So, why are we so loyal to a president who is not loyal to us?

Kevin Johnson was pilloried for suggesting Obama has not been good for African Americans. But his question was a good one

Back when affirmative action was white, educational institutions were created for African Americans who were barred from admission elsewhere. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) became the breeding grounds for the "talented tenth" – the elite class groomed to lead black America. Towards the end of the last century HBCUs had produced 75% of black PhDs, 85% of black doctors and 80% of black federal judges. Among the most prestigious was Morehouse, in Atlanta, which counts Martin Luther King, Samuel Jackson and Spike Lee among its alumni.

A president for everyone, except Black people

 

Cornel West v. Barack Obama  Melissa Harris-Perry

Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards - Diane Ravitch

The Common Core standards have been adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia without any field test. They are being imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools. We are a nation of guinea pigs, almost all trying an unknown new program at the same time.

"For the past two years, I have steadfastly insisted that I was neither for nor against the Common Core standards. I was agnostic. I wanted to see how they worked in practice. I wanted to know, based on evidence, whether or not they improve education and whether they reduce or increase the achievement gaps among different racial and ethnic groups."

"Such standards, I believe, should be voluntary, not imposed by the federal government; before implemented widely, they should be thoroughly tested to see how they work in real classrooms; and they should be free of any mandates that tell teachers how to teach because there are many ways to be a good teacher, not just one."

They were developed by an organization called Achieve and the National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states.

Condi Rice-Joel Klein report: Not the new ‘A Nation at Risk

Council on Foreign Relations

The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education.

Joel Klein, Condi Rice, and the Military-Business-Education Reform Complex

The Joel Klein-Condi Rice ed report: What it will and won’t say
Don’t however, expect to see much, if anything on the fact that 22 percent of American children live in poverty and the consequences of that affect student achievement enormously.


"So I think that has led us to a place and time where we really clearly understand the problem in very much more specific ways. We know which schools work and which don't, which teachers are good and which are not so good, which kids are performing and which aren't. And so, you know, the first thing you have to do before you start to cure a problem is to figure out exactly, you know, what it is."         MARGARET SPELLINGS

Don Winslow's Top 5 Crime Novels

Don Winslow's Official Website

Don Winslow's Top 5 Crime Novels

‘What’s the best private eye novel ever written?’  The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

“A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.” 

Featured Author Interview: Don Winslow

LS: The scope of the publishing industry is changing. What is your opinion of the evolution of the e-book and self-publishing and their impact on the industry?

It’s enormous, of course, and I don’t know that anyone has really figured out its full impact yet. As long as people are reading, I’m not sure that the format matters, except I do worry about the impact on bookstores.  I’m of that generation for whom prowling a bookstore is a wonderful thing, and I would hate to lose that.



LS: On your website you mention growing up around story tellers. What other influences (such as novels you read as a kid) impacted your decision to become a writer?

I don’t think I read fiction until I was twelve or so.  Before that, I only read histories and biographies.  Then I discovered Dickens – Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.  I think Dickens is one of the progenitors of noir fiction, writing as he did about the criminal underclass. I also read a lot of Shakespeare.  Then I started reading novels by Michener, Uris and Ruark and thought, “That’s what I want to do.”


LS: Every writer experiences a moment when they decide if they want to be married to writing or just fool around with it. When did that decision come to you?

I was sitting in Oxford (sounds so snooty, doesn’t it) with my friend Jim Basker, a professor of literature at Barnard, and he said, ‘You’ve been talking about writing a novel for years. Why don’t you just do it?’ A few weeks later I was in Kenya, leading a photographic safari, sitting in front of a fire before dawn, and thought, ‘He’s right. I should just up and do it.’  I had heard an interview with Joseph Wambaugh who said that when he was still a cop he decided to write ten pages a day.  I didn’t think I could do ten, but I could do five.  So I decided that before the sun came up and stuck to it.

