Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

Here’s to Brooklyn! And to Bedford-Stuyvesant, the capital (in exile) of Wakanda… Brooklyn, a grand & rich cultural village. A bountiful reservoir for enriching a child’s out-of-school learning experience. The place where Prince’s purple reigns, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, the Brooklyn Public Library, Theater for a New Audience, Richard Beavers Art Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, Park Slope Food COOP, Coney Island, The Aquarium, The Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, Prospect Park (Zoo, Pedal Boats & Carousel), Weeksville Heritage Center, Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, great post-high school intellectual capital investment, 20+ colleges and universities–a Law & Medical school, Tom’s Restaurant, Bed-Stuy (do or die) YMCA, a Bodega Breakfast to go, BAM’s DanceAfrica, Junior’s (the really real) Cheesecake, the West Indian-American Labor Day Parade, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, 3 Black Cat’s Café, the NBA Nets, the Promenade; the abundantly rich diversity of churches, masjids, synagogues, temples and other spiritual worship places; the Nostrand Avenue Cuisine Tour– from Jamaican veggie patties to Trinidadian Roti, Barbadian Flying Fish; International African Arts Festival, BRIC, Brooklyn Bridge, Little Sun People, Bushwick arroz con pollo. Every part of the world’s culture, architecture, language, food and history can be found in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, a 2.65 million people town that thinks and acts like an international city!
And how do you know you are from Brooklyn?
Because you know that not all Caribbean people come from Jamaica. That Africa is a continent, not a country! You have some hope for America because the vitriolic and ugly Trump rallies are not taking place in Brooklyn. The voices you hear in Derek Walcott’s (Saint Lucian) poem: Omeros, you can hear on the streets of Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, Flatbush and Canarsie. That it’s Trinidad and Tobago (And if you claim to be ‘woke’ and have not read Eric William’s Capitalism and Slavery, well just go back to sleep!) You love the beauty and dignity of the many characters who live in the books of Edwidge Danticat (Haiti) because they remind you so much of your Haitian neighbors. Guyana, although rich with Caribbean cultural flavor, is actually geographically in South America; but that Guyana also produced one of the greatest historians in the world Dr. Walter Rodney. (And no self-respecting Brooklyn Bajan will ever let you forget this!) That Barbados has one of the highest literacy rates in the world; and so why do we only speak of U.S. Black children’s learning capabilities in “gaps” and “deficit” terms?
You have probably eaten Bruschetta, Kimchi, shrimp fried rice and Fufu (that bachelor’s Tupperware leftovers combo meal), and washed it down with either Soursop juice, Aguas frescas, Palm wine, Ting, Sangria or Sake. Or had peas and rice, eggs, coconut bread (or “baked”) and Milo for breakfast.

You know that Latinos are from a lot of different places; i.e., the Dominican Republic, not just Mexico! You know that Puerto Ricans are Americans (even though they are not treated as such). You may be a Christian, but Muslim-Americans are your family members, friends and neighbors, and you love (not fear, hate and want to ban) them! You (having grown up in Crown Heights) can read Martin Buber & Joseph Soloveitchik and immediately recognize the Hasidic theological connections. And you can differentiate between Korean-, Vietnamese- and Chinese-Americans!
More than likely, you could care less who people want to love and marry, and there is a lack of interest on the part of men (many long past their own reproductive capabilities) to want to control what women want to do with their own reproductive organs. There is a good chance that things like diversity, religious tolerance, and integration don’t bother you.
You have to love Brooklyn’s resilience, because although many of her residents are struggling to survive, and there is a great deal of poverty, dislocation and unemployment, Brooklynites soldier on. The level of governmental disappointment, leadership abandonment and betrayal in areas like public housing is devastating. (You know things are bad when Trump’s Justice Dept. says that you are mistreating people of color!) In the “County of Kings,” the NYC public school system has essentially doomed too many Black and Latino young people to a life of marginalized modern serfdom. And yet, Brooklyn is a place where the people would never build walls that sought to negate the humanity of others, organize hate rallies to marginalize and vilify the less politically powerful. Choose to vote in callus bigotry as an official governmental practice. The Brooklyn response to socioeconomic pain is not to inflict an even greater pain on the “other,” and that’s because all of Brooklyn is the other!
And so now, I am returning to the great city of Brooklyn (sort of). I am honored and humbled to join the family of that great Brooklyn, Bedford-Stuyvesant-based, but widely read and respected newspaper, Our Time Press, as a regular Education Columnist. My hope is that I can bring information and a greater understanding of educational issues to parents and all (that’s everyone) citizen stakeholders who care about our young people and the nation’s future. So let’s talk about education!

Michael A. Johnson has served as a public schoolteacher, Science Skills Center director, principal and a school district superintendent. He also served as an adjunct professor of Science Education in the School of Education at St. John’s University. He recently completed a book on school leadership: “Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership.” [http://reporttotheprincipalsoffice.net/]

On Sunday, hundreds participated in Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams’ “Stroller March” in a collective cry of outrage against family separation at the United States-Mexican border, and in support of the more than 2300 immigrant children separated from their parents (now reportedly detained in various locations throughout the United States since May).

Could the stroller – the world’s most recognizable vehicle of child transport – be the symbol that carries America to justice? We are encouraged by leaders’ recognition that paying attention to those with the least power is the path to take in pursuit of justice. Caring about our youngest and our oldest is implicit in every issue that hurts neighborhoods, towns and cities across the nation.

Sunday’s marchers shouted, “What Makes America Great?” Love, Not Hate. Responding to the call, Adams held a stroller above his head and roared, “This carriage is a symbol of protection… a symbol of nurturing … a symbol of what children represent in America.

“When you take a baby out of this and remove them from their mother or their father, you’re destroying the foundation of America and that cannot happen.”

Other leaders joining parents and children at the rally included Public Advocate Letitia James, Rep. Nydia Velazquez, state Senators Velmanette Montgomery, Jesse Hamilton and Kevin Parker, and Brooklyn Council members Brad Lander and Laurie Cumbo.

“I am a mother,” said a tearful Cumbo who attended with her ten-month-old son Prince Noah Oluwafemi. “We carry our children in our wombs. We go through extensive labor. We try our best to do our best for our babies, to bring them into this world so they can be the best they can be. We are here today to show that you cannot destroy the critical bond a mother has to her child, that this cannot happen.

“The administration has crossed a line in a way that there is no coming back. We are continuing to mobilize because they cannot tear apart families and strip their children away. I am a mother, and I am angry. And when you anger a mother, you anger the most powerful woman in the world. I am a mother.”

The march started at D’Emic Playground on Third Avenue, wending through the Sunset Park neighborhood to the Metropolitan Detention Center – just one mile of the nationwide of “Families Belong Together – Not in Cages” rallies planned for Saturday, June 20 in opposition to the president’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies. Last Sunday, protestors amplified a conviction, “What Makes America Great?” Love, Not Hate.