Why is the Director of Social Studies Curriculum at the School District of Philadelphia on the Board of an organization which partnered with Samidoun, a designated terror entity?
On Wednesday, March 26th, the Philadelphia Branch of the Democratic Socialists of America hosted an event with Ant Smith, of the W.E.B Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction and Samidoun.
The original advertisement for the event noted Ant Smith as being from the W.E.B Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction and the School was listed alongside Samidoun and the Philadelphia Democratic Socialists of America as being involved in the event.
The description for the event invited attendees to join a conversation between “Samidoun and the Abolition School on how US and Palestinian settler-colonialism carceral apparatuses function.”
The W.E.B Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction states that it “trains aspiring and current movement organizers in how to understand the world and how to change it…Our students are aspiring revolutionaries and abolitionists of all ages and backgrounds who want to acquire the analytical tools and practical skills necessary to set political change into motion and sustain it through struggle. But we seek above all to help build the leadership capacity of organic intellectuals, those most directly impacted by oppressive structures—policing, mass incarceration, environmental racism, and poverty—and those closest to the struggles to dismantle them.”
So such an event should be right up its alley. But all mention of the School was subsequently removed from communication about the event.
Why is this? Perhaps it realized that appearing at an event with a US designated terror entity, Samidoun, was not the smartest decision. After all, the “School” has ties to the School District of Philadelphia thanks to Ismael Jimenez, who sits on the School’s “advisory board”.
Ismael Jimenez is the Director of Social Studies curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia. Jimenez, like his friend Sharif El-Mekki, is a proponent of Paulo Friere’s belief that education is a tool of and for political activism.
In the above post, Jimenez tags his friend Sharif El-Mekki and the W.E.B Du Bois Movement School.
Jimenez’s ties to the School seem deep. After all, his wife is on the board of the School’s fiscal sponsor, the Abolitionist Law Center.
And he offered very public support to Ant Smith after his incarceration for flipping over a police car during the 2020 George Floyd protests
Anthony Smith was sentenced Tuesday following a guilty plea in June to a federal charge of obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder, which included aiding and abetting an arson, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Smith acknowledged having helped others flip a vacant Philadelphia police car over outside City Hall on May 31, 2020. After someone fired a road flare into the vehicle, sending it up in flames, Smith then threw a piece of paper into the blaze, prosecutors said.
The School District of Philadelphia should have to answer for why its Director of Social Studies Curriculum is on the Board of such a baldly activist organization - one which, at least initially, would have the bad judgment to partner with anti-American terrorist entity.
