wednesday, March 19 to Thursday, March 20

www.edliberation.org/talkin-bout

Talkin’ bout is an online discussion series that brings together educators, activists and youth to participate in a public conversation on the network website about timely and important topics in liberatory education. From Wednesday, March 19 to Thursday, March 20 a panel that includes Algebra Project founder Bob Moses and RadicalMath.org founder Jonathan Osler will answer questions posted to an online discussion board about math and social justice. The conversation will take place on the website of the Education for Liberation Network.

talkin ’bout.math and social justice is linked to the upcoming national conference, Creating Balance in an Unjust World. Creating Balance provides a unique space in which educators can come together to explore questions, challenges, and opportunities to work for social and economic justice through mathematics and math education. This conference is sponsored by Radical Math and Long Island University.

The panelists are:

* Bob Moses, Founder and President of the Algebra Project

Author of Radical Equations and former Civil Rights Movement organizer.

* Jonathan Osler, who taught math at El Puente Academy for Peace & Justice for six years and is currently a math coach in Los Angeles. He is the founder of RadicalMath.org and an organizer of the Creating Balance in an Unjust World conference on math & social justice.

* Darnisha Hill, a junior at the Greater Lawndale/Little Village School for Social Justice in Chicago and a member of the school’s “mathematics for social justice” team. As part of the team, Darnisha participated in five regional and national conferences to present their work and research.

* Patricia Buenrostro, who has taught high school mathematics for 10 years in Chicago. Currently she is pursuing a PhD at the University of Illinois at Chicago in Curriculum. Her research interests are math and social justice, community engagement in schools, and teacher professional development in mathematics reform.

* Saara Nafici, Projects Coordinator for the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project in New York. She provides technical support to community groups, collaborates on GIS mapping projects, engages in coalition organizing and organizes the annual Community Reinvestment Workshop Series.

Also available on the website are samples of social justice math lesion plans.

The network invites all those interested in this important issue to post their own questions and comments for the panelists and for each other. Anyone can read the discussion without registering. To post, first you must register to use the site.

We hope this will be an enlightening and lively digital conversation.

The Education for Liberation Network is a national coalition of teachers, community activists, youth, researchers and parents who believe a good education should teach people-particularly low-income youth and youth of color-to understand and challenge the injustices their communities face.

For more information contact Tara Mack, Director, Education for Liberation Network at tara@edliberation.org.

Find out about Ruafika Cobb who founded the Algebra Academy, a Saturday program that teaches 15 minority students from the Asheville Middle School. Her work, and others in the Asheville, North Carolina community, is raising the bar for public school math education.

You can read more about the event at the Asheville Citizen-Times.

On January 10, 2008, ninety parents, community members, civil rights activists and educators assembled at the Medical Mall in Jackson, Mississippi with great anticipation of the demonstrations in mathematics which would be led by the Algebra Project students of Lanier.

The demonstrations highlighted the concepts of distance and displacement and how these ideas are applicable in everyday life situations such as the relay race. As teachers Demetrica Gorden and Herbert Brown outlined the rules of the relay race the students anxiously awaited their turn to display their knowledge of mathematics in a unique way. It was now time for the students to take center stage. As they hurriedly began stacking their cubes, they captivated the audience as R. Ferguson outlined the step by step process involved in a dynamical system at the end of the demonstrations, many questions and positive comments were made of learning math.

Frank Figgers, AP Parent Liaison, strongly reminded the audience of their role to be a village for these students. He stated that their presence was an indication that they care.

This event was made possible through the teamwork from the community at large- current and former AP students, parents, members of the Medical Mall Foundation, radio, churches in the Lanier feeder pattern, barber and beauty salons, teachers and administrative staff of Lanier and mentor groups. The event was a great success. More “Family Math Night” will be planned for the future.

Click here for PDF 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2008 4:30 P.M. CST
CONTACT: David J. Dennis, Sr., (601) 668-6473, Algebra Project Site & Community Development consultant

Renowned actor and humanitarian Danny Glover will be in New Orleans visiting Recovery School District schools tomorrow, Thursday February 14 and Friday February 15, continuing his involvement in efforts to bring officials, schools and community together to create effective solutions toward raising the quality of public school education.

Mr. Glover will meet with students and faculty members of schools involved with the Algebra Project. These events seek to highlight the progress of the collaboration between the Vanguard Public Foundation and the Algebra Project—Mr. Glover sits on the Board of Directors of both organizations—with New Orleans schools.

In October 2005 the Vanguard Public Foundation initiated intensive support of work in New Orleans to assist the rebuilding efforts, particularly in the critical areas of public school education and housing. Vanguard partnered with the Algebra Project to provide professional development to math teachers from James Singleton Charter, Eleanor McMain and Frederick Douglas High Schools. AP trainers worked with the math teachers using the Algebra Project methodology at these schools throughout the 2005-2006 school year.  In the summer 2006, the teachers at Singleton charter were officially trained to implement the Algebra Project for the next school term.

