Thrive Space & Green House Inc

The purpose of the program is to spread awareness and understanding of how the conditions of our communities we reside in affects or limits our different ways we discover and express ourselves. And through reflection we find different ways to create on foundational principals of social development and serving our societies. People may come from different types of environments, some impoverished while others having its ups and downs. However, the conditions of any environment and culture affects the way we express ourselves. Even the simplicities that get overlooked like just being in nature. A research study from an interdisciplinary team at Cornell University states that being in natural spaces for 10-50 minutes can naturally reduce stress.

By cultivating and participating in a holistic environment rooted in wellbeing we can envision the endless possibilities that can develop ethically within the ways we share our creativity and better the world. I feel that it is imperative for students to understand knowledge of self like cultivating moral values within their preparatory phases of life. The youth is one of the most, if not, the most sacred part of this world and we as a people must understand the human welfare of the community with goals to help scholars be comfortable with their self-expression even in times of discomfort. The invisible emotional work and the inner inquiry they do to discover themselves in new ways while studying their environment can further develop the critical thinking and analytical skills that must be cultivated with a deep reverence for the pursuit of education in life. Students socially develop when they learn how to learn on their own throughout the tasks of understanding education as a necessity and when they see their purposeful impacts on themselves and society. SANKOFA!

It is what comes from the structures of schooling that often reduces students to objects of measurement rather than human beings with feelings capable of self-improvement and transforming the world. An ongoing problem in many schools where the invisible emotional work students do to discover themselves in new ways or intellectually shift their perspectives is undervalued and often times ignored. It is due to the structures of schooling only prioritizing students quickly complying to rules without developing understanding with the student. While noticing this, I noticed most of my school’s walls are mostly plain white brick. giving the enclose feeling similar to a prison. So, I started an initiative to put affirmation murals on the walls to inspire students and create an empathetic environment of reassurance as they walk the fast-paced halls. Understanding that well-being of a community is to be first priority whether the institution is based on efficiency or not. Violence and different distortions will always be a byproduct of optimizing the efficiency of humanity. We are all healing which is a patient process and that is the truth because love is the spirit of healing. Structures of society would rather take advantage of your vulnerabilities, and I want you to know they are your strengths. Don’t let it make you detached and dissociate yourself from being an empathetic human with feelings because growth never is in a straight line. Students should learn how to see reality objectively by uncovering the socio-political structures of oppression, but they must do so through their own subjective experience and dialogue. The teacher’s role is to intervene and help students overcome paralyzing social constructs to think critically for themselves while collaborating with students to uncover the truth together through genuine ethical dialogue.

The principals of the initiative consist of intellectually confronting the social and structural injustices of the system my community is in.

It concerns how my local community has prioritized infrastructure that pertains to profitable markets that influences consumerism instead of the responsibility of supporting a community’s sustainability and creating holistic youth spaces for the developing youth. A prime example I always explain, is how there is a corporate bank, luxury car dealership, a smoke shop, and three gas stations with hyper processed foods in them, and they all are a walking distance from Banneker HS as the local community sits in a food desert.

In return, my 2024-25 senior year, I applied a greenhouse on my school’s campus before the smoke shop and gas stations, and this is how I see unconditional love and justice as verbs. By holistically analyzing the system and infrastructures that prioritized profit and imagining the horizontally based on the extensive moral nature of humanity. I am a student and community advocate the tries his best to see beyond what we as a people adapted to.

When gang violence amongst youth in the past were high and forms of escapism from my peers go unacknowledged in my community and school, I understood ways to address those effects of neglect was to create conditions for people that will inspire them reflect on themselves and think deeper about their choices and not just prioritize finding ways to make money or engage into unhealthy habits because they may have struggles with how they survive or imbalances in their emotional regulation. My intention is to provide a space for students of Banneker to learn about tools of self-sustainability and provide them with a space to safely and simply reflect on themselves, their culture, and environment during school. I appreciate those that have already addressed community issues and continue to do so continuing social justice.

As of June 2025, a political choice to make an FCS operation called GLIDE has taken place to shrink it school system to match its shrinking student population. The FCSS district plans to eliminate 140 central office positions by 2030 and adjust school staffing formulas. GLIDE is a budget control system the administration of FCS is using to plan to save 17 million dollars annually and by cutting non personnel spending by 5% FCS plans to GLIDE into a balanced budget without ever hitting $0 on their savings account. They are predicting if they don’t cut their spending by 2030, it will be a $93 million dollar debt. So, the district administration wants to remove redundant roles that were added during periods of higher enrollment via COVID relief funds. When a school district is declared insolvent the local school board loses its power over the budget and the state takes over. The state government of Georgia is controlled by republicans. Republicans want to dismantle the present educational system and privatize it fully for profit to sustain predatory state capitalism. The GLIDE initiative as it’s framed, is pushing school visuals of managing their own budgets on how they rely on their community, making everything look like the local worker making the decision.

