Portside

I was young and I believed
I didn’t know I was naive
But if you don’t know what’s coming down
You can’t turn this world around
(But if you never even try
You’ll never ever learn just why)

Since I wouldn’t go to war,
They said, go off and teach the poor
To a town that’s mean and gritty
Go on down to New York City

I left in the blistering summer heat
Cruised on down to East 10th Street,
On my first post-college road trip
Thought, this place is really hip

Grabbed my bag and up the stairs,
Saw my good friend Eric there,
Bounded down to the first floor
Out the door to get some more

But my bags had disappeared
No, I cried, this is too weird
No one there had seen them taken
I was stunned and badly shaken

Eric’s place was barely able
Bathtub doubled as a table
Eastside people weren’t so pretty
Blown out minds and looking shitty

Even worse than digs so shabby
Was a neighbor very crabby
Raging, drugged with muscled body
He tortured Eric with Karate

Eric, sad, but we were buddies
Partners from our Princeton studies
Black and small and somewhat fried
Eventually fell to suicide

Off to find a place to live
$300 bucks I had to give
10th street living wasn’t right
Settled down in Washington Heights

Went on over to the Board of Ed
Packed with draftees filled with dread
Used my letter of introduction
Got my South Bronx-bound instructions

Off to work, my shoes all shined
Arriving to a picket line
“Wow” I thought with satisfaction
Teacher striking, lots of action

Joined the teachers on the line
Seeking justice felt just fine
Didn’t know, amidst the strife
This type of fight would be my life

Meanwhile back at my new pad
Lack of food, cockroaches bad
Just a mattress for my head
Borrowed bakery day old bread

The first strike ended, stopped the duel
All the kids went back to school
Time to teach, my new found skill
Where was Ocean Hill Brownsville?

Kids were sharp and very cute
But didn’t like their substitutes
Every day they drove me mad
Good was boring, they liked bad

School was lousy, not well done
They were looking for some fun
They were black and we were white
We all knew this wasn’t right

Then the strike broke out once more
Teachers marching out the door
Once again I walked the lines
Teachers’ rights were on our signs

Soon it ended, back to teaching
Time to try more children reaching
But the contradictions raging
Forced my mind to start engaging

Then a teacher caught my ear
Tried to make the picture clear
None of us would have immunity
When teachers struck against community

How could a fight for teachers’ rights
Be separate from the awful plight
That drowns our students with its tides
And yet we stand on different sides

This wisdom struck like bolts of thunder
Removed the fog that I was under
Somewhere I heard my father say
We’re all equal in every way

I tried for days to reach the others
Draft dodging men, I called my brothers
But not a one would make a break
All looking out for their own sake

When the big strike three came to pass
We decided to teach our class
Six of 100 made up our mind
Defy the union picket signs

First we canvassed door to door
Inviting kids to a school house tour
Contradicting their teacher perceptions
Getting a friendly community reception

Every morning we formed our troop
Parents and children in our group
Just as the daily clock struck nine
We marched across the picket line

Teachers booed and shouted “scab”
Taking names and keeping tabs
Don’t know from whence my courage came
But I was proud, eschewing shame

For many days the strike endured
My classroom filled, my will inured
Without supplies or books or training
I learned to teach, my skillset gaining

The halls were quiet as could be
The classrooms practiced ABCs
Each class was made of many ages
But they seemed happy turning pages

Five weeks the routine carried on
The tensions high, battle lines drawn
It wasn’t how I pictured teaching
But here were kids that I was reaching

We braved the conflict all together
Standing strong in stormy weather
I let the kids into my heart
My new career, a fateful start

But then the bitter strike was done
And daily classrooms had begun
I faced the union teachers’ glare
They didn’t want me teaching there

When other teachers got a class
I was always left to last
They vowed to leave a deep impression
They wanted me to learn a lesson

I remained a daily substitute
Living down my ill repute
I couldn’t keep the kids in line
They kept messing with my mind

I couldn’t sleep night after night
Each day my stomach wasn’t right
My days ended with me screaming
The kids were laughing, even beaming

Once again I was dependent
On my friendly district superintendent
When I told her of my plight
She agreed to set it right

I began the new semester
A fourth grade class I had sequestered
On Fox Street Bronx I found a school
Principal Lonoff made the rules

A delightful group of fresh fourth graders
Confronted with a new invader
But I brought forth my youthful passion
With all the tricks that I could cash in

Some came to class with ragged sticks
I said I won’t fall for your tricks
Oh no, they cried, it’s for the rats
On Fox street you’ll find lots of that

One contingent spoke only Spanish
My earnest lessons quickly vanished
My class was just their latest fate
Our school had no one to translate

The books were few
No lesson plans
There were lots of can’ts
And too few cans

Principal Lonoff told us all
There shall be silence in the hall
All that he wants is law and order
In case of visits from headquarters

I once played Puerto Rican songs
And by their desks kids danced along
Then in stormed Lonoff in a rage
To subject us to the printed page

Nightly through our windows passed
School yard rocks and shattered glass
Early mornings with my broom
I daily swept glass from the room

With winter winds ferocious breezing
The kids wore coats to forestall freezing
Lonoff declared the issue dead
Without word from the Board of Ed

