Howard Fuller. So great to see you again.

It is good to see you, my friend.

I had a chance to check in with my dad just a couple days ago. We were reliving his, Case Western Reserve days and how I think he ended up getting his PhD, just a few years before you did. There's a part of me. We've talked about my brother his birthday is one day away from you. I never have an excuse not to send you a happy birthday greeting. Right? But also there's just this ship's passing in the night. I can't claim it. But, if there had been a chance that you and my father had been in the same PhD program in Case Western, I would've loved it. Right?

Yeah. Like I actually got my master's degree in social work from Western Reserve University. Okay. Because there was Case Tech. In Western Reserve, and then ultimately they merged into Case Western Reserve that we know of today. So I was there before the merger.

Well, there have been, ships that have sailed in our nights that have almost come into contact, but every time we get together and Charterfolk Chat, I'm grateful. So thank you so much. Well, what sparks this one, Howard, is the fact that you and I were on a conference call here recently with national leaders, and you started talking about some issues, and some new observations that you were making about the movement. And I was like, wow, it's been too long since Charterfolk Chat have heard from you. The Howard Fuller mind is, full of new ideas, or additional ideas. And so and also, we're gonna release this during Thanksgiving week exactly the time that people say, don't leave a, don't release a podcast. No one has enough time. Right. But I want, I want the frame of thankfulness but also not taking anything for granted. And it was really in that last area, Hey, are we taking things for granted? That maybe we shouldn't, would you mind just doing the download, sharing with our readers, our listeners, what you were sharing on that conference call earlier this month?

Yeah. So Jed, I like the idea of the thankfulness. 'cause to me thankfulness has two elements to it. It is to be thankful for what it is that you have or we have at any moment in time. But it's also the understanding that because we're still alive, we have the ability to make it better. Or we have the ability to change it so that it can better serve whomever it is that we're interested in serving.

Yeah,

And I think where I was coming from is that I have a fundamental belief that we have to remain committed to purpose, not to the institutional arrangement that gets us to purpose and what that has always meant to me is that while I'm a strong supporter of, as Ted Kolderie would say, chartered schools. I'm only a supporter of it as long as it works for what it was it was initially intended to do, and that, in my opinion, it was intended to do two things. Number one, particularly in our community, the Black community, but in all communities generally. Number one is to provide parents with the ability to choose, an option. Other than the traditional public school system. And the second thing, it gave educators and other people in our community the ability to create schools and those two elements are part of a, of a broader framework of self-determination.

Yeah.

And so. As to follow this theme that you're talking about. I'm thankful that the fight took place over all of these years to create these possibilities, but the reality of it is no public policy is permanent. Yeah. Any public policy can be changed or it can be eliminated. Yeah. And so one of the things that those of us who support parent choice, generally, charter schools in particular, we have to be mindful that there's no given. It's not given

Yeah.

That, that charter school laws will stay in existence and because all you gotta do is whatever you think about Roe versus Wade is look at the fact that there are people who never thought that Roe versus Wade could be eliminated on whichever side they were on.

Yeah. But

The fact of the matter is. That elections have consequences. Those elections can change any existing policy, not necessarily based on the merits of it, but based on the politics of it. Yep. And so I think those of us who, support charter schools have to be mindful. Of that reality. Yeah. And at the same time, we also have to understand that we gotta constantly be trying to figure out how do we make sure that this option is serving our kids and the, and the, and the families in the best possible way. So we gotta be open to both criticism and self-criticism. But it's difficult to do that as when you're being attacked. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's, how do you, how do you do that? Because that is the best way to make sure we serve our community well is to be self-critical and to be able to understand the criticisms that are valid. 'cause there's gonna be all kinds of stuff. Sure. But then you have to do that many times in an overall environment that's hostile. Yeah. And so I understand that's a very difficult thing to do.

Well, and you'd also suggested that we may be starting to take for granted, like the, like the Roe v Wade thing. Hey, this charter, this chartering, this charter possibility is always gonna be here. And it could very well be that's not the case. And I just wonder is there anything that you think, because I'd like to start to address how we fix it, of course, or how we make it as best we can going forward. But do you have any observations on why we might be in this circumstance? Because 10 years ago, 15 or 25 I don't think we were there. Right? Why? Why is it happening now?

