The Washington Post, CNN, and Latina Lista have featured my work during the past month. The Post wrote about the Washington Hospital Center nurses’ labor dispute and showed that it was just part of a larger phenomenon occuring across the country.
Philadelphia has been an example of that after Temple Hospital nurses and allied professionals were on strike for 28 days back in April, and The Washington Post mentioned that in their story and linked to my video showing the health professionals walking out from the hospital at 7 a.m. on April 31.
In October I covered the Federal Trial against two Shenandoah, Pa., men charged with a hate crime in relation with the 2007 beating death of Luis Ramirez, an undocumented immigrant. I had the chance to work with Latina Lista and Spot.us to distribute and crowdfund the coverage, respectively.
Finally, in an not so direct way, CNN ran a story on the violence at South Philadelphia High School. In December 2009, 32 Asian students were the target of attacks from a mob of primarily black students. The students organized and boycotted the school in an attempt to bring authorities to dialogue table to find a solution to the history of racial violence against Asian students at Philadelphia schools.
After almost a year, CNN ran a story detailing what happened back then and how these kids are coping with the aftermath of a problem that still goes without being addressed. Since then, I have noticed an increase in the traffic to my videos on the testimonymany of the victims gave at an SRC meeting in March.
Both the DREAM Act and the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military will have to wait for their respective turns in the Senate after midterm elections. This is due to the Republican-led blockade that did not allow the defense bill to even be debated on Tuesday.
Following the vote, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said that this move was preventing thousands of willing immigrants to sacrifice their lives for this country by joining the military.
“Where is the justice in this decision? At least have the courage to let us bring this matter to the floor, and stand up and vote ‘No.’ But to hide behind this procedural ruse – this unanimous consent request – is totally unfair,” he said.
Under the most current version of the bill, beneficiaries would be required to graduate from a two-year community college or complete at least two years towards a 4-year degree, or serve two years in the U.S. military.
Local DREAMActivist María Marroquín said that this was a wake-up call for their movement.
“This hasn’t killed the DREAM Act,” she said. “We know there are Republican senators who support it and that means we have to present it as a stand-alone bill.”
Marroquín was part of a delegation of DREAMers that made its way to Washington D.C. to lobby in support of the act. They were also present during the Senate session.
“As the Senators were casting their votes we were hopeful but in the end we were sad of the outcome,” she said. “This only means we have to keep on working hard. And those who haven’t called their senators should do it because the life of thousands of students depend on every single phone call.”
Updated at 3:37 p.m.
After learning how Senate Republicans blocked further debate and voting on the defense bill that includes the DREAM Act and the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military, David Bennion, staff attorney at Nationalities Service Center, said the fight is not over.
“This should not be the end of the road for the DREAM Act. Senate Democrats should bring it forward as a standalone bill to give GOP Senators like Senator [Robert] Bennett from Utah a chance to vote for it as they’ve promised they would,” he said.
Updated at 3:01 p.m.
The votes are finally in: 56 in favor to 43 against. Democrats needed 60 votes, with at least 1 Republican, for the bill to move forward. Floor is open for reconsideration. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) is speaking in favor of the DREAM Act.
Updated at 2:45 p.m.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a conference call that passage of the DREAM Act was “the right thing to do”.
“Earlier today, I sent a letter stating my full support for the DREAM Act,” he said. “Is not only the right thing to do for students, it also the right thing for our country. There’s no reason it shouldn’t pass now. The DREAM Act means more young people will contribute in the development and help this country.”
Right now, Senators are voting on whether to move forward with the National Defense Authorization Act and start debating the two amendments: the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and an immigration measure, the DREAM Act.
Updated at 2:38 p.m.
Senators are reconvening after their weekly meetings. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is speaking in support of the DREAM Act.
Updated at 1:10 p.m.
As the Senators left the floor for their weekly meetings, it is still uncertain if Democrats have the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster and move forward the National Defense Authorization Act.
