Transcripts For CSPAN2 Nikhil 20240704

How to protect the truth. And we are grateful for that. Thank you so much. Thanktonight. Im very excited to welcome the kilgore oil celebrating the release of his novel live to see the day. Coming of age in american poverty. Nick nikhil goyal is a sociologist and policymaker who served as a Senior Policy Adviser on education and children for chairman. Senator bernie. Senator Bernie Sanders on the u. S. Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions are in committee on the budget. He developed education child care and Child Tax Credit, federal legislation as well as a Tuition Free College program for incarcerated people and correctional workers in vermont. He has appeared on cnn, fox and msnbc and written for the new york times, washington post, wall street journal, time, the nation and many other publications. Goyle earned his b. A. Goddard college and a master of philosophy and ph. D. At the university of cambridge. The kill will be joined today in conversation tonight by Binyamin Appelbaum applebaum writes about economics and business for the editorial page of the new york times. From 2010 to 2019. He was a washington correspondent for the times covering Economic Policy in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. He previously worked for the charlotte observer, where his reporting on subprime lending won a george polk award and was a finalist for the 2008 pulitzer prize. Hes local. He lives in washington, d. C. , with his wife, two children and a dog. So please join me in welcoming tonight politics and prose, nick nikhil goyal and Binyamin Appelbaum. Good evening on. We are going to talk about this book, which i when i went to kill asked me to do this and sent me a copy of it. I knew the topic was of interest. To me, its stuff i care a lot about, but i didnt expect to the quality of the storytelling. For those of you havent read it, what makes this book important and powerful is how he gets into the lives of his characters, portrays them with empathy and in detail, helps you to understand the challenges that theyre facing and and helps us to understand both whats wrong and perhaps what we might do about it. So were going to do this in two parts. The first part is going to be about that storytelling, and then were going to talk a little bit about some of the policy lessons, the takeaways from that story. But i do want to begin with, with that remarkable storytelling and perhaps the place to begin is just to have you talk a little bit about how you found these kids, how this all began for you. Sure. And thank you so much for being here. And thank you for being conversation. So i first started visiting kensington and in 2015 it came actually very by chance. I reached out to a friend, andrew, freshman, who runs an Organization Called big picture learning, and i was interested in examining the High School Dropout crisis across the united states, and id asked him to suggest schools for me to visit. And he suggested i go to el centro de studio and an alternative last chance high school in kensington and i started going to kensington, visiting the school. I thought i was going to a story interview, you know, a couple dozen kids spent a couple of weeks there. And then over time it snowballed into a much larger project. I spent some time there, went off to grad school, made that my, conducted a full length ethnographic study in the neighborhood and then turned that study into this book. You know, the the process of writing it was i mean, it was it was exhaustive in various respects. You know, as an ethnographer and ethnography is essentially a study where you immerse yourself in the lives of your Research Participants to provide a systematic analysis of something, a concept, an issue, a community. And i followed a number of these young people who had attended el centro. I met them when they were at the school. They had dropped out of school previously, and tried to come back to finish their High School Diplomas. I learned about their educational experiences, their families, their loved ones, their aspirations. You know everything about them as human beings and and additionally, as a sociologist, it was very important for me to not just provide an account of their lives, but to examine and structure them in a way to show that they are embedded within a larger political economy, that, you know, the conditions we see in kensington, you know, the poorest neighborhood and the poorest large city in america are our conditions that did not come about by accident. Theyre the result of policies and histories and political and economic decisions over the course of generations. And so i tried to bring those two things together. And as part of the research, i would interview the young people. I eventually they introduced me to their families and friends and just shatter them at their homes, would just hang out after school, go on, go on walks, walking tours in the neighborhood, asking them to show me places where they frequented with their friends and important landmarks in their lives, really trying to get a full on sense of, of, of their social of kensington. I also spent a lot of time conducting research at other schools in the neighborhood to make sure i was getting a representative understanding of alternative education in the city. I mean, a lot of young people who had been pushed out of schools tend to go to the alternative school system, whether it is a last Chance School like kensington, like el centro, or you know, a Virtual Charter School or even a more formal disciplinary school. They have a variety of options. And i want to understand that at at large. So, you know, thats thats a little bit of of the kind of Research Process and, you know, took on about a over eight years of reporting. Well, so the core of this story, its the lives of three young men in this philadelphia neighborhood, kensington, struggling to get through school, to get started on their adult lives against all of the challenges of their environment and their social situation and and those three lives dont exactly they dont intersect. Exactly. They touch a little bit, but theyre three distinct stories and talk a little bit about those stories. Why these three stories seemed meaningful to you. Tell us a little bit about who these young men are and and what about their stories made you say these are the three that i want to tell . Sure yes. The three main characters in the book, ryan karam, emmanuel neff, now now known as kareem and john carlos and i met them, you know, just around the time of 2015, 2016. You know, ryan starred with ryan. You know, ryan had he starts off the book with the story of how he started a fire in a trashcan in his middle school and that incident gets him arrested. He gets sent to juvenile detention and then eventually gets expelled from grover washington. His middle school, and gets transferred to an alternative for profit. This very School Called Community Education partners. And i follow his life during that time by drawing on an enormous trove of records and that his mother had kept for many, many