Sometimes well-meaning people, in an attempt to help out with issues dealing with poverty or racism, can make things worse by being condescending, by missing the humanity involved, and by missing current and past policies that directly led to present problems.

In Tucson we have one such person, a well-meaning white liberal who ironically has a “racial justice” program under her command, but when it comes down to tough choices, sides with the ones causing the problem over the ones fighting the problem.

At the YWCA in Tucson, one can write poetry and artistically express themselves and how they have to deal with racism in Tucson, but heaven-forbid they actually get involved in the most effective way possible, through direct political action using the history of civil disobedience as a guide.

Some of the UNIDOS students were associated with the YWCA, and this relationship was even brought up in the Ethnic Studies court hearing in Phoenix while TUSD superintendent and former Vice-President of Tucson’s 1% club SALC, John Pedicone was on the stand.

What UNIDOS did was the most effective protest of the year in Tucson. A vote was going to take place to strip American History / Mexican American perspectives classes of the graduation credit they provide by satisfying all state standards, and that vote was going to take place on April 26th. Month after month UNIDOS spoke at the call to the audience, and they were ignored.

So they made their voices heard!

And to this day, those classes exist and the vote never took place.

The following week another vote was attempted, as bigotry keeps trying, and seven women were arrested at the direction of John Pedicone. One of the arrested was a 69-year old Mexican American History professor who was trying to read “Letter from a Birmingham prison” by Martin Luther King.

John Pedicone had her arrested.

Seven empowered women standing up for racism and justice against John Pedicone and he had them all arrested.

This sounds exactly what the YWCA would stand up for right? Women’s rights, minority rights, and certainly support their UNIDOS students and empowered women trying to read MLK in front of John Pedicone trying to eliminate racism?

Eliminating racism.
Empowering women.
YWCA Tucson

Not executive director Janet Marcotte, who called the UNIDOS action a “gift to Tom Horne” and who immediately defended John Pedicone no matter what. Women arrested, brown kids beat outside of TUSD; Janet Marcotte stands by her man.

Later that month Pedicone’s cabinet would reprimand the MAS director, and over the summer institute policies that cut MAS enrollment in half… Marcotte still stands with the 1% over minorities.

To this day Pedicone, through his assistant superintendents, continues the assault on Latinas, and will the executive director of the YWCA, home to racial justice programs, when it comes down to make real choices that affect real people, choose the racial justice and women in Tucson over the white male from Oro Valley?

Are you kidding me? White privilege does not work that way.

And that’s why many in Tucson are boycotting the YWCA and will no longer be associated with it.

To eliminate racism in TUSD, you start with getting rid of John Pedicone who is doing more damage.

Choosing John Pedicone over UNIDOS, MAS, and Save Ethnic Studies is the wrong choice, and history books will remember how sometimes white liberal Democrats continue in the tradition of other white liberal Democrats in making things worse for minorities.

From poverty pimp Janet Marcotte to “poverty porn” produced by ABC’s Diane Sawyer… maybe they are trying to help, but maybe they should also stop “helping” and let others provide real help.

Perhaps they are both well-meaning, but sometimes you and your friends are part of the problem, and then what are you going to do?

Side with minorities over SALC? Power and privilege don’t work that way, but luckily now we know which side of the power and privilege line some people stand on.

Then again, maybe the more racism TUSD produces, the longer executive director Janet Marcotte will have a job… promoting Pedicone is job security for a poverty pimp?

Last month ABC’s 20/20 aired a special they called “Children of the Plains,” that portrayed the Lakota Indian reservation as a place that only dealt with crime, unemployment, alcoholism, overcrowded trailers and crumbling schools.

On Monday, young Native American students from Rosebud, South Dakota released a short video that challenged the claims made by “Children of the plains.”

“I know what you probably think of us…we saw the special too. Maybe you saw a picture, or read an article. But we want you to know, we’re more than that…We have so much more than poverty.”

“The stories are manipulative to the point of tears—literally,” wrote Rob Schmidt on Indian Country about the show. “A boy cries because his mother is an alcoholic. A girl cries because she tried to commit suicide. The school principal, an old lady in a motorized chair, cries because her work is so difficult.”

Schmidt argues the ABC documentary was little more than poverty porn because it didn’t offer any historical context or the causes of poverty for many Native American reservations.

“Are the Lakota responsible for their own plight, or is someone—the government or big business—causing it?,” Schmidt continued.

Sawyer glossed over broken treaties, stolen land and disinvestment by the end of the show, but by then it’s too little, too late. “The ‘poverty porn’ feeling predominates,” Schmidt said.

via Native American Youth to Diane Sawyer: We’re Not Poverty Porn – COLORLINES.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 19th, 2011 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Ethnic Studies, Headline news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.