Well, I think you have one in the Frantz Fanon wrote a book called Wretched of the Earth, and, which I bought, which I bought at your recommendation. And I've read Thank you. And there, and there's a quote in there where he says, every generation out of relative obscurity. Must discover its mission and either fulfill it or betray it. Right? So that if you, if you go backwards, for those of us who are still here, who are part of starting this movement, and it's, and really, I wanna make sure we give credit to Annette Polly Williams, who. Without her courage, the, a lot of the parent choice initiatives, whatever people think of them, would never have come into being. Right. Yeah. And because of her courage back at the point, and it took a lot of courage back in 88 and 89

Yeah. To

Stand up talking about parent choice.

Yep.

That at that moment in time, our. Responsibility or what our mission was to fight to create these options. It was the fight to say, we gotta move away from the one best system, and that what we gotta do is create the possibility of new institutions that educate kids and we gotta sort of change the power equation. We gotta, we gotta change in essence, who controls the flow and distribution of the money.

Yep.

And so, as when we initially started on the charter route, the slogan was freedom. In exchange for accountability, right. That was, that was what we talked about. But initially the focus was on providing the freedom. That was the initial focus, and it was only later on that the chartering community began to talk more about, well, what does this accountability mean. Right. And what I, what I think has happened over time is that the more we kept trying to prove that we were public, we began to accept and adopt accountability measures. Yeah. That made us more like the system that we were trying to escape from.

Yep.

And so now we're, it's, it's a conundrum, right? Because we've got all of these accountability measures set up. That in essence have severely infringed on the freedom part of this. Yeah. In other words, the balance between freedom and accountability in my opinion, has been lost.

Okay.

But, but just stick a pin in that. And I want to come back to get at your question in another way. So there were two elements to the creation of the chartering is a possibility, and as Ted Kolderie talked a lot about, is that the change was not in the type of schools. The change was in who could create the schools. Right. That, that the chartering process, the removal of the district exclusive Right. Was really the change.

Yep.

And then, and then certain types of schools then could be created. But some of those schools look just like the schools in the existing system. So a Montessori school was a Montessori school, whether it was a charter school or a district school. Right. So what I'm trying to get at is that the fight was two things. It was the governance fight or who could charter. But then once you're able to create a school, we all know that the work to make a school great is like relentless, difficult, hard work every single day.

Yeah. And,

And there's so many issues that happen to the kids before they ever get to the building. Yeah. That impact the ability to create great schools. So the problem that we have is fighting to maintain the chartering while at the same time trying to do the things that you have to do to make sure the kids get the best education possible.

Yep.

Yeah. Both of those things are just difficult, right? I mean, absolutely. And some of us didn't give enough credence to the difficulty. Of, of creating a great school, right. We, we were operating under the assumption, oh, we can just get the ability to create these schools. They're gonna be great. No, no, they're, they're not just gonna be great. They're gonna be great because we do the work that has to be done trying to make a school great. Yeah. And, but what we did was. We allowed the definition of greatness or goodness, even to be almost solely based on test scores. Yeah. In, in, instead of trying to find a more balanced way to de to determine the value of a school. And that's what I meant, Jed, when I said that, when we began to try to prove that we were public. The mistake that we made was to, was to allow the chartering or the chartered schools to be in the same process and definition of goodness that we were saying, this is why we gotta get out of there in the first place. Yeah. And that's where we are today. And to me, that's the struggle of the current generation to figure out how do we get out of this?

Yeah, I sometimes think that, you can compare the charter school movement to a Greek tragedy. Hubris is always the origin of our problem. And it's been expressed in different ways over and over again. It's like we're, we're like a trilogy, the orestia. It's like, what's the form of hubris we're gonna have this time? Is it that? Schools are relatively easy to make. Is it that no child left behind can, like, change everything? Is it whatever you might find? Right, right. So, I think hopefully over time we're learning, that, there's progress to be made and we can make progress, but we also, can't be hubristic in terms of how quickly we can do it or how easily it's gonna be accomplished.

