Eli­jah: I was extreme­ly proud to see the stu­dents resist Bet­sy DeVos, despite the admin­is­tra­tion bring­ing her against their will and hav­ing her give a com­mence­ment speech instead of actu­al­ly being there to dia­logue about her con­stant destruc­tion of edu­ca­tion, pri­mar­i­ly pub­lic edu­ca­tion. So it was great to see the stu­dents stand up against that. I was real­ly inspired by it. I was real­ly hap­py to see that they didn’t just allow her to come there and it be busi­ness as usual.

Wel­come to Inter­views for Resis­tance. Since elec­tion night 2016, the streets of the Unit­ed States have rung with resis­tance. Peo­ple all over the coun­try have wok­en up with the con­vic­tion that they must do some­thing to fight inequal­i­ty in all its forms. But many are won­der­ing what it is they can do. In this series, we’ll be talk­ing with expe­ri­enced orga­niz­ers, trou­ble­mak­ers and thinkers who have been doing the hard work of fight­ing for a long time. They’ll be shar­ing their insights on what works, what does­n’t, what’s changed and what is still the same.

Sarah: She had made some par­tic­u­lar­ly, shall we say, igno­rant com­ments about the his­to­ry of uni­ver­si­ties like Bethune-Cook­man in the past, right?

Eli­jah: Right. Her say­ing that HBCUs [his­tor­i­cal­ly black col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties] are [the] def­i­n­i­tion of school choice is just not true at all. It is a choice [between] decid­ing not to be edu­cat­ed or being edu­cat­ed. If that is what you mean by choice, then yes, that was the choice that was giv­en to folks. The insti­tu­tion­al racism that didn’t allow folks to receive high­er edu­ca­tion was the cause for the birth of his­tor­i­cal­ly black col­leges and for her to make it seem like it was the same as choos­ing between a pri­vate school and a pub­lic school is just real­ly dis­heart­en­ing and just shows her lack of under­stand­ing of his­to­ry and also even edu­ca­tion as an insti­tu­tion. That some­one who is going to be the [edu­ca­tion] sec­re­tary, it is very dis­heart­en­ing that she doesn’t under­stand the his­to­ry of edu­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States nor does she even have the time to want to learn that and actu­al­ly try to bet­ter edu­ca­tion, to just push the same agen­da that she has been push­ing since she was in Michi­gan, just destroy­ing edu­ca­tion because she doesn’t see edu­ca­tion as a pub­lic good, but more as a commodity.

Sarah: I thought the com­ments from the school admin­is­tra­tion were inter­est­ing, say­ing that they need­ed to make friends with this admin­is­tra­tion. And, of course, there was that pho­to op of [Don­ald] Trump with HBCU presidents.

Eli­jah: Right. They are always very good with optics and they under­stand sym­bol­ism. They will take the pic­ture with us even though they invite us to a meet­ing that actu­al­ly dis­cuss­es real­ly noth­ing and then turn around in the same breath and say some­thing like, ​“Oh, well, look­ing into it now, that fund­ing that we said we were going to do may be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.” They present them­selves as one way, but in the same breath do some­thing that is com­plete­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry to what they just did. This has pret­ty much been his whole admin­is­tra­tion. So, why [would] we think it would be any dif­fer­ent with us, I don’t know. That is just the game that he plays. It is the whole, ​“Oh, I am with you,” and then in the same breath, ​“I am against you.” It is a tac­tic they have been doing for years and Trump has real­ly mas­tered that and I feel like he has been doing well, trick­ing peo­ple with his false narratives.

Sarah: In the same week, we saw Paul Ryan show up at Harlem Suc­cess Acad­e­my, a char­ter school in New York and also greet­ed with a lot of protest. It is inter­est­ing to look at these two events together.

Eli­jah: That is exact­ly what I am say­ing. After you get every­body with the hor­ri­ble health­care thing that he just did in the House, you run and try to have Bet­sy DeVos go down to speak to Bethune and then you have Paul Ryan go to the Harlem Suc­cess Acad­e­my to make it seem like you care about black and brown folks, espe­cial­ly in edu­ca­tion. These are some of the shin­ing exam­ples of things that you don’t real­ly support.

Even with the char­ter school piece, char­ter schools work on very small scales, but not up to large scale. When you try to actu­al­ly pri­va­tize schools, which is what folks have been doing, then it makes edu­ca­tion a com­mod­i­ty. Then, it is edu­ca­tion only to come to grad­u­a­tion. You real­ly min­i­mal­ize and triv­i­al­ize it so that you can sell it to folks. In order for you to sell some­thing to some­one, you have to make them think that your ser­vice is need­ed. To make your ser­vices need­ed, you do all types of things that have been hap­pen­ing in edu­ca­tion over the years. It is always the first thing they cut to bal­ance the bud­get. It is always hor­ri­bly under­fund­ed. Then, some­body pops up and will be like, ​“Oh, well, we should grade schools,” and ​“Oh, well, the schools that we go to are dif­fer­ent than the schools that you go to. You can have the same type of school that we have.”

What has been hap­pen­ing in edu­ca­tion over the last 20 – 30 years — peo­ple talk a lot about the prison-indus­tri­al com­plex and about the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal-indus­tri­al com­plex, but folks don’t talk enough about the edu­ca­tion­al-indus­tri­al com­plex. Edu­ca­tion is where all these things come togeth­er and that is what we have been hav­ing for the last 20-some­thing years is an edu­ca­tion­al-indus­tri­al com­plex where you have all these busi­ness­es come in try­ing to pro­vide a ser­vice and real­ly pri­va­tize edu­ca­tion, which is our last pub­lic good.

Repub­li­cans have been doing this for the last 20 or so years. Espe­cial­ly DeVos. Michi­gan is one of the worst states when it comes to edu­ca­tion. I have vis­it­ed those schools and those com­mu­ni­ties and when you destroy a school, you destroy that com­mu­ni­ty. You can go to any com­mu­ni­ty in Amer­i­ca and I can tell you how good that com­mu­ni­ty is doing based off of the lev­el of edu­ca­tion in that com­mu­ni­ty. So, it is also, by design, destroy­ing our com­mu­ni­ties and also using them for jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in the areas where they do take over these schools and char­ter­ize them, all these new high-ris­es go up, pub­lic hous­ing goes away, and it is sup­posed to bring in mixed-income [hous­ing] and these oth­er words that they love to use, but real­ly it is push­ing out the poor peo­ple that live there, bring­ing in new folks, and the school is used as the hook to bring folks togeth­er. Edu­ca­tion is a huge piece that we just haven’t real­ly been talk­ing about enough in a real way that has real­ly been affect­ing, espe­cial­ly our com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. The destruc­tion of pub­lic edu­ca­tion is a direct cor­re­la­tion. All these things are direct­ly tied to it.

Sarah: It is inter­est­ing when you say that com­mod­i­fy­ing edu­ca­tion makes it all about that grad­u­a­tion moment. When you think about it that way, watch­ing the stu­dents turn their back on Bet­sy DeVos is also their turn­ing their back on that idea that this is just about get­ting your degree.

Eli­jah: Absolute­ly. I thought that was huge. That is what they are always try­ing to make it seem, that the end goal is grad­u­a­tion. But grad­u­a­tion is just one com­po­nent. That grad­u­a­tion sim­ply says that you are able to fol­low a process and able to do the things nec­es­sary to get a piece of paper that says you are teach­able and you have knowl­edge in a spe­cif­ic sub­ject. Usu­al­ly, that is what a bachelor’s is. For that to be the end-all, be-all of edu­ca­tion is real­ly sell­ing edu­ca­tion very short.

That is an extreme­ly busi­nesslike way of think­ing about some­thing, where it is just the bot­tom line. Edu­ca­tion in itself doesn’t have a bot­tom line like with busi­ness. With busi­ness you have a bot­tom line. It is a prof­it motive. Then, if you flip that and com­mod­i­fy edu­ca­tion, then the prof­it motive would be grad­u­a­tion. That is the bot­tom line. There is noth­ing else bet­ter than graduation.

But, we all know in edu­ca­tion you learn much more. You learn social norms, you learn things about your­self, how to fig­ure out how you are going to move and act in this world and be in this world. Through edu­ca­tion, you learn how to be social and make friends. You even learn the bad things. You learn about the bul­lies, you learn about racism. It doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be taught to you, you can see it when you go to the school­yard and how seg­re­gat­ed they are. You actu­al­ly learn every­thing about the world through edu­ca­tion. So, for you to try to bot­tom-line it, lets me know that some­body is prof­it­ing off if it. That some­one has a motive, they want a prof­it and sim­ply make edu­ca­tion about grad­u­a­tion. But, you go to these Ivy League schools and some of the most ​“suc­cess­ful” peo­ple didn’t even grad­u­ate. So, if the bot­tom line is grad­u­a­tion and some of the most suc­cess­ful peo­ple in the world nev­er grad­u­at­ed, then edu­ca­tion clear­ly must be big­ger than that. But, why is it that it is being pushed to cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties that this is the only thing that mat­ters in education?

Sarah: One of the things that I have watched over the last few years is there has been a shift away from unequiv­o­cal, bipar­ti­san sup­port for char­ter schools. That there real­ly is a grow­ing move­ment in this coun­try that sup­ports pub­lic schools, that real­ly is will­ing to fight for pub­lic schools. I won­der if you could talk about that a lit­tle bit.

Eli­jah: I am a part of AROS, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools. It is made up of par­ents, com­mu­ni­ty groups, teach­ers unions, oth­er social jus­tice non-prof­its that are all about reclaim­ing pub­lic schools and hav­ing the type of schools that our com­mu­ni­ties deserve. That is an ongo­ing move­ment that has been hap­pen­ing. We have been hav­ing walk-ins where folks from the com­mu­ni­ty, unions, par­ents, stu­dents, all walk into schools instead of walk­ing out. The sym­bol­ism behind it is that you are walk­ing in to reclaim your school because a lot of pub­lic schools aren’t friend­ly to the pub­lic, unfor­tu­nate­ly. Like, try­ing to get into some of these pub­lic schools almost feels like you are try­ing to get into jail, or some­thing to that effect, because there are so many restric­tions and the way it is run doesn’t seem as wel­com­ing. Not the type of school that folks want.

We are envi­sion­ing get­ting folks to envi­sion that these are your schools. They are from your com­mu­ni­ties. They are paid by your tax dol­lars. We should have ful­ly fund­ed pub­lic schools and we should have the type of schools that we want. Teach­ers shouldn’t wor­ry about hav­ing to teach to a test. Stu­dents have the pres­sure of these stan­dard­ized tests that we know are biased. All these things. Wrap-around ser­vices, because a lot of these com­mu­ni­ties are impov­er­ished. Hav­ing health ser­vices in these schools helps the sur­round­ing community.

We know what type of schools that we need and we are try­ing to get. It is a grow­ing move­ment of folks claim­ing and demand­ing the type of schools that we want and not allow­ing them to pri­va­tize them and destroy pub­lic edu­ca­tion. If they destroy pub­lic edu­ca­tion, if they pri­va­tize it, then we know what hap­pens when things get pri­va­tized. That doesn’t mean bet­ter. In most cas­es, it usu­al­ly means worse. Now, some­one has own­er­ship over it and they can decide and they can dis­crim­i­nate at their leisure because they own it. We have to keep edu­ca­tion pub­lic so that the peo­ple own it, so that we can decide what type of schools and what type of edu­ca­tion that we want.

With the rise of ​“school choice” and vouch­ers, they are try­ing to take edu­ca­tion down that pri­va­ti­za­tion route because they are reward­ed from it. The mon­ey goes into their hands. They own the text­books. They own the tests. They even own the equip­ment that goes in the schools, all the dif­fer­ent soft­ware. It is a bil­lion-dol­lar indus­try. I tell folks, you spend half a tril­lion dol­lars as a nation on edu­ca­tion. That is mon­ey that won’t go away. So, of course, cor­po­ra­tions are always try­ing to find ways to get their hands on that type of mon­ey, because that mon­ey is going to come in.

