Tag Archives: Philando Castile

Educators, Allies to March From AFT Convention

July 18, 2016

Today at 4 p.m., members of Minneapolis’s Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC) and the St. Paul Federation of Teachers, along with community allies and representatives from teachers unions around the United States, will be marching together in downtown Minneapolis. Their jumping off point is the Minneapolis Convention Center, where the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) national convention is being held this week.

A July 18 press release from NOC states that the groups are marching to “stand in solidarity,” as a show of  “direct action following the unjust killing of their colleague and friend Philando Castile.” Along with honoring Castile, the march is also intended to “demand justice for his life and for Black lives everywhere.”

But the marchers are also providing a framework that moves beyond drawing attention to police violence by planning to march from the convention center to the U.S. Banks building in downtown Minneapolis:

The groups are demanding community safety beyond policing; naming those who profit from unjust and violent systems that are taking the lives of people of color; and demanding investment in community-driven solutions.

Like the Chicago Teachers Union, the St. Paul teachers union has been instrumental in drawing parallels between disparities in access and outcomes in education to big picture issues of economic injustice, arguing that large, national banks like U.S. Banks and Wells Fargo profit mightily from the prison industrial complex and the foreclosure crisis, for example.

This is reflected in NOC’s work, too, and in their press release for today’s event: 

  • Both U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo have served as the underwriters and trustees for a number of cities that have issued bonds to pay police misconduct settlements. Cities throughout the country have spent over $1 billion in the last 10 years on such settlements, taking money away from public services.
  • Local and state governments, desperate for funds and wanting to avoid raising taxes, use traffic tickets and fines to increase cash flow and balance their budgets. U.S. Bank operates the online payment system in states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin, and for municipalities in those states, receiving a fee for each transaction.
  • U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo have both provided significant financing to private prisons, including the largest for-profit prison operator in the country, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The controversial prison in Appleton, Minnesota, now owned by CCA and vacant, was originally financed in 1992 through the use of bonds, for which U.S. Bank served as the trustee. 

Karen Lewis, the high-profile head of the Chicago Teachers Union, is scheduled to speak at the march, along with Amber Jones, of NO, and Michelle Wiese, the newly elected president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, among others.

WHEN:

TODAY, TUESDAY, July 19, 4:00 p.m.

WHERE: 

Minneapolis Convention Center (Second Avenue South Entrance), 1301 2nd Ave S., Minneapolis, MN 55403

“As a society, we choose to underinvest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs. We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book. And then we tell the police, ‘You’re a social worker; you’re the parent; you’re the teacher; you’re the drug counselor.’ We tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs and do so without causing any political blowback or inconvenience; don’t make a mistake that might disturb our own peace of mind. And then we feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over.”

–President Obama, quoted in Charles Blow’s recent New York Times Op-Ed, “Blood on Your Hands, Too”

No grant, no guru, no outside funding source. My work is entirely funded by my very kind and generous readers. Thank you to those who have already donated!

[Exq_ppd_form]