SEEDING NYC’S STARTUP SUCCESS

Over the past decade, the NYC region’s share of all venture capital deals in the U.S. more than doubled, from 5.3 percent to 11.4 percent. During the same period, New England’s share fell from 14.8 percent to 10.2 percent and Silicon Valley’s rose slightly, from 28.6 percent to 31.7 percent.

The Center for an Urban Future

Source: Center for an Urban Future analysis of data from MoneyTree Report, published by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association with data from Thomson Reuters

Yahoo

In Boost for Silicon Alley, Yahoo to Buy Tumblr for $1.1B
New Tech City- wnyc.org




Yahoo-Tumblr deal, here's a breakdown.    Tumblr, the blogging tool and social network - “platform for creativity” 



"And our mission — to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve" David Karp

And New York City's "Silicon Alley" sure is excited.

Instagram and now Tumblr have shown that once a social networking site attracts a fervent user base, deep-pocketed companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo will come calling.


Yahoo Bidding for Hulu
Mashable

AllThingsD reported earlier this month that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had met with Hulu executives, but after the company dropped $1.1 billion on Tumblr and another several million for gaming platform PlayerScale earlier this week, it seemed that the company might not go ahead with a bid. But that appears not to be the case — and even after the Tumblr acquisition, Yahoo has around $4 billion in cash to spend.

Yahoo Scraps Deal for French Video Site

Gig Alert: Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys

"My Side of the Mountain."
First came the traditional sounds of American bluegrass.  Then there was the punky, uptempo sounds of new-grass.  Now the Michigan band known as Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys would like to bring you something they've called 'Lou Grass.'  It’s their blend of expert picking, country swing and pop.

The Biggest Takeaways From Apple's Tax Grilling

The Mac maker's tax strategy has been under fire ever since The New York Times ran an expose about a year ago, "How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Taxes."


Apple's Record Plunge Into Debt Pool Offering Sets Record; Demand Was More Than $50 Billion

That brought attention from lawmakers, even though the issue at hand is really how broken the U.S. corporate tax system is. Apple just happens to be perhaps the highest-profile example of tax minimization. Here are the biggest takeaways from the hearing and Apple's testimonies, which were delivered by CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and head of tax operations Philip Bullock.


Strangely, there's a double standard when it comes to corporate income tax and individual income tax. It's entirely acceptable for individuals to seek tax minimization. Every tax preparing service promises to get you the "largest refund ever," which indubitably translates into paying the least amount legally possible.

However, when corporations do this for the benefit of their shareholders, they get vilified. It's also worth noting that the majority of Apple's shareholders are American individuals, whether they own shares individually or through a mutual fund or pension fund, so Apple's broad domestic investor base benefits from tax minimization.


the company has released a 17-page statement  outlining its tax policy.

Hank Willis Thomas

Shooting Stars


Hank Willis Thomas

 "And then he gets caught up in that friction, that conflict between the commodification of cool and absolute soul, as you describe it."

http://edudemic.com/2013/04/the-36-rules-of-social-media/

"When poor children go to public schools that serve the poor, and wealthy children go to public schools that serve the wealthy, then the huge gaps in achievement that we see bring us closer to establishing an apartheid public school system. We create through our housing, school attendance and school districting policies a system designed to encourage castes—a system promoting a greater likelihood of a privileged class and an underclass. These are, of course, harbingers of demise for our fragile democracy."  Susan Ohanian


Richard Rothstein, research associate and respected author of numerous books, briefs, studies and reports at the Economic Policy Institute, including the EPI Briefing Paper he wrote with William Peterson, “Let’s Do the Numbers: Department of Education’s ‘Race to the Top’ Program Offers Only a Muddled Path to the Finish Line” (4/20/10). For years, Rothstein has been reminding people that no matter how many fourth graders pass the test, it won’t raise the minimum wage. The education press seem incapable of hearing this message—or sharing it with the public.