This procedural vote would allow for two amendments to be debated: the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and an immigration measure, the DREAM Act.
This morning on C-Span, The Hill reporter Roxana Tiron explained what the bill faces in today’s vote.
With the vote looming, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC issued a press release saying they will help defeat the act by tracking down what politicians support it.
“We are directing our activists against amnesty to contact every US Senate campaign in America today to determine which candidates oppose or support Obama and Reid’s Dream Act Amnesty amendment,” said ALIPAC President William Gheen. “We intend to track which Senate candidates support or oppose this Amnesty attempt and remind them all that voters will defeat any candidate unwise enough to support this Amnesty ambush!”
On the other hand, labor organization Jobs With Justice joined forces with those supporting the bill and urged people to call Senators and tell them to vote in favor of both amendments.
The vote is scheduled for today at 2:15 p.m. and will be broadcast live on C-SPAN2.
On Sunday, support for the bill came from a somewhat unexpected corner. And that’s because former Secretary of State Colin Powell came out publicly in support of the proposal in an appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press.
“America is going to be a minority nation in one more generation. Our minorities are not getting educated well enough now. Fifty percent of our minority kids are not finishing high school. We’ve got to invest in education. We should use the DREAM Act as one way to do it,” Powell said.
Today, ColorLines tells us that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa held a press conference to announce his support for the DREAM Act.
Passage of the Dream Act would provide “a great return on money we’ve already invested, and it encourages economic growth,” Villaraigosa said.
Organizers in support of the DREAM Act are calling senators to help get the 60 votes needed to pass the much-anticipated federal bill. After reaching the 10,000 phone-call mark on Thursday, activists now hope to make 5,000 more before the vote.
Just this week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) announced that he would attach the bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Another rider on the bill would begin a gradual repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy within the military.
At the press conference, Reid said:
I think it’s really important that we move forward in this legislation, I tried to work on — I know we can’t do comprehensive immigration reform — I’ve tried to. I’ve tried so very very hard. I tried different iterations of this, but those Republicans we had in the last Congress have left us.
The DREAM Act is really important. [...] That’s what the DREAM Act is all about: kids who grew up as Americans should be able to get their green cards after they go to college or serve in the military. So these are the two amendments ["don't ask don't tell" and DREAM Act] that I’ve told Senator McConnell that I think are essential to the defense authorization bill. I hope they let us move to it.
A message on DREAMActivist.org provides the phone numbers and names of the senators the group identified as important to contact.
A vote is expected next Tuesday. Senator John McCain, who previously cosponsored DREAM Act legislation, said he would block the bill. President Obama has pledged his support for the DREAM Act. Obama noted that several Republicans who previously supported the DREAM Act have “backed away from that vote.” Republicans argue that including the DREAM Act on a defense appropriations bill needlessly politicizes it. As midterm elections near, activists may have the leverage needed to pass a bill that has previously stalled in Congress.
“We did this because we have lobbied, sent letters and emails, made phone calls, and met with people in Congress. But we feel the Congress is not listening to us,” said María Marroquín, a student organizer with the campaign.
Similar actions have taken place in Arizona. In late May, three immigrant students were among those arrested after staging a sit-in at Senator John McCain’s office in Phoenix.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents did not have contact with the arrested students in either instance, but the activists know what could happen to them.
“All of the students were aware (of risk of deportation) and ready to stand up not only for themselves but for all the students,” Marroquín said. “They are aware of what can happen.”
Through a spokesperson, Senator Richard Durbin, one of the co-sponsors of the bipartisan bill, disapproved of these latest demonstrations.
“Today’s demonstrations by some DREAM Act supporters … crossed the line from passionate advocacy to inappropriate behavior. The tide of public opinion has long been on the side of the DREAM Act – it has broad bipartisan support in Congress and poll after poll shows that people of all political persuasion believe in its goals. Sen. Durbin believes that we will win this fight on the merits, not through public demonstrations or publicity stunts.”
