Partial Transcript:
“This privatization of Dyett calls into question the intention of the privatization movement. It’s really colonialism. It is removing the right of people to control the institutions that affect their lives. Our communities are defined by outside forces. And so the people, the interests that closed all those schools – Rahm Emanuel is not the leader of that. He’s just the trigger, he is the initiator of it.
They view our children through a lens that is based on profits and based on racism. They don’t see our children and see the genius and the strength that children growing up in the inner city have to have; or the resilience they have to have; the creativity that we have to have; the how to make something out of nothing that we have to have; the endurance that we have to have; the ability to reconcile unbelievable conditions and still look up and see the sun and smile.
That lens is a lens that loves our children.
But to see our children and to see inmates, to see our children and to see people that are less than you, or less than anyone else, has driven a lot of the policies that have us on a hunger strike for twenty days.
For Chicago Public Schools to have charlatans standing up there, talking about the new Dyett High School, has only fueled our resolve. And so we are very confident that we are going to win this fight, and we want this to energize people around the country to say that we don’t have to play by the privatizer’s rule, or the dominant culture’s rule.
They know we are going to do sit ins. We have to be willing to fight for our children. Peacefully, but we have to be able to use every resource within our abilities to say you’ve crossed the line.
Not one more child – not one more child.”
Jitu Brown – September 5, 2015
Day 20 of the #FightForDyett hunger strike
Interviewed by NPE Executive Director Robin Hiller
State of Education/1030 KVOI Arizona Radio