years, you know, all the way from School Records to her notes, where he would come home every day from sleep. And then she would record his own experience or his experiences. And then even the videotape of ryan starting the fire that the court had given to her, you know, in 2009, she had kept that. And i was able to use that to provide a really, i think, intimate and fully narrative story of what that young person was enduring. And so i felt i eventually meet ryan. He this is a second tour of el centro, as he would like to call it. He had dropped in and out of the school and i follow his life during that time. You know, he eventually gets arrested as an adult for for selling drugs. And then goes to el centro and i wont spoil the entire story, but its time after el centro and his and his and his career, emmanuel when i, when i met him was, was dealing and grappling with his sexuality. You know, he had been he had grown up in a pentecostal christian household. His mother was deeply religious, religiously conservative, and did not approve that he had come out as bisexual to her. And so he was dealing with a very unstable home life. And the fact that they had been dealing with addictions almost single year, multiple evictions, a year for for several, several years. And so i traced that period of his time, of his childhood, and later when he comes to el centro and all of those issues come into full picture, because now hes trying to graduate high school. He has just come out to his mother. Hes dealing with housing insecurity and and and all the other things that teenagers have to confront. And i you know, i think his story really illustrates a number of the failings of the social safety net, whether its from the lack of public assistance like the program called temporary assistance for needy families or the insufficient amount of money that people who are disabled get through the ssi program. Or just the fact that if youre dealing with a family, if youre in a family dealing with Domestic Violence and your family has to break apart and a single mother has to then take care of that child, how the state does not give anything to that single mother to make sure that child is taken care of. You know, all this kind of harrowing predicaments that that confront low income families in this country. And then finally, john carlos, you know, he was very fascinating in particular to me because as part of the book, i was following their lives, talking about the School Giving this history. But he illustrated and and represent the resistance to neoliberal, market based School Reform in particular. You know, philadelphia, i would say, has been a guinea pig in a in this market based experiment, whether its from privatize in Public Schools to opening up Charter Schools to zero tolerance discipline to massive budget cuts, to shaping the Public School system in the face of the market. You know, all of those practices have existed in the in the city for the past. You know, 20, 25 years. And john carlos came of age in the during that time, he began protesting against the school closures. In 2013, philadelphia closed 24 Public Schools, one of the largest mass School Closings in american history. He joined an Organization Called youth night change, which was a youth Led Organization in resisting against these these policies. And i followed his trajectory as an activist that helped tell a broader story about Public Education in the city. So in some, you know, each of them illustrate some history or some policy or institution and i think i hope hopefully give voice to that and humanize them by connecting agency with which structure. One thing i really admire about the book is that you told the stories as they were in all of their complexity, even when that didnt necessarily serve the policy conclusions. And i wont spoil brians story for those who havent read the book yet, but his his initial disastrous encounter with the law turns out to have, you know, a little bit of a Silver Lining at the end. Thats school that you focus on is arguably an example of, you know, what happens when you allow capitalists to get involved in education, right. The guy who founds it is the scion of one of the industrial families that formerly employed the people of kensington and he comes back with this vision of, a way to help educate these kids. So i guess talk a little bit about maybe lets focus on the school and tell us a little bit into policy here, but talk a little bit about the example that school and what you take from it because that is not an institution that was created by the philadelphia Public School system or ever could have been, i wouldnt think. Sure. So in philadelphia, in the early 2000s, paul vallas becomes a superintendent. Some of you may know that the name paul vallas, because you just ran for of philadelphia mayor of chicago against brennan johnson. And hes been a kind of a kind of a villain figure in various of these School Reform stories, whether its in new orleans or in chicago or in philadelphia. And so he takes the helm of the philadelphia schools at that time. And there was an interest to solve the dropout crisis. And so they began this district began issuing contracts to alternative school providers, not some of them, or nonprofit fits for profit companies. And one of the schools that i mentioned, cpe Community Education partners, was one of the schools that was given a contract and then so the person youre referring to is his name is David Bromley, and he, you know, grew up just out of feel outside of philadelphia. His ancestors were had run the largest textile firms in kensington. Its just a fascinating story because, you know, going back to methodology for a second, i didnt know any of this, you know, going in. You know, i hadnt known the bromley family or or the history of industry in kensington. And its only a couple of years into my research where i was reading a history of industrial life in enfield off i think it was philips grant and one of the great historians of philadelphia. And i noticed bromley kept coming up and i was like, wait a second. Like this . The same guy, you know, that ive been writing about for all these years. And i went to be david was like, hey, david, like, are you, you know, are you bromley . You know, are you what is your family part for ancestors or were were how organized these textile companies . And so he tells me a little the history that i went on this kind of goose, goose search, where im going all over kansas ten and trying to find the old factories. And i learn quite remarkably. The school was located on dauphin street when i was there and literally, you can stand you can be on the third the top floor of the school and you can see an old bromley textile mill just next to the dolphin station, which is kind of remarkable. And actually something david shouldnt even know. And so go you know, i uncover a lot of this history over time and even the first location of the school, which is in north square, just two blocks south of dolphin street in philadelphia. Noor square used to be a a place where many of the the bosses of the