Urban Ecology

Occupy and Movement Building

2011-11-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Ella Baker

A few weeks ago I posted a question October 2 @rebeccaojohnson: #occupywallstreet & Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee have a lot in common. Who is their Ella Baker? Do they need one?
Here is a cogent and helpful analysis from the Ella Baker Center of how the #Occupy movement fits with historical social change movements. It was helpful to be reminded there was a time when sitting down to a meal was a radical act.

US Toxics and Human Rights

2011-11-07T09:38:00.000-05:00

An extraordinary event kicks off in New Orleans this morning. Representatives of the International Indian Treaty Council, including representatives of Alaskan peoples affected by oil pipelines, and Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, are convening a US Toxics Policies and Human Rights Forum. They will gather in New Orleans, travel to Mossville to tour the community with Mossville Environmental Action Now leaders Dorothy Felix, Delmar Bennett and Van Johnson, and then return to New Orleans for further discussions. The meeting announcement provided by the Gulf Coast Fund states, "A gathering of diverse organizations to share, learn, and strategize about current US policy reform initiatives, community organizing, and advocacy to protect reproductive health, prevent toxic exposures, and defend our basic human rights."

Food Day is Every Day in Albany Georgia

2011-10-31T11:52:00.000-05:00

There have been many food and hunger events this past month. World Food Day was October 16. National Food Day was Oct. 26. Of course we need to pay attention hunger and access to good food more than a day, week or month each year, but October has also been Farm to School month and one of my favorite organizations in the whole world, The Southwest Georgia Project, have been working with local farmers and the Dougherty County School System (which includes Albany, Georgia) to bring locally grown produce and healthy meals to students.

The Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education has been organizing for social change, civil rights and economic justice since 1961. They have focused on black land loss, rural black women's development and strengthening southwest Georgia's food system. Many organizations have begun focusing on issues of food security in low-income communities. SWGA understands the complex factors leading to food insecurity -- land loss by local producers, the focus on commodity crop production rather than a diversified agriculture, producer access to farmer markets, and organizing to address in Department of Agriculture's historic discrimination of African-American farmers in Georgia and throughout the south.

New Blogs/Sites to Follow

2011-08-22T21:28:00.000-05:00

I've found some interesting websites and blogs of late. Here are just a few:

Ohio Environmental News

EcoWatch Ohio

Jack and Jill Politics

Colorlines

And my favorite,
Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl

Enjoy!

Getting the Nivea Ad Out of My Head -- Going w/the Graffiti

2011-08-20T13:09:00.000-05:00

Personal care product manufacturers are trying to figure out how to market to Black folk and keep getting it wrong. I can cite two egregious and one borderline: The Old Spice ad featuring Isaiah Mustafa in a towel might be an attempt at "post-racial" product seduction or just a well-spoken scantily clad native (you decide). First in the egregious category was the irritating Summer's Eve ad featuring a talking African-American hand puppert that couldn't refer to her vagina as a, well, vagina. But most disturbing was the recent Nivea ad urging Black men to "re-civilize yourself". Here's the ad:

Note the beheaded, afro'd, grimacing (I would be too if I had somehow been separated from my body, even if it looks like a very clean cut) black man.

Now that I have planted the image in your mind (sorry about that) here is an image of Gil Scott-Heron from his 1972 album, Free Will. Perhaps the African-American ad exec who reportedly thought up this campaign was unconsciously influenced by the sudden passing of one of our most important and tragic musicians.

There was an advertising executive who did understand how to reach African-American consumers. Herb Kemp pioneered a style of marketing that respected black people's intelligence and dignity. Mr. Kemp passed away this past March.

I'm not a big fan of most commercial personal care products. They are generally too stinky, sticky or flammable for my tastes (what is it with Fructis anyway?) or do nothing for my head full of tiny dreadlocks, I would like to be able to open a magazine or turn on BET without being assaulted by ignorant and distasteful ads. After all, according to the Terry College of Business African-American buying power amounted to $1.6 trillion in 2010, despite our having "lost a decade's worth of job growth"in the current recession. Given that kind of spending power you would think marketers would do what it takes to get it right. Might I suggest an Undoing Racism workshop?

The Help -- A Digressive Rant

2011-08-16T09:21:00.001-05:00

I really didn't want to see this movie. Some of you remember how back in the day we went to a particular movie just because black people were in it. It was a rare treat and an act of racial solidarity. At first everyone was a maid or a tap dancing darkie but eventually we would get respectable films like To Sir With Love. Then in my young adulthood we had the pleasure of the so called blaxsploitation films. Movies with all black casts criticized for stereotyping us. But the music was fine and the women beautiful. ( Remember the Book of Numbers? I knew bookies growing up but they were all women ... I digress). Then there was the civil rights movie. Usually with a white heroine or hero who saves the life for us poor downtrodden colored folk in the tradition of To Kill A Mockingbird. Films like Mississippi Burning and The Long Walk Home (Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg. Keep this one in mind).