Across the country, progressive educators complained that despite all the conversation about RTTT, there was little serious questioning of this radical federal deformation of what should be local school policy; the “other guys” got all the press. I decided to take a look, which meant reading some 700 articles on the subject of RTTT and the Common Core standards published between mid-May 2009 and mid-July 2010. Wanting to see which “independent experts” reporters called upon to explain these programs, I eliminated cites from state ed officials, union officials and politicos. This left me with 152 outside experts in 414 articles. Of the 23 experts quoted five times or more, 15 have connections with institutions receiving Gates funding and 13 with strong charter advocacy institutions.

Social Media Tools For Your Classroom

social media tools 

Students Face Tougher Tests That Outpace Lesson Plans

The city has spent $125 million on the Common Core, including teacher training sessions and the establishing of Common Core leaders who can teach and evaluate new practices. It also expects to spend more than $50 million on new Common Core-aligned textbooks.

Statistically speaking, city officials said, people should not worry too much about falling marks because everyone is taking the same new tests. Schools, students and teachers will be judged against one another.


At Public School 10 on the edge of Park Slope, Brooklyn, parents begged the principal to postpone the lower school science fair, insisting it was going to add too much pressure while they were preparing their children for the coming state tests.

They have been redesigned and are tougher. And they are likely to cover at least some material that has yet to make its way into the curriculum.

But the standards are so new that many New York schools have yet to fully adopt new curriculums — including reading material, lesson plans and exercises — to match. And the textbook industry has not completely caught up either. State and city officials have urged teachers over the last year to begin working in some elements of new curriculums, and have offered lesson plans and tutorials on official Web sites. But they acknowledge that scores will most likely fall from last year’s levels.

To cope, schools like Public School 3 in the West Village and Middle School 51 in Park Slope have begun intensive weekend and after-school prep classes, where students are briefed on how to perform math equations that might appear on the tests, in some cases using material they have not previously been taught. At other schools, they are plowing through practice booklets, dissecting Victorian-era poems, Japanese folk tales, and in some cases, instructional manuals at levels that teachers and parents say the students have not encountered.

IS THE GATES FOUNDATION INVOLVED IN BRIBERY?

FAIR

Here is how a news story describes it: "Now the foundation is taking unprecedented steps to influence education policy, spending millions to influence how the federal government distributes $5 billion in grants to overhaul public schools. The federal dollars are unprecedented, too. President Barack Obama persuaded Congress to give him the money as part of the economic stimulus so he could try new ideas to fix an education system that most agree is failing. The foundation is offering $250,000 apiece to help states apply, so long as they agree with the foundation's approach."


And it gets worse, as the story related: "Duncan's inner circle includes two former Gates employees. His chief of staff is Margot Rogers, who was special assistant to Gates' education director. James Shelton, assistant deputy secretary, was a program director for Gates' education division. . .The administration has waived ethics rules to allow Rogers and Shelton to deal more freely with the foundation, but Rogers said she talks infrequently with her former colleagues."

A particularly gross example of this upscale, and so far legal, bribery was revealed by Bill Turgue, in the Washington Post in April:  "The private donors have told the District that they reserve the right to reconsider their $64.5 million pledge if leadership of the school system changes. . . 

On a national scale, we have the unprecedented and increasing control of national education by a foundation created by a single billionaire. The thing driving these standards is not wisdom or public choice but the money:

"I think the reality of it is the Gates Foundation has been the major funder of the national standards and the three major reports on which the Massachusetts recommendation is based are funded by Gates. It's a little like being judge and jury," said Jamie Gass, director of the Center for Education Reform at the Pioneer Institute.

The  Gates Foundation since January 2008 has awarded more than $35 million to the Council of Chief School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the two main organizations charged with drafting and promoting common standards. 

If an individual were to influence governmental decisions with this sort of money, it would be clearly a criminal offense. Why should it be any different for a foundation? 

Gates has opened the door to an manifestly corrupt approach to government where a handful of well funded groups and individuals override the democratic legislative process by the prospect of funding or the threat of losing it. If you can't go to jail now for doing this, there should be laws that make it clear that you do from here on out.

The Fordham Institute has accepted more than $1.4 million from the Gates Foundation, including nearly $960,000 to conduct Common Core reviews

"I think the reality of it is the Gates Foundation has been the major funder of the national standards and the three major reports on which the Massachusetts recommendation is based are funded by Gates. It's a little like being judge and jury," said Jamie Gass, director of the Center for Education Reform at the Pioneer Institute.