Companies Used to live. And i learned davids family members actually lived in the brownstones, literally across the street from the school, the first school building. So, you know, its just in fuzed with this great history that i just became insanely curious about uncovering. So long story short, david, i, you know, grows up in and outside of philadelphia, goes to private schools, moves to california and then gets into education. All of a sudden by design, a tutor at a at a local high school in l. A. And i get, you know, inspires them to go into teaching. He goes on to start a big picture learning model school in oakland and big picture learning for you know for those of you not familiar is you know, Nonprofit Organization that has a network of were called progressive or Student Center schools. The idea is that the school should fit the needs of the child. And we shouldnt we should you know, there should be a divorce between the community and the classroom. So students spend several days a week in internships and what they call real World Learning experiences, among other activities. There, theres a structure of advisories where students in those advisories throughout the day and and the idea is that each child should be known by at least one adult in the school, which helps produce more social cohesion, reduces bullying, and also just make sure that students are heard and felt responsive to. So david comes back to philadelphia, starts el centro. The scientists, gets a contract by the district. It was quite funny because he was telling me about his you know, his experience coming to kensington and it wasnt deliberate that he decided to start this. The school in that neighborhood. He only learns later on when he was looking for real estate for the school that people would tell him like, are you a bromley . Like, are you, you know, is are you part of that family . And he you know, he tells me this funny story where he know he met this guy and hes like similarly, hey, i dont mean to be offensive, but like, are you bromley . And hes like, yeah, you know, im just want to let you know, like, i used to be in a union organized and the bromley were the worst people i guess workers. And so david you know kind of gets into this situation and you know, ive talked to him a number of times. Ive asked him to kind of reflect upon starting a school and ill talk to school for some, the poorest children and families in the city, in a neighborhood that was sucked dry of the enormous wealth that these factories produced for decades. You know, how do you kind of reconcile with that . And, you know, i pose them some pose some of these kind of difficult questions. And and, you know, you recognize the kind of irony of that and and, you know, felt that he was doing some good on behalf of these children living in very deep poverty and, you know, even though many them may not have graduated. And but he was providing them with a safe, nurturing place for at least a couple of hours during the day. Yeah. I mean, its interesting that that sense of that neighborhood sucked dry. I mean, it feels like the description of it feels a little bit like, you know, the high plains with all the nutrients gone, you cant really have a productive farm there anymore. You also spend a lot of time on on not just the stories of these young men, but on their family histories, on the traumas that their mothers in particular, but also their fathers and their grandmothers and grandfathers endured. And it starts to feel pretty bleak, honestly. It starts to feel like, you know, here they are traumatized for generations stuck in this place where its awfully hard to imagine anyone prospering, where wheres the hope in the stories . I guess, is the question, you know, is is a very harrowing book. Im not going to, you know, try to, you know, change that understanding of the book. I think its a it tells very traumatizing stories of of great structural violence. You just actually your politics, prose. Tracy carter spoke a couple of months ago and you wrote incredible book about paul farmer, the anthropologist and physician. And, you know, i followed and have been wedded to the concepts of structural violence because i found that i found the kensington was the embodiment of that structural violence and housing, the lack of housing, health care, educational opportunities, food insecurity, you know, run the gamut and so, you know, i began to try to understand those concepts and apply them to these young peoples lives and see that kind of be borne out across generations. And it was very important for me to provide an intergenerational account as well, because i think a lot of a lot of narrative nonfiction books may not provide the larger history at play and, you know, as i was beginning to interview their mothers in particular, you know, this is just as much a book about these three kids, as much as it is about their three mothers. I began to see the intergenerational transmission of poverty over time, and thats the sociologist me talking about. Thats essentially the reproduction of poverty from generation to generation, not because of what some people would argue or due to culture or due to cultural attributes. But because, as many sociologists would argue is because that these young people are put in the same or similar egregious conditions that their parents were predisposed to when they grew up, whether its the lack of opportunity in various capacities. And so the question about hope, you know, i think what im hopeful for, at least what i try to do and you can see this in the conclusion at least, is to provide a somewhat of a rough blueprint for where we go from here. You know, one of the things that i, i, you know, i took from these stories and i took these stories and i brought them to to washington when i started working for senator sanders. And i constantly remembered kensington when we worked on the Child Tax Credit, when we worked on affordable child care and and tuition free public college, i knew how transformative those programs would be for their lives. And so i think thats where i see hope. Thats where i see the sense of possibility that when when democrats had a trifecta, there was this sense that maybe, just maybe, we could actually have a social democracy where we can have to ensure that people have a basic standard, a decent standard of living. So, you know, i think i encourage people to read to the end because i think there is, you know, some some hope at the end that with the sufficient political will, we can change and transform the conditions in neighborhoods like kensington, the kensington of america and and and make sure that everyone has a decent senator living in the richest country in the history of the world. And lets talk about the Child Tax Credit for a second, because thats a policy prescription youve worked on that you focus on in the book. The idea is basically that the government gives money, cash to families to help them raise their children, to meet their expenses, the needs of daily life. We tried it during the pandemic for a year. It seems to have worked really well so we