Queen Latifah, Set It Off

By then, the mid 1980's onward, I no longer felt obligated to see every movie with a black actor in it. We were ubiquitous. I only went to the serious ones, or the ones with cute girls (anything with Halle Berry), singing nuns (Sister Act I and II) or space aliens attacking the earth (Men in Black I and II). My idea of a great movie is Set It Off. Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox and Kimberley Elise. Poor Black women getting by. And who can resist a bull dagger and a semi-automatic weapon?

So I have become resentful of movies I have to see. But even though I avoided reading the book I knew I had to see The Help. We went last night, first discussing which theater would likely have the most black people in the audience. We first went to the Regal Cinema in Montrose, outside Akron. It was closest to us. As we were standing in a long line with a lot of elderly and middle aged white people who apparently loved the book we decided to head to north Akron. Indeed, at Chapel Hill the crowd was smaller with pockets of middle aged and elderly black women. At least there would be a few of us laughing at the same jokes.

I read an interview with the amazing Viola Davis (the maid Miss Abileen) who stars in the film. She said that for her they should have called the movie The Pressure Cooker. She went on to tell a story that many of us know. Like her, my mother and grandmother were domestics. I suspect my great and twice great grandmothers were as well. While they, Mom and Grandma, didn't live in the South (we are at least 5 generations in Ohio) that doesn't mean they didn't experience segregation, poor pay and bad housing. Cousins from my mother's generation remember living near settlements of recent migrants from the south. Akron constructed what cousin Richard called "shantytowns" on a hillside in their neighborhood. The Chapmans and the Finneys (my mother's side of the family) were both live-in domestics and day help, both the men and the women. I have aunts who helped raise the white children of their employers. They loved those children. It is one of the fundamental contradictions of the black labor experience in the post-bellum era, that ability to love a child who is going to grow up to apparently hate you and then hope to raise up their child in the hope they will love you back. It pleased some of the womenfolk in my family to no end when a white woman would look in the stroller transporting one of my light skinned siblings or cousins and mistake them for a white child. I was raised with the hope that I would not be anybody's maid. And while my housekeeping skills are considerable I did meet their expectations. If you want a more historical analysis of Black people's experience in domestic service please see the excellent critique by The Association of Black Women Historians as well as their short but important reading list.

Hattie McDaniel, Gone With TheWind

It is from this context that I went to see The Help. My first reaction, as the movie ended, "White people sure take up a lot of space." And they had to. How else could we be sympathetic to their suffering when a single glance from Viola Davis could express centuries of abuse, torture, disregard and grief? Except for Ms. Davis' character, Miss Abileen, just about everyone else -- white and black -- was a caricature of a stereotype. Octavia Spenser seems to have been cast as Miss Minnie in order to visually remind us of all those maids/mammies of earlier film eras -- Hattie McDaniel in Gone With The Wind, Ethel Waters in Pinky -- with a little Aunt Jemima for good measure. That Miss Minnie is considerably more dangerous than them (if equally defenseless) is a relief. The young white mothers are particularly poorly written and generally irritating. Sissy Spacek portrays what would have become of her character from the Long Walk if she hadn't stood up for her maid in that film, drunken, doddering, eventually redeemed old lady. And Allison Janney does another excellent turn as a racist mother with a secret (remember Hair Spray? She was brilliant as the demented Prudy Pringleton).

I once attended a MLK Day event in Albany, GA. After a parade of Christian themed puppet shows, gospel groups and skits a former or current Miss Georgia (I can't now remember) got on the stage, all blonde enthusiasm, and declared "This is what Dr. King wanted for us, that we all just get along." And that is all the creators of The Help want for us. That we get along and leave the theater feeling good.

This is a film about women and while their portrayal is shallow, white men are merely ornamental. That there seems to be almost no men in the lives of the maids in The Help is inexplicable. What few men appear reinforce the perception that black men were either irrelevant or inherently dangerous. This was a potent fiction for white women in the South even as the reality of all black people's lives was largely invisible to them. So their characterization, in a film full of caricatures is particularly revealing. They are almost non-existent except for the minister ("Love those who hate you"), an old man wielding a hoe out in the garden (I was waiting for him to begin singing nobody knows the trouble I seen), two men who are dead -- Miss Abileen's son and Medgar Evers, and Miss Minnie's husband, the invisible man, who beats her up. George, the "counter boy" at the local restaurant has the only human black male role.

