Demand that the School Board & NAACP Withdraw from the Resegregation Settlement!

5-25-99

DEMAND THAT THE SCHOOL BOARD
AND THE NAACP WITHDRAW
FROM THE RESEGREGATION SETTLEMENT!

Come to the School Board Meeting Tuesday, May 25
Gather at 6:00 PM, Martin Luther King Middle School,
350 Girard Street (in the Bayview district)

     All students, teachers and community members who support equality in education are needed to come to the last school board meeting of the semester to demand the district withdraw from the settlement reached in the Ho lawsuit. This settlement, which the district and NAACP have accepted, ends integration at Lowell High School now and will lead to the elimination of all integration measures in the San Francisco schools in the near future.

     The settlement effectively destroys the consent decree, the desegregation plan established in 1983 that led to the only effective measures to integrate the San Francisco public schools. Three Chinese-American families backed by white racists filed suit (Ho vs. SFUSD & NAACP) to end the plan. The Ho plaintiffs have encouraged the creation of false divisions between Chinese-American students and black, Latino, other Asian-American, and other minority students. The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) did not present a shred of evidence to defend the integration plan. At a hearing in Federal District Court held April 20th in the courtroom of Judge William Orrick, high school students themselves offered the first evidence in defense of integration of the San Francisco schools. But Judge Orrick ignored the students' evidence and went forward with the resegregationist settlement.

     At a Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary (BAMN) organized press conference outside the courthouse, high school student speakers from Lowell Black Student Union (BSU) along with speakers from BAMN, and Chinese for Affirmative Action made clear that the hearing only marked a starting point in the movement to defend integration and equality in San Francisco schools. Following the hearing, BAMN organized with high school students from Lowell, Mission, and Galileo high schools in San Francisco, Oakland High and Skyline in Oakland, and Berkeley High School to build a tribunal on racism and inequality in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and other Bay Area schools.

     The tribunal addressed inequality and racism and took charge of the fight to defend integration by establishing a plan of action to build the movement. Tribunal participants spoke for integration and made clear the racist character of the Ho suit. Speakers on the tribunal panel included Shanta Driver, national coordinator for BAMN, students from Lowell, Mission, and Berkeley High schools, UC-Berkeley students, teachers from Oakland and San Francisco, and parents. The audience included high school and college students as well as black and Latino community members. In addition, because BAMN had organized a press conference and intervention in the May 11 school board meeting, in which Lowell students demanded the board withdraw from the Ho settlement, the tribunal audience included two San Francisco school board members and a representative from the SFUSD office of integration.

     Tribunal participants made clear that quality education is impossible without integration. All the alternatives being proposed would tend to ghettoize many students and so deny many more students one of the most important benefits of living in San Francisco - a city of many different ethnic groups, which tend to be broken up into separate communities. The resulting resegregation will only intensify the fragmentation and divisions of the city.

     Integration is necessary if a narrow and close-minded view of the world is to be replaced by a broader more informed understanding. Black, Latino, and Asian students emphasized that in particular the militancy and experience with social struggle that is a legacy of the black and Latino fight for liberation and equality are invaluable for the development of critical thinking and any real understanding of power and politics in human society. The students own participation in this fight has fused them into a group that increasingly questions what is necessary for education and feels increasingly confident to assert its own leadership in the struggle for control over the schools and educational process.

     Black, Latino, and Asian students spoke on the racism that condemns students in predominately black and Latino schools to a second class education, and to having to make a daily and ongoing fight for even the most basic resources. They spoke on the racism that already exists in the schools. They made clear that segregation leads to isolation and demoralization on the part of black, Latino, and other minority students, and to increasing racism on the part of white administrators, students, and teachers. Tribunal participants exposed the racist bias of standardized tests, and the falsity of any claim that test scores and GPA's can measure human potential, creativity, determination, or leadership potential.

     The tribunal passed two resolutions (a motion to defend the consent decree, which is reprinted on the other side of this flyer, and a motion for students and youth to lead the fight for quality education in Oakland) that establish a plan of action for the next several months. We will continue to build student-based campaigns against the resegregationist settlement throughout the summer and early fall, in order to place students in the best possible position to intervene and to determine the outcome of the next set of court proceedings in October 1999. As part of our campaign, we are attending the School Board meeting on Tuesday, May 25th to demand that the SFUSD rescind its support for the current resegregationist plan.

     The tribunal made clear that we will not allow the gains that were won in hard struggle by the civil rights movement of the 50's, 60's and 70's to be taken away from us. As a new civil rights movement develops in San Francisco, Oakland, and the Bay Area, we feel our connection to the struggles that came before. This new civil rights movement can grow rapidly over the next several months - bringing forward new leadership and gaining the power to defend integration in San Francisco and the conditions of life for millions of youth in this generation and those to come. Successful gains by the movement here, will provide a model and inspiration for youth nationwide. And, as our movement develops, we will open up a whole new chapter in the struggle for equality not only in San Francisco, Oakland, and the Bay Area, but throughout the nation.

