"Good things don't come to those who wait. They come to those who agitate!" Julian BOND
On June 6, 1963, President John F. Kennedy stated the following at a speech at San Diego State College (now San Diego State University):
“One of the most impressive, if not the most impressive, accomplishment of this great Golden State has been the recognition by the citizens of this State of the importance of education as the basis for the maintenance of an effective, free society… I do not believe that any State in the Union has given more attention in recent years to educating its citizens to the highest level, doctoral level, in the State colleges, the junior colleges, the high schools, the grade schools. You recognize that a free society places special burdens upon any free citizen. To govern is to choose and the ability to make those choices wise and responsible and prudent requires the best of all of us. No country can possibly move ahead, no free society can possibly be sustained, unless it has an educated citizenry whose qualities of mind and heart permit it to take part in the complicated and increasingly sophisticated decisions that pour not only upon the President and upon the Congress, but upon all the citizens who exercise the ultimate power… In this fortunate State of California the average current expenditure for a boy and girl in the public schools is $515, but in the State of Mississippi it is $230. The average salary for classroom teachers in California is $7,000, while in Mississippi it is $3,600… Such facts, and one could prolong the recital indefinitely, make it clear that American children today do not yet enjoy equal educational opportunities for two primary reasons: one is economic and the other is racial.”
Sadly, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board and more than 50 years later after JFK's San Diego speech, California students are still plagued by stark racial and economic segregation and misguided education reform efforts led by some of the wealthiest people on the planet. California’s once proud, mostly white, public school system was the envy of the globe in the 1950s and 60s but it is now one of the worst in the country and criminally underfunded. In 2004, PBS made a film documentary on California’s public schools appropriately entitled “From First to Worst.” More recently, Education Week’s Quality Counts 2016 report gave California a "F" in School Spending and ranked California just behind Mississippi in "School Finance" despite that:
"California...is the home to more super rich than anywhere else in the country-and it also exhibits the highest poverty rate in the nation, when cost of living is taken into account. Income disparities in the state of California are among the highest in the nation, outpacing such places as Georgia and Mississippi in terms of GINI coefficient, a standard measure of inequality.”
Black and Latino students today make up at least 59.6% of the student population in California. Additionally, 58.6% of the students in California are poor. Like the rest of the country, the public school situation in California is directly related to an important 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In Rodriguez v. San Antonio ISD, the court stated that education is not a fundamental right under the U.S. constitution and reversed a Texas court’s declaration that the unequal local school district financing scheme for Latino and white schools was unconstitutional. The court essentially left the right to education to the mercy of states and their constitutions. California’s Supreme Court did respond positively to Rodriguez in Serrano v. Priest by affirming that the right to education was fundamental and equally protected to all by California’s Constitution. Yet, forty years later, after much legislation, many public referendums, and other high profile lawsuits, California’s students are still denied their right to a quality, free public education. The time has come to give life to lifeless laws by following SNCC's path.
As Rev. James Lawson said during the first SNCC Conference in April of 1960:
“The choice of the nonviolent method, ‘the sit-in’ symbolizes both judgment and promise. It is a judgment upon middle-class conventional, half-way efforts to deal with radical social evil. It is specifically a judgment upon contemporary civil rights attempts…After many court decisions, the deeper south we go…Crisis magazine [published by the NAACP] becomes known as a black ‘bourgeois’ club organ, rather than a forceful instrument of justice. Inter-racial agencies expect to end segregation with discussions and tea. Our best agency (the NAACP) accents fund-raising and court action rather than developing our greatest resource, a people no longer the victims of racial evil who can act in a disciplined manner to implement the constitution…But the sit-in is likewise a sign of promise: God’s promise that if radically Christian methods are adopted the rate of change can be vastly increased.”
Lawson later remarked to the New York Times that “The legal question is not central. There has been a failure to implement legal changes and custom remains unchanged. Unless we are prepared to create the climate . . . the law can never bring victory.”