decided to stop doing it. And and that idea, you know, a lot of people look at that and, say, well, this would make a big difference for families in this situation. And i sort of want to interrogate that premise in the context of this book, because reading the stories of these families made me wonder how much of a difference would it really make if they had, you know, a few hundred dollars extra each month . Take us into that. Tell us tell us what that would have meant to them as tangibly as possible. Sure. So, you know, the expanded Child Tax Credit was issued in the American Rescue plan in march 2021. You know, its funny, my first day on the job was the day the bill was was passed by, was voted on and passed by the u. S. Senate. So i was thrown right into that. And then we tried to, you know, with some extraordinary colleagues, both in the Sanders Office and across the democratic aisle, to make sure that expanded tax credit, Child Tax Credit, was permanent, at least on a ten year basis. And basically what for those of you who dont know what the tax rate did, is that, you know, it gave 250 or 3 a month per child for four to each family. And as long as the kid was under the age of 18 and the research was very clear for at least the temporary expanded Child Tax Credit in 2021, and the way it dramatically reduced Child Poverty and poverty overall, millions of children were lifted out of poverty. Food insecurity went down. You can look at the census report during that time. They have these great Household Pulse surveys asking people about Economic Hardship and are you eating enough . Do you feel . And on every people felt more economically secure as a result of the expansion of the Child Tax Credit in 2021. And it was just a great disappointment to me and all of us that that tax credit expired at the end. The expansion expired at the end of december 2021. And so, you know, the question around, you know, is a child allowance or special tax credit sufficient to meet the challenges that exist in kensington and elsewhere . And i would say absolutely not. No degree. I think its not a panacea. I think it would have it would dramatically reduce poverty. It would have meant that emmanuel and and ryan and john carlos and their families would have lived in more economic, let with less economic insecurity. They would have been able to eat more. They would have had to get evicted less. They would you know been able to have less toxic stress. The toll on their minds and bodies just dealing with the daily grind of a poverty insecurity. You know, i think it would have helped reduce the suffering and inequality in in kensington and all over this country. But it you know, its not you know, i cite a and the great economist where he talks how poverty is not simply a lack of income. Its also a of what he calls capabilities or you know, the way i describe it is the basic necessities for a dignified life. And you know, i think its very important that we have, you know, a child allowance, but also that we have really robust public goods, that we build up institutions. Whether its in education, in housing, transit. In various systems, to make sure that people have the resources to thrive. And many of those institutions exist already. They exist in the wealthiest communities in this country. You know, take Public Education, for example. We know that the wealthiest communities in this country have really robust, equitable wellfunded Public Schools and their parent and those kids, those parents dont send their kids to Charter Schools. They send their kids to the local Neighborhood School because they know that school is serving their needs. And so in the book, i try to make the case for for really investing in the Public Sector and and reversing the years and years of austerity and privatization and provide a much larger scope of what a social democratic country might look like. And i thought we saw glimpses of that during the pandemic. You know, i think we saw examples, you know, we saw the emergency rental assistance. We saw the the expansion of medicaid to millions upon millions of people. We saw the expansion of snap benefits, you know, the emergency allotments that were given to folks. You know, we saw the Child Tax Credit expanded. You know, you know, there was a moment in the sun where we had glimpses of, you know, we might actually create a european style social democracy. We might be on the path towards that vision. And obviously, you know, as you and i know, that did not come about. And we have, you know, frankly gone backwards and people are falling deeper and deeper into despair. And, you know, next month, were going to see the expiration of the, you know, the child care funding that was part of the covid relief packages. And, you know, theyre going to be millions, if not more people that are going to lose their childcare benefits. So im, you know, going back to the question of hope, im hopeful. But, you know, im also, you know, quite pessimistic, you know, about the future there. Theres a horrible scene in the book where a graduate of of this high school is shot and killed right outside the high school. And one thing that struck me about it was just that he was there. He didnt he graduated. He was done with the institution, but he didnt really have anywhere else to go next. You know, one thing amartya sen also says about poverty is that, you know, people need work, right, to lift themselves up and not just for the income, but for the dignity that it brings and the absence of viable sources of employment. It is so striking in your narrative, you know, here in washington, people regularly find internships for their children. That happens in kensington do. But if the only source of employment is the drug trade, then the internship is working a corner. Talk a little bit about that aspect of it, the sort of absence, i mean, even if you get, you know, through childhood on a more stable basis and you graduate from high school, what happens next . Right. Is i think its a very important question because in the literature on the dropout crisis, there is this idea that if we just get every kid to High School Graduation, you know, well solve a lot of our problems and we just raise that, you know, the High School Graduation rates. Thats, you know, thats the kind of Silver Bullet to some of our ills. And i think this book shows very clearly how just how flawed that thesis might be. And, you know, like just the example of this, this young man who is literally shot and killed in broad daylight outside the school, he had done everything was supposed to do. He had gone to school. He had graduated. You know, he had fulfilled the soci ideal expectations before him and still could not make it out. And and that was, you know, that was not an isolated story. It was a story that came up consistently in the lives of these young people where, you know, even, you know, one thing i found just so striking and maybe i can just talk about this briefly, but the title lived to see the day it came from conversations would have with with the kids in particular. Ryan you know, give one example, give