As we left the theater I asked a clutch of older women what they thought. They loved it, some of them had read the book. Others were going to read it. I'm sure one or two of them had been domestics in their day. They were a bit older than me. Some of them had met Ntosake Shange for the first time in the movie adaptation of For Colored Girls and felt bad that Tyler Perry didn't have one of the roles (That the most recognized black woman film star is Tyler Perry is unnerving. Imagine M'Dea as the Loretta Devine character Juanita/Green -- oh. my. head.) A lot of the fiction my generation of African-American women reads is not the collected works of Alice Walker or the wondrous tomes of Toni Cade Bambara. They read E. Lynn Harris, Lolita Files, Victoria Murray. And that's ok. Perhaps like me, they had gotten beyond the need to "hold up the side" by only reading the serious literary fiction of African-American writers. In the past we had all gone to movies to be lifted up by the sight of our people on the screen. I think that's all they wanted from The Help. That filmmakers haven't gotten past the superficial and inaccurate representations of the white savior/civil rights movie is regrettable. Perhaps my sister movie goers are more charitable than me, more able to overlook the usurpation of Black women's dignity in the service of white women's redemption than I am. I just feel all the domestic workers in our lives, our mothers and grandmothers, and all those who served in bondage, deserve better than The Help.

Let's Get Y'all Caught Up

2011-08-13T14:09:00.000-05:00

Yes I'm in Akron, OH, living temporarily on a red brick street and a relatively new generation of trees. I've attended one of the local mediation groups, been to a dance performance at Glendale Cemetery (watch for a future, published --I hope -- article on this) and re-joined the excellent public library.

I do enjoy the more serene pace of this place and while I miss the diverse colors, accents and languages of Boston, I have to say, being back among my kind of colored folk, Great Migration elders and their progeny, makes me very happy. In a land of a lot of straightened hair people have been very kindly toward my unprocessed and unruly hairdo.

There are some Boston things I miss - our CSA, VanGuarden Farm and little pick up co-op called VeggieGals, the Boston Globe comic page, our front yard full of flowers and of course, numerous friends and those who, only what a young friend back east described as "old skool lesbians", constitute family.

I'm thinking about black youth and organized violence (WI and Philly), the British riots and the ludicrous reactionary policy of the Brits to evict the families of rioters from social housing (they learned that from us), and the extremes of Gay marriage -- leave Bert and Ernie alone -- and wouldn't it be better if Sesame Street was encouraged to have muppets advocating for social and economic security for everyone, regardless of the legal privileges of marriage (and divorce). More on some, if not all of these subjects soon(ish) I hope.

Akron

2011-07-25T13:32:00.000-05:00

Foundation Detail

I haven't talked about this much but I have been planning to move back to the homeland of my birth, Akron Ohio. A week ago at 3 in the morning we -- Pat, 2 cats and I -- arrived at our temporary home on Grand Ave. Our possessions arrived 7 hours later. Our permanent homes will be on North Maple St. These will be straw bale houses. More on these choices, Akron, straw bale houses, leaving Boston, in future posts.

Soon there will be a change in Urban Ecology's masthead. My everyday bird in this urban ecosystem is the robin. They have nested in the bushes next to our porch here at Grand Ave, similarly, they nested on the porch at my parent's home (of happy memory) on Storer Ave.

This just came to my attention. The Women's Health & Justice Institute in New Orleans has issued a statement on the demeaning practice of criminalizing poor women's lives as an excuse for deficit reduction. Check out Stereotypes, Myths and Criminalizing Policies: Regulating the Lives of Poor Women.

Now That Gay Marriage Is Legal In New York ...

2011-06-26T13:23:00.000-05:00

A month ago I posted about the cutting edge of gay organizing, the transgender/gender queer/questioning movement. I received interesting comments from the author at Bionic Mamas blog. Commenting on that May 9 post, Bionic Mama wrote, "this is far too short. In fact, this is at least 4 posts I'd like to read. write them."

So Bionic Mamas here goes. Installment 1.

Now that marriage is legal in NY let's hope activists who have poured so much into the organizing and advocacy for what they considered a right (I'm agnostic on this) maybe they can begin to organize and advocate for other rights that US citizens are finding undermined and/or denied, such as the right to health care, comprehensive education beginning in early childhood and to advocate for themselves and other workers through labor organizing.

It is telling that Governor Cuomo, according to the NY Times, made a deal with people who share his same opinion about social services to his people, that is Republican funders and hedge fund managers, to give Republican senators the financial "cover" to vote for gay marriage.

I live in a state, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that has taken the risk to guarantee all it's citizens (yes, used to be all residents, documented or not. We are not perfect.) access to health care regardless of their ability to afford it. Commonwealth Care receives no cover from Republican activists. They use it to bludgeon their potential presidential candidates (ok, Mitt Romney) and President Obama. These are the kind of alliances gay marriage has brought us.

So as you celebrate Gay Pride in the city where transgendered persons and low-income queers took a stand while most wealthy Gay Republicans lived comfortably in their closets, don't forget all those marginalized people in this country who don't have governors making deals that could give them preventive care, or allow them to send their kids to decent schools or, heaven forbid, pay them a livable wage.

So maybe this isn't exactly installment 1. More on Wednesday, as well as reflections on my recent trip to Mississippi and Louisiana. Oh, and read Bionic Mamas. It's a great blog.

