Thursday, August 21, 2014

2014 The Summer of Discontent

The Revolution will not be Televised
2014 the Summer of Discontent

You will not be able to stay at home and play with your video games, my brother
You will not be able to download the latest porno flick and simply lose yourself
You will not be able to roll up a blunt and poor a glass of Ciroc
Text your boo thang and let her know you’ll be through in 45 minutes
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you by Puffy/P-Diddy or any other hip-hop artist
Or will be hosted by DJ Drama
The revolution will not show you pictures of Obama with cool shades on dapping up Jay-Z and Beyonce with Michelle standing off in the cut nodding here head to “Partition
The Revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you via satellite in HD with subtext and a Spanish interpreter and will not have guest appearances by Kevin Hart or a tribute to T.D Jakes or a special appearance by Rev Al or Jessie
The revolution will not get you to Heaven but will accept your contributions.
The revolution will not make you popular
The revolution will not make you slimmer if you commit to a plan of 5 days a week and 2 hours a night, Family.

There will be no post of you taking a selfie next to a burnt out storefront or an overturned vehicle for anyone to like on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
There won’t be any Google analytics to help you get to the top of a web page or trending topics for you to Tweet
The revolution will not be televised.

There won’t be a Happy Hour with a roped off VIP and bottle services or valet to park your car, Uber and Lift won’t be available to drop you off.  You won’t be able to use acronyms like lol, lmao or ijs to describe the time you are having to your BMF or BFF.
The revolution will not be televised.


Real Housewives of Atlanta, Love and Hip Hop or Scandal wont be so damn relevant because it won’t matter who slept with who or who got shot.
Folks will be rioting in the streets because they will know the names of who got shot (Michael Brown, Timothy Stansbury, Oscar Grant, Aaron Campbell, Alonzo Ashley, Wendell Allen, Eric Garner, Jonathan Ferrell, Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis) - the pain and the blood will be more real than any housewife in Atlanta and the love will be so deep that not to start a revolution will be the least of the scandals that people will be worried about.

There will be no Fox News commentary to slant the views of what went on or Don Lemon to tell the world they called me the N word and no hash tag to start a trend or motherly looking white women to say it could have been my child.
The theme song won’t be “Happy” or contain folks singing and dancing with smiles on their faces, instead James Brown’s the “Big Payback” or Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” might be playing in the background
The Revolution will not be televised

The Revolution will not return right after a message about
Christian Singles or E-Harmony.
You wont have to listen out for jingles that say they would like to buy the world a Coke and fill it with perfect harmony or even tell you to have a Coke and a smile.  It won’t contain the most interesting man in the world, but might have images of angry people both black and white
The Revolution won’t be safer in a Subaru or in the suburbs or allow you time to comparative shopping for his and her matching Glocs
The Revolution will put you in the front seat and disrupt all your creature comforts.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run family;
The revolution will be live.



Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

Monday, August 18, 2014

A Nonpolitical Poverty Conversation

I recently read an article published by the Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor) regarding poverty and came away with how subjective poverty is based upon the individual’s social lens. I read this article not only as a practitioner, but also as someone who has an academic interest in the subject matter as well.  Therefore, the following is my reaction to the information I read. 

The term poverty as the authors’ uses it is subjective when the idea of what it means to be poor in this country is far more complex.  Simply put poverty in the U.S. can have negligible and legal consequences that do not exist in other countries.  Therefore, to look at poverty through the lens of the nightly news and a late night infomercial and determine what passes for acceptable poverty levels domestically are rather shortsighted, if not naïve. 

It seems to me that the authors’ define poor simply in terms of access to goods and services.  However, at the very onset of the article they acknowledge that the cost of goods goes down considerably following a products introduction into the marketplace.  Therefore, cost and access are relative depending upon where we are in the products market cycle. 

The authors identified a combination of at least 10 of the following items as an example of an improved lifestyle that contradicted what “liberals” define as poor.  As if to say if you own any of the 10 you are no longer poor, you simply lack comforts.  The list are as follows:

  • ·      Microwave Oven
  • ·      Air Conditioner
  • ·      Car or Truck
  • ·      VCR
  • ·      DVD Player
  • ·      Cable or Satellite TV
  • ·      Cell Phone
  • ·      Video Game
  • ·      Personal Computer
  • ·      Internet Service
  • ·      Dishwasher
  • ·      Stereo
  • ·      Big Screen TV or LCD
  • ·      Video Recorder


Going back to an earlier point depending on where the product is in its life cycle consumers can obtain the aforementioned at relatively inexpensive prices.  Case and point with a microwave oven.  You can purchase one for as low as $38.00 from Wal-Mart brand new.  Also, both a DVD Player and a VCR can be purchased for basically the same price with the later not available in some cases.  

Also, you would be hard pressed to find any well meaning, social conscious advocate to consider items like cars and trucks, personal computers and internet service as examples of “luxury” items. 

Depending on the city access to adequate transportation is absolutely vital in terms of functionality.  In Jacksonville, FL dependable transportation can be the difference between employability and being unemployed because of our lack of investment in an adequate public transportation system.  Furthermore, the suburbanization of job opportunities makes access to a car far more important to those who live in core communities than it ever has been in our country.   The lack of investment made in core communities regarding jobs and the infrastructure associated with jobs continues to be a leading indicator regarding generational poverty, which leads me to my next point and that being technology.

