Evil and Goodness

Evil is contagious, so be cautious; but so is goodness, so take heart.

Anno Domini

How does one deal with life after death? I don't mean passing onto the other side, I mean living again after your loved one dies. The best of our family came alive after my mom died. We were the most vulnerable and the closest we had been ever. The best of what we brought to the table as adult siblings and as relatives came about. But, when all the pomp and circumstance of the wake and funeral subsided, we went back to work, we went back to routines. I just checked my phone I realized I missed a call from my dad at 6:03, it's 11:21am now, I've got to go to bed I've got work tomorrow. I'll die if I don't get some sleep.

Growth

Growth is a slow, secret, unspectacular affair.                                                              - Lesslie Newbigin

The Ballad of the Landlord by Langston Hughes

The dynamics of interpersonal communication and power relations. I'm reminded all the time when I deal with my tenants. 


Ballad of the Landlord
by Langston Hughes

Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a leak.
Don't you 'member I told you about it
Way last week?
Landlord, landlord,
These steps is broken down.
Vvlhen you come up yourself
It's a wonder you don't fall down.
Ten Bucks you say I owe you?
Ten Bucks you say is due?
Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'l pay you
Till you fix this house up new.
What? You gonna get eviction orders?
You gonna cut off my heat?
You gonna take my furniture and
Throw it in the street?
Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.
Talk on-till you get through.
You ain't gonn a be able to say a word
If I land my fist on you.
Police! Police!
Come and get this man!
He's trying to ruin the government
And overturn the land!
Copper's whistle!
Patrol bell!
Arrest.
Precinct Station.
Iron cell.
Headlines in press:
MAN THREATENS LANDLORD
TENANT HELD NO BAIL
JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL

"Cuz He's Black"

El Pionero Senior Apartments at North and Pulaski

So i tried to create a viral post on a website, urging local decision makers in the old neighborhood to chose my idea for a naming a new development. its guerilla community organizing, because i couldnt stand by and let some politicians hash it out and decide on a politically connected name that carries no weight or reference to the community. So i petitioned the power brokers online. this could work or work against me, either way I did it and have no regrets. "Thirty-eight years after a 1975 fire burned down the old Woolworths and almost a city block on the southwest corner of North and Pulaski, a new affordable housing development is coming to the area. Hispanic Housing Developement Corporation and Tropic Construction have broken ground on the $19 million dollar development that will include 72 apartments for local residents ages 55-80 who earn less than 80% of the area's median income to stay and continue living affordably in their community. This development has come together after residents, our local chamber of commerce, and our alderman have worked to keep the project alive.

Currently, the development is called North and Pulaski Seniors Housing, but we are asking that Hispanic Housing consider El Pionero Senior Apartments at North and Pulaski. Hispanic Housing and other Humboldt Park affordable housing organizations, like Bickerdike, have a history of meaningfully naming their projects for significant community members, community intersections, and community struggles. Consider Theresa Roldan Apartments on Paseo Boriqua, North and Talman Elderly Apartments, Zapata Apartments, and La Estancia.

El Pionero is in reference to the Pioneer Trust and Savings bank across the street. The bank was built in 1924 and in the years that followed, it solely financed all of the development and housing that makes up much of the North and Pulaski area of Humboldt Park. It is one of only a few neighborhood banks that survived the Great Depression. Standing at five stories, an landmark above all other neighborhood structures, it's architecture was meant to convey security and stability. Similarly, the seniors development will take the corner and stand at five stories; the building will symbolize housing security and stability for our long time residents. The name El Pionero Senior Apartments at North and Pulaski references and gives meaningful respect to our section of Humboldt Park, and the history and culture of our residents who will call the building home. We urge Hispanic Housing's Hipolito (Paul) Roldan, Alderman Reboyras (30th), and Alderman Maldonado to pick El Pionero as they collectively choose an honorable name for this building. We look forward to a community meeting in the near future; the neighborhood is excited and eagerly watching and waiting for the completion of this development. "

Mom

This is my eulogy for my mom:

