Drawing the Battle Lines: The REAL Superwomen of NYC are calling out Cathie Black (pt. 1)

This is going to be one hell of a fight.

Yet again, surviving in NYC means we have another task added on to our existing struggles to:

• feed our families;
• make and keep appointments to ensure our children and ourselves are /get / stay healthy;
• hold onto and/or find a job, hopefully one that pays a decent living wage and has benefits;
• stretch a dollar ‘till it hollers, while trying to put 2 pennies away for emergencies;
• review (or battle over) homework and attend / respond to school meetings
• get the shopping and laundry done and put away;
• find time to invest in quality nurturing / reading / talking / sharing with our children and loved ones;
• attend to the needs of ailing and/or elderly family members;
• volunteer with an organization, congregation or activist group;
• battle with banks, creditors, insurance companies, landlords, city agencies and social service providers;
• clean the house;
• keep the spotlight on racist, sexist, classist injustice, raise our voices in defense of our homes, families, communities, public education, our dignity, our democracy and our human rights;
• and give praise to our higher power for the strength and guidance to do what we do.

We, the already overwhelmed women and mothers in NYC are gearing up and joining our allies across the boroughs in order to accomplish a monumental task in the coming weeks.

We have to convince David M. Steiner, the Commissioner of NY State Education (along with his “panel of advisors”) to deny Mayor Bloomberg’s request that Cathie Black, a non-educator, be granted a waiver to the state education law.

This law clearly defines the necessary credentials required to be Chancellor of the NYC public school system, oversee the teaching, academic curriculums, learning, health and well-being of 1.1 million school children and the over-crowded, lack-luster facilities that we send them into every day.

We have to remind Mr. Steiner that these children are OURS, and that they are majority Black and Latino and immigrant children who for the most part, are living with us in or very near, poverty.

We have to remind Mr. Steiner that we are unrelenting in our efforts to see them achieve academic success, and that our hopes for our children’s futures depends upon them having an excellent education overseen by someone who has a proven track-record in PreK-12 grade, urban schools.

We are going to have to defeat billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and millionaires, Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani, who have just given their support to Ms. Black’s appointment, but who as former mayors, also failed miserably to better our public education system when they had the chance.

We will have to defeat the corporate moguls, union leaders and political power-players who have also weighed in on deeming Ms. Cathie Black fit to lead our public schools and oversee its $21 billion dollar budget and contracting.

We know better than any one that this is really all about money, not what's best for our children. We know that our kids, our good teachers and the select few public schools in our communities that aren’t failing, have been under attack by a racist system that is determined to privatize education and keep the distance between the haves and have-nots in this society, in place.

We CAN stop this madness. We MUST. We can not afford the same kind of experience we’ve had with another non-educator, Chancellor Joel Klein, who did his very best to silence of our concerns, demonstrate his disrespect for us, break education laws and fail our children.

The MANY is arming itself with information and tactics. Get ready to join the fight, or everything we know from living in Black, Latino and immigrants communities about disappointing public schools and the failure of our children to achieve, graduate on time with Regents diplomas, and have the opportunity to attend institutions of higher learning, is about to get so much worse.