“Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.”
– African Proverb I first saw in the email postscript of the great Dr. Brandi Blessett
What do the People do when truth itself does not matter, but only the words of those with institutional and economic power? How does an accurate and complete accounting of events get out, particularly within the presence of disparate power disparities? Who determines which stories are worthy of being shared? Who is the audience receiving and interpreting shared events? And whose interpretation of events matters?
Throughout my time as an educator and advocate for public education in Camden, I’ve asked myself these questions time and time again as our community is at increasing risk of losing what many folks have the freedom to take for granted – public access and availability to democratic public education. To be clear, our Camden school district is on the precipice of being gone for good – by design. And while this would surely be newsworthy were similar events to unfold in neighboring towns like Collingswood, Audubon, or Cherry Hill, that this is happening in the community I call home along with my roughly 74,000 fellow Black and Latinx neighbors, it is troubling this occurring without the public scrutiny and centering it rightfully deserves.
To this present reality the common refrain among concerned residents often goes something like this: “we have to organize the community”; we need to “knock on doors and inform the parents”; “we gotta get the word out.” Conceptually, I understand the emotive value this shared phraseology has in encouraging folks that there is something that can be done to take such matters into their own hands; that there still exists an opportunity for self- determination in shaping what our school system, and more broadly, our community will look like in future. In my heart, however, I’m aware that a different, more troubling reality is among us: that Camden’s residents, much like others around the country and world, are fighting for democratic rights within a perfect storm of decimated newsrooms and concentrated corporate and political power that have rendered the voices of those shouting for justice, mute. These days the Narrative and press releases of and from the Powerful is the news that is consumed by, informs, and drives the public. While there is little doubt that problems of messaging, framing, and conveying events has always favored those with the most privilege, in our current age where money buys greater influence in news coverage and public relations, those with little of both money and influence are faced with being silenced – or having their message marginalized to the benefit of those with the power to exploit.
In a recent interview I conducted for a book I am working on, one former Camden City School District board member noted: “One thing that caught my attention almost immediately in a meeting I was in, was that following the state takeover, they budgeted for public relations…media relations. I thought wow, all this is happening and this is one of the first items you guys are budgeting for. We never really had that before.” That new expenditure by Christie’s DoE was calculated. The Camden version of the New Orleans Miracle has to be conveyed in a certain way; that Governor Christie’s (politically opportunistic) takeover of the Camden school district was necessary, that the takeover was initiated to benefit of our city’s helpless and vulnerable children (not at all) who “were trapped in public schools that were terrible places” to endure, and that parent’s only saving grace is “choice” embodied in the hedge fund supported corporate charter schools (renaissance schools) that were imposed on Camden by a politically complicit mayor and legislature; that the city’s teachers – primarily Black teachers – simply didn’t care for Camden’s students enough and weren’t up to the task; and that the stripping of residents’ democratic rights was for their own benefit. Sadly, this Narrative that has been repeated ad nauseum in newspapers, District press releases, political mailers, and on the news since 2013, and like most lies that gain traction after sustained repetition, the Narrative has become accepted as true by many both in this community and outside of it.
To be sure, many parents who are exhibiting choice here are doing so out of genuine hope and desperation that if there is any truth to the “American Dream” and social mobility, that getting a “good education” will be their child’s best shot to live their best lives as adults. In that, parents’ actions are understandable, which is why I’ve never stated that parents should not have the right to choose whatever they deem to be the best educational setting available. But what has been happening here in Camden, in truth, is far more nefarious than even those parents and the broader public are aware of. A massive redistribution of millions of publicly accountable dollars toward less accountable opacity is happening in Camden right now thanks to the Urban Hope Act which the Narrative praises. A slew of pre-approved and pre-determined publicly funded, privately operated (“renaissance”) schools are opening without a demonstrated need, while public schools that are educating hundreds of students per building, are being systematically shuttered denying hundreds of parents the same choices the Narrative claims to espouse. Performance on standardized tests does not reflect what the Narrative claims it does, student learning or future success in college, but is actually a direct indicator of one of two things: family income and/or exorbitant time preparing for tests – the exact kind of education that does not happen in college. But the reliance on standardized test to give the imagery of academic rigor or school success does just enough to satiate suburban parents concerns that their taxpayer dollars are funding “quality schools” while providing the very people who lobbied to use standardized tests as the metric of school quality, the ammunition they’ve sought since 1983 to privatize and profit from public education. In short, it’s all bullshit.
Through it all in Camden however, folks who have been active in our schools and in public education and know the truth, have been fighting with every tool in their obsolete tool kit. Petitioning. Door Knocking. Rallying. Holding press conferences. Writing op/eds. Phone banking. Participating in school board and city council meetings. Demonstrating at the state capitol. All the things folks were told to do if they wanted to see democratic change take hold, they’ve done…but Narrative combined with the political and economic power of the few to drive it are reigning here. So what do folks do when the truth of their struggle and their reality runs counter to the Narrative, yet seems to not matter?
(These questions aren’t rhetorical by the way.)