So it's hard to put 36 years of a relationship into a few minutes, and it may be more than a few minutes, but I'll try. The truth is that my mom's relationship with me was formed way before my birth, because how can you raise a child and impart things unto them unless you have a life history before that child is born. My mom was born in 1949 in Santurce, Puerto Rico to her parents Israel and Edmelinda. They were with each other, then they divorced, then years later got back together, then divorced. Both parents got married to others, then got divorced, then married others. My mom always lived with her mom and her sister Enilda through this. My mother would always say she had a hard childhood, especially any time we ever expressed how hard our life was living under our parent’s roof. She was put into many situations and had to take on burdens and responsibilities not meant for a child. She had to grow up early, act like an adult, and be a rock to people who were adults and could arguably be considered children in with their emotions and actions.

 Most rocks are hard, at least their outer layer. My mom grew into adulthood to be tough and world hardened, but always compassionate and deeply loving inside. In her twenties, she began working in San Juan while living and taking care of her mom who was very controlling. The story goes one day she was cruising the strip her cousins, the area of San Juan where sailors hang out. That day everyone hooked up with a crew a sailors on leave, my mom connected with a guy from Chicago. They hung out for three days. He went back to Chicago, they wrote letters back and forth for a few months, and then my dad popped the question, “Will you marry me?

What was my mom to do, she was taking care of her mom, she had lived her whole life in Puerto Rico,  her life was there. She knew her mom would not let her go, so she went to her loving abuela, Paquita, who gave her the advice that would set in motion her family," If you don't leave now, you will never leave." So, my mom took the chance, left everything she knew behind, and came to
Chicago, to marry essentially, a stranger, I mean, how can you know someone through three days and a couple letters, but she did.  By the way, my dad didn't tell his parents that he was thinking of
marriage; I think he was already getting set up into some arranged marriage by his parents. In the first days of her arrival my dad introduce my mom to his Eastern European parents, they were not too happy that he brought home a Puerto Rican woman, and I’m being nice with my version of the story, they predicted that the marriage would fail. Nice introduction to this new life. My dad wanted to chicken out and just see where the relationship went. But my mom looked him dead in the eye and
said, "I left everything for you, I'm not going back with egg on my face, we are getting married" and so they went to down city hall, my aunt and her husband flew in to serve as witnesses, and they got married June 14th, 1975.

             My mom's statement could have been perceived as a threat, no doubt knowing my mom it may have been, but I choose to look at it as the defining moment that thrust this family into being. A defining decision moment between two people that signaled how she would fight tooth and nail to will a family together, that family was number 1, and like a bulldog never let her family go. Her and my dad forged their bond early on through persistence, as husband in wife through fights, swearing,
doggedly working through issues such as vastly different backgrounds, moral and cultural.
Sometimes you commit to something and fall in love later, I'm not embarrassed and neither was she
to say that, it worked for them, my dad was deeply committed to my mom and loved her madly. My mom loved him with an unfiltered and tough love too. They were together 38 years and their love and commitment has inspired me and created the convictions I have about love, marriage, fidelity, and what it means to have a true life partner.
           Falling in love may have come later for their relationship, but my mom gave pure and received the  pure love that she desired from her children, all three. I am the firstborn of all of Elfrida and Bill's kids. My mom loved me til the day she did. An abiding love that was deep in soul. My mother always protected me and fought on behalf of me, she believed in me and saw things in me I couldn't believe about myself as a youth. She showed me off and was proud of my achievements. She put a lot of stock into who I would be in the future and always called me a her good boy; I think all of her aspirations and expectations for me growing up were meant as someone who would be different than all the men who had hurt her in her life. I believed her and my life is a testament to trying to give her
that gift and her dream fulfilled. She could convince a mountain to move, and in my love for her I
wanted to live up to and climb beyond her expectations. As hard as she could be, as rough as her exterior, mannerisms, or words could be, she was a romantic, she fought for the underdog, she carried the weight of her family, she wanted everyone to be the person God created them to be regardless of the what the world shaped them to be, she loved giving gifts, she was very political, but most importantly she loved God unabashedly. She couldn't move the mountains that life put in front of without that simple faith like a mustard seed. I will miss this woman. I love you mom and will forever carry you and your legacy in my character and my heart.