I think another. Issue that I would just put out there for us to consider is, I think an one of the mistakes that we made was to concede to the opposition that there's no distinction. Between public education and the system that delivers it. And so what we did was to allow them to take the moral high ground Yep. And say that those of us who support parent choice, of which charters is one element of it that we're quote, anti-public education. Right. And so I keep trying to say to people that there's a clear distinction. In my mind between public education and the system or systems that deliver it, and that the traditional public school system is not the only delivery system that can be in existence to make sure that the public is educated. Yeah. So a person who supports charter schools is not. Those of us who, I speak for myself, I support charter schools, but I'm a strong believer in public education. Sure. I just think that the types of delivery systems and the type of funding mechanisms and the type of enrollment schemes that you can use, they can vary from place to place, but still be a part of a broader public education system. Yep. And I think we should not concede.

That issue. I totally agree with you. I wanna, I know you also wanna talk about Milwaukee. I wanna get there, but I'm just too fascinated by this. Let me just put two things in front of you, or I have two questions. Let me ask the first, but maybe I'll frame them both so what's coming. I think we've got a problem looking forward and we've got a problem. Looking back, I don't think we tell history the right way. I don't think we equate our newcomers. To the problems that have been there. And that's why your constant voice, I think, is so important. The other piece is looking forward, what are we trying to achieve, right? Why is the charter, not every school's gonna be great, but there are aspects of charter ness that more align with our values. All of our most people's values, Republican and Democrat. But because we are unwilling. To offer a critique of the traditional system in the public sphere and to present ourselves as something that's real with faults and has all sorts of problems, right? But it's fundamentally set up for fairness and for excellence in ways that the existing system isn't, I mean, when we don't have that thing in front, when the newcomers who come into the movement, they won't even hear our own people say that. Right. So what do they have to be grateful for, right? Why isn't it natural that they would begin to take for granted what this opportunity is to work in chartering? And, do you see that as a part of what's going on here too? Yeah.

I mean, there's just so many different dimensions to this judge. So what I try to do, in fact, I sent a text out this morning because of a particular thing that's happening in Milwaukee right now. But the way I see Milwaukee. So my last day as superintendent 30 years ago, we had like 96 thousand students in the Milwaukee Public schools. Today there's between 54 and 58 or somewhere, depending upon how you look at the numbers, right? Because we have, private schools, we have charter schools, we have traditional NPS schools. And we also have people who are engaged in homeschooling. Yeah. We also have open enrollment. So what has happened, Jed, is that we have created a 21st century educational ecosystem, but it's standing on a 20th century. Foundation of rules and regulations so that, so that the way that the rules and regulations are functioning, they're functioning is if the Milwaukee Public Schools is the only entity that is serving publicly funded kids. Yeah. Or that it is the dominant entity that is serving publicly funded kids. And that's no longer true. So that what we have to do is, at least in my opinion, is to reexamine some of these 20th century, rules and regulations, to deal with the fact that one best system no longer exists. An example being the Milwaukee Public Schools is the only entity in the city of Milwaukee. That serves publicly funded kids that can go out for a referendum. Yeah. And the property tax money that comes from that referendum only goes to NPS, but all of the families and taxpayers who are paying taxes. They, they, many of them have their children, right, in charter schools or private schools, but they get no access to those property tax dollars because of the way that the system is set up. And so three years ago, we had a significant, decision made by the state legislature to close the funding gap. Between private schools, charter schools, and traditional NPS schools. And it was, it was a significant movement

And you had a lot to do with it too, Howard, so thank you for what you did there. And the legislature was amazing.

Yeah. But once the NPS went out for a referendum, that funding gap was exacerbated again. So now you're gonna have between a five and six thousand dollars per pupil gap between traditional NPS schools and charter schools. And so you have a situation in Milwaukee where you could have a family with three children, and this is actually true. It's not just a made up example. They'll send one child to NPS, they'll send one child to a charter school and they'll send another child to a private school. Each one of those kids coming from the same family will generate a totally different per pupil. Amount. Yeah, that's, that has to be addressed at least I think so going forward.