Writers Explore What It Means To Be 'Black Cool'

"And, you know, I always give the example we don't celebrate - we don't separate yoga from India or Hinduism. We don't separate French cooking from the French. We don't separate the art of war and strategy from Chinese culture. And so the result of that is that all of these cultures have a kind of social currency on the global stage, but if blackness is separated from this aesthetic of cool that comes out of our culture, that represents our culture, that is transformative and is the lingua Franca around the world, then we lose - you know, as black people we lose respect, we lose financial support. And most of all, in our own lives, we lose the understanding of how much we are actually giving to this world."

Transcript
WALKER: Yes, dream's piece is really lovely. It's called "Audacity." One of the things I wanted to do with this book is to excavate all of the different elements of black cool, so that when we look at things that we think, oh, wow, that's cool, you know, I wanted to go beneath the surface and see what actually transmits that idea of cool, that notion of cool, that vibe of cool.

In  a new collection of essays, Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness, writers explore the definition of coolness within African-American culture. Writer Rebecca Walker edited the book and compiled a series of essays aimed to build a "periodic table of black cool, element by element."

Writer Rebecca Walker set out to create a "periodic table of black cool." She is the editor of a new collection of essays, Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness.

"I really wanted to name 'black cool' specifically because I think that the more it's appropriated, assimilated, commodified, the more distant ... the cultural contribution to global discourse becomes from actual black people. If blackness is separated from this aesthetic of cool that comes out of our culture ... we lose the understanding of how much we are actually giving to this world."

Walker stresses that though there are a lot of objects that have become symbols of cool, there's an aspect of "black cool" that should be internalized. "The moment at which we think as a people or as a community that we have to look outside of ourselves for this cosmology that expresses itself through this aesthetic, we're lost," says Walker.

It can be used to describe the artistry of a Miles Davis, or as the ultimate drug that keeps black men addicted to their status quo and in their place, that from bell hooks.
Mat Johnson
Tricia Rose
Kara Walker
Dream Hampton
Michaela Angela Davis
Helena Andrews
Miles Marshall Lewis
Hank Willis Thomas

I read this book because Kola Boof kept talking about it on her Twitter. I knew by the title it would be some type of affirmation essays by people I've mostly never heard of.

Stop And Frisk Trial

5 million stops have been made during the past decade, mostly of black and Hispanic men.

'It's Therapy': Why One Man Takes the Stop And Frisk Trial Personally

Lawrence Rushing, a Brooklyn professor has made a point of attending the federal stop and frisk trial nearly every day since it began three months ago. He has no personal ties to the case. But he believes the lawsuit challenging the way the city has been conducting its stop and frisk tactic is the most important trial focused on race in decades. Rushing has attended each day of the stop and frisk trial for most of past nine weeks. He arrives at 8:30 a.m. He has a bagel and a coffee in the cafeteria. Then he heads to courtroom 15C where he takes his usual spot in the second row.

"I live in the Prospect Lefferts Garden section of Brooklyn. I've seen stops in my neighborhood and it's shocking. ... You don't believe that its happening when it does. But for the people that are being stopped, they’re in a kind of shock. They are kind of speechless. They don't know why its going on or happening."

"Nobody wants criminals to be dealt with more than the black community because they are often the victims of street crime. But instead of going after the criminals they go after innocent people-- 90 percent of the people they stop are innocent of any crime… If there's one thing a community should be able to do is to protect their children and we are not able to protect our children and this is a horrible blight on us, the older generation."

You've mentioned that whatever happens in terms of the outcome of the case you’re hopeful that race relations will improve and more New Yorkers will get to enjoy a better quality of life. Why do you think so?

  KATHLEEN HORAN, Reporter, WNYC News

Witness Breaks Down in Stop And Frisk Trial

A 24-year-old nonprofit worker wept on the witness stand Tuesday as he described an unnerving episode of being handcuffed near his home while an officer took his keys and went inside his building.