My identity

It is said that in other places people ask you where you are from, but in Chicago people ask what are you? That question is intended to size people up and to compartmentalize you into neat, formal, understandible racial categories; its easier that way, but when you cant answer that question so clearcut, you won't quite fit in, ever. That one question and the working around it's boundaries has formed my identity. It's hard to conflate my life into three or four experiences or events that helped my identity formation but I'll try.

I will start with my early years, my early identity was shaped by the family and where I grew up. I was born and raised in Chicago. Born as William Smiljanich II, or Smilyanich if you want to say the non Americanized way. Born to a Ukrainian/possible also, Scottish man, and Puerto Rican woman, and given a Serbian surname even though there is no Serbian blood in me, and with Serbian being white, i don't get much privilege with a last name like that. My parents knew each other for only three days before my mom left everything behind in Puerto Rico and took a chance on marrying a stranger in Chicago. My Ukrainian grandmother and Serbian grandfather did not welcome my mom into the family by mere fact that she was a Puerto Rican, who they judged as dirty and lazy people. My parents began a life together as an escape from their families and their dominance; they began their own family by rejecting or compromising their cultural upbringing (i never ate a pierogi and I  do not speak spanish), as a way to survive as two totally different people. While others had the pleasure of distinct culture, distinct languages, and distinct cultural expectations, my parents left most of their cultural upbringing behind and I was left to guess, infer, and make up my own identity. In one way this was freedom, in another way this was a burden, but in my early years i became adept at being able to navigate between, within, and around various cultures to avoid looking stupid or feeling stupid. i don't think I ever asked my parents who I was until 6th grade.

By the time I was in 6th grade, the not knowing who i was began creating problems for me, kids started making clearer distinctions for me, based on racial categories they already knew they fit into. They would ask me what i was and I couldn't answer. One day I asked my dad, but he replied, why do you care? Tell em your white. i dont think i asked my mom, but since she spoke Spanish to my aunt, I assumed i was Spanish. I distinctly remember riding the school bus and telling a kid that I was something like Russian, because my last name sounded Russian. I also remember leaving out the Spanish part because I was ashamed. I had felt that being Russian was somewhat better than someone who was Spanish, but that proved to be a false assumption after the kid called me a commie. I think I internalized some kind of shame about being of Puerto Rican decent because of the stereotypes and racist remarks my family had made about Latinos throughout my childhood.

When I got to high school, I had somehow come to this belief that as a teenager in Chicago,  it wasn't cool to be called white. I was going to a school with kids from all races, classes, and places from across the city and world. In my mind it became clear that in order to relate to others I needed to embrace my "otherness". So I decided to explore my Puerto Rican roots. This proved short lived because of the micro aggressions on the part of some Puerto Ricans, the only ones who I felt could give me the credibility and acceptance I needed at that point in time. One day, was on the Addison bus, and a girl from my earth science class gets on with her friend. Her friend sits on a seat covered in rain water from an open window, i snickered, she turns around and says, "Shut the f#@& up, whiteboy!" I countered that I wasn't white, but Puerto Rican like her. Her friend said she knew me from class, that indeed, I was, half Puerto Rican. The girl counters, "Well, he don't look like no Puerto Rican". And so it was, over and over, I didn't look Puerto Rican, I wasn't Puerto Rican because I was half, I didn't speak Spanish, I didn't dress Puerto Rican. Soon enough I could never measure up to being Puerto Rican, so throughout high school and in college i found affinity with the misfits, with those who felt oppressed by and who rejected the  rules and mores of their own culture, those that were raised in mixed families, those that were culture shocked in the dominant American society. And though I found solace in-between racial and cultural categories, I still wished i fit into those easy categories.