Wilfredo, bored with class room dreck
Looked out the window, cut his neck
Lonoff freaked out at the blood
They covered windows all with wood

One young girl, her arms all bitten
Said with bedbugs she was smitten
I went to visit with her mother
But the landlord said he wouldn’t bother

I had grown up working class
Never had a lot of cash
But I never knew much more
About the suffering of the poor

I tried to paint a hopeful arc
Once took the kids to Central Park
I fell in love and tried my best
To undo how they were oppressed

Next year to remain in compliance
Lonoff had me teaching science
I said of science I knew shit
Lonoff said just use the kits

I decided to be a radical padre
And found myself some 6th grade cadre
We studied weekly from the text
The autobiography of Malcolm X

Then with my cadre, bold and hearty
We went to see the Panther Party
With old strike friends in the community
I developed power and immunity

Lonoff, in the liberal tradition
Gave me time and his permission
To do the outreach and explore
A Bronx-wide march against the war

Of the charts and in my glorium
I led a Bronx-wide moratorium
While Thousands gathered in DC
The Bronx Students marched with me

But yet the teaching took its toll
I hated how I lost control
Without much help and absent training
I had my doubts about remaining

One kid hid in the cloakroom there
I found by grasping for his hair
Next day his mom said “please sir please sir”
My son was up last night with seizures

One day Jeff Perry came to see me
Actually intent to free me
Leave he said and follow me
It’s nothing but a colony

Forget the draft
Walk out the door
We’ll keep you from
That awful war

There’s a place to go
And not for scuba
But revolution
Viva Cuba

That was the end of my teaching career
My mind was blown, my spirit clear
It radicalized me to my core
I knew not what, but I wanted more!

August, 2010

OFF TO TEACH THE POOR in 1968- A POEM BACKGROUNDER

This poem is about my personal journey as a working class Jewish kid form Philadelphia who traveled to NYC in 1968 to get out of the draft, not knowing that I was stepping into a tornado of social conflict. As a graduate of an elite college I found out that I could avoid the draft if I was willing to do what was considered by many as unthinkable – teach in a poor neighborhood of NYC.

Thousands of young NYC men had the same idea and the same war-avoiding desperation, but through good fortune I had a letter of introduction from an African American NYC District superintendent. I got a job at an elementary school in the South Bronx. This began an intensive year and a half coming of age for me and an education about poverty, racism, public education unions and power.

What I didn’t expect was that on my first day on the job I would arrive to a picket line – the vast majority of teachers in NYC were on strike. It was my first union experience and, at first, I enthusiastically joined the picket line.

The NYC Ocean Hill Brownsville struggle, as it is often referred to, was a historical moment: for NYC, for teachers, public sector unions, Jews and African Americans in NYC and beyond, as well as for public education. (There has been a lot written about it – one thorough overview is the book titled The Strike that Changed New York by Jerald Podair and for more here and here)

Ocean Hill Brownsville was the Brooklyn community where the district board fired and transferred teachers, demanding more control over who teaches and what is taught in their mostly African American neighborhood. The United Federation of Teachers (AFT) led by a rising star of the labor movement, Albert Shankar, struck to protect the union contract and due process rights of teachers above all else.

In its essence the struggle was between communities of color wanting control over their failing local schools and a union wanting to defend policies that protected predominantly white teachers, many of them Jewish, who lived mostly in the outer boroughs and the suburbs. This is all in the context in which the NYC Department of Education in Brooklyn rigidly controlled every single operational aspect of schools throughout the five boroughs.

The conflict brought to a head the Post WW II growth of “middle class” whites many of whom migrated out of the inner cities resulting in a shrinking urban tax base and the deterioration of schools, housing and public services. In the case of Jews in NYC, and elsewhere, they had gone into to teaching since the 30s for its rewards and because of the continued exclusion of Jews from parts of private sector employment.

This strike followed the ’68 riots that broke out across the country after Kings assassination and the emergence of movements among African American and Latinos seeking economic equality beyond the legal progress gained from civil rights legislation.

The three UFT strikes in the fall of 1968, the third lasting for five weeks, fractured a long standing solidarity between Jews and African Americans. Jewish teachers and communities joined a citywide white alliance with Irish and Italian Catholics. African American joined with Puerto Rican communities. Ford Foundation, ironically, funded the experimental district in Ocean Hill that led the community control struggle.

The lessons from the Ocean Hill Brownsville struggle are still being learned. Teacher unions are struggling to build community alliances while corporate funders promote privatization of education while posing as the champions of the poor. Off To Teach the Poor is my reflection on this moment in history.

Gene Bruskin is a 37 year veteran of the labor movement as a local union president, an organizer and campaign coordinator for numerous local and national unions.  He worked as the labor director for the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and served as Secretary Treasurer for the Food and Allied Service Trades Department of the AFL-CIO. He was the UFCW Director for the successful Justice@Smithfield Campaign  He has done extensive international labor solidarity work, including with Iraqi workers and uinions, and is a founder of US Labor Against the War.  He retired in September 2012 after establishing and leading the Strategic Campaigns Department for the AFT and is presently working as a consultant for several unions. He is currently in the process of producing  a musical comedy for and about unions and workers called Pray For the Dead-A Musical Tale of Morgues, Moguls and Mutiny. (www.gofundme.com/prayfor the dead)