A year ago I wrote an article for TCLA laying out a student organizing plan for Jordan High School. One year later, I can’t say that we met all the goals of that plan, but we did have successes. Throughout this year, we had to endure a variety of setbacks; another year’s worth of killings and the continuing struggle in and with the community. We discovered that the neighboring scrap metal yard which accidentally launched a World War II artillery shell on to the campus last year has also been piling toxic materials next to our field. Students have been eating lunch on ground with 20 times the safe levels of lead and arsenic. But as I reflect, I believe now more than ever that I was right to quote Aqeela Sherrills when he said, "Watts is the catalyst for the next major peace movement in this country," and that I was right when I wrote that those of us engaged in the struggle for liberation should “look to the youth of Watts for leadership.” Of course, there are many other places to look for peace and leadership as well, but if the struggle for social justice is the struggle for self-determination for oppressed people, there is nowhere better to look than Watts.

As was part of the plan, we were fortunate at Jordan to have a class which allowed students to engage in this work as an elective. The class was sponsored by the Leadership Development in Interethnic Relations (LDIR), an organization that provided a curriculum, support personnel, and a budget. But there were difficulties in this, too. The class was left off the master schedule at the beginning of the year. In fact, the master schedule was so confusing that the administration decided to completely redo it a month into school, giving out new schedules to students and going through the opening procedures a second time. Even after that, it was again left off the master schedule for several weeks. When the class finally began, most of the students who had been previously selected as leaders in their peer-groups were unable to change their schedules to be a part of the class. As a result, we had to begin again at stage one of the plan: building an organizing committee.

Overall, the effects of this year’s LDIR class on the students and its lessons for teachers have been profound. When students were asked to reflect on the class at the end of the year two themes came up again and again: the challenge to work in anti-oppressive ways forced them to form new, more positive relationships with peers, and the autonomy they experienced allowed students to make these relationships real and a chance to grow as individuals. In his end of the year reflection, one student wrote of having grown up in Watts without ever having a real conversation with a gang member. He had been afraid to become involved with neighborhood gangs and had avoided people affiliated with them. In the LDIR class he was finally able to get to know people he had been surrounded by but avoided much of his life and, as a result, he overcame the stereotypes he had held about gang members. When one of these classmates was killed after dropping out, it moved him in a way that the dozens of teen killings in Watts before hadn’t. Unfortunately, his essay was never finished as he himself was expelled a week before the school year ended for carrying a knife for self defense. Other students wrote about becoming more willing to speak their mind, of committing themselves to peace and social justice activism, of the value of transcending social barriers and becoming leaders.

Learning to work in anti-oppressive ways and with autonomy was not easy. For example, students were allowed to sit where and how they wanted. This led to some conflicts at the beginning as boys jockeyed to sit closest to certain girls or girls would sit in certain boys’ laps, and issues of sexual harassment had to be dealt with as these boys learned to deal with this freedom. Students worked on group projects without much supervision and without being graded. Since all students were given an “A”, students had to learn how to be accountable to their tasks and to each other, not to the teacher. We also had members of rival gangs sitting across from each other in class. Bringing together gang members in a class that had established a culture of transcending social barriers was perhaps the most challenging and exciting part of this year’s class. Unfortunately, few of these students were able to stay in the class long enough for this potential to be realized. Many were kicked out, moved, or dropped out just when they began to open up. Ultimately, students were able to learn to meet the challenges remarkably well.

In the end, I must be realistic in pointing out that the chaos and lack of support in urban schools undermined the goal of organizing students to demand radical change at a school-wide level. At least for this year. But most organizers will tell you that it often takes several years of start and stop efforts to accomplish such a goal. And in the meantime, this class undeniably proved a liberatory education is possible even in the most dysfunctional schools and in the most oppressed communities.

Sean Leys can be e-mailed at seanleys@utla.net.