Fed up with Section 8 and you should be Too!

Section 8 is supposed to decentralize poverty, but it actually centralizes it, in struggling Black neighborhoods. At best, all section 8 does is destabilize Black communities. At worst, it drives hard working and responsible middle-class neighbors out and turns entire areas into slums. Once a Black neighborhood starts having problems, Section 8 accelerates those problems. In some cities where public housing is in transition, residents with vouchers have clustered in working-class Black neighborhoods. Section 8 will always seeks out the worst housing markets, and it will often be in transitional or poor Black neighborhoods. With the vouchers, thousands of poor Black families each year do exactly what the program should not: They move out of poor neighborhoods and into poorer neighborhoods with failing schools, and no job opportunities. And this is where the patterns of concentration come together. I know and you know there are thousands of Black folks that abuse the program. Some on Section 8 think they are being victimized. They think they have been intensely wronged by the system for not wanting to do better, or having baby after baby. Some have become what I call, Section 8 crazies, playing the victim of ever changing government housing policies. I know a friend of a friend who has spent 57 or her 58 years dedicated to Section 8 and Section 8 only, and has nothing to show for her dedicated years of service to this humble program. She has lived in Section 8 housing all but 1 of her 58 years. It is an honored legacy passed down from her parents who moved into Section 8 housing when she was six months old. She has passed the honored legacy down to her children, but now fears they may have to get up off of their asses and get jobs to pay for their own utilities and deposits. She actually mourns about her one year away from the comfort of her Section 8 wonderland. She told me, “I tried it for a year, you know, working and all. It's not anything I would want to go through again, or wish on anyone in my family.” If you read my writings, you should know that I fight for our people on a day to day basis, but I’m damn sick of our people demanding free handouts, and refusing to make something of their lives. As long as they keep receiving free stuff, why not be lazy? They're probably all happy as can be. I'm sure between Section 8 and their assistance check; it buys em enough liquor and dope to keep em feeling pretty good. Too bad they don't
use some of that money to buy a large supply of condoms, because the majority of Section 8 families seem to have 4, 5, even 6 and 7 kids running around. Have you ever seen who and what hangs out on the streets where Section 8 vouchers dominate? The people look like hell! The most undesirable people follow Section 8. Drive through a housing complex or neighborhood with a high percentage of Section 8 renters in the early evening, and at night; take a look at the cars parked there. If there are a lot of older cars, or if there are average looking cars with a few expensive/tricked out cars, beware! You will also see young thugs loitering non stop. Housing and Urban Development also affords landlords to treat Section 8 renters better than renters who pay their own bills. Housing and Urban Development states that landlords can require only a $50 security deposit from Section 8 renters — instead of the usual full month's rent deposit required for unsubsidized renters. Section 8 tenants usually don't have anything to lose. If you have a little more to lose, then you are more likely to make it clean when you move out or to take a little better care of it when there. Some Section 8 renters live in homes owned by absentee landlords who won’t even evict tenants, even for the most flagrant lease violations. For landlords, the guaranteed subsidy payment is a strong ass incentive. I think that we Black folks are expected to put up with this dysfunctional way of life because of the idea that all Black people are tied together in our struggle. This concept was absolutely cool when we battled just to be recognized as humans and citizens worthy of treatment equal to that of white people. But while our country still fights with racial equality, gains have been made, so much that a self-identified Black man became leader of the free world. In other words, (some Black people don't like to hear this, but) personal responsibility is now the determination of our progress. Once it’s ingrained in a person that they can’t get out of the hood and they’re just like Shameequa and them, then they start to believe it. Should they want more? Yes. Will they get more? Only if they move past the negative, (institutionalized racism, classism, sexism, and other isms), will they ever reach the positive (a life that isn’t dependent upon governmental handouts). I, like many other like-minded Black people, do not like to be broke. That’s why I write my ass off to get where I need to be. However, some Black people don’t have shame and instead, look for a damn handout

CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE NOT FOR ME, HERE IS WHY

I just don’t agree with the premise that charter schools are the savior of the Black community. Why do charter schools have curriculums not available in our ordinary public schools? If such demanding curriculums are needed for our children’s future, why not offer it to everybody? When you allow parents to enroll their children into charter schools, while leaving most other students to a less-challenging curriculum, only proves that the system of unequal educational will live on. Go and visit the home of a Black parent who is hell bent on getting their kid into a certain charter school! They may or may not have had a formal education, but they sure as hell know the value of an education. Where is this insane passion for public schools? Why didn’t you join the PTO then? Why didn’t you participate at the public school? If they only they had that same passion when their child was in public school. On the other hand, there are some Black parents who never had a formal education, and they just don’t understand the value of an education, so in essence they really don’t give a damn. Way too many of our children come from these families. Nowadays, in the United States, the re-structuring of education is really racialized. Ground zero is centered right smack dab in the middle of Black communities, where public schools are being closed, taken over, privatized, and driven by a cut-rate curriculum of preparing lil Black kids for standardized tests. Public and private are racialized code-words. Private is equal to being good and white, and public with being bad and Black. Marginalized low investment in our public schools, closing them, and opening privately operated charter schools in our Black communities is made easier by racist attitudes towards our communities and our public institutions. But you know what? Our failing schools are the product of a history of educational, economic, lack of parental involvement, discipline, and social injustices experienced by us Black folk. Schools serving Black communities continually face deeply unfair opportunities to learn, including unequal funding, curriculum, educational resources, facilities, and teacher experience. The new school and teacher accountability rules has often created these injustices by limiting the curriculum to only test preparation—producing an exit of some of the strongest teachers from schools in Black communities. We need to change the heart and soul of our children’s education, redefining the purpose of education and what it means to teach, learn, and participate in school in Black communities. The education that our youth are now receiving leaves them capable of performing a function within the system, but they will be ignorant of how the system they will eventually work for is structured or operated. This ignorance is a direct result of our mis-education. We should start measuring the quality of our children’s education not by what they learn, but by what was excluded from the educational process. Also, teachers are being driven by standardized tests and performance outcome measures; principals are managers, and school superintendents are now CEOs; and learning now equals the students performance on the tests, with teachers, the student, and parents held responsible for failure. Education, which should be seen as a public good, is being converted into a private good, which is an investment you make in your child or yourself to add value in order to better compete in the labor market. Schools in the inner-cities are no longer seen as part of the bigger picture of advancing individual and social development, but are merely the means to rise above others. Neighborhood schools are being replaced with charter schools or selective enrollment schools that most neighborhood children are unable to attend. School closings have spawned increased mobility, a rise in violence, and neighborhood instability as children are transferred to schools out of Black neighborhoods. This coded policy erases schools that are anchors in our Black communities, contributing to an ongoing economic boycott. In gentrifying areas, closing neighborhood schools and replacing them with schools branded for the middle class makes it easier for the displacement of Black working-class families. I just don’t like the charter concept. I believe in community neighborhood schools. I just remember walking with my childhood friends to Locke Elementary, Tolleston, and West Side High, laughing all the way, knowing that the homework better had been done!!

