By Lindsey Schlax
(Editor’s Note: Teacher Lyndsey Schlax of the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts launched the nation’s first on-site high school LGBT course in 2015. She has just resumed teaching that groundbreaking class. In this column, her students usually share their thoughts about LGBT-related matters, including their concerns, what they have learned in class and more. For this issue, however, Schlax has invited Jamie Pelusi, a teacher at the June Jordan School for Equity, to present the work of the Excelsior District’s school’s students. On October 18, four students were shot outside the school’s campus, and four others were injured. Police have since arrested two suspects, but are still searching others. The victims, including a female who was shot in her upper right thigh and left hip, are recovering.
Students, faculty and staff at June Jordan have since unified and become even stronger. Negative news articles published in other media inspired the students to create a video—http://jjse.org/jjse-in-our-own-words/—to speak out about the event and their dedication to community building and social justice. They also crafted the below pieces, which we are proud to share with you. June Jordan will soon offer an LGBT class, inspired by Schlax’s work. For more information about the school, please visit: http://jjse.org/)
Words from Our Community
(Collected and edited by students in grades 9–12)
June Jordan is a community fighting oppression…
Working together to be a part of something
Standing up for what we believe in
Social justice
Knowing that we have different struggles but we come together to try to understand each other
Helping each other out
About not fighting who you are but loving who you are
Where you can push yourself and grow in many ways
A place that teaches you that realizing your own internalized oppression is uncomfortable and takes time but it’s possible to fight
Warriors
Solidarity
June Jordan is safety…
No oppression, no racism, no homophobia, no sexism, no sexual harassment, no oppressive language
Respecting each other’s differences
Being able to express yourself in any way without being judged
Being yourself and loving who you want to love
Everyone here is a brother or a sister or a non-binary sibling
Never feeling alone
People coming together sharing one safe place
Safe haven
Respect, integrity, courage, humility
Hope
June Jordan is family…
Diversity
Where you can come to be yourself and have fun
All are welcome
Spreading love not hate
Queer
A strong community
Cool teachers and amazing students
About respecting others’ right to use their preferred pronoun and gender identity
Friends, laughter, and fun
The nest that shapes you
A second home
Family
Love
A New Sense of Purpose
Student, Grade 12
On October 18, June Jordan’s community changed drastically due to an unfortunate event. Members of our community were injured by outsiders. After the incident, many members in our community felt in denial, worried, unsafe, and traumatized to come back to a space that has been violated a day after. However, students came back to school with a sense of purpose: to rebuild our community’s safety. Students communicated through social media and showed solidarity by wearing our school shirt, a blue shirt with the solidarity fist on the front and a quote on the back: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Wednesday morning, our school had an assembly about standing in solidarity with each other. Students and teachers had spaces for them to talk about the incident, their feelings, and ways to cope about it. Our community, slowly but surely, is healing from the incident.
True Social Change Requires Reforming Institutions that Oppress
Student, Grade 11
As the truth came to light, I had a f lashback to 5 years ago when my family & I came home and our house was robbed. I began thinking: our community and our home, June Jordan, has just experienced an invasion. We’ve become the latest example of school gun violence. Over the next few days we wondered, what is the root cause of this violence?
While our school mission is social justice, we mean social justice for everybody, including the people who affected our community. We live in a society where the focus is “profits above everything,” which makes people disposable. Living under this profit-driven mentality has brought advancements to our society, such as technology and transportation. Although the developments under this mentality are crucial, they do not outweigh the unjust treatment it brings upon us. Not everybody can be rich; there is only limited space at the top. You get your riches on the back of someone else.
Ironically in this rich city of San Francisco, there are groundbreaking levels of unemployment, displacement, poverty and environmental degradation. This is critical because the Black Lives Matter Movement states that “Black people are not inherently more violent or more prone to crime than other groups. But black people are disproportionately poorer, more likely to be targeted by police and arrested, and more likely to attend poor or failing schools. All of these social indicators place one at greater risk for being either a victim or a perpetrator of violent crime.” Although the movement is talking about black people specifically, this connects to other people of color. Since the profit-driven mentality produces inequality, poverty, & unemployment, this leads our communities to be divided through structural violence all over the nation. This mentality truly brings oppression upon us, or makes us oppress each other.
Nevertheless, our people are resilient; our people are strong & our people have solidarity. To fight structural factors, we must fight to change systems, rather than demonize individuals. If we want to change how people are deprived of basic human rights & dignity under capitalism, then we must train ourselves and each other to become organizers who work to build organizations and movements to strike the root causes of problems. If we want true social change, we must reform the institutions that oppress us.
Lyndsey Schlax has been a teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District since 2008. She is uniquely qualified to address multiple areas of LGBT studies, having also specialized in subjects such as Modern World History, Government, Economics and U.S. Politics. She is a National Board Certified Teacher, and earned her M.A. in Teaching at the University of San Francisco.
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