Current education will not serve our public democracy well because it prioritizes state capitalism and constructs and environment where low-income area teachers’ prioritize short-term returns to deliver results, putting pressure on them as they learn less. Education is a public good that should prepare students to participate in the economy by cultivating critical thinking and curiosity as independent thinkers. Markets are always bad at protecting the educational needs of a democracy as the needs of the most vulnerable get sidelined because they are considered unprofitable. Behind the scenes, democracy is quietly being dismantled, and it is bad economics that will lead higher future public cost because resources have not been distributed amongst people equitably.

Governments have the ability to raise revenue for the working class and with this responsibility they’ll have to confront powerful wealthy people. Many wealthy corporations want taxes lowered and it’s been this way for a long time. President Nixon in 1971, implemented the Nixon Shock to address the rise in inflation from the heavy Vietnam War spending. In 1973, oil prices started quadrupling due to the OPEC embargo further causing a recession. By 1979 the Iranian revolution occurred accelerating inflation alongside Fed Reserve Chair Paul Volker increasing interest rates to drop inflation causing another recession lasting from 1980-82. Which lead to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. By 1981, the neoliberal Reagan Administration aggressively redirected wealth to the top implementing the largest tax cuts in history that increased inequality only to favor wealthy individuals.

The elite have indoctrinated us as a people to think economics is the study of scarce resource allocation and unlimited wants. This incomplete definition abstracts the actuality of economics away from the most critical aspects of reality, isolating it from its social and ethical contexts, the truth can be read though the lies. For example, corporate interests that leads to lobbying and monopoly power where private corporations reap the rewards from the risk the public working class takes. All people can vote for different rules to change but the power lies in the hands of the wealthy elite, where public funds are being used for high-risk research and development only resulting in the profit of private corporations. Present day economics continues to be a question of power, the desire to maximize personal gain at the expense of others, artificial scarcity limiting life’s essentials, and class war against the general population. When economics is originally production, consumption, interchange, and should be a deeper dive into human nature. The world currently possesses the resources to solve major crises, and real scarcity of environmental resources is currently being created by people due to the privatization of profit over the planet’s survival. The scarcity that people aren’t focused on is our intellectual capacity, and moral will to choose a path to a better world.

Public education can be reformed without surrendering to private interest. There has been federal involvement historically before because of the state failing poor, rural, black, disabled, and migrant students. Removing federal responsibility will not achieve equality that the marginalized deserve. Rights will not enforce themselves so we as citizens have to advocate for them. If not, there will be long term societal costs of privatizing education fully for low-income communities leaving high need students underserved.

Power shifts resources from poor to wealthy families and policy makers continue to avoid the education of systemic oppression. Through this they can say the poor schools are based on the behavior of the community. There is a persistent wealth gap in America rooted in the economic exclusion of the marginalized by ways of institutionalized redlining, manipulative policies and ideological warfare, and chattel slavery. Low-income communities are paying the price of economic, social, and political oppression. History will always matter explaining why inequality exist now. SANKOFA

Systemic exploitation has been historically used by the wealthy to create the inherited hierarchy we see today. The oppressor’s version of freedom has always been a greedy one with a 300-year head start designed purposely to prevent wealth accumulation of the marginalized. Arawak Indians lived cooperatively, and Christopher Columbus was on his search for gold, presently we see different cultures numbing themselves out with certain individuals engaging into conspicuous consumption, on their own search for gold at the expense of others stability. Now we have a displaced culture with a consensus of be poor and try to work your way up through life, conform as hard as you can and be strategic enough to gain wealth, or go to prison never sacrificing the identity of where you come from. Wealthy districts will provide low quality education to poor students that will prepare them for low wage jobs. As this goes on the wealthy has time to get creative education to lead the country. Our predatory state capitalism system has historically, pushed cost downward and the FCS district is absorbing the damages because the state would rather protect the capital of their corporate interest. Become aware of the identity crises marginalized people come across in the life that comes with bypassing the history of this society. Things cannot truly progress without addressing rotten foundations.

Injustices went from wage slavery, mass incarceration, and manipulative Jim crow laws in the 1870s, to the 1920s with Walter Lippman arguing ordinary people can’t understand complex politics fully and giving elites advice on shaping perception in democracies, alongside Edward Bernays being a founder of modern public relations turning propaganda to a science and art form to shape public perception and desire to serve elite interest, to the 1930s Franklin D. Roosevelt introducing the New Deal institutionalizing redlining with segregationist where blacks were denied loans, insurance, and mortgages making welfare only possible for white families only, to the 1950s civil rights movement fighting back, to the 1970s with black men losing their factory jobs finding ways to survive, to the CIA working with the Contras of Nicaragua/Honduran military to overthrow the Sandinista socialist government, and the CIA working with anti-left paramilitaries in Columbia for the profit of US corporate interest of natural resources overseas. Letting contras, anti-left paramilitaries, and cartels traffic drugs into U.S. for funding to obtain weaponry and equipment from the CIA, with Reagan’s drug policy leaving the black mother in poverty in the 80s, to by the 2000s 1 in 3 black men could expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Hence why they call it the War on Drugs. And just think how us black people’s music has changed over time.