What's An Old-Style Semi-Butch Lesbian To Do?

2011-05-09T05:13:00.000-05:00

The first workshop I attended at the National Conference for Media Reform was Beyond Pronouns: Creating Real Stories About Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People. I have struggled with the "style" issues in writing about transgender folk and this workshop was helpful in that respect as well as in how transpeople are demonized, endangered and exoticized by media coverage. More importantly for me, a middle-aged lesbian identified with an earlier generation of feminism, womanism and a GLBT movement that was the radical edge of social change, I finally came to understand why I need to ally myself with trans and gender non-conforming folk.

Let's face it, the GLB movement isn't what it used to be. Let me say I love my non-matrimonial spousal equivalent partner for life. You might think this is a lot to say when, because I live in Massachusetts, I could get married, call her my spouse or (heaven forbid) my wife. Marriage isn't a victory to me. Military service anathema -- I'm more of a don't serve kind of girl. Groups like Queers for Economic Justice have well developed critique of these supposedly progressive organizing efforts within the gay community. Now don't get me wrong. There are many GLB organizations doing cutting edge work on homelessness, anti-violence, and economic justice. But note that I leave the Q & T off. For many of these more established groups Q & T (and frequently youth) are an afterthought. Organizations like The Audre Lorde Project, Queers for Economic Justice, TransPeopleSpeak.org, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition So it seems like the radical edge has shifted. GLB has mainstreamed so that you can be gay, married, Republican and advocate for the conservative assault on women's health.

All movements have their moment. Now it's time to let the transgendered and gender non-conforming folk help lead us along their radical edge of social change.

Media, Organizing & Reform

2011-04-05T09:57:00.000-05:00

I will be attending the National Conference for Media Reform here in Boston the weekend. As an older organizer I find my media proficiency has declined in direct proportion to my outrage over how progressive issues are misrepresented, radical causes maligned or important events simply missing from what we used to call the popular press. I will be tweeting and blogging my way through the conference. I'll be focusing three tracks: social justice and movement building, workshops and trainings, and technology and innovation. You can follow my tweets @rebeccaojohnson and follow my longer reports right here.

A New Labor Movement

2011-02-26T14:13:00.000-05:00

I went to the WI solidarity rally today @ the MA Statehouse. I remember my father saying that strikes and rallies gave him a stomach ache, especially when he was shop steward for the URW @ General Tire. Back then strikes occupied that perilous terrain between energetic non-violence and outright fisticuffs (or worse). Today I wonder if we have the energy for such vigorous defense of our rights.

In MA we can be both smug and complacent at the same time. There was an ok turn out but the crowd was quiet and at the end, when the band struck up Solidarity Forever no one sang, probably because most younger folks didn't know the words. When a song leader finally chimed in she was two octaves too high and off key. Maybe handing out song sheets and instructions on when to cheer and how to chant in unison?

I'm happy the protester in Wisconsin, young and old, have found the courage to endure extended digestive upset. I hope the rest of us find the ovaries to join them.

Donuts

2011-02-23T11:31:00.000-05:00

After the donut article in today's NYTimes I thought I would share a photo of the first donut shop that I loved. It was founded in 1939 but I didn't become conscious of the source of our occasional weekend treats until 1959 (4 years old).

Weathering Out with Rita Dove--Mercy, Mercy Me #4

2011-02-17T08:24:00.001-05:00

Number 4 in Urban Ecology's Black History Month Series:

The word ecology is such a big word, encompassing what we refer to as the nature: wildlife, flora, fauna; but also our towns and cities, the built environment, and the micro-climates of our bodies and spirit. Our bodies are eco-systems and for our forebears, even the ancestors shaped and inhabited what we know of as the natural world (still true for some of us today).

Rita Dove, U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, native of Akron, Ohio, weaves all these elements together in her poem Weathering Out from her Pulitzer Prize winning book of poems, Thomas and Beulah.

Weathering Out

by Rita Dove

Akron brick streetscape

She liked mornings the best—Thomas gone
to look for work, her coffee flushed with milk,

outside autumn trees blowsy and dripping.
Past the seventh month she couldn’t see her feet

so she floated from room to room, houseshoes flapping,
navigating corners in wonder. When she leaned

against a doorjamb to yawn, she disappeared entirely.

Last week they had taken a bus at dawn
to the new airdock. The hangar slid open in segments

The BZB in Anacostia

and the zeppelin nosed forward in its silver envelope.
The men walked it out gingerly, like a poodle,

then tied it to a mast and went back inside.
Beulah felt just that large and placid, a lake;

she glistened from cocoa butter smoothed in
when Thomas returned every evening nearly

in tears. He’d lean an ear on her belly
and say: Little fellow’s really talking,

though to her it was more the pok-pok-pok
of a fingernail tapping a thick cream lampshade.

Sometimes during the night she woke and found him
asleep there and the child sleeping, too.