My last major identity forming experience began a year and a half ago. I had heard of African American studies, Latino Studies, and Asian American studies, but I wondered if there was such a
thing as mixed studies, so I googled it, and sure enough there was such a thing. Finally, I thought, something that could speak to my experience in writing. On the website I found a list of experiences that people of mixed race/ethnicity live through, and I related to them. I found a bill of rights for people of mixed race/ethnicity, and it empowered me. I found books and I cried because they put words to feelings and emotions I experienced but didn't have vocabulary or language for. I also found a conference called Critical Mixed Race Studies at DePaul last November, i showed up to a breakout session for mixed Latinos and found people who validated my experience. This is a new

 phase in my identity formation, but the one thing I have learned through my experiences is that my identity can be fluid. This has allowed me to accept myself better. My existence challenges the notion of monoracial categories. My identity points beyond race, yet does not work to undermine or forget historical injustices and pain caused by man made racial categories which are stupid, but still have real effects. My identity reveals a legacy of privilege I can more easily buy into, but within that identity I also have a legacy of not having access to privilege, making it easier for me to recognize the folly of buying into it. My racial composition and my position in the world are realities which I alone may determine. I do not expect to be told what I should consider myself, so today i will claim I'm a Chicagoan, a Puerto Rican, a Ukrainian American, a Ukrianorican, a Latino, a white Hispanic, a Latino of Mixed Ancestry, a multiethnic person, a both/and. The great thing about recognizing the fluidity of my cultural identity is that things can and will change. i am on a journey, just like all of you, to fully come to grips with who God created us as.

Are the Blackhawks Chicago's Team?

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2013/06/28/are-the-blackhawks-chicagos-team

10 Year Anniversary

Well we made it. 10 years of marriage.

06/27/2003 Married
08/04/2004 Hawaii; bought building on Keystone
6/27/2005 Trip to Europe
08/06/2006 Liam is born; grad school finished
04/19/2007 Bill's 30th
09/28/2007 Katie's 30th
06/27/2008  5th Year Anniversary
05/19/2009 Ava is born
09/07/2010 Liam starts school
09/30/2011 Bought home on Natchez
08/26/2012 Katie goes back to work, both kids start Montessori
06/27/2013 10 year anniversary

These are just highlights, I can't believe all we went through so much in the in between time, those little moments are what make this marriage. The day to day reality, good and bad, is what true love looks like. Never a dull moment, honey. I love you so much Katie.

Authenticity

"Authenticity must be used to reshape the rights of ownership. Claiming authenticity can suggest the right to the city, a human right, that is cultivated by longtime residence, use, and habit. Just as icons – in the original, religious meaning of the word – derive their meaning from the rituals in which they are embedded, so do neighborhood, buildings, and streets... If we appreciate them as authentic, we are speaking from a distance of space and time, where we no longer participate in the routines and rituals of their origins..."




"Authenticity is nearly always used as a lever of cultural power for a group to claim space and take it away from others without direct confrontation, with the help of the state and elected officials and the persuasion of the media and consumer culture. We can turn this lever in the direction of democracy, however, by creating new forms of public-private stewardship that give residents, workers, and small business owners, as well as buildings and districts, a right to put down roots and remain in place. This would strike a balance between a city's origins and its new beginnings; this would restore a city's soul."



Sharon Zukin, from "Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places," 2011.

Immigrants Remake the Built Environment of Inner Ring Suburbs

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/as_we_remake_suburbs_should_th.html

Two books by Zukin

A blog post from someoe else:    

Sharon Zukin's Naked City and Landscapes of Power

I way overslept, and then I had to bring a recalled book back to the library to unfreeze my account, and then I had a craving for lentil soup which necessitated a trip to the grocery store and a couple of hours of paring and blending and reducing - oh, and of course it was raining.  It's been a strange day, but the soup was delicious (the recipe ishere) and I just finished Landscapes of Power, the second of the two books by Sharon Zukin on my geography list.

Landscapes of Power is the earlier of the two, and in it, Zukin argues that "landscape" is the key cultural product of post-postindustrial capitalism in America.  In other words, as we transition from a Modern industrial production economy (and culture) to a Postmodern service and consumption-based economy (and culture), the landscape changes too.  According to Zukin, landscapes are always characterized by a tension between abstract market forces, which want to globalize and homogenize everything, and local, place-based communities, who want to stay rooted where they are and not have to pick up and move every time the economy changes and they get laid off.  Postmodern landscapes are composed of liminal spaces that blend markets and places - so when you go to a museum, for instance, you could just walk in and look at the paintings, but they would really prefer it if you went to the IMAX, paid for a guided tour, and maybe picked up a few things at the gift shop, too.  It's like the long arm of capitalism is penetrating further and further into every aspect of our lives.