two examples. Ryan would tell me that when he was growing up, especially as a teenager, he didnt know what he was going to. He didnt he didnt. And he could envision what life was after the age of 18 or 21. He was either going to be he thought he was either going to be dead or incarcerated. One of those two things he didnt even think he might have a job, he might have a family, you might have kids. You know, that wasnt even something. A question, a possibility for him. And then the second thing ill mention is i was another young person i interviewed. I you know, his his birthday. It was his birthday couple of years ago. And i wish him happy birthday. And i said, how do you feel . And i and he said, im just glad i made it another year. Like, just i mean, the astonishment, like, of that remark, i. Im glad i made it another year that this young person, you know, was literally living day by day like he didnt know if he was going to survive next week. And, and and and that was just hit me to the core, you know, not just as a sociologist and an organizer, but also as a human being. Because, you know, i grew up on long island. I grew up in, you know, pretty welloff communities. And there was never a question like that one that you were going to go to college or something, you know, do well economically like. But the idea of just being alive just wasnt even a thing that we thought, you know, we talked about and so premature death, the concept that the how how violent of a concept premature death is is one that is found throughout the book and one that impacts a lot of these young people. You know, i talk about john carlos and his best friend, you know, just getting the crosshairs of a and and gets shot in the back of the head and dies. I mean, just it you know, the conditions that exist in kensington, you know, are just intolerable in that way. And you know, it. Philadelphia has become now over the past couple of years, the most violent city in america, the largest state, the most number of homicides per capita of any large city in this country. And so its a daily struggle of just even going to the corner store like they were, you know, there was one young person who told me that, you know, he he was afraid to walk two blocks to go to the poppy store, as they call it, in kensington, just to pick up a sandwich, because the other day, a bullet grazed his ear. And then almost, almost his daughter, like so, you know, the the toll that violence had their lives and how the now have to navigate that violence on a daily basis and then trying to graduate High School Top of that. I mean, come on. You know, you put anybody in that situation and its almost akin to making them fail. And so i think a High School Diploma is frankly insufficient to that. To the question of employment. You know, i think i you know, one of the policy proposals that i was a big champion for is bringing is renewing the spirit of the new deal. The Works Progress administration, wpa style public jobs programs. Because the way to actually disrupt the drug trade is not to just a restaurant car, your way to success. Its to provide people with decent dignified living, wage, employment so that people have real opportunity in their lives, and particularly for people who have a criminal record. Too many folks in the community have a criminal record that prevents them from getting decent and long term employment. And so if you solve that, thats how i think you really get to some of the issues of violence. Thats that comes out of the drug trade, among other systems. One one program that has been tried in limited doses and and is successful but problematic in other ways is is offering People Housing vouchers that take them out of communities like kensington and into neighborhoods that are more affluent and more stable. Theres a lot of Research Suggesting that that type of context really matters, but its also clear. Its clear in your narrative. And its its clear to anyone who spent time in these communities that the community has a tremendous value to its residents, that they rely upon it, that its not just their society, but in an important way, their economy. And so i guess im curious for your take on that. Can kensington be saved . Is the way to help the people there to save them by removing them from kensington . Its a really important question. Its an its a question that i think weve asking for over 50 years. I think you know, i spent a lot of time reading books of the 1960s. And, you know, Daniel Patrick moynihan talked about it a piece. He said, should we be gilding the ghetto or should we be abolishing the ghetto . Like, should we be, you know, building it up by, you know, with more funding and better institutions . Or should we actually, you know, make sure that people are not segregated and contained in one location . You know, i think theres you know, i think theres been a lot of evidence, as you point out, of success of many of these place based housing vouchers. You know, getting people out of the neighborhood into higher opportunity neighbors. And theres a lot of evidence that suggests of that success. But is that a structural solution . You know, thats a question like, you know, thats great for a few families, but for everyone, you know, think i would like to see, you know, and you, you know, very, you know, very compellingly about this. But the how do we tackle the residential segregation . Its core by looking at zoning in particular, making sure that were building Affordable Housing in other area and in affluent areas and all over, you know, cities and communities. You know, it is interesting to think about this question, particularly now, because kensington especially and parts of the neighborhood are seeing massive gentrification. So youre seeing a mass, you know, an influx of mostly white urban professionals moving in to the neighborhood and displacing some longtime residents. And so, you know, youre actually in el centros first and second location is actually safer than its ever been. You know, its the the violence in that neighbor has gone down precipitously over the past couple of years, even just the quality of, you know, the fact that theyre making sure that trash is being picked up, that potholes are being fixed, you know, when when those urban fresh move in the state, the city makes sure that theyre taken care of. And before they werent. And so that is something that i think youre going to see continue and, you know, push north northward into other parts of north philadelphia. So, you know, its something that i think is its a question id like to kind of explore further. I think at the very least, ending exclusionary zoning, building up Affordable Housing, not just all types of housing, but particularly social housing. Thats mixed income that allows people of of of all income backgrounds to live among each other. But also to address like smaller interventions. You know, Eric Klinenberg wrote this great book, palaces for the people, and he talks about some of these very common sense places, based interventions, you know, all the way from fixing up abandoned and abandoned