|
AbbePetuchowskiFirstEssay 8 - 22 May 2021 - Main.EbenMoglen
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
| | | Thus, movement lawyering infuses new language and human narrative into legal proceedings and the public view. Through reframing the national dialogue, there a possibility that public opinion on education will shift to a more collective view that views inequity as harming all students, rather than just those students in under-resourced schools. While not without its differences, one can look to gay marriage as an example of the tremendous impact that connecting legal doctrine to principles of equality and liberty has in tandem with shifting public opinion.
| |
>
> |
Yes, this is a much improved draft. You have found your point and gotten it across to the reader lucidly without losing any of its complexity. From here, it's about learning how to make the practice in which you get better at helping to solve the hardest parts of the real problems.
| | |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines: |
|
|
AbbePetuchowskiFirstEssay 7 - 19 May 2021 - Main.AbbePetuchowski
|
|
<
< | Revision 6 is unreadable | >
> |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
Community-led Educational Reform
-- By AbbePetuchowski - 18 May 2021
New programs, same issues
The educational arena is saturated with organizations and think tanks all promising reform. As a teacher, I quickly became disenchanted by the revolving door of initiatives imposed on teachers unilaterally by decisionmakers. I saw the disconnect between policy goals and the reality of available resources provided to teachers to implement programs effectively. Moreover, these efforts often focused on improving a single aspect of schooling, such as behavior management or test scores, while failing to address the interactions between these spheres. For instance, implementing a tiered behavioral program focused on prevention, is substantially more difficult if a district simultaneously fails to provide adequate mental health resources and places extensive pressure on improving test scores. Consequently, I saw reform efforts slowly morph into the form of previous programs, failing to disrupt the status quo.
A similar effect is evident in educational reform litigation, where top-down legal victories do not always translate to improved realities for students. Without a federally-recognized right to education, a significant portion of educational reform litigation has relied on affirmative state constitutional obligations to provide access to a sound education. Yet, how is a sound education defined, and what remedy is available for plaintiffs who have been denied this right? For instance, in DeRolph v. State, an Ohio court declared the State’s school finance system unconstitutional, yet plaintiffs were left with no remedy when the court in subsequent cases declined to define the metrics of an adequate education or resulting punishments for the State’s failure to comply. Likewise, in Sheff v. O’Neill, a desegregation case, plaintiffs successfully argued that Connecticut’s school system had denied them their constitutionally-guaranteed right to a substantially equal educational opportunity. Yet, the issue of remedy brought about challenges in subsequent years. In order to desegregate schools, Hartford officials opened 42 impressive magnet schools and implemented a voluntary busing program. While these efforts have received national praise, others have criticized this remedy as only entrenching inequity, where magnet schools are now largely filled with suburban children and there is increased racial isolation in city neighborhood schools. (“Left Behind,” De la Torre)
Roadblocks to institutional change
Researchers, advocates, and academics alike have analyzed reasons for the persistent status quo in education. For one, education does not exist in a silo. Since most students attend schools close to where they live, researchers, such as Heather Schwartz, have pointed to the influence that housing policy has on educational equity. Additionally, an adequate education is difficult to define and measure. While policymakers have increasingly relied on high-stakes testing as an accountability metric, this has been the subject of extensive criticism and litigation itself. Moreover, cases relating to educational reform force the court to make decisions regarding other governmental agencies, calling into question issues of separation of powers and judicial activism.
Importantly, equalizing education involves the alteration of a system of power that, for some, has long served to provide immense privilege. While it is uncommon to meet someone against improving education, divides often arise when humanistic ideas shift from abstract platforms to distributional realities personally affecting one’s own educational status quo. Thus, voluntary integration measures, such as those in Hartford, have yet to meaningfully disrupt education’s inequitable system of power.
