Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx

Chapter Eight. Commitment and Commencement

Chapter Eight Commitment and Commencement All of the social change organizations (SCOs) in the present study sowed and reaped rewards for their efforts in local education reform, and all of them received media attention for it. Outlets as varied as the New York Post, the New York Times, City Limits, the Christian Science Monitor, and National Public Radio chronicled various campaigns for greater funding, better teacher training, and greater parental voice in school governance. A quick glance at these articles would suggest that the Bronx chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Northwest Bronx Clergy and Community Coalition (NWBCCC), Mothers on the Move (MOM), and Sistas and Brothas United (SBU) performed similar work, and indeed, some of their campaigns overlapped. Further, a lot of the keywords used in these articles were the same: accountability, education reform, school reform, social justice for the Bronx, and so on. A closer look, however, yields faint hints of some of the lessons covered in this book—that these organizations tackled different aspects of school reform , that they utilized different strategies in their campaigns, and that, ultimately, their campaigns eventually led them to different ends as well as different means. Through an investigation of their tool kits, this study has examined how and why this happened. Commitment and Commencement 187 The practices that marked commitment and participation in Alinskyite and Freirean SCOs, primarily described in chapters 3 and 4, formed distinct tool kits. When put into action, these tool kits revealed different capacities for policy formulation–oriented versus policy adoption–oriented political strategies, different embedded preferences for collaboration or confrontation , and different ways to address (or gently tiptoe around) issues of race and ethnicity. Through dynamic activities like extensive recruitment or conflict resolution, intense shared experiences like accountability sessions or deeply personal conversations, and high dues payments or peer tutoring and media literacy classes, the four Bronx education organizing groups revealed not only disparate cultural practices, but different assumptions, preferences, and strengths in their political campaigns. An Ever-Changing Epilogue In the months immediately following this book’s fieldwork, ACORN sponsored large-scale events regionally and nationally. While the 2004 presidential election results were disappointing for the organization, which endorsed the Democratic Party candidate via its political action committee affiliate, ACORN succeeded in registering over one million new voters, hosting numerous rallies, and helping to approve a referendum raising the minimum wage in Florida.1 Locally, ACORN Bronx continued to contribute to citywide campaigns for affordable housing and regional alliances for New York City school funding. However,ACORN also gathered some negative attention, with articles about its tenuous role as both a Department of Housing and Urban Development–sponsored landlord as well as a tenant activist organization in media outlets such as the New York Times.2 In some ways, this mixed media coverage echoes lessons found in this book, that in its quest for a large support base and political power, ACORN Bronx struggled to navigate nuances in the terrains of substantive leadership-driven initiatives, education policy, and radical social change. The NWBCCC continued to integrate its education and immigrant campaigns across neighborhoods and official issue categories, scoping out and promoting community-based land use on vacant lots and at the Kingsbridge Armory. Although the plan it developed with architects and planners from the Pratt Institute was ultimately rejected, policy makers cited pressure from the NWBCCC as one of the reasons they finally made an official call for proposals for the armory’s redevelopment. 188 Chapter Eight The NWBCCC also expanded its campaign against overcrowding, and for adequate funding and school construction under the city’s capital plan. For example, after a small, music-themed school was forcibly moved from one large high school building to another without notice, the parents contacted the NWBCCC to help them negotiate for a permanent, adequate space for the students, who take upright basses, cellos, and other instruments to and from school every day. The NWBCCC helped the parents at the Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music to join forces with other parents, at both small and “regular” comprehensive high schools, in fighting overcrowding overall. This received coverage by all of the New York television network news organizations, as well as major periodicals.3 The NWBCCC also expanded its efforts to collaborate with other SCOs, including its affiliate, SBU. During this time, ACORN Bronx and...