STOP THE RESEGREGATION OF SAN FRANCISCO'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
BUILD A NEW YOUTH-LED CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT TO DEFEND INTEGRATION NATIONWIDE!

Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)
Hotline/voicemail: (510) 895-3068
E-mail: bamn1@hotmail.com
Web: http://www.bamn.com
Mail: BAMN / ASUC Box 155 / Berkeley, CA 94720-4510

MOTION TO ORGANIZE SAN FRANCISCO TO DEFEND THE CONSENT DECREE
(Passed by the Student/Teacher/Community Tribunal on May 16, 1999)

WHEREAS:

1. The students of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) are the plaintiffs in the current San Francisco school desegregation case. We have been effectively kept out of our own court suit. We have been kept in the dark about the court proceedings and treated as people devoid of opinions and solutions for the betterment of education within the SFUSD.

2. We are the people who are directly affected by the quality of educational opportunity, the racial and ethnic composition of our schools, and the kind of education provided in the classrooms. We must have not only a voice in but real control over the outcome of the ongoing legal proceedings on whether to maintain or strike down integration in the San Francisco schools.

3. All of the three parties designated to represent our interests - the San Francisco Unified School District, the NAACP, and the Ho plaintiffs - have failed to represent either our collective or individual interests. The SFUSD has allowed the City of San Francisco to lose over $37 million in state funding used over the past several years to help eliminate segregation within the district. The NAACP has allowed black and Latino students to be almost excluded from attendance at Lowell High School beginning with the incoming class of September 1999: only eight black students and seventeen Latino students will be part of a class of about 650 incoming freshmen at Lowell. The Ho plaintiffs allegedly representing the interests of Chinese American students have encouraged the creation of false divisions between Chinese American students and black, Latino, other Asian American, and other minority students. They have promoted the racist and anti-human doctrine that intelligence can be measured by test performance alone and that a standardized test can be used as the full measure of a young person's desire to learn, his or her capabilities, talents, imagination, etc. This right-wing theory, first promoted by former California governor Pete Wilson and UC Regent Ward Connerly, has been used to justify striking down affirmative action programs within the UC system and at other universities throughout the nation.

4. Court-ordered desegregation plans in St. Louis, Buffalo, Boston, Kansas City, and other cities are also in the process of being dismantled. The movement for charter schools and for mayoral take-overs of urban school districts represents another attack against quality public education. The leadership of San Francisco high school students, teachers and their supporters is needed for a successful national fight to defeat both of these attacks.

5. The students and youth of San Francisco must help build a new militant civil rights movement beginning with the defense of equal, quality, and integrated education in San Francisco and extending throughout the nation.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

1. We will mobilize students, youth, teachers, and community supporters to demand that the NAACP and the SFUSD immediately withdraw their support for the current SFUSD/NAACP/Ho court settlement that will effectively end integration within the San Francisco schools.

2. We will continue the process initiated in this tribunal today to make clear to the court and to the people of San Francisco that racist inequality still plagues the schools of San Francisco, causing thousands of black, Latino, and other school children to receive a second-class education. This racist inequality is creating a school district in which separate and unequal education is becoming the norm. Low test scores, high dropout rates, and demoralization among black, Latino, and other students are byproducts of this policy of separate and unequal education. All of San Francisco's students and youth have merit. All deserve the opportunity for an integrated and high-quality education.

3. We will continue the process initiated in this tribunal today to make clear that quality education is impossible to achieve for any student without integration. Only completely integrated schools can result in greater equalization of funding and resources throughout the SFUSD. Full integration of the SFUSD is also necessary to give the students of San Francisco the opportunity to benefit from the vast experience that students from each of San Francisco's separate racial and ethnic communities can bring to a common learning environment.

4. We will continue to build our student-based campaign throughout the summer and early fall against the current resegregationist settlement in order to place students in the best position to intervene and to determine the outcome of the next set of court proceedings in October 1999. The October 1999 court proceedings will determine whether or not to maintain the latest settlement or to restore the former school integration plan referred to as the consent decree.

5. As a part of our campaign, we will attend the School Board meeting on Tuesday, May 25 to demand that the SFUSD rescind its support for the current resegregationist plan. The School Board cannot make the fight for the full integration of the SFUSD if it is unprepared to defend the gains we have already made through the consent decree. All the current proposals, including using socioeconomic factors to determine school assignment, and redistricting schemes, will not achieve integration. Only a vigorous defense of the affirmative action measures contained in the consent decree can prevent the resegregation of the SFUSD.

6. We will build the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) within San Francisco as the real voice and real representative of the interests of San Francisco students and youth. To maintain integration within the City of San Francisco and to win equal, quality, and integrated education throughout San Francisco, we must build our own independent student-based and run organization.