Well, I, well, let me see what your thoughts are about I write about this all the time, and my sense is virtually everywhere, but especially in a lot of our urban contexts, we just won't say the thing. We don't have a north star, we don't have an idea of what we want to evolve everything into, such that things become as in the language, I like to use greatly more public than it's ever been because we've never had anything that's really been that public. Our delivery system. As you've, I identified it. Has been broken or dysfunctional or skewer skewed to serve the interests of the privileged, not the others. And so my sense is that we've gotta articulate what that thing is. A part of it, of course, is that, charter schools should be funded at the same level as traditional district schools. But we don't say it except I, for me, I, yeah. If we look in New Orleans, we got there by hook or by crook. And now by the way, the data in New Orleans is looking better and better every year. I know there's still problems left and right, but I think we have something significant to celebrate there. But then, in Indianapolis, mind trust and stand and, the association. Now the new association, Indiana, they have a new clear North Star for Indianapolis. And all sorts of blowback is happening because of that, but it's my sense that. Just being able to articulate what that future thing is absolutely essential. So our own world knows what we're going for and why, and it seems to me as though Milwaukee is as ripe a place for us to have our second star as any place. I think that's right. I think, and

I think, I think what it is how should a 21st century. Ecosystem, education ecosystem function to serve our kids. Yeah. Because we, whether people like it or not, parent choice initiatives, both on the private side and the public side have changed the nature of how the system. Operates. Yep. But now you how how this, like when I, when I was in college, the one of the few things I remember this teacher talked about a thing called a cultural lag. And what he said was, there's a change in the technology, but it. It's a period of time before the culture catches up. With the change in the technology now from a standpoint of looking at technology, it is much more difficult today because it used to be that significant. Technological change would take years and years and years.

Yeah.

Now it's minutes. Right? And so the ability of the culture to stay up with the technology is at least in my opinion, more and more difficult. And the more I learn about ai, I'm taking this online course, the more I'm like, oh my God. Oh my God. But, but the thing is, I would say the same thing about these kinds of institutional arrangements, right? That, that we change one part of the institutional arrangements, but we don't go in and then look at all of the things, as I said, that are buttress the old institutional arrangement. Yeah. And so to me, the way we've got to talk about it is that we have created new systems of public education.

Yeah.

What we now have to do is to make sure the financial arrangements, the rules, the regulations, the guidelines, et cetera, are consistent with the new institutional arrangements.

Yeah. And,

And as people who support charters, I think that's. What we need to say and be willing to take actions that support what it is we're saying.

Yeah, I see a lot of this also coming from our own strategic analysis, our own political analysis, our own polling data that says that for the sliver of undecided voters on charter issues or school choice issues, they don't want to hear critical messages about the local school district. So, hey, you reformers, tone it down. Don't, don't even highlight the problems that are there or don't play us them in terms of what's a better model on those kinds of things. So in the end, we don't really make the case, and when we don't make the case. That's when I think our world, really starts to not even understand that we're on the right side of history and

Yeah, but, and, but I think the reason we don't make the case yet is because we see, we seeded to the opposition, the definition of public education. That, that to me is where all of this begins, right? I couldn't, could not agree. Be because if you don't see, if you, if you don't give. That definition to the opposition. If you say, and I'm not just saying it because to say it, I believe it. The struggle is to improve the results. Of educating the public. Right. That's, yeah, exactly. That's, that's, that's what we wanna do.

And to al and to allocate it fairly Exactly. The history of allocating unfairly. Right,

Right, right. And so the struggle for, before we even talk about equity, the struggle for equality is ongoing. Yeah. Right. But in order to have a consistent struggle for equality, you have to understand the fundamentals of what you're trying to make. Be more equal. Yeah. And what I'm saying is that when you, when you look at states, it's while like in an urban area like Milwaukee, you end up. Talking about how do we make things more equal within the city? We haven't addressed the question of how do we make things more equal between the city and suburban areas that have greater property tax valuation because of the way that school financing works, at least in our state. Right?

Right.

So what I'm saying is that. What, what we all allow, what we many times do is get into this thing of criticizing the traditional system for results, blah, whatever it is, right? What I believe we have to be doing, what we should be doing is talking about how do we ensure that all of our kids, irrespective of what type of school that they're in, how do we ensure that they are funded equally? How do we work to make sure that they get the best education possible no matter what type of school that they're in, or no matter what type of funding mechanism there is to get them to the school that they're in.