But what is unfortunate, Marroquín said, is that students have to face deportation in order for Congress to pay attention.
“We believe it is inappropriate that they have taken 10 years to pass this bill and in the meantime they keep deporting students,” she said. “But if this is what it takes, we’ll risk even if it means deportation.”
The DREAM Act is a bipartisan legislation that would give qualifying undocumented youth a six-year-long conditional path to citizenship that requires completion of a college degree or two years of military service.
We featured Maríaback in November 2009, when she told the Notebook why this fight is personal for her.
Former South Philadelphia High School student Hao Luu is now attending a private school his family can scarcely afford, is repeating 9th grade, and is not receiving any formal Englishas- a-second-language instruction.
Beaten after school on December 2, the day before an explosion of violence against Asian immigrant students, Luu, a 17-year-old student from Vietnam, ended up spending months fighting disciplinary charges and then countering accusations that he is a gang member.
The School District said it has now mailed him a letter for his file that clears him of any gang involvements. But he, his grandmother, and the School Reform Commission (SRC) are still awaiting a formal explanation of why he was suspended in the first place, transferred to a disciplinary school, and then prevented from returning to South Philadelphia, even after the charges against him were dismissed.
The series of mass assaults at South Philadelphia on December 3 injured 30 students and sent 13 to area hospitals, prompting an eight-day boycott of the school by dozens of Asian students.
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a federal civil rights complaint with the Department of Justice, charging the District and school with “deliberate indifference” to a history of harassment of Asian students.
Responses to the violence
Since the violence, the District has implemented new security measures at the school, hired a diversity consultant for staff training, and organized crosscultural activities and groups.
But 18 speakers at a March 17 SRC meeting, including Hao Luu’s grandmother and nine Asian students, criticized the District for its handling of the aftermath. The testimony pointed to a failure to communicate with families, an inadequate investigation of the violence, and a lack of action against school staff who responded inappropriately.
Speakers also said that the District had failed to acknowledge a pattern of violence against Asian students, reacting instead by accusing Hao Luu and others of being gang members and implying that they were somehow responsible.
The tearful testimony of his grandmother, Suong Nguyen, and Hao Luu’s story made front-page news, becoming the latest illustration of the District’s puzzling and as yet unexplained handling of the incident.
“Review Hao’s case and clear him from wrongful accusations,” said Nguyen.
A distressed Commissioner Johnny Irizarry pushed the issue with SRC Chair Robert Archie.
“Mr. Archie, I would just like to request that the staff provide us an explanation for this,” Irizarry said.
“Rest assured, they will,” Archie replied.
District spokesman Fernando Gallard said the District was preparing a response on the handling of the case and would not comment until the SRC sees it.
Counting Luu’s case, five of the 19 suspensions meted out after the December attacks on Asian students were overturned, Gallard said.
The District did not offer the Notebook a breakdown of how many of the suspended South Philadelphia students were African American or Asian, though previously they had told the press that eight Asians were among those suspended. Nor did the District release the ethnicity of the students whose
suspensions were overturned.
Luu and his grandmother said they went public to try to clear his record and reputation.
“The school is accusing me of something that I’m not guilty of,” Luu told the Notebook through an interpreter in February. “They are messing up my record.
They have gone too far, and that’s why I continue making this an issue.”
While not mentioned by name, Luu was a central figure in the official School District report on the South Philadelphia violence – an investigation conducted by a retired federal judge, James Giles, at the request of Superintendent Arlene Ackerman.
The Giles report describes an incident involving a Vietnamese student and a group of African American students in a stairwell at South Philadelphia High School on December 2. The report said this confrontation led to a conflict after school that day – what the judge called the “Walgreen’s incident.”
The judge’s report offered four conflicting versions of what happened outside that Walgreen’s store on December 2 while not resolving contradictory reports about who attacked whom and whether a “crippled/disabled African American student” cited in these accounts was a victim or an attacker.
