Skip to main contentPoliticians in D.C. are preparing to wage war with Iraq, but in Salem legislators have already dropped the bomb, laying a direct hit on Oregon's education system. Coincidence? Portland high-school students don't think so; they're walking out of class Thursday in a twofold protest--against war in Iraq and cuts to the school budget.
The message is "fund education, not war," says Erin Jones, a Lincoln high-school senior and member of the Student Activist Alliance.
The SAA, founded last fall in response to the cuts, is organizing the "books not bombs" protest, which culminates with a 1:30 pm rally at Waterfront Park.
Protesters will also recruit fellow students to help plan a "Liberation School," which would make up for some of the 24 days cut from the Portland Public school year. Inspired by the boycott to desegregate Northeast Portland schools in the 1980s, Liberation School would provide supervision for younger students as well as community-taught classes on a range of subjects.
The SAA settled on the alternative education plan last week and has formed a Liberation School subcommittee. Subcommittee member Marko Lamson, a junior at Metropolitan Learning Center, says students will plan the school, with adults and community groups, such as Portland Area Rethinking Schools, playing a supporting role.
"I think we'll work with parent and teacher groups down the road, but right now we really need to focus on what we want it to be," says Lamson, a self-described anarchist. "We definitely need to have the basic elements of the school, but it's set up by radical kids so there's going to be radical elements to it."
Jones, who spoke at the Jan. 18 citywide anti-war rally, says several teachers have expressed interest, but the group has yet to talk to the teachers' union. The first step, she says, is to find a location.
"I've heard of teachers who were willing to teach in the parking lots," says Pesha Wasserstrom, a 15-year-old sophomore at Wilson High School.
Lamson hopes the project will be more diverse than the Portland Freeskool, an off-and-on education program founded in 2000 by area activists and located in the Liberation Collective, a East Burnside Street building that houses several activist groups.
Lamson, who once took a drawing class at the Freeskool, says it rarely reaches beyond white, left-leaning middle-class youth. To be effective, he says, Liberation School will have to involve poor and minority students by being in their neighborhoods.
"We don't have those people in our movement," Lamson acknowledges, "and that's a problem."
Charles McGee, who is black, says his emphasis on race and class is unwelcome among SAA's largely white membership. McGee, junior-class president at Franklin High School, says poor and minority students are often excluded from activism and student government because they don't have the time or resources to participate.
He didn't participate in an earlier walkout on Dec. 19 because it was endorsed by the teachers' union, which he faults for resisting attempts to transfer bad teachers from low-achieving schools. With the district's largest minority populations, low-achieving schools have the greatest need for top teachers, McGee says.
Though he opposes the war in Iraq and the budget cuts, McGee won't join Thursday's walkout, either. He thinks it's negative and could come back to haunt him. "I want to be in politics," says McGee, "and I don't want to ruin anything."
Wilson High senior-class president Kyle Stoneman won't walk out, either. Stoneman, who is helping plan the Liberation School and volunteered for Gov. Ted Kulongoski's campaign, says he prefers sit-ins to walk-outs: "Why would we protest the fact that they're taking away school by missing more school?"
WWeek 2015