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COMMENTARY: Back to School, Back to Fighting Far-Right Attacks on Education

We cannot begin to heal our divisions until we acknowledge and teach our whole history — good and bad. And we know that standing up for the freedom to learn will be a challenging task. This school year follows one in which reports of book bans and censorship reached record levels according to the American Library Association. Far-right groups and politicians are offering rewards and setting up tip lines to “report” teachers who cover “divisive” topics. School board members are receiving death threats.

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Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way and Professor of the Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way and Professor of the Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. A New York Times best-selling author, his next book “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free” will be published by Harper Collins in December 2022.

By Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way

Just when you thought far-right attacks on public education couldn’t get any more absurd, we hear about something new.

For the first time in almost 15 years, Sarasota schools this fall are turning down hundreds of free dictionaries from the local Rotary Club. Why? Because the district is afraid of violating a radical new law that’s part of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s crackdown on inclusive curricula. The district can’t buy or accept any new books until it hires someone to make sure they comply with the state’s draconian censorship regulations. So, the dictionaries sit on the shelf.

The idea that dictionaries might be hazardous to kids would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. This new school year is starting as more states are passing laws to make it easier to ban books. States are also passing laws to stop teachers from talking about topics like racism; according to Education Week, 42 states have now enacted limits on what teachers can say about racism or sexism in the classroom.

These same political forces want to make schools teach a whitewashed version of our history and our current reality in the name of “patriotic” education. They’re trying to take over school boards to impose their political ideology on teachers and students. That’s bad for our kids. And it’s bad for our country.

The freedom to learn is at risk.

This fall, it’s more important than ever to stand for the rights of teachers to teach, and students to learn, about the full spectrum of the American experience. That means lessons that include and celebrate diverse communities. It means history that doesn’t erase the experiences of Black people, brown people, LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, people with disabilities, and other communities that have been historically marginalized. The director of the nonprofit EveryLibrary warns that the current wave of book bans amounts to “the silencing of stories and the suppressing of information” that will make “the next generation less able to function in society.”

Children learn better when they can see themselves in others and see their communities as part of the great American story. At the same time, science tells us that learning how to understand and empathize with people across differences is essential to children’s healthy development. Looking honestly at our past helps students develop critical thinking skills that are desperately needed when every smartphone is a gateway to disinformation.

Democracy, too, depends on informed citizens to function. It’s no coincidence that the crowd that stormed the Capitol in 2021, was acting on lies and misinformation.

Authoritarianism feasts on ignorance. Election deniers and censors of history are in the same camp and should get nowhere near our schools.

We cannot begin to heal our divisions until we acknowledge and teach our whole history — good and bad. And we know that standing up for the freedom to learn will be a challenging task. This school year follows one in which reports of book bans and censorship reached record levels according to the American Library Association. Far-right groups and politicians are offering rewards and setting up tip lines to “report” teachers who cover “divisive” topics. School board members are receiving death threats.

But we don’t shy away from these challenges when we act from a place of love. Loving our children means being advocates for them when political extremists want to limit what they can learn. It means showing up to school board meetings and organizing to make ourselves heard. It means running for the school board.

It means rejecting one of the censors’ most harmful assumptions: that students are too fragile to hear the history our people have lived.

Millions of families are getting ready to send their kids back to school. Let’s also get ready to defend the freedom to learn. Before the dictionary ends up on your district’s banned-books list.

Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way and Professor of the Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. A New York Times best-selling author, his next book “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free” will be published by Harper Collins in December 2022.

Activism

How the Crack Cocaine Epidemic Led to Mass Sex Exploitation of Black People PART 3: The Case Against SB357: Black, Vulnerable and Trafficked

Although California Senate Bill 357 was intended to alleviate arrests of willing sex workers under anti-loitering laws, it opened up a Pandora’s box loophole that hinders the ability of law enforcement to halt human trafficking, especially of young Black and Brown girls. This segment continues to explore the history that led to this latest form of exploitation in Oakland.

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Sable tied up.
Sable tied up.

By Tanya Dennis and Vanessa Russell
Although California Senate Bill 357 was intended to alleviate arrests of willing sex workers under anti-loitering laws, it opened up a Pandora’s box loophole that hinders the ability of law enforcement to halt human trafficking, especially of young Black and Brown girls. This segment continues to explore the history that led to this latest form of exploitation in Oakland.
It was 1980: The beginning of the end for the Black family and Black community as we knew it.
Crack cocaine was introduced to the United States that year and it rendered unparalleled devastation on Black folks. Crack is a solid smokable form of cocaine made by boiling baking soda, cocaine, and water into a rock that crackles when smoked.
The tremendous high — especially when first smoked — and the low cost brought temporary relief to the repeatedly and relentlessly traumatized members of the Black community.
What was unknown at the time was how highly addictive this form of cocaine would be and how harmful the ensuing impact on the Black family when the addicted Black mother was no longer a haven of safety for her children.
The form made it easy to mass produce and distribute, opening the market to anyone and everyone, including many Black men who viewed selling crack as their way out of poverty.
These two factors — addicted Black women and drug-dealing Black men — would lead to the street exploitation for sex as we know it today.
Encouraged to try it free initially, most poor, Black women in the 1980s used crack cocaine in a social setting with friends. When the free samples disappeared the drug dealer offered to supply the women crack in exchange for allowing him to sell their bodies to sex buyers.
The increase in the supply of women willing to exchange sex for crack — a.k.a. the “sex for crack barter system” — caused the price of sex to decrease and at the same time increased the demand for sex because more buyers could afford it.
The desperation of the women to get their hit of crack made them willing to endure any form of abuse and treatment from buyers during sex, including unprotected and violent sex.
It also pushed desperate Black women onto the street to pursue sex buyers, flagging down cars and willing to have sex anywhere actively and desperately. Street prostitution grew and buyers were able to buy oral sex for as little as $5.
This sex-for-crack barter system resulted in a dramatic increase in sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and AIDS, both of which are disproportionately represented among Black people.
It also resulted in unplanned pregnancies by unknown fathers, which then resulted in children born addicted to crack who were immediately placed in the foster care system where they were often abused and/or neglected.
For his part, the Black man who engaged in the mass production and distribution of crack was often killed by gun violence while fighting over drug territory or incarcerated for long periods of time as use and sales and distribution of crack carried longer sentences than powdered cocaine.
Crack unleashed an entire chain of new trauma upon the Black family which then all but collapsed under this latest social attack that had started with chattel slavery, followed by Jim Crow, redlining, school segregation, food deserts, et. al.
Exploitation was and is at the root of the crack cocaine epidemic. It is the latest weapon used to prey upon Black people since the beginning of our time in the United States.
The sex industry and legislation like SB357 have only increased harm to Black people who have been historically oppressed with racist laws and epidemics including crack. More must be done to restore the Black community.
Tanya Dennis serves on the Board of Oakland Frontline Healers (OFH) and series co-author Vanessa Russell of “Love Never Fails Us” and member of OFH.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tanya-Leblanc/publication/236121038_Behind_the_Eight_Ball_Sex_for_Crack_Cocaine_Exchange_and_Poor_Black_Women/links/0c9605162c8f362553000000/Behind-the-Eight-Ball-Sex-for-Crack-Cocaine-Exchange-and-Poor-Black-Women.pdf?origin=publication_detail

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Oakland Post: Week of March 22 – 28, 2023

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March March 22 – 38, 2023

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The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 22 - 38, 2023

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Oakland Post: Week of March 15 – 21, 2023

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 15 – 21, 2023

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The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 15 - 21, 2023

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