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(Education in our Interests... Cont.)

In contrast, Ms. Boudreaux is a former Principal/ Administrator in the LAUSD, and for the past eight years has been the only African-American member on the School Board representing District One. This district is overwhelmingly composed of African-Americans and people of Mexican and Central and South American origin. District One schools have consistently scored the lowest in the entire LAUSD; many of the schools lack even sufficient text books for students and the school buildings resemble, and are operated more like, prisons than places of learning. Ms. Boudreaux has done nothing to address these very serious conditions; nor has she been the source of any progressive ideas, programs, or solutions to the educational crisis affecting the pubic schools in District One. It is indeed time for a change. One thing is certain, “career politicians” who only seek re-election, year after year, can never be part of the solution.

 For many years, too many, Board of Education elections in Los Angeles have rarely attracted much attention, with less than twenty percent of the eligible voters even bothering to vote.  This is also a national phenomena; and a contributing factor as to why the schools do not operate in our interest. This too must change, because, on the one hand, the apathy among parents of color about educational issues has been part of the plan to continue the public schools’ miss-education and under-education of our children. But, on the other hand, parents, and the community at large, are generally not encouraged to be actively involved in the planning and operations of the school; there are absolutely no efforts to involve working parents. In fact, the majority of the schools, no doubt, although physically located in the community, are not part of the community. All of this must be changed.

The other arena is the “Education In Our Interest” joint organizing project of the New Panther Vanguard Movement and the Mexica Movement. The Mexica people were the indigenous peoples of what is now known as Mexico, Central America, and the Southwest (including California) of the United States of America.  The words Chicana and Chicano is just a shortened, and Spanish language version of Mexica. In 1519, the Mexica were the cultural heirs of 3,500 years of Anahuac civilization... [who] were finally exterminated through an ethnocide that has left no true-blood descendants of the Mexica... But the Mexica culture and history have survived.  The people of Anahuac, meaning land between the waters, are one of the many Original Inhabitant (indigenous, or the falsely labeled Indian) groups who discovered this continent [the Americas] somewhere between 20,000 to 50,000 years ago.

African-American history begins not in America, but in Africa. Africans, like the indigenous Anahuac peoples of the so-called Americas, developed complex and long-lasting civilizations long before Europeans acquired the refinements of so-called civilization. This history and the cultures of Africans and the indigenous peoples of the so-called Americas are the best kept secrets in America's public schools. Instead of teaching the truth, distorted historical concepts like “Christopher Columbus discovered America” are popularized and made the subject of intense study. This form of “brainwashing” must yield to the truth that he, and other so-called European “explorers” actually found thriving civilizations in Africa and the Americas, which they promptly began to loot and destroy in the interest of greed and profits for their “wealthy” and too often “religious” benefactors. The role of African slavery in the development of the modern world is another best kept secret. All of these lies about the nature of colonialism in the Americas and the African Slave Trade, all these distortions of the history of people of color are the subject and focus of the “Education In Our Interest” Joint Organizing Project.

Another significant aspect of the “crisis in education” is the ignorance of our people, both of African and Mexica ancestry. Forcing the public schools to teach the truth will be the hardest part of any educational reform effort. The lies and distortions are deeply imbedded in the consciousness of our people and will not be easily dislodged or discredited. As the Mexica activists point out: “Most of our people have been intentionally kept ignorant of our true and complete Anahuac history. What little we know is lies or exaggerations or our failings. We are only taught of European “discoveries” and accomplishments and nothing of the crimes that they committed against us.”

In a special feature of the October 20, 1978, Black Panther Newspaper entitled “The Atrocity of Education,” by Dr. Arthur Pearl, he hits the nail squarely on the head, stating “Our society requires an intellectually sophisticated population in order for it to function, and the individual needs the gratification that comes from investment in cultural pursuits to retain his sanity. In a nation in which most of the activity is mind work, we obviously need people with working minds.. Our society suffers because of the deficiency of... leadership. There is no way we can begin to develop human resources unless we radically change the nature of our schools.” 

After all the traditional approaches have failed, a radical approach to the educational crisis requires a radical and extreme frame of mind. The political status quo, and their conscious and unconscious supporters in our communities, must be opposed and challenged at every opportunity. African-Americans, and the Mexica people of the Americas, must not expect white America to begin to move forcefully on these problems. While description is plentiful, there remains a blatant timidity about what to do to solve the problems. It is crystal clear that the initiative for such radical changes will have to come from the African-American and Mexica people themselves. In the final analysis, the control of inner-city schools must be taken out of the hands of professional bureaucrats, most of whom have shown their insensitivity to the needs and problems of poor children of color. They have no clue as the causes of “columbine-like ” acts among white males.

If this approach sounds radically designed, impractical or utopian, then we ask: what other real alternatives exist? There are none; the choice lies between a genuinely new and radical approach and maintaining the ineffective, often paternalistic, often self-destructive, violence-breeding public school life as its exists today. Moreover, it is certainly wasteful and inefficient, not to mention unjust, to continue imposing old forms and ways of doing things on a people who no longer view those forms and ways as functional. From the point of view of conscious African-Americans and people of Mexica ancestry, the road to “education in our interest” is the path we choose to take. 

Prisons by Huey P. Newton

“The prison operates with the concept that since it has a person's body it has his entire being, because the whole cannot be greater than the sum of its parts. They put the body in a cell and seem to get some sense of relief and security from that fact. The idea of prison victory, then, is that when the  person in jail begins to act, think, and believe the way they want him to, they have won the battle and the person is then ‘rehabilitated.’  But this cannot be the case because those who operate the prisons have failed to examine their own beliefs thoroughly, and they fail to understand the types of people they attempt to control.  Therefore, even when the prison thinks it has won, there is no victory.

There are two types of prisoners. The largest number are those who accept the legitimacy of the assumptions upon which the society is based. They wish to acquire the same goals as everybody else: money, power, and conspicuous consumption. In order to do so, however, they adopt techniques and methods which the society has defined as illegitimate. 
When this is discovered such people are put in jail. They may be called ‘illegitimate capitalists’ since their aim is to acquire everything this capitalistic society defines as legitimate. The second type of prisoner is the one who rejects the legitimacy of the assumptions upon which the society is based. He argues that the people at the bottom of the society are exploited for the profit and advantage of those at the top. Thus, the oppressed exist and will always be used to maintain the privileged status of the exploiters.

There is no sacredness, there is no dignity in either exploiting or being exploited. Although this system may make the society function at a high level of technological efficiency, it is an illegitimate system, since it rests upon the suffering of humans who are as worthy and as dignified as those who do not suffer. Thus, the second type of prisoner says that the society is corrupt and illegitimate and must be overthrown. They do not accept the legitimacy of the society and cannot participate in its corrupting exploitation, whether they are in the prison or on the block.

The prison cannot gain a victory over either type of prisoner no matter how hard it tries. The ‘illegitimate capitalist’ recognizes that if he plays the game the prison wants him to play he will have his time reduced and be released to continue his activities. Therefore, he is willing to go through the prison programs and say the things the prison authorities want to hear. The prison assumes he is ‘rehabilitated’ and ready for the society. The prisoner has really played the prison's game so that he can be released to resume pursuit of his capitalistic goals. There is no victory, for the prisoner from the ‘git-go’ accepted the idea of the society. He pretends to accept the idea of the prison as a part of the game he has always played.

The prison cannot gain a victory over the political prisoner because he has nothing to be rehabilitated from or to. He refuses to accept the legitimacy of the system and refuses to participate. To participate is to admit that the society is legitimate because of its exploitation of the oppressed. This is the idea which the political prisoner does not accept,  this is the idea for which he has been imprisoned, and this is the reason why he cannot cooperate with the system. The political prisoner will, in fact, serve his time just as will the ‘illegitimate capitalist.’  Yet the idea which motivated and sustained the political prisoner rests in the people. All the prison has is a body. The dignity and beauty of man rests in the human spirit which makes him more than simply a physical body. This spirit must never be suppressed for exploitation by others. As long as the people recognize the beauty of their human spirits and move against suppression and exploitation, they will be carrying out one of the most beautiful ideas of all time. Because the human whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. The ideas will always be among the people. The prison cannot be victorious because walls, bars and guards cannot conquer or hold down an idea.”

[Huey P. Newton while confined in prison after false conviction for the murder of an Oakland cop. While he was imprisoned prison officials sought to dehumanize and control him. However, the BPP founder and chief theoretician grew to understand the psyche of the prison administration and refused to be dominated.]