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That is why, since last August when the Michael Brown
decision of non-indictment came down, Ragland has been
spending a lot more time in Ferguson, near his home town of
St. Louis, dividing his time between organizing there and
teaching at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
Ragland is a lead organizer in The Truth Telling Project (www.thetruthtellingproject.org),
which is sponsoring The Truth Telling Weekend in Ferguson
and St. Louis, March 13-15. UT students and faculty and
Toledo community members have accepted Ragland’s invitation
to travel to Ferguson in March to participate in the
weekend.
Ragland has written in the Tikkun Daily, with
coauthor Arthur Romano, about how Ferguson provides a moment
to address violence throughout our nation and all its
institutions. They wrote, “It is important that we do not
miss this opportunity for sustained truth telling, to see
that the protests are not simply blaming or trying to
displace responsibility, but acknowledging work that needs
to be done while the world is listening. What we see now is
a shift from moments of resistance to a movement working to
change systems that create this inequity” (http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2014/12/16/why-protest-and-whats-next-truth-telling-and-reconciliation-for-ferguson-and-beyond/).
The contingent from UT shares this view, and hopes that
traveling to Ferguson will help them develop skills to work
to change systems, including schools.
The UT trip to The Truth Telling Weekend is cosponsored by
the program in Educational Theory and Social Foundations (http://www.utoledo.edu/education/depts/efl/programs/edtheory/index.html)
and the Padua Alliance for Education and Empowerment (http://www.utoledo.edu/education/depts/efl/faculty/hamer/PaduaAlliance.html).
Even
though both organizations are primarily concerned with
education, both see connections to issues of police violence
and ways to learn from the truth telling process.
Classrooms are where children who grow up to be police
officers, judges, jury members, teachers and citizens in
general learn how to interact in society. Classrooms are
also where teachers inadvertently set some students on route
to the school-to-prison pipeline.
Key for all professionals
to work effectively with their constituencies is listening
to the stories people tell about their own experiences,
their own truths. Trip organizers believe that teachers and
future teachers—including the organizers themselves--benefit
from learning about racism and antiracist work, like the
Truth Telling Weekend, in order to understand the larger,
systemic issues of racism in our society, and how to teach
antiracism in our classrooms.
Some of the participants will be presenting a workshop at
the weekend under the auspices of the Padua Alliance for
Education and Empowerment, a group that Ragland was part of
when he studied at UT. Since 2007, UT students and
community members have worked together, based at The Padua
Center at 1416 Nebraska, to listen to and record stories in
projects including "Kwanzaa Park," "Civil Rights in Toledo,"
and "What Teachers Need to Know about Themselves and the
Students they Teach.”
Ragland sees his
work with the Padua Alliance as what "got me involved in
community activism in Toledo, as it was in the participatory
action research class and later community organizing work,
that I learned about capacity development and listening to
community as the expert."
Carpools to Ferguson will leave Toledo at noon on Thursday,
March 12 and return on Sunday evening, March 15. If you
have been involved with the Padua Alliance research and
would like to help present a workshop on its methods at the
Truth Telling Event, or for more information about attending
the event, contact Borris Cameron at
borris.cameron@rockets.utoledo.edu
or UT Social Foundations at 419-530-7749. |
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