The coffee was good but too little. Outside
everything shivered in tinfoil—only the clover

between the cobblestones hung stubbornly on,
green as an afterthought . . .

Not Exactly Literary But Fun and Thought Provoking

2011-02-14T13:27:00.017-05:00

This was sent to me by Toi:World Citizen at the blog Advocation. It is a "mock commercial for a Black Moses Barbie toy celebrating the legacy of Harriet Tubman is part of Pierre Bennu's larger series of paintings and films deconstructing and re-envisioning images of people of color in commercial and pop culture imagery.

Two more commercials for this hypothetical toy will be posted throughout Black History Month..."

Black Moses Barbie

The Negro Speaks of Life and Death

2011-02-07T09:39:00.001-05:00

In one of his essays Howard Thurman, an eminent theologian, mystic and civil rights activist wrote the following:

In an essay included in a little book of meditations on Negro Spirituals published under the title Deep River, I located three major sources of raw materials over which the slave placed the alchemy of his desiring and aspiring: the world of nature, the stuff of experience and the Bible, the sacred book of the Christians who had enslaved him.

The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death

Thurman suggested that death is an inescapable fact but what concentrates our attention is the manner of that dying. Nature does not owe us a living, but when death comes at the hands of a human being. Well that's another matter, especially when one's own humanity has been denied.

Consider this offering from Yusef Komunyakaa

Yellowjackets

Mossville Horse

When the plowblade struck
An old stump hiding under
The soil like a beggar’s
Rotten tooth, they swarmed up
& Mister Jackson left the plow
Wedged like a whaler’s harpoon.
The horse was midnight
Against dusk, tethered to somebody’s
Pocketwatch. He shivered, but not
The way women shook their heads
Before mirrors at the five
& dime—a deeper connection
To the low field’s evening star.
He stood there, in tracechains,
Lathered in froth, just
Stopped by a great, goofy
Calmness. He whinnied
Once, & then the whole
Beautiful, blue-black sky
Fell on his back.

from Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems, 1975-1999, Wesleyan Press, 2001

Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)

2011-02-05T08:18:00.000-05:00

It's Black History Month (I'm sure you have noticed the annual surfeit of media programming about African-Americans). In celebration, for the first time in Urban Ecology history, I will be offering words from writers, poets, and essayists of African descent on nature, gardening, and mercy mercy me, the ecology.

Jamaica Kincaid

For the first offering, and in recognition that many of us are enduring a particularly difficult winter, an excerpt from My Garden by Vermont gardener and Antigua-born novelist Jamaica Kincaid:

I was putting the garden to bed for the winter when, looking over the empty spaces that had not so long ago been full of flowers and vegetables, I was overcome with the memory of satisfaction and despair, two feelings not unfamiliar to any gardener. Satisfaction was seeing the tips of the asparagus poke through the earth, coming all the way up, wonderfully whole, real and without blemish, just the way they should be really, from the trenches into which I had placed their roots. Even after many years of gardening, I never believe a live plant will emerge from the seed I have put in the ground; I am surprised, as if it had never happened to me before, as if every time were the first time.

Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden, 1999 Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, NYC, NY

Safe School, Better Education

2011-02-03T07:53:00.001-05:00

Kelley Williams-Bolar has sought to clarify the reason she removed her children from the Akron, Ohio public schools. It was not because she was seeking a better education for her daughters. Ms. Williams-Bolar has stated she was seeking safety for her children, a safer school.

I certainly want to respect Ms. Williams-Bolar's distinction but also point out that a child (or anyone) learns better when she feels safe. Safety for a parent -- and I'm not sure if this was the case for Ms. Williams-Bolar -- includes knowing that there are after-school activities and good supervision for your child between the time classes end and the parent(s) arrives home from work. What constitutes a safe school and a good education is more complicated than test scores.

Conservatives who are calling the events surrounding Ms. Williams-Bolar's conviction "the Rosa Parks moment" for education probably don't want to spend the additional money to help the Akron Public Schools and the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority (the owner of the unit where Ms. Williams-Bolar currently lives) meet the critical needs of students and parents for safety, flexibility, and quality education.

Ohio Governor Decides to Intervene in Williams-Bolar Case

2011-02-03T07:25:00.001-05:00

Kelley Williams-Bolar

A week ago Friday the Summit County prosecutor stated that Kelley Williams-Bolar had been charged with a felony because of her unwillingness to cooperate with officials in the settlement of the charge that she had illegally enrolled her children in the Copley-Fairlawn School system. Well, yesterday, Governor John Kasich decided to intervene.

This from the Feb. 2 Akron Beacon Journal:

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has ordered his legal staff to review the Kelley Williams-Bolar school residency case in detail.

''My wife alerted me to it and I read about it and I thought, this doesn't make any sense,'' Kasich said in a telephone interview Tuesday. ''And then I got a call from [U.S. Rep.] Jesse Jackson Jr. who has been a friend of mine since we served together and he asked me to take a really hard look at it and I got all my people on it.''