The report recommended that the school and the District interview witnesses about what really happened.
Giles pointed to rumors about the Walgreen’s incident as triggering the attacks on Asian students December 3.
Ackerman, in her first public statement about the violence, referenced one hearsay version of the incident, saying the conflict at the school “began as an unwarranted off-campus attack on a disabled African American student.”
Hao Luu’s story
Hao Luu said after an incident in the stairwell in the afternoon, he and four friends were followed after school that day and attacked twice by a group of 10 or more students.
“I got beat down and fell in the Walgreen’s driveway,” he said.
His grandmother went to school the next day to file a report. Luu stayed home on December 3 due to his injuries, and then participated in the eightday Asian student boycott.
Luu first heard he had been suspended when he returned to school after the boycott. He then received a transfer to a disciplinary school and missed weeks of school while challenging the charges.
Advocates said Luu’s paperwork showed numerous due process errors, including untranslated notices and repeated failure to contact the family in a timely manner.
With the help of Cecilia Chen, an attorney from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Luu prevailed in a disciplinary hearing on January 29.
The hearing officer overturned the transfer and reenrolled Luu at South Philadelphia.
But when he tried to return, he was again denied entry and presented with yet another transfer signed by Principal LaGreta Brown and approved by a regional superintendent.
In a follow-up conversation in early February, Chen was told by a District lawyer that the school couldn’t guarantee Luu’s safety because he was involved with a gang.
Soon after, having missed so much school, Luu enrolled in the private school.
In a subsequent meeting with school officials, Luu was accused of being involved in a fight at the school a year before, Chen said. But he had been living in Virginia at the time. He had only been attending South Philly High for three months when he was attacked, and he had no disciplinary record at either school.
Luu said he regrets not being able to stay at South Philadelphia “because they have a good ESL program.”
“The family has gone through so much,” attorney Chen noted. “And they’re still distressed after how the school dealt with their responsibility.”
As a low-performing school, it was turned over toEdison Schools in 2002. But because it made little improvement, it was taken away from Edison in 2008.
During and after Edison’s tenure, Potter-Thomas has had a total of six principals. This year, parents finally got one they liked and who seemed to be making a difference. Since Dywonne Davis-Harris came in September, there has been a palpable change in school climate and a renewed focus on academics.
“With this new principal, we have seen an improvement overall, even in the behavior of the students,” said Guadalupe Tovar, who has three children at the school.
But now, as a designated Renaissance School, Potter-Thomas is facing yet another upheaval, just as parents thought they had found some stability. The school is in line to be matched with one of five possible outside providers – all of which would convert the school into a charter.
Parents – the school is 95 percent low-income and 78 percent Latino – are worried about what becoming a charter will mean.
“Now there’s resources for parents and kids,” said Elizabeth Álvarez, whose granddaughter is a student. “There was nothing before and now they want to take it away from us.”
Álvarez and several other parents want to keep the principal, and as a result spoke before the School Reform Commission asking to become a Promise Academy – or undergo turnaround under the supervision of Superintendent Arlene Ackerman. That way, the school can stay within the District and have a better chance of retaining Davis-Harris at the helm.
“We the parents are very fond of the way our administration leadership team and us have brought the school and made all the changes to put Potter-Thomas to where it is today,” said Midgalia López in testimony before the SRC, as a group of Potter-Thomas parents stood by. The day before, they had held a protest at the school against becoming a charter.
López is a noontime aide at the school and grandparent of a 3rd grader. “We need a chance,” she said. “And that chance is a Promise Academy.”
Ackerman was responsive to their concerns. She said she would make an exception for Potter-Thomas among the nine schools now undergoing the matching process, giving the school the option of rejecting all potential partners and becoming a Promise Academy instead.
The community will have its meeting with the potential providers on May 6, and the School Advisory Council, which is made up of parents and several representatives of local organizations, has until May 11 to decide.