homes, putting up street, you know, cleaning trash. You know, these small things that have enormous impacts on reducing. So i think its we can look at the broader picture, but there are things that the low hanging fruit cities and communities can do today. But i want to open this up and, allow the audience to ask some questions. So if you would line up at this microphone over here. Anybody who would like to ask a question come on down. Yes, absolutely. Actually, why dont you go ahead and go ahead. Were waiting for people to line up. So. Well, youve mentioned the as a sociologist, the economic and other obvious new deal ish kind of solutions. But theres also a psychological damage for living in this. And i think you have to work separately on that and you have to make i mean. I can give you two examples of where the arts have had a tremendous resource in giving people self image. The idea that can succeed in something that they get peer support and all this. And one of them is in this city in ward eight, the Ballou High School that banned is like a family to them. And those kids go on to college. And another one is in chester, pennsylvania im associated with a policy where thats even worse than kensington. Im sure the whole city is a disaster. No schools and someone has started a program there with the arts, continues. So i wonder, do you want to speak about is anything like that going on in these schools . Sure. No, its a its a great, great point. You know, theres a Great Program in in philadelphia called mural arts, and it we build these beautiful murals over the city and they evolve young people, those activities. I think the arts are a tremendous asset and its, you know, the unfortunate reality is that too many schools in philadelphia dont have the funding to have art and music teachers. They just dont, you know, austerity measures. The fact that the state continues deny philadelphia its fair share of funding, i mean, its just as simple as that. I mean that. And, you know, john carlos in the book talks about how art and music were the reasons he stayed in school, that keeps kids motivated and and as you point out, some of the psychological effects of poverty. So, you know, i think its incredibly important and thats just the bare minimum. And, you know, i dont generally frame these in the in the in the form of return on investment. But we know that these have enormous impacts, positive impacts on young people and and the economy in the future. Right, sir, during the pandemic. You mentioned that there was increased funding, which brought a lot of families and children out of poverty. But at the same time, there were masking. School closures, zoom classes and kids may not have had access to these things. Their parents might not have been home to facilitate facilitate these things. So can you talk about what it was like for these families and these children . And also for this school that had the benefactor . Were they able to ameliorate some of those problems there . The the young man that was shot was was he going to that Better School . Better school . Yeah. No, its its a great question. You know, i think that so the young person that was unfortunately shot, he graduate from el centro. So it was, you know, that was you know, i think the the thats the Better School. Yeah, thats the old story school in the book that David Bromley had had. It started. And yeah i think you know that that and so to talk about the first part in question you know the book ends just 2020 or so. So it doesnt necessarily it doesnt about the pandemic. But i have kept in touch with the kids and and folks at the school to understand how the pandemic affected them and, educational experiences. And i think the research is very clear that. Chronic absenteeism is up, dropout rates. Many parts of the country have risen. And, you know, theres just the failures of Remote Learning are just. And so i you know, i think were going to have to deal with the of that for many, many years to come. And for kids at el centro who needed like really they needed somebody to handhold them, they needed an adult who was going to care for them, constantly push them. And its very hard to do that behind a screen. You need someone really inperson and so a lot of those kids fell by the wayside when they didnt have inperson school. You know, i think there was some efforts to like learning pods at el centro where some kids had come in, which i think was helpful. You know, there was one extraordinary teacher who would have class in parks in, you know, in the city. You know, i think, unfortunately, too Many School Districts did not do enough to hold inperson outdoor instruction that, frankly, that should have been happening without masks. Yeah, without masks in safe way. And and, you know, and once we saw some of the Scientific Evidence of of the safety outdoor activities, i think could have been you know, there was a lot of federal money coming through and, you know, some schools did use that, create outdoor pavilions and do other activities. But i think those it would have been very i think would have helped a lot, especially for some of the most vulnerable kids to have something that was not just virtual instruction. Also, did you draw upon your your own experiences growing up in writing this book . Yeah, its not i dont it doesnt come up in the book per se, but its something i constantly reflect on and know the ive been writing a lot about Public Education for many years and just some of problems i faced in terms of the lack of engaging instruction and and boring classes and the fact that i felt that school wasnt always the relevant place to be. Know, i saw that play out in the lives of these young people as well. Certainly more, you know, intensified ways. But its certainly something that i draw upon. And definitely this the inequalities between my own childhood and what these young people in order to something that i constantly refer to. Go ahead. Hi, im jeff kennedy. Oh, how how are you. Right. Ive known about this young man since. I think he was in high school. I, i havent had an opportunity to go through the entire book, but ive had enough understanding of your career and some and a lot of your work to. Formulate i this question im about to ask. First, let me say you spoke about alison from opt out and in in your book and in philadelphia i want you if you could talk a little bit about how you got involved in schools. One of the things, even when you were in high school, even when you were in england getting your education at cambridge, i kept sending you messages saying you know, i want you to learn about the eugenics movement. I want you to learn so much about scientific racism, other things, because had that you were that young man who, you know, had prepared to continuously and worked hard to continuously in a way. And you had that consciousness at a very early age. So i want you to talk about how you got involved in education and in building who got you involved, and also the path to see the that you speak of. In right here in washington, d. C. We started talking about School Reform, how it