One of the goals of the Algebra Project - and national math standards - is to offer algebra at the eighth grade to all students, a year before it is officially offered in the New Orleans public schools.  During the 2007-2008 school year, this work has expanded to additional RSD schools.

Dr. Raynard Sanders of Vanguard is pleased with the Algebra Project trainers and with the level of participating teachers’ commitment, evidenced by the start of the first eighth grade Algebra class at Singleton.  He underscores these contributions as demonstrations of the kinds of educational improvement efforts available to the city. “This is quite an accomplishment, given the academic challenges of the Singleton students, who do not have academic admission requirements.”

On Thursday, February 14th, Danny Glover will be present at a reception for community leaders and parents at the James Singleton Charter School at Dryades YMCA on 2220 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard between 4:30PM and 6:00PM.  Later that evening at 6:30PM, he will attend a Community Reception open to the general public at The Wisdom Hall on 1359 St. Bernard Ave.

Also, at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, February 15th, Mr. Glover will visit John McDonogh High School, 2426 Esplanade Ave.  During this return visit Mr. Glover will be meeting with school officials to better understand the current challenges and opportunities facing New Orleans students and teachers.

If you have any questions, please contact David J. Dennis, Sr., Algebra Project Site & Community Development consultant at 601-668-6473.

RAISING THE FLOOR: Quality Education as a Constitutional Right

Where: Jackson State University, Jackson, MS

When: July 24-27, 2008

Registration: Please visit: http://www2.jsums.edu/forms/algebraconference/

Schedule: (as of 6/17/08) http://www.algebra.org/articles/APconfsched_20080617.pdf

Questions: ebrooks@algebra.org.

Volunteering: Email ebrooks@algebra.org if you’d like to volunteer on one of the committees or at the event.

For over a quarter century, the Algebra Project has been working at the forefront of a civil rights struggle against one root cause of racial inequity in the United States: math education. This academic year heralds the 25th anniversary of AP, as well as a few other significant anniversaries:

150th Anniversary of Dred Scott v. Sandford

50th Anniversary of Civil Rights Act of 1957

50th Anniversary of Public School Integration of Little Rock 9

15th Anniversary of the Algebra Project in Jackson, MS

From July 24 to July 27, 2008 (save the date!) AP will hold its inaugural anniversary conference in Jackson, Mississippi: hosted by Jackson State University and partnering with Florida International University. Registration is now available:

http://www2.jsums.edu/forms/algebraconference/

The Algebra Project (AP) national conference seeks to engage youth and adult participants in facilitated small and large group discussions, working sessions, and interactive activities. The overall goal of the conference is to rigorously evaluate the requirements and strategies needed to create a Quality Public School Education for all students. Anticipated outcomes include networking among participants and organizations to mobilize resources for the future work of raising the floor of education for all students.

AP started from one parent’s desire to see his child understand algebra in middle school so that she could enter high school and enroll in college-preparatory math courses. In doing so, he saw the need to change youth culture around math education – to get them excited about math – and to break down institutional barriers to a quality public education.

That is exactly what AP students are doing: overcoming obstacles and spreading the excitement to be in the classroom. How often do you hear your high school students say they want to take math – 90 minutes a day, five days a week – and fully attend all year long? Calculate the minutes of class time that students are engaging themselves and each other, becoming agents of their future.

AP currently seeks a national response to establish a fundamental right that every child be guaranteed a quality public education; and you are part of this conversation!

Please join us in celebrating math literacy and youth action for a quarter century and beyond. And, if you find that you cannot attend our conference in 2008, please consider making a contribution toward a student travel scholarship by clicking on the “Donate Now” link above, or join our email list, also found at the top of this page.

Petersburg People’s News

The Progressive Index

Yvonne and Wilheminia

    Though Yvonne and Wilhemenia worked eight hours a day, Emergency Relief Committee meetings were held in their apartments on week nights, sometimes late into the night, and on weekends in the early evening. For many months the sisters, on Saturdays, joined the small band of ERC activists in soliciting food in front of supermarkets for Tennessee blacks who lost their jobs and were subjected to threats and sometimes violence as a result of attempting to register to vote.

    It was at the sisters’ suggestion that black churches were urged to aid ERC efforts.

    Churches on the South Side of Chicago, where the ERC was headquartered, consisted overwhelmingly of southern blacks who knew the pain of racial insult in the South and could readily identify with and were likely to come to the aid of their southern brothers and sisters. The ERC project offered a nearly ideal means by which blacks in the North might personally, and in large numbers, become directly involved in the southern movement, which raised their consciousness with respect to their plight in the North.

    Roughly seventy churches answered the ERC call to donate non-perishable food items and clothing to the cause.