Yeah, I think that's, important foundational piece. I also think we're at the place when we have 30 40 or 50 percent of kids in charter schools in different urban areas. The question starts to come up. What is the school district supposed to evolve into? It's just supposed to sit there passively and have its enrollment eaten up forever, or is it supposed to go away? Is it supposed to become a service provider? What? We don't have answers to those things. Right? And I don't, and I think that what we have in Indiana right now are the first policy proposals that talk about what the future of it should be. My own personal sense is the best thing to do. Is to say, Hey, we think that all schools should be freed up from this unnecessary regulation and constraint and those kinds of things. And of course, we want it for charter schools, but we want it for all schools. So, hey, we want the school district to evolve into essentially the biggest CMO in town, and to have all the freedoms in the count and all of that we currently have. And if they succeed and they take back enrollment, terrific. Terrific. And if they're doing great in Milwaukee, start opening up schools in Stinking Madison or open up schools in Detroit. Who knows, right? Bring them into this thing. But, but because we don't, we can't articulate what it is that we want the existing broken, delivery system as you describe it, to evolve into be, to be set up to do better again, we end up going silent and we let the other side come in and define what public education is, and we end up on the, on the hind foot again.

Yeah. Sometimes when we're fighting these battles. The people who are on the far left and the people who are on the far right are both crazy and no literally. And so you end up in an argument where you have some people who are on one side of the political equation who are saying they want traditional public schools to fail. 'cause they don't. They don't believe that such a system should exist. And you got people who are on the o other side saying no other option should exist other than the traditional, public system. So you got so those of us who don't believe either of those things, right? Like how could I not want Milwaukee Public Schools to be successful? Yeah, for two reasons. Number one, I was the superintendent at one point in time, but more important than that, our children are in it, of course. And how could anybody who cares about kids want any place where our children are to not be successful, let's say. But, but sometimes we end up getting pull pulled into making this false dichotomy. That, that the only way you can really care about kids is you can only have one system, or the only way you can really care about kids is to have everything, quote, privatized, whatever that terminology right, would be the pejorative term anyway. Right? And neither one of those things are true. And what we have to do is to make sure, at least I think so, that as supporters of charter schools or chartering and the supporters of parent choice more broadly, that we don't allow ourselves to get trapped. Into making that false dichotomy or get trapped into, criticizing the traditional system in ways that don't recognize that we're all out here trying to make sure that our kids get the best education possible, but we want that to be done in a framework that allows. Parents to choose. Yes. And we should never, at least in my opinion, give up on that argument.

Absolutely. I love the message of, please come and it's all voluntary. You can stay in the same situation that you're currently in, if you wanna be high bound by thousands and thousands of pages of ed code and all sorts of regulatory constraints. Otherwise, look fine. Stick it. We're not gonna force you to do something 'cause then you're disempowering a local school community. That's the forced turnaround stuff. I don't really like it very much, but please come voluntarily. You, you can take control of your own destiny. I just feel as a much better, strategic, but also to your set to the point. It's, it's most likely gonna result in kids getting better opportunity faster. Right, right. Can I just ask you,. You bring up this funding ma matter in Milwaukee, it's sounding to me very similar to the funding, challenge that we've had in Indianapolis, there because the local school district could keep all of the local, tax proceeds, but only distributed to their own schools. And their own schools were serving about forty percent of kids. You can see a hundred percent of the money going to forty percent of those kids. You've got, eight thousand bucks per kid in funding Delta. And it's not surprising to me to see that Milwaukee is quickly going back to that after the legislature tried to address it. But if you look at the experience of Brandon Brown and you had told me that you've had a chance to look at his Charterfolk Chat, I mean, that's really the hallmark of what he was talking about last year. Hey. We're, we don't want charter school kids to have any more funding. We just think that they should be funded at the same level. Right. But just the personal toll what came against him. My, I mean, look and look, I love charter school advocates. They're my posse. I love these people and it's an incredibly hard job and all that kind of stuff. But I also know there's an aspect of conflict avoidance or self preservation, or I'm just not willing to make my life that difficult. That also factors into this collective decision making. There are all sorts of other things too, where people are saying, but un under no circumstances should you do that. Even if you want to do that, they're gonna pull people back. But, I think Brandon's experience is just so sadly representative of what we find right now. Can you comment on it? What, what do, what do you think? Yeah,