We have got to fight for it and we have got to fight for it now. We have seen what hap­pens when you take away the fund­ing from these pub­lic schools and you put them in these char­ter schools that don’t have the same account­abil­i­ty. Some of these schools are fly-by-nights that are just lit­er­al­ly there to take mon­ey. Oth­er schools lit­er­al­ly destroy these kids’ con­fi­dence by con­stant­ly over-test­ing them, burn­ing out the teacher work­force because teach­ers are held to these ridicu­lous mar­ket-based stan­dards where their whole eval­u­a­tion is based off of stu­dent test per­for­mance and they under­stand that these stu­dents are com­ing from pover­ty, so it is not that they can’t under­stand and process infor­ma­tion, but they are deal­ing with so much that they are not always nec­es­sar­i­ly there. It is a lose-lose cycle for every­one. And then, they are deem­ing these folks as fail­ures on top of that. No one wants to be asso­ci­at­ed with any­thing that is failing.

There is a huge move­ment right now, like I was say­ing. AROS are not the only ones. There are oth­er dif­fer­ent coali­tions, but all of us hope­ful­ly are com­ing togeth­er and are work­ing togeth­er around demand­ing the type of pub­lic schools that our com­mu­ni­ties deserve.

Sarah: I was just think­ing about even the grad­u­ate stu­dent teach­ers who are hunger strike at Yale. This real­ly is every­where, even at the rich­est uni­ver­si­ties, you still have teach­ers fight­ing to get paid.

Eli­jah: I am not as abreast on that, I can’t real­ly speak on it, but I def­i­nite­ly sup­port what they are doing and bring­ing atten­tion to that cause. It just speaks vol­umes that even at Yale … When you think about inte­gra­tion, the only lev­el of edu­ca­tion that real­ly didn’t get inte­grat­ed was Ivy League schools. State schools and oth­er schools kind of got inte­grat­ed, but real­ly, that was a mon­e­tary thing. Tele­vi­sion came around, they were able to use that to get prof­its off folks through the ath­let­ic pro­gram. But in your Ivy League schools, whether it was sports or aca­d­e­mics, they still have real­ly nev­er inte­grat­ed tru­ly. They are still pre­dom­i­nant­ly white insti­tu­tions that folks of col­or still strug­gle to actu­al­ly be a part of because they don’t real­ly allow the space in a real way. I think what the Yale grad­u­ate stu­dents are doing is awe­some, to real­ly try to con­tin­ue to shed light on that.

Ivy League schools are the place where lit­er­al­ly the folks that run this world and cre­ate jobs for folks come from. None of the folks that look like me are there then that just lit­er­al­ly means that we are going to be work­ing class forever.

Sarah: We are look­ing at the Trump admin­is­tra­tion on so many lev­els: health­care, immi­gra­tion, depor­ta­tions, pris­ons and polic­ing, and now the FBI this week. Edu­ca­tion often has slipped off the radar with this admin­is­tra­tion. It would be great to hear a lit­tle bit more about what is going on with the edu­ca­tion move­ment right now. Where are there strug­gles that peo­ple should know about around the issue of pub­lic schools?

Eli­jah: That is the thing, edu­ca­tion inter­sects with all of those things. We talk about polic­ing, the polic­ing that hap­pens to folks in the com­mu­ni­ty, they get their first taste of that in schools. It is fun­ny how the whole zero tol­er­ance poli­cies came about was because of what hap­pened after Columbine when dis­grun­tled stu­dents decid­ed to, unfor­tu­nate­ly, take the lives of oth­ers and them­selves, but that was in sub­ur­bia in Col­orado. But most of the secu­ri­ty and things and mea­sures took place in inner-city schools. The places that actu­al­ly were the most affect­ed by the zero tol­er­ance poli­cies were places where none of that had ever tak­en place. When you go to the Detroits, the Chica­gos, and Philadel­phias and Bal­ti­mores, they have all these met­al detec­tors and things like that — but if you go to Columbine, I have been to Col­orado, there are no met­al detec­tors in those schools, but that is the school where it happened.

It makes you also think of, ​“Who are we polic­ing and who are we pro­fil­ing and who are we pro­tect­ing?” You hear these hor­ri­ble sto­ries about school resource offi­cers con­stant­ly slam­ming kids and things like that. When you look at those videos, the thing that is con­stant is that the per­son that is get­ting slammed is usu­al­ly a per­son of col­or. Whether it is a woman or a man, it is usu­al­ly a per­son of col­or being slammed and it doesn’t usu­al­ly mat­ter the age. I have seen videos of a kid as young as 5 get­ting arrest­ed over a tantrum. A young lady up to 17 – 18 being slammed for being late to class. It varies.