If, after that meeting, “the community is still not satisfied,” said Benjamin Rayer, who is running the Renaissance process for the District, “becoming a Promise Academy might be an option.”
All this uncertainty, however, is just creating more anxiety among parents and grandparents who are used to being buffeted about by institutions and government in one of the poorest areas of the city.
Rumors are flying
“Some say there’ll be free uniforms, others just talk about how good everything is going to be, but we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Tovar said.
At the school, which is 78 percent Latino and 20 percent African-American, 25 percent of the students are English language learners, 15 percent are in special education, and the churn of students is constant. In 2007-08, nearly 100 students in the 475-student school withdrew during the year, and another 70 enrolled. The following year, those numbers declined, but were still high.
Despite those factors, of the 14 Renaissance-eligible schools reviewed by a team of evaluators earlier this year, Potter-Thomas received one of the most positive reports. Some of the schools were cited for total breakdown of leadership, lack of instruction, and out-of-control climate.
But at Potter-Thomas, the reviewers said, “leadership has worked to create a unified voice that is focused on high expectations for student achievement,” “there are clear goals and improvement strategies,” and “school administrators serve as an instructional leadership team.” Teachers have common planning time and more opportunities for professional development.
At the same time, it noted, good instructional practices “have yet to be established school-wide.” Scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests (PSSA) remain woefully low, especially in the upper grades.
Davis-Harris agreed that the most improvement to date has been made in school climate and student behavior, which she attributed to help from parents, teachers and the District. “I knew it was going to be a good challenge when I first came here,” she said.
Whatever happens, she said, her work to improve the students academic achievement is an ongoing task.
“We’re using multiple approaches to do it,” she said. “We have instruction specialists providing our teachers with teaching techniques every week. We create an environment where we can give each other feedback. We all have in mind that this is to benefit our children.”
As part of the process in deciding the school’s future, SAC members and anyone else who is interested will have the chance to visit other schools operated by the potential tunaround teams, which include two Latino-focused organizations,ASPIRA and Congreso de Latinos Unidos. Both run charter schools. They are the only providers who have expressed particular interest in working with Potter-Thomas.
Nicholas Torres, president of Congreso, said that the parents don’t have animosity towards these groups, but have a fear of the unknown. “It seems parents are reacting to a lot of rumors, and it seems there’s no official providing actual information,” he said. “That’s why it is important for parents to show up to the meetings that will be held there.”
For Tovar, however, the issue is simple. “What we want is to have stability for our children” she said, “because they keep changing things around here even if they work.”
National data show high dropout rates, but locally there are no studies.
José Ángel Torres (left) and his brother David. When Torres started attending an American school, he encountered language and culture barriers that made him hate school from day one. Harvey Finkle/The Notebook
When José Ángel Torres arrived in the United States seven years ago, the most difficult thing was trying to understand what was going on around him.
He was only 10 and did not speak English. Nonetheless he was expected to be like any other 5th grader, learning math, science, and other subjects. He said no one bothered asking him if he needed any help.
Torres is one of an untold number of immigrant youth who have dropped out of Philadelphia high schools.
One recent national study found that immigrants make up nearly one quarter of the country’s teen dropouts.
“I didn’t like school from the beginning because I didn’t understand anything,” Torres recalled. “I felt I was dumb, especially with the vocabulary exams; those really screwed me up.”
Lost and lonely in a new world, his mind was set only on going back to his native Mexico – until hip hop came into his life, teaching him lessons he did not find in the classroom.
“I started listening to the radio, lots of music like Eminem, 50 Cent, Tupac and Biggie; I liked what they did with language,” he said.
Growing up in Philadelphia was not easy. He faced violence in and out of school and classrooms that felt more like a prison than like a learning hub.
“I would start cutting class one day here and there with my friends, but nothing serious until last year,” he said. It took a while to realize that “I wasn’t going to school at all.”
Torres remembers having at least 70 absences before he stopped attending Furness High in South Philadelphia last year. He said no one approached him to push him to return to school until his mother pleaded with him to go back and finish.