Last week, the Illinois Democrat called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to ''ascertain the facts, intervene on behalf of Ms. Williams-Bolar because she represents millions of Americans who recognize the unfairness of an education funding system that is based on local property taxes.''

A Summit County jury convicted Williams-Bolar, 40, of two felonies for tampering with records during the process of enrolling her two children in Copley-Fairlawn schools in August 2006.

Her children left Copley-Fairlawn after the 2007-2008 school year and she was indicted on felony charges in November 2009, more than two years after the district contested her residency in an official district-level hearing.

Kasich said in a statement released Tuesday that his lawyers are ''in the process of talking to her lawyer, the prosecutor and the school district.''

The Williams-Bolar case has drawn international attention and she often is portrayed as a mother fleeing Akron Public Schools — where she works as a teaching assistant for special needs students — to secure a better education at Copley-Fairlawn Schools.

Conservative commentator Kyle Olson told NPR last week that ''a lot of people are seeing this as the Rosa Parks moment for education and education reform.''

On Monday, the Washington Post published an opinion piece online by Kevin Huffman headlined ''A Rosa Parks moment for education'' that cites Olson's comment.

''Last week, 40-year-old Ohio mother Kelley Williams-Bolar was released after serving nine days in jail on a felony conviction for tampering with records,'' Huffman wrote. ''Williams-Bolar's offense? Lying about her address so her two daughters, zoned to the lousy Akron city schools, could attend better schools in the neighboring Copley-Fairlawn district.''

However, Williams-Bolar hasn't called Akron schools lousy.

She has said repeatedly that she enrolled her students in Copley-Fairlawn because she worried about the safety of her West Akron neighborhood, not because she had problems with the quality of Akron Public Schools.

The media attention coincided with National School Choice Week, which Kasich memorialized through official proclamation, declaring last week to be Ohio School Choice Week.

Kasich said he was not thinking about school choice when he called for the review of the Williams-Bolar case, however.

''I think the statement speaks for itself,'' Kasich said. ''It does say that we need more choice, but it's a human case before anything else. I'm concerned about the woman.''

He said he understood that her publicly stated reasons for enrolling her daughters in Copley-Fairlawn had nothing to do with the quality of Akron Public Schools.

Black History Month, Langston's Birthday and Ground Hog Day

2011-02-02T11:52:00.001-05:00

I'm taking a break from shoveling. It snowed so much here yesterday (Boston) that I missed Langston Hughes' 109th birthday. I had hoped to be in New York City at the Schomburg Center for the Langston Birthday Party but here are some pictures in case you missed it too.

That black dot is the composter!

At the beginning of this Black History Month we are up to our eyeballs in wet, heavy snow. I am less concerned about whether that Pennsylvania ground hog sees its shadow and more worried about whether I will be able to find the compost pile after today's delivery of snow, ice, rain, ice, and snow. The 2nd of February is significant because it falls halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Besides Ground Hog Day, it is also known as Candlemas Day and St. Brigid's Day. Regardless of what you call it, it means that pea planting time is only six weeks away (the Ides of March). I will shovel off a patch of garden dirt, if I have to, so we can have at least a ceremonial cultivation of peas. Soon after that there will be the need for fresh compost from our very own pile. Even though it is snow covered and a bit frozen now, it thaws quickly once the days get longer and a bit warmer. And then all the inhabitants -- the bacteria, earthworms, millipedes, nematodes, and my favorites, slugs and snails -- get busy turning our winter vegetable trimmings and waste into nutritious food for the garden beds.

So tomorrow I will go out and liberate the composter from it's snowy carapace, in belated celebration of our halfway march toward spring, telling it's hibernating inhabitants,

April Rain Song, by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

Collected Poems, 1994, Estate of Langston Hughes, A. A. Knopf.

How We Get Educated -- Reflecting on the Case of Kelley Williams-Bolar

2011-01-28T15:38:00.002-05:00

I was discussing the felony conviction of Kelley Williams-Bolar with an old family friend back in Akron. She discussed the case in old, familiar, comforting terms -- what is expected of "our people", how many of "us" were caught in the Copley-Fairlawn school system sweep of out-of-district attendees. What people would think of us if this didn't end well. By us, this elder meant, African-Americans, Black people, colored folk, all the disparate terms for those who I knew as, until I started elementary school, "our people."

My parents, like Ms. Williams-Bolar, struggled to give us the best education. We started out in Akron's segregated public schools with teachers who looked like us, who expected us to excel. But by first and third grade my siblings and I attended St. Bernard School, in downtown Akron. We colored children were few and almost instantly made to know we were different. But we received an excellent education in classrooms with less than 20 children. It was unclear at times what the good sisters of St. Dominic expected of us but we excelled anyway.

