no.

just heard that bill brent killed himself. fuck. i loved him. when he moved back here from hawaii we were supposed to get together. i had sent him my tiny books and so on. i never managed to actually go have coffee with him and had no idea he was depressed or suicidal or anyting. wtf. i cant even believe it. fuck. so sad. why why why why why. i just got the black sheets 2.0 email too and was thinking of writing him. guilt. pointless guilt. mostly just sadness and confusion.

i rmeember messing around with him at 14th street parties and how creative he was in that context. and how a zillion years ago he read my manifesto out loud to his boyfriend in the bath and they laughed so hard they cried.

my heart goes out to anyone who was actually close to him . what a wonderful creative funny smart person he was. anarchisty and spontaneous and hilarious. i can't bend my mind around it. i wasn't close to him but he was a person after my own heart. i will miss him.

Racism in schools

Thinking about this combined with stuff about disability & race.

Researchers Sound Alarm Over Black Student Suspensions
By Nirvi Shah and Lesli A. Maxwell

Nearly one in six African-American students was suspended from school during the 2009-10 academic year, more than three times the rate of their white peers, a new analysis of federal education data has found.

That compares with about one in 20 white students, researchers at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, based at the University of California, Los Angeles, conclude. They use data collected from about half of all school districts in the nation for that year by the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights.

And for black children with disabilities, the rate was even higher: One in four such students was suspended at least once that year.

In some districts, as many as one out of every two black students was suspended.

“These numbers show clear and consistent racial and ethnic disparities in suspensions across the country,” said John H. Jackson, the president of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, based in Cambridge, Mass., which supports equity in schooling for all students and efforts to improve outcomes for African-American boys. “We are not providing [these students] a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. Any entity not serious about addressing this becomes a co-conspirator in the demise of these children.” . . .

If you also look at the rate that black kids are declared disabled (and what happens to them when they are) that is interesting too.
* The Disproportionate Representation of African-Americans in Special Education: Looking Behind the Curtain for Understanding and Solutions (PDF)
* Disability and Race: Who will catch you when you fall