“I don’t really want to go to school, but I’m doing it because of my mom and now because of the baby my girlfriend and I are expecting,” he said.
Torres is now enrolled at Performance Learning Center SW, an accelerated school for over-age and under-credited students run by Communities in Schools.
His story is typical of what many immigrant children face when they come to this country. The education system was shaped without them in mind, and reform policies “fail to consider their particular needs or realities,” according to researchers Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco of New York University.
As a result, these children often wind up in inappropriate settings, receiving inappropriate instruction.
Nationally, the consequences for immigrant youth are apparent. In a 2005 study, the Pew Hispanic Center found that while only 8 percent of the nation’s teens are foreign-born, nearly 25 percent of teen dropouts were born outside the United States.
“The dropout rate for teens with school problems before migration is in excess of 70 percent, in comparison with 8 percent for other foreign-born youths,” stated the report.
The Pew study said many of these were poorly educated before arriving.
The study also found that many immigrant youth never enrolled in school in the United States; the purpose in migrating for many youth was probably to seek employment.
This and other research suggests that by not keeping track of immigrant children’s academic achievement and their families’ needs, many problems go undetected. Schools lack services not only for these youth but for their families as well, which increases the chance they’ll drop out.
In Philadelphia, the only available graduation data related to immigrants are the School District’s records for English language learners (ELLs) – whose graduation rate is 57 percent, close to the District average. That ELL rate, however, is a composite of rates for an array of nationalities that sheds no light on the performance of particular ethnic groups.
Moreover, ELLs and immigrant populations do not coincide – students from Puerto Rico are citizens whose first language is Spanish while some immigrants are native English speakers.
“The District doesn’t have a direct indicator of immigrant kids because it is illegal to ask kids who are registering whether they have a Social Security number,” explained Mary Yee, who ran the District’s now-extinct Office of Family Engagement and Language Equity Services.
Even when determining where a student was born, “that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know. You don’t know who are the children living with immigrant families,” Yee said.
Some say they spot the immigrant students when the time comes to fill out college applications.
“Almost 50 percent of my students, most of them the brightest in their class, don’t fill them out because they won’t be able to attend college due to their status; the door is almost shut for them,” said Nilza Lozada, Edison/Fareira High School’s multicultural SLC coordinator.
The School District did not respond to requests for information about current initiatives to help immigrant students.
Like Torres, many immigrant youth in Philadelphia face violence and discrimination.
“We encountered a lack of resources at schools; the language barrier was also an issue because all letters to my parents were never translated and this is still the case today in many schools,” said Xu Lin, a Chinese youth organizer and a Furness High graduate.
He also pointed to family economic needs.
“Most immigrant students come from working class families,” he said. “Their family prefers them to work than to attend school; they are pressured to work to support the family.”
This is the case for Javi, whose full name the Notebook is withholding due to his immigration status. He left his family in Mexico when he was 15 to provide for his mother after finishing the Mexican equivalent of middle school.
“Down there, you only think of coming here to work – not to go to school,” he said.
“I would like to get an education, but I would have to fully learn the language first and that takes time. Right now I need to make money to send it back home.”
The drop out rate among Philadelphia’s most vulnerable teens may not account to a big chunk out of the larger crisis. But when taking closer look, one sees that pregnant teens, kids just released from the juvenile system, children living in foster care and others going through homelessness drop out of school at outrageous rates when compared to their peers. “In fact, between 70 to 90 percent of these groups of youth left school without graduating,” reads an article in The Philadelphia Public School Notebook. In their latest issue, The Notebook presents a package of stories on what the School District of Philadelphia has done to address the problem among these groups. The following links will take you to the different stories.
I’m supposing none of y’all know what the title to this post means. I’ll put it this way: that’s proper Chicano English, a southwestern US of A dialect of Spanglish, for “aw yeah, crazy dudes!”