I mean, first of all, I don't know Brandon, but I have a tremendous, I hope you meet him soon. I hope you meet him. Maybe I'll, I'll link you guys. Yeah. Tremendous amount of respect for him. But in looking at what he went through it took me back to what Polly went through, when she stood up in 88 to talk about vouchers for poor parents in the city of Milwaukee. And I've heard a lot of that thrown at me over all the years. The difference though that I find is that back in 88. You didn't have social media, you didn't have the ability of people to get online and just relentlessly come at you in ways that begins to affect your family. I mean, they did stuff, but they didn't have the same tools that they have today. And so to me, it's a much more difficult environment. To wade struggle in, but the way that they came at him. Is not dissimilar to the way that they came at us. They, they just didn't have the social media tools, but the in present ability to get in your face, threaten you, all of those things we went through, I've gone through at different points in my life and you the fact of the matter is, I remember this quote. It was, there was one by Stephen Pressfield from The Art of War, or the War of Art, or whatever they called it, and it was called The degree of fear equates to the strength of resistance. If it scares you, it's important. And the way I always try to paraphrase that is to say that, wait. Can

You repeat that? Re repeat it first Howard, but that's too brilliant. I love

It. So it's, it's the degree of fear equates to the strength of the resistance. If it scares you, it's important. I took it to say that the degree of the resistance to something that you're trying to do. Speaks to the importance of what it is you're trying to do and what Brandon is experiencing and other people are experiencing who fight for change at this level is that it means that actual change is gonna happen and the people who are the protectors of the status quo because they profit. Or by the existence of that system, they're not gonna just sit there and say, oh, this is wonderful. And the fact that they came at him the way that they came at him, it talks about how important the work that they were doing actually is. Mm-hmm.

And,

And that you how you can put proposals forward. That change stuff, but don't really change stuff. The proposals that he was fighting for, change stuff.

Yeah.

Cause it changed the flow. It changed how the money is distributed. Yep. Money is power. In this society. Right? So he was going at, and if we're gonna be real about this, we have to go at changing the power equation. We have to go at changing the power relationships because if we don't change the power relationships or the power equations, or if we don't attack the existing institutional prerogatives

Mm-hmm.

Then we're not gonna make any real change for our children. And when you begin to really attack that in the way that we're talking about, the resistance will come. Because it's meaningful change.

Well, there's, a phrase that you've been reminding us all the time, right? No. Without struggle. There's no progress, right? No

Struggle. No progress, man. And so it's been true and it's still true.

It's the name of your book and, I just think it's such a great frame for so much of what we're trying to do. Is there anything that you would offer to people who are in situations like Brandon's who are debating about whether or not to do that thing or, and also the people around them. My own sense on this is it's really hard for individuals to do this. But when there's, when your, when your posse is with you. And when your values are expressed proactively in ways that our own world feel very confident about hey, they may say things six months from now 12 months 18 months but in over a long period of time, people are gonna recognize. That we weren't doing anything other than something that was clearly in the long-term interests of children. I mean, is there anything that you would say to people that perhaps, I mean, for somebody that was, that's, that's walked with revolutionaries in Africa and you can wore out your shoes on this? I mean, I, what I wanna see is worn out shoes from charter school advocates across the country, but. I just feel we're on the cusp of will we do it? Will we not do it any

Here? I think, Jed, the fact of the matter is if you decide to wage struggle, you have to make the individual decision. What price are you willing to pay? There's, there's, there's no getting around it. Right? You, you cannot make significant social change. Without there being tremendous resistance. There's, there's, there's no, I have no knowledge of any social movement that has been of any significance in this country or in the world where individuals have not paid a price, who take leadership in trying to make that happen, and everyone has to decide how willing. I to pay that price. Everyone has to decide, for example, is balance. The most important thing in my life, for example. And if balance is the most important thing in your life, then I can tell you for sure there's a certain level of change that you will never be able to make happen because you ca because the price you pay is the lack of balance. And then that means your family pays and everybody's gotta decide. Are they willing to pay that price? And you can't, you there's no formula for how you reach those decisions, but once you make that decision, then you gotta be willing to take the weight for what's gonna come at you. And there's no other way to say it, Jed. And you can't be mad at people who decide, I'm not willing to send my family through that. Right? Or, I'm not willing to lose my job, or I'm not, you you can't, you can't be mad at people who make those types of decisions. But all of us who say that we're gonna fight for social change, you gotta ask yourself, what price am I willing to pay? There's, there's no way around it. Yeah. And if you say, I'm willing to pay the price,

Then how do you mind sharing, do you mind sharing how you and Debbie have like that achieved, an okayness of living in a life that's gonna be potentially out of equilibrium? Well, I mean, maybe that's too personal. I don't know, but I just, I think about my wife in conversations we've had at certain moments where, thank goodness she was with me and we just wrote it out. But yours at a, at a whole other level,

Right? Yeah, no, all I can tell you is this, is that over the years, and I would never tell anyone to do this. I wanna make sure I said this very clearly.

