This Weekend, the national board of the NAACP ratified the proposal from their members to call for a moratorium on charter school expansion.  We enthusiastically applaud this decision, which is in the greatest civil rights tradition of national policy advocacy rooted in grassroots realities.

As community organizers, teachers, students and community members we have felt the sting of inequity in public education go unrecognized by school boards mutated by corporate interest.  We have seen thousands upon thousands of parents, students and teachers plead for support instead of elimination, warning of the dangers of closing schools and the relationships being severed; to no avail.  We have suffered while corporate school "reformers" operate as colonizers in our communities, leaving us voiceless as education entrepreneurs gorge themselves on our public schools under the illusion of school choice.  Our over 40,000 members have spoken.  We want the choice of a great neighborhood school within walking distance of our homes.  That message is spreading and we appreciate the NAACP and the national Black Lives Matter Movement for hearing the call from our communities.

We must organize an all-out assault on inequity in public education.  We are clear that in Black and Brown communities across America, there is no school choice.  That choice has been snatched from us and it is a violation of our human rights.  We have been victimized, but we are not passive victims.  In many of our communities regular people are organizing to win sustainable, high quality K-12 systems of education.  To borrow from the late, great organizer Ella Baker; "Until the education of Black children, Black mother's sons and daughters is as important as the education of white children, white mother's sons and daughters; we who believe in freedom will not rest until it comes."  The struggle continues!

 

Read the full press release  here