Down there, by our own Berlin Wall, we live in español, but go to school in Spanglish, which goes to show how unsuccessful Operation Wetback was.
What worries me is that still, today, there are people who think that English is the only language that should be spoken in this land. But I take relief when amigos gabachos stand in defense of the many tongues spelling out life in the today’s United States. So, gracias to attorney and blogger Len Rieser for his post in response to a Christopher Paslay’s op-ed piece that appeared in The Inquirer earlier this week.
It’s equally satisfying to learn that some UPenn vatos got their school president, Amy Gutmann, to issue a letter in support of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act).
Kudos to Laura Trujillo, all of the MEChA, the Asian Pacific Student Coalition, the Lambda Alliance, UMOJA, and the United Minorities Council at UPenn for their work.
I had the chance to meet with the Chicano students last month, and it is great that after just two weeks of sending letters they got what they set out for. Gutmann’s gesture doesn’t mean that schools will start charging in-state tuition to undocumented students right away, but it is a great piece of support in the national effort to have comprehensive immigration reform soon.
Back in November, we had a video posting on María Marroquín, a student activist and would-be beneficiary of this act who is organizing around this issue in the Philadelphia area.
In related news, I also send a greeting to the students at Swarthmore who just created of their DREAM Act organizing group, according to a story in Swat’s The Phoenix. I’ll keep you updated on that group soon and on the overall movement.
Back to school violence
My story in The Notebook’s current issue reported on the almost 30 year history of mild and slow response to violence against Asian students in Philly schools. For my reporting, I recorded Xu Lin’s account of the violence he experienced while he was a student at Furness High School in South Philadelphia. But rather than me telling you, listen to his very own words recounting how it was for him and his friends back in 2000.
At the most recent SRC hearing, Philadelphia Student Union member DeVante Wilson set the beginning of a campaign to address violence and find solutions to this ill plaguing our schools.
Somali Pirates
Before this post is over, I wanted to leave y’all with a little piece of music I thought many of ya would like.
Yeah, it’s some sort of whim of mine trying to give this space some identity, while trying to stick to the issues at hand. In this case, I came across a performance by artist K’Naan who’s originally from Somalia. The Somali pirates brought the country back into the news last year, but K’naan commented that the coverage lacked analysis of the conditions in East Africa.
K’Naan, who learned English listening to rap tapes, performed along with the great Mos Def at Austin City Limits last year and I just recently caught that show on TV. There, Traveler—what his name means in Somali—talks about his immigrant experience coming to Toronto when he was a kid.
K’Naan struts his abilities as a lyrical master and delivers the following dope rhyme prior to his song “Waving Flag:”
Get off the plane—in America
Feeling insane-in America
Me and my brother,
Sister, and mother-
And then it hit me,
Right in the kidney:
Where are my friends
And why aren’t they with me?
This made me think of the immigrant kids who come to American schools and rarely get an assessment or even asked how they feel and what they have gone through in their countries of origin. I wrote about this recently and thought it would be worth bringing it back to the front.
Please feel free to drop a comment of two–till next time, vatos!
In 1981, two stabbings and a series of brawls between African American and Asian students disrupted school life at University City High School.
Two years later, a Vietnamese student named Do Manh spent a month in traction after a pair of attacks at University City left him with a broken neck and a Laotian girl needing stitches in her lip.
Then, as now, in the aftermath of attacks on Asian students at South Philadelphia High, District officials were slow to recognize the problem as ethnic violence and take action. Only after community outcry did they move to respond.
Students during the MLK march demanding an end to school violence. Gustavo Martínez Contreras
“I went to see [Do Manh] at the hospital and found out from his classmates that no student had even been suspended for that assault,” recalled educator Debbie Wei.
“I ended up going to the newspapers, and after it got reported, then the District made an investigation,” Wei said. “If I hadn’t gone to the newspapers, nothing would have been done.”
In fact, it took Philadelphia police more than a month to get warrants and arrest the two teenagers charged with Do Manh’s beating because the school declined to cooperate in the investigation, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer story at the time.
