The Prize
The Prize

Author: Dale Russakoff

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2015-09-08

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0547840519

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ThisNew York Times bestseller chronicles how Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Christie, and Cory Booker tried—and failed—to reform education in Newark, NJ. In September of 2010, billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went on Oprah to announce a pledge of $100 million to transform the downtrodden schools of Newark, New Jersey. There by his side were the city’s Democratic mayor, Cory Booker, and the state’s Republican governor, Chris Christie. Together, they vowed to make Newark “a symbol of educational excellence for the whole nation.” But this trio of power players had no idea what they were in for. The tumultuous changes planned by reformers and their highly paid consultants spark a fiery grass-roots opposition stoked by local politicians and union leaders. At the center of the fight was Newark’s billion-dollar-a-year education budget: a prize that, for generations, had enriched seemingly everyone, except Newark’s children. In The Prize, Dale Russakoff presents a dramatic narrative encompassing the rise of celebrity politics, big philanthropy, extreme economic inequality, the charter school movement, and the struggles and triumphs of schools in one of the nation’s poorest cities. “One of the most important books on education to come along in years.”—The New York Times

Black Power at Work
Black Power at Work

Author: David Goldberg

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-05-02

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0801461952

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Black Power at Work chronicles the history of direct action campaigns to open up the construction industry to black workers in the 1960s and 1970s. The book's case studies of local movements in Brooklyn, Newark, the Bay Area, Detroit, Chicago, and Seattle show how struggles against racism in the construction industry shaped the emergence of Black Power politics outside the U.S. South. In the process, "community control" of the construction industry—especially government War on Poverty and post-rebellion urban reconstruction projects— became central to community organizing for black economic self-determination and political autonomy. The history of Black Power's community organizing tradition shines a light on more recent debates about job training and placement for unemployed, underemployed, and underrepresented workers. Politicians responded to Black Power protests at federal construction projects by creating modern affirmative action and minority set-aside programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but these programs relied on "voluntary" compliance by contractors and unions, government enforcement was inadequate, and they were not connected to jobs programs. Forty years later, the struggle to have construction jobs serve as a pathway out of poverty for inner city residents remains an unfinished part of the struggle for racial justice and labor union reform in the United States.

A Consumers' Republic
A Consumers' Republic

Author: Lizabeth Cohen

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2008-12-24

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 0307555364

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In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life. Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of consumers to purchase everything from vacuum cleaners to convertibles gave rise to the power of citizens to purchase political influence and effect social change. Yet despite undeniable successes and unprecedented affluence, mass consumption also fostered economic inequality and the fracturing of society along gender, class, and racial lines. In charting the complex legacy of our “Consumers’ Republic” Lizabeth Cohen has written a bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book.

Black Mayors and School Politics
Black Mayors and School Politics

Author: Wilbur C Rich

Publisher: Garland Science

Published: 2021-12-12

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 1000525953

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First Published in 1996. Some people believe that if inner-city black children had excellent schools, they would perform better in them. Granted, schools are a part of the problem, but they are not all of the solution. Schools are only buildings where teachers, administrators, and students interact. Learning is a more much complex process. There are many forces arrayed against an inner-city child that preclude him/her from mastering the education process. Among these forces are poverty, family instability, disruptive classroom environments, and incompetent teachers. There seems to be no end to research and speculation about how to overcome these forces. However, the author asserts that the gap between black and white children continues to widen. With research beginning in 1989, exploring three school systems for this study: Detroit, Michigan; Gary, Indiana; and Newark, New Jersey. The book presents a systematic survey of school politics in these three cities, giving particular emphasis to local reform efforts.

The Fixers
The Fixers

Author: Julia Rabig

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-09-28

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 022638845X

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Stories of Newark’s postwar decline are easy to find. But in The Fixers, Julia Rabig supplements these tales of misery with the story of the many imaginative challenges to the city’s decline mounted by Newark’s residents and suburban neighbors. In these pages, we meet the black nationalists whose dynamic organizing elected African American candidates in unprecedented numbers. There are tenants who mounted a historic rent strike to transform public housing and renegade white Catholic priests who joined black laywomen to pioneer the construction of low-income housing and influence housing policy. These are just a few of the “fixers” we meet—people who devised ways to work with limited resources and pull together the threads of a patchwork welfare state. Rabig argues that fixers play dual roles. They support resistance, but also mediation; they fight for reform, but also more radical and far-reaching alternatives; they rally others to a collective cause, but sometimes they broker factions. Fixers reflect longer traditions of organizing while responding to the demands of their times. In so doing, they end up fixing (like a fixative) a new and enduring pattern of activist strategies, reforms, and institutional expectations—a pattern we continue to see today.

Inside Newark
Inside Newark

Author: Robert Curvin

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2014-07-09

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 0813565723

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For decades, leaders in Newark, New Jersey, have claimed their city is about to return to its vibrant past. How accurate is this prediction? Is Newark on the verge of revitalization? Robert Curvin, who was one of New Jersey’s outstanding civil rights leaders, examines the city, chronicling its history, politics, and culture. Throughout the pages of Inside Newark, Curvin approaches his story both as an insider who is rooting for Newark and as an objective social scientist illuminating the causes and effects of sweeping changes in the city Based on historical records and revealing interviews with over one hundred residents and officials, Inside Newark traces Newark’s history from the 1950s, when the city was a thriving industrial center, to the era of Mayor Cory Booker. Along the way, Curvin covers the disturbances of July 1967, called a riot by the media and a rebellion by residents; the administration of Kenneth Gibson, the first black mayor of a large northeastern city; and the era of Sharpe James, who was found guilty of corruption. Curvin examines damaging housing and mortgage policies, the state takeover of the failing school system, the persistence of corruption and patronage, Newark’s shifting ethnic and racial composition, positive developments in housing and business complexes, and the reign of ambitious mayor Cory Booker. Inside Newark reveals a central weakness that continues to plague Newark—that throughout this history, elected officials have not risen to the challenges they have faced. Curvin calls on those in positions of influence to work for the social and economic improvement of all groups and concludes with suggestions for change, focusing on education reform, civic participation, financial management, partnerships with agencies and business, improving Newark’s City Council, and limiting the term of the mayor. If Newark’s leadership can encompass these changes, Newark will have a chance at a true turnaround. Watch a video with Robert Curvin: Watch video now. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-d6zV2OQ8A).