Blacksmythe

I am a strong believer in giving youth the ability and the wherewithal to change the circumstances of the contexts they find themselves in. They already show a remarkable ability to take found objects and make magic. Who would’ve considered using a turntable as a musical instrument 35 years ago?? For me the Algebra Project takes the best of the Civil Rights Movement and drags it kicking and screaming into the present.
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For the most part I’ve been dealing with national issues since I began writing the column. I expect that to continue, as I expect issues like social security to become much more important after the New Year. But I want to begin to look at some of the local issues that have an impact on the lives of citizens. And as important I want to try to look at the various ways folks are trying to organize around these issues. As we move forward it is apparent to me and many others (particularly parents) that one of the most pressing issues is education. The word “crisis” is often over-used. Remember the furor caused over the Janet Jackson flap? That now caused over the revelation that Barry Bonds might have used steroids in pursuit of baseball glory? These were crises right? Took over the talk shows, the news broadcasts, the daily paper, the internet.

These aren’t crises. You want to see a crisis? Take the Baltimore City School system. On the one hand a city circuit court judge has ruled that the state of Maryland has “unlawfully” under funded the Baltimore City school system. At the same time, a number of Baltimore City school administrators have recently been sent to prison for mismanagement and misappropriation of funds. And a recent rash of school arsons and shootings have left teachers, and administrators pointing fingers at an uneducable student population. And while there are serious structural problems, there is one stat that is pretty much undisputed here in Baltimore.

From what I understand the drop out rate is much higher than 50%.

What do we do? Sit-ins do not by themselves deal with this problem. Boycotts won’t work either. And marches? We’ve done those to death.

On November 17, I was in Dubois High School listening to Bill Cosby give one of his smackdown the poor speeches. The central problem was parents not taking responsibility for their children. And giving them jacked up Africanized names to boot. Cosby’s solution would be simple. Get parents to raise their kids right, like they used to, and everything would be “otay.”

It’s clear we need an approach that moves beyond speakers, and town-hall meetings, and finger-pointing.

The Algebra Projectis a step in the right direction.

The Algebra Project is the brainchild of Robert Moses. Moses was instrumental in organizing men and women in the Mississippi Delta when he was a part of the Student Nonviolent (later National) Coordinating Committee. He recognized years ago that the next step in empowering citizens was to increase the level of math literacy among working class students in general, and black and Latino/a students in particular. So he created the Algebra Project. The basics of the project are simple. Kids are tutored in math by other kids. Those kids, when they become successes, in turn tutor other kids. The end result? Higher test scores, more interest in math, a substantive increase in math literacy.

But there’s another layer to it.

Moses is using the same organizing principles that made SNCC powerful in the South, not simply to teach kids algebra, but to give them the power to change the institutions around them.

I talked about this a couple of weeks ago when I addressed some of the issues the NAACP has to face. If we are to move forward and take our country back we have to give people the agency to take control of their own lives. We can’t do this if we are continually speaking for or organizing on behalf of black folk.

So there are a couple of impressive things about the Algebra Project specifically as it relates to political organizing. Through training kids to teach other kids, Moses is able to not only empower children to do the work of organizing, to develop their own leadership abilities, he further empowers those being taught by the kids. They can look at someone a little bit older than themselves, and immediately think I could do this. Furthermore, by teaching them the nuts and bolts of mathematical language using their own material context as the template he gives students a way to learn the subject matter that comes from their own experience.

Recently in Baltimore, the Algebra Project has taken a turn that should have been expected. As reported recently, members of the Baltimore Chapter of the Algebra Project have begun to aggressively agitate in order to force the Baltimore City School District to deal with the crisis I talked about above. The students have used skills they applied to the cool logic of mathmatics, to the hard realities of politics. Their tactics have been innovative, and well-thought out. And their actions are radicalizing their peers, getting them to deal with issues that most African American school aged children probably should deal with but don’t.

They are radicalizing children.

Think about that.

They are giving children the skills not just to see the world for what it truly is, but to change that world into something better, something different.

I can’t think of any other identifiable group of people who need this particular skill more. In fact, I can’t think of any other identifiable group of people who we need to have this skill.

Now when we deal with the national realm and discussions about vote suppression, and Republican racism, it is fairly easy to point out the enemy. In fact, it is not that hard to get black people angry enough to at least think about doing something. This does not mean we will necessarily, but we’ll think about it. Part of that is because what we are talking about at some level is inter-racial subjugation. White Republicans (with some black help) in Florida taking black votes away in 2000.

(And probably in 2004.)

But what happens when we move from the national level to the local level in a city like Baltimore, where most of the political officials and most of the population is black? Inevitably we end up having to deal at some level with black complicity in racial subjugation. And this is where the rubber meets the road—there are black people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo in the schools. Some black teachers who would rather not think about the possibility of having to go back to school in order to learn new skills. Some black administrators who would not want their systemic mismanagement to come to the fore.

Let’s conduct a thought experiment. Think about the activities your local NAACP, or Urban League, or church conducts on a month-to-month basis. Think also about the age of the members in the chapter.

How would the average age of the chapter change if students in organizations like the Algebra Project got involved in your group?

Better yet, how would the activities of the organization change if students from an organization like the Algebra Project became involved? Would they improve for the better or for the worse?

Obviously a program like the Algebra Project isn’t perfect. It is not a panacea that, if implemented, will single-handedly increase the number of black men and women covered by health care. It will not, if implemented, decrease the number of toxic waste sites that pockmark our cities. It will not increase the ability of single black mothers to care for their children without fear of being stigmatized for making “bad choices.”

But if we were to fast-forward ten years, and work on the assumption that every child involved with the Baltimore City chapter, what are the odds that these individuals would still be organizing? That they would be applying their skills not just to the Algebra Project, but also to other pressing issues that Baltimore faces? What are the odds that these kids would possess both political and scientific skills that we could only imagine of possessing? And that these skills could in some ways change the world?

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