The Choice is Yours: Reform or Revolution on Behalf of Children
Graphic by Habib Salami.
BY RANN MILLER
A year before his assassination, Dr. King said that he “was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such,” because he witnessed the evaporation of President Johnson’s priority on the war on poverty for the war in Vietnam.
The 21st century has seen a repeat of history.
A few years ago, the war on COVID resulted in a program aimed at meeting the needs of all Americans, particularly children from poor, underserved, and oppressed communities. But national priorities have shifted from helping to harming that constituency at home and a similar one abroad.
Abroad, the U.S. is involved in numerous military conflicts, including civil wars throughout the SWANA (Southwest Asia and Northern Africa) region, Ukraine’s war with Russia, and the genocide of the Palestinians. Internally, masked ICE agents raid communities of color, various executive orders have rolled back civil rights protections, and universities are subject to having funding withheld for engaging in anything labeled as DEI.
The latest strike against the people is the Trump Administration’s withholding of federal funds from school districts nationwide, in addition to its aim to dismantle the Department of Education, which was recently supported by a decision from the Supreme Court. Why? Because the administration believed it had found instances of federal dollars being “grossly misused to subsidize a radical left-wing agenda.”
A casualty of the move is students nationwide who attend after-school programs as part of 21st Century Community Learning Centers. Additionally, the Trump Administration secured congressional approval to cut $9 billion in funding for NPR and PBS.
These actions are invariably a heavy blow in the war against the people.
The Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) is a federally funded out-of-school-time program that provides academic support and enrichment activities to students after school and during the summer. I have had the honor of leading several of these programs throughout the South Jersey Region as a director.
These programs are a mighty benefit to traditionally underserved students in high-poverty, low-performing schools.
Students who attend shows exhibit improved academic and social skills, as well as enhanced school attendance. Seventeen of the state’s top 25 municipalities with the highest poverty rates offer such programming, serving well over 6,000 students. 21st CCLC programs in Camden City, where I currently teach and which has the state’s second-highest poverty rate, serve over 800 students, representing $1.35 million in funding per year.
Thanks to the advocacy of educators and a lawsuit by 24 states, the Trump Administration has allowed the release of $1.3 billion in 21st CCLC funding to local education agencies (LEAs). Additional pressure, stemming from the attention to the Epstein files, is likely responsible for the Trump administration’s release of the remaining withheld funds.
Had funding been withheld from these programs, it would sever the ties supporting Black and Latino/a/x academic success. However, other ties supporting this constituency remain in jeopardy as $5.5 billion remains withheld. And since the Department of Education’s future remains in flux, 21st CCLC programming will likely continue to face serious threats of being defunded.
Sadly, you can’t have quality education content after school AND at home on television. You can only have one or the other.
If you’re like me, you grew up watching PBS. As a kid, I transitioned from “Zoobilee Zoo” and “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” to “Square One” and “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” But I never outgrew Sesame Street. Count Von Count, Elmo, or Cookie Monster could never be irrelevant… even at 42 years old.
Sesame Street, a show deeply rooted in Black culture and born out of the War on Poverty, was explicitly created to help Black and Latino children in urban areas who lacked access to quality preschool education. But like the war on poverty, Sesame Street, and Black and Latino by extension, became a casualty of “funding priorities,” being forced to find a home on subscription-based streaming platforms.
Public broadcast television is free.
For years, data-based advocacy was the strategy used to convince Congress to continue funding PBS (and NPR). However, the war against the Department of Education has yielded data collection cancellations, severely harming advocacy efforts on behalf of the most vulnerable student populations. Now, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down.
These realities for Black children, and other children of color — particularly from indigent communities — which include funding threats for teaching the history of genocide, enslavement, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism in the U.S., are proof of the war being waged against them. Redistributing tax dollars from these communities to support imperialist aims that include genocide, to expand American hegemony in the SWANA region, and enrich the wealthy must harken us to the words of Dr. King, that we as a nation need a revolution of values:
“On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
Americans are good at philanthropy. When policy fails people, we look to philanthropic gestures from corporations, athletes, and entertainers to fill the gaps … and we applaud them. However, philanthropy isn’t enough.
What is needed is a shift from what Dr. King called a thing-oriented society to a people-oriented society. Philanthropy doesn’t demand open mouths, only open wallets, and while money talks, it’s never been louder than activism amongst the rank and file.
The people must choose between reform and revolution.
My message to the people is to choose revolution — revolution in the mind, displayed through advocacy and activism. We must speak up and speak out, using the vehicles of agitation and protest to draw the state’s attention.
To the state, my message is to heed the peaceful revolution of the people, which you demand of them as you thrust the violence of public policy and law enforcement upon them, and meet their needs through policy. Because, in the words of John F. Kennedy, if you make peaceful revolution impossible, you’ll only make violent revolution inevitable.
The choice is yours.
BIO: Rann Miller is a writer, author, and educator. A graduate of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Rann teaches AP United States History, is the author of Resistance Stories from Black History for Kids, and is an opinion columnist, featured in various news outlets exploring the intersections of race, education, politics, culture and history. You can follow on “X” @RealRannMiller, on IG, and TikTok @realrannmiller.
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