It would have been great if we could have gone to schools in Fairlawn, an upper middle class suburb as near to us to the west as St. Bernard was to the east. No one really wanted to go to the Copley schools. And the Fairlawn school system only experienced significant integration when it merged with Copley, where you can still find some of the African-American families who moved there in the Great Migration and used to farm the extremely fertile soil of the area, dirt we called muck land.

In 7th grade we moved to the north side of the building that looked out on the relatively new Summit County jail. The same building, I presume, where Ms. Williams-Bolar served her ten day sentence. It never occurred to me to be surprised or appalled that our school was next door to the jail. And it was never lost on me how many of our people were incarcerated there, probably in inverse proportion to those of us in St. Bernard.

In this country, parents make great sacrifices to gain a good education for their children. That's because educational opportunities are still, over 40 years after I left St. Bernard, unequally distributed in this country. Sometimes parents sacrifice money, comfort, a preferred geographic location so their child can attend a public school that meets their child's needs. In the case of Ms. Williams-Bolar, she sacrificed reputation, freedom and possibly a career in a set of activities that broke the law as she attempted to keep her kids in the Copley-Fairlawn system. Perhaps their was prosecutorial overreach. Perhaps the Copley-Fairlawn school system was unclear and unfair. Perhaps Ms. Williams-Bolar simply forgot that, even with others committing far more heinous crimes, our people frequently seem to be held to a different standard.

As this same elder pointed out, "Wrong is wrong." I am fascinated by the general silence within the African-American community in Akron about this case. I am appalled by the online comments at the Akron Beacon Journal site ohio.com. My hope is their will be productive discussions about access to quality education, the detrimental effects of yoking educational resources to No Child Left Behind (Bush administration parlance for "Be sure underachievers drop out before the 10th grade") and the pervasive undertow of racism in so many systems that govern the lives of women and their children.

Update from the Akron NAACP

2011-01-27T13:32:00.000-05:00

11:40 a.m.

I spoke with Mrs. Ophelia Averitt, President, Akron Unit, NAACP:

"The NAACP worked hard with the judge to bring about fairness, and to bring about these 10 days (sentence). Ms. Williams-Bolar is supposed to do her community service with the NAACP."

Mrs. Averitt stated she was in court herself, working with judge, to get the least amount of time.

"The judge wanted a misdemeanor as did the NAACP."

Mrs. Averitt further stated, "The judge is a beautiful person."

Kelley Williams-Bolar Released from Jail

2011-01-27T11:08:00.000-05:00

Kelley Williams-Bolar
photo by Phil Masturzo

Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Akron, Ohio woman handed a felony conviction for sending her children to a school outside her district (but to the district where she grew up, where her father still lives and where her children lived for a time) was released from jail Wednesday morning after serving 9 days of a 10 day sentence. She still must serve 3 years probation and because of the felony conviction, a cloud hangs over her ability to keep her assistant teaching license or gain the full teaching license that she is only a few credits away from attaining.

There has been a national outcry against the harsh and inexplicable prosecution and sentence.

This morning in the Akron Beacon Journal:

By Ed Meyer and Carol Biliczky, Beacon Journal staff writers

On the day Kelley Williams-Bolar walked out of the Summit County Jail, public outrage over her local school residency case went viral on Internet blogs, Facebook, the vast audience of New York City radio and ABC national news.

Williams-Bolar admitted in a brief telephone interview, hours after her release Wednesday morning, that she was so overwhelmed by the nationwide attention to her story, she could not put it into words.

''I'm just trying to get my head together,'' she said, repeating herself but unable to say anything more.

A jail official confirmed that Williams-Bolar, 40, was released about 10 a.m., after serving nine days of a 10-day sentence for improperly enrolling her children in Copley-Fairlawn schools.

Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cosgrove, who handled the four-day trial and sentencing, gave Williams-Bolar credit for one day of time served. It was derived from the day she was arrested and taken to jail on multiple felony charges in November 2009, court records show.

Update on Kelley Williams-Bolar Case

2011-01-26T12:21:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I posted about the inexplicable felony prosecution of Kelley Williams-Bolar for sending her children to schools located in her father's town (back at the home house as some of us would say) of Copley rather than those located near her home in Akron Ohio. Here is additional information on the case:

Ms. Williams-Bolar, according to the Akron Beacon Journal, had moved her children in with her father after her apartment was burglarized.

Additionally, negotiations with the school district seemed to indicate that the matter had been settled. Judge Patricia Cosgrove stated she had tried to get the Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh to reduce the charges to misdemeanors. During sentencing Judge Cosgrove seemed to imply she wanted Ms. Williams-Bolar's current teaching assistant credentials suspended and any future full teacher credentials denied. Judge Cosgrove, who is an elected official (as is Prosecutor Walsh) stated in in today's ABJ:

The judge said the Ohio Department of Education will hold a hearing and make the final decision ''whether or not they will revoke her license. I have nothing to do with that as a matter of law. Once she was convicted by a jury of any felony, that conviction has to be reported to the state, and then it's up to the state at that point in time to decide whether or not they're going to revoke her license,'' Cosgrove said. ''This is the Ohio legislature who wrote this law, not [this] court.''