    Over a period of eight months, massive amounts of such items were transported by van lines to Tennessee. The churches also contributed substantially to cost of shipments South being covered by the Emergency Relief Committee. The strategy of enlisting the support of the churches was the key to the success of the ERC in support of voter registration. Later that strategy worked on behalf of the Freedom Rider movement. The churches were also asked by the ERC to support Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Yvonne and Wilhemenia helped spearhead the three projects. The Chicago Defender, the principal black newspaper, unfailingly carried news of ERC activity into the homes of blacks on a weekly basis.

    The June 6th, 1961 issue of the Defender carries a photo of Yvonne with newly arrived Freedom Riders in Chicago. Moreover, all major Chicago newspapers–the Tribune, The Sun-Times, and the Daily News covered ERC projects, as did Chicago Television stations. Both voter-registration efforts of the ERC in 1960 and its support of the Freedom Rides in 1961 received national television coverage, over the Huntley-Brinkley evening news. Thus millions of Americans viewed ERC efforts.

    In the opening years of the Sixties, from 1960 to 1961, the ERC, as no other Chicago organization, helped focus the spotlight of publicity on the struggles of southern blacks.

    Chicagoans by the hundreds of thousands knew that a Chicago organization, with the support of churches, and with support from people irrespective of race and class orientation in and around Chicago, was deeply involved in coming to the assistance of southern blacks.

    Such assistance in time was not considered rare at all. But not once, in all the time spent with the sisters, was their talk from them about their contributions to the movement. Yet no one was more responsible for the Sixties movement in Chicago than they.

The Birth of the Emergency Relief Committee

    Sisters Yvonne Stephens and Wilhemenia Evans were, in the spring of 1960, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), at which time they walked picket lines in support of the student sit-in movement in the South. The sisters recruited Sterling Stuckey to join in their effort and encouraged him and James Wagner, who became members of CORE, to attend the national CORE convention in the summer of 1960 where Earl Walter of Los Angeles CORE spoke movingly about reprisals against blacks in Fayette and Haywood counties Tennessee for attempting to secure their voting rights. Upon returning to Chicago, Stuckey and the sisters in July founded The Emergency Relief Committee for Fayette and Haywood Counties, Tennessee– the ERC– as a subcommittee of CORE. In order to send large supplies of food and clothing South, the sisters suggested that the ERC should try and win the support black churches in Chicago, reasoning that most church memberships consisted of blacks who had fled the South in search of a better life.

    The pain felt by southern blacks, Yvonne and Wilhemenia emphasized, was especially felt by those in the North who were apt, the sisters argued, to want to help those left behind. While the great bulk of the support did indeed come from black churches with lower income members contributing heavily to the cause, ERC activity, which made the pages of every Chicago newspaper and was aired over television locally and nationally, attracted a great deal of attention across racial, class, and religious lines. Support also came from individuals near Chicago and from as far away as Washington, D. C. World-class scientist Percy Julian, who lived in nearby Oak Park, Illinois, was among the financial contributors to the cause, as was Ethel Payne, the journalist who lived in Washington, D.C.

    While the response to the ERC cut across class and race lines, the community of ex-southern blacks in Chicago churches drove the relief effort, as the sisters thought would be the case. Writes Michael Gomez, chair of History at NYU: “The work of the ERC was in fact the model later adopted by civil rights organizations in Chicago in relation to the southern rights struggle…” Further, Gomez writes that historian August Meier and sociologist Elliott Rudwick argue that the ERC was “the most active” CORE chapter at the time, sending “about sixty tons of food and clothing,” over five months, to Fayette and Haywood counties.

    Yvonne and Wilhemenia not only helped conceive the ERC but went on, after the ERC had sent roughly eighty tons of food and clothing to blacks attempting to win their voting rights, to support the Freedom Rides. The ERC, in fact, was the first civil rights organization in the country to bring a large number of Freedom Riders North, after their release from jail, to raise money so that CORE might continue its part in the Freedom Rides. Among the Freedom Riders brought to Chicago by the ERC in June of 1961, were Rudy Lombard, Doris Castle, Jerome Smith, Bill Larkin, Julia Aaron, Dave Dennis, and Dr. Walter Bergman. The planning meeting for this effort, as did most ERC meetings, took place in Yvonne’s apartment in Hyde Park. The sisters also helped raise money for Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.

    While helping the drive for voter rights in Tennessee was the signal achievement of the ERC, members of the organization, inspired by the example of Yvonne and Wilhemenia, went on to play a role in the founding of the Amistad Society, which helped prepare the ground for movement for Black Studies and other intellectual movements of the Sixties in Chicago and the nation. Tragically, the sisters, who were completely dedicated to helping others, died of brain anueisms while still in their thirties. But no one in Chicago was more responsible for breathing life into the Chicago movement of the Sixties, which largely sprang into being as a result of their work.