Audio: "Hallelujah The Saviors Are Here"

Click here for a performance from Louder Than A Bomb 2012, an annual teen poetry slam competition, which expresses frustration at educators coming into communities to teach but not becoming part of the communities (or staying):  "Hallelujah the Saviors are Here"

Want more?  There's a treasure trove of them at Chicago Public Radio from this year and previous years. 

Comments

[Bruce]

This poem cannot help but call up, for me, reminiscences of TFA at Locke High School, whose alumni moved in en masse after Green Dot took over in 2008. Their presence has been positive there, but is it really enough? We need vastly more comprehensive urban renewal programs than any teacher preparation service can provide. Yet our mayors are left competing for the favor of the capitalists, and their commitments are usually brief and superficial, since most of them generally want to advance their careers before they are removed by term limits; so the kind of deep, abiding reforms that might tear down these psychic ghetto walls will not be forthcoming from our present political system. Without genuine social democracy, pitiful halfway solutions may be the best we can muster.