District officials are no better able to cope and respond today, according to Xu Lin, an organizer with the Chinatown Development Corporation. He said that before the South Philly attacks, he met with Principal LaGreta Brown. “I cautioned her if she didn’t do anything, a massive attack was just a matter of time.”
Dean Coder, a math teacher at South Philadelphia High School for three years, said his warnings to Brown’s predecessor weren’t acted upon.
“I didn’t notice [the violence] right away because it is pretty chaotic there at the school,” he said. “But after a while I started seeing a pattern of ethnic intimidation that seemed to go without any response from the administration.”
Violence affecting immigrant and refugee youth has been a fixture for nearly three decades in Philadelphia schools. Ethnic tension has been especially prevalent between African Americans and Asians.
Despite reports, studies, and investigations, the scenarios that occurred in the 1980s in University City and other schools, and the December attacks against Asian students in South Philadelphia High, have unfolded in strikingly similar ways.
Coming to a hostile place
The Southeast Asian exodus to the United States was a by-product of the wars Uncle Sam fought in that region in the 30 years between the end of World War II in 1945 and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
Refugees from Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries found themselves away from home unable to speak the language, understand the culture, or cope with their new neighbors. The newcomers and their children settled in the impoverished and hostile settings of major cities such as Philadelphia, in which they became targets of hatred and bigotry.
In 1981, Wei worked as a community organizer in Philadelphia’s growing Asian community and was sent to University City to establish a connection with the Asian students. But after seeing what they had to deal with, she decided to become a teacher at that school.
“They desperately needed an advocate,” said Wei, now principal of FACTS charter school in Chinatown.
In 1988, the city’s Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services wrote a report called “A Study of Southeast Asian Youth in Philadelphia.”
In a section entitled “Discrimination by Fellow Students and Teachers,” it says that “nearly every Southeast Asian youth complained of experiencing…tensions with other youth, especially Black youth,” and perceived themselves as “targets of discrimination.”
Beyond name-calling, this discrimination “has resulted in some serious and unfortunate incidents such as the stabbings and severe beatings of several Southeast Asian students,” the report said.
“Large chunks of that report could be lifted verbatim and used today to describe the situation,” said Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, director of intake and operations at the nonprofit Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, which runs a program at South Philadelphia High.
Finding healing and solutions
Just as is happening now regarding the South Philadelphia incidents, the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations held hearings in 1985.
Students from all backgrounds have come together trying to create a bigger analysis than the one offering a mere racial divide as the root of the problem.
Its 94-page report, published three years later, detailed how thousands of immigrants and refugees struggled with “poverty, language access issues, racism, crime, and lack of preparation for urban life.” But it had little if any impact in providing solutions to the crisis, according to news accounts at the time.
It is unclear what the commission plans to do after investigating the current school violence in South Philly and other schools. Hearings started in January.
In 1985, in one of the first such actions on behalf of Asian students, the Education Law Center filed a civil rights suit against the District. Known as Y.S., after the initials of the lead plaintiff, it alleged that limited-English-proficient Asian students had unequal access to educational opportunities.
In a 1988 settlement, the District agreed to review the placements of Asian students in special and regular education classes, revise programs when necessary, and recruit more personnel who speak Asian languages.
“The lawsuit did at least put in some systematic [English as a Second Language] instruction and provided for the recruitment of bilingual personnel,” said Mary Yee, a community activist who once ran the District’s immigrant programs. Despite some improvements, the plaintiffs are still monitoring District compliance with the requirements because of continuing poor conditions for Asian students.
One thing that has not changed is the tension between the African American and Asian communities in the schools. Yee would rather view the problem as structural than as a “Black-Asian issue.”
Said Yee, “Unfortunately what has happened is that people who really face the same oppression are pitted against each other.”
Xu Lin agrees. “If the School District doesn’t take this kind of violence seriously, it could happen in any school with any group of kids.”
