Tagged: Andre Perry

Men, did you know that we hurt people when we chose not to learn? Aldous Huxley said, “We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love.”

That Huxley quote always reminds me of the never-ending responsibility to learn about the people I claim to love. Intimacy comes out of the scrutiny of our desires, shames and delights. Therefore, loving is not just learning how to be vulnerable; it’s being vulnerable enough to learn.

About a year ago, Ms. Chanda Burks met me in my office to discuss establishing a mentoring program for black males.  Ms. Burks brought along her adolescent son Jared Michael Francis to take in the conversation.  One year later, just a few days ago, I bumped into Ms. Burks at a NOLA for Life event.  There, Ms. Burks informed me that her son Jared died from multiple gunshots in front of their home in the hushed neighborhood of Tall Timbers. He died September 15, 2012.  He was an 18 year-old senior.

The deadline for voter registration for this year’s elections is Tuesday, October 9. Have you registered?

Regrettably, political and legal battles over voter identification laws compel me to ask, "Have you registered correctly?"

“One percent rapper” Nikki Minaj proclaimed that she intended to vote for Mitt Romney, but later a charged public discovered that darling Nikki hasn’t registered to vote. We’ll chalk that up as an oversight. However, several rappers have made it clear that they’re not voting.

When I used to coach track and field, I would tell my colleagues, “A great leader removes all excuses for their athletes to fail.” The same is true in education. Our systems should make it easy for parents and students to succeed by removing excuses’ door.

While empowering, New Orleans highly decentralized system of charter schools has been as confusing. Parents encounter loopholes when they don’t fully understand their options.

Stakeholders on all sides of the Chicago teachers’ strike trumpeted the phrase “civil rights” so much that it became hard to see who’s fighting for what. Beyond the strike, how many times do you hear advocates start a petition with, “The civil rights issue of the 21stcentury is [insert concern here]?"

It’s downright trendy to root for civil rights. But since we apparently solved for racism, what exactly is the most pivotal injustice that keeps citizens from realizing their full potential?

Although Hurricane Isaac blew out electricity for the entire New Orleans metro area, do we collectively understand what it means to be powerless? For too many residents, neither Isaac nor Entergy will prevent electricity from returning; powerlessness will. The silver lining to our temporary blackout should be that it illuminated our awareness to the day-to-day conditions of the poor in New Orleans.