BLACK PANTHERS VS. The TEA PARTY

I was fourteen years old in the summer of 1969. We sat in the playground at Patcher Park in Gary, Indiana and watched Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton talk about community involvement, guns, drugs, and parental control. All we wanted to do was play ball, but Brother Fred’s message kind of put me in a trance. I knew right then, that this dude was the real deal. I cannot help but remember, and relive, the joy and pride of that day. I also became frustrated and angry because I now knew who the real enemy was. Wow, strong angry Black men going to war against the oppressive and racist U.S. government. But, do not get confused. Tea Partiers, carrying and waving guns, screaming nigger this, and nigger that, threatening violence against our Black elected officials, and holding anti-tax rallies is not the same as the Black Panthers response to overt police brutality, which involved developing community-based programs that promoted self defense, Black political power, and freedom from economic exploitation. When white people say that all they know about the Black Panther Party is that they were a crazy group of niggers led by angry, gun-toting radical’s, shows their (white people’s) lack of understanding of the Black Panther Party’s grassroots political philosophy and commitment to community organizing. The truth of the matter is that the Black Panther Party and the Tea Party are nothing alike. To begin with, the Tea Party does not offer anything close to the in-depth sophisticated analysis of the political and economic condition of oppressed people. The Black Panther Party developed a 10-point platform of demands and reform proposals intended to improve the lives of ordinary people in Black communities. The Tea Party, meanwhile, has a terrible understanding of the way current political and economic systems operate. They spend their time protesting stimulus programs, social programs, healthcare reforms, the deficit, repealing civil rights legislation, and re-segregating private businesses, but that’s not the same as building a movement that enacts change through projects like the free breakfast program for children, as the Black Panther Party did. Whether you agreed with the Black Panther Party politics or not, they at least had an agenda that was full of action! The difference is as clear as being assassinated in the middle of the night by the FBI’s counterintelligence campaign (COINTELPRO) that claimed the life of several Black Panther Party members including Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark. Their murders were probably the worst act of violence against the Black Panther Party by the racist police, who in Chicago and anywhere Black folk lived, partnered with the FBI to target civil rights groups and our people. My serious analysis of the Tea Party’s values, members, goals, and racist rhetoric led me to believe that this group is not a modern white version of the Black Panther Party, but is instead the very opposite of the Black Panther Party. While our history is being blurred by these racists, you need only look at Texas and Arizona, where their resident racist lawmakers are attempting to erase some of our most important moments in the nation’s history from public school textbooks. But for me, and for so many others like me, when those who represent these systems come looking for us, they don’t come to our front doors politely, knocking first, they bust through, shooting first. The Tea Party's biggest drawing card is its racism, just as white racism is central to the success of the Republican Party. Forget about the Tea Party's other supposed issues, like the budget and the bank bailout. That's not what puts fire in their asses. This is America, remember? Race is all some white people understand.

FAILURE AT THE TOP

FAILURE AT THE TOP
OBAMA’S LACK OF LEADERSHIP
By Phillip Norton
After House Speaker John Boehner knocked the President down on Tuesday, Obama picked himself up, dusted himself off again and pretty much fell in step with the right again. This was an amazingly incompetent failure of leadership that has further demeaned, embarrassed, and diminished the Obama Presidency. Whoever allowed it to happen should be fired. Whoever failed to tell Obama that the idea of a pre-emptive strike (Jobs speech) while the Republicans were having their Saturday Night Live debate, was dangerous and foolish and should be fired? But they won't be. They (the failed advisors in the White House) are trying to win the respect and appreciation of moderate and independent voters. Obama doesn’t understand that all voters, not just Black voters, want to see strength and strong leadership and competence. The American people have seen nothing but failure, incompetence and lack of strong leadership from the White House. The reporters, writers, journalists, and bloggers like me see that the wildly left progressives are disgusted with Obama for his failure to be progressive. I never expected him to function as a progressive, or to pursue progressive issues or values. But I did expect him to keep his promises. I did expect him to be better than, not worse than Bush. I did expect him to be a strong leader. I did expect him to have some level of competence as a negotiator. He is an abject failure at both. He is a first down punter- a failure at negotiation. It is tempting to blame Obama's chronic, consistent pattern of leadership failures on some advisor. But I think we must face the reality that Barack Obama is a wimp, a smart man, even a nice guy, who just doesn't have the spine to be as tough as the people of the United States and the rest of the world need.
This screw-up should lead to the firing of whoever orchestrated it for Obama, and whoever failed to nix it, and that includes the withdrawal of Barack Obama as a candidate for the 2012 Presidency!! And the leaders of the Democratic party have to wake up to the reality that their leader is not a leader, that he is being seen more and more every day as a wimp who can be pushed around. We need a President who can be tough- on crime, on polluters, on corrupt banksters, on trans-national corporations, even on party members who go rogue. I think it's time for a tough-as-nails, take no prisoners woman President. Folk on the street say there's no candidate in sight. I say that once Obama steps down, a rush of candidates will come out of the woodwork- good ones. The scary Obama lackeys say that if Obama doesn't run, the Dems will lose. I don't believe that unsupported claim. I think it's a lie. When LBJ stepped down, Robert Kennedy would have won if he had not been assassinated. Obama had his chance. He is not a leader. Registered Democrats, independents and the people of America deserve better. He should step down or face primary challengers, preferably step down. America needs a strong willed woman President who will really lead. It is time.