Okay.

I have put the movement. Ahead of my family. You pay a price when you do that. There, there's, there's no getting around it. You, you pay a price. And I keep coming back to, I would never tell anyone to do that. But I also have to face the fact that in my life at this moment,. I've paid a price for making those kind of decisions, but it was a price that I was willing to pay. But not everyone is gonna do that. And I understand when people choose not to, but there's a price to be paid. And as from looking at social movements in this country, some people paid the ultimate price.

Their

Lives. Right. And other people have paid lesser prices, but they paid a price.

Yeah. Well I think that somehow, sometimes we want to, convince ourselves. That these issues really don't pertain to our lives. And yet when we peel back the surface of the issue, we see the guts of it are exactly what you're describing right now. And,

And I think honestly, Jed, it's a much more difficult environment today. Than it was at other moments in time. Although there have been other moments in history where the type of political polarization that we have today have existed and in fact what has happened. Obviously, at least in my opinion, in this moment, we have obl. Any kind of guardrails.

Yeah.

On civility, any kind of guardrails on respect for other people's opinions. And so now what it is, it's open season.

Yeah.

With no guardrails. And so the type of political violence, it's, it's not just the rhetoric.

Yeah.

But the actual political violence, the stuff that we saw,. In Minnesota. Sure. What happened to this dude, Charlie Kirk? Would I agree with him or not? I mean, yeah. These, these are all indicators that we're at a different moment in time right now.

Yeah.

And that it makes the decision to take the lead on fighting for something even more difficult.

Mm-hmm.

Because it's not only the rhetoric. That will come at you on social media. It's not just the meanses, it's not just the ability to just pound away. Yeah. At a person. It's the threats to their life. Yeah. And given what is happening in this country, you have to take all of those threats seriously.

So can you, deconstruct yourself just a little bit? Why is it that you've turned out to be a person that's lived this kind of life? Is it something just in the, in the DNA? Is it from some, from your parents? Is it from the legacy of some of your earliest work in the civil rights movements? Just grounding you. Is it, a special family relationship you have with each other, being at each other's backs in cool ways? Or, is it, what is it? What is it that has given you a kind of commitment in this level, at this level that surpasses almost anybody else I know in our world.

I think it like in my book, it obviously begins with my grandmother and it, and the fact that her blood runs in my veins. But, but what it also is that is I have like a deep love for my people that I can't. Explain in logical ways. It just exists in the deepest part of my being, but it is tied to Dred Scott.

Mm-hmm.

Rosa Parks.

Mm-hmm.

Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, but more so to my mother. My grandmother and the whole generation of black people who worked hard every day in this country to make a difference for me personally.

Yeah.

But for this country, it's, it's tied to the black men and women who died in service to a country that will still try to keep them as second class citizens. Mm-hmm. It's, it's, it's like this, it's like this deep understanding of why was I able to go to college when a lot of dudes who played with me on the playground and were better than me?

Yeah. Didn't,

How come I got this opportunity? And they didn't.

Mm-hmm.

And by virtue of the fact that I got it and they didn't, don't I have the deepest responsibility to them is It's true, isn't it? Yeah. That for those of us who much is given, much is required. Mm-hmm. What I mean? And so it's like those kind of things is what burns inside of my soul. And it's not something Jed that even if I wanted to, which I don't, that I couldn't, I don't know how I could not respond to the, to the call. I just I don't know how I could not do it. And so the tagline. And I'll end with this, but the tagline in my email is this. It is that the drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there's a single Negro boy and I added or girl without a chance to prove his or her worth. Mary McLeod with them. That's it.