City attorneys said officers operate within the law and do not target people solely because of their race. Police go where the crime is - and crime is overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods, city lawyers said.

How Much is a College Education Really Worth?

Should some college-bound students opt for a two-year degree at a technical school? Will an education give you a better life? Money Talking digs into the tough questions in the debate over the high cost of higher education and the mounting student debt that's one of its byproducts. The central question: Is college worth it? The answer: Only the listener can decide.


It's a question absolutely worth asking. It's also compounded by the fact that these kids are coming out into a very sluggish job market in which they're going to make less comparatively than they were going to five or 10 years ago.
— Rana Foroohar


As a result, some students and parents might be asking whether that college degree was really worth the cost. As higher education has gotten more expensive, total student debt has risen to more than a trillion dollars — second only to mortgage debt. The amount has nearly tripled since 2004.
Finally, some have rightly pointed out that our findings are descriptive, and should not necessarily be interpreted causally. It is likely true that smarter students self-select into engineering majors, so not every student will do better if she studies engineering rather than English. The same logic applies to more selective schools: part of why students at elite schools do better later on is that they are more talented before they ever enter college. Even so, careful economic research suggests that students do best when they attend the best school they can get in to, and that certain  majors have real benefits.

Ultimately, higher education decisions are made by individual students and their families, and are based on their unique interests, strengths, and personal values, not only income and career prospects. Students need to have realistic expectations about what they’re likely to get out of pursuing higher education. Rigorous   economic    research has found that there is a sizeable proportion of people who experience a negative return to their education. That doesn’t mean they may not excel at other pursuits. It just means that one size doesn’t fit all high school students.

Money Talking
The Brookings Institution

'Hedonic Treadmill'

Investopedia explains 'Hedonic Treadmill'

The hedonic treadmill theory explains the oft-held observation that rich people are no happier than poor people, and that those with severe money problems are sometimes quite happy. The theory supports the argument that money does not buy happiness and that the pursuit of money as a way to reach this goal is futile. Good and bad fortunes may temporarily affect how happy a person is, but most people will end up back at their normal level of happiness.

The tendency of a person to remain at a relatively stable level of happiness despite a change in fortune or the achievement of major goals. According to the hedonic treadmill, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness.

The hedonic treadmill is a characteristic associated with happiness where the source of happiness ultimately wanes in its ability to actually make the individual happy. This trait of happiness is most often associated with hedonistic sources of happiness, such as new purchases that first bring an increased sense of well being but eventually lose their luster.

As such, the hedonic treadmill is often used as an argument against the hedonic view of happiness. However, this happiness treadmill can also apply to eudaimonia, which suggests that encountering and overcoming challenging situations is one source of happiness. Under this definition, a eudaimonist who receives fulfillment by mastering a new hobby may find less happiness as he or she masters that hobby and the challenge wanes.

Other subtler points: Although many economists agree that money doesn’t make people happy, disparities in income make people miserable, according to most happiness literature.

Happy
Happy combines cutting-edge science from the new field of "positive psychology" with real-life stories of people from around the world whose lives illustrate these findings.

Shawn Carter Scholarship Foundation

The Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) Scholarship Fund | Deadline May 15

Shawn Carter Foundation

Sometimes, people just need the opportunity to be great. We created the scholarship foundation to be an opening of a door; the first step in a new direction. No one should be cheated out a chance at success just because they can’t continue their education. I want to do my part so anyone that really wants it has a chance to achieve their dream. -Shawn “JAY Z” Carter

A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn Craig Steven Wilder

Craig Steven Wilder is a professor of American history at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York.

Craig Steven Wilder is a professor of American history at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University focusing on urban history, under the tutelage of Kenneth T. Jackson, as well as Barbara J. Fields, and Eric Foner. His doctoral disseration was titled Race and the History of Brooklyn, New York which followed the history of Brooklyn from the arrival of the Dutch to the present day, focusing on the experiences of African-Americans. He has appeared on the History Channel's F.D.R.: A Presidency Revealed and on Ric Burns' PBS series, New York: A Documentary Film. Wilder was an assistant professor and Chair of African-American Studies at Williams College from 1995 to 2002, when he joined the faculty at Dartmouth. He remained at Dartmouth from 2002 to 2008 when he joined the faculty at MIT.