To me, how folks of col­or have been treat­ed in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem is lit­er­al­ly a direct cor­re­la­tion of how we are treat­ed out­side in the com­mu­ni­ty. If we are crim­i­nal­ized in our schools, we are going to be crim­i­nal­ized when we are in our com­mu­ni­ties, as well. There is a correlation.

Then, we talk about the immi­gra­tion piece. That also direct­ly comes into the edu­ca­tion piece. Kids are being picked up, ICE raids are hap­pen­ing at bus stops. Kids are afraid to go to school or walk home from school with their par­ents or have their par­ents come pick them up because lit­er­al­ly they are wait­ing at these bus stops and fol­low­ing kids home because they are pro­fil­ing kids who they think are undoc­u­ment­ed and fol­low­ing them home and deport­ing them or their par­ents. That is hap­pen­ing from schools.

Or, you have got chil­dren who are being bul­lied sim­ply because they are Mus­lim or sim­ply because they are Lati­no and things like that. Those things hap­pen in schools. They are a microcosm.

To me, edu­ca­tion is always there. Now, whether it is talked about in a way where folks can see the direct con­nec­tions, that is dif­fer­ent. But, it is very preva­lent in all things. Even with the health­care piece. Most of the folks that need health­care also go to schools that are 95 per­cent or 100 per­cent Title I schools, in high­ly impov­er­ished areas that are all kinds of pushed togeth­er in one area so they are all com­plete­ly under­fund­ed. Those kids, their par­ents, their fam­i­lies are the ones that are suf­fer­ing the most from also this health­care piece. It is just like how now in the school sys­tem where they can do re-zon­ing and make sure all these schools are sup­ple­ment­ed with enough resources for them to be sus­tain­able, but they pur­pose­ly make sure that these schools are high­ly con­cen­trat­ed with pover­ty and then those are the schools that are always sub­ject to low test scores and the schools that need to be improved and things like that. But, if these kids don’t have the resources, you are lit­er­al­ly strip­ping them of their resources that they need and then call­ing them fail­ures and say­ing it is their fault. The same way that they are stripped and they don’t have the ser­vices that they need, it is the same thing that is hap­pen­ing with health­care. The folks that are the most affect­ed, those stu­dents go to those schools, they come from those areas.

All the things, to me, inter­sect at the edu­ca­tion lev­el. You can lit­er­al­ly look at edu­ca­tion and pick an issue and I can tell you how that plays out out­side of the edu­ca­tion are­na. To me, it is piv­otal. And, of course, I am biased because I am an edu­ca­tion orga­niz­er, but I see all the dif­fer­ent par­al­lels and tracks and how they all inter­sect, but we are not nec­es­sar­i­ly talk­ing about it the same way. What we are try­ing to do in the edu­ca­tion move­ment is get our folks to under­stand that. There has been a big effort for us to be a part of the immi­gra­tion fight and the Fight for $15 and the fight for health­care and the fight against polic­ing. We were even part of the big May Day cel­e­bra­tion that hap­pened May 1st where we were with all the dif­fer­ent groups and cel­e­brat­ing not only work­ers’ rights but immi­grant rights, real­ly try­ing to get folks to see that the edu­ca­tion move­ment has always been there, but we are try­ing to be bet­ter allies and make sure that we real­ly see our­selves as a part of the over­all movement.

Sarah: How can peo­ple keep up with you and your work?

Eli­jah: The Face­book page, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, you fol­low us there and get all the updates on what is going on in pub­lic edu­ca­tion around the coun­try. Also, you can fol­low me on Face­book, as well, Eli­jah Arm­strong. You can just type me in and I usu­al­ly pop up.

Inter­views for Resis­tance is a project of Sarah Jaffe, with assis­tance from Lau­ra Feuille­bois and sup­port from the Nation Insti­tute. It is also avail­able as a pod­cast on iTunes. Not to be reprint­ed with­out permission.