Reforming education from the bottom up
While teaching, I learned about a P.S. 305, a local organization using community organizing strategies to build a movement of students, parents, teachers, and community members demanding for better schools in their neighborhoods. In an educational system driven by top-down decisions, P.S. 305 aimed to transfer power by equipping teachers, such as myself, with the necessary information and tools to become stronger advocates so that we could then reach out to other community members and repeat the same cycle. Similarly, under the movement lawyering model, lawyers shift power by providing tactical support for community-based initiatives, seeking to pass on information, rather than acting as gatekeepers of knowledge. (Purvi & Chuck: Community Lawyering).
Integrate NYC's approach
Last month, Integrate NYC, a youth-led organization, joined civil rights lawyers to file a complaint, alleging that New York’s school system violates its constitutional right to a sound education. The lawsuit argues that the educational system is designed to reinforce racial inequity, and rather than focusing on one reform area, the requested injunctive relief includes the elimination of standardized testing for the gifted and talented track, the adoption of programs to recruit and retain a diverse workforce, and the establishment of an accountability system. As described by Integrate NYC co-founder Sarah Medina Camiscoli in a panel discussion last month, the organization uses litigation as a tool to support youth leaders in maneuvering within a system that historically has ignored student voice. Lawyers hold informational sessions to ensure that plaintiffs understand each stage of the litigation and maintain autonomy over the case.
A broader strategy for achieving institutional change
Although some may be skeptical about the use of litigation to address structural educational policies, this strategy’s impact will likely extend beyond a singular case. Similar to Felix Cohen’s suggestion for the use of “patter,” movement lawyers can use legal tools to establish a channel of communication between the courtroom and those affected by judicial decisions. With this mechanism, community organizers can contextualize transcendental nonsense by drawing connections between legal doctrine and its implications on human values. For instance, rather than defining “sound education” in terms of traditional top-down accountability metrics or defining “integration” by enrollment numbers alone, youth organizers redefined these familiar terms with their vision for improvement.
Thus, movement lawyering infuses new language and human narrative into legal proceedings and the public view. Through reframing the national dialogue, there a possibility that public opinion on education will shift to a more collective view that views inequity as harming all students, rather than just those students in under-resourced schools. While not without its differences, one can look to gay marriage as an example of the tremendous impact that connecting legal doctrine to principles of equality and liberty has in tandem with shifting public opinion.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. |
|
|
AbbePetuchowskiFirstEssay 5 - 31 Mar 2021 - Main.AbbePetuchowski
|
|
>
> | Revision 5 is unreadable | |
<
< |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Words that Inflict Force
-- By AbbePetuchowski - 20 Feb 2021
Prologue
“Do you think your students and their families just viewed you as part of the system?” Hearing this question during a summer internship interview forced me to pause and think for a moment. As a teacher, I often felt constrained by overbearing district initiatives, seemingly pointless school policies, and the realities of available resources. As a new teacher, I worried about the repercussions of disobeying the system’s rules, but also struggled with the moral and practical implications of subjecting my students to policies that I could see provided no benefit and feared would cause harm. With time, I learned where the system had openings for disobedience, yet this tension between my role as an employee within the system and my dissatisfaction with the system itself remained constant.
An agent within a system
Lawyers are also individual actors within an unjust system. However, lawyers are in the unique position to experience personal freedom, while also holding power to impact whether the legal system will unilaterally exert force over their clients. The reality is that a lawyer’s use of language directly impacts how and when public force will be applied to individuals who often have no say in the situation.
The system itself
Holmes describes our society as one in which “the command of the public force is entrusted to the judges in certain cases, and the whole power of the State will be put forth, if necessary, to carry out their judgments and decrees.” In response to the judges’ decrees, a host of actors, from prosecutors to policemen, carry out the prescribed public force, and consequently, individuals are subjected to this force. Inherently, this is not a system concerned with its impact on the individual, nor a system easily amenable by those on which it inflicts force. In applying their own set of ethics to cases, judges often prioritize the protection of the system itself, rather than the human impact of the holding. As Jansen remarked in Lawyerland, this is a system, where Judge Lemuel Shaw, an abolitionist, authored an opinion returning a fugitive slave to enslavement, under jurisdictional grounds.