Landscapes of Power is interesting, but Naked City was much more fun to read.  In the twenty years between the two books (1991 and 2010), Zukin's style has gotten more conversational; more importantly, though, the internet, reurbanization, the housing bubble, and 9/11 have all made the world a very different place from what it was in 1991, and she takes all of these developments into account.  This time, urban spaces are still landscapes of power, and culture and the economy are still based on consumption instead of production.  However, her focus now is not on the decline of modern industrial culture but on the rise of the "authentic city," a place characterized by a tension between old, historic, deep-rooted elements and new, creative, truly innovative forces.  The book is comprised of six case studies, each a different place in New York city, that examine the meaning of "authentic" and its relationship to power.

I really hate the uncritical use of the word "authentic," so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Zukin spends a good 30 pages theorizing it and that she's well aware that authenticity is socially constructed.  The part I particularly like (aside from her liberal use of the word "hipster," hah) is her construction of authenticity as an elitist, consumption-based concept.  Claiming to either be or see the authentic gives you a certain amount of power: you're the real deal, or you are worldly enough that you know it when you see it.  But authenticity can only be perceived from the outside, by someone who has enough mobility and distance not just to discern between the real and the fakes, but to care about authenticity in the first place.  Hence, white gentrifiers moving into a poor black neighborhood might see their new home as an authentically gritty urban place, but the neighborhood's current residents, who are more concerned with getting their bills paid and taking care of themselves and their families, just see it as home.  The gentrifiers are consuming the experience of living there, while the current residents are simply inhabiting the place.  (I guess there's no particular reason why the black residents wouldn't seek out authentic experiences or places in some other form, but she doesn't go into that - one of the failings of the book.)

Together, Zukin's two books does a lot to spatialize capitalism and inscribe the urban landscape with cultural meaning.  Naked City in particular, though, reminds me why I got into this business in the first place.

Why New Orleans Mothers Day Parade Shooting isn't a National Tragedy

http://portside.org/2013-05-15/why-isnt-new-orleans-mothers-day-parade-shooting-national-tragedy

Project Based Friendships

"What is a Godly relationship really supposed to look like across economic and racial differences? "



Without commitment to genuine relationships, people become projects.

Don't reduce people to projects.
                   - Eugene Cho

Transformation

Our own transformation makes us avenues of transformation in the city- Randy White

EZ PAWN

"Discussion and protest are foundations of democracy and they keep it vibrant and strong" -Dave Stieber



Nice work Galewood. Keep up the fight, keep Democracy on the west side.

The Problem With Communicating About Place

The problem about taking photos, blogging or using social media to highlight a place is that there is a great potential that reader will be compelled to visit it and experience it. My age group and younger live in a culture in which authenticity is highly sought after commodity and value. The overexposure and the mining of authentic places inevitably strips the place of authenticity. Our human nature is to share with others, as social beings, unfortunately it gets corrupted; do I call tourism a corruption?  I guess, but then I indict myself.So do we share the Macchu Pichu, do we share Feng Du, do we share Sokotra, do we share Petra, do we share the sewers of Paris, do we share the favelas of Rio, do we share the ruins of Detroit, do we share footsteps of the French Provencal village of Menerbes, do we share the Italian hillside villages of Tuscany, do we share the nooks and crannies of our forgotten neighborhood?

Why Do We Move and Why Do We Live Where We Live?

My old former neighbor came by last week and we got to talking about the old block and this block. I asked him how he perceived this place as he has spent the little time over here visiting me in the year I've lived here. He said, " Bill this place is a neighborhood where people move to get away from someplace."
    Research says Chicagoans move due to perceived disorder in their origin neighborhood, which leads to an outmigration to other neighborhoods or suburbs where they don't find symbols of disorder. Research Seems to indicate that you don't choose your neighborhood, your neighborhood chooses you.  Outmigrants tend towards homophily meaning they settle around others like them, others that do not want to be around disorder, which in my opinion, leads to tenuous communities with an underlying cancer festering. It doesn't lead to healthy relations between neighbors or a healthy situation when evidence of others shows up. It leads to places where people are on the defensive and barriers are put up in physical and emotional manefestations, how do we live in healthy communities in Chicago where we are not a lot of people that have moved from some place of perceived dysfunction? How do we get ourselves into a collective good place. How do we push against selfish neighborhoods, our fear of others, and our tendency towards homophily and move towards a zenophily? What would that neighborhood look like?

