Anti-racism club nears funding
Middle-schoolers competing for $25,000 national award
Twelve-year-old Liza Mullin was inspired to do her part to combat racism after the police killing of George
Floyd in Minneapolis last year along and seeing bigoted social media posts that annoyed her.
“I always knew about racism, but it was just never really a huge issue for me, because I had never really seen it, when I was younger, I didn’t have the social media and stuff to see it, but now I do,” said Mullin, a member of the Oneida Middle School for Anti-racism in the Schenectady school district.
The club, which is about a year old and is led by Yacouba Sangore, an Oneida sixth-grade math and science teacher, is among about 200 school and community groups nationwide vying for 40 grants of $25,000 each through State Farm Insurance’s “Neighbor Assist” program to help further their cause.
After making it past the initial stage, OSAR must now rally supporters to vote en masse online between Wednesday and Aug. 27 for the windfall to become a reality.
Winners will be announced Sept. 29.
The rules, according to online information about the program, allows for adults to vote up to 10 times every day.
In the grant application, Sangare wrote the grant will be used to start a debate team, a slam poetry program and pay for a field trip to the nation’s capital to meet with elected officials and attend the anti-racism book festival to meet with authors they’ve studied.
“Both the debate team and slam poetry program would give students different avenues to research social justice issues that are important to them and give them creative outlets to express these issues,” stated Sangare, a staff advisor to the club. “Our trip to Washington D.C. would be part of our advocacy work.”
The journey to this point began in May or June when Sangare submitted an application to State Farm about the club, community and for what they would use the prize money.
Last week, the veteran educator got an email that OSAR was among 200 finalists who made into the second round of the competition.
Sangare, who has taught in the district for 18 years, talked Tuesday about the role of the club, an outgrowth of his involvement with the district’s anti-racism task force and the anti-racism building leadership team at Oneida.
“This is not to brainwash kids, this is not to have Blacks against whites, that’s not our intention,” said Sangare. “This is really to help our community at Oneida, where we have almost close to 45 percent Black and brown students, to teach them and make them aware, and to give them a safe space where they can come and express themselves.”
He’s extremely impressed by the thoughtfulness of some of the 27 sixth-graders in the group who helped design a mural adorning the top of the first floor stairs at the Oneida Street school.
“They really think about their identity, they think about pronouns, they think about name change and all these things, so it was really remarkable when we were able to establish a relationship with those students, they were able to trust us and really open up about so many issues that they’re going through at home and in school,” said Sangare, adding the hot button topics ranged from Black Lives Matter to the LGBTQ+ issues. “We let them tell us what they want to see and what they want to do, and we support them on the side.”
Blake Simmons, who will celebrate his 12th birthday next week and is going into seventh grade, said Tuesday that he penned a poem about police brutality.
He is also part of the group’s communication committee that puts out OSAR’S newsletter.
Mullin, who serves on OSAR’S public relations and social media committee, said the prize money will be put to good use to help further the club’s mission.
“Some people don’t realize how important it is to the club itself to get that money, and I think if we did have that money, we could do some great things,” said Mullin, who is going into seventh grade.
Sangare said the club aims to unify people in a polarized country.
“This is the right thing to to do with this generation — teach them the right way and talk about it before they get to the point nobody wants to talk about it anymore,” he said. “This is not a Black-and-white issue, this is a societal issue.”