Interviews - Craig Steven Wilder - PBS
On New York's Immigration:I think the most phenomenal aspect of New York City, and it's almost continuous in New York City's history, is the sort of revolutionary movement of the population. These wild demographic shifts that occur every 20 years, the huge influx of people from all around the world. No other city can claim that type of population swing. Right now Brooklyn claims the largest African-descended population in the world outside Lagos, Nigeria.
"Whitman starts out writing for these one penny rags, the NEW YORK AURORA and other such papers. He eventually finds himself as the editor of the pro-slavery, pro-democrat BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE, from which he is fired for expressing a moderate anti-slavery thought, which is not really an anti-slavery thought, it was just about slavery's extension into the west. He was a pro-slavery person, pro-slavery editor, and pro-slavery idealogue for most of his career. But Whitman I think, really comes to represent a whole generation of people who didn't know who to blame for what was happening in their society."

My Brooklyn - Kelly Anderson - 2012 Craig Steven Wilder

NYC Teachers Union: Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union

Taylor began teaching in the New York City public school system as a special education teacher. For seven years, he worked at Junior High School 278 in Marine Park, Brooklyn, with students who were classified as emotionally disturbed, one of the most challenging student populations in the system. In 1984 Taylor left JHS 278 and became a social studies teacher at James Madison High School in Brooklyn. While teaching there, he pursued his doctorate in history at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.  Clarence Taylor joined the Baruch College faculty in 2004. Prior to his appointment at Baruch, Professor Taylor spent many years teaching in the New York public school system.

 

 Clarence Taylor provided our Dreamers and Fighters HISTORY page with an overview of the NYC Teachers Union, which will give you a preview of his forthcoming Reds On the Blackboard. He has lectured widely on the subject of teacher unionism and the TU and this book will feature a political view of the Union.

 

Reds at the Blackboard showcases the rise of a unique type of unionism that would later dominate the organizational efforts behind civil rights, academic freedom, and the empowerment of blacks and Latinos. Through its affiliation with the Communist Party, the union pioneered what would later become social movement unionism, solidifying ties with labor groups, black and Latino parents, and civil rights organizations to acquire greater school and community resources. It also militantly fought to improve working conditions for teachers while championing broader social concerns. For the first time, Taylor reveals the union's early growth and the somewhat illegal attempts by the Board of Education to eradicate the group. He describes how the infamous Red Squad and other undercover agents worked with the board to bring down the TU and how the union and its opponents wrestled over anti-Semitism and other issues as the anti-communist investigations ran their course from Rapp-Coudert through the early 1960s.

 

Clarence Taylor's history of the Teachers Union

Timeline


Dreamers and Fighters web site  is an attempt to further reach out — to those familiar with the impact of McCarthyism on a local level in New York City, and to those who would like the know more about it. Click your way through for a look at the History of the period, video clips from the Documentary, Multimedia from teachers, and for ongoing developments about the documentary and related Current Events. And don’t forget to join the conversation on the Message Board.

Ghosts of Sneakers Past

Lives Taken by Gun Violence Remembered in Shoes

Elaine Lane has collected a couple hundred shoes that represent young lives lost to gun violence. Her goal is to collect thousands, to represent the total number of young people killed by violence the year her son was shot and killed. 

She begs students to make positive choices so she never ends up with a pair of their shoes on her display. She hopes to collect 3,792 pairs – one for each person under age 19 who was killed by gun violence in the U.S. the year her son died.  

She came up with the idea of collecting shoes after walking a path of military boots that represented lives lost in the Iraq war. But she had no idea sneakers would resonate with young people so much.

Every sneaker has a story. I just feel like it’s so many lives and so much history and so much memories to all these shoes.
— Student Tyneikia Robinson, 14.