School District of Philadelphia Director of Social Studies Curriculum is on board of group calling for education as a tool of revolution and to bring outside activism into K-12 schools.
Ant Smith: "the real desire for revolution which is the ultimate goal of abolition and reconstruction." Dylan Rodriguez "this study guide reflects an existing insurgency in Philadelphia."
In a two-hour long webinar, W.E.B Du Bois Abolition and Movement school educators and contributors discussed the study guide which will help educators bring revolution into the classroom and carry on the School’s “insurgency” (this might explain their presence at the Swarthmore encampment).
They discuss the importance of linking formal educational institutions, like K-12 and colleges, with outside networks like the School.
Ismael Jimenez, the Director of Social Studies Curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia is on the school’s advisory board. Jimenez’s wife is on the board of the School’s fiscal sponsor.
Here’s the full two hour conversation:
So who took part in the webinar?
Geo Maher: Maher is the coordinator for the W.E.B Du Bois School for Abolition and Movement. He “is an abolitionist educator, organizer, and writer based in Philadelphia. He has taught previously at the University of Pennsylvania, Vassar College, Drexel University, San Quentin State Prison, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas, and has held visiting positions at the CUNY Graduate Center, the Decolonizing Humanities Project at the College of William & Mary, NYU’s Hemispheric Institute, and the Institute of Social Research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).”
According to the W.E.B Du Bois School for Abolition and Movement website, Maher “was taught at an early age to despise oppression, and found early inspiration in local and global struggles against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy—and in the revolutionary internationalist vision for a new world that those who fight continue to carry in their hearts.”
He also, apparently, spent around $25 on Etsy to buy that natty “Anti-Zionist Social Club” t-shirt he wore especially for the book launch.
Christopher Rogers: Rogers had previously been on the steering committee for National Black Lives Matter at School. NBLM was started by Jesse Hagopian of Rethinking Schools. Another founding member is Tamara Anderson, a founding member of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee. Ismael Jimenez, the Director of Social Studies Curriculum for Philly School Districts, on the advisory Board of the abolition school, and the founding member of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, was also involved.
From the Black Lives Matter at School website: You might be able to recognise Norman Shaw Macqueen and Ismael Jimenez.
Here is the BLM at School Curriculum resource guide - including a guide to helping students organize walk-outs. Did I mention that Ismael Jimenez is the Director of Social Studies curriculum for the entire district?
In the guide for Black Lives Matter at School 2024, they quote from Sharif El-Mekki’s Center for Black Educator Development (El-Mekki and Jimenez are friends and host a weekly podcast): “Teaching is activism”
Listen to Rogers talking about how National Black Lives Matter at school aimed to spread a “fugitive pedagogy” throughout K-12, “working through schools…to liberate, to subversively move through….we need to be teaching Dylan Rodriguez…the work of the Abolition school continues that.”
He talks about the need to work in spaces like public K-12 schools but also to work outside those spaces as an activist and then connect them together through networks- to bring the activism from the outside inside the public school system.
Did I mention that Ismael Jimenez is on the board of the Abolition School and is also the director of social studies curriculum for School District of Philadelphia? I don’t think I did. So let me mention - Ismael Jimenez is on the board of the Abolition School and is also the director of social studies curriculum for School District of Philadelphia
Ant Smith: A former social studies teacher. Smith was previously covered in this Substack because he took part in an event with Samidoun, a designated terror entity. The event was initially advertised as being between Samidoun and the School, but that was later edited out to mention only Smith and Samidoun.
Smith was jailed for overturning and setting alight a police car during a riot to protest for George Floyd. He talks about that experience in the webinar - along with acknowledging that the goal is revolution, using the classroom as a tool.
Maher says Smith was “targeted by federal forces…as a result of his organizing” (just so you get an idea of what they mean when they talk about organizing).
Smith says “I faced the consequences of being organized and participating in the resistance to state violence, primarily known as the George Floyd protests….the Abolition School was just a monumental force in sort of the support I received.”
Again - Smith flipped over and set fire to a police car.
“We speak at length about the ideological warfare we’re engaged in.”
Ismael Jimenez is a vocal supporter of Smith.
The guest speakers were:
Melissa Ferrer Civil, the first poet laureate of Kansas City and founder of the B-REAL Academy (Black, Radical Education for Abolition and Liberation).
Joy James, the Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities at Williams College.
Dylan Rodriguez, professor at University of California-Riverside, former chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies. He is a founding member of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.
“Dylan’s lifework focuses on liberationist, anticolonial, and abolitionist confrontations with the antiblack, colonial, and white supremacist violences that permeate the ongoing Civilization project. He is devoted to studying and teaching the historical, collective genius of rebellion, survival, and insurgent futurity that radically challenge dominant forms of authority, power, and institutionality…
Most importantly, Dylan believes in the right—in fact, the obligation—of occupied, colonized, and incarcerated peoples to fight for their liberation against external oppressors as well as internal reactionaries, and the parallel responsibility of those who profess solidarity to take all necessary measures to protect, defend, and advance liberation struggle, whatever forms it may take.”
Listen to Rodriguez talk about the study guide produced by the W.E.B Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction which he wants to center “within the theatre of counterinsurgency”
“This book reflects an already existing insurgency in Philadelphia.”
The point of the book is to provide a curriculum and study guide for educators to, as Rodriguez puts it, “secretly organize rebellion, insurrection and uprising.”
To summarize: Ismael Jimenez, the Director of Social Studies Curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia, is deeply connected to an organization which has created a “study guide” for educators to bring insurrectionist action and thought and “revolution” to the classroom - an organization which describes its strategy as being an outside agitator which creates a network or bridge to institutional actors, like, say, an administrator in a school district, to make sure that their “liberatory”, “revolutionary”, “insurrectionist”, curriculum is taught in K-12 and in colleges.