with how it started years ago. It really senator around washington, d. C. With michelle rhee. I know the young lady in the middle, in the blue jacket. She just talked about Blue High School and the band. But we had something else. I actually attended blue. I was in the math Science Program and it was one of the best. My part, i think, was the best program in the city at that time and they turned it into charter school. They took away the math science component from blue and turned it into a charter that was down southwest and. That was some of the beginnings of the charter movement. And of course, the school didnt last once they, took it outside of Blue High School. So the students there we we went to any Ivy League School or any other place, the country that we went into. I eventually graduated from mckinley technology, mckinley tech. And so. I want you to i want you to talk about where have an opportunity to go from your from what you learned historically and in the English School system, in the british schools, in the british, about the british system and where we are as a country. And, you know, just from talk about that experience, a little more that i know you yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I think my background as an organizer growing up on long island and seeing, you know, the high stakes testing rollout across the state was quite formative in my own understanding and political consciousness. And then i would visit places philadelphia and and meet actually here in d. C. And in portland, oregon. And wed all come together and we talk about some of the challenges of market based School Reform, because wed all been wed grown up as the generation of the no child left behind era. And and testing, you know, constantly came up in those. And its something that john carlos in the book was was a was a great critic because he found it dehumanizing that the school was just treating him like a number and that the performance and their potential future to even operate in the long term was based on this on how the students do on the test and and so he called that he you know engage in the opt out protest walkouts his school and and really tried to connect the centrist testing to the privatization to the austerity measures among other policies. As you know the other the your second question around, you know, just reflecting upon the various school systems, you i, i found the british system at least to cambridge to be very aligned with the way i prefer to learn which was working very closely with two or three, you know, to supervise two professors and creating my own curriculum and Research Agenda based that. You know, it was very similar to my time at goddard, which was, you know goddard for those of you dont know is like a very kind of hippie, Progressive School in Rural Vermont and where it has many similarities to two graduate school. And so i found that those experiences prepare me for graduate school very well because. I was able to be be selfdirected, create my own curriculum, work closely with mentors, use the community, the classroom and, you know, that was helpful later on. So and i think many of those principals exist in el centro with the, the internships, the real World Learnings experiences, among other activities. High as someone who went to a british system like school in india let me tell you at school level it is learning rote and its at the Cambridge Oxford and the ph. D. Level that you get the kind independence youre talking. So actually we are all looking in the other countries as to how make the system look a little bit more flexible, like the american system. So quite often there can be that kind of thing. But the other question is you have been a critic of the pedagogy in general, even in the good schools. So does it make sense to bring if you were to replicate the best schools and take it to two kensington, would that help . If you say that the pedagogy itself is something that is at fault, would it help to replicate that system in in another neighborhood or do we have to go into something much more fundamentally different to help that system now . Its a great question. I think if you look at some of the most Progressive Schools in this country, theyre usually private schools and, they have Student Centered approaches to learning their teachers are well paid. They have small class sizes. They have really rich, robust curriculum, the arts, music, drama, speech and debate. You know, all the great Extracurricular Activities that i think kids deserve. And i think, you know, those those practices and those types of those pedagogies be, i think in the traditional Public School system at large, i, i think when i, i, i would compare it to my, if i look at my own high school, which is a very high ranking public, high school in long island, that was very regimented, pretty pressure cooker. You know, a lot of the kids they were preparing to go on to, you know, they were being trained for the ivy league or, you know, prestigious colleges, universities and it was done in a very, i would say, a very distorted way of learning where you stripped out a lot of the joy in an education. So and its interesting you made the comment about the british system because yes, you know, that was exported. India and many other countries very, very didactic rote learning. And then then you go on to, you know, the elite institutions and now youre given freedom to learn and do what you want. So, you know, its its a very its important point that you made as well. And another question is whether i would really make a difference rather than try to replicate what doesnt work here. Can we just completely revamped with technology . No. I mean, i think there is i, i think theres a lot of questions that are still at play with intelligence. I mean, i think you know, were seeing that literally right now and especially with chatbots just coming out a couple months ago and just the effect that its had on just teaching learning. I that it will technology can never replicate those really rich authentic learning experiences that young people should have, especially in the real world at large, whether its project based learning, whether its internships, whether experiential learning opportunities work, you know, those can never be fully replicated by technology. So itll always be technology as a as a as a tool. You know, its one part of it and can help or a help or hurts learning in different ways and think. I always find it very problematic when we treat it as a Silver Bullet to our educational problems and especially in policy rates. Congratulations on your book, kill. My question. So were talking about governmental policy solutions to the youre talking about and i was curious what the perception of government is in the communities youre talking about because there are studies that show that people who live in very impoverished low income neighborhoods usually have a bad associate with the government, and that leads to decline in political participation, like people dont vote or, you know, associate candidates in any way because their main associate with