Technology or lack thereof can be a major factor in terms of lifting up or keeping people in generational poverty.  I would question if the authors have ever had to fill out any public assistance forms.  To merely apply for “help” requires you to have online access.  Given the Internet as an access point to even get services I would question if you could still consider a computer or the Internet as a “luxury” amenity.   In some cases it is actually a cheaper proposition to access services online because of the fees associated with talking to a live a person.  Therefore, creating a codependency on the part of poor people who cannot afford to be with or without ample technology. 

Computer and Internet access is all-together a different story when it comes to children, particularly children from poverty stricken families.  Research is very clear regarding technology and child development, those who have access achieve and those who don’t simply fall behind.  Furthermore, given our country’s propensity for testing technology is simply a must have access.  In the State of FL starting this year certain aspects of the statewide assessment will be done solely online.  Can you imagine being a student who only has access to a computer in school or at the neighborhood library, who by the way have limited access and only allows you up to an hour per session?  This is not to even mention that here in Jacksonville the library and its hours are the 1st targets for cuts in at least the last 2 different mayor’s budget.     

The final category in which I take particular issue with is the authors’ lack thereof “evidence” regarding poverty-induced malnutrition.  They suggest that overconsumption of calories is a major problem within the U.S. in general and not germane to poor communities.  As evidence the authors’ sited the nutriment intake of adult women in the upper middle class as resembling that of poor women and suggesting the same evidence was consistent across the board despite the ethnic or gender subset.  However, the one glaring issue that is overlooked is choice.  The lower subsets of people have very little choice based upon access.  In poorer communities’ access to healthier food options is limited at best and simply not available worst case creating terms like “food desert,” which mean an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food.  Therefore, foods that are high in calories become part of an unhealthy diet out of necessity rather than a life style choice.  All of this combined leads to run away medical bills, which can have a crippling effect even on the best-managed households. 

What this article does is it makes the issue of poverty simply an issue of choice, particularly regarding marriage and work ethic.  I have coined this the  “urbanization of poverty,” which means if poor inner city black and brown people would simply make better choices socially, get married and get jobs their social and economic condition would change. This approach not only simplifies poverty to fit in a nice explanative social commentary box, but it also adds a level of racial stereotyping while ignoring the social conditions that create poverty.  At the same time it further de-humanizes people based upon the idea that somehow poor people, particularly those from inner city communities’ somehow make poor decisions, don’t get married, have out of wedlock children as a result of some cultural norm and neither have the aptitude or attitude to work.  However, all of those statements are over generalizations and inaccurate regarding poor people.

Finally, what I do know as a practitioner first and an academician second is poverty is less about choice, although it does play a small part, but more about the environmental circumstances that create the conditions that lead to poverty.  And it is those environmental circumstances, which are created through the vessel of public policy that allows politicians and policy makers the ability to inflict their social will. 

No one wakes up in the morning and decides that today is a great day to be poor.  Nor do they wake up and decide that I want to be educated in the worst schools, or eat the unhealthiest foods and find a job that’s the furthest away from my home.  However, this is the reality many poor people find themselves in yet the expectation is to somehow simply pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make it without any social safety nets. 

That’s My Truth and I AM Sticking to it….

I AM

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

Friday, August 15, 2014

Schools to Prison Pipeline

Last night I was part of a forum that discussed the school to prison pipeline and amongst the many issue that resonated with me the one that particularly struck a chord was how adult solutions have crept into child/adolescent behaviors.  When I hear adults using terms like “tough on crime” and “zero tolerance” I cringe because what that symbolizes to me is adult concerns have superseded the mistakes that young people often make on their way to being responsible adults.

Part of being young and an even bigger part of the learning process is to be afforded the opportunity to make mistakes, but now mistakes have consequences that can cost you a lifetime of opportunities.  That experiment with marijuana or that fight with your now best friend can result in adult consequences that at 16 you never knew would impact you for the rest of your life. 

That being said what’s even bigger for me and a point that I think is often overlooked is our acceptance of the prison culture that has now impacted our school system.  What I mean by this is, anyone would be hard pressed to distinguish the difference between what is a school and what is a detention center (i.e. metal detectors, surveillance cameras, uniformed students, and armed security guards).  Therefore, it could be easily assumed given the aforementioned we are conditioning students for what may be their ultimate fate.  And if you live in a public housing complex and attend an urban school then your home environment reinforces the idea. 

Sometimes I wonder if the gates were put up to keep crime out or keep our ass in….
                                                                                       -Cell Therapy (Cello Green/Goodie Mo)

What’s of further concern to me is our resolve to ignore or at the very least our unwillingness to discuss how the historical framework by which the public school system was formed and its history of delivering particular populations to low wage jobs. Thereby, ignore the consequences when those opportunities where no longer available or shipped to China the same populations became and are still becoming fuel for the criminal justice engine.  There again helping us to become the world’s leader in incarceration.

Another point that I have come to believe is that the school to prison pipeline is just one cog in a complex wheel.  What I mean by that is you cannot deny the relationship between our insatiable appetite for test data and how that impacts the relationship between schools and prisons.  Yet we continue to invest more and more into systems of testing and those schools who have done poorly and the children that attend them become the fuel for our incarceration engine.  Simply look at the correlation between testing data and the decision to build prisons.

The research is clear regarding schools that have the highest rate of teacher turnover, the highest rate of new teachers, the highest rate of discipline issues and are located in most cases poor neighborhoods and have high incarceration rates.   Therefore, prison or some level of criminal justice system contact becomes almost an inevitable fate for children living in them.

Finally its not that I personally believe in some nefarious plot by school systems to send young people to prison.  I do however, question are we prepared to change the system that fosters a school to prison pipeline especially when there is an entire economic system tied to it. 

That’s My Truth and I AM Sticking to It…

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen