At the root of austerity and privatization is a business model for education. This model disciplines educators to teach to the test and ties funding to those results. That testing regime has, in fact, become a big for-profit business in its own right.

This model is ruining teachers’ and students’ experience of school. We did a study in LA that revealed that a student will take over 100 standardized tests by the time they get to sixth grade. This testing regime reinforces teachers’ feeling of being disrespected and powerless, because we have to teach to a test that we didn’t choose and don’t believe in.

Angela Davis, born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama, became a master scholar who studied at the Sorbonne. She joined the U.S. Communist Party and was jailed for charges related to a prison outbreak, though ultimately cleared. Known for books like Women, Race & Class, she has worked as a professor and activist who advocates gender equity, prison reform and alliances across color lines.

Writer, activist and educator Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. She grew up in a middle class neighborhood dubbed "Dynamite Hill," due to many of the African-American homes in the area that were bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. Davis is best known as a radical African-American educator and activist for civil rights and other social issues. She knew about racial prejudice from her experiences with discrimination growing up in Alabama. As a teenager, Davis organized interracial study groups, which were broken up by the police. She also knew some of the four African-American girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing of 1963.

Davis' father, Frank, owned a service station, while her mother, Sallye, taught elementary school and was an active member of the NAACP. Sallye would later pursue her masters degree at NYU and Davis would accompany her there as a teenager.

Davis later moved north and went to Brandeis University in Massachusetts where she studied philosophy with Herbert Marcuse. As a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, in the late 1960s, she was associated with several groups including the Black Panthers. But she spent most of her time working with the Che-Lumumba Club, which was an all-black branch of the Communist Party.

Hired to teach at the University of California, Los Angeles, Davis ran into trouble with the school's administration because of her association with communism. They fired her, but she fought them in court and got her job back. Davis still ended up leaving when her contract expired in 1970.

Outside of academia, Davis had become a strong supporter of three prison inmates of Soledad Prison known as the Soledad brothers (they were not related). These three men — John W. Cluchette, Fleeta Drumgo and George Lester Jackson — were accused of killing a prison guard after several African-American inmates had been killed in a fight by another guard. Some thought these prisoners were being used as scapegoats because of the political work within the prison.

Charged With Murder

During Jackson's trial in August 1970, an escape attempt was made and several people in the courtroom were killed. Davis was brought up on several charges, including murder, for her alleged part in the event. There were two main pieces of evidence used at trial: the guns used were registered to her, and she was reportedly in love with Jackson. After spending roughly 18 months in jail, Davis was acquitted in June 1972.

After spending time traveling and lecturing, Davis returned to teaching. She was a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she taught courses on the history of consciousness, retiring in 2008. 

Davis has continued to lecture at many prestigious universities, discussing issues regarding race, the criminal justice system and women's rights.

In 2017 Davis was a featured speaker and made honorary co-chair at the Women's March on Washington after Donald Trump's inauguration.

“What Silicon Valley is saying to justify that lack of diversity is that there’s no pipeline from the inner city to Silicon Valley,” he told Complex in 2017. “The reason that there’s no pipeline is that we lack science, technology, engineering, and math skills, and you can’t teach a 13-year-old that; it’s too late. They gotta be trained in that.”

Those communities will hopefully continue to benefit from Hussle’s work to give back to the neighborhood that raised him.

Yousafzai was born to a Pashtun family in Mingora, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Her family came to run a chain of schools in the region. Considering Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Benazir Bhutto as her role models, she was particularly inspired by her father's thoughts and humanitarian work.^[6] In early 2009, when she was 11–12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu detailing her life during the Taliban occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary^[3] about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. She rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by activist Desmond Tutu.

On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in the Swat District, after taking an exam, Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a Talibangunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism; the gunman fled the scene. Yousafzai was hit in the head with a bullet and remained unconscious and in critical condition at the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, but her condition later improved enough for her to be transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK.^[7] The attempt on her life sparked an international outpouring of support for Yousafzai. Deutsche Welle reported in January 2013 that Yousafzai may have become "the most famous teenager in the world".^[8] Weeks after the attempted murder, a group of fifty leading Muslim clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her.^[9] The Taliban was internationally denounced by governments, human rights organizations and feminist groups. Taliban officials responded to condemnation by further denouncing Yousafzai, indicating plans for a possible second assassination attempt which was justified as a religious obligation. Their statements resulted in further international condemnation.^{[citation needed]}

Following her recovery, Yousafzai became a prominent activist for the right to education. Based in Birmingham, she founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit organisation,^[10] and in 2013 co-authored I Am Malala, an international best seller.^[11] In 2012, she was the recipient of Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize and the 2013 Sakharov Prize.^[12]

We rode to Baton Rouge so excited. We had prepped our signs apart and packed all our snacks for a full day of activism. I guess a little part of us felt like if we joined the sheer energy in Baton Rouge then we would be closer to justice. Justice for unarmed black bodies. For people’s parents, sisters, brothers, children and all other affiliations of unarmed black bodies that were ended at the hands of someone else. Someone who today we were told were determined to be not guilty. Not guilty is something that I still cannot digest.

The day that started off so exciting with bands, chants and dancing from other protesters quickly turned. It’s interesting because my guilt was not on trial that day in Baton Rouge but yet we were met with dogs, tear gas and riot gear. We were threatened and pushed and prodded. I was a peaceful protestor but in that case that didn’t matter.

How could the police put on riot gear for children and elderly and peaceful protesters smudging with sage and dancing in flip flops. That night I went to bed unsettled in my thoughts.

Allot of days I go to sleep unsettled because of my perception of the way things are and how emotionally taxing it is to actively work to change things and be so close to the work. I am usually unsettled because just like that day and allot of days I am prematurely judged because of my identity.

It’s easy to focus on the negative, but now I’m pushing myself to hold on to what’s energizing. What is energizing is the shift in telling our stories and becoming clear on who we are and what we need to change our communities. It’s energizing to know people doing the work in classrooms, writing policies, organizing, and running for office. It’s something I can hold in me and feel proud of. So although we haven’t received perceived justice from the system we can hold on to the progression in our spaces. Until the system shifts from criminalizing us and our communities we can hold on to something lighter. Here’s to healing our communities and healing ourselves. ✨