0:31BThank you. Good evening, everyone. First, I would like to thank the Green Party of Central Florida for giving me the opportunity to speak before you guys tonight. I was invited to speak here about education, which is Very interesting topic for me, given that about 2 years ago I graduated from college myself. So my experience in public speaking is usually giving presentations in my classes, so this is a bit of a new experience for me. One of the reasons why education is such an important subject right now in America is because it’s a challenge nowadays to get education. Not only do we have the issue of student debt, which is an issue that’s been raised quite often during this election. But the general state of public education in the nation is very poor. While it is very difficult --
1:29AThank you.
1:29BWhile it is very difficult for students to obtain a college degree, in some parts of the nation, it’s a challenge simply just to graduate high school. So we have a situation in which obtaining a decent education is already challenging. And in some places, it’s very difficult to get an education, period. This also contributes to the ongoing issue that we have of poverty, and it creates a cycle. Malcolm X once said, when you live in a poor neighborhood, you’re living in an area where you have poor schools. When you have poor schools, you have poor teachers. When you have poor teachers, you get a poor education.
2:09BAnd when you get a poor education, you, you can only work in a poor-paying job. And in that poor-paying job, it only enables you again to live in a poor neighborhood. So he was speaking about the cycle of poverty, which he described as a very vicious cycle. The cycle is made even more vicious when one considers that this issue also intersects with mass incarceration, or what Michelle Alexander called the new Jim Crow. She refers to this as the new Jim Crow because, similar to the old Jim Crow, in this system, people who are incarcerated for drug crimes are stripped of certain abilities, such as the ability to vote, access to housing, and even access to jobs.
2:51BThis situation is especially significant when we consider that the new Jim Crow is also connected to, again, the issue of education. Some people refer to this as the school-to-prison pipeline because we have, in essence, a school system which works to maintain the prison industrial complex in this country. A study by the Advancement Project and Power U Center for Social Change in 2007 found that between 1987 and 2007, there was a 127% increase in funding for incarceration. During that same 20-year span, there was only a 21% increase for funding for higher education. So over the last 2 or 3 decades, We have had a situation in which America has actually invested more money in incarceration than has been invested for education.
3:41BOne of the issues that have also come into play with the school-to-prison pipeline is a policy of zero tolerance in schools. What this essentially means is that students are either given out-of-school suspensions or outright expelled for conduct problems. This has included problems such as as small as talking back to teachers or even uniform violations. In preparing for the speech tonight, I came across one situation in which a school was actually suspending 300 students a year for conduct problems. Now, research on this shows that this is an issue that predominantly affects Black students, but it’s also an issue across the board. One study showed that in 2009, in the West Valley School District in Spokane, Washington, 60% of the students that were expelled were white students.
4:31B10% of the students that were expelled were black students. But this is particularly alarming because only 4% of the students enrolled in that district were black students. The zero tolerance policies also created other issues in the schools. There was an issue earlier this year in Baltimore in which a police officer assaulted a 16-year-old student. There was another officer that was nearby, and in the end, both of them ended up getting charged. And this is a frequent issue in schools. There was one issue that happened. It occurred last year, and it created quite a stir in the media. I think you guys might have seen it.
5:07BIt was when a student was texting in class, and she refused to stop texting, so an officer came in and actually dragged her out of her desk. This thing happens quite often. In doing research for this speech, I came across another situation in which a 3rd grader was actually handcuffed by a police officer. So we are dealing with a situation here where police aggression isn’t only something that’s occurring out in the streets, it’s actually happening right in our own classrooms. I will also add, concerning the situation in Baltimore, that quite often some people have put forward a solution to police brutality against Black people, saying that perhaps we need more Black officers.
5:44BWell, in this situation, it was 2 black officers that were assaulting another black man. So what this demonstrates is that we’re really dealing with a complex issue that needs to be addressed at the very root. Now before I get to my conclusion, I’d like to add very quickly that it was mentioned that I’m an author. One of the things I write often on is African history and African culture. Now in the culture of the Acholi people in Uganda, they have a judicial system known as mato oput. This is a system in which rather than jailing or locking away offenders, offenders are rehabilitated. They are urged to empathize with the victim, and the focus on this judicial system is more so on healing than locking people away.
6:32BThank you. Now, why I find this system particularly interesting is that in Western societies, especially here in America, we’re so used to the concept of American exceptionalism or the greatness of Western civilization. And too often we don’t look at other civilizations and other cultures to see what ideas they have, how those ideas work for those cultures, and how they could be adapted to our cultures. So why I find Mātuoput’s significant in America dealing with the issue of mass incarceration, that it demonstrates that there is a different way to do things, that you don’t necessarily need a justice system in which people are incarcerated. Thank you.
7:19BIn conclusion, I will say that aside from the issue that has been raised, the issues of education that have been raised this election year, such as student debt and the poor state of public education, there’s also the issue of mass incarceration, which is deeply connected to the issue of education. So that in fixing education, we must also fix the school-to-prison pipeline. Thank you. Thank you.
