Drawing the Battle Lines: The REAL Superwomen of NYC are calling out Cathie Black (pt. 2)

Drawing the Battle Lines: The REAL Superwomen of NYC are calling out Cathie Black (pt. 2)

Fifty-five years ago, almost to the day, a tired Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus and yield to oppressive, Jim Crow law as expected. She had reached her personal "tipping point" and sitting in protest sparked a movement that taught America a lesson.

From a solitary Black woman, the nation witnessed what it meant to be fed-up, what it meant to be a person of color with a memory bank of being dictated to, and what it meant for this marginalized woman to decide that her time to resist had come.

Joined by caring people of all backgrounds, the nation shifted.

Today's protest at Tweed is a reminder that times have changed very little. Just as Mrs. Parks sat down for us, we are standing up to policymakers and resisting rules and laws bent on oppression.

Few will say openly that this matter of appointing Cathie Black is about the ugliness of capitalism, where race and class politics dictate the maintenance of our divides. Under the current regime, public schools in NYC have continued to fail the developmental and intellectual needs of all of our children, the largest majority who are poor and of color.

Failing to educate our children to become critical thinkers (and thus, agents of social change) is by design; and more and more, people are waking up to the reality of our mayor's deep-pocketed control. Whoever governs and controls public education, determines the destiny of our Black and Brown children and communities, and as such, selecting Cathie Black as NYC Schools' Chancellor is an insult and an outrage to us.

Commission Stein's waiver is our tipping point; the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. Providing this elitist, socialite from the corporate world with a waiver to the law that clearly mandates the criteria of extensive, educational experience is a telling sign of the times; an alarm clock to every late rising, low and middle income New Yorker, that the ruling class intends to optimize upon their power of urban, social control.

Although we in the Black, Latino and immigrant communities remain the tired, the poor and the marginalized, we still believe in the promise of public education, and are joined with concerned New Yorkers of all colors, to take a stand today from the pages of historical protests-- bringing with us to Tweed, the same hope from the past-- that our children's futures can be better than our own.

My hope is that the politicians and policymakers get the message that from every margin in my community, we are fully awake now and very fed-up.

Wear red today to demonstrate your outrage and show solidarity.

This is our time to resist.