Find and follow us
Get our most popular stories once a week!
Oakland Gang Series Sends Wrong Messages
(This post originally appeared on RaceWire.)
Last week, the Discovery Channel aired "Gang Wars: Oakland," a series that, according the network, "opens a window to give a glimpse inside the lives of Oakland's gangs." However, the series played more like a myth dispenser about black and Latino Oakland residents and glorified cops.
Aimee Allison, host and producer of San Francisco Bay Area KPFA's Morning Show, has written a critical review of the show:
"The grainy night shots, closeups of semiautomatic weapons, wailing sirens and shot after shot of black and brown tattooed bravado is horror-flick fun to some -- but this is a harrowing reality for those of us in Oakland grappling with the persistent problem of violence.
And to make matters worse, the show claims there are 10,000 gang members in the city -- a number refuted by acting Oakland Police Chief Harold Jordan. Since the show producers haven't come up with where they got the inflated number, one can only guess that they lumped in people based on neighborhood or skin color."
Visit AlterNet to read the full article.
Breaking News: LAUSD Students Arrested for Protesting Layoffs
(This post originally appeared on RaceWire)
Close to 400 Los Angeles Unified School District students are marching to the district’s headquarters to protest teacher layoffs. CutsHurtKids twitter feed is reporting four Black students have been arrested and removed from the premises.
Earlier in the week students from the Santee Education Complex marched to the headquarters building and yesterday, a few miles south, about 350 students from West Adams Prep and Manual Arts High School in South Los Angeles walked out. Students are protesting budget cuts that could lay off up to 2,500 instructors.
Dennis Danziger, a teacher at Venice High School, says “9th and 11th grade English classes are mandated by law to not exceed 20 students." If 2,500 teachers are laid off, “next year [classes] will be ballooning to 35 to 38. Our classes of 35 will mushroom to 42 or more” he says. At the current rate, Venice High School has a 55% drop out rate. Danzigers says “If LAUSD fires teachers, APs, deans, college counselors, and librarians, and axes arts and vocational programs, those dropout numbers are likely to soar, sending undereducated teens into a national job market that’s losing more than 15,000 jobs a day.”
According to LAUSD District Profiles, 92.3 percent of the district are students of color.
Images via CutsHurtKids
Jorge is a Multimedia Associate with the Applied Research Center and co-editor of RaceWire.