Trump symbolically states that he’s going to “Make America great again” and recreate the Golden Age. However, his policies are on the parallel historically with Reagonomics and Thatcher-era economics in the UK. Remind you, due to the unique conditions of low global competition after WW2 that required strong government and public investments, 1947-1973 is considered the Golden Age of America. Even with the exclusion of marginalized groups, it is considered the Golden Age. In present day reality, power and wealth concentration is growing, control is shifting from the public to private corporations, and our President Trump is advocating for minimal government investment, privatization of government services in the midst a lot of global competition, deregulation of industries, and nationalist trade through tariffs. The golden age of America consisted of the government investing in education and infrastructure heavily. With things going how they are with Trumps policies, wages and productivity that grew together that was seen before 1973 won’t happen, economic inequality will increase favoring elite power only, and ordinary working families will lose services due to privatization making everything more expensive. The U.S. will go to war to protect corporate interest.

The FCS district finances remain stable with a projected year-end fund balance of 287 million for the 12-month accounting period of 2026. However, Title I cannot solve things that local property taxes are supposed to fund or anything that replaces what should already exist at a school. Title 1 is something that doges the question of why we don’t change the system that creates Title 1 and redistribute funds. Low-income schools have to endure the constraints that comes with receiving funds and the state system it operates in constantly distributes wealth upward. Title 1 helps students survive the system while they aren’t having the same educational experiences wealthy areas are having. But what interest me is how my culture of people especially the developing youth have such a hard time conforming to this economy.

I always would wonder why people advocate for cultural diversity and different values of their cultures. African Americans have historically been at the bottom of the hierarchy. If the marginalized develop socially and advocate for change amongst the system, it will lead to challenging the norms of relational power anywhere. Cooperative economics and mutual aid are something to look into always even if they are ridiculed. So, who really are these corporate entities making sure wealth stays concentrated at the top while my classmates go right into the workforce or military. Its injustices all throughout this system of predatory state capitalism and they must be exposed for all cultures to exist peacefully together to create the unified class movements.

The elite do not want schools like Banneker to focus on high level social development or creative thinking. I feel as though they weaponize critical thinking to keep students complicit and mentally paralyzed postponing stages of self-discovery. Social development is threat to the powerful because it creates the ideas of solidarity, that classmates and the community can demand a change. If we do decide to come together will advocate for the redistribution of funds and the taxation. Only groups of people that get to operate like socialist are the wealthy while the poor are the corporate elite’s policy success.

Those in power want high quality education for the wealthy and technical training for the rest. I think white supremacist will manufacture deeper conditions of barriers and coercion for the marginalized because the marginalized human is so resilient. The elite could just mold and objectify them harder at the expense of their cultural identity and become the best highly paid service to the ruling class. Just for the now high paid service, to say things to minorities that white supremacist can’t.

People like this think wealth is an actual thing and equate it to their self-worth. Wealthy people are those who benefited from specific policy decisions designed to enrich them. For example, since redlining schools have been tied to property taxes putting white families in green zones with federally backed mortgages at low interest, it has created intergenerational wealth excluding black families from one of the main ways wealth accumulated in U.S. neighborhoods. With expensive homes creating more revenue for schools alongside displacing black neighborhoods through the 1950s-70s. While wealthy shareholders and corporations make money from investment income and executive compensation, low-income workers were underpaid through minimum wages. Local social capital policy created advantages that compound over generations.

President Trump stated his administration is going to raise the values of houses for the wealthy through deregulation enriching corporations and billionaires. He claims those in need don’t work as hard. As a toddler, Donald Trump was raised in a 23-bedroom mansion until 13, by age 8 became a millionaire. Presently, he advocates the illusion of meritocracy on unlevel playing fields openly. And we have to acknowledge the republican president of the one-party system of America because he is in favor of the wealth sector in Georgia and their decision making affects the public rights of democracy. In this society, both democrats and republicans are committed to maintaining a massive, militarized state and supporting corporate interest. However, even though the republican party has drifted so far right that they have abandoned parliamentary politics and democrats tend to be more rational on subjects and favored publicly, there is bipartisan commitment to the neoliberal agenda to create a militarized state. Business party or even “wings of the same bird” can be a proper name for the superficiality of opposition that we observe. Some even go as far as calling these instances that happen within our capitalist democracy, political theatrics or illusions because of democrats and republicans both engaging in continuous efforts to dismantle a regulatory state and protect private wealth.

Wealth is created through financial institutions that create nothing of social value. Socialism is for the rich and predatory state capitalism is for the exploited poor. If wealth was a measure of merit teachers and technicians would get paid way more than they do. Rewarding the outcomes for a group of people that are purposefully unaccountable and scared they would lose everything is unethical and emotionally immature. They continue to deny democratic education and what people are capable of in this world.

I think we as a people should come together to dismantle neoliberal policies and advocate for reparative justices like societal agreements to redistribute funds to correct past injustices so we can live in solidarity and preserve the environment. Market driven education replaces public values with the competition of profit making. Banneker is a public institution; therefore, it needs public investment, but society has gained this notion of turning inequalities into opportunities for businesses without addressing the root causes of why the inequality exist.

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This matters why?…Because this is what the society scholars are born into consists of.