I love it. I love it. Well, I wanna give you the last, I have so many other questions waiting for you. Can, maybe we can edit this one out. Maybe we'll edit this one out. But like, can I, this is other part of you. There's nobody that knows history like you do. You just, you're constantly reading it and you leverage it. It's like, it's like your deep understanding of it keeps you springing out of it seems to me, and I understand here that maybe your study of the history grows out of a love for your own people that you can't understand and that motivates you. Then perhaps understand the history. But I just also feel like our world doesn't know the history of unfairness in education. It's why of any post that I wrote, the, I worked the longest on it was at the 50th anniversary of, Milliken versus Bradley. And just, and the Boston bus stuff and when people can see, and you talk about making freedom schools, I mean, when you see the heartbreak of people who made freedom schools, but there wasn't a charter school movement at that point. They were able to keep their kids out of school for what two three months? But then they went marching back into the same broken school, singing We shall overcome. Right. I feel like the more that we can understand our history, the more we'll give ourselves leverage on these things. And it's another thing to thank you for. 'cause I think you do as good a job as anybody I know, equating, all of us with with the history that we come from.

Yeah. What it is though, Jed, is that I believe that. Struggle is like a combination of ideas and practice, right? There's, there's this dialectic, right? Between theory and practice.

Yeah.

Right. You, you can only improve theory by engaging in practice. You can only improve practice by having a theoretical understanding of what it is that you can't be. Either you can't be an empiricist where you base everything based on your experiences, but you also can't just be a ian. Right. Where, because ultimately ideas are an abstraction from reality. Right? And if you keep building reality. Without testing it. In practice, it doesn't make sense. And so for me, understanding history I is important for trying to figure out, okay, well, but what does this history dictate that I should be doing to today? Mm-hmm. Right? How, how do I, whatever that was back into my understanding. Of, of what should be happening today. And so for me, history is it's not relic, it's alive. What I mean? It's alive because you are alive and that history has to mean something. To what it is that we do today. If, if you sit and listen to someone like Ted Kolderie, for example, Ted Kolderie is one of the smartest people I've I've ever known really be because of his ability to break down structural practice, right? And his ability to have you look at institutional frameworks. In a whole different way. And because he's so quiet and unassuming, you don't, you don't get the fire that's inside of his analysis of these institutional arrangements. So for me, studying someone like Ted or reading his book like slit screen. It, it helps me in the same way, but for different reasons that reading Jim Anderson's book, educational Blacks in the South. What is 1867 to 1935 or reading a new book? Like, what is it? Kellie Jones's book, Force and Freedom. I'll, I'll think of the name of it, right? But, but it was reading her book that I learned that a black woman had financed John Brown's. Raid. Oh yeah, I remember this. I remember reading Force and Freedom, I think is the name of it. Right. I began to understand more about the role that black abolitionists played, because you only hear about Frederick Douglass. Yeah, exactly.

Or

You only hear about the white abolitionists. Mm-hmm. So by me getting a greater understanding of the Black abolitionist role. Mm-hmm. And what they pushed for at that moment in time, 'cause they were the ones who actually pushed for a civil war 'cause they did not see how slavery could possibly be eradicated without a war. I mean, that was A-A-A-A-A hell of a thing, right? Mm-hmm. Or if you, or if you read Du Bois's book Black Reconstruction, which I find did during. You, you understand how to compare black, the period of black reconstruction to the period that we have today. What are, what are the similarities and the differences between these two historical periods? What is the similarity of how Trump is functioning? To how Johnson functioned after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Mm-hmm. So the meaning, the reason why you study history and you try to understand it is so you can make the, those ties what I mean? You can, you can, yeah. You can come back and try to understand today through a, through a broader prism of history and not just the current moment of history.

Well, Howard, I'm thankful for you being able to help us understand through the broadest prism possible. So, and Howard, I I treasure all of our time together. This one spoke directly to me in some, really important ways, so I just thank you for continuing to do what you do. To visit us here at Charterfolk from time to time, and look forward to staying in touch. But thank you for being a part of a, what's gonna be a great Thanksgiving podcast to share with people.

Yeah. I really appreciate the opportunity, Jed, because if you didn't gimme the opportunity, we couldn't have these conversations. So I'm deeply grateful for you. Of course. Anytime, Howard, thank you so much. Okay. You have, you and your family. Have a great Thanksgiving, man. Oh,

You do the same. You do the same. Okay. Alright, see you now. Okay,

Bye.