The lawyer: an agent of force
Robert Cover, with reference to a lawyer’s interpretation, remarked, “Interpretation always takes place in the shadow of coercion." (as quoted in “Repairing The World Through Law: A Reflection On Robert Cover's Social Activism,” Stephen Wizner). Even a lawyer who uses her power of interpretation to protect a client from violence is nonetheless employing a system of force to ensure that protection. Although a lawyer does not directly inflict violence on others, she nonetheless uses language to achieve an outcome that directly results in the application of public force. All cases result in a judgment, which inseparably stipulates that a party’s failure to comply will result in the powers of the state unilaterally enforcing that verdict. Here, there is an inherent juxtaposition of the lawyer’s personal freedom to determine a career that meets her needs with her role within a system that is sustained by the use of unilateral force. The next question is, what can a lawyer do with the understanding that her words not only affect verdicts, but result in the use of coercion?
Distinguishing oneself from the system
The status quo of the criminal legal system results in the application of force in a manner that disregards individual impact. However, as Cohen describes, a lawyer can use “patter” to effect favorable judicial opinions by distracting from adverse precedents and facts, while also introducing human values by “sleight-of-hand.” Cohen does not define “patter,” but just as a magician must determine the form of patter best suited to her own style, lawyers too must determine how best to distract the court from the inclusion of human impact and moral concerns. Perhaps this entails uttering transcendental nonsense to give “justification” for a new interpretation, or maybe it involves spectacle, such as Clarence Darrow’s famous exchange with William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes Monkey Trial. Regardless of the specifics, here, the lawyer is using her creativity, legal knowledge, and institutional power to disrupt the system's status quo of operation.
Transferring power within the system
During my second year teaching, I learned about P.S. 305, a local organization using community organizing strategies to build a movement of students, parents, teachers, and community members demanding for better schools in their neighborhoods. In an educational system driven by top-down decisions from the school district, P.S. 305 aimed to transfer power by informing and organizing those most affected by the district’s decisions. As one aspect of their approach, P.S. 305 sought out teachers, like myself, to equip us with the necessary tools to become stronger advocates so that we could then reach out to others and repeat the same cycle. Similarly, under the community lawyering model, lawyers shift power by providing tactical support for community-based initiatives, seeking to pass on information, rather than acting as gatekeepers of knowledge. (Purvi & Chuck: Community Lawyering). Here, the lawyer uses her role within the system to work outside the system’s status quo, while also aiming to transfer her institutional power.
Epilogue
Thinking back on my experience in the classroom, it is easier for me to now see the role I played within the broader system. However, in the day-to-day of teaching long days, I lived in the present. Although planning for future lessons involved reflection of past classes, I rarely allowed for absence. I didn’t fully step back and look at the system performing in front of me to better visualize where I was situated within it. As a lawyer, I imagine I will be faced with similar time constraints and mental and physical exhaustion. Yet, this time, I aim to remember the necessity of absence, so that I approach each client interaction and legal proceeding with an awareness of my word’s implicit connection to coercion and a vision for how I can work to transfer that power.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. |
|
|
AbbePetuchowskiFirstEssay 4 - 26 Feb 2021 - Main.AbbePetuchowski
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | The status quo of the criminal legal system results in the application of force in a manner that disregards individual impact. However, as Cohen describes, a lawyer can use “patter” to effect favorable judicial opinions by distracting from adverse precedents and facts, while also introducing human values by “sleight-of-hand.” Cohen does not define “patter,” but just as a magician must determine the form of patter best suited to her own style, lawyers too must determine how best to distract the court from the inclusion of human impact and moral concerns. Perhaps this entails uttering transcendental nonsense to give “justification” for a new interpretation, or maybe it involves spectacle, such as Clarence Darrow’s famous exchange with William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes Monkey Trial. Regardless of the specifics, here, the lawyer is using her creativity, legal knowledge, and institutional power to disrupt the system's status quo of operation.