government is with carceral or with the police and so i was curious if talking about kids making it to the age of 18 was voting anywhere in they talked about with their friends or what how did government come up in the conversations . Yeah, great question. You know, el centro certainly it very made an essential piece of the curriculum that young would try to become good citizens, that they would be exposed to current events. And in politics, you know, there was a lot opportunities for democratic engagement where students could could organize in the school and push for certain policies. And the staff was open to considering their opinions they also, you know, theres one scene in the book where el centro is threatened with closure and how the young people at el centro and the alternate organize an entire campaign, you know, going to city hall, testifying, marching around around the city to to push against the threatened closure. So, you know and even you know, john carlos is a i think, a really textbook example of of that and the ways that they took their own education in their hands and and fought for their schools you know, i the question around the perception of government, i think its a really interesting one. You know, ill give one example to illustrate my point. It was 20,. 20 to 2020. And the Trump Administration was about to issue stimulus checks as a result of the pandemic. And ill never forget ryan, you know, he he knew i was politically inclined and you know, would follow this up very closely. I had never seen him more in politics than when there was a question of whether we were going to get a second stimulus check. You know, he wasnt going to vote for trump, but i think a lot of people were were like, wow, this the first time that government actually gave me something, you know, you know, the notion of a hidden welfare state, you know, was something that i was very struck by that. You know, here you know, they got so many tax and other benefits through the tax code that they didnt necessarily realize. But now they actually have like a tangible, you know, 600 check here as a 1400 dollars check that i thought was very that made a major impact in how they viewed government. And i think it had had a significant role in the georgia elections in the senate, the runoff elections and how people were said they were promised that were going to, you know, deliver hundred dollars checks if you vote for democrat, as you know, i and think the Child Tax Credit is another example of that, where i think we one of the i think the failings how it was messaged was that a lot of people didnt realize that they were getting the expanded child child tax. They didnt know it was this new thing going on. You know, they may have thought it was part of the the pandemic era program. And i think, you know, democrats particular need to do a better job in taking credit in like in actually showing people that we did something for you. We made sure that your kids are fed at night, that they are not, that they have a safe place to live. You know, i think theres a theres just been enormous accomplish of the Biden Administration that a lot of people just dont know about because they dont necessarily see it or they dont know about it in their in their daily lives. So i think the importance of of making those programs very tangible is is a task that i think all should be involved with and reducing the kind of bureaucratic nonsense of the welfare state that unfortunately prevents a lot of people from getting public assistance and the benefits that they are entitled to. But ryan in particular, has this fascinating relationship with government, right . He dreams of working in government as a Police Officer . Yup. Working in government. He uses the government to go see football games. And, you know, hes got a really interesting relationship. Yeah, its because i wont spoil the end but like, you know, he does he eventually ends up working in the criminal Justice System and so he has this this this kind of love hate relationship because his life especially his childhood and beyond, was at least the criminalization of a child, was a product of government policy. And hes, you know, part of the system today. Hes, you know, is a youth advocate, among other roles that he has where hes with many of the same kids, many of the kids who were in the same predicament that he was in as a kid. So, yeah, its, its a fascinating, uh, uh, exchange there between those two systems. I think last question. Yeah. Since im let me ask this question, then we go straight to the heart. I just found out that you were that you grew up in long island. You grew up at the home of colts spring harbor. Oh, and most people dont know. Thats the thats home of the eugenics movement, this country. But when we look at progressive policy, a lot of people dont understand that housing policy is school policy, that our housing policy that came out of the American Economic association, where most of those individuals had these scientific scientific racism created community, is where people couldnt go to school together. Its what created segregation. They created these communities where people would not be able to get a quality education because everyone would be centered. All all the low economic would be centered all across the country in these neighborhoods. So our whole our whole country was built on these ideas. So now we know and i think, again, my friend in the blue jacket for saying what she said earlier, because its not Brain Science was working kids arts saying math giving them quality music. I mean project zero has been out of harvard has been one of the best programs in the country for years so weve seen what works. But yet we invest in completely opposite things that dont work with children. The market, schools, we know testing this with testing was used to keep people out of opportunities and that to give people opportunities. Thats why they created Testing School testing in the first place. So what can we do to make this and i know you might be this so social democrat. 00a socialist more more inclined. What can we do to make the sweeping changes for the next generation . What can we do to make the sweeping so the next generation can have hope that theres going to be something for right now . Thank you i think you know, i think theres a number of things and ill elaborate on that in in another context. But i think joining social movements, getting involved in, the political process, working for government, you know, making it very clear to your Public Officials and servants that you want an antipoverty, proeconomic security agenda on table, helping to unionize and organize your workplaces you know, those types of tangible things, i think will, make a major difference in in peoples lives. I think politics is, frankly, a matter of life and death and it determines who lives and who dies. So and i think we need to be we need to recognize that first and foremost. And we also to craft our the way we live in that in that way so that we put pressure on the people in power to provide equitable and decent resources to m