Nuevo SNCC seeks to create this climate necessary to ensure that the human and constitutional right to quality, free public education is recognized, respected, and protected!
“One of the most impressive, if not the most impressive, accomplishment of this great Golden State has been the recognition by the citizens of this State of the importance of education as the basis for the maintenance of an effective, free society… I do not believe that any State in the Union has given more attention in recent years to educating its citizens to the highest level, doctoral level, in the State colleges, the junior colleges, the high schools, the grade schools. You recognize that a free society places special burdens upon any free citizen. To govern is to choose and the ability to make those choices wise and responsible and prudent requires the best of all of us. No country can possibly move ahead, no free society can possibly be sustained, unless it has an educated citizenry whose qualities of mind and heart permit it to take part in the complicated and increasingly sophisticated decisions that pour not only upon the President and upon the Congress, but upon all the citizens who exercise the ultimate power… In this fortunate State of California the average current expenditure for a boy and girl in the public schools is $515, but in the State of Mississippi it is $230. The average salary for classroom teachers in California is $7,000, while in Mississippi it is $3,600… Such facts, and one could prolong the recital indefinitely, make it clear that American children today do not yet enjoy equal educational opportunities for two primary reasons: one is economic and the other is racial.”
Sadly, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board and more than 50 years later after JFK's San Diego speech, California students are still plagued by stark racial and economic segregation and misguided education reform efforts led by some of the wealthiest people on the planet. California’s once proud, mostly white, public school system was the envy of the globe in the 1950s and 60s but it is now one of the worst in the country and criminally underfunded. In 2004, PBS made a film documentary on California’s public schools appropriately entitled “From First to Worst.” More recently, Education Week’s Quality Counts 2016 report gave California a "F" in School Spending and ranked California just behind Mississippi in "School Finance" despite that:
"California...is the home to more super rich than anywhere else in the country-and it also exhibits the highest poverty rate in the nation, when cost of living is taken into account. Income disparities in the state of California are among the highest in the nation, outpacing such places as Georgia and Mississippi in terms of GINI coefficient, a standard measure of inequality.”
Black and Latino students today make up at least 59.6% of the student population in California. Additionally, 58.6% of the students in California are poor. Like the rest of the country, the public school situation in California is directly related to an important 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In Rodriguez v. San Antonio ISD, the court stated that education is not a fundamental right under the U.S. constitution and reversed a Texas court’s declaration that the unequal local school district financing scheme for Latino and white schools was unconstitutional. The court essentially left the right to education to the mercy of states and their constitutions. California’s Supreme Court did respond positively to Rodriguez in Serrano v. Priest by affirming that the right to education was fundamental and equally protected to all by California’s Constitution. Yet, forty years later, after much legislation, many public referendums, and other high profile lawsuits, California’s students are still denied their right to a quality, free public education. The time has come to give life to lifeless laws by following SNCC's path.
As Rev. James Lawson said during the first SNCC Conference in April of 1960:
“The choice of the nonviolent method, ‘the sit-in’ symbolizes both judgment and promise. It is a judgment upon middle-class conventional, half-way efforts to deal with radical social evil. It is specifically a judgment upon contemporary civil rights attempts…After many court decisions, the deeper south we go…Crisis magazine [published by the NAACP] becomes known as a black ‘bourgeois’ club organ, rather than a forceful instrument of justice. Inter-racial agencies expect to end segregation with discussions and tea. Our best agency (the NAACP) accents fund-raising and court action rather than developing our greatest resource, a people no longer the victims of racial evil who can act in a disciplined manner to implement the constitution…But the sit-in is likewise a sign of promise: God’s promise that if radically Christian methods are adopted the rate of change can be vastly increased.”
Lawson later remarked to the New York Times that “The legal question is not central. There has been a failure to implement legal changes and custom remains unchanged. Unless we are prepared to create the climate . . . the law can never bring victory.”
Nuevo SNCC seeks to create this climate necessary to ensure that the human and constitutional right to quality, free public education is recognized, respected, and protected!