Transferring power within the system | |
<
< | During my second year teaching, I learned about a P.S. 305, a local organization using community organizing strategies to build a movement of students, parents, teachers, and community members demanding for better schools in their neighborhoods. In an educational system driven by top-down decisions from the school district, P.S. 305 aimed to transfer power by informing and organizing those most affected by the district’s decisions. As one aspect of their approach, P.S. 305 sought out teachers, like myself, to equip us with the necessary tools to become stronger advocates so that we could then reach out to others and repeat the same cycle. Similarly, under the community lawyering model, lawyers shift power by providing tactical support for community-based initiatives, seeking to pass on information, rather than acting as gatekeepers of knowledge. (Purvi & Chuck: Community Lawyering). Here, the lawyer uses her role within the system to work outside the system’s status quo, while also aiming to transfer her institutional power. | >
> | During my second year teaching, I learned about P.S. 305, a local organization using community organizing strategies to build a movement of students, parents, teachers, and community members demanding for better schools in their neighborhoods. In an educational system driven by top-down decisions from the school district, P.S. 305 aimed to transfer power by informing and organizing those most affected by the district’s decisions. As one aspect of their approach, P.S. 305 sought out teachers, like myself, to equip us with the necessary tools to become stronger advocates so that we could then reach out to others and repeat the same cycle. Similarly, under the community lawyering model, lawyers shift power by providing tactical support for community-based initiatives, seeking to pass on information, rather than acting as gatekeepers of knowledge. (Purvi & Chuck: Community Lawyering). Here, the lawyer uses her role within the system to work outside the system’s status quo, while also aiming to transfer her institutional power. | | | Epilogue
Thinking back on my experience in the classroom, it is easier for me to now see the role I played within the broader system. However, in the day-to-day of teaching long days, I lived in the present. Although planning for future lessons involved reflection of past classes, I rarely allowed for absence. I didn’t fully step back and look at the system performing in front of me to better visualize where I was situated within it. As a lawyer, I imagine I will be faced with similar time constraints and mental and physical exhaustion. Yet, this time, I aim to remember the necessity of absence, so that I approach each client interaction and legal proceeding with an awareness of my word’s implicit connection to coercion and a vision for how I can work to transfer that power. |
|
|
AbbePetuchowskiFirstEssay 3 - 25 Feb 2021 - Main.AbbePetuchowski
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | |
<
< | Paper Title | >
> | Words that Inflict Force | | | -- By AbbePetuchowski - 20 Feb 2021 | |
<
< | Section I | >
> | Prologue
“Do you think your students and their families just viewed you as part of the system?” Hearing this question during a summer internship interview forced me to pause and think for a moment. As a teacher, I often felt constrained by overbearing district initiatives, seemingly pointless school policies, and the realities of available resources. As a new teacher, I worried about the repercussions of disobeying the system’s rules, but also struggled with the moral and practical implications of subjecting my students to policies that I could see provided no benefit and feared would cause harm. With time, I learned where the system had openings for disobedience, yet this tension between my role as an employee within the system and my dissatisfaction with the system itself remained constant. | | | | |
<
< | Subsection A | >
> | An agent within a system
Lawyers are also individual actors within an unjust system. However, lawyers are in the unique position to experience personal freedom, while also holding power to impact whether the legal system will unilaterally exert force over their clients. The reality is that a lawyer’s use of language directly impacts how and when public force will be applied to individuals who often have no say in the situation. | | | | |
>
> | The system itself
Holmes describes our society as one in which “the command of the public force is entrusted to the judges in certain cases, and the whole power of the State will be put forth, if necessary, to carry out their judgments and decrees.” In response to the judges’ decrees, a host of actors, from prosecutors to policemen, carry out the prescribed public force, and consequently, individuals are subjected to this force. Inherently, this is not a system concerned with its impact on the individual, nor a system easily amenable by those on which it inflicts force. In applying their own set of ethics to cases, judges often prioritize the protection of the system itself, rather than the human impact of the holding. As Jansen remarked in Lawyerland, this is a system, where Judge Lemuel Shaw, an abolitionist, authored an opinion returning a fugitive slave to enslavement, under jurisdictional grounds. | | | | |