Cosgrove said her reading of the statute leaves open the possibility Williams-Bolar can be a teacher ''because she was not convicted of an offense of violence [or] offenses of moral turpitude.'' Because Williams-Bolar had no previous felony record, Cosgrove said she will write a letter to the state Board of Education asking that Williams-Bolar's license not be revoked.

''I will do everything I can, as far as sending a letter, asking them not to consider it,'' the judge said.
Cosgrove also indicated she would consider expunging the felony conviction if Williams-Bolar successfully completes a minimum of six months of probation.

''I suspect she will,'' the judge said.

You can sign a petition at Change.Org but for my Akron Ohio brothers and sisters who may be reading this, remember, elected officials come, and elected officials go. I'm happy to come home and campaign for whoever decides to run against Sherri Bevan Walsh.

Two Extremes -- One Worse Than the Other

2011-01-25T17:33:00.000-05:00

I know that header makes no sense but I want to share two extremes of experience in the African-American community -- one, unfortunately, from my hometown of Akron Ohio and the other from the folks struggling for survival in Turkey Creek Mississippi.

First the story from the Akron Beacon Journal:

An Akron woman was sentenced to 10 days in the Summit County Jail, placed on three years of probation and ordered to perform community service after being convicted of falsifying residency records so that her two children could attend Copley-Fairlawn schools.

Summit Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cosgrove, who handed down the sentence Tuesday afternoon in a packed courtroom, ordered Kelley Williams-Bolar, 40, to begin serving the sentence immediately.
Williams-Bolar, who was standing before the bench with her lawyer, sagged into the arms of sheriff's deputies as she was led away, sobbing loudly, to begin her jail time.

After seven hours of deliberations, a jury convicted her late Saturday of two counts of tampering with records.

While her two girls were registered as living with her father in Copley Township within the Copley school district, prosecutors maintained that they actually were living with Williams-Bolar on Hartford Avenue in Akron, in subsidized housing provided by the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority.

In addition to the tampering offenses, Williams-Bolar and her father, Edward L. Williams, 64, were charged with fourth-degree felonies of grand theft, accused of defrauding the school system of two years of educational services for the girls.

School officials testified that those services were worth about $30,500 in tuition.

The jury failed to reach unanimous verdicts on those charges, and Cosgrove declared a mistrial.
A decision on whether to re-try the grand theft charges against Williams-Bolar and her father is pending, prosecutors said.

On the tampering conviction, Cosgrove gave Williams-Bolar the maximum prison sentence — five years — for each of the two charges, with the sentences to run concurrently.
The judge then suspended all but 10 days of the sentence, which will be served in the county jail. Cosgrove also ordered Williams-Bolar to perform 80 hours of community service in mentoring programs sponsored by her church or the NAACP.

Yes, sentenced to serve her people because obviously this woman is a hardened criminal who doesn't know the value of an education. Read on ...

Cosgrove noted Williams-Bolar faces another form of punishment.

Williams-Bolar, a single mother, works as a teaching assistant with children with special needs at Buchtel High School. At the trial, she testified that she wanted to become a teacher and is a senior at the University of Akron, only a few credit hours short of a teaching degree.
That won't happen now, Cosgrove said.

''Because of the felony conviction, you will not be allowed to get your teaching degree under Ohio law as it stands today,'' the judge said. ''The court's taking into consideration that is also a punishment that you will have to serve.''
...
The Rev. Lorenzo Glenn of Macedonia Baptist Church also pleaded for leniency, saying his church has a mentoring program well suited for probation in lieu of prison time.

Glenn told the judge that he has known Williams-Bolar for more than 20 years and was overwhelmed by her convictions.

''This is a serious matter, but by all means,'' Glenn said, ''it was done to help her children.''

Glenn noted the attention the case has drawn and the resources used to prosecute the case.
All of Cleveland's major television stations had cameras at the sentencing.

''When I see all the media here today, you'd think it was a serial killing,'' Glenn said.

Cosgrove said some incarceration was appropriate, ''so that others who think they might defraud the school system perhaps will think twice.''

Assistant county prosecutor Terri Burnside, one of the two government lawyers assigned to the case, did not object to probation for Williams-Bolar.

After the sentencing, Brian Poe, Copley-Fairlawn school superintendent, said the prosecution of Williams-Bolar and her father ''obviously is a very difficult and uncomfortable case.''

According to court testimony, there were 30 to 40 similar residency cases involving other families from August 2006 to June 2008, when Williams-Bolar's children were enrolled in Copley schools.

Williams-Bolar was the only parent prosecuted, according to testimony...

And now, Turkey Creek:

Check out this link (I can't get the clip to post to my blog)