Local Leader Spotlight

Organizing for Justice: An Interview with Sharon Smith

By Margaret Goldman

 

As communities mourn the gutting of our public education system, I sat down with a long-time Newark resident and community organizer, Sharon Smith, to discuss her experiences advocating for social and educational justice in Newark. Sharon’s decades of community organizing reveal two key messages that can serve as a resource during seemingly unprecedented times: first, the current assault on inclusive, community-controlled education has been years in the making; second, for just as many years, Newark community members have resisted this assault and successfully organized for a public school system that prioritizes people over power and profit.

As a long-time community organizer, Sharon has worn many hats and played many roles. At the national level, she serves as the leadership development coordinator for Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J), which works with other social justice organizations to improve their skills and capacities for base building, coalition building, and sustainable organizing. About 12 years ago, Sharon also co-founded PULSE (Parents Unified for Local School Education), a non-profit in Newark that has led a decades-long fight for educational equity and community-controlled schools.

Sharon’s interest in community organizing emerged from her role as a mother of five and, later, grandmother of two. “I live in the South Ward of Newark,” she explained, “I have been living in the South Ward for about 20 years. My children attended some of the schools in the South Ward, but also during the changes in the school district, they’ve been in other schools, including charter[s].” These changes refer to two distinct but related waves of privatized education reform that swept through Newark in the 90s and again in the 2010s.

Sharon distinguished the two waves, centering around the rise of charter schools. Whereas the 90s saw a massive influx of charter schools, Sharon explained, “the move from just opening up charter schools to closing down public schools, that really happened during the Obama administration.”

But it wasn’t just schools in general that were being closed: it was specifically Black and Brown schools, in Black and Brown neighborhoods, that served Black and Brown children. Referring to the swift progression of school closures, Sharon remarked that “it was as though the superintendent dropped a bomb on the South Ward:” a comment that evokes resonance with the MOVE bombing and other attacks the US has led on Black and Brown communities. Indeed, Sharon and the other parents in PULSE drew similar connections, linking their resistance against school closures to a broader fight for community control over the spaces that Black and Brown youth and their families called home.

So that began the fight with Newark Public School and the closing of schools. [We argued that] an alternative to school closure was to take on the sustainable community schools, and we felt like community schools was the answer to making sure that we were providing support around the whole family, the whole child. And it was better than closing the schools down. Because most of our public schools are community hubs. Not only were children going there for learning, but there were activities, basketball, different game nights. There were other things that were going on that really kept the community close to, you know, developing neighbors, right? But that was being destroyed also.

Sharon’s experiences advocating for her own children at the various schools they attended ultimately evolved into organizing alongside other parents for the educational rights of children across Newark. In addition to fighting school closures, PULSE successfully filed a Title XI complaint against Newark, resulting in an investigation that ultimately pressured the city to take corrective action.

In the last few minutes of our conversation, as a pint-sized boss was summoning her to return to her grandma duties, I asked whether the struggle for educational justice in Newark could provide guidance for these seemingly unprecedented times. Her response, worthy of being quoted at length, highlights the continued possibilities for demanding educational equity and the necessity of connecting these struggles to other social and economic struggles toward a shared vision of social and community justice,

…the pandemic only highlighted what was actually going on in America … We call this inequity…And so what our group, which is Journey for Justice Alliance(J4J), was doing near the end of the pandemic was to talk to more people about a Quality of Life agenda. [We realized] that we could no longer push this fight in silos. Our platform is education—but if there is something going on in healthcare, we’re helping the same people. If there’s something going on with safety, we’re talking to the same people. If there’s something going on with economics in your neighborhood, we’re talking to the same people. And if it’s something going [on] with fresh fruits and vegetables—food sovereignty? Of course. It’s going on in our community. So [the question becomes] how do we look at our country with a Quality of Life agenda?

Sharon’s closing words underscore the interconnectedness of our collective struggle for equity, justice, and an improved quality of life. Her final words of advice offer us a clue towards how we forge forward during these times: we do it in community and with a shared agenda.