<
< | Subsub 1 | >
> | The lawyer: an agent of force
Robert Cover, with reference to a lawyer’s interpretation, remarked, “Interpretation always takes place in the shadow of coercion." (as quoted in “Repairing The World Through Law: A Reflection On Robert Cover's Social Activism,” Stephen Wizner). Even a lawyer who uses her power of interpretation to protect a client from violence is nonetheless employing a system of force to ensure that protection. Although a lawyer does not directly inflict violence on others, she nonetheless uses language to achieve an outcome that directly results in the application of public force. All cases result in a judgment, which inseparably stipulates that a party’s failure to comply will result in the powers of the state unilaterally enforcing that verdict. Here, there is an inherent juxtaposition of the lawyer’s personal freedom to determine a career that meets her needs with her role within a system that is sustained by the use of unilateral force. The next question is, what can a lawyer do with the understanding that her words not only affect verdicts, but result in the use of coercion? | | | | |
<
< | Subsection B | >
> | Distinguishing oneself from the system
The status quo of the criminal legal system results in the application of force in a manner that disregards individual impact. However, as Cohen describes, a lawyer can use “patter” to effect favorable judicial opinions by distracting from adverse precedents and facts, while also introducing human values by “sleight-of-hand.” Cohen does not define “patter,” but just as a magician must determine the form of patter best suited to her own style, lawyers too must determine how best to distract the court from the inclusion of human impact and moral concerns. Perhaps this entails uttering transcendental nonsense to give “justification” for a new interpretation, or maybe it involves spectacle, such as Clarence Darrow’s famous exchange with William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes Monkey Trial. Regardless of the specifics, here, the lawyer is using her creativity, legal knowledge, and institutional power to disrupt the system's status quo of operation. | | | | |
>
> | Transferring power within the system
During my second year teaching, I learned about a P.S. 305, a local organization using community organizing strategies to build a movement of students, parents, teachers, and community members demanding for better schools in their neighborhoods. In an educational system driven by top-down decisions from the school district, P.S. 305 aimed to transfer power by informing and organizing those most affected by the district’s decisions. As one aspect of their approach, P.S. 305 sought out teachers, like myself, to equip us with the necessary tools to become stronger advocates so that we could then reach out to others and repeat the same cycle. Similarly, under the community lawyering model, lawyers shift power by providing tactical support for community-based initiatives, seeking to pass on information, rather than acting as gatekeepers of knowledge. (Purvi & Chuck: Community Lawyering). Here, the lawyer uses her role within the system to work outside the system’s status quo, while also aiming to transfer her institutional power. | | | | |
<
< | Subsub 1
Subsub 2
Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B | >
> | Epilogue
Thinking back on my experience in the classroom, it is easier for me to now see the role I played within the broader system. However, in the day-to-day of teaching long days, I lived in the present. Although planning for future lessons involved reflection of past classes, I rarely allowed for absence. I didn’t fully step back and look at the system performing in front of me to better visualize where I was situated within it. As a lawyer, I imagine I will be faced with similar time constraints and mental and physical exhaustion. Yet, this time, I aim to remember the necessity of absence, so that I approach each client interaction and legal proceeding with an awareness of my word’s implicit connection to coercion and a vision for how I can work to transfer that power. | | |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
|
|
AbbePetuchowskiFirstEssay 1 - 20 Feb 2021 - Main.AbbePetuchowski
|
|
>
> |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Paper Title
-- By AbbePetuchowski - 20 Feb 2021
Section I
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1
Subsub 2
Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|