Teachers can be activists too!

Or at least the point teachers Jeanine Molloff and Cris Mann of St. Louis Public Schools are making. They’ll be hosting a chat tonight on “In What Ways Can Teachers Be Political?” It’s happening tonight from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Adult Learning Center, 5078 Kensington Ave.

The event will be hosted by the Literacy for Social Justice Teacher Research Group, a grassroots, teacher-led organization committed to literacy education and advocacy for social justice in classrooms and communities.

The discussion will feature other teachers and parent activists sharing their stories about trying to change educational systems for the better while being mired in politics. They will also talk about the “complexities of teacher-activism” including topics like getting involved in Independent political parties, balancing teaching and activism and advocating for educational issues.

They will also host Millie Phillips, a parent in the San Francisco Public School system. She played an active role in anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan’s Congressional campaign.

For more info, check out the Literacy for Social Justice Teacher Research Group Web site at www.umsl.edu/~lsjtrg/.

It’s a late debate, but it might be a good’un!

State Representative contenders Stacey Newman and Steve Brown will go head-to-head tonight, 9:30 p.m. at Ursa’s Fireside on Washington University’s campus. It will be in Lien Hall on the ground floor next to the Office of Residential Life. Both Democrats are running for Missouri’s 73rd District seat. The district include the area south of Hwy 40, so this maybe the go to event for the informed local voter.

As long-time St. Louis activist Percy Green took questions Friday at the World Community Center on his decades of activist experiences, he grinned politely at the prospect of answering one audience member’s question, in particular: his thoughts on the efforts to recall St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.

“I thought you would never ask,” he laughed.

The occasion of Green’s lecture was a discussion on protesting and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, of which he was a leading voice here in St. Louis. The event was hosted by the Peace Economy Project. After speaking for more than an hour-and-a-half, the final question he took was about the recall effort.

Green used the question as a platform to jump from addressing the legwork for signature-gathering for the recall effort to giving his opinion on the fight between Slay and his African-American constituency.

“Most of us don’t see Chief (Sherman) George and the recall Slay effort as a fight against blacks and City Hall,” Green said. “Others feel like Slay has been a poor manager of the city. Lots of the resources the current administration has used — like the new stadium — we needed a new stadium like a hole in the head. It wasn’t a new stadium. It was a replacement stadium.”

Green said Slay has misused city funds to reward business interest that have not benefited the city as a whole. He cited as the debate over the new Busch Stadium as an example where he believed the taxpayers were manipulated by the “false crisis” of Cardinal management threatening to move the team. Green saw it as a bluff.

“All of that was a game. They weren’t going any place,” Green said. “You don’t want administrators who are going to be gouging taxpayers whether they’re black or not.”

Green also gave his perspective on the firing of embattled Fire Chief Sherman George. While much has been reported of the fight being over hiring practices and race issues, Green, who was also fired by Francis Slay in 2001 from his post as head of the city’s minority business-certification program, said George’s dismissal had everything to do with money.

Green said that as Fire Chief George oversaw the fire code enforcement of downtown buildings, his refusal to approve building which he felt were unsafe rubbed Slay and the mayor’s developer contributors the wrong way. Green charged that Slay wanted George out to ease the path for these business people.

Green called the new chief a “patsy” there to “rubber stamp everything” for Slay and the downtown developers.

“Many people haven’t thought about it,” Green said. “They haven’t seen the connection.”

If anyone in St. Louis should know anything about how to throw a proper protest it would be Percy Green. A veteran of civil rights fights in St. Louis since the 1960s, Green has been arrested, has had successes and failures and knows that many activist groups, irregardless of the cause, are often fighting the same foe. He proposes, why not fight together?

Green was offering this and other sage advice to the Peace Economy Project Friday when he was a guest speaker at their event Friday at the World Community Center on North Skinker.

Green drew on his 47 years of activism, including recounting his famous climbing of the Gateway Arch during its construction to protest the lack of black laborers on the project.

Some of Green’s advice to current and aspiring activists:

• “Young people are going to be young people.” – Green advised those who are older and were involved in protest movements of the past to not get frustrated with their younger counterparts who’s participation my ebb and flow based on outside influences like marriage or starting a family. Rather than get out of sorts he advises organizations “do what little bit we can do and stay focused.”

• “The movement is just like other parts of nature. Some of us know that you need rain. Rain is very necessary if you want vegetation to grow.” – Green’s metaphor continued, adding that to get rain necessitates clouds, but not every cloud means rain, but that it’s not going to rain on a blue sky day. Translation: Despite some stagnation in progress, organizations need to keep up their work as diligently as possible. The right chemistry could come along at anytime to make their work dynamic, but they’re are guaranteed to not get that dynamic if they don’t keep their apparatus, their “clouds” up, out and visible.

• Emotion. Green said the main thing that will bring new people suddenly into a protest movement is emotion, mainly anger or hostility towards a recent injustice. While some might blanche at working with the raw emotions of others, Green said he’d rather have this fire directed properly through guidance and organization. “You know how to organize a picket line. What to say in a megaphone,” Green said on helping young people channel their anger into progress.

• “We can still learn from the young folks. The Young folks can learn from us.” – Green said the protest movement is at a junction point with the youth having knowledge and expertise in technology and the older generation knowing how to organize and protest.