The Power Of Symbols

"Kate how am I supposed to take it that there is a used condom in the gutter by the curb?"  In our old neighborhood it meant that we had a problem with prostitution there,  it symbolized some kind of dysfunction in the community. So if I embed that sight of a used condom  with the idea of dysfunction, what logical or illogical conclusion do I make about my new community?
  A few months ago I was talking to my neighbor across the street, an African American woman in her 60's. I asked if her daughter's kid goes to the local school, two blocks to the east. She didnt seem  too enthralled at the concept of me thinking her grandchild going to Lovett School. She said her grandson goes to a very good Luthern school in Forest Park. The public schools around here elicit very strong opinions, if not spoken, they are implied. Sending your child to a local school is embedded with symbols, mostly negative. The conversation somehow veered into her saying that she was planning to move out of the neighborhood, after 22 years. Why i asked why,  she said, " cause used to be you didn't have no cars on the street, it was quiet, we had no problems." she nodded her head over to her neighbors next door to her. I didn't press her to stay or reconsider her opinion; I silently disagreed with her assessment of the block, for my assessment was that what she experiences as discomfort, pales with what I experienced on Keystone, but I get sentiment that when you move to a place where you want quiet, you want cleanliness, when you want peace to live your life with your family, without any challenges to that lifestyle, then perceptions of change or disorder take on a symbolic quality.
   This Tuesday, our community will have a meeting regarding a zoning change to allow a pawnshop called EZ Pawn to come into our community. I don't want to spend time elaborating on the symbols that surface from the prospect of another pawn shop, west of Narragansett, so I will allow you to make your own inferences based on these statements elaborated in the aforementioned book, " Recall my argument (in chapter 6) that shared perceptions of send a culturally meaningful signal about the reputation and confidence in a neighborhood. Recall also that perceptions of disorder were strongly influenced by prior racial/ethnic composition and furthermore that the collectively perceived disorder predicted individual-level perceptions many years later."
 How I navigate my thoughts related to the meanings and symbols I attach to the slippery, red, used condom by the curb and how we collectively navigate the meanings and symbols we attach to the pawnshop matter for the future of this community. Let's navigate better, let's navigate well.

What The Most Priveleged Parents Want For Thier Child's Education Should The Mimimum We Want For All Children

The day after the 2012 election: A letter from Bill Ayers. Not my favorite guy in the world, but I think he is succinct in the narrative he uses to explain educational reform, especially her in the Presidents hometown Chicago. Typically, it is hard for me to hear out liberals because they don't indict themselves or include themselves or those they associate with as part of the problem. What I particularly liked is that Bill Ayers advocates for public schools, he indicates that he, as well as Obama and Rah, sent their kids to the best private school in town; I love how he reconciles that problem or truth, he says, " In a vibrant democracy, whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children."

Dear President Obama: Congratulations!

I’m sure this is a moment you want to savor, a time to take a deep breath, get some rest, hydrate, regain your balance, and take a long walk in the sunshine. It might be as well a good time to reflect, rethink, recharge, and perhaps reignite. I sincerely hope that it is, and I urge you to put education on your reflective agenda

The landscape of “educational reform” is currently littered with rubble and ruin and wreckage on all sides. Sadly, your administration has contributed significantly to the mounting catastrophe. You’re not alone: The toxic materials have been assembled as a bipartisan endeavor over many years, and the efforts of the last several administrations are now organized into a coherent push mobilized and led by a merry band of billionaires including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Walton, and Eli Broad.

Whether inept or clueless or malevolent—who’s to say?—these titans have worked relentlessly to take up all the available space, preaching, persuading, promoting, and, when all else fails, spreading around massive amounts of cash to promote their particular brand of school change as common sense. You and Secretary Arne Duncan—endorsed in your efforts by Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a host of reactionary politicians and pundits—now bear a major responsibility for that agenda.

The three most trumpeted and simultaneously most destructive aspects of the united “school reform” agenda are these: turning over public assets and spaces to private management; dismantling and opposing any independent, collective voice of teachers; and reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score. While there’s absolutely no substantive proof that this approach improves schooling for children, it chugs along unfazed—fact-free, faith-based reform at its core, resting firmly on rank ideology rather than any evidence whatsoever.

The three pillars of this agenda are nested in a seductive but wholly inaccurate metaphor: Education is a commodity like any other—a car or a refrigerator, a box of bolts or a screwdriver—that is bought and sold in the marketplace. Within this controlling metaphor the schoolhouse is assumed to be a business run by a CEO, with teachers as workers and students as the raw material bumping along the assembly line while information is incrementally stuffed into their little up-turned heads.

It’s rather easy to begin to think that “downsizing” the least productive units, “outsourcing” and “privatizing” a space that was once public, is a natural event. Teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the “outcomes” (winners and losers) becomes a rational proxy for learning; “zero tolerance” for student misbehavior turns out to be a stand-in for child development or justice; and a range of sanctions on students, teachers, and schools—but never on lawmakers, foundations, corporations, or high officials (they call it “accountability")—is logical and level-headed.

I urge you to resist these policies and reject the dominant metaphor as wrong in the sense of inaccurate as well as wrong in the sense of immoral.  

Education is a fundamental human right, not a product. In a free society education is based on a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being; it’s constructed on the principle that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each, and, conversely, that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all. Further, while schooling in every totalitarian society on earth foregrounds obedience and conformity, education in a democracy emphasizes initiative, courage, imagination, and entrepreneurship in order to encourage students to develop minds of their own. 

When the aim of education and the sole measure of success is competitive, learning becomes exclusively selfish, and there is no obvious social motive to pursue it. People are turned against one another as every difference becomes a potential deficit. Getting ahead is the primary goal in such places, and mutual assistance, which can be so natural in other human affairs, is severely restricted or banned. It’s no wonder that cheating scandals are rampant in our country and fraudulent claims are commonplace.

Race to the Top is but one example of incentivizing bad behavior and backward ideas about education as the Secretary of Education begins to look and act like a program officer for some charity rather than the leading educator for all children: It’s one state against another, this school against that one, and my second grade in fierce competition with the second grade across the hall.

You have opposed privatizing social security, pointing out the terrible risks the market would impose on seniors if the voucher plan were ever adopted. And yet you’ve supported—in effect—putting the most endangered young people at risk through a similar scheme. We need to expand, deepen, and fortify the public space, especially for the most vulnerable, not turn it over to privatemanagers. The current gold rush of for-profit colleges gobbling up student loans is but one cautionary tale.

You’ve said that you defend working people and their right to organize and yet you have publicly and noisily maligned teachers and their unions on several occasions. You need to consider that good working conditions are good teaching conditions, and that good teaching conditions are good learning conditions. We can’t have the best learning conditions if teachers are forced away from the table, or if the teaching corps is reduced to a team of short-termers and school tourists.

You have declared your support for a deep and rich curriculum for all students regardless of circumstance or background, and yet your policies rely on a relentless regimen of standardized testing, and test scores as the sole measure of progress.

You should certainly pause and reconsider. What’s done is done, but you can demonstrate wisdom and true leadership if you pull back now and correct these dreadful mistakes.

In a vibrant democracy, whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children. Arne Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (as did our three sons); you sent your kids to Lab, and so did your friend Rahm Emanuel. There students found small classes, abundant resources, and opportunities to experiment and explore, ask questions and pursue answers to the far limits, and a minimum of time-out for standardized testing. They found, as well, a respected and unionized teacher corps, people who were committed to a life-long career in teaching and who were encouraged to work cooperatively for their mutual benefit (and who never would settle for being judged, assessed, rewarded, or punished based on student test scores).

Good enough for you, good enough for the privileged, then it must be good enough for the kids in public schools everywhere—a standard to be aspired to and worked toward. Any other ideal for our schools, in the words of John Dewey who founded the school you chose